Talk:Colonisation of Africa

Untitled
Half of the article is the stuff that 172 pasted everywhere And that "stuff" pertains to the "colonization of Africa".

172 -- Maybe we could merge all the article you edited in just one ;). I'm not historian do you feel to write something in Algerian War of Independence it's a major lack in Wikipedia. Ericd

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A succint page on colonization of Africa is essential. Ericd’s that a separate article on the Algerian War of Independence is needed as well.

172: Go to my user page. There’s a surprise there.

- Including Madeira as a colony is absurd, it had no previous indeginous population, present day population is of european descent and it is an autonumous region of Portugal
 * It's often counted as part of Africa, and it was colonised. Including it make clear sense. Warofdreams talk 01:32, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

- This article is an absolute mess as far as organization, sentence structure, and clarity. Like in the Walter Rodney section -- "Africa was being underdeveloped through the resources taken." What does this even mean??? And the article starts refering to someone named "Khapoya" out of nowhere, with no introduction. Anyone know how to add a flag to the page as being in need of revisions? -- JJWWiki 22:45, 11 April 2021

Spelling
Why is the American spelling of colonization used? Most English-speaking countries in Africa use commonwealth English, so why American?? Aaker 14:02, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

I am American, but I agree. It just seems weird to me to see "Colonisation of Africa" with a "z" instead of an "s". The manual of style seems to agree. I'm going to rename the page. --Tea and crumpets 15:46, 27 September 2007 (UTC)


 * I have changed all instances of "z" to "s", except in the interwiki links. – Black Falcon (Talk) 16:16, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

The Manual of Style suggests that we avoid the the word "colonization" or "colonisation" altogether in the title. Therefore, i suggest we retitle the article "Colonialism in Africa."

I second that "Colonialism in Africa" would avoid any confusion or debate in the title and retain the the same meaning, but I'll leave that for someone else to change. I am going to update the 17 uses of "colonization" to "colonisation." JJWWiki 22:08, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

Germany?
Nice twist to blame The Scramble for Africa on the Germans. Lars T. 20:22, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

In response to the above comment: The reference to Bismarck's Berlin Conference and the policy of New Imperialism as the impetus for The Scramble for Africa does not appear a biased claim in this article nor a nationalist attack on Germany by any means; it is generally acknowledged that the Conference and Bismarck's dominant role in European politics during that period culminated in the era's rapid colonization of Africa (for example, as in college-level/AP European History textbooks). --Tpugliese01 (talk) 16:04, 10 August 2017 (UTC)


 * "It is generally acknowledged...", by whom? The publisher for those history books? Some recent historians? It's not exactly uncommon for the anglosphere to engage in historical revisionism, especially when it comes to textbooks for schools, via framing things a certain way and/or omitting facts (apparently Americans don't even learn about their concentration camps on The Philippines, as an example). One can easily look up the data from the time (colonization, treaties etc) to see what was happening. Something like Germany claiming Cameroon five days before a British ship arrived and could do so could certainly give you an indication on how things were already before the "Congo Conference". And that's aside from the fact that it was a general "grab everything as fast as you can" which applied to other non-African non-influenced territory as well. Otherwise, one can look at older history books, more close to the time and possibly from people who lived through it, to get a less framed picture.
 * Granted though, this is Wikipedia which is often used as a propaganda tool and full of wrong information. There are even pages straight up contradicting each other with written text like: "The man chiefly responsible for the Triple Alliance was Otto von Bismarck, the Chancellor of Germany.", in contrast to, "Italy became part of the Triple Alliance, an event which upset Bismarck's carefully laid plans and led Germany to join the European invasion of Africa." (which is, of course, utter nonsense, on so many levels even). That's also why Wikipedia itself wasn't (and hopeyfully still isn't) allowed as a source for any school work. Lucumo (talk) 14:02, 29 June 2022 (UTC)

UK/US edit notice
I made a failed attempt to create an edit notice using the British-English-editnotice template. Sorry about the mistake, but this notice is now moved to the top of the article. Can an admin please create this edit notice? --Fama Clamosa (talk) 18:42, 11 March 2010 (UTC)
 * ✅. JohnCD (talk) 20:18, 11 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks! --Fama Clamosa (talk) 20:32, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Map Substitute
Does anyone else think that the map under "The Scramble for Africa" on the right, should be replaced with larger one? —Preceding unsigned comment added by GameSlayerGS (talk • contribs) 14:42, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

Vincent Khapoya
Way too much of this article Is based on the opinion of one person, Vincent Khapoya, a modern day person. Is Khapoya widely acknowledged as 'the Einstein of the history of the colonization of Africa?" It seems to me that since so many assertions of fact made in the article are based on the views of this person, there should be a section vetting his credibility as a widely recognized and respected authority. Without it, It seems less an encyclopedic article on the colonization of Africa than a presentation of the views of Vincent Khapoya, which may be biased. This strikes me as odd and typical of the sort of things that make people consider Wikipedia at best a good starting point for seeking info about something but nothing you could ever 'take to the bank' without external verification.


 * Totally agree, there are more than enough relevant historians so that we can have multiple points of view and sources for this article, which is an important one.
 * -- Edmond8674 — Preceding undated comment added 00:03, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

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Negative effect of colonialism in Africa with examples
The negatives impact on colonialism in Africa 41.222.180.100 (talk) 12:04, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

Earliest European Colony?
Phoenicians are mentioned, but they are from Asia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenicia — Preceding unsigned comment added by TurnerValley (talk • contribs) 04:06, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

The article indicates that the earliest European colony inAfrica was Cape Town in 1652, but the Portuguese founded Luanda in 1576. FelipeVO (talk) 12:47, 18 August 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Information Literacy and Scholarly Discourse
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Unclear Use of "Colonisation"
Pretty simple contention here - I'm not sure the totality of subject material covered under this article should be placed in the same article, at least not without much further clarification. There are a few main contentions motivating this: The article, all in all, comes across entirely incohesive, unified only by a vague sense that all its subject matter may be described with the same term, without consideration for how said term is employed differently in each topic. Put differently, this article has little discussion on how topics relate, calling into question whether topics are better placed on dedicated articles that already exist.
 * The unexpected & unexplained decision to center this article on external "colonisation"
 * The unclear bounds & definitions to delineate what, exactly qualifies as "colonisation" under the tenants of the article.
 * The clearly uneven distribution of efforts & energies between discussing different topics.

Part of this comes down to the mere ambiguity of words, especially those such as "colonisation". Simply put, it does not seem to me that this term has any consistent 'meaning', nor is one clearly given, articulated, maintained, or justified by the article. While we obviously refer to migration of human populations to a region in order to exploit resources (for subsistence) as "colonisation" in the literal sense, we lack an article on "Colonisation of Europe" because we clearly draw some mental difference between mere migration to a region in a pre-historic or at least pre-modern sense (think, the movement of human populations into Europe, the spread of Near Eastern farmers and their offspring across Europe) and the Imperial efforts driven by (mostly) European states (say, the events from the early-modern era onwards). For that matter, I also would advocate excluding Medieval expansion into the African continent by Arabs/Muslims from "Colonisation" for the same reason we typically do not refer to the unification of Arabia or conquest of Persia as "Colonisation", or the Ottoman annexation of Anatolia, or even the Crusades as such. I reckon the article should have its contents divided between:
 * (Prehistoric) Migrations Within and Into Africa (including such topics as Back To Africa migrations, Inter-African Migrations (i.e. Bantu Expansion)
 * Imperialism in Africa (including such topics as Portuguese activity on the Swahili Coast, the Zimbabwe Plateau, Colonization of the Guanches peoples, all the way to the Scramble for Africa and potentially the "Neo-Colonialism" that people like to discuss. Under the latter we may include such topics as Arab or Roman conquests into Africa, though at that point I personally would question why we should then exclude imperialism executed by African-rooted Empires as well (Mali, Songhai, Luba, Ethiopia, &.c.), at which point the article simply becomes one about empires in Africa.

The place of "settler-colonies" (ie: founding cities by populations who move to an area in order to gain some edge from its resources, usually location & trade) within this schema is unclear here, but note that we already have such an article, "Colonies in antiquity", for discussing many such instances in antiquity. One such article may be made for a broader set of use-cases, which could then also encompass Swahili settler-colonies in places like Madagascar, and various "colony" communities founded by traders in / from West African regions (ie: "Tukrir" settlements in East/Central Africa, historic Hausa communities without Hausaland)...

"Colonisation of Africa" may then be made into a Disambiguation to refer to any of these potential uses of the term. HiddenHistoryPedia (talk) 17:25, 17 August 2023 (UTC)


 * This seems a decent analysis. The article is very undeveloped, likely a function of the ambiguities you identify. If you have sources that could help elucidate these distinctions and conceptual frameworks, that would greatly help the article. I wouldn't split it into a disambiguation though, at least not before the context here is developed enough that a split is clear from the existing content. CMD (talk) 03:06, 18 August 2023 (UTC)
 * I agree that a precise definition of "colonisation" must be selected at the outset. The article would demand heavy modification once this necessary first step is accomplished. Chino-Catane (talk) 12:05, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Gender and Technoculture 320-01
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lead section
Moved from Article:

"...and potentially the Malays as it is pertaining to distinguishing between immigration and settler colonialism..."

Is there any evidence that Malays established colonies in Africa? If they simply migrated to Africa freely, this does not need to be mentioned in the lead section of an article concerning the colonisation of Africa. Chino-Catane (talk) 11:33, 4 June 2024 (UTC)