Résultats Éditeur "Charles River Editors" dans Afrique

The Napoleonic Wars radically altered the old, established European power dynamics, and in 1795, the British, now emerging as the globe’s naval superpower, assumed control of the Cape as part of the spoils of war. In doing so, they recognized the enormous strategic value of the Cape as global shipping routes were developing and expanding. Possession passed back and forth once or twice, but more or less from that point onward, the British established their presence at the Cape, which they held until the unification of South Africa in 1910.

Before the mid-19th century, European intervention in much of tropical Africa was extremely difficult because of the disease gradient. The combination of malaria and yellow fever commonly killed off half of European troops stationed in West Africa each year. It was the reverse of the conquest of the Americas, where introduced diseases wiped out 50 million indigenous Americans, opening the land to settlement and greatly reducing the ability to resist. This was much less of a problem in temperate southern Africa, accounting for the Dutch being able to set up a colony there in the 17th century.