Diamonds have become synonymous with Africa. The continent is rich with them, but they had not been discovered there until the mid-1800's, when a mine in South Africa found a large deposit of diamonds.

While there were many gold rushes in American history, there was never a truly large amount of gold in the United States. South Africa, however, is gifted with an abundance of it. This gold, along with the diamonds discovered 20 years earlier, made the British Empire incredibly wealthy, as South Africa was still part of the British Empire then.

When Britain invaded the Zulu Kingdom, they sparked the Anglo-Zulu War. The Zulu were able to win several victories early in the conflict, but thanks to their superior technology and numbers, the British eventually won the war. This British victory led to the annexation of the Zulu Kingdom into the South African Colony.

While the Zulu proved to be much fiercer opponents than originally thought, the British did eventually win. The Zulu won many early engagements thanks to their speed of movement and expert use of the terrain to ambush the British; however, the superior firepower of the British eventually led to victory in pitched battles.

The Boers were the next target of the British Empire following the Anglo-Zulu War. The British were driving farther inland to lay claim to regions that had resisted them since their claiming of land at the Berlin Conference in 1884. 

Despite being born and raised in Africa, the Boers were actually Dutch by heritage. Their ancestors were traders based in ports along the eastern coast of what is now South Africa. They were stationed there as part of their service in the Dutch East India Trading Company. However, when the British came along and took over the region these Dutch settlers were forced to flee inland to escape the British, where they formed two nations, The Orange Free State, and Transvaal. 

European nations had the technology to dominate the nations of Africa and Asia for centuries by the time the Industrial Revolution happened. The Industrial Revolution simply made dominating them easier. What it did do was to make Europe need more raw materials to make their goods, and need people to sell those goods to. 

The major powers of Europe met in Berlin in 1884 to decide which nations would gain the right to rule which parts of Africa. This conference was meant to keep the European nations from fighting each other and focused on colonizing the various parts of Africa.

Europe had no interest in creating stable governments in Africa. Rather, they wanted to impose their own governments on the people of Africa. They did, however, say that it was the duty of white men to rule over people of color since they felt themselves superior to them. They also claimed they were doing good by attempting to stop the slave trade in Africa and the transatlantic slave trade.

Africa had a very varied and complex layout. There were large cosmopolitan cities as well as many small villages, and tribal nomads. There was no one unifying culture in Africa, but many different people and ethnicities within the continent.