How did Europe take almost all of Africa in barely a generation?

Europe took Africa quickly because it suddenly could, and because every power feared being left behind. In the 1870s Europeans held about a tenth of the continent, all of it on or near the coast. By 1914 only Ethiopia and Liberia stood outside European control. Historians call this rush the Scramble for Africa.

Several things changed at once. Steamships, railways and telegraphs let Europeans move people and orders inland. Quinine, an effective treatment for malaria, made vast stretches of the tropics far less deadly to visit. For centuries those diseases had kept large parts of the continent essentially uninhabitable for Europeans, so traders had stayed by the sea.

Then came motive. In a long economic slump, Europe's own markets were shrinking and growing more protectionist, and Africa looked like an open market with ivory, rubber, palm oil and other raw materials. Rivalry mattered as much as profit: colonies were bargaining chips between empires, and in an age of nationalism an empire was a status symbol. Once Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, Italy and Portugal were all grabbing, nobody wanted to be the one who held back.

Africans did not simply watch. Ethiopia defeated Italy in the war that broke out in 1895 and kept its independence, and elsewhere resistance lasted for years. The conquest was fast on the map, but it was fought for, and often at terrible human cost.