History Project

Billy Burnside Timeline of Africa and S. America Africa 1899-1902 – The war between the British and the Boers in South Africa March 26, 1902 – Cecil Rhodes dies in Africa March 26 at age 49 leaving £6 million for public service plus $10 million to endow 170 3-year Rhodes scholarships at Oxford University. Awarded each year to 60 young men from the British colonies, 100 from the United States, and 15 from Germany, the scholarships pay £250 per year; the trustees will increase the amount and, beginning in 1976, will award some scholarships to women. March 1903 – Construction begins in March on a 1,200-mile railroad from Africa’s west coast through the center of Angola into the copper-rich Katanga district. The Benguela Railroad begun by Robert Williams on a concession from Portugal’s queen Marie-Amélie will reach 300 miles inland by 1913 but will not reach the copper mines until 1931. 1904 – Herero and Hottentot tribesmen in German South-West Africa rise against German colonial forces in an insurrection that will continue until early 1908. The revolt will be suppressed only after methodical campaigns by 20,000 German troops. 1905 – The Cullinan Diamond found in South Africa weighs 3,100 carats–the largest gem-quality diamond ever discovered. It will be cut into stones for the Crown jewels and the British royal family’s collection. 1908 – Namibian railway worker Zacharias Lewala finds a small diamond in the desert and turns it over to his supervisor, August Stauch, who obtains a prospecting license from the German colonial government. Consolidated Diamond Mines of South-West Africa, a De Beers subsidiary, will monopolize the new industry. 1908 – The Union of South Africa is founded 1909 – Labour in Portuguese West Africa by William Cadbury draws attention to conditions of slavery in São Tomé and Principe. Cadbury has visited both places and persuaded two other Quaker cocoa and chocolate firms (Fry and Rowntree) to join in a boycott of cocoa from the Portuguese African islands, but while working conditions in São Tomé improve, the system of cocoa slavery remains.

1910 – France renames the French Congo French Equatorial Africa and redivides it into the colonies of Gabon, Middle Congo, and Ubanghi-Shari. 1910 – The Republic of South Africa, independent of Britain, is established May 31 under terms of the South Africa Act approved by Parliament in September of last year. The new Union of South Africa has dominion status, it unites the Cape Colony, Orange River Colony, Natal, and Transvaal, its legislative seat is at Cape Town, its seat of government is at Pretoria, and its prime minister is Boer statesman Louis Botha, 47, who will continue in the post until his death in 1919. 1911 –amaica-born Marcus Garvey (1887-1940) forms the United Negro Improvement Association. The association, which takes as its motto “One God, One Aim, One Destiny,” seeks to foster black pride and unite Africans around the world. Garvey attracts a mass following among working-class African Americans after he moves to New York in 1916. Arguing that blacks cannot achieve equality in the United States or in other countries where they have minority status, Garvey advocates a “back to Africa” movement, through which African Americans are to establish their own African state. 1913 French Protestant missionary-physician Albert Schweitzer, 38, founds Lambarene Hospital in French Equatorial Africa; he will be famous for his “reverence for life.” 1914 – South Africa’s Prime Minister Louis Botha puts down a pro-German Boer revolt. He takes command of troops that enter German South-West Africa.

South America 1900 – Brazil’s northeastern Hump remains 40 to 50 percent forested, but the figure will drop to 5 percent in the next 70 years. Deforestation will lead to erosion and water problems. 1900 - Earthquakes rock Ecuador and Peru in mid-August, killing thousands. December 9, 1902 - enezuela refuses to meet her debt obligations, British and German warships seize the Venezuelan Navy December 9, and Italian warships join in a blockade of Venezuelan ports December 19. The blockade will continue until February of next year, when Venezuelan dictator Cipriano Castro, 44, will agree to arbitration by a Hague Tribunal commission.

1904- The Christ of the Andes is dedicated at Uspallato Pass on the ChileanArgentine border to honor the peaceful settlement of disputes between the two countries since declaring their independence from Spain in 1817 and 1816. The 14-ton, 26-foot high monument is the work of Argentine sculptor Mateo Alonzo who has molded the figure from the bronze of old Argentine cannon. 1905 - Bolivian store clerk Simon Ituri Patiño, 43, at Cochabamba is sacked by his German employer for extending $250 in credit to a poor Portuguese miner and forced to pay the miner's bill. The miner moves away, leaving his mine to Patiño, who recruits coca-drugged local Indians to work the mine's outcroppings; the property turns out to be a fabulous deposit of tin ore that will be the basis of a $200 million fortune for Simon Patiño and make Bolivia a rival of Malaya, Burma, and the Dutch East Indies as a world tin source. Patiño's Consolidated Tin Smelters, Ltd., will be the world's largest company of its kind. 1912 - Bethlehem Steel's Charles M. Schwab journeys to France and buys Chile's Tofo Iron Mines from the Schneider interests. The Chilean mines contain 50 million tons of ore with iron content 10 percent better than Lake Superior ores. 1912 - Brazil's Madeira-Mamoro Railway opens after 6 years of construction that has cost 6,000 lives and the equivalent of three tons of gold. Rubber barons have financed the 255-mile road to circumvent 19 major waterfalls, the road permits resumption of Bolivian rubber shipments, but malaria, yellow fever, beriberi, snake bites, wild animals, and curare-tipped arrows from hostile natives have taken a heavy toll, and the Amazon Basin rubber boom will soon collapse as East Indian and African plantations undercut the price of wild rubber. 1917 - Berlin notifies Washington January 31 that unrestricted submarine warfare will begin the next day, the United States severs relations with Germany February 3, Latin American nations including Brazil and Peru follow suit, China severs relations with Germany March 14.

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