British Empire: 3. Africa

Abstract

Abstract Africa has sometimes been depicted as a sideshow to British ambitions elsewhere, but this is only partly true. The slave trade, in which the British emerged as the most important slavers on the West African coast, was vital to the development of plantations in the West Indies and the southern colonies of North America. The take‐over of the Cape, at the southern tip of Africa, from the Dutch during the Napoleonic Wars was based on its key strategic position on the route to India. Similarly the British established their “veiled protectorate” in Egypt in 1882 because of its vital strategic role as a pivotal point between the Mediterranean, Middle Eastern, African, and Asian worlds, particularly after the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869. Even British interest in East Africa was considered to be a by‐product of the British desire to maintain their dominant position on the entire Nile system as well as in India and the Indian Ocean. But African colonies later developed importance for their own sake with the emergence of significant economic interests in West, Central, and southern Africa while complex commitments arose from the presence of white settlers in South, Central, and East Africa. All of this ensured a particularly messy decolonization of African colonies.