Relations with indigenous people 1890-1914

Question 1

Imbalances between British colonial forces and the indigenous people

Answer 1

• Military and technological gap
• Indigenous people had obsolete weapons and were up against the British with maxim guns
• Europeans had a superior military strategy
• British military was well drilled and disciplined whilst the indigenous had poor marksmanship

Question 2

Challenges to British rule

Answer 2

• Sometimes the resistance came in the form of political action and protest
• This was most prevalent in India, where a nationalist campaign took hold and grew in the years to 1914
• Elsewhere, challenges were more direct as the British were forced to fight to maintain and consolidate their dominance
• This was particularly the case in various parts of Africa during and after the era of expansion
• All these challenges to empire came at a cost to Britain (in terms of money, time, attention, and pride)

Question 3

Challenges in India

Answer 3

• In the 1890s, political opposition to British rule grew amongst the educated Indian professional classes and an outlet for protest was found in the emergence and growth of nationalist newspapers
• Both Bal Tilak, editor of Kasari, and Shivram Paranjape who founded a weekly called Kaal in 1898, were sentenced to imprisonment for stirring up hostility
• Tilak was accused of inciting the murder of a medical officer, while the popularity of Kaal led to Paranjape’s imprisonment for sedition in 1908
• After his release in 1910, the British authorities banned the publication of Kaal and also confiscated his writings
• The Abhinav Bharat (Young Indian) organisation, founded by 2 brothers, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar and Ganesh Damodar Savarkar in 1903, became the home for several hundred revolutionaries and political activists
• It established branches in various parts of India and carried out assassinations of British officials, including a British magistrate, Arthur Jackson
• It was Viceroy Curzon’s controversial partition of Bengal, however, that prompted the most vociferous opposition to the raj
• Tilak was at the forefront of a swadeshi or self-sufficiency campaign designed to undermine British rule
• Besides petitions and protests, a public boycott of British goods took place
• This 6-year campaign was successful as Bengal was reunited in 1911
• However, its methods and principles also greatly influenced the later campaigners of Mohandas Gandhi

Question 4

Challenges in Africa

Somaliland

Answer 4

• Mohammed Abdullah Hassan, a Somali religious and military leader, known to the British as the “mad mullah” aimed to defend Somalia from British, Italian, and Ethiopian invasion
• Following the incident in 1899 in which a group of Somali children were said to have been converted to Christianity by French Missionaries, Hassan stated that “they have destroyed our religion and made our children theirs” and declared his intentions to drive all Christians into the sea
• He built up an army of around 20,000 dervishes and, from c.1900, his forces mounted raids on British Somaliland, antagonising the local communities
• To counter Hassan and his army, the British conducted joint military action with Ethiopia’s emperor Menelik, although without conclusive success
• The British were not able to suppress Hassan’s resistance until 1920, when aerial bombing was deployed to destroy the Dervish strongholds, at the cost of thousands of civilian lives

Question 5

Challenges in Africa

Zanzibar

Answer 5

• On the island of Zanzibar, Britain’s control was challenged briefly by Khalid bin Barghash, who assumed power in August 1896 following the suspicious death of the pro-British Sultan Hamoud
• Although Khalid commanded 3000 men, he quickly fled following heavy bombardment from British ships anchored nearby

Question 6

Challenges in Africa

West Africa

Answer 6

• In 1898, the British governor of Sierra Leone, Colonel Cardew, introduced a new, severe tax on dwellings, known as the “hut tax”, and also insisted that local chiefs organise their followers to maintain roads
• His demands were met with resistance
• Cardew responded militarily and eventually deployed a scorched earth approach, which involved setting fire to entire villages, farms and crops
• This tactic secured surrender from Cardew’s primary adversary, Chief Bai Bureh, in November 1898, although hundreds had been killed in the process
• Despite the British government’s plea for leniency Cardew had 96 of the chief’s warriors hanged