Looking back into the past before the United States is “the United States” and before countries in Africa are now separated countries like in the present, they were ruled under the power of European countries. If we study the history of Europe, we will find out that European countries used to be very powerful and strong nations. The big four nations, England, France, Spain, and the Netherlands, were all racing on the colonial expansion and sometimes they even fought over lands. The targeted continents of the powerful countries were North America and Africa.
Before World War I period (which is around 1914-1918) most parts of Africa is colonized by two main nations, France and Britain. These two powers alone ruled around two third of the whole continent, those times were since 1800s. The lands in Africa were previously divided to the power nations at the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885 when all the European powers met and partitioned Africa, accepting each other’s share of the continent. The main purpose of the conference was to make an agreement on imperialism and boundaries to prevent any future conflict between European powers dealing with colonization. According to Ali Mazrui (and his study on the African history), he suggested that there were three main reasons why Europeans were so interested in Africa and decided to travel there for the explorations of the continent. The first reason was associated with the need of new knowledge. With the strive of learning and exploring the unknown places, Africa was the great destination for the explorers since back in time it was referred as the “Dark Continent” due to its mysteries and its distance from Europe. The second reason was racism. Referring to the Christian doctrine, it stated that the Christian followers should spread the belief in the gospel to others and try to convert other people to become Christians. Since most of African people follow their own traditional believes, Europeans felt the need to teach and convert the native people to Christianity. The third reason was mainly influenced by imperialism, the desire of European patriots to contribute to their countries by claiming lands on other countries.
Main reason for Europeans to sail to Africa is not only to discover new lands but also to look for places to trade. However, the most beneficial and popular trade was slave trade. Many Africans were traded, sailed to Europe, and lost their lives along the way there. Slaves that survived the travel had to suffer from brutal punishment from the white people; sometimes the causes of punishment were unknown or unreasonable.
On the other hand, during the late 16th century, Great Britain, France, Spain and the Netherlands started major colonization programs in eastern North America. Many colonizers from Europe went to North America with highly developed military, naval, governmental and entrepreneurial capabilities. Mercantilism was the basic policy enforced by Britain on its colonies from the 1660s. Mercantilism meant that the government and merchants based in England became partners with the goal of increasing political power and private wealth. The first successful English colony in North America was Jamestown in Virginia. The main goal of the colonizers was to find gold. They set up the London Virginia Company to corporate and responsible for the searching of gold in the new land. However, the first years were difficult for them because many of the colonizers died from disease, starvation and also wars with native Indians. After a failed plan searching for gold, the British turned their interests into crops. Their colony survived and flourish by trading tobacco. By the late 17th century, new and richer settlers came into America, took up large portions of land and started to import slavery and servants. Soon after, African slaves replaced the servants and became the main labor force in America. Some of the settlers and some people moved to New England areas in order to escape from the limitation of religion and that was how towns in Massachusetts’s areas were settled.