Welcome to the History Extra podcast, fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History Magazine.

Between the 1870s and the First World War, European colonialists set their sights on Africa, making territorial land grabs that consumed

nearly the entire continent. To find out more about how this so-called scramble for Africa played out,

and to explore its immense impact on Africa and its peoples, I spoke to Richard Reed, professor of African

history at the University of Oxford, and the author of The African Revolution, A Long History

of the 19th Century. Thanks for joining me, Richard, to talk today about the Scramble for Africa.

Before we go any further, let's start with that term itself. What do we mean by the Scramble for Africa, before we go any further, let's start with that term itself.

What do we mean by the Scramble for Africa?

So this is the term that's used to describe the European partition of the continent,

which conventionally is regarded as spanning the mid-1870s and just before the First World War. And it's pretty much the entire

continent kind of parceled out amongst a bunch of European powers. So we've got a huge amount

to cover in this episode. Obviously, we're talking about the history of an entire continent and there's

so many different stories within that, but hopefully we can give people

an introduction to this topic and they can go out and find more if they want to. Let's just talk

for a moment about that term then. Deal Gaboroy on Instagram has asked when the terms

scramble for Africa, because it's quite distinctive, was coined. Was it part of the discussion

around this at the time?

It was. I mean, we think it was coined in the mid-1880s, so just as the whole thing was really escalating,

some of the earliest literature on the phenomenon refers to the partition of Africa, which is the other

phrase that's often used.

But yeah, the term scramble has been around really from that point. And it was subsequently used by other parts of the world, South America, China and so on. But it begins in the mid-18s.

And do you think it sums up what happened well? It's useful. It's a useful way into the topic. And I think probably

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