The Scramble for Africa
Causes of the Scramble (industrial demand, rivalry, prestige, technology such as quinine and the machine gun), the Berlin Conference of 1884-85, chartered companies (the Royal Niger Company), conquest across Nigeria (Ijebu 1892, Benin 1897, Aro 1901-02, Sokoto 1903), African resistance, Ethiopia's victory at Adwa, and borders that split peoples.
Partition and resistance
Historians debate the causes of the Scramble: economic interest in raw materials and markets, strategic rivalry among European powers, nationalism and prestige, and the new technologies (quinine against malaria, steamships, breech-loading rifles and the Maxim gun) that made conquest cheap. African states resisted everywhere, militarily (Asante, Sokoto, Benin, the Ijebu, Samori Touré) and diplomatically; Ethiopia under Menelik II decisively defeated Italy at Adwa in 1896.
Thomas Pakenham, The Scramble for Africa (1991); A. Adu Boahen, African Perspectives on Colonialism (1987); UNESCO General History of Africa, vol. VII; Michael Crowder, West Africa under Colonial Rule (1968).