British Policy in Africa 1873-1877: A Study in Geographical Politics

Abstract

THE partition of Africa in the second half of the last century provides admirable studies of the workings of European diplomacy. These are the more instructive because they present in each case not merely the problems arising from European relationships alone but also such national hopes and ambitions as were inspired by potential opportunities in the outer unexploited world. Not a few of the situations that arose out of the contest for Africa were unique. That which materialized in the course of British penetration into the Arabian quarter of Africa was no exception; for in it were combined a keen economic appetite for undeveloped lands, together, perhaps, with some thought of conveying to the natives the ineffable blessings of Christian culture, and a real and pressing concern for the safety of the vital route to India. Significant changes in British policy emanating from such a combination of interests cannot be discussed without some reference at the outset to the consequences of the cutting of the Suez ship canal. Since the French expedition in I798 it had been a cardinal point in the British imperial program to safeguard the direct approaches to India by preventing any European political establishment in Egypt. Until I869 the protection of Egypt and even the maintenance of the British overland route had required only a close surveillance of the eastern Mediterranean, with Malta and Constantinople as points of vantage. The cutting through of the Isthmus of Suez, however, instantly destroyed all previous conceptions of British strategy by giving an almost infinite extension to the shores of the Mediterranean. With a similar extension of the problems of the Mediterranean, the inevitability of fundamental changes in British planning and procedure is apparent. Although such changes certainly were inherent in the Suez Canal, their direction was determined largely by technological developments, by growing territorial appetites of other European states, and, at a critical period, by far-reaching ambitions of the Khedive of Egypt.