I need some information for an essay I'm attempting on the "Scramble for Africa". I have tried to find information on this but my searches are always overwhelmed with books and articles on the life of African Americans. Can anybody help me out? Did Africans feel subjugated by their European intruders or did life go on generally unhindered? I'd also welcome any information on the Boers in South Africa and how colonial domination by the British affected their way of life as well? Thanks guys.
I'll happily recommend a few a sources that might help you out with your essay. The African experience of colonization varied massively depending on the area and colonial regime.
A very good recent book that is probably what you're looking for is Being colonized: The Kuba experience in rural Congo 1800-1960 By Jan Vansina. Here is a link to the google books entry. Vansina writes very well and pretty much all of his books are easy to get a hold on. Being Colonsed is about a specific state within the Congo Free State/Belgium Congo and should give an idea of what colonization was like from an African perspective. An overview would be that the Kuba had a pretty bad time under colonialism. Forces at work in the period just before and during colonialism meant a lot of population displacement from neightbouring Luba and Lunda areas. The merchant capitalist forces at work in the Congo had little care for the lives of the Kuba and were almost exclusively interested in resource extraction.
For more general histories of Africa and Colonialism I would reccomend, Richard J Reid's A History of Modern Africa Google Books and John Illife's Africa: The History of a Continent Google Books. There will be a couple of relevant chapters in each that will give a good overview of what colonialism was about. I found both very easy to read and informative. Neither will cover anything with the sort of detail you would get in Being Colonised: The Kuba Experience but they will explain the general processes that were going on.
I would also highly reccomend you take a look at the UNESCO General History of Africa VII: Africa Under Colonial Domination Link to full Text. All of this series are available for free for anyone to download. There will be several chapters of interest to you here. This one is slightly dated compared to the other recommendations but will certainly be useful alongside them.
If you have a specific area that you're looking for, I'll see if I can find something more specific for that area. Hopefully these will be of some use for you for now.
This is a very broad question as different colonial powers would lead to a very different experience. Do you have a specific colony in mind?