CDS (I) 2020 General Knowledge · Question 85 of 120

Correct — C, Portuguese. The Portuguese reached the West African coast first and stayed longest. Their voyages down the Atlantic shore through the fifteenth century were driven by gold, pepper and a search for a route to the Indies, and in 1482 they built Elmina Castle on what is now the coast of Ghana — the first trading post on the Gulf of Guinea and still the oldest surviving European building in sub-Saharan Africa. Elmina began as a gold factory and later became a depot in the Atlantic slave trade. That fort is the marker the question is reaching for: a permanent European foothold on African soil, planted by traders, from which territorial control eventually grew. The other three powers followed later. The Dutch took Elmina from the Portuguese only in 1637 and founded Cape Town in 1652, and the oldest modern city founded by Europeans on the continent is that Dutch one — a hundred and seventy years after the Portuguese fort.

• (a)French — French trading and settlement in Senegal and along the West African coast belongs to the seventeenth century and after, well behind the Portuguese voyages of the fifteenth.
• (b)Spanish — Spain's fifteenth-century energies went west across the Atlantic rather than down the African coast, and by the Treaty of Tordesillas of 1494 the African route was conceded to Portugal. Spanish holdings in Africa remained small and late.
• (d)Dutch — The strongest wrong answer, because the Dutch presence is so visible later. But they arrived as competitors to an established Portuguese network — capturing Elmina in 1637 and founding Cape Town in 1652, both long after 1482.

European involvement in Africa began as coastal trade, not conquest. For four centuries Europeans held forts and factories on the shore and dealt through African intermediaries for gold, pepper, ivory and then slaves. Territorial partition came only at the end of the nineteenth century, when the Berlin Conference of 1884-85 laid down the rules by which the interior was divided. The trading posts of the earlier centuries are what made that partition possible, because they fixed the claims from which it was argued.

Order the four powers by date and the answer settles itself. Portuguese voyages down the African coast run through the fifteenth century, with Elmina built in 1482 and the Cape rounded in 1488. The Dutch, English and French arrive as challengers in the seventeenth century, and the Spanish, having taken the western half of the world under the Treaty of Tordesillas, largely stay out. The eventual colonisation is a separate story from this first contact, and the question is careful to say that the trading arrival eventually led to it — the two are separated by roughly four hundred years, which is worth remembering when a paper asks about causes.

• The Portuguese built Elmina Castle in 1482 — the first trading post on the Gulf of Guinea and the oldest surviving European building in sub-Saharan Africa.
• Elmina began as a gold-trading fort and later served the Atlantic slave trade.
• The Dutch captured Elmina from Portugal in 1637 and held it until the British took over in 1872.
• Cape Town, founded by the Dutch East India Company in 1652, is the oldest modern city founded by Europeans in Africa.
• Territorial partition of the continent was formalised only at the Berlin Conference of 1884-85.

• Choosing the Dutch because Cape Town is the best-known early European settlement; it is 170 years later than Elmina.
• Assuming Spain led in Africa because it led in the Americas — Tordesillas pushed it the other way.
• Collapsing the first trading contact into the colonial partition; four centuries separate them.

As a which-power-came-first item, or through a named fort, treaty or conference of the African story.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Elmina Castle, the earliest European trading post on the Gulf of Guinea, was built in 1482 by the

  • (a)Dutch
  • (b)Portuguese
  • (c)British
  • (d)French

  Answer(b) Portuguese — the Dutch captured it only in 1637 and the British took it over in 1872.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The rules for the partition of Africa among European powers were laid down at

  • (a)the Congress of Vienna
  • (b)the Berlin Conference of 1884-85
  • (c)the Treaty of Versailles
  • (d)the Bandung Conference

  Answer(b) the Berlin Conference of 1884-85 — four centuries after the first Portuguese trading forts appeared on the coast.