Map of Africa in 1914
By 1914 the European partition of Africa was complete. Almost the entire continent was under formal European rule — a configuration that would last only briefly before WWI redrew the map again.
The Completed Partition
In just three decades (roughly 1884 to 1914) European powers had divided 90% of African territory. Only Ethiopia (which defeated Italian invaders at the Battle of Adwa in 1896) and Liberia (settled by freed American slaves and effectively a US protectorate) remained independent African states.
Colonial Holdings in 1914
- France: French West Africa (Senegal, Mauritania, French Sudan, Côte d'Ivoire, Dahomey, Guinea, Upper Volta, Niger), French Equatorial Africa (Gabon, Middle Congo, Ubangi-Shari, Chad), Algeria (formally part of France), Tunisia (protectorate), Morocco (protectorate from 1912), Madagascar, French Somaliland
- Britain: Egypt, Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, British East Africa, Uganda, Northern and Southern Rhodesia, Bechuanaland, Nyasaland, Union of South Africa (1910), Basutoland, Swaziland, Nigeria, Gold Coast, Sierra Leone, Gambia, British Somaliland
- Germany: German South West Africa (Namibia), Kamerun (Cameroon), Togoland, German East Africa (Tanganyika, Rwanda, Burundi)
- Belgium: Belgian Congo (taken from King Leopold II's brutal personal rule in 1908)
- Portugal: Angola, Mozambique, Portuguese Guinea, Cape Verde, São Tomé and Príncipe
- Italy: Libya (taken from the Ottomans 1911-12), Eritrea, Italian Somaliland
- Spain: Spanish Sahara, Spanish Morocco, Rio de Oro, Spanish Guinea
- Independent: Ethiopia, Liberia
What Changed After WWI
Germany's defeat in World War I cost it all its African colonies. Under the 1919 Treaty of Versailles the former German territories became League of Nations Mandates administered by the victorious powers: German East Africa went to Britain (Tanganyika) and Belgium (Ruanda-Urundi); Kamerun and Togoland were split between Britain and France; German South West Africa went to South Africa. The 1914 map of Africa thus marked the absolute high point of European colonization — within five years the German colonies had been redistributed, and by the 1960s nearly all of them would be independent African states.