The Kingdom of Eswatini was an obscure little country. Historically, Britain had not turned it into a semi-colony until 1907. Generally, when the British did such a thing, there were only two reasons: either they could not swallow it whole, or it truly had no value. The Kingdom of Eswatini belonged to the latter.
But now the Swazis had suffered a streak of rotten luck. As the saying went, calamity fell from the sky while one sat peacefully at home. A force from who knew where had launched a surprise attack directly on the Kingdom of Eswatini.
The Kingdom of Eswatini was merely a small country with a population of several tens of thousands. Do not be fooled by its small territory and sparse population—where Eswatini was located was actually one of Africa's most densely populated regions.
In the nineteenth century, Africa's entire population was only a little over ninety million. Egypt, including Sudan, and the Abyssinian Empire accounted for over twenty million of that; the Kingdom of East Africa, together with its black population, had over twenty-seven million. Those three countries alone held nearly half of Africa's population. If Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, and the other North African nations were excluded as well, the rest of Africa might have had only around forty million people. This showed just how vast and thinly populated Africa was, especially Sub-Saharan Africa.
The main reason was that the black civilization originating in West Africa was far too underdeveloped. Even after spreading throughout the region, it had remained at the primitive society stage. Population growth in primitive societies was essentially fixed: many were born, but many also died.
Therefore, the environment had a tremendous impact on Africa's population. The Nile River valley in Egypt, East Africa's Great Lakes Region, the Abyssinian Empire, West Africa, the