Consolidation And Expansion In Africa 1890-1914 (2) Flashcards
What was the role and influence of Joseph Chamberlin?
• He turned down both the Chancellor of the Exchequer and Home Secretary Job in order to become the Colonial Secretary in the Conservative led coalition between 1895 and 1903
• He believed that effective use of the Empire could sustain British prosperity and prestige
• He believed that the imperial bonds needed reinforcing if the Empire was to be preserved and Britain maintain its status as a world power
• Chamberlain summoned and chaired two further colonial conference (after the failure of the first 1887) in 1897 and 1902 At these he proposed an imperial defence and customs union for the self-governing white colonies but these ideas were both rejected
• He conducted a campaign of tariff reform and for imperial preference. A tariff reform league was set p which distributed leaflets and played messages in public meetings
• He believed imperial preference would benefit Britain and reduce unemployment
• He was a strong advocate for ‘colonial development’ and promoted government investment in the less profitable areas of Empire both to promote and out of feeling it was an imperial duty
• ‘I believe that the British race is the greatest of the governing races that the world has ever seen’
• When the Boer war broke out in 1899, Chamberlain was viewed as a national hero, something which faded as the war dragged on
• He initiated the building of the Ugandan Railway, sanctioned the conquest and annexation of Ashantiland and, in 1900, supervised the acquisition of the territory of Royal Niger Company
• His idea of colonial preference split the conservative party and in 1906 he also failed to persuade the public meaning the liberals won a majority
• He resigned in 1903
• Shortly after, Chamberlain suffered a stroke and his political career was over
What was the role and influence of Cecil Rhodes?
• Prime Minister of Cape Colony in 1890
• Driven by a strong conviction that British civilisation and control was key to the betterment of the world
• Using his vast fortune, political power and control of the Cape newspapers, Rhodes impressed upon audience at home and abroad the right and duty of Britons to dominate Africa and beyond
• In 1890, he sent settlers to establish Fort Salisbury in Matabeleland, opening up the territories that from c1899 were to be known as the Rhodesias in his honour
• One of Rhodes’ projects to outflank the Boer Republic of the Transvaal and the Germans in the rush to Central Africa, was the railway line north from the Cape through Bechuanaland. He hoped it would eventually reach the Nile to ensure British domination of all east-central Africa. This dream of Cape to Chiro was blocked by the German occupation of East Africa from 1891 and never completed
• He resigned after the Jameson Raid in 1896 and dies 6 years later
• He made a great fortune out of enterprises and his funds helped promoted Empire after his death e.g. In his publicity work of the Round Table, an imperial pressure group established in 1910 by a like-minded ally of Rhodes – Alfred Milner
Who was Viceroy Curzon?
• Lord Salisbury appointed him as Viceroy of India in 1899
• He travelled around the world, exploring and producing several books, most notable of Russia and Persia
• Concern about Russian expansion led him to create the North West frontier province in 1901 and dispatch military expedition into Tibet
• He believed in a moral imperial and took great pride in representing Britain and its imperial mission
• He established both commissions and legislation to improve India’s administration and agriculture – making provisions for famine relief and irrigation projects
• He oversaw the re-arming of native regiments, the expansion of provincial police, the promotion of scientific and medical education and the construction of a further 6000 miles of railway track to consolidate British control of India
• He founded the Imperial Cadet Corps to give Indian nobles a military role and the prospect of officer commissions
• He lavished hospitality and rewards on its members at his elaborate Delhi durbar of 1903, both this and his costly restoration of the Taj Mahal were his way of honouring colonial India
• He was wary of giving Indians too much responsibility and he had a low opinion of their abilities
• In his own province, an Indian lacked an Englishman’s authority and outside his province this would be even harder
• Curzon refused to appointed more to senior posts for fear that they were unequal to emergencies and ‘rather inclined to abdicate or to run away’
• He believed dividing the troublesome province of Bengal in 1905 would weaken the Raj’s internal enemies. Instead partition backfired and Curzon resigned the same year
Who was Evelyn Baring?
Consul-General in Egypt between 1883-1907
• Saw himself as a moral reformer, he was certain that Christian values should be base of Empire
• He believed the long occupation of Egypt was essential and he established a new guiding principle – the ‘Granville Doctrine’ (named after the Foreign Secretary at the time) which allowed Baring to dismiss Egyptian minister who refused to accept British directives
• He placed British officials in key ministries and created the vailed protectorate in which British officials held the actual power
• Baring thus effectively controlled Egypt until 1907, the arrangement worked well for the first 10 years of British control because Tewfik died in 1892 and was succeeded by Abbas Hilmi II, who wanted to throw off British rule and encouraged the nationalist movement
• Baring regarded Egypt as something of a battleground between ‘civilised’ Christianity and Islam, which he viewed as a set of outdated Arabia customs that were detrimental to modern Egypt
• Baring was particularly concerned with the Islamic society’s acceptance of slavery, its antiquated justice system and its treatment of women
• Baring’s moral mission both echoed and informed public opinion in Britain
• He took action to: stop the slave supply into Egypt; discourage slave ownership in Egypt; abolish forced labour; outlaw punishment by the Kurbash; halt the import of hashish by establishment of Camel Corps to patrol Egypt’s boarders; regulate alcohol sale licenses; regulate alcohol sale licenses; close gambling houses and stop local money-lending and extortion by establishing the National Bank and Post Office Savings Bank
• He was forced to resign after the Denshawai Incident in 1906
• Parliament awarded Baring £50 000 in 1907 in recognition of his services in Egypt
• Baring returned to Britain and devoted himself to preventing women’s political rights as President of the Men’s League for Opposing Women’s Sufferance
• He published a 2-volume set of books ‘Modern Egypt’ in 1908, narrating the events in Egypt and the Sudan since 1876. In 1910, he published ‘Ancient and Modern Imperialism’ – a comparison of the British and Roman Empires
Who was Alfred Milner?
• An administrator who served in Egypt (1899-92) and as chairman of the Board of Inland Reverence (1892-7)
• An ardent imperialist
• Chamberlain picked him to become Britain’s High Commissioner for Southern Africa from 1897
• He was convinced of British superiority over Boers and Afrikarns
• When Kruger was re-elected as President of the Transvaal in February 1898, Milner thought the only way out of troubles in SA was reform in the Transvaal or war- he took Britain into the Boer War
• He founded a series of a English-Speaking ‘Milner Schools’ in Pretoria and Johannesburg
• Milner demanded full citizenship rights for Uitlanders after 5 years of residence – by the time of the
Bloemfontein Conference (may-June 1899) he had already decided to use force to get his way- it was actually
Kruger, however, who declared war in October 1899
• When Britain annexed territories in the Orange Free State & the Transvaal in 1901, he left his port as Governor
of the Cape and took over the Cape and took over the administration of these areas
• He negotiated the Peace of Vereening alongside Kitchener
• He was made a baron (1901) and Viscount (1902) for his services
• After the war, he and a group of young administrators and lawyers (known as Milner’s Kindergarten) worked
to resettle the Boers & promote economic growth, particularly in the gold mining industry
• He hoped to attract British settlers and introduced a vigorous English language education program
• However, more British left than arrived during the depression in the period after the war
• Milner and the British government decided to use Chinese labourers (coolies) on 3 year contracts to make up
for the shortfall of workers in the mines. The first group arrived in 1904
• Public opinion in Britain was soon outraged to learn that there were being poorly treated and even flogged in
breach of the law
• In March 1906, there was a move to censure Milner, but this backfired and produced a counter-campaign, let
by Sir Bartle Frere, which expressed high appreciation of Milner’s services in SA
• The issue of the Chinese coolies partly contributed to the Conservative election defeated in January 1906 and
the Liberal government rejected Milner’s plans for the future of the Transvaal
• He reigned from SA and returned to England when he wrote ‘The Nation and the Empire’ in 1913
What was Orientalism?
-The Palestinian literary and cultural theorist Edward Said first identified the concept of Orientalism in his book of the same name published in 1978
-Orientalism describes the way in which Western European societies perceived societies in North Africa and Asia (the so called ‘East’ or orient), particularly those they had colonised
-Said points out that often Western ‘knowledge’ about the East was not based on reality, but rather on a series of preconceived stereotypes that saw all ‘Eastern’ societies as fundamentally similar to each other and dissimilar to ‘Western’ ones
-Some of these stereotypes about ‘oriental’ societies include the idea that they were static and unchanging rather than progressing, romantic and superstitious rather than rational, lazy rather than unindustrious, and sensual rather than civilised
-Evelyn Baring’s books on Egypt provide a clear example of this way of thinking
What were the causes of the second Boer war?
-Political factors
-Economic factors
-Social factors
-Influences of individuals
What political factors were a cause of the second Boer war?
o The Uitlanders were effectively denied the vote, despite the fact they paid taxes. Over 50 000 Britons were excluded from political rights despite the fact Boers who lived in Cape Colony were granted their political rights
o At the Bloemfontein Conference of May-June 1899, Milner demanded the Transvaal granted voting rights to the Uitlanders – Kruger refused
o Despite half-hearted attempts to compromise, both sides began mobilising troops
o In October 1899, Kruger issues an ultimatum, demanding a British withdrawal from the border of the Boer republic- war broke out when the British stood firm
What economic factors were a cause of the second Boer war?
o The Transvaal’s prestige and power had grown with the discovery of gold on the Rand in 18886
o It had extended its control over Swaziland by establishing its independent rail networks
o Both Rhodes and Chamberlain were worried that British dominance in South Africa was under threat and launched the Jamerson Raid in 1895
o High tariffs imposed by the Boers also irritated Rhodes and limited trade
What social factors were a cause of the second Boer war?
o Kruger’s success in securing a 4th term as the Transvaal president in 1898 reflected the Boer’s strong nationalist sentiment and resentment of British interference
o An English man, Tom Edgar was shot by a Transvaal policeman in December 1898 which prompted Uitlander outrage and pressure on the British government from the Uitlanders for firm action
Why was the influence of individuals a cause of the second Boer war?
o Cecil Rhodes, the Prime Minister of Cape Colony 1890-96, had an overriding aim in South Africa to bring the Boer republics into a South African Federation
o Rhodes and Kruger were very hostile towards each other
o Chamberlain also supported the federation ideas
o Milner, the South African High Commissioner from 1897 encouraged the British to pursue a vigorous policy
What were the consequences of the second Boer war?
• The eventual victory in 1902 came at a cost
• Kitchener deployed a ‘scorched earth’ policy which involved incinerating Boer farms and livestock
• Boer families and black Africans were placed in concentration camps and endured horrendous conditions there. Many perished as a result of malnutrition and disease
• By the end of the war, about 11500 people were living in these camps and many more had died in them
• The camps were not intended to cause deaths – it was more a result of contemporary medical/sanitation ignorance
• More than 16 000 British soldiers were also killed by disease, nearly 3x as many that had died from enemy action
• Humanitarians, left-wing liberals, and socialists thought the use of these camps was barbaric
• The war highlighted the shortcomings of the British army. It had been anticipated to last 3/4 months, to involve
75 000 troops and cost no more than £10m. Instead, it lasted the best part of 3 years, involved 400 000 troops and cost £230m. It also saw 22 000 British deaths, to just 6000 Boer troops
• It showed the vulnerability of Britain’s imperial control and perhaps made it more aware of its inability to inflict its will on other people without a cost
• Britain had had to call on troops from other parts of the Empire (mainly India) to maintain the fight and the danger of leaving other dependencies with adequate armed back up was grave
• In South Africa, the British had not been able to rely on their long-vaunted sea power
• The war’s short-comings dictated the drive for national efficiency and dampened the jingoism that had characterised the 1890s. Thereafter only conservatives still spoke out politically for imperialism
• It also prompted the Boers to develop a more distinctive ‘Afrikaner’ culture
• The Treaty of Vereening of May 1902 granted the Boers £3m compensation to restore their farms
• Milner also worked to integrate the economies of the British and Boer colonies, bringing them into a single customs union and amalgamating their railway systems
• The Transvaal was granted self-government in 1906, the Orange River Colony in 1907. However, in 1910 the parliaments of the Cape Colony, the Transvaal, and the Orange River Colony, as well as the people of Natal, agreed on the establishment of the Union of South Africa, as an independent Dominion within the British Empire
• However, this constitution allowed the states to retain their own voting policies: a compromise that was to store up trouble for the future
What was the British approach to Africa in the 1880s?
• The Empire was largely bases for strategic or trading purposes
• Occasionally they responded to other powers – matching settlements by the French/Germans
• Private chartered companies were used to occupy and administrate territory
• The approach was generally cautious but there had been some direct intervention e.g. in Egypt and South Africa
How and why did the British approach to Africa change from 1890?
• Imperial attitudes within Britain had changed and people were more supportive of formal intervention, largely due to the attitude of the press
• The conservatives, ‘party of Empire’, were elected in 1895 and were determined to uphold Britain’s position in every part of the world. This led to wars, threats of wars and ambitious programmes to uphold Empire
• British protectorates were expanded in order to provide security to pre-existing ports, markets or resources
• New territories were taken to limit the advance of other European powers
• The Berlin Conference (1885-5) had established the ground rules of colonisation – as long as you bcould show ‘effective occupation’ (i.e. admin and defense) of African territories then it could be claimed as a formal colony
• Only 10% of land remained outside European control 20 years after the conference
• Chartered companies proved increasingly inefficient and were no a cost effective was of
administrating/expanding British interests. Formal control was seen as a better way to protect/develop British interests
Where did the British expand in West Africa?
-Gold coast
-Nigeria
