(12) Relations with indigenous peoples

Question 1

Challenges in India?

Answer 1

• In the 1890s the British found opposition in the Indian Professional classes and nationalist newspapers
• Tilak the editor of ‘Kesari’ and Paranjape who founded ‘Kaal’ in 1898 were sentenced to imprisonment for stirring up hostility in 1908 - released in 1910
• Kaal was banned
• The Young India organisation, founded in 1903, became the home of political activists who planned and carried out assassinations of British officials, including Arthur Jackson a magistrate
• The partition of Bengal started the swadeshi campaign which carried out protests and most importantly boycotts of British goods, Bengal was reunited in 1911

Question 2

Challenges in Africa (Somaliland)?

Answer 2

• Sayyid Hassan, religious warrior built up a force of 20,000 Dervish forces armed with Ottoman Empire weapons
• Wanted to drive all Christians into the sea
• From 1900 his forces raided British Somaliland
• The British joined forces with the Emperor of Ethiopia but did not stop the raiders until after the First World War
• The British lost the battle of Dul Madoba in August 1913 with their Camel Constabulary

Question 3

Challenges in Africa (Zanzibar)?

Answer 3

• August 1896, suspicious death of pro-British leader Sultan Hamoud
• Khalid bin Barghash assumed control of Zanzibar with his 6000 troops
• The British heavily bombarded the city from ships anchored nearby and the war was over in less than two days

Question 4

Challenges in Africa (West Africa)?

Answer 4

• Colonel Cardew introduced the ‘hut tax’ and instead local chiefs maintained the roads
• The locals resisted this
• Cardew started a ‘scorched earth’ policy and hung 96 of the chief’s warriors
• The primary adversary Chief Bureh was defeated in November 1898

Question 5

Challenges in the Sudan?

Answer 5

• Kitchener’s conquest of the Sudan was covered by the Daily Mail as the fall of ‘the worst tyranny in the world’
• Battle of Omdurman and the fall of Khartoum 1898
• Many Sudanese welcomed the fall of the Mahdist Regime as the Sudanese economy had declined and 50% of the population died through famine, disease and warfare
• Took British more than 30 years to subdue the tribes in the south of the Sudan
• The Sudanese did not agree with the implementation of a modern government, lad tenure rules and taxation
• Tribes refused to pay tax or renounce their customs, the British acted heavily
• 33 British punitive expeditions
• Mahdist uprisings in 1902-03, 1904, 1908
• Public hangings without trial for the rebels
• British increased economic development, telegraph poles and railway lines in the north of Sudan, Port Sudan opened in 1906, 1911 Gezira Scheme to provide high quality cotton for Britain

Question 6

Causes of the Second Boer War?

Answer 6

• Cecil Rhodes became Prime Minister of the Cape in 1890 and heavily pushed for the collection of the Boer Republics into a South African Federation, in which the British and Cape would influence - stemmed from the Transvaal hurting his business with high tariffs and from his personal hatred of Paul Kruger
• Transvaal was strong since 1886 discovery of gold on the Rand and then it opened a rail network to Portuguese-controlled port of Lourenco Marques
• Chamberlian and Rhodes worried about Britain losing its dominance in the region
• They then supported the Jameson raid which failed in 1895
• Continuing clashes over the voting rights of Uitlanders
• Alfred Milner, South African High Commissioner from 1897, was very aggressive with Kruger and at the Bloemfontein Conference of May-June 1899 he demanded voting rights to the Uitlanders, Kruger refused
• In October 1899 Kruger issued an ultimatum which Milner refused and so the Boers attacked the Cape initiating war

Question 7

Consequences of the Second Boer War?

Answer 7

• Kitchener started a ‘scorched earth policy and burnt farms and livestock
• Boer families (mainly women and children) and black Africans were placed in concentration camps (20,000 died)
• Boers surrendered in May 1902
• War dragged on for over 2 and a half years
• Cost £230,000
• Involved 400,000 troops
• 22,000 British were killed
• 6000 Boer troops killed
• Showed the vulnerability of the British imperial control
• Had to call on troops from all over the Empire, mainly India, leaving other colonies badly defended
• Dampened jingoism and led to a need for national efficiency
• Treaty of Vereeniging May 1902 granted the Boers £3 million compensation for their farms
• Milner worked to integrate the Boer and British economies
• Transvaal given self-governing status in 1906
• Orange River Colony given self-governing status 1907
• Union of South Africa 1910, a British dominion