... important, revealed the potential advantages of the colonisation of Africa; for it begun to present itself as a continent rich in natural resources, with little technologically advanced peoples, and moreover, free of colonisers, and was thus just waiting to be easily conquered and exploited. The explorers, therefore, intentionally or unintentionally, pointed to Africa, as a place for the fulfillment of various interests: economic, political, military and socio-cultural. European Imperialism of the late nineteenth century differed from its earlier forms on a number of cardinal issues. It was an element of the world's scramble for the dominance over the last territories, which could still be exploited. Evidently, the world's resources were not infinite; the countries, which secured for themselves colonial empires beforehand, where rapidly gaining a durable advantage; those, which had hesitated could easily, once and for all, find themselves out of the first league, since colonies where regarded as an integral ...

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