an area of over three and a half million square miles, with a native population of some 37,000,000, almost the whole tropical or sub-tropical, inhabited by lower races and incapable of genuine French colonisation.
Italian aspirations took similar shape from 1880 onwards, though the disastrous experience of the Abyssinian expeditions has given a check to Italian Imperialism. Her possessions in East Africa are confined to the northern colony of Eritrea and the protectorate of Somaliland.
Of the other European States, two only, Portugal [9] and Belgium, enter directly into the competition of the new Imperialism. The African arrangements of 1884-6 assigned to Portugal the large district of Angola