<P> Even as late as the 1870s, European states still controlled only ten percent of the African continent, with all their territories located near the coast . The most important holdings were Angola and Mozambique, held by Portugal; the Cape Colony, held by the United Kingdom; and Algeria, held by France . By 1914, only Ethiopia and Liberia remained independent of European control . </P> <P> Technological advances facilitated European expansion overseas . Industrialisation brought about rapid advancements in transportation and communication, especially in the forms of steamships, railways and telegraphs . Medical advances also played an important role, especially medicines for tropical diseases . The development of quinine, an effective treatment for malaria, made vast expanses of the tropics more accessible for Europeans . </P> <P> Sub-Saharan Africa, one of the last regions of the world largely untouched by "informal imperialism", was also attractive to Europe's ruling elites for economic, political and social reasons . During a time when Britain's balance of trade showed a growing deficit, with shrinking and increasingly protectionist continental markets due to the Long Depression (1873--96), Africa offered Britain, Germany, France, and other countries an open market that would garner them a trade surplus: a market that bought more from the colonial power than it sold overall . </P> <P> Surplus capital was often more profitably invested overseas, where cheap materials, limited competition, and abundant raw materials made a greater premium possible . Another inducement for imperialism arose from the demand for raw materials, especially copper, cotton, rubber, palm oil, cocoa, diamonds, tea, and tin, to which European consumers had grown accustomed and upon which European industry had grown dependent . Additionally, Britain wanted the southern and eastern coasts of Africa for stopover ports on the route to Asia and its empire in India . However, in Africa--excluding the area which became the Union of South Africa in 1910--the amount of capital investment by Europeans was relatively small, compared to other continents . Consequently, the companies involved in tropical African commerce were relatively small, apart from Cecil Rhodes's De Beers Mining Company . Rhodes had carved out Rhodesia for himself; Léopold II of Belgium later, and with considerable brutality, exploited the Congo Free State . </P>

Scramble and partition of east africa in the 19th century