The ‘key to South Africa’ in the 1890s: Delagoa Bay and the origins of the South African war

Abstract

Developments at Delagoa Bay have not generally been seen as having a direct bearing on the outbreak of war between Britain and the Transvaal in 1899. Britain's lack of control over the Bay has typically been viewed as a threat to British ascendancy in southern Africa only in the period prior to the signing of the Anglo‐German agreement in August 1898. Before then, the Bay and its railway to the Rand were seen as providing a route through which rival European powers — above all Germany — might promote the Transvaal's political and economic autonomy from Britain. On the surface, the agreement seemed to place the Bay more firmly under British control and mark the end of German support for the Transvaal. In reality (and as the British Colonial Office saw when it eventually discovered what the Foreign Office had conceded to Germany) the agreement threatened to undermine British ascendancy in southern Africa to a decisive extent by opening the door to the competitive commercial development of the Bay. The Colonial Office, fully recognizing what was at stake, became more convinced than ever by March 1899 that an early showdown with the Transvaal was imperative. This article argues that British concerns about Delagoa Bay were a key, and hitherto neglected, factor in the origins of the South African war. These concerns sprang from threats posed via the Bay to a whole range of interconnected British interests relating to strategy, economics, geopolitics, and prestige. The article therefore challenges those interpretations of the war which suggest that the British government was driven by a narrower set of either non‐economic or economic motives.