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The 19 century m'zuŋ u scramble for Africa
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"Veni, Vidi, Vici"

"Colonial Legacy, State-Building and the Salience of Ethnicity in Sub-Saharan Africa," 89
Ali, Merima, Odd-Helge Fjeldstad, Boqian Jiang, and Abdulaziz B Shifa.
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“ In fact, of course, the very existence of colonial rule meant that the fabric of African
societies was exposed to alien forces of change of an intensity and on a scale

unparalleled in the previous history of western Africa. Hitherto remote territories like
Niger and Mauritania, where there had been very little change since the introduction of
Islam, were from about 1900 suddenly caught up in the same tide of aggressive material

changes that had for some time been affecting the coastal societies in Senegal or in the
southern Gold Coast and Nigeria. From the African point of view, there was little to

choose between the European colonial powers. Portugal, despite the fact that it was
virtually bankrupt at the onset of the colonial period, was as significant a bringer of

change as France, Germany, and Britain. In fact, in the long run, a strange combination of
its poverty with memories of its older colonial tradition were to make Portugal's sense of
a mission civilisatrice even more pervasive than that of its stronger rivals. “

"Western Africa - French Territories." 90
Encyclopedia Britannica.
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