s. Many of them (like the Sultan of Zanzibar and the chiefs of
the Cameroons) had repeatedly begged to be taken under British
protection, and had been refused. During the two generations before
1878 the interior of the continent had begun to be known. But except in
the north and north-west, where French explorers and a few Germans had
been active, the work had been mainly done by British travellers. Most
of the great names of African exploration--Livingstone, Burton, Speke,
Baker, Cameron and the Anglo-American Stanley--were British names.
These facts, of course, gave to Britain, already so richly endowed, no
sort of claim to a monopoly of the continent. But they naturally gave
her a right to a voice in its disposal. Only the French had shown
anything like the same activity, or had established anything like the
same interests; and they were far behind their secular rivals.

But these facts bring out one feature which differentiated the
settlement of Africa from that of any other region of the non-European
world. It was not a gradual, but an extraordinarily rapid achievement.
It was based not upon claims established by work already done, but, for
the most part, upon the implicit assumption that extra-European empire
was the due of the European peoples, simply because they were civilised
and powerful. This was the justification, in a large degree, of all the
European empires in Africa. But it was especially so in the case of the
empire which Germany created in the space of three years. This empire
was not the product of German enterprise in the regions included within
it; it was the product of Germany's dominating position in Europe, and
the expression of her resolve to create an external empire worthy of
that position.

Africa falls naturally into two great regions. The northern coast,
separated from the main mass of the continent by the broad belt of
deserts which runs from the Atlantic to the Red Sea, has always been
far more ultimately connected with the other Mediterranean lands than
with the rest of Africa. Throughout the course of history, indeed, the
northern coast-lands have belonged rather to the realms of Western or
of Asiatic civilisation than to the primitive barbarism of the sons of
Ham. In the days of the Carthaginians and of the Roman Empire, all
these lands, from Egypt to Morocco, had known a high civilisation. They
were racially as well as historically distinct from the rest of the
continent. They had b