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