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

Question 1

Role of Joseph Chamberlain?

Answer 1

• 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”

Question 2

Role of Cecil Rhodes?

Answer 2

• 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

Question 3

Role of Viceroy Curzon?

Answer 3

• 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

Question 4

Role of Evelyn Baring?

Answer 4

• 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

Question 5

Role of Alfred Milner?

Answer 5

• 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