CHAPTER XXXV EUROPE IN WEST AFRICA The first chapters of European intercourse with the West Coast of Africa are not chapters of which we have any reason to be proud. I do not propose to relate in detail the history of early European settlement upon the coast, but the relations of civilisation with the natives had certain general characteristics which it is necessary very briefly to indicate. They cannot, however, be fairly indicated without a constant recollection of the fact that the races with whom Europe had now to deal were not those fine races of the northern territories known to ancient historians as Nigritia, but the generally negroid inhabitants of that strip which was for a long time included under the appellation of the Guinea Coast. Barbot, a Frenchman, who traded with West Africa in various capacities for upwards of twenty years towards the end of the seventeenth century, and who, writing both in French and English, is perhaps to be counted as the best and most voluminous historian of the coast, defines Nigritia as extending northward from 8° to 23°, and Guinea as extending southwards from 8° to the coast. The history of European settlement deals exclusively with the southern strip.

The progress of the Reformation in Europe throughout the sixteenth century tended to deprive Papal decrees of the authority which once attached to them, and throughout that and the succeeding century the nations of the Atlantic coast competed eagerly with each other for a share of the newly-opened African trade. With the exception of France, where, however, a great in-322