(10) Attitudes to empire - the role and influence of individuals Flashcards

1
Q

Role of Joseph Chamberlain?

A
  • Opposed Gladstone’s proposal for Irish Independence and joined a conservative-led coalition as Colonial Secretary between 1895 and 1903
  • Initiated the Uganda Railway
  • Sanctioned the conquest and annexation of Ashantiland in the Gold Coast in 1900
  • Tried to develop closer imperial ties at the 1902 Colonial Conference with ‘Imperial preference’
  • 1899 Chamberlain got £3m worth of colonial loans through parliament – Cyprus got a whole new irrigation and railway system, first railways were built in Sierra Leone, Lagos and the Gold Coast
  • Set up two Schools of Tropical Medicine and numeral institutes to research into better methods of colonial agriculture and husbandry
  • Seen as a national hero in the Second Boer war but as the war dragged on lost most of his prestige
  • Resigned in 1903
  • “I believe that the British race is the greatest of the governing races that the world has ever seen”
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2
Q

Role of Cecil Rhodes?

A
  • Secured Primeministership of the Cape in 1890
  • Established Fort Salisbury in Matabeleland 1890
  • Did this by using fighting the Matabele War in 1893 and taking the land against the Ndebele Kingdom
  • Used his vast fortune, political power and control of Cape newspapers he imposed the right of the British to rule Africa
  • Wanted to build a railway from the Cape to Egypt but was never completed due to German occupation of East Africa from 1891
  • Resigned as Prime Minister in 1896
  • His influence created the Round Table, an imperial pressure group established in 1910
  • Maintained Nyasaland through BSAC for the British until it was made a protectorate in 1907
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3
Q

Role of Viceroy Curzon?

A
  • Curzon did not believe that Indians were equals
  • Delhi Durbar 1903 and restored the Taj Mahal.
  • Promoted an Anglo-Indian nationality not a native Indian one
  • Appointed during conservative Imperialism
  • Created the North-West Frontier Province in 1901 and dispatched a military expedition to Tibet to defend against Russian expansion
  • Wanted to consolidate British control of India, created 6000 more miles of railway
  • Founded the Imperial Cadet Corps to give Indian Nobels military training and prospect of officer commissions
  • Division of Bengal caused his resignation in 1905
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4
Q

Role of Evelyn Baring?

A
  • Consul-General in Egypt from 1883-1907
  • Saw himself as a moral reformer as well as an administrator - “code of Christian morality is the only sure foundation on which the whole of our vast Imperial fabric can be built if it is to be durable”.
  • Established the ‘Granville Doctrine’ which allowed him to dismiss Egyptian Ministers
  • Worked well as Twefik was weak and happy to accept British guidance
  • Egyptian army disbanded
  • 1892 the new leader Abbas Hilmi II comes to power and wants to throw off British rule
  • Baring bullied him into submission
  • He stopped slave trade
  • Outlawed the use of the kurbash
  • halted the import of hashish by establishing a camel corps
  • regulate alcohol sale licenses
  • stopped local money-lending and extortion by establishing the National Bank and Post Office Savings Bank
  • Forced to resign after Denshawai incident in 1906
  • Received £50,000 in 1907 for his service
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5
Q

Role of Alfred Milner?

A
  • Hand picked by Chamberlain to become Britain’s High Commissioner for Southern Africa from 1897
  • Regarded Africans as “children, needed and appreciating a just paternal government”
  • Founded ‘Milner Schools’ in Pretoria and Johannesburg
  • Demanded full citizenship rights for the Uitlanders after five years of residence
  • Was very aggressive with Kruger
  • By the Bloemfontein Conference (May-June 1899) he had decided that a war was the only way to get this
  • Kruger declared war in October 1899
  • Led the annexation of the Orange Free State in 1901
  • Became Governor of the Cape and the Orange free State
  • Negotiated the Peace of Vereeniging May 1902
  • Established ‘Milners Kindergarten’ after the war to resettle the Boers and promote economic growth
  • Hoped to attract British settlers and Anglicise the area
  • Most British settlers left due to the depression and the British brought in Chinese workers, the ‘Coolies’
  • Public outrage of the exploitation of the coolies
  • Contributing factor to the loss of the Conservative election in January 1906
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