There were were no maritime expansions into Eurasia,
as opposed to out
of it. Second, the peoples of Africa played only a limited role in the
process. Carthage, by far the most important sea power ever located in
Africa, was a Phoenician colony. The ancient Egyptians sailed the Red
Sea, but went no farther. In early modern times many Africans crossed
the Atlantic to the New World, but only as a result of being caught up
in a slave trade initiated by Europeans. This maritime passivity of
Africa is highlighted by the history of some of the islands that lie
off its coasts. Madagascar remained uninhabited until colonized by a
population from Borneo in the first millennium A.D., and it was only in
the course of this settlement that an African element from the mainland
appeared on the island. Unlike Madagascar, the Canary Islands off the
coast of Morocco were settled from the mainland in ancient times, but
contact was lost, as is shown by the fact that Islam did not reach the
islands; it was the Europeans, not the North Africans, who rediscovered
them in the later Middle Ages and conquered them in the course of the
fifteenth century.
