The Scramble for East Africa: British Motives Reconsidered, 1884–95

Abstract

This article re-examines the partition of East Africa. It first outlines the existing historiography, namely the dominant geo-strategic Nile model, and suggests that there are two major areas of weakness upon close analysis: a lack of documentary evidence; the way the sequence of actual events and policy decisions is inconsistent with the main thesis. Second, using a wide range of sources, a new chronology of events will be proposed that divides the annexation process into three separate stages. The article will first expose the importance of the prelude to partition in determining its ultimate geographical scope, in particular Anglo-German relations, local treaties and the commercial expectations for the lakes region. The second and third sections will expose the importance of public opinion in formulating a forward policy in the region. Finally, building on this, it will be argued that the role of Britain's anti-slave-trade policy needs to be fully acknowledged, with regard to Britain's raison d'être for establishing a formal presence on the mainland in 1885 with the occupation of the territories encompassing modern Kenya and Uganda in successive stages from 1885 to 1895.

Introduction

This article re-examines the sequence of, and motives for, the partition of eastern Africa. The imperial annexation of this vast territory, which includes modern Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania, has been heralded as the definitive example of late-Victorian grand strategy. The apparent spectre of a territory largely devoid of natural resources and with negligible European commercial interests encouraged incisive historians such as Langer¹ and later Robinson et al.² to deduce that the partition was a result of defensive concerns. Their theories were founded on the region's most prominent geographical feature: the River Nile that takes its source from the Victoria Nyanza and flows north to constitute Egyptian agriculture's primary source of water. Carved through Egypt ran the Suez Canal which formed the British Empire's most important waterway as it connected the metropole with its principal colonial possession. As the logic goes, far-flung eastern Africa would require imperial incorporation in order to maintain Britain's hold over India.

The model found its place in the meta-narrative of British imperialism which suggested British defensive concerns gained primacy in the late nineteenth century. As the empire neared its ultimate geographical extent, its finite imperial power waned in proportion to its expansion. Thus the realities of geo-strategy were the explanation given by historians who willingly or otherwise overlooked other factors in their analyses. Testament to the orthodox historiography's lasting influence is not only the new edition of Africa and the Victorians ³ or the number of casual references made to the model in literature published after Darwin's initial refutation⁴ but also Tvedt's 2011 article in which strategy is replaced with economic considerations, although the misplaced emphasis on the Nile and Egypt is retained.⁵

Whilst an Egypto-centric explanatory model is seemingly a natural inference, it seems Robinson and Gallagher might have been unduly influenced by contemporary events such as the completion of the Owen Falls dam in 1954 or the Suez Crisis of 1956 during the development of their theory. As Darwin has suggested, these narratives have little or no basis in documentary evidence.⁶ Some would attempt to counter this by suggesting that it would be reasonable to make a tacit assumption of contemporary policy-makers' unwritten strategic motives. Yet the actions taken in the years before and after the partition do no more to validate the model. Building upon Darwin's path-breaking research this article will question further the scant evidence underpinning the strategic model and attempt to provide answers for the guiding motives behind British policy by perceiving the territorial expansion in conjunction with private commercial interests and imperial humanitarian policy objectives.⁷

Contrary to the existing historiography that focuses almost exclusively on Britain's bilateral treaty with Germany in 1890, it will be argued that the process which led to East Africa's incorporation into the British Empire occurred in three distinct phases, each culminating in a bilateral treaty or declaration of a protectorate. Importantly it will be demonstrated the two subsequent stages were in large part determined by the initial actions and that these in essence were faits accomplis. The initial phase, occurring between 1884 and 1887, divided the East African mainland into a southern German and a predominantly British northern sphere of influence as laid down in the Anglo-German Agreement of 1886–87. The second phase, which culminated in the Anglo-German Heligoland Treaty of 1890, extended the British sphere westwards to comprise Uganda and made Zanzibar a British protectorate. The third and concluding phase occurred between 1890 and 1896. It included the Uganda debates of the autumn of 1892, the decision to construct the Uganda Railway and the declaration of Uganda and the remaining mainland territories as protectorates in 1894–5.

The First Phase: End of British Hegemony in East Africa, 1882–86

The most decisive determinant of the East African partition's geographical scope was the German intrusion in 1884–85. Carl Peters and his colleagues in the Society for German Colonisation⁸ arrived on the coast opposite Zanzibar in the autumn of 1884. They had proceeded up the course of the Wami River and ‘acquired a considerable tract of country … between the Zanzibar coast and [Lake] Tanganyika’.⁹ Four months later, in March 1885, a German nucleus protectorate was declared ending Britain's hegemonic position in East Africa.¹⁰ But already, before the German annexation, British policy-makers had decided to establish a presence on the mainland.

Prior to the partition of the 1880s–90s, East Africa's dominant polity was the archipelagic Sultanate of Zanzibar. It had formed part of the Portuguese empire in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and later fallen to the sultan of Oman in 1698. Britain had co-opted Zanzibar as a client state in 1862 when, through the Canning Award, it acted as a king-maker during a succession dispute, and effectively underwrote the sultan of Zanzibar's independence from Muscat. Zanzibar was principally a commercial empire based on its caravan trade with the interior of Africa, trading in slaves, ivory and cloves; the sultan's political influence on the mainland was centred on the coastal zone, from Kilwa Kivinje in the south to the Benadir Coast in the north.

Britain had been attracted to the region out of its ‘humanitarian and commercial' interests: in particular anti-slave-trade policy and the Indian traders who resided in Zanzibar.¹¹ Apart from a squadron of cruisers from the East India Station, suppression of the slave trade was sought through a treaty network executed by its diplomatic agents.¹² These efforts reached a crescendo in 1873, with the anti-slave-trade treaty that had resulted from Sir Bartle Frere's mission to Zanzibar.¹³ Although greatly reducing the trade, it failed to stamp it out completely and the Admiralty estimated in 1883 that 55,220 slaves had been imported since 1874.¹⁴ To combat it more cost-effectively the Foreign Office clerk Sir Clement Hill, in consultation with the British consul, Sir John Kirk, concluded that an increased ‘[c]onsular supervision of the mainland' was required and two vice-consuls were deployed.¹⁵ This was the first occasion since the Scottish shipowner William Mackinnon had, in 1878, sought a concession from the sultan that any direct British presence on the mainland had been contemplated. Mackinnon's scheme for the development of the mainland—a tentative first step toward partition—was however secretly thwarted by the then secretary of state for India, Lord Salisbury.¹⁶

For purposes of both trade and exploration the East African mainland was in geographical terms divided into a northern and southern section. This was a natural consequence of the caravan routes that extended from the coast towards inland trading centres such as the kingdom of Buganda or the town of Ujiji. Importantly, Peters and his associates had followed the southern caravan route from Pangani into the interior to the territories their compatriot Gustav Fischer had explored in 1882. In January 1884 he had recommended the territories as ‘well adapted for European settlement' in a public exhibition held in Hamburg, no doubt inspiring the budding German colonialists.¹⁷ British exploration had focused on the northern interior, by using the northerly caravan route to Uganda, which originated in Mombasa. Joseph Thomson had set out from there in February 1883 as an agent of the Royal Geographical Society (RGS) with the object of ascertaining ‘if a practicable direct route existed through the Masai country to the Lake’.¹⁸ Upon his return to England in the autumn of 1884, he stated that he had never before encountered such population densities in Africa, or food in such ‘marvellous abundance’, as in the territories east of the Nyanza.¹⁹ Upon his return The Times jubilantly pronounced that Thomson ‘is an excellent example of the class of pioneers wanted to set the work going’.²⁰

But this particular honour fell instead upon Kew's man-on-the-spot Harry Johnston. In May 1884, Johnston had set out for Kilimanjaro to collect botanical specimens for the Royal Society and Kew Gardens.²¹ The ‘rather too cocky'²² Johnston returned to England with, among his collection of flora, treaty forms signed by six chiefs of Taveta, the tribal settlements lying just north of the mountain.²³ Before his departure Johnston penned a letter to the government. He portrayed the territories he had seen in East Africa as a veritable Arcadia, ‘eminently suited for European colonization’, and prophesied that ‘within a few years it must be either English, French or German’.²⁴

Foreign Office Debates

Receipt of Johnston's communication sparked a debate among the policy-makers of the ruling Liberal party and the Africa experts in the Foreign Office over the autumn of 1884. Foreign Secretary Earl Granville was a prominent abolitionist who had shortly before delivered a key address at a commemorative meeting in London's Guildhall which marked the 50th anniversary of the emancipation of slaves held in British colonies. ²⁵ Granville wrote to his consul-general in Zanzibar, Sir John Kirk, for advice as to how to proceed. He noted that ‘it would be undesirable that an opportunity should be neglected of securing a hold over a territory adapted for British enterprise and favourably situated for striking a blow at the Slave Trade’.²⁶ Britain had thus on commercial and anti-slave-trade grounds committed itself as a participant in the partition of East Africa in October 1884—a direct reversal of Salisbury's earlier decision to prevent Mackinnon from establishing a British presence on the mainland in 1878.²⁷

Sir Percy Anderson's²⁸ deputy in the Foreign Office's Africa Department, Mr Clement Lloyd Hill, produced an extensive memorandum concerning the Kilimanjaro region and positioning it in the wider question of African partition. The geographical dispersion of British imperial possessions in Africa would largely reflect the early analysis made by Hill in the months leading up to the West African Conference in Berlin, 1884–85.

Hill argued that ‘[t]he geographical position of the East Coast lays it more within the general area of our foreign policy than that of the West Coast. Our alternative route by the Cape to India may at any time make it important that we should have possession of, or at least free access to, good harbours.'²⁹ The substantial Indian community that resided in Zanzibar was also cited in favour of Britain exercising a ‘preponderating influence' in East Africa. Apart from the strategic considerations, which derived from Britain's position on the subcontinent and the need to safeguard the Cape route, and notably not Egypt or the Suez Canal, Hill considered the economic potential of the region to be substantial. He ended his influential memorandum with a précis of what would become Britain's official Africa strategy at the dawn of the partition. Hill questioned whether Britain should not yield on the west coast and seek compensation on the east

where the political future of the country is of real importance to Indian and Imperial interests; where the climate is superior; where commerce is capable of vast extension, and where our influence could be exercised, unchecked by the rivalry of Europe, in the extension of civilization, and the consequent extinction of the Slave Trade, for which we have so long laboured?³⁰

By December 1884 Granville had instructed Kirk confidentially to inquire whether Britain's client potentate, the sultan of Zanzibar, could extend his mainland dominions to include the territories encompassing Kilimanjaro. Hill had earlier been tasked with evaluating the feasibility of such an ‘Embassy' to extend the suzerainty of Britain's client state, the Sultanate of Zanzibar, over the tribes populating the immediate interior. Despite presuming that the costs involved would be slight, Hill believed it would be most expedient to ‘justify it in Parliament, on the ground of the blow it would, if successful, strike at slavery and the Slave Trade … the commercial advantages would … fully repay it. The capabilities of East Africa, when once the devastating slave-raids are put down, are immense.'³¹ In regard to the additional burden indirect control of East Africa would place upon the Treasury, Hill ventured to believe that it would not be greater in the future than it currently was. Both on account of Britain's obligation to protect its Indian subjects and since it had ‘pledged irrevocably to the extinction of the Slave Trade’,³² Hill was fully cognizant of the potential for Britain taking over East Africa should the Sultanate collapse, but he also foresaw the potential for friction with other European powers. Despite having received a warning by Kirk in November that ‘there are mysterious Germans travelling inland, and a German man-of-war is expected on the coast'³³, Hill pronounced that ‘at least there is no European Power yet at Kilimanjaro’.³⁴ The Foreign Office estimated that the worst possible scenario would be a forestalment by France or Germany. On this basis Hill proclaimed that prompt action should be taken; it was indeed ‘now or never’.³⁵ But, alas, Britain had already been outflanked, as the cryptic travellers reported by Kirk turned out to be Peters and his associates.

British and German Spheres of Influence, 1884–87

Acting consul Frederic Holmwood estimated the nucleus German territory to be ‘entirely south of the River Wami, and between the main trade routes from Zanzibar to Ujiji viâ Unyanyembe, and that it nowhere' approached ‘the coast within 80 miles’.³⁶ Britain's man-on-the-spot urged, in a similar dispatch sent only five days later, ‘immediate action' to secure the ‘healthy and fertile regions lying to the north of the German territory' in order to forestall further encroachment by Germany or any other power.³⁷

Contrary to Gladstone's hospitable public expressions vis-à-vis Germany,³⁸ the Foreign Office instructed Kirk to inquire ‘privately and unofficially' whether the sultan would reconsider re-awarding the concession William Mackinnon had attempted to gain in 1878³⁹ covering the ‘dominions from Saadani northwards’.⁴⁰ The British inquiry went unheeded by the sultan as he sent his General Mathews to hoist the Zanzibari flag in Chagga, the next territory anticipated to be annexed by the German agents.⁴¹

At the end of May, the Liberal government could again reassure Germany that Britain had ‘no intention of opposing the German schemes of colonization in the neighbourhood of Zanzibar' and that, on the contrary, Britain welcomed the ‘co-operation of Germany … in the work of suppression of slave gangs, and the encouragement of the efforts of the Sultan both in the extinction of the Slave Trade and in the commercial development of his dominions'. In the same despatch, the British government alerted their German counterparts to the fact that a few British ‘capitalists’, including William Mackinnon and James Frederick Hutton, had ‘originated a plan for a British settlement in the country between the coast and the lakes … and for its connection with the coast by a railway'.⁴²

However, in July 1885, it transpired that the sultan, for fear of prejudicing his claims to sovereignty over the mainland, would not grant a concession to the British industrialists. Mackinnon and Hutton had also reconsidered their earlier enthusiasm, doubting ‘in the likelihood of a railway paying for many years to come’. Despite these setbacks, Whitehall's principal Africa mandarin Sir Percy Anderson attempted to entice them with the economic prospects of the region. It was clear that Anderson shared Holmwood's views of the interior:

my personal opinion was that, if the tribes on the Nile lakes could be reached there was a greater opening for trade than among the Congo tribes, as the habits of the former would make them more likely than the latter to take European goods, and that the climate of the Kilimanjaro was apparently admirably suited for a European Settlement.⁴³

By 3 November, British commercial interests, represented by Manchester Chamber of Commerce president and cotton magnate James Frederick Hutton, had after all decided to make use of Johnston's Kilimanjaro concession. He notified Johnston that he would take steps to form a syndicate, inviting his friend William Mackinnon to join him in immediately securing ‘British rights' in the region.⁴⁴ Anderson, ‘strictly in his private capacity’, had prior to this met with Johnston and made clear that the British government would ensure the syndicate would be ‘officially recognised' and receive ‘every just support'.⁴⁵

Meanwhile the young British officer Horatio Herbert Kitchener, together with German and French representatives, was tasked to define the boundaries of the sultan's mainland dominions. Despite Kitchener's protests, the Sultanate did not receive recognition for more than the East African coast line with a 10-mile strip extending from the coast including the islands; the interior had thus been lost to the sultan.⁴⁶ Similarly to Kirk, Kitchener had also come to appreciate the value of Mombasa. As Kirk had pointed out a year earlier, the port would be the most suitable place to commence construction of a railway to the equatorial lake—the Uganda Railway.⁴⁷ During 1886 both argued for the city's strategic importance, since it was anticipated that Dar-es-Salaam, which the German Company leased from the sultan, posed a security threat to the British presence in East Africa and the Indian Ocean, notably the Cape route to India.⁴⁸

The Admiralty did not share these views, but the Intelligence Department of the War Office did. In August 1886, a memorandum listing reasons why Britain should secure Mombasa was produced. The principal grounds were defence of Britain's economic interests and of the Zanzibar telegraph cable, which ensured communications with the Cape. The War Office also revealed some of Britain's contingency planning:

In the event of war with France, the Mediterranean, and, consequently, the Suez Canal, will, owing to the prohibitory rates of insurance which would be charged, cease to be available as a commercial route; and almost the whole of our commerce with India and the Pacific must pass round the Cape.⁴⁹

Notwithstanding the conspicuous absence of any comments regarding the strategic importance of securing the Nile, the presumption that the Suez Canal would be rendered useless for commercial traffic during a potential war with France serves to weaken the Egypto-centric model as it ultimately derives from the supposed strategic necessity of securing this waterway.

In the autumn of 1886 Peters travelled to Argyllshire to meet personally with Mackinnon at his Balinakill estate. It was the results of this meeting that formed the basis of the Anglo-German Boundary Agreement. According to Peters' notes, Mackinnon thought ‘it a necessary condition that the British Crown should have sovereignty over one part or the other of East African territory, in order to induce British subjects to invest their money in East Africa’.⁵⁰ The discussions proceeded to evaluate ‘the geographical position of the country which Mr. Mackinnon would like to acquire for England’; Peters recorded Mackinnon's view as ‘he expresses the wish to take the northern part of the Kilimanjaro’. Peters' response and Mackinnon's subsequent reply to this were crucial:

Dr. Peters does not think the German Company would like to cede a part of the Kilimanjaro district to the English, but he asks whether Mr. Mackinnon would not be satisfied with the provinces between Kilimanjaro and Tana, perhaps including the Kenia, which Mr. Mackinnon does not deny.⁵¹

Peters had thus in August 1886 freely offered to Mackinnon the northern territories, which, through the later bilateral treaty between Britain and Germany, would form the basis of the northern British and southern German zones. In October, the German chancellor expressed his hope that the Zanzibar question would be brought to a ‘speedy and … satisfactory conclusion’. His intention was to send Dr Friedrich Krauel to London in order to negotiate the terms.⁵²

By 26 October 1886, Anderson and Krauel had come to an agreement, sanctioned by Foreign Secretary Earl Iddesleigh, regarding the delimitation of the Zanzibari Sultanate in addition to the British and German spheres of influence on the East African mainland. The sultan of Zanzibar's dominions were recognised as comprising the islands of Zanzibar, Pemba, Lamu and Mafia, and the coastal zone as recommended by the Boundary Commission. The other important aspect of the agreement was the determination of the line of demarcation separating the countries' respective spheres of influence, in which Germany was awarded the southern section and Britain the territories to the north.⁵³

The economic rationale behind the north-south partition was confirmed by Anderson himself in 1892 when he recollected that ‘[t]he guiding principle of this demarcation was a partition of the caravan routes to Uganda; the route reaching the coast at Mombasa was placed on the English, that terminating at Pangani on the German, side. Both parties recognized Uganda as a trade centre.'⁵⁴ Indeed, this logic had also been proclaimed in 1888: ‘The compromise by which the Mombasa trade route to the interior went into one sphere, and that of Pangani into the other, was the best that was practicable after every existing interest had been carefully gone into in consultation with Sir John Kirk.'⁵⁵

The Tana River was given as the territory's north-eastern boundary, while the Rovuma River bounded it to the south. Importantly, no western boundary was stipulated.⁵⁶ In a clarification made in July 1887 Salisbury promised the German government ‘to discourage British annexations in the rear of the German sphere of influence, on the understanding that the German Government will equally discourage German annexations in the rear of the British sphere’.⁵⁷ No promise, however, was made to discourage British annexations in the rear of the British sphere—the territories in this British hinterland included Uganda. The despatch was sent after German fears were raised regarding the activities of Henry Morton Stanley; engaged by the Emin Pasha Relief Committee of which Mackinnon was the greatest benefactor, to rescue Emin Pasha from Egypt's Equatorial Province, Stanley had taken the Congo route after King Leopold's prompting and was thus situated to the west of what was considered the German hinterland.

The Second Phase: Uganda and the Imperial British East Africa Company (IBEA), 1889–90

In 1885 the German-born Egyptian administrator of Equatoria, Eduard Schnitzer known as Emin Pasha, had become cut off from Cairo due to the Mahdist insurrection.⁵⁸ The Mahdists had consolidated their rule over most of the Sudan in the intervening years, but Emin's Equatorial Province had escaped conquest and remained under nominal Egyptian control. The fate of his administration was notorious in European circles, and by 1886 Mackinnon and Hutton had established the ‘Emin Pasha Relief Committee' with the stated aim of rescuing the Egyptian governor.⁵⁹ Although this was in part philanthropic, there is little doubt that there were considerable ulterior motives that led Mackinnon to organise an expedition to Equatoria, a region rumoured to be rich in ivory and conveniently situated just north of what would later form the British sphere's hinterland. Indeed he outlined his plans in a confidential memorandum aptly entitled: ‘Syndicate for establishing British Commerce & Influence in East Africa & for relieving Emin Bey.'⁶⁰ By persuading Emin to amalgamate his province into that of his coastal concession, Mackinnon would control most of the valuable trading networks of Central Africa.⁶¹

Salisbury had been unaware of Mackinnon's grand designs until February 1890 when the German ambassador presented him with letters intercepted by the rebel leader Abushiri ibn Salim al-Harthi's men, which revealed Mackinnon's secret orders.⁶² But Stanley famously failed to re-supply Emin with ammunition since his expedition, which had proceeded up the Congo River, had itself required rescuing by Emin. The subsequent rebellion among Emin's Sudanese officers and his later enlistment by the Germans led Mackinnon to set his sights on Uganda instead and to ratify Frederick Jackson's unintended treaty with Mwanga, the kabaka of Buganda, as described in the next section. Uganda was thus a sort of consolation prize in lieu of Equatoria to the British company in the spring of 1890.

An Unintended Treaty: Uganda and the Men-on-the-Spot, 1889–90

By pure chance, the IBEA had in the autumn of 1889 obtained a treaty with the ruler of Buganda. The kingdom was at the time embroiled in a civil war in which the nominally Protestant Wa-Ingleza, Catholic Wa-Fransa and Muslim groups formed the principal factions. On a mission to rescue the hapless Stanley and against his explicit orders ‘not to get into Uganda’, the IBEA's man-on-the-spot Frederick Jackson had answered Mwanga's plea for assistance to regain his throne.⁶³ Prior to departing Mumias for Mount Elgon, Jackson sent Mwanga ‘one of the Company's flags, with the intimation that his acceptance of it would lay upon the Company the obligation to come to his assistance as a protecting power’.⁶⁴ However, Jackson had responded to an outdated request, and Mwanga, from a vantage of power, had denied his offer of ‘protection’. But the kabaka’s luck proved short-lived when he in November 1889 again was deposed by his brother Kalema’s allies. On the advice of both Christian factions, on 1 December Mwanga wrote a letter to Jackson in which he accepted his terms.⁶⁵ The following January Mwanga had re-conquered his capital Mengo, had ‘declared himself a Christian' and used the allied Christian faction to vanquish the Swahili Arabs.⁶⁶

Emin had arrived at Zanzibar on 3 March, and, much to the regret of the IBEA, he had by April taken up service with the Germans under Major Wissmann.⁶⁷ With Emin in the service of Germany, Mackinnon could no longer realistically entertain any hope of amalgamating the Equatorial Province with that of the British sphere, so nearby Uganda had assumed the status of a consolation prize.

Hence, the IBEA's initial incursion into Uganda had come as a result of the failure to establish control of the Equatorial Province due to the collapse of Emin's regime following Stanley's rescue, while the decision to engage in talks with Buganda's exiled ruler had been taken solely by Jackson in contradiction to his orders to avoid Uganda. It is thus fair to conclude that the treaty with Mwanga, which was retrospectively sanctioned by Mackinnon, had not come about as a result of the IBEA's or indeed Salisbury's alleged grand strategy for the region.⁶⁸

In conjunction with Emin's enlistment there were rumours that Wissmann was planning a large expedition into the interior to secure Uganda for Germany. The British consul-general, Charles Euan Smith, speculated that the German imperial commissioner would use the rivalry to his advantage, in particular that Wissmann would offer support to the Catholic ‘Fransa' faction and thereby eject British influence. He further warned that ‘[i]f Uganda passes under German influence, [the] British Company has no future before it’.⁶⁹ The consul's analysis was an economic one; it was thought that the IBEA's financial future was linked to the exploitation of the rich trading networks of the inter-lacustrine region and not to the barren coast and its immediate hinterland. If Germany took control of Uganda, the privately funded and hitherto highly unprofitable IBEA would be left with little but the largely unproductive and sparsely populated territories of East Africa: a prospective future that offered little but financial ruin for the company.

Nevertheless the rumours of Wissmann's expedition were soon contradicted by intelligence reports suggesting that Berlin had issued ‘stringent orders' that ‘Wissmann would have to abandon for the present all designs on Uganda’.⁷⁰ The reports were followed on the 21 March by news from Berlin; Bismarck had resigned as German chancellor.⁷¹ Despite the emperor's explicit reassurances that German foreign policy would ‘continue absolutely on the same lines as heretofore’, the aftershock of the iron chancellor's fall was felt in distant Zanzibar.⁷² Already, on the same day as Bismarck's resignation, Wissmann had reassumed the preparations for his expedition and requisitioned 500 porters from the sultan.⁷³

In order to forestall the German plans Euan Smith recommended the immediate appointment of an officer to act as ‘Her Majesty's Consul for the North Victoria Nyanza and Kingdom of Uganda’.⁷⁴ ‘His early appearance upon the scene of action … ’, he argued, ‘would be a great desideratum at the present juncture of affairs.'⁷⁵ Thus, through official diplomatic means Uganda would be secured for the British Empire. However, in complete contradiction to any suggestion of an imperial grand strategy to safeguard Uganda, Salisbury refused Euan Smith's suggestion and notified him that ‘it is not advisable in the opinion of Her Majesty's Government to appoint at present a British Consular officer to reside in Uganda’.⁷⁶ Surprised by recent events, Salisbury had sought to verify and learn the ‘exact nature' of the IBEA's intentions of ‘securing paramount influence in Uganda’.⁷⁷ The company later notified him that ‘a special caravan' under the leadership of Captain Frederick Lugard had been sent ‘with the utmost dispatch' for the purpose of ‘concluding a Treaty with Mwanga and promising him the support of the Company'.⁷⁸

The Anglo-German Heligoland Treaty, 1890

The German authorities had already in July 1889 expressed an interest in settling East African territorial disputes.⁷⁹ Mackinnon's complaints over the German protectorate at Witu⁸⁰ had led Salisbury to send an enquiry to German Ambassador Hatzfeldt in December 1889 in which he suggested that ‘arbitration’ should take place between the two countries.⁸¹ This tentative sounding, and the following meeting in February at which Bismarck had suggested widening the scope of the arbitration to include all outstanding territorial disputes in Africa, marked the beginnings of the Anglo-German negotiations that took place in May.⁸²

Mackinnon had already issued a veiled threat of evacuation from East Africa if his company did not receive government backing:

the actions of the Germans in endeavouring to surround us with their territory is forcing us into a position of extreme gravity, which renders it questionable whether we are justified in expending more of the money entrusted to our charge without some clear understanding that the interests of the Company and its shareholders shall be safeguarded and protected by Her Majesty's Government.⁸³

Equally, Euan Smith had pressed upon Salisbury the importance of the IBEA expanding into the interior and the ‘great trade markets of Central Africa’. His advice for the company was unequivocal: the IBEA should ‘change its line of policy, to strive after the line substance which awaits them in the interior instead of attempting to grapple the shadow which eternally eludes them upon the coast … they should at all costs, without one moment's unnecessary delay, make their position unassailable in Uganda and upon the Lake’.⁸⁴ Only a month elapsed before the company announced that it had ratified the agreement between Jackson and Mwanga of December 1889, their agent Mackenzie consequently declaring that Uganda and its environs were included in the IBEÀs sphere of influence.⁸⁵

The arguments advocating an expansion into Uganda were divorced from any suggestion of Nile Valley Doctrine. While there was a push for the interior, it came about for economic reasons derived from the men-on-the-spot. Without controlling what were believed to be the ‘great trade markets of Central Africa' the company would face bankruptcy. By the time the negotiations began in May,⁸⁶ the frugal Salisbury, now aware of the company's expansion into Uganda, faced a grim prospect. In the case of the IBEA's retirement he would be forced either to commit scarce imperial funds to hold the region or to relinquish British rights to Germany with the backlash in public opinion that would entail. The simplest option was to sanction the company's expansionist agenda.

Of the 13 points to be raised in the negotiations, the question of the ‘East African “Hinterland”' figured as a rather lowly number 11. Upon this point, Salisbury had instructed Anderson that ‘[t]he claim on our side to be that the line of latitude for us in the north should run from Kilimanjaro, not from Kavirondo, and that we ought to hold the whole of the Nile watershed; to the south that we must hold the territory to the west of the Stevenson road’. Salisbury added: ‘The discussion [was] to be opened on this basis, and the Germans to be drawn to show their hand.'⁸⁷ Implicitly, Salisbury did not attach an overarching importance to the Nile. It was neither a foremost priority nor was it a definitive demand. The negotiations were merely to be opened on the basis of the British side indicating an interest in territories that included the Nile watershed.

Perceived in this light it may be argued that the ‘Nile watershed' was simply used as a convenient geographical point of reference, rather than as an explicit expression of Salisbury's unwavering interest in the Nile per se. This interpretation would also apply to his later comments in the House of Lords where he defended the unpopular cession of European Heligoland for obscure Witu on the basis of what it meant for ‘those who are engaged in these enterprises’—namely, the IBEA's potential expansion into the Upper Nile region.⁸⁸

Even the staunch adherent of the Egypto-centric model George Neville Sanderson questions the absence of Nile-related motives in the Anglo-German correspondence:

In the negotiation with Hatzfeldt the real importance of this region was not however explicitly revealed—the word ‘Nile' does not even appear in the published German documents. Nor did the project of bases, as initialled on 17 June, contain any specific reference to a British sphere in the Nile Valley or even to the Nile Valley at all.⁸⁹

The answer to this ostensible conundrum might be that contemporary policy-makers attached less ‘real importance' to the Upper Nile than did the later historians interpreting their motives. Prior to the Anglo-German negotiations Mackinnon had on his own initiative waived any future rights the IBEA ‘might obtain in the Western Nile basin' to the Congo Free State in return for a corridor of land to the west of the German sphere. This ‘agreement was shown privately to the Marquis of Salisbury who at first expressed a personal opinion that it was unobjectionable’.⁹⁰ Surely, if Salisbury had entertained strategic designs on the Nile he would not have found a treaty which bartered away the western basin of the very same river ‘unobjectionable'.

However as both parties had informally agreed to separate the British and German spheres into a northern and southern zone, Anderson suggested at the opening of the negotiations that their ‘work would be facilitated by settling at once points which were not contended; regarding the “Hinterland” Agreement of 1887 in this light’. It was thus agreed to ‘Germany's having the east coasts of the Nyassa and Tanganyika, whilst it is agreed to by them that a line of demarcation shall be drawn to the Congo State, west of Victoria Nyanza, along the 1st parallel of south latitude’.⁹¹ Hence, Uganda was among the first territories secured by Britain owing to the fact that it was not disputed by Germany. The ‘hinterland doctrine' ensured that the territories north-west of the Victoria Nyanza belonged within the British sphere, a natural consequence of the earlier 1886 Agreement, which was partially clarified in regard to adjoining hinterlands in 1887. It was also a result of the independent actions of the IBEA, which had, crucially, not been directed by the Foreign Office.

The conclusion of the negotiations resulted in German territories being entirely confined to the southern section of the mainland and the British to the north. This was in line with the views Count Herbert Bismarck had expressed in July 1889.⁹² Moreover it led to Zanzibar being incorporated as a British protectorate. No such honour was bestowed upon the territories held on the mainland, including Uganda and the Nile watershed. Salisbury's decision not to declare Uganda a protectorate simultaneously with Zanzibar is also inconsistent with the Nilotic explanatory model. Should he have attached significance to defending the source of this river, he certainly would have afforded the region protectorate status. Instead, it merely formed part of a British ‘sphere of influence’, the lowest rung in the British Empire's territorial hierarchy and recognised only by Germany.

Upon conclusion of the treaty in June 1890, Salisbury proclaimed that ‘the direct control and extensive influence which this arrangement will confer upon Great Britain will furnish a powerful assistance to the efforts which are being made for the suppression of the maritime Slave Trade, as well as for the extirpation of slavery itself’.⁹³ Salisbury's words were no simple exercise in public relations; in 1888 the slave trade had revived to levels not witnessed since before 1873.⁹⁴ The British Anti-Slave Trade Squadron netted a total of 841 captures that year, over three times the average rate in the years 1873–87 and all made before the blockade was instituted on 2 December.⁹⁵ The revamped slave trade had provoked European public opinion and a campaign organised by the French cardinal, Lavigerie, which had been active since 1886 gathered momentum.⁹⁶ His petitions to the Foreign Office and the stark picture painted by the naval reports led Salisbury to minute ‘this generation will have done its part, if it destroys the export slave trade’. He proceeded to instruct his ambassador, Vivian, to ‘sound the Belgians whether they would be willing to summon a conference of the Powers controlling the coast of Africa for this purpose’.⁹⁷

Hence, Salisbury was the originator of the international Anti-Slave Trade Conference held in Brussels 1889–90, which resulted in a treaty that committed its signatories to inland expansion.⁹⁸ The Brussels Act also mandated the construction of railways, a matter of particular concern for the British position in East Africa. Apart from asserting effective occupation and facilitating communications with the interior, it was believed that the Uganda Railway would put an end to the East African slave trade. The 25 year Treasury guarantee for 2% p.a. interest on the IBEA's £1.25 million loan could thus be offset by the annual expenditure of £110,000 on the then redundant anti-slave trade squadron.⁹⁹ Hence, annexation and the railway that came with it was by contemporaries such as Salisbury perceived to be a form of anti-slavery on the cheap, a point obscured by the railway's ultimate cost of £5.5 million. Salisbury had also in July 1888 told the House of Commons that Britain would, together with Germany, act to suppress the trade through a dual policy of ‘legitimate trade' and ‘repression' and that ‘the Slave Trade should be more completely checked when the British and German East African Companies administer the coast’.¹⁰⁰ At German prompting a blockade directed against arms imports and slave exports was instituted by Germany and Britain in December 1888 which would not be raised until the following October.¹⁰¹ The deliberations at Brussels also revealed that Salisbury was a firm subscriber to the prevailing philosophy of the mutual dependency that existed between anti-slave trade policy and economic development. Salisbury could ‘entertain no doubt, not only that the suppression of slave raids is useful for commerce, but that it is a condition of commercial progress so indispensable that without it all other expenditure would be in vain’.¹⁰²

The Third Phase: The Unintended Retention of Uganda, 1890–94

Despite his alleged designs for Uganda, Salisbury on two occasions, in 1891 and 1892, sanctioned the IBEA's plans to evacuate the country. Once the Liberals had won the 1892 general election the new foreign secretary, Lord Rosebery, was faced with the decision whether to continue Salisbury's policy of evacuation or to retain the kingdom for the empire. He chose the latter against the opinion of all his cabinet colleagues out of fear that an evacuation would cause the massacres of Church Missionary Society missionaries and their converts—a repeat of Khartoum in 1885. What has been construed as Rosebery's continuance of Salisbury's strategic foreign policy with regard to Uganda thus errs on both accounts: Salisbury never attached great value to Uganda and Rosebery sought to hold the country only in order to avoid a public relations disaster.

By August 1891, pressured by the cost of occupying Uganda, the IBEA had resolved to evacuate the country by the end of the year. In contrast to its German counterpart, it did not receive much in the way of state support for its colonial undertakings. The company itself estimated the cost of garrisoning Uganda came to £40–50,000 p.a. and, already by August 1891, 60 per cent of its initially subscribed capital had been expended on this largely fruitless occupation.¹⁰³ It was supposedly only a temporary expedient in which the company was to ‘restrict its operations to the coast' until sufficient funds had been raised to reinstate the occupation.¹⁰⁴ On the grounds that the abandonment was only temporary, Salisbury instructed the company not to make its decision public.¹⁰⁵ Wary of public opinion Salisbury candidly minuted that the company's order to evacuate Uganda ‘would not look well if published’.¹⁰⁶ When perceived in the light of the following autumn's uproar, Salisbury proved to be far more adept at anticipating the explosive effect abandonment of Uganda would have on the public feeling than Gladstone's successor cabinet. But Salisbury's reluctance to intervene is also indicative of how little value he attached to Uganda. Had the country really posed, in Salisbury's mind, a pivotal geo-strategic territory for Britain's hold on Egypt, then surely a £40,000 subsidy would not have prevented an intervention.

Since Salisbury was reluctant to offer anything more than a survey party for the Uganda Railway, the company looked to the other significant interested party, namely the Church Missionary Society for financial support. Although the CMS was only a religious and philanthropic body, it had wealthy backers that the company could benefit from. Already on the 9 September Mackinnon had met with Bishop Tucker and other CMS representatives on his estate and informed them of Lugard's orders to withdraw.¹⁰⁷ Tucker, perhaps unsurprisingly since he served as the bishop of East Africa, had taken a particularly dire view of the impending retreat. But also Euan Smith had ‘concurred … in the serious view which [Bishop Tucker] took of the consequences to the Mission which might follow the withdrawal of the Company'.¹⁰⁸ There was unanimity in the expectations of these ‘dangerous consequences’, but before committing any funds the CMS meeting resolved to formulate a memorial to Salisbury in order to ‘earnestly request the assistance of the Government’. But, as nothing came of this, the CMS was left to its secondary resolution, namely an ‘appeal for money'.¹⁰⁹

The IBEA confidentially promised it would contribute £20,000 if the CMS could raise the remaining £20,000 so that it could sustain its occupation for another year.¹¹⁰ This, it was hoped, would tide the company over for enough time to enable the government to intervene, compelled by its ratification of the General Act of the Brussels Anti-Slave Trade Conference. As long as a railway was secured for the IBEA, the company would be profitable and Uganda would be secured.¹¹¹ In the CMS's ‘urgent and special' appeal for funds which it had circulated to a select few ‘God had given the means to help’, the opinion of the society's leaders, Tucker, Kennaway and Hutchinson, was unequivocal: ‘The burden of developing British East Africa and protecting British interests and preserving peace is left in private hands, and the progress of civilization, the security of the C.M.S. Mission, and the honour of the British name, are in peril for the lack of adequate funds.'¹¹² By November the necessary amount had been raised and the IBEA could sustain its occupation for another twelve months.¹¹³

But only six months later, on the 17 May 1892, the IBEA again gave notice to Salisbury's government of the company's intention to evacuate Uganda by the 31 December ‘owing to the excessive costs of transport and other consequent difficulties of communication with the interior of Africa’.¹¹⁴ The company's message came as no surprise to the PM. In February he had received a warning from his new consul-general to Zanzibar, Gerald Portal, that ‘their financial position is very shaky indeed’.¹¹⁵ According to a conversation Portal had had with the IBEA director William Berkeley the company was operating with an annual loss of £50,000 and there were few signs that its revenue would increase in the foreseeable future. Portal also remarked that the IBEA was unable to raise any further capital to cover the shortfall, thus making it reliant upon a government intervention.¹¹⁶ Indeed, Portal notified Salisbury later that February, in very explicit terms, that he had ‘written a letter to Percy Anderson on the subject of the rapidly approaching break-up of the E. African Co' and added that it was ‘a very serious question’.¹¹⁷

Salisbury's reply to IBEA's resolution to again abandon Uganda was brief and again offered no opposition. He acknowledged the company's decision and made but a single remark. Namely, upon a set of orders that had been issued to Lugard, the company's agent was upon his exit not to leave any ‘surplus arms or ammunition' in the hands of the local population that had been loyal to the IBEA, as this, it was held, was ‘contrary to the spirit of the provisions of the Brussels Act’.¹¹⁸ Hence, Salisbury had in May 1892 again sanctioned the IBEA's policy of abandoning Uganda; indeed, rather than issuing any plea to reconsider the company's decision, his reply was analogous to asking a guest to close the door on the way out. Just as he had done in the autumn of 1891, nor in 1892 did he lend, or promise to lend, any financial or material support to safeguard the company's occupation.¹¹⁹ In fact Salisbury's reply was a letter that Gladstone later used as evidence of the Salisbury government's complicity in an attempt to persuade Rosebery to change his opinion of the Uganda question: ‘they prove that the decision of the Co. to withdraw to Dagoreti was fully accepted by the late Ministry—Lord Salisbury; letter of May 26 in answer to one of May 17 is, both from its date & its matter, a well considered document, & leaves the question a settled evacuation. (a settled question).'¹²⁰ The Foreign Office's letter to the IBEA of September 1892 further corroborates Salisbury's policy of evacuation: ‘The final determination of your Directors to evacuate Uganda on the 31st December next which was notified to the late Government and accepted by them in May last.'¹²¹

Salisbury sanctioned the company's decision to evacuate Uganda despite the fact that it was under the threat of French annexation due to the preponderance of the Catholic Wa-Fransa faction and to the French succession rights to the neighbouring Congo Free State. Salisbury did not attach enough importance to Uganda to warrant his government allocating an annual subsidy of £20–40,000 required for the IBEA to sustain its occupation.¹²² Had imperial considerations of such geo-strategic significance as Egypt and the Suez Canal really been key factors in the government's deliberations over Uganda then it is unlikely that such a relatively small sum would have prevented Salisbury's administration from ensuring the continued presence of the IBEA in the kingdom.

A Damnosa Hereditas: Rosebery and the Uganda Question, 1892–94

At the very top of new Foreign Secretary Rosebery's list of priorities in the autumn of 1892 was the ‘ticklish … and … pressing business' of the Uganda troubles and the announced evacuation of the country by the IBEA.¹²³ The IBEA had announced it would withdraw from Uganda by 31 December, which meant that any potential counter-orders to prolong the occupation would have to be issued by 1 October.¹²⁴ Rosebery commissioned a range of memoranda about the subject only days after he had assumed office.¹²⁵ According to Under-Secretary Phillip Currie, his superior wanted an ‘impartial statement' which he could present to his cabinet colleagues.¹²⁶ The War Office produced the first of the memoranda, which was in essence a brief history of Uganda and a précis of British interests in the kingdom.¹²⁷ The 13 typed pages presented by Staff Captain Hubert Foster contained no mention of Uganda's significance with regard to the Nile or Egypt. This would itself have been a remarkable omission by the War Office's Intelligence Division had Nile deflection and Egyptian security really been a central factor in deliberations over Uganda.

The Anglo-Egyptian army had compiled the second and third memoranda. Predictably Major Reginald Wingate of the Egyptian Intelligence Department focussed on what, ostensibly, would be the consequences for Egypt in the event of a British withdrawal. He believed that any European state holding Uganda could easily re-conquer the former Egyptian Equatorial Province from the Mahdists.¹²⁸ Wingate's commanding officer, the Egyptian army's brigadier-general, or sirdar, Sir Herbert Horatio Kitchener, also offered his thoughts in a memorandum concerning the importance of maintaining British rule over Uganda. But among his reflections no mention of the defence of Egypt in a Nile Valley doctrine fashion was made. Instead his emphasis was laid upon stemming the tide of ‘Mahommedan Arabs' that with ‘religious fanaticism … would be enabled to push back our efforts for improvement of Africa'. Despite presumably being the most strategically inclined of all government officials, Kitchener even proposed to cede Uganda to Belgium or Germany, had they not had ‘their hands full’.¹²⁹

The fourth and most important of the memoranda that circulated in September 1892 was the one compiled by Whitehall's most senior and influential Africa expert, Sir Percy Anderson.¹³⁰ Throughout his memorandum Anderson placed emphasis both on the slave trade and on the plight of the British missionaries as the principal grounds for past and projected intervention: ‘Whatever may be its future, it must be an important factor in the anti-slavery struggle.'¹³¹ Anderson held that Uganda offered an excellent vantage point from which to execute Britain's anti-slave trade policy in the interior of Africa, particularly against the slave raiders operating on the Upper Congo. In contrast to Kitchener, Anderson issued a stern warning against a policy of evacuation:

All those who know the country have grave apprehensions. They see the possibility of the return of the slave-traders, massacres of missionaries and of their flocks, the resumption of the old system of wars and depopulation of the neighbouring countries. Their fears may be exaggerated; they cannot be groundless.

It is likely that Anderson was deliberate in his allusion to a repeated Khartoum in his implicit mention of the CMS's Bishop Tucker and the missionaries' resolve to remain in Uganda ‘whatever may be their fate’. Only seven years had passed since Gladstone's government had presided over General Charles Gordon's transition into the ranks of imperial martyrs. The words ‘remember Gordon' had in some jingoist quarters become an epithet for liberal wavering in imperial affairs.¹³² Anderson also broached local geo-strategic concerns in his memorandum.¹³³ But, despite what is frequently claimed in the historiography, Anderson never directly linked the retention of Uganda to the defence of Egypt.¹³⁴

In terms of deciphering motives, Anderson's memorandum is most valuable in enumerating the reasons why Uganda came to form part of the British sphere in 1890, not necessarily as the basis on which the Liberal government took the decision to delay evacuation. Rosebery approved of Anderson's analysis as ‘a good memorandum’; in fact the foreign secretary had edited it heavily after it first had been presented on 25 August until a finished version was published on 13 September.¹³⁵ One of these edits was the striking out of a sentence that professed Wingate's insistence on holding Uganda, ostensibly for Egyptian reasons.¹³⁶

Importantly for the purposes of determining British motives, Currie revealed in his letter to Anderson in August 1892 that he thought Rosebery was ‘favourable to retention' but that he had cabinet colleagues who would ‘make difficulties’.¹³⁷ Notwithstanding the fact that Rosebery personally had ordered the memoranda to be produced only five days after assuming office, which in itself would indicate positive interest, the issue of Uganda was at the top of his agenda and dominated his correspondence with Gladstone for the whole of September 1892. Hence, it is very likely that the new foreign secretary already had come to a decision about holding Uganda before any of the memoranda were presented. Another important aspect of Currie's private letter was that it revealed that Rosebery was the only member of Gladstone's government who was in favour of retention—which is also corroborated by Gladstone himself.¹³⁸ Prominent members of the cabinet such as the chancellor of the exchequer, Sir William Harcourt, were pledged against any imperial expansion. Harcourt even scorned Anderson's memorandum as written in ‘the highest jingo tone advocating the annexation of the whole country up to the Albert Lakes with a view to the “reconquest” of the Sudan’.¹³⁹ For the 81-year-old Gladstone the situation was unprecedented, indeed it was the first time in his long prime ministerial career that his foreign secretary dissented over an important foreign policy issue.¹⁴⁰ In a private letter to Gladstone sent immediately prior to the cabinet meeting which delayed evacuation another three months, Rosebery made an implicit threat of resignation due to this ‘most heartfelt and bitter' difference of opinion between them.¹⁴¹

The private correspondence between Rosebery and Gladstone is revealing as to the foreign secretary's reasons for ‘holding' Uganda and leaves little to conjecture. Rosebery was consistent in his references to the ‘most grave' and ‘disastrous' consequences that would result from a policy of abandonment.¹⁴² This is echoed in the memorials presented to the government by pressure groups and interested parties such as the CMS and the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society (BFASS).¹⁴³ Rosebery invoked, in no uncertain terms, the spectre of a repeated Khartoum and cited serving Consul-General Gerald Portal's fear of nothing less than ‘a general massacre' in his attempts at influencing Gladstone.¹⁴⁴ Little indicates that this was insincere or contrived, despite the assertions made by the historian Gordon Martel.¹⁴⁵ Portal himself noted in his personal diary that an evacuation would ‘inevitably cause massacres’.¹⁴⁶ Indeed, Rosebery thought Uganda to be ‘one of those more or less damnosas hereditates that one government leaves, not unwittingly, to its successor’.¹⁴⁷

And why was Uganda such a burdensome inheritance? Simply because Gladstone's government found itself in a predicament analogous to what had occurred in Khartoum seven years prior. But this time it would be Rosebery, not only in the capacity as lord privy seal as he was in 1885, but as foreign secretary and likely successor to the Liberal party's leadership, who would preside over the inevitable scandal.¹⁴⁸ Although Gladstone had pleaded that the public would hold the IBEA and Salisbury jointly responsible for any potential massacre, Rosebery differed: ‘Unluckily, public opinion will, roughly, attach the responsibility to the Govt.'¹⁴⁹ Where Gladstone's third government had wavered and belatedly decided to despatch a relief expedition to Gordon in 1884, Rosebery was adamant that his fourth government would not repeat this error. Hence, Rosebery found himself in a dilemma over Uganda. He could pursue the path of least resistance and follow the opinion of the prime minister, his new cabinet colleagues and the Manchester Guardian, which was generally ‘held to be the voice of liberal opinion’, and sanction an evacuation or he could attempt to postpone an evacuation through persuasion by way of an information campaign.¹⁵⁰ These were probably the grounds upon which he commissioned the memoranda to be drawn up in August 1892. Rosebery had already made up his mind and needed only an ‘impartial statement' covering all possible reasons for retention in order to prevent the new government from being discredited at its inception.¹⁵¹

Hence, the decision to delay evacuation for three months had little or nothing to do with strategic concerns. Indeed, Rosebery did ‘not think very highly of' the most strategically minded of the memoranda, namely that of Wingate which stressed the consequences for Egypt.¹⁵² Since Rosebery was the only member of Gladstone's cabinet in favour of retention and since he had made up his mind about this prior to production of any memoranda on the issue, their projections are rendered largely irrelevant. Strategic aspects are completely omitted from the copious correspondence between the two political protagonists, Rosebery and Gladstone, in the month leading up to the cabinet decision. Perhaps this was not surprising since Gladstone was staunchly in favour of evacuating Egypt. But Rosebery was hardly a ‘jingo' on the matter himself, as he stated six months later: ‘No one is more sensible than I am of the delicacy and perplexity of our position in Egypt. Were we out of it I should on the whole rejoice.'¹⁵³

After the cabinet meeting of 30 September 1892 that postponed the evacuation another three months, a feverish pamphlet war was unleashed, in a partially concerted action by the CMS, the BFASS and the IBEA.¹⁵⁴ These public debates, which took place over the autumn of 1892, were what the historian D. A. Low termed ‘a very remarkable movement in Victorian public opinion’.¹⁵⁵ While the CMS focused on the ‘disastrous results' to missionary activity that were certain to follow a withdrawal of British influence,¹⁵⁶ the BFASS emphasised the slavery question and in particular ‘the immediate expansion of the Slave-trade' with a 150-strong deputation which presented a memorial to Rosebery.¹⁵⁷

A day after their meeting, William Henry Wylde, the former head of the Foreign Office's Slave Trade Department, wrote a letter of congratulations for the deputation's ‘great success' to the society's board member Joseph Sturge. Wylde was certain that Rosebery's ‘words respecting the “continuity of Policy” as regards Slave Trade suppression which he says this Country is bound to carry out' must afford them all ‘sincere pleasure’.¹⁵⁸ He also confided that some of the MPs against the retention of Uganda were ‘wavering and would be glad to find a decent excuse to “volte face” [and] a little more exposure of Public Opinion will afford the required excuse'.¹⁵⁹ In historiographical terms Wylde's remarks concerning the ‘continuity of policy' are decidedly of interest. Rosebery's intention, both from the context in which the phrase was pronounced and from the policy Britain had long pursued in this region, all indicate that Wylde's interpretation was correct: that Rosebery revealed that he was committed to preserving the continuity of Britain's anti-slave trade policy in East Africa through the retention of Uganda. But, instead of construing it in what arguably was its proper context, historians subscribing to the strategic hypothesis have cited Rosebery's statement as evidence of his collusion with Salisbury's alleged, and distinctly discontinuous, strategic motives.¹⁶⁰

Campaigning was, however, not left only to adept and well-connected pressure groups. The IBEA also launched an offensive aimed at influencing both policy-makers and public opinion. The man disparagingly described by the staunch ‘evacuationist' Harcourt as a ‘mischievous lunatic’, IBEA's man-on-the-spot Frederick Lugard, returned home to Britain in October to assist in the company's public relations campaign.¹⁶¹ While Lugard went on a public-speaking tour and worked on a book that would be published the following year, the IBEA's director Ernest Bentley had already published a pamphlet.¹⁶² It was entitled ‘Handbook to the Uganda Question and Proposed East Africa Railway' and contained a volley of 237 arguments in favour of retention and construction of a railway, while it also included 60 passages that rhetorically caricatured the opposing arguments.¹⁶³

Every conceivable reason for retaining Uganda for the empire was trumpeted, from humanitarian to commercial and strategic. The pamphlet's most important function, however, came much later than the autumn of 1892. Its main role has been to influence and frame the historiography of the partition of East Africa, since Bentley identified that the arguments most likely to gain support from policy-makers were geo-strategic, in particular those connected to ‘protecting' the Nile. He lavished attention on the company's vital role as the gatekeeper to Egypt—instead of mainly focusing on the more emotionally and morally evocative issues such as the slave trade or the plight of the missionaries and their converts. After all, the CMS and the BFASS had already laid claim to these good causes. If only used as a convenient, albeit speculative excuse at the time, Bentley's argument certainly captured the imagination of generations of historians hence that have interpreted the events and their motives.

One of the arguments listed was ‘[t]hat the relinquishment of Uganda to a civilised power immediately imperils the safety of Egypt, as the diversion or blocking of the head-waters of the Nile could stop her water supply and starve her population’.¹⁶⁴ IBEA's agent Lugard later included a similarly worded argument, in his semi-biographical account published in 1893, that ‘Egypt is indebted for her summer supply of water to the Victoria lake, and a dam built across the river at its outlet from the lake would deprive Egypt of this'.¹⁶⁵ The historian Terje Tvedt erroneously cited Lugard's remark as evidence of British government policy and the basis of the decision to retain Uganda.¹⁶⁶ However, the argument formed merely a part of the IBEA's public relations campaign to protect its investment in the kingdom.

The British hydrologist and Egyptian civil servant William Willcocks' comprehensive publication of 1889 entitled Egyptian Irrigation ¹⁶⁷ contains no reference to potential dam construction south of Egypt whatever, despite presumably detailing every aspect of Nile hydrology, from the Victoria Nyanza to the Mediterranean, known at the time. If deflection or blockage of the Nile was considered a real and likely scenario by British policy-makers in 1890, leaving out any mention of this possibility in such a book published only a year earlier was a peculiar omission by one of the leading experts in the field. Some four years later, Garstin's foreword to his subordinate Willcock's report on perennial irrigation of Egypt of May 1894, makes clear that any dam construction south of Aswan was considered nigh impossible on economic grounds due to the lack of limestone.¹⁶⁸

By November 1892 Rosebery had decided that the ‘best plan' was to send a commissioner to Uganda to ‘superintend the Company's evacuation, and to make arrangements for an organized Government'.¹⁶⁹ With Gerald Portal's appointment, Uganda's eventual incorporation into the British Empire was regarded in political circles as a fait accompli. As had been anticipated, the following year Portal produced a report that was favourable to retention. While he dismissed factors of ‘a purely economic character' as weighing ‘on the side of evacuation' he concluded that ‘those of a philanthropic or strategical nature may be quoted in favour of the maintenance of some form of British preponderance’. Of those ‘philanthropic' factors mentioned was ‘the danger, or indeed the certainty of an almost immediate resuscitation of slave-raiding and slave-trading in the event of the withdrawal of European control’.¹⁷⁰

Rosebery succeeded Gladstone as prime minister in March 1894 and Uganda was declared a protectorate in August, in line with his policy statement made in February.¹⁷¹ At the end of May 1895, two cabinet meetings were held devoted fully to East Africa and it was agreed ‘after a long windy and irrelevant discussion' that a protectorate over the remaining portion of land separating Uganda from the sea was to be declared—what eventually became the British East Africa Protectorate.¹⁷²

Conclusion

The historiography analysing the partition of East Africa has focused disproportionately on the events unfolding in the 1890s. Ignoring Britain's longstanding interests in the region and the immediately preceding events of the mid-1880s is however a mistake, particularly as it runs the risk of misconstruing the motives of contemporary policy-makers. That the Nile rose in importance over the following decades arguably led the orthodox historiography into drawing false conclusions falling under the remit of post hoc ergo propter hoc.¹⁷³

The Liberal government had already by October 1884 recognised the potential economic and humanitarian benefits to be derived from annexing East Africa. These plans were, however, foiled by the actions of German agents only some weeks later. But it was the subsequent British reaction to the German annexation, which, largely under the direction of private British interests, led to the formalisation of the British presence in 1890 and 1894–95. The Anglo-German Heligoland Treaty of 1890 was simply an addendum to the substantially more important 1886–87 Agreement. The declaration of protectorates in 1894–95 were faits accomplis: natural conclusions to a set of events all took their origin from the crucial proceedings of 1884–87.

Thus, in endeavouring to understand the motives behind the British annexation of East Africa, one must determine the factors at play in the mid-1880s. During this time, as is abundantly clear from both private and official correspondence, British interests in East Africa were equally humanitarian and commercial. Despite what has been argued in the Egypto-centric literature, strategic Nile-related motives were wholly absent. Mention of strategic designs towards the Nile did not appear until 1892 and even then it merely formed one of many arguments put forward in a public relations campaign launched by a company to save its investments and commercial existence.

The Nilotic model is neither consistent with the sequence of policy decisions taken prior to, during or after the respective stages of the annexation process. If Uganda constituted an important geo-strategic territory, as has been argued by Langer, Robinson et al. and Sanderson, why was it not declared a protectorate simultaneously with Zanzibar in 1890? Why did Salisbury think a cession of the Nile's western watershed to the Congo Free State ‘unobjectionable'? And why did he on two occasions sanction the withdrawal of the IBEA from Uganda? The only support forthcoming from Britain to hold this supposed strategic pivot of the British Empire was private donations from a missionary society, hardly consistent with a carefully conceived grand strategy. Salisbury made repeated references to the IBEA as both a philanthropic and a commercial venture. Perceiving the British presence through this prism affords logical coherence to the sometimes half-hearted and parsimonious actions taken by London in regard to East Africa over this period.

Britain's formal sovereignty over the northern interior of the East African mainland came as a response to the initial German annexation of the southern region. Britain would naturally not let Germany take the entirety of a section of Africa, which had formed part of its informal empire since at least the mid-1860s, a presence born out of its anti-slave trade campaign and from the numbers of British imperial subjects, the Indian ‘banyan' traders, residing there. These northern territories had been freely offered by Peters and it was this informal agreement between the two private parties that formed the basis of the Anglo-German Boundary Agreement of 1886. This treaty was clarified in the following year to exclude the parties from making annexations in each other's hinterlands. The source of the White Nile lay, quite coincidentally, in the hinterland of the British zone. The extension of Britain's sphere of influence to encompass this region in 1980 was simply a natural consequence of its territorial proximity, an act that conformed to contemporary imperial practice and that had indirectly been sanctioned by Germany already in 1887. This occurred both on account of the economic expectations entertained for the peoples inhabiting the inter-lacustrine region in lieu of the lost province of Equatoria and in order to neutralise the potential threat posed by an antagonistic Buganda, a powerful and politically unstable regional power.

The plight of the British missionaries already present in the kingdom supported the IBEA's cause in the eyes of British public opinion, which made a decision to evacuate the country difficult for policy-makers keen to avoid another Gordon incident. Once the territories were included in the British sphere of influence they were colonies in all but name; it was only a matter of time before they eventually would be declared protectorates and formally incorporated as imperial possessions.

Direct British administration of the region, it was believed, would also put a final end to the East African slave trade. There had been a marked upsurge in the traffic during the 1880s and particularly in 1888. The political consequences of this was the Brussels Anti-Slave Trade Conference. Since Britain had undertaken at Brussels to enact new measures against the inland slave trade—in particular sponsoring the construction of railways—it paved the way for the Uganda Railway and thus also annexation, as holding the territory was made economically viable. Indeed it was even perceived as cost-effective on account of the belief that these measures would render the anti-slave trade squadron redundant, hence partition could be construed as a form of anti-slavery on the cheap.

Any revival of slave trafficking was deemed unacceptable to a potent combination of public opinion, influential pressure groups and policy-makers. Britain had aligned its national and moral prestige with the eradication of this ‘scourge of humanity’, while the anticipated social stability that resulted from ending the slave trade was perceived to be beneficial for commercial development. Conversely, by not asserting sovereignty, British policy-makers would antagonise not only the ‘jingoist' segments of its electorate, but also those inclined to humanitarianism and commercial enterprise. Annexation was, incidentally, the path of least resistance, and East Africa was the ideal theatre in which to display Britain's commitment to, and bask in the reflective glory of, these professed values. Against this backdrop it is unnecessary to invoke a Nilotic explanatory model that has little to no basis in documentary evidence. The annexation of East Africa is no historical conundrum. It marked no discontinuity in British policy. It formed a continuum, a natural consequence of Britain's self-proclaimed ‘civilising mission' rooted in the Livingstonian tenets of ‘commerce, Christianity and civilisation’.¹⁷⁴

Acknowledgements

Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the conferences entitled ‘David Livingstone, Africa and world history: a life and legacy reconsidered' held in Livingstone, Zambia, 19–21 April 2013, and ‘CAS@50: Cutting Edges and Retrospectives’, held at the University of Edinburgh, 6–8 June 2012. I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my academic supervisor Dr Joanna Lewis for her invaluable assistance throughout the research, writing and editing of this article. Emeritus Professor John Lonsdale kindly offered incisive commentary and advice both prior to and after completion of this work. I also owe thanks to Carol Thanki and my family Bente, Nils, Jens, Niklas and Julia for their kind support during this project. Lastly, I am grateful to Dr Karl Newton for his motivational advice. The research conducted for the article forms part of my doctoral research as a PhD candidate in the Department of International History at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

ORCID

Jonas Fossli Gjersø http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0454-7957

Notes

[1] Langer, Diplomacy of Imperialism, 537–80; and Cecil, Life of Robert, iv., 138–39.

[2] Robinson and Gallagher with Denny, Africa and the Victorians.

[3] The newest edition of Africa and the Victorians: The Official Mind of Imperialism includes a foreword by Wm. Roger Louis and was published by I. B. Tauris & Co Ltd., on 30th March 2015.

[4] Post-1997 literature subscribing to the strategic ‘Nile hypothesis': Newbury, ‘Great Britain and the Partition of Africa', 624–50, 639; Iliffe, Africans, 196; Tvedt, ‘Hydrology and Empire', 173–94; Otte, The Foreign Office Mind, 183, 194; Jeal, Explorers of the Nile, 376–77; and Huzzey, Freedom Burning, 164.

[5] Tvedt, ‘Hydrology and Empire’, 173–194.

[6] Darwin, ‘Imperialism and the Victorians', 634–39.

[7] See also Uzoigwe, Britain and the Conquest of Africa, 17; and Hyam, Britain's Imperial Century, 225–31.

[8] Perras, Carl Peters and German Imperialism, 46–66. Peters' group was in 1887 merged with the German Colonial Society to form the German Colonial Company.

[9] Scott to Granville, 7 March 1885, FO 403/93, The National Archives, Kew (hereafter TNA).

[10] Kirk to Granville, 3 March 1885, FO 403/93, TNA.

[11] Percy Anderson, Memorandum, 9 June 1885, FO 881/5122, TNA.

[12] Coupland, Exploitation of East Africa; Gray, The British in Mombasa; Howell, Royal Navy and the Slave Trade; Lloyd, Navy and the Slave Trade; Miers, Britain and the Ending of the Slave Trade; and Beachey, The Slave Trade. Coupland's analysis, published in 1939, which emphasised the role of Britain's anti-slave trade policy was eclipsed by Robinson and Gallagher's 1961 publication: Africa and the Victorians. While Miers is owed considerable recognition for her publications detailing the African slave trade and British efforts to suppress it, she does not link Britain's anti-slave trade policy with the decision to annex East Africa, nor does she delve into any particular detail about the annexation process. Miers, Britain and the Ending of the Slave Trade; Miers, Slavery in the Twentieth Century.

[13] Miles to Granville, 1 March 1883, T 1/14421, TNA.

[14] Miles to Granville, 1 March 1883, T 1/14421, TNA.

[15] Clement Hill, Memorandum, 23 Aug 1882, FO 881/4676, TNA.

[16] de Kiewiet, ‘History of the Imperial British East Africa Company', 44–45.

[17] The Royal Geographical Society, ‘Dr. Fischer's Journey’, 82–83.

[18] The Royal Geographical Society, ‘Through the Masai Country', 690.

[19] ‘Eastern Equatorial Africa’, The Times, 4 Nov. 1884, 5.

[20] ‘Mr. Joseph Thomson delighted … ’, The Times, 4 Nov. 1884, 9.

[21] Kirk to Granville, 5 May 1884, AEX/3/1, Part 3, Folio 104, The Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew.

[22] Sclater to Hooker, 12 Dec. 1883, AEX/3/1, Part 2, Folios 60–100, The Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew.

[23] Johnston to Hutton, 31 Oct. 1885, Box 17, Files 66–68, Mackinnon Papers, SOAS; treaty enclosed in Johnston to Anderson, 29 Oct. 1885, FO 403/95, TNA.

[24] Johnston to Fitzmaurice, 10 July 1884, FO 881/5037, TNA.

[25] ‘The Jubilee of Emancipation-Day: Great Meeting in London', Manchester Guardian, 2 Aug 1884, 5.

[26] Granville to Kirk, 9 Oct. 1884, Confidential, FO 881/5037, TNA.

[27] de Kiewiet, ‘History of the Imperial British East Africa Company', 44–45.

[28] Head of the Africa (formerly Slave Trade) Department at the Foreign Office. See Louis, ‘Sir Percy Anderson's Grand African Strategy’, 292–314.

[29] Clement Lloyd Hill Memorandum, 20 Oct. 1884, FO 881/5037, TNA.

[30] Ibid.

[31] Hill to Kirk, Confidential Memorandum, 9 Dec. 1884, FO 81/5037, TNA.

[32] Ibid.

[33] Kirk to Anderson, 24 Nov. 1884, FO 881/5037, TNA.

[34] Hill to Kirk, Confidential Memorandum, 9 Dec. 1884, FO 81/5037, TNA.

[35] Ibid.

[36] Holmwood to Granville, 23 March 1885, FO 403/93, TNA.

[37] Holmwood to Granville, 27 March 1885, FO 403/93, TNA.

[38] Count Herbert von Bismarck to Prince Otto von Bismarck, 7 March 1885, cited in Dugdale, German Diplomatic Documents, 190–93.

[39] de Kiewiet, ‘History of the Imperial British East Africa Company', 44–45.

[40] Lister to Kirk, 27 April 1885, FO 403/93, TNA.

[41] Kirk to Granville, 28 April 1885, FO 403/93, TNA.

[42] Granville to Malet, 25 May 1885, FO 403/93, TNA.

[43] Anderson, Memorandum, 2 July 1885, FO 403/94, TNA.

[44] Hutton to Johnston, 3 Nov. 1885, FO 403/95, TNA.

[45] Johnston to Hutton, 31 Oct. 1885, Box 17, Mackinnon Papers, SOAS.

[46] Wilkinson, ‘The Zanzibar Delimitation Commission’, 130–58.

[47] Kirk to Salisbury, 26 Oct. 1885, FO 403/95, TNA.

[48] Kirk to Rosebery, 4 June 1886, FO 403/98, TNA; Kitchener to Kirk, 27 May 1886, FO 403/98, TNA.

[49] ‘Memorandum on the Proposal to Obtain Certain Rights over the Port of Mombasa, in the Sultanate of Zanzibar’, enclosed in Sir Ralph Thompson to Sir J. Pauncefote, 25 Aug. 1886, FO 403/98, TNA.

[50] Carl Peters to Foreign Office, 14 Aug. 1886, FO 403/98, TNA.

[51] Ibid.

[52] Malet to Iddesleigh, First telegram, 2 Oct. 1886, FO 403/99, TNA; Malet to Iddesleigh, Second Telegram, 2 Oct. 1886, FO 403/99, TNA.

[53] Iddesleigh to Hatzfeldt, 1 Nov. 1886, FO 403/99, TNA.

[54] Foreign Office (Percy Anderson) Memorandum, 13 Sept. 1892, Confidential, FO 84/2258, TNA.

[55] FO (Julian Pauncefote) to Universities Mission to Central Africa, 15 Oct. 1888, FO 403/107, TNA.

[56] Salisbury to Malet, 2 July 1887, FO 403/102, TNA.

[57] Ibid.

[58] Wingate, Mahdiism and the Egyptian Sudan.

[59] Smith, The Emin Pasha Relief Expedition, 49–60.

[60] Memorandum, private & confidential, 27 Nov. 1886, Mackinnon Papers, SOAS, cited in Galbraith, Mackinnon and East Africa, 114–15.

[61] Anderson and Fergusson's Memoranda, 23 Nov. 1886, FO 84/1794, TNA, cited in de Kiewiet, ‘History of the Imperial British East Africa Company', 83–88.

[62] Salisbury to Malet, 6 May 1890, FO 84/2030, TNA. ‘The important part of them is that which reveals Sir W. Mackinnon's designs on what the Germans would call their “Hinterland”. It may serve to explain the Emin Expedition.’

[63] Charles Stokes to Euan Smith, 25 Feb. 1890, enclosed in Euan Smith to Salisbury, 15 April 1890, FO 403/137, TNA. Also see Jackson, Early Days in East Africa, 222–23.

[64] Jackson, Early Days in East Africa, 223.

[65] de Kiewiet, ‘History of the Imperial British East Africa Company', 195.

[66] Euan-Smith to Salisbury, 3 March 1890, FO 403/136, TNA.

[67] Euan-Smith to Salisbury, 3 March 1890, FO 403/136, TNA; Euan-Smith to Salisbury, (Secret), 3 April 1890, FO 403/137, TNA.

[68] Salisbury to Malet, 5 May 1890, FO 84/2030, TNA.

[69] Euan-Smith to Salisbury, (Secret), 13 March 1890, FO 403/136, TNA.

[70] Euan-Smith to Salisbury, 18 March 1890, FO 403/136, TNA.

[71] Malet to Salisbury, 21 March 1890, FO 403/136, TNA.

[72] Ibid.

[73] Euan Smith to Salisbury, (Secret), 21 March 1890, FO 403/136, TNA.

[74] Euan-Smith to Salisbury, 31 March 1890, FO 403/136, TNA.

[75] Euan Smith to Salisbury, 3 April 1890, FO 403/137, TNA.

[76] Salisbury to Euan-Smith, 9 April 1890, FO 403/137, TNA.

[77] FO to IBEA, 2 April 1890, FO 403/137, TNA.

[78] IBEA to FO, 22 April 1890, FO 403/137, TNA.

[79] Euan Smith to Salisbury, 19 July 1889, FO 403/119, TNA.

[80] IBEA to Euan Smith, 16 Oct. 1889, FO 403/120, TNA.

[81] Salisbury to Hatzfeldt, 21 Dec. 1889, FO 403/120, TNA.

[82] Salisbury to Hatzfeldt, 21 Dec. 1889, FO 403/120, TNA; FO to Treasury, 16 April 1890, FO 403/137, TNA.

[83] Mackinnon to Salisbury, 26 March 1890, FO 84/2078 and FO 403/136, TNA.

[84] Euan Smith to Salisbury, 31 March 1890, vol. 80, no. 8, Salisbury Papers, Hatfield House.

[85] Euan Smith to Salisbury, 15 April 1890; Euan Smith to Salisbury, 30 April 1890, FO 403/137, TNA.

[86] Euan Smith to Salisbury, Private, 31 March 1890, vol. 80, no. 8, Salisbury Papers, Hatfield House.

[87] Memorandum of Instructions to Sir P. Anderson, FO 881/6146, TNA.

[88] Salisbury, Hansard, House of Lords Debate, 10 July 1890, vol. 346, cc 1258–92.

[89] Sanderson, England, Europe and the Upper Nile, 63.

[90] Rosebery to Monson, 16 Dec. 1892, FO 84/2268, TNA.

[91] Malet to Salisbury, 8 May 1890, FO 881/6146, TNA.

[92] Euan-Smith to Salisbury, 19 July 1889, FO 403/119, TNA.

[93] Salisbury to Malet, 14 June 1890, FO 881/6146, TNA.

[94] Miles to Granville, 1 March 1883, T 1/14421, TNA.

[95] Annual Total of the Royal Navy's Slave Capture Statistics, 1888, FO 881/5896, TNA. For an overview of the trade between 1873 and 1890, see FO 881/4676, T 1/14421, HCA 35/87, FO 881/5165, FO 881/5366, FO 881/5459, FO 881/5616, FO 881/5896, FO 881/6009, FO 881/6010, FO 881/6053, FO 881/6199, TNA.

[96] Lavigerie Petition against the Slave Trade enclosed in Playfair to Lister, 3 Sept. 1886, FO 403/98, TNA.

[97] Salisbury Minute on T. Villiers Lister Memorandum, 1 Sept. 1888, FO 84/1927, TNA.

[98] Miers, Britain and the Ending of the Slave Trade, 208.

[99] See: Salisbury to Treasury, 13 Jan. 1891, FO 84/2156 and Treasury to FO, 10 Feb. 1891, FO 84/2156, TNA.

[100] Salisbury's Reply to MacNeill in the House of Commons, 30 July 1888, FO 881/5896, TNA.

[101] Salisbury to Malet, 5 Nov. 1888, FO 403/107, TNA.

[102] Salisbury to Malet, 24 Nov. 1890, FO 2030, TNA.

[103] IBEA to FO, 4 Sept. 1891, FO 84/2174, TNA

[104] IBEA to Lugard, Confidential, 10 Aug. 1891, FO 84/2174, TNA.

[105] Lister to IBEA, 8 Sept. 1891, FO 84/2174, TNA.

[106] Salisbury Minute on IBEA to FO, 2 Sept. 1891, FO 84/2174, TNA.

[107] General Secretary's Minute Book, Special Committee Meeting, 29 Sept. 1891, 645–49, CMS/G/C1/55, Cadbury Research Library, University of Birmingham.

[108] Ibid.

[109] Ibid.

[110] Urgent and Special: Withdrawal of the Imperial British East Africa Company from Uganda, Private, Nov. 1891, CMS/G/Y/A7/1/2, Cadbury Research Library, University of Birmingham.

[111] General Secretary's Minute Book, Special Committee Meeting 29 Sept. 1891, 645–49, CMS/G/C1/55, Cadbury Research Library, University of Birmingham.

[112] Urgent and Special: Withdrawal of the Imperial British East Africa Company from Uganda, Private, Nov. 1891, CMS/G/Y/A7/1/2, Cadbury Research Library, University of Birmingham.

[113] Ibid.

[114] IBEA to Salisbury, 17 May 1892, FO 84/2249, TNA.

[115] Portal to Salisbury, 3 Feb. 1892, vol. 80, no. 60, Salisbury Papers, Hatfield House.

[116] Ibid.

[117] Portal to Salisbury, 27 Feb. 1892, vol. 80, no. 61, Salisbury Papers, Hatfield House.

[118] Salisbury to IBEA, 26 May 1892, FO 84/2250, TNA.

[119] McDermott, British East Africa, or IBEA, 203.

[120] Gladstone to Rosebery, 23 Sept. 1892, Gladstone Papers, vol. 204, ADD MS 44289, British Library (hereafter BL).

[121] FO (P. W. Currie) to IBEA, 30 Sept. 1892, CMS/G/Y/A7/1/2, CMS Papers, University of Birmingham.

[122] P. L. McDermott to Thomas Fowell Buxton, 11 Aug. 1891, Anti-Slavery Papers, S 22/G4 (Uganda), Rhodes House, University of Oxford.

[123] Rosebery to Gladstone, 19 Sept. 1892, Gladstone Papers, vol. 204, ADD MS 44289, BL.

[124] Rosebery, Memorandum, Undated (134), FO 84/2258, TNA.

[125] Rosebery, Memorandum, 24 Aug. 1892, FO 84/2258, TNA.

[126] Currie to Anderson, 23 Aug. 1892, Private, FO 84/2258, TNA.

[127] War Office (Hubert Foster), Memorandum, 5 Sept. 1892, Confidential, FO 84/2258, TNA.

[128] Major Wingate Memorandum cited in Foreign Office (Percy Anderson) Memorandum, 13 Sept. 1892, Confidential, FO 84/2258, TNA.

[129] Kitchener Memorandum, 3 Oct. 1892, FO 84/2258, TNA.

[130] For an analysis of Anderson's role in the Foreign Office, see Louis, ‘Sir Percy Anderson's Grand African Strategy', 292–314.

[131] Foreign Office (Percy Anderson) Memorandum, 13 Sept. 1892, Confidential, FO 84/2258, TNA.

[132] See Knight, ‘British Public Opinion’, 179–200.

[133] Foreign Office (Percy Anderson) Memorandum, 13 Sept. 1892, Confidential, FO 84/2258, TNA.

[134] For a non-exhaustive list of the literature which has made assertions that the Foreign Office and in particular Anderson linked the retention of Uganda with the defence of Egypt, see Langer, The Diplomacy of Imperialism, 124; Robinson and Gallagher with Denny, Africa and the Victorians, 315; Sanderson, England, Europe and the Upper Nile, 100; Louis, ‘Sir Percy Anderson's Grand African Strategy', 292–314; Martel, Imperial Diplomacy, 81; Otte, The Foreign Office Mind, 194.

[135] Minute by Rosebery, Anderson Memorandum, 10 Sept. 1892, FO 84/2258, TNA.

[136] Sentence stricken out by Rosebery: ‘Major Wingate, who has studied this subject with exceptional advantages, has expressed himself strongly in favour of the retention of our hold on Uganda.’ Draft Memorandum, 12 Sept. 1892, Confidential, FO 84/2258, TNA.

[137] Currie to Anderson, 23 Aug. 1892, Private, FO 84/2258, TNA.

[138] Gladstone to Rosebery, 24 Sept. 1892, Gladstone Papers, vol. 204, ADD MS 44289, BL.

[139] Gardiner, Life of Sir W. Harcourt, 191–93.

[140] Rosebery to Gladstone, 26 Sept. 1892, Confidential, Gladstone Papers, vol. 204, ADD MS 44289, BL.

[141] Rosebery to Gladstone, 27 Sept. 1892, Gladstone Papers, vol. 204, ADD MS 44289, BL.

[142] Rosebery to Gladstone, 19 Sept. 1892, and Rosebery to Gladstone, 29 Sept. 1892, Gladstone Papers, vol. 204, ADD MS 44289, BL.

[143] Anti-Slave Trade Society Memorial, 20 Oct. 1892, vol. 113, 482ff., Benson Papers, Lambeth Palace Library.

[144] Rosebery to Gladstone, 29 Sept. 1892, Gladstone Papers, vol. 204, ADD MS 44289, BL. Emphasis in original.

[145] Martel, Imperial Diplomacy, 82.

[146] Gerald Portal Diary Entry, 15 Sept. 1892, Gerald Portal Papers, Rhodes House, Oxford University.

[147] Rosebery to Gladstone, 20 Sept. 1892, Confidential, Gladstone Papers, Vol. 204, ADD MS 44289, BL.

[148] Hansard, House of Commons Debate, 13 April 1885, vol. 296, cc 1484–85.

[149] Rosebery to Gladstone, 20 Sept. 1892, Confidential, Gladstone Papers, vol. 204, ADD MS 44289, BL.

[150] Rosebery to Gladstone, 27 Sept. 1892, Gladstone Papers, vol. 204, ADD MS 44289, BL.

[151] Rosebery to Gladstone, 22 Sept. 1892, Confidential, vol. 204, ADD MS 44289, BL.

[152] Rosebery, Minute on Wingate Memorandum, Director of Military Intelligence in Cairo to FO, 23 Aug. 1892, FO 84/2257, TNA. Also cited in Robinson and Gallagher with Denny, Africa and the Victorians, 314–15.

[153] Rosebery to Gladstone, 16 April 1893, Gladstone Papers, vol. 204, ADD MS 44290, BL.

[154] FO (P. W. Currie) to IBEA, 30 Sept. 1892, CMS/G/Y/A7/1/2, CMS Papers, University of Birmingham.

[155] Low, Buganda in Modern History, 61.

[156] The Record Supplement, 14 Oct. 1892, CMS/G/Y/A7/1/2, CMS Papers, University of Birmingham.

[157] Chas. H. Allen to Archbishop of Canterbury, 17 Oct. 1892 (479), vol. 113, Benson Papers, Lambeth Palace Library; Committee Meeting, 7 Oct. 1892, Paragraph 438, Minute Books of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, vol. 6, E2/11, Anti-Slavery Papers, Rhodes House, Oxford University.

[158] Wylde to Sturge, 21 Oct. 1892, S 22 / G4 (Uganda), Anti-Slavery Papers, Rhodes House, Oxford University.

[159] Ibid.

[160] Robinson and Gallagher with Denny, Africa and the Victorians, 312; and Sanderson, England, Europe and the Upper Nile, 99–100.

[161] Rosebery to Gladstone, 22 Sept. 1892, Confidential, Gladstone Papers, vol. 204, ADD MS 44289, BL.

[162] Example of Lugard's public speaking tour: Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce to Foreign Office, 18 Nov. 1892, FO 84/2192, TNA.

[163] Ernest L. Bentley, Handbook to the Uganda Question and the Proposed Uganda Railway, 12 Nov, 1892, FO 84/2263, TNA.

[164] Ibid., 8.

[165] Lugard, Rise of Our East African Empire, 584.

[166] Tvedt, ‘Hydrology and Empire', 187.

[167] Willcocks, Egyptian Irrigation.

[168] Willcocks (for the Technical Commission on Reservoirs), Perennial Irrigation and Flood Protection for Egypt, xiii.

[169] Rosebery Memorandum, 3 Nov. 1892, FO 403/173, TNA.

[170] Portal to Rosebery, 1 Nov. 1893, FO 2/60, TNA. See also Portal, British Mission to Uganda (published posthumously).

[171] Rosebery Memorandum, 12 Feb. 1894, FO 403/193, TNA.

[172] Rosebery, 27 May 1895, CAB 41/23/36, TNA.

[173] It has been suggested that Salisbury issued secret orders to Major MacDonald on his 1897 East Africa expedition to secure the region surrounding the White Nile against inter alia French encroachment. See Barber, ‘The MacDonald Expedition to the Nile’, 1–14; and Matson, ‘MacDonald's Expedition to the Nile’, 98–103.

[174] For an analysis of the origins of these tenets, See Lewis, ‘Empires of Sentiment’.