The Report of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Africa, published in 1865, concluded that “all further extension of territory or assumption of Government” in Western Africa “would be inexpedient” – and yet, by the conclusion of the Boer War in 1902, often cited as the end of the so-called ‘Scramble’, Britain, along with her fellow European powers, had expanded her sphere of influence in almost all parts of Africa by nearly 5 million square miles. This 30-year period represents perhaps the most rapid period of imperial expansion, and the pinnacle of European colonial confidence and control, but leaves no definitive conclusion as to its causes. The popularised view that British involvement in Africa in the period was closer to accident than to intention, epitomised by the view of Sir John Seeley, Professor of History at Cambridge in 1883, that “we seem, as it were, to have conquered and peopled half the world in a fit of absence of mind”, seems at odds with the rapidity and scale of the said involvement. As a result, it is necessary to consider the range of ruler-centred metropolitan theories, subject-centred peripheral theories, and broader international theories that have subsequently been offered as having driven British involvement in the scramble, in conjunction with the empirical evidence of actual British expansion, in order to try to interpret Britain’s motivations. In doing so, one comes to the ultimate conclusion that it would be remiss to accept simple conclusions in explaining the Scramble for Africa, in particular Britain’s involvement, and so must acknowledge the combination of motives that were at work in different parts of Africa as contributing to an ultimate movement to expansion.
The first way in which historians have attempted to explain British involvement in the Scramble is in consideration of domestic factors in influencing official policy. The clearest example of this comes in J. A. Hobson’s Imperialism: A Study, which takes a purely economic view of Britain’s role in the partition, rejecting the idea of conquests forced upon us, and highlighting expansion as a deliberate policy of the elite British class of “financiers, capital investors and unscrupulous politicians”. Hobson’s justification for this rests heavily on the fact that “the pressure to find external markets […] is not based upon any natural economic necessity” – in other words, the increased British investment abroad that was in Hobson’s eyes the driving force behind territorial partition was not actually for the “common good” of Britain. It was not, in his view, directly economically beneficial according to the figures he provides, and was instead the symptom of “a certain conspiracy of rich men seeking their own advantage under the name and pretext of the commonwealth”. This argument certainly seems convincing in light of British actions in Egypt under Gladstone. Whilst official fears that led to intervention came from French influence and rising Egyptian nationalism, the fact that Gladstone himself owned shares in the Suez Canal perhaps – as Cain and Hopkins so diplomatically put it – allowed him “to see the creditors’ point of view with greater clarity if it could be presented as […] in the wider public interest”. This seems to be clear evidence of the sort of collusion between capitalists and government against the national interest but in their own that Hobson feared. This idea was developed by Lenin in his work Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, in which he furthers the claim that all European governments had become the “puppets” of “finance capitalists” and “monopoly companies”, and that this was as a result of the abandonment of the free trade era in favour of protectionism and imperialism, which had forced European capitalists to push their governments into formally controlling the only remaining possible world monopolies that lay in Africa. Evidence of this pressure can be seen in a letter from a leading Liverpool trader, John Holt, to Lord Granville, proclaiming that “the influence […] of her great colonial and trade interests in Western Africa, which far exceed those of all other nations combined, will be maintained, and, if necessary, her territory extended”. The weakness of these predominantly socialist theories is that, whilst they make a compelling case in portraying how imperial expansion was certainly aligned with the interests of the British financial elite, they fail to provide a significant range evidence of instances in which capitalists directly influenced British policy from within Britain. It seems to be a significant leap to claim that simply because British capitalists would have been in support of imperialist expansion in Africa that this must have been the driving force behind governmental policy – after all, official British policy was only to support the interests of capitalists when they were integrated within the national interest – and it remains perhaps too convenient that these theories fit perfectly with the socialist agenda of Hobson and Lenin. Furthermore, whilst also presenting a predominantly domestically based theory for British expansion, J.A. Schumer provides the antithesis of an economic explanation in The Sociology of Imperialism. Here, Schumer attacks the links drawn between the newer class of capitalists and imperialism, and instead emphasises the influence of aristocratic elites passing on ideas of imperial glory and superiority, who looked to Africa for this sense of power as they felt the threat of the rising working and middle classes at home. This trend seems to have been effectively encapsulated by the Pall Mall Gazette in 1885, whose fear that “Our old position is lost – irrevocably” is just the sort of sentiment, what Jean Stengers dubbed the “implicit protest against the idea that England could be left behind”, that would have driven a last grab for territory and power from the hereditary aristocrats of Britain. Once more, however, this domestic explanation seems incomplete in explaining British involvement in the Scramble. This is due to the fact that the acquired territories in Africa in this period were less the ‘true colonies’ of imperial legend, and simply official protectorates of formerly unofficial spheres of trade influence. This perhaps discredits Schumer’s proposal that the dream of an aristocratic elite was in some way the major driving force behind governmental policy, as the nature of Britain’s expanding colonial territories would evidently have been dramatically different had this been the case. Whilst these domestic explanations for escalating British involvement in Africa provide convincing evidence as to the pressures on the government that came from within Britain, they are perhaps too insular and limiting, as not only do they fail to provide a sufficient range of instances across Africa to explain fully the evident trend of expansion, but they also ignore both the actions and influences of other European powers, and of the entirety of Africa itself.
A contrasting view of British involvement in Africa in the period is that, far from a scramble for territory driven by a variety of factors domestically, the policy was in fact coherent, and influenced by periphery actions in Africa. This idea of coherency is particularly championed by Gallagher and Robinson in their 1961 work Africa and The Victorians: The Official Mind of Imperialism. Here, the authors present a view of increasingly interventionist British policy not as motivated by any new desire for territory in Africa, but simply a systematic and consistent reaction against threats to the “informal empire” that Britain had held in Africa for some time. Where this theory is unique is in its emphasis on local factors in Africa in forming these threats to informal control, and thus dragging a “reluctant” Britain into seeking official control of territory. This theory is particularly convincing in light of British action in Egypt. Whilst Disraeli referenced the purchasing of the Suez Canal shares in 1875, the key turning point in British interest in Egypt, as an attempt to halt French influence in the region, the roots of the purchase were evidently in protecting and legitimising financial control in the region, as France were more concerned with financial stability over who implemented this stability. Despite this suggesting that Britain was once again driven to action in the interests of the financier class in London, the fact that ultimate occupation of Egypt only came in 1882, as a direct result of the ‘local crisis’ deriving from the Urabi Revolt of Egyptian Army officers, indicates that it was neither the competition from European powers nor the influence financial lobbies that was key in forcing British occupation of the territory, but the so-called ‘pull factors’ in Africa. After all, before the threat of this rising nationalism Salisbury had concluded that “Monopolising would have been very near the risk of war. So we resolved to share” with France. The significance of Egypt in Britain’s increasing involvement in Africa cannot be understated – despite the lack of French argument about Britain’s occupation of Egypt itself, it brought to an end the policy of Dual-Control that the two nations had exercised in Africa, and thus opened up the West of Africa for British colonisation. Moreover, Gallagher and Robinson attach a similar claim to British expansion in Southern Africa, citing rising Transvaal and Boer nationalism as forcing the hand of Britain, who were acting as “reluctant imperialists” dragged in to claiming territory by African nationalism. This claim is perhaps less convincing in explaining initial British involvement than in North Africa – the rise of Transvaal and Boer nationalism, and its influence on British control in the region, stemmed largely from the British annexation of Transvaal in 1870, and this annexation was evidently motivated by economic interest as a result of the discovery of rich diamond resources in Griqualand West in 1870. However, the fact that Britain were forced to annex Bechuanaland in 1885 directly as a result of Boer actions is clear evidence of African nationalism forcing the hand of British official policy, as by this point the diamond industry there was no longer simply the venture of lone capitalists acting independent of the jurisdiction of the British government, but integrated within the national interest, hence requiring national protection by colonisation. Here, one can see clear evidence of both economic factors and peripheral actions in Africa itself acting to influence increasing British colonisation. This action stretches too into increasing British involvement in West Africa, in particular the Gold Coast. Despite the legal foundation for British colonisation stemming from trade interests and the Bond of 1844, in the purchasing of ports from the Danes and the Dutch in 1850 and 1872, the actual ‘scramble’ for territory, outside of the natural progression of formalising economic control, came in 1874, directly as a result of the threat of repeated Ashanti uprising and invasions into the British controlled territory. It was this repeated struggle against African nationalism in the Gold Coast that forced Britain to proclaim a Crown Colony, and continued to force the British hand into consolidating their position with further acquisitions of territory in 1896 and 1901, where Ashante officially became a British colony. This consolidation of British control through territorial expansion across the span of 25 years was on an unprecedented scale when compared with the almost non-existent official colonial control since British influence in the region had begun almost 100 years previously, and serves as clear evidence of a forced revision of British policy to imperialism directly as a result of nationalism in Africa. Clearly, these so-called peripheral explanations for increasing British involvement in Africa from 1870 onwards have a place in highlighting the limitations of a purely economic and domestic of policy. However, there is a sense that in viewing British partition as separate and unrelated events, motivated by issues specific to their location, one is drawn into ignoring the broader economic, social and political factors at work. It remains difficult to believe that Britain was drawn unwillingly into each separate event by the pull factors African nationalism, especially given the scale and totality of their increasing imperialism in the period.
In reaction against these two seemingly insular strands of argument historians have attempted to approach an explanation to the partition with a broader international perspective. For example, A.J.P. Taylor cites the diplomatic aims of the other leading European powers as acting to influence increasing official British involvement in Africa. He claims that German victory in the Franco-Prussian War of 1871 brought to an end the period of unification unrest that had wrought Europe since the end of the Napoleonic Wars, and in doing so created a political and territorial deadlock for the ambitious powers within Europe. This in turn triggered the growth of a militant breed of nationalism that created a European “armed camp”, in which the balance of power was so finely poised that the risk of a war was too great to pursue interests within their own continent. In this context, Africa provided the ‘safe’ arena in which to play out the European desire for expansion without risking such a war, and so the partition came in the form of an unplanned and irrational proxy for “the struggle for mastery in Europe”. This theory does certainly seem to be a recurring theme across the different regions of Africa in driving British intervention expansion, and is reflected in Frederick Lugard’s remark that the “vital importance of the control of the tropics [for Britain] had already begun to be realised by the nations of Europe, as France, Germany, and Italy, laying aside their ambitions in Europe, emerged as claimants for large colonies in Africa”. The final act that essentially confirms Taylor’s theory was the Berlin West Africa Conference in November of 1884 – the laying down of rules by which powers could officially and legitimately lay claim to territory by occupation signifies the end of the supposedly absent minded and reluctant imperialism that had been claimed of the early years of the Scramble, and, with the British ambassador’s claim that the conference took the form of “the application to the Congo and Niger of the principles adopted by the Congress of Vienna”, is clear evidence of the European power struggle being played out in the African theatre.
Moreover, the direct influence of this upon Britain can be seen in Egypt, where, upon acquiring the Suez Canal shares from the Khedive, a key stage in Britain’s increasing control in the region, Disraeli remarked to the Queen that “the French Government has been out-generaled”. This is mirrored in the Niger Coast – Britain’s strategic and trade interests were less significant here than in the East or the South of Africa, but the French announcement in 1883 to “sign political and commercial agreements with the littoral chiefs that would enable us to place these territories under our protectorate”, in conjunction with the German annexation of Togoland and Cameroon in 1884, forced the British hand into the establishment of the Niger Coast Protectorate in 1884. A similar reaction to international pressure occurred at the same time in Southern Africa, where the British government allowed the Cape Colony to subsume the Walvis Bay territory in direct response to German annexation of South West Africa. This European conflict in Africa continued into the 1890s, with the most striking example the 1890 British Ultimatum that called for “all and any Portuguese military forces which are actually on the Shire or in the Makololo or in the Mashona territory are to be withdrawn” – Salisbury’s fear of a possible trans-African Portuguese zone stretching from Mozambique to Angola, in conjunction with the ineffectiveness of the conditional treaties with tribal leaders in preventing the Portuguese taking control of areas that overlapped with British settlements and interests, forced his hand into claiming sovereignty over territory that the Foreign Office had declined to protect as recently as 1888. In addition, Britain were forced to cede Heligoland to Germany in order to gain primacy for territorial acquisitions along the Nile, a move which led to the creation of British Uganda and all of the East African protectorate. As well as being further evidence of the theme of European competition influencing British policy, this instance also highlights another manipulating factor; namely, the role of men on the ground in Africa, and their special brand of so-called “private enterprise colonialism”. Whilst it was superficially the actions of the German government that forced the hand of Britain in East Africa in 1890, the actual physical threat to their interests came from Karl Peters and his actions through the German East Africa company in his acquisition of territory on the Tanganyika coast. The evidence for this lies in the fact that British government itself used the East Africa company as the means by which they were able to bring these territories under crown protection. This influence also underpins the earlier examples given – it was George Goldie and his Royal Niger Company that preyed on his government’s fears about European power balance into protecting the interests of his company by “legalizing and affirming […] the business of administration” along the Niger Coast, and Cecil Rhodes and his British South Africa Company doing the same in South Africa. Rhodes used Salisbury’s fear of Portugal to gain a Royal Charter in order to further his own mining interests in Mashonaland and Matabeleland, that he had gained via the controversial Rudd Concession of 1888, which granted his chartered company “the complete and exclusive charge over all metals and minerals situated and contained” within the territory. This was evidently against the wishes of the British Government and the Colonial Office, with Sir Robert Herbert describing the issuing of the charter as “a very objectionable course, because it would involve the establishment of an administrative protectorate over all the Company’s territories”, and yet the combination of an expansionist European power in Portugal and the pressure from Rhodes was enough to force territorial acquisition where it was not desired, but deemed necessary, in perhaps the clearest example of ‘scrambling’ in the period. Whilst this may seem to put these private enterprise colonialists as a major driving force behind policy, other instances in the period seem to undermine this as a consistent influencing factor. For example, after Sir Harry Johnston’s attempts to pressure the government into annexation of Kilimanjaro in 1884, assuring that “within a few years it must be either, English, French, or German […] however all these are still hesitating while I am still on the spot […] able to make Kilimanjaro as completely English as Ceylon” , Gladstone was quick to reject him, retorting that “I cannot see […] an adequate reason for our being ‘dans cette galere’”. This not only displays the limitations of the influence of private colonialists, but also, as Johnston’s reference to the certainty of one of the European powers taking control of the territory in the near future shows, the fact that any hopes of influencing policy they did have came about only as a result of the context of European relations at the time. Finally, there is an argument to suggest that an international perspective on the Scramble can stretch beyond the European powers, to look at broader international relations. Paul Kennedy attempts to place the partition in the context of the rise and fall of great powers across history, presenting the view that British involvement was driven by a need to defend her dominance of international trade and imperial rule, as the other European powers sought the great power status post 1870. This certainly seems to be in line with aspects of the governments colonial policy – whilst economic factors arising directly from the Africa did indeed influence British involvement in Egypt, Sir Charles Dilke’s comments in the House of Commons that “our position seems to arise from necessity […] by the fact that the canal is the principal highway to India, Ceylon, the Straits and British Burmah […] also to China” display that international trade control was Britain’s real focus. This is mirrored by her policy in East Africa – whilst French interest spurred on territorial acquisitions, the only reason this was the case was due the fact that “our alternative route by the Cape to India may at any time make it important that we should have possession of […] good harbours” – in other words, strategic international interests made the territory invaluable to Britain, hence why the French threat actually mattered. Once more, whilst these arguments certainly provide part of the picture of the motivations behind British involvement in the partition, none can be used to explain this in its totality. The broader international relations perspective is too tied up in British domestic sociological and economic considerations to be treated as a separate motivation, and the European political theories too easily ignore the specific events of the partition, painting the motivations of the powers and their actions with too broad a brush.
It is clear, then, that despite the number of interpretations put forward to explain British involvement in the partition of Africa from 1870-1900, the Scramble is not a topic in which one can hold confidence in any one interpretation. In the African proverb “until lions have their historians, tales of hunting will always glorify the hunter” we can perhaps see the limitations of the majority of theories put forward – whilst it may not necessarily glorify British action, viewing partition from a purely domestic or international perspective seems to ignore actual events in Africa, the history of the lions, in a way that is remiss given the nature of the subject. Conversely, an attempt to view the partition solely from an African perspective would be to ignore the merit and significance of the aforementioned domestic and international influences. In short, the Scramble for Africa serves as an example of the limits of historical explanation, where in attempting to derive an explanation historians must accept that there were complex combinations of domestic, international, and peripheral motivations that lay behind the British involvement.