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In 1865 in British-ruled Jamaica, a crowd of some 400 African-Caribbeans, who disliked the decision of a local magistrate, attacked a local courthouse and rescued a fellow black from prosecution. Britain's governor on the island, Edward John Eyre, sought the arrest of some of those involved, and people resisting arrest killed a few of the white volunteers sent against them. Martial law was proclaimed. A white-controlled militia burned down nearly 1,000 homes of blacks and flogged hundreds of captured. Court-martials of captured blacks resulted in the summary execution of 354.[note] The whites targeted a "colored" (half-black and half-white) leader, G.W. Gordon, a Baptist minister and political spokesman for grievances of black peasants, as the man responsible for the rebellion. The white settlers and authorities were afraid of a revolt similar to the massacres that had occurred earlier in the century in Haiti. They believed in British order and justice, but their fear and excitement led them to a hasty and false judgment, and within a few hours of his trial, Gordon was hanged.
The rebellion was defeated, but in England an investigation was held. Eyre was widely condemned and was called to London. Some demanded that he be tried for murder. He was removed from office but a grand jury refused to indict him.
Britain's experiences with colonies, including the thirteen colonies that became the United States, had not been altogether pleasing or of lasting benefit to Britain. In government was substantial opposition to expansion in Africa, and in 1865, a Select Committee of the British House of Commons commented that "all further extension of territory or assumption of government, or new treaties offering protection to native tribes would be inexpedient." As for territory in West Africa that Britain already ruled, the committee recommended preparations for independence. What Britain wanted in Africa was free trade.
In eastern Africa, the British were in conflict with Tewodros II, emperor of Ethiopia (Abyssinia) since 1855. Tewodros sent a letter to Queen Victoria asking for British help in removing the Turks from the Red Sea. For two years his letter went unanswered, and when the reply came it was negative. Tewodros responded by arresting British subjects servingin the British consulate. Britain demanded their release, and when this did not happen they sent 30,000 troops. Tewodros was able to put together an army of no more than 4,000. The British troops freed their consulate personnel. Tewodros killed himself on the battlefield with his pistol, and the British left Ethiopia - uninterested in absorbing Ethiopian territory or natural resources.
It was in Egypt that Britain developed an interest, after penetration there by the French. Egypt was one of the areas of frequent investment of money by French capitalists, and the French and Egyptians had been digging a 106-mile long canal (171 kilometers) between the Mediterranean and Red seas, employing around 1.5 million Egyptian workers - a ten year project that cost 125,000 lives. The canal was a largely French-owned company, with some shares owned by the Ottoman Empire's viceroy (khedive) in Egypt, Ismail Pasha. Late in 1869 the canal was opened for navigation, with access promised the ships from all nations, for a fee. It provided British merchant and warships a shorter route to India and farther east, including Australia. Giuseppe Verdi wrote an opera for the opening celebration - Aida.
The British were already established in South Africa, with its Cape Colony. Diamond deposits had been discovered in southern Africa - at Kimberley in the land of the Griqua, or Griqualand, on the northern frontier of the British colony. In 1870 diamond diggers were rushing there - Africans, whites from Europe, Australia and the Americas. Britain persuaded the Griqua chieftain Waterboer to accept British protection from the nearby Dutch Boers, and in 1881 Britain annexed the territory , which became Griqualand West.
With the arrival of economic depression in 1873, British concerns over their ability to trade internationally increased. The first to industrialize, Britain was holding to older, or outmoded, machinery compared to what was being used by more recently developed economies. The British felt threatened by the rising economies of Germany, France and the United States. German textile and metal industries had become better organized and more technically efficient than those in Britain. British businesses were suffering from reduced profits and price deflation. London financial houses grew in their fear that French and German investments in international markets would depress interest rates, and they were increasingly concerned about government consistency in its willingness to protect British investments abroad. And the British were concerned about inadequate sales of their commodities abroad creating an unfavorable balance of trade. The British believed that they should continue as "the workshop of the world," in other words as the world leader in manufacturing and commerce - a source of their nation's strength and therefore grandeur.
Financial houses favored more control by Britain in international affairs. Some manufacturers involved in large-scale exports, such as metals and textiles, turned to their government for help. And there were missionaries and religious organizations advocating for more British control in the form of interventions in non-European societies.
Britain was concerned about its influence in the world against a newly united Germany, against the weakness of its ally the Ottoman Empire, and fear of Russia expanding eastward into Asia and southward against the Ottomans, the Persians, toward Afghanistan and India. Agitation for independence among the Irish was also disturbing, and trade unions were growing in strength.
The British had bought out the last of the Dutch and Danish trading forts and in the early 1870s had acquired a trading monopoly along the Gold Coast. In 1874 the British turned that coastal area, about a 100 kilometers deep and 400 kilometers wide, into a colony - the beginnings of a colony that would be called Ghana. The British fought a war against the kingdom of Asante, whose kings had claimed jurisdiction over the coast and had challenged the British there. (Rather than their red and green coats, the British commander, Wolseley, had his troops wear brown jackets and khaki trousers - a move toward the modern habit of camouflage.) The British defeated the Asante army, burned the Asante capital, Kumasi, and withdrew. The British force was about 50,000 strong, the Asante force about 60,000, the British losing about a 1,000 men, the Asante about 2,000. The Asante were shocked that their military had been defeated. The Asante king was deposed by his subjects, and areas that had been dominated by the Asante kingdom were inspired to revolt against Asante rule. The inland region in and near Asante had become destabilized, with civil wars and rebellions to follow in the years to come.
In 1874, the Conservative Party's leader, Benjamin Disraeli became prime minister again, the Conservative victory made possible by splits among the major opposition party, the Liberals. The Conservative Party was also split on a lot of issues, while Disraeli's government was under pressure to vigorously pursue British interests abroad, and it did so appealing to the grandeur of empire and the patriotism of common people, including those attracted to trade unionism. The conservatives were posing as the guardian of working-class interests against unscrupulous industrialists and lesser bourgeoisie.
In 1875 Britain became part owners in of the Suez Canal enterprise, the British government, through Disraeli's manipulations, managing to acquire the shares of Ismail Pasha, who, while trying to Europeanize Egypt, had borrowed from international bankers and had exhausted his credit, and in 1876 Ismail Pasha declared his government bankrupt. In response, Britain and France set up a Joint Control Board to regulate Egypt's economy, creating cost-saving measures for Egypt such as reducing the size of its army. Many Egyptian army officers lost their jobs - precipitating resentment against the British and French.
Southern Africa was similar in ways to the west in America. Bantu tribal peoples in southern Africa had been on the move, southward to wherever better grazing land was available, and sometimes running from rival tribes. And they were also bumping into white settlers, who were pushing onto lands that the tribal peoples had come to consider as theirs.
Both whites and blacks in southern Africa were dependent on raising animal herds and growing crops, exporting skins, ivory and ostrich feathers. Then diamonds were discovered, and by 1875 southern Africa became the largest diamond producing area in the world. Company owned mines were replacing individual diggers, and the companies were employing black migrant labor. They came from surrounding kingdoms and earned enough money to buy guns, which they took with them back to their tribal areas. The blacks were becoming better armed in their perennial conflicts with their Dutch neighbors, the Boers, conflicts that, along with financial mismanagement, were bankrupting the Boer government - the Republic of South Africa - in the Transvaal. Better armed, the Pedi tribe in their mountain stronghold drove the Boers the Boers out of their territory. The Xhosa, who had acquired guns on the diamond fields, were eager to regain lost lands, and they made war on the whites and their black allies, the Mfengu.
The British rallied some support among the Boers, stressing the dangers from the republic's bankruptcy and from hostile Zulus and Pedi. The British promised to put the Boer territory back on a sound financial footing while allowing a degree of local self-rule, and they promised to rid the Boers of the menace of the Zulus. Acting on the supposition that a majority of the Boers were in favor of British rule and that the Boers at any rate were too divided to resist, Britain annexed the Boer republic in April 1877. More than 6,500 Boers, in a nation of around 20,000,signed a petition protesting the annexation, but the British government was adamant that the annexation would remain.
In 1878 the British ordered the King of the Zulus, Cetshwayo, to disband his army of 40,000 to 60,000. When the king did not respond, British troops advanced into Zulu territory, without precautionary scouts. The Zulu army attacked, at Isandhwana, killing 800 British and capturing 1,000 rifles, with ammunition - an historic defeat for the British. The British overcame that defeat and overpowered the Zulu, at the Battle of Ulundi, on July 4, 1879. Queen Victoria urged "kind and generous treatment of Cetshwayo," who was captured and exiled to Cape Town. The Queen worried that in disarming the Zulus of their guns, should they be attacked "we are bound to defend them." The British left the Zulus to rule themselves but divided and therefore weakened, under thirteen separate chiefdoms.
Russia's advance into Turkistan and Samarkand alarmed Disraeli, and he pressed British authorities in India to secure a defense against Russian expansion into Afghanistan. The Afghanis admitted a Russian envoy but Afghan troops refused entry to a British envoy, Neville Chamberlain. On the throne in Afghanistan was Amir Sher Ali Khan, the son of the former ruler, Dost Mohammad Khan, who had been imprisoned by the British. Sher Ali Khan shared his father's hostility to the British. The British responded by launching the Second Afghan War, sending troops over Afghanistan's high passes. Sher Ali Khan fled. The British occupied Kabul, and the war begun in 1878 ended in 1880 with Abdur Rahman as the new amir, Rahman agreeing to British control of Afghanistan's foreign relations. The British decided where Afghanistan's borders would be - borders that would eventually be recognized by the Russians and remain into the 21st century.
Benjamin Disraeli supported the spread of empire and the glories of British power, but he lost the elections of 1880. Many had been unhappy with him for having raised taxes and unhappy over the cost of military operations. Those supporting Disraeli because of his favor towards empire were not enough to keep him and his conservatives in office. The champion of Britain's Liberal Party, William E. Gladstone, presented himself as favoring peace, liberty and fairness. The Liberals won a substantial majority in Parliament, and Gladstone returned as prime minister.
Gladstone kept British gains in southern Africa, including rule over the Boers, and the Boers rebelled. In early 1881 they defeated the British at Majuba Hill, the British losing 93 killed, 133 wounded and 58 taken prisoner. The Boers lost only one killed and five wounded. Gladstone surrendered British rule over the 20,000 or so Boers but maintained control over the foreign affairs of the Boer republic.
In Egypt the British and French were still in control of the Suez Canal and still with the power over Egypt's government, in cooperation with their ally, the Ottoman Turks. The Ottoman sultan was still the nominal ruler of Egypt. A member of the Egyptian army Ahmad Arabi (or Urabi), led a revolt against Turkish rule and took control over Egypt's government. He was a nationalist and hostile also toward Europeans in Egypt. The British looked to a collective effort against the threat to their interests in Egypt and demanded that Arabi's government resign. The British and French sent naval squadrons to Egypt's coast, at Alexandria, which offended Egyptians, and in Alexandria people rioted and killed about 50 Europeans in one day - June 11, 1882. British ships bombarded coastal forts at Alexandria, and, to quell the disorder, Gladstone sent an army into Egypt. In September that army defeated Arabi's army at the Battle of Tell al-Kabir, thirty miles south of Cairo. The British lost 57 killed, 382 wounded and 30 missing. The British then occupied Cairo, where they captured the Arabi. They tried him on December 3 and sentenced him to death, butthe sentence was changed to exile in Ceylon.
The British stationed troops at the Suez Canal. They re-established Tewfiq Pasha as Egypt's Khedive, and they made themselves responsible for Egypt's external relations. As Egyptians saw it, their country became an economic colony, totally dependent upon the import of British manufactured goods and the export of its raw cotton.
Queen Victoria spoke of the Khideve having no army and with only a few utterly unreliable police. There was concern in Britain over the protection of Christians in Egypt. Exercising her power to consult with and advise "her government" on matters of war and peace, Victoria complained that for the sake of a "more dignified position" for Britain, its troops should remain in Egypt. "Once any troops are withdrawn," she complained, "we shall have no pretext for replacing them."
On October 11, 1882, Victoria wrote,
... short of annexation, our power in Egypt and control over it ought to be great and firm, and we ought to show to other Powers that we shall maintain this position, though without detriment to them. We should maintain a large force there for a long time. [note]
Gladstone wanted to withdraw British troops from Egypt as soon as possible, but the British never found the time right for withdrawal, and the British would remain there into the 20th century.
In the Sudan in 1881, Muhammad Ahmad led a pan-Islamic rebellion amid cries for war against infidels. He proclaimed himself the Mahdi (Messiah) - a person who was to rid the world of evil. With Britain responsible for Egypt's external relation and Egypt the nominal authority in the Sudan, Gladstone exercised his preference for peace and ordered Egyptian forces in the Sudan to withdraw, and he sent a British force to the Sudan, led by the military hero and evangelical Christian, Charles Gordon, to supervise the evacuation. Gordon arrived at Khartoum in February 1884 and took charge of 2,500 women and children and the sick and wounded, but before he could evacuate them, Ahmad's force surrounded the city. Gordon requested approval from Glandstone's governement for military help from a Sudanese slave trader and warlord, Zubayr Rahama Pasha, but the government rejected the idea, seeing an alliance with Zubayr Rahama Pasha as too controversial. Gordon and his people remained in Khartoum behind weak fortifications and with insufficient food. The British were reading news of Gordon's heroic defense against Ahmad. Then, after ten months, Gladstone's government sent a relief column, but it arrived 48 hours after Ahmad's forces had overrun Gordon's position, leaving Gordon dead and the British public angry and humiliated.
A few months later, in June 1885, following the defeat his 1885 Budget in parliament, Gladstone resigned. But he was back again in 1886, his Liberal Party in alliance with Irish nationalists replacing the Conservative Party led by Lord Salisbury.
In the Middle Ages and later, England had absorbed Scotland, Wales and Ireland - empire of sorts. And in Ireland resistance remained strong. There in the nineteenth century English and Scottish landlords had been dominant, with Roman Catholics - a majority among the Irish - prevented from acquiring land. The landlords raised their rent, and when an agricultural depression began in the 1870s those rents remained. Many tenant farmers were evicted and became homeless. In response a movement grew that sought reduced power for the landlords and freedom for Catholics to own land. Also in the 1870s a Home Rule movement arose mainly among the mainly middleclass Irish of Dublin. It sought something less than full independence - a return of an Irish parliament with the power to decide domestic issues while Parliament in England continued to decide foreign policy.
A Land League formed that appealed to Irish nationalism and aimed at more rights for tenant farmers and reduced evictions. The Land League boycotted peasants who moved onto lands where tenant farmers had been evicted, trying to force the new tenant to leave and deny the landlord new rent. This created violence and became known as the Land War.
Britain's parliament created rent controls, which lowered rents for many of Irish by 20 percent but did not help the more impoverished farmers, and the violence and the struggle for more rights and reduced evictions for tenants continued.
The leader of the Liberal Party, William Gladstone, committed the party to Home Rule for the Irish, while some in the Liberal Party and the Conservative Party remained opposed to Home Rule. The House of Lords killed the Home Rule bill, believing it would weaken the United Kingdom and encourage others in the empire to seek to break away.
Protestants in northern Ireland remained anti-Catholic and passionately in favor of union with Britain - 50 people having been killed in Belfast alone in 1886, while many Catholic Irish remained against anything less than complete independence and for independence of all of Ireland. A division remained in Ireland between nationalists in the countryside and people in Ireland's major city, Dublin. Many in Dublin looked upon the land movement as something for peasants, and nationalists from the countryside entered Dublin to promote their cause with rallies, pretending to be locals and committing violence against opponents.
Recommended Books
Empire: The British Experience from 1765 to the Present, by Denis Judd.
European imperialism in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, by Woodruff D Smith, 1982.
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