49. BRITISH FOREIGN POLICY IN AFRICA AND AMERICA. At the outbreak of the European War the British possessions in Africa amounted to a total of 2,100,000 square miles. On 5 Nov. 1914 Great Britain declared war on Turkey, and on 17 December the Turk ish suzerainty over Egypt was ended. By this stroke Great Britain annexed Egypt, the Sudan and the Libyan desert, adding a matter of 1,600,000 square miles to the British empire. These three territories, though administered by England since 1882 in the case of Egypt and 1898 in that of the Sudan, had never been Brit ish possessions. They stood under Turkish suzerainty with a native prince (khedive) as ruler, assisted by a staff of British officials. France owns 3,866,950 square miles of Africa, but of this at least 1,500,000 square miles is her share of the great Sahara Desert. Great Britain, on the other hand, holds 3,701,411 square miles, most of it situated in the choicest regions of the Dark Continent. The German African colonies captured by the Allies during the war are not considered here.
Leaving out of account the Gold Coast (80,000 square miles), Sierra Leone (31,000 square miles) and Gambia (4,500 square miles), all situated on the West Coast and ceded to England by treaties in 1672, 1787 and 1807 re spectively, it has taken Great Britain exactly 100 years to create her gigantic African empire — from the Treaty of Paris in 1814 to Decem ber 1914. With the signing• of that treaty, by which also British Guiana was ceded to her, Great Britain completed the structure of her dominions on and about the American Conti nents — Canada, West Indies, Falklands, etc.
To return to Africa. It is customary at the erection of all stately edifices to lay first a foundation and then to proceed with the super structure according to some well-defined plan, design or policy. A study of British policy in Africa cannot but lead the student to the con clusion that policy—in the sense of adesign°— is an almost negligible quantity. This assertion, however, may not apply so strictly to more re cent years. It seems rather that a concatenation of fortuitous circumstances led or drove Great Britain into acquiring or annexing huge terri tories than that there existed any inherent de sire to do so. Over and over again we find successive governments hesitating — almost trembling— on the brink of some colonial ad venture; a desire to °cut and and finally pushed by events or individuals into the very act they dreaded and hoped to avoid. India was conquered by a private trading company; Canada dropped into England's lap as the re sult of one battle; and Australia became British mainly because no one else came along to pick it up; the North American Colonies were estab lished by private enterprise and lost again only through government bungling. The position of Great Britain in Egypt to-day is due simply to the defection of France in 1882. Both nations — at the instigation of France — sent warsht to Alexandria with the object of crushing e Arabi Pasha rebellion and of restoring the au thority of the Khedive Tewfik Pasha. At the
eleventh hour France backed out and left the British fleet to carry out the task alone. British troops crushed the revolt and England was left to face the alternatives of either leaving the country in a state of chaos or remaining to set its affairs— especially the finances — in order. Only six years before England had become the chief proprietor of the Suez Canal by the pur chase of the khedive's shares for $20,000,000. This master stroke, again, was due to private initiative, and not to any intention on part of the government. The late Frederick Green editor of the London Pall Mall Gazette, was e man who worried Lord Derby and Lord Beaconsfield to such an extent that the latter sent his secretary late at night to ask Lord Rothschild to advance the money, and next morning the shares were British property. The armed intervention in 1882 was due in a large measure to the correspondence of the late Mr. C. F. Moberly Bell (q.v.), then Times represen tative in Egypt. In both these far-reaching events the government was unwillingly prodded into activity by private individuals. In South Africa, again, we observe the gigantic figure of Cecil Rhodes, the founder of Rhodesia, the man who, without any official sanction, dreamed the vision of British, from Cairo to the Cape.* With the aid of his able lieutenant, Dr. Jameson, he organized and financed the so-called Raid" into the South African Re public in 1895. Four years later this ill-starred exploit brought on the Boer War, in which it took Great Britain nearly three years and 250, 000 men to achieve what Rhodes and Jameson hoped to accomplish in a few days with 500 men. After the Majuba Hill disaster of 1:.:1 the British government accepted defeat and "scuttled" in alarm, thereby laying up a store of future trouble that was not ended till 21 years later by the Peace of Vereeniging. Great Britain had fought expensive wars against the Kaffirs to save the whites from extinction in 1811, 1818, 1829, 1835, 1846, 1851 and the Zulu War of 1879. She also fought the Matabeles and Bechuanas, instilled respect for the white man among the natives, and consummated her civilizing mission by insuring political stability and peace in that part of the world with the Union of South Africa in 1910. Here, as well as in the Sudan and on the Slave Coast, where the hand of Great Britain once fell heavily, in flicting painful wounds, that same hand has also known how to heal and uplift after the drastic ordeal of correction. The Mandi and Khalif a horrors of the Sudan were swept away in two days by fire and sword; in the city where Gor don fell there is now a university for the peo ple; the human sacrifices and blood orgies of Benin and the slavery atrocities of Ashantee are now things of the past: peace and industries now reign in their stead.