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 How European History merged into World History 581 III. PARTITION OF AFRICA 1058. The "Dark Continent." The last great region to attract the attention of Europeans looking for trade was Africa. Little was known of the interior before 1870. Between 1850 and 1880 many explorers braved the torrid heat and the dangers from disease, savages, and wild beasts to discover the sources of the Nile and to trace the courses of the Zambesi and the upper Congo Rivers. Of these Livingstone and Stanley are best known. Stanley's famous journey through the heart of "Darkest Africa" naturally aroused the intense interest of all the Euro- pean powers, and within ten years after his triumphant return to Marseilles in 1878 the entire surface of Africa had been divided among the powers or marked out into "spheres of influence." A generation ago a map of Africa was for the most part based on mere conjecture, except along the coast ; today it is traversed by boundary lines surveyed almost as carefully as those which separate the various European countries. 1059. France in Africa. France has almost the whole of the northwestern shoulder of the continent, from the mouth of the Congo to Tunis. To be sure, a very considerable portion of the French claim is nothing but a desert, totally useless in its present state. On the east coast of Africa France controls French Somaliland. The French also hold the island of Madagascar. 1060. German Africa. Between 1884 and 1890 Germany acquired four considerable areas of African territory Togoland, Kamerun, German Southwest Africa, and German East Africa, which included together nearly a million square miles. The Germans attempted to develop these regions by building railways and schools and expending enormous sums in other ways, but the wars with the natives and the slight commerce which was estab- lished left the experiment one of doubtful value. 1061. Belgium and the Congo Free State. Wedged in be- tween German East Africa and the French Congo is the Belgian Congo. King Leopold of Belgium organized a company in 1876 to explore this region and later announced that he regarded