The British establish Fort James on an island in the Gambia river

A fleet from Oman evicts the Portuguese from Mombasa and Zanzibar

Dutch nomads, pressing far north from Cape Town, become known as the Trekboers

A British ship lands a party of freed slaves as the first modern settlers in Sierra Leone, on the west coast of Africa

Mungo Park sets off on his first expedition to explore the Niger on behalf of the African Association

With the Dutch entering the war on the side of the French, Britain seizes their valuable Cape colony in South Africa

Napoleon's campaign in Egypt begins well with the Battle of the Pyramids, a victory over an Egyptian army

Disaster strikes the French in Egypt when Nelson finds their fleet in Aboukir Bay and destroys it in the Battle of the Nile

Napoleon's soldiers discover a black basalt slab, the Rosetta Stone, near the village of Rashid in Egypt

Napoleon abandons his army in Egypt and returns hastily to Paris at a time of great political opportunity

The Treaty of Amiens restores the Cape of Good Hope to the Netherlands

The USS Philadelphia is captured, with its 300 crew, in the first Barbary War between the US and north African pirate states

The British recapture the Cape of Good Hope from the Dutch

The British government uses Freetown, in Sierra Leone, as a base in the fight against the slave trade

The British impose the so-called Hottentot Code, protecting Africans at the Cape but also tying them to employers' farms

All but one of 300 Mameluke guests are assassinated during an entertainment by Muhammad Ali in Cairo

The congress of Vienna leaves the Cape of Good Hope in British hands

Napoleon is sent to a more secure place of exile, the rocky Atlantic island of St Helena

Shaka wins control of the Zulu and begins to build them into a formidable military machine

The British establish Bathurst (now Banjul) at the mouth of the Gambia as a base against the slave trade

The first big influx of British settlers, numbering some 5000, arrives at Cape Town in South Africa

An Egyptian army makes its camp at Khartoum, subsequently the capital of an Egyptian province in the Sudan

Napoleon dies on St Helena, after six years of captivity

The American Colonization Society buys the area later known as Liberia to settle freed slaves

Egyptian hieroglyphs are deciphered by French Egyptologist Jean François Champollion, using the Rosetta stone