Africa

The Upper Paleolithic (or Upper Palaeolithic) is the third and last subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age. Very broadly, it dates to between 50,000 and 12,000 years ago (the beginning of the Holocene), according to some theories coinciding with the appearance of behavioral modernity in humans. It is followed by the Mesolithic.

Anatomically modern humans (i.e. Homo sapiens) are believed to have emerged in Africa around 300,000 years ago. It has been argued by some that their ways of life changed relatively little from that of archaic humans of the Middle Paleolithic, until about 50,000 years ago, when there was a marked increase in the diversity of artefacts found associated with modern human remains. This period coincides with the most common date assigned to expansion of modern humans from Africa throughout Asia and Eurasia, which may have contributed to the extinction of the Neanderthals.

World Christianity or global Christianity has been defined both as a term that attempts to convey the global nature of the Christian religion and an academic field of study that encompasses analysis of the histories, practices, and discourses of Christianity as a world religion and its various forms as they are found on the six continents. However, the term often focuses on "non-Western Christianity" which "comprises (usually the exotic) instances of Christian faith in 'the global South', in Asia, Africa, and Latin America." It also includes Indigenous or diasporic forms of Christianity in the Caribbean, South America, Western Europe, and North America.

Saint Helena (/ˌsɛnt (h)ɪˈliːnə, ˌsɪnt-, sənt-/, US: /ˌseɪnt-/; US: /ˌseɪnt ˈhɛlənə/ ) is a volcanic and tropical island, located in the South Atlantic Ocean, some 1,874 km (1,165 miles) west of the mainland of the continent of Africa, with the Southern African nations of Angola and Namibia on its southeastern coast being the closest nations geographically. The island is around 1,950 km (1,210 mi) west of the coast of southwestern Angola, and 4,000 km (2,500 mi) east of the major seaport city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in South America. It is one of the three constituent parts of Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha, a British overseas territory.

Saint Helena measures about 16 by 8 km (10 by 5 mi) and had a population of 4,439 in the 2021 census. It was named after Saint Helena (AD c.246/248–330), the mother of the Roman Emperor Constantine I the Great. (A.D 272–337, reigned 306–337), of the ancient Roman Empire. It is one of the most remote major islands in the world and was uninhabited until the 16th century, when it was discovered by the Portuguese explorers/traders en route southward around the continent of Africa, then east across the Indian Ocean to the Indian subcontinent (India) of South Asia in 1502. For about the next four centuries, the island was an important stopover for ships between Europe and Asia sailing around the African continent and its southern Cape of Good Hope, before the opening of the shortcut Suez Canal in 1869, in Egypt between the Mediterranean and Red Seas. Saint Helena is the United Kingdom's second-oldest overseas territory of the old British Empire, after the islands of Bermuda, off the southeast coast of North America.

South Semitic is a putative branch of the Semitic languages, which form a branch of the larger Afroasiatic language family, found in (North and East) Africa and Western Asia. The grouping is controversial and several alternate classifications supplanting South Semitic have been proposed in recent decades.

East Africa, also known as Eastern Africa or the East of Africa, is a region at the eastern edge of the African continent, distinguished by its unique geographical, historical, and cultural landscape. Defined in varying scopes, the region is recognized in the United Nations Statistics Division scheme as encompassing 18 sovereign states and 4 territories. It includes the Horn of Africa to the North and Southeastern Africa to the south.

Africa was a Roman province on the northern coast of the continent of Africa. It was established in 146 BC, following the Roman Republic's conquest of Carthage in the Third Punic War. It roughly comprised the territory of present-day Tunisia, the northeast of Algeria, and the coast of western Libya along the Gulf of Sidra. The territory was originally and still is inhabited by Berbers, known in Latin as the Numidae and Maurii, indigenous to all of North Africa west of Egypt. In the 9th century BC, Semitic-speaking Phoenicians from the Levant built coastal settlements across the Mediterranean to support and expand their shipping networks. In the 8th century BC, the settlement of Carthage became the predominant Phoenician colony. Rome began expanding into Africa after annexing Carthage in 146 BC at the end of the Punic Wars, and into Numidia from 25 BC, establishing Roman colonies in the region.

Africa was one of the wealthiest provinces in the Roman Empire, second only to Italy. It was said that Africa fed the Roman populace for eight months of the year, while Egypt provided the remaining four months' supply. The area east of the Fossa Regia was fully Romanized with one third of the population made of Italian colonists and their descendants, the other two thirds were Romanized Berbers, who were all Christians and nearly all Latin speaking.

The Jamestown settlement in the Colony of Virginia was the first permanent English settlement in the Americas. It was located on the northeast bank of the James River, about 2.5 mi (4 km) southwest of present-day Williamsburg. It was established by the London Company as "James Fort" on May 4, 1607 O.S. (May 14, 1607 N.S.), and considered permanent, after a brief abandonment in 1610. It followed failed attempts, including the Roanoke Colony, established in 1585. Despite the dispatch of more supplies, only 60 of the original 214 settlers survived the 1609–1610 Starving Time. In mid-1610, the survivors abandoned Jamestown, though they returned after meeting a resupply convoy in the James River.

Jamestown served as the colonial capital from 1616 until 1699. In August 1619, the first recorded slaves from Africa to British North America arrived at present-day Old Point Comfort, near the Jamestown colony, on a British privateer ship flying a Dutch flag. The approximately 20 Africans from present-day Angola had been removed by the British crew from a Portuguese slave ship. They most likely worked in the tobacco fields, under a system of race-based indentured servitude. The modern conception of slavery in the British colonies was formalized in 1640, and fully entrenched in Virginia by 1660.

From the 16th to the 17th centuries, the First French colonial empire existed mainly in the Americas and Asia. During the 19th and 20th centuries, the second French colonial empire existed mainly in Africa and Asia. France had about 80 colonies throughout its history, the second most colonies in the world behind only the British Empire. Around 40 countries gained independence from France throughout its history, the second most in the world behind only the British Empire. Over 50% of the world’s borders today were drawn as a result of British and French imperialism.

France began to establish colonies in North America, the Caribbean and India, following Spanish and Portuguese successes during the Age of Discovery, in rivalry with Britain. A series of wars with Britain during the 18th century and early 19th century, which France finally lost, almost ended its colonial ambitions in these regions, and without it what some historians term the "first" French colonial empire. In the 19th century, starting with the Occupation of Algeria in 1830, France began to establish a new empire in Africa and Southeast Asia. The following is a list of all countries that were part of the French colonial empires from 1534; 491 years ago (1534) to the present, either entirely or in part, either under French sovereignty or as mandate.

The Burma campaign in the South-East Asian theatre of World War II was fought primarily by British Commonwealth, China and United States forces against the forces of Imperial Japan, who were assisted by the Burmese National Army, the Indian National Army, and to some degree by Thailand. The British Commonwealth land forces were drawn primarily from the United Kingdom, British India and Africa.

Partly because monsoon rains made effective campaigning possible only for about half of the year, the Burma campaign was almost the longest campaign of the war. During the campaigning season of 1942, the Japanese had conquered Burma, driving British, Indian and Chinese forces from the country and forcing the British administration to flee into India. After scoring some defensive successes during 1943, they then attempted to forestall Allied offensives in 1944 by launching an invasion of India (Operation U-Go). This failed with disastrous losses.

Imperialism, colonialism and irredentism played an important role in the foreign policy of Fascist Italy. These included both ethnic-nationalist irredentist claims and frivolous foreign adventures intended to artificially raise the regime’s prestige. Among the regime's goals were the acquisition of territory considered historically Italian in France (e.g. Nice) and Yugoslavia (e.g. Dalmatia), the expansion of Italy's sphere of influence into the Balkans (e.g. Greece) and the acquisition of more colonies in Africa. The pacification of Libya (1923–32), the invasion of Ethiopia (1935–36), the invasion of Albania (1939), the invasion of France (1940), the invasion of Greece (1940–41) and the invasion of Yugoslavia (1941) were all undertaken in part to add to Italy's national space. According to historian Patrick Bernhard, Fascist Italian imperialism under Benito Mussolini, particularly in Africa, served as a model for the much more famous expansionism of Nazi Germany in Eastern Europe.