Ever since the first year of the 19th century, when Britain expelled the French from Egypt, she herself had longings to assume the control of that country. One reason for this desire was very clear: across Egypt lay the shortest sea route to India. Even without the Suez Canal, a day’s journey on a railway or three days’ journey by canal and carriage would transfer one from Alexandria on the Mediterranean to Suez on the Red Sea. Two hundred and thirty-four years ago, in the reign of Louis XIV, and one hundred and fourteen years ago, in the dawning empire of Napoleon Bonaparte, when steam was unknown as a motive power, the idea was conceived and born that Egypt controlled the back door, the garden gate of India. But when steam came into vogue on the sea, and later on the land, and people contrasted the saving of time the Egyptian route offered, compared with the weary three months’ voyage round the Cape, it became apparent to British statesmen, that British influence must have full play if not exclusive control in Egypt.

Subsequent on the withdrawal of the French, a simple major of artillery from European Turkey—Muhammad Ali—had suddenly risen to power by procedure which was faithfully copied 80 years afterwards by Arābi Pasha. He had inspired such energy and bravery into the military forces of Egypt that in 1806-7 his soldiers defeated a British force which landed at Alexandria and Rosetta, and attempted to take possession of the country. Thus was staved off for 76 years the British occupation of Egypt, an occupation which in 1806 would have been far more rapidly converted into annexation than it could possibly be at the present day^[192].

Britain respected Muhammad Ali’s sturdy resistance, and although she opposed his attempt to conquer the Turkish Empire, and—in opposition to the foolish encouragement he received from France—seemed at one time his enemy, she nevertheless saved him from downfall, and assisted him to establish a dynasty in Egypt which has ruled, directly or indirectly, for a century. Still, knowing British hankerings, the Tsar Nicholas I offered Egypt and Crete to Britain a short time prior to the Crimean War in return for a free hand at Constantinople. Great Britain declined, dreading to see Russia, with a new base at Constantinople and the locked Black Sea behind her, becoming the strongest Power in the Eastern Mediterranean. Then came the making of the Suez Canal by Ferdinand de Lesseps, the influence of which, however, was somewhat counteracted by the fact that all the Egyptian railways were British. Nevertheless, British influence never stood so low in Egypt as at the opening of the Canal, when the heir to the British Crown was lost amid a galaxy of reigning sovereigns headed by the effulgence of the Empress of the French. But although French influence had grown so strong in Egypt, the French Government did not—overtly at any rate—strive for more than an equal voice with England in the affairs of Egypt, partly owing to a feeling of loyalty to the British alliance, which Napoleon III displayed whenever he could, and, later, to the enfeeblement of France after the German War. In 1871 something like a thousand British steamers passed through the Suez Canal, the enormous importance of which became so apparent that in 1875 the British Government purchased the Canal Shares held by the Khedive of Egypt, and thus became a controlling factor in the Canal Company.

For between 1862 and 1877, Egypt had been ruined and reduced to bankruptcy by a reckless borrowing of money on the part of her native ruler, the Khedive Ismail. This prince at great cost purchased his country’s practical freedom from Turkish control; indeed, by 1873, he was virtually an independent sovereign. He extended Egyptian rule into Equatorial Africa, reorganized his customs’ service, carried through important public works; but he also built palaces in profusion, and was guilty of needless extravagance and waste. As the result of Egyptian bankruptcy, there came into existence in 1877 the Dual Control of Britain and France over Egyptian finances. Ismail instigated a rebellion against this interference with his government and was deposed in 1879 by the Sultan of Turkey. The Dual Control was re-established (Lord Cromer, then Major Evelyn Baring, being one of the controllers) under the new Khedive Taufik; but in 1881 occurred the revolt of the army headed by Colonel Ahmed Arābi. France under the influence of Gambetta pursued the same policy as Britain, namely, the delivering of verbal warnings at intervals without the display of force. At last, in June 1882, there was a riot and a massacre of Christians at Alexandria. When the British fleet prepared to take action the French withdrew, a hostile vote of the Chamber having dissolved the Dual Control. Britain then intervened in Egypt against Arābi’s revolt, bombarded the port of Alexandria (July 11, 1882), and seized the Suez Canal. Lord Wolseley, of Ashanti fame, fought the battle of Tel-el-Kebir, occupied Cairo (September 15), and reconquered the country for the Khedive. When this had been done, the British Government was in a dilemma. Had it, say some, on the capture of Cairo, declared Egypt to be a British protectorate outright, it would have only done what all the Powers of Europe expected. On the other hand, this bold step would have meant the tearing up of treaties and the partitioning of the Turkish Empire. Perhaps this might have been got over by direct negotiation with the Sultan and assurances of the continuance or composition of the tribute.

From about 1853 an interest was taken in the development of the Sudan by the British Government. A Glamorganshire mining engineer, John Petherick, after his contract of service with the Egyptian Government was over, established himself at Khartum as an ivory trader and was made British Consular Agent. In the sixties the journeys and explorations of Speke and Grant, and of Sir Samuel and Lady Baker, brought the Egyptian Sudan prominently into notice. In 1869 Sir Samuel Baker was made Egyptian Governor of the Equatorial Province (Gondokoro to the Albert Nyanza). In 1874 he was succeeded by Colonel Charles George Gordon, who became Governor-General over the entire Egyptian Sudan in 1877. Between 1877 and 1879 Gordon devoted himself, with the Italian Romolo Gessi as lieutenant, to the defeat and suppression of the “Nubian” or “Bazinger” slave-traders and raiders on the Bahr-al-Ghazal and Darfur. Unsuccessful wars of conquest against Abyssinia took place during the seventies, and equally unsuccessful attempts to secure the Mombasa coast and the kingdom of Uganda—attempts opposed by the British Government. Gordon was replaced by a Turk as Governor-General in 1880; and civilized rule over the Egyptian Sudan began to decline, though Emin Pasha (Eduard Schnitzer, a German of Silesia) ruled well and wisely over the Equatorial Provinces till about 1886.

In the autumn of 1882, the British Government was probably sincere in declaring its intention presently to evacuate Egypt; but it seemed as though fate had ordained that the British garrison should remain in that country. In 1881 the Mahdi’s revolt had broken out in the Sudan^[193]. In November 1883 Hicks Pasha’s force was cut to pieces in the wilds of Kordofan. General C. G. Gordon was sent to relieve and remove the garrisons, instead of doing which he remained at Khartum in the vain hope of restoring before he left it some kind of order to the country that he loved. An army under Viscount Wolseley was sent to rescue him. It arrived a few days too late, yet might even then have retaken Khartum and put down the revolt; but Russia was threatening to impinge on the borders of India, and Great Britain could not afford to lock up many soldiers in Central Africa. Not being able, therefore, to settle the Sudan question, the British were forced to remain in Egypt to prevent that country from being overrun by the Mahdists. An attempt was made in 1885-6 to negotiate terms of withdrawal with the Sultan, but the proposed convention was not ratified, owing to the opposition of France and Russia. Gradually, owing to the ability and truly British calm of the British Agent and Consul-General, Sir Evelyn Baring (who became Lord Cromer in 1892), the situation grew into a possible one. A moderate British garrison was retained. The Exchequer was placed under British control, as were public works, the administration of justice, the organization of the army, posts and telegraphs, and other departments where an infusion of order, honesty, and economy was necessary. The Khedive of Egypt continued to reign with British support and under British advice. In 1890 the conclusion of the Anglo-German agreement for delimiting the British and German spheres of influence in East, West, and Central Africa had secured from one European Power, at least, recognition of an eventual British control over the former Equatorial provinces of Egypt. From this event and from the contemplation of maps arose the idea of “the Cape to Cairo^[194]”; and British ministries began slowly to contemplate the reconquest of the Sudan. The Mahdists aided the growth of this resolve by their fatuous hostility and constant attacks on Suakin and on the Wadi Halfa boundary to the south of Egypt proper, behind which the Egyptian forces withdrew in 1885. In 1886 the Mahdists attempted to invade Egypt by following the Nile, but sustained a crushing defeat at the battle of Sarras. Three years later, again led by Wad-an-Nejumi the conqueror of Hicks Pasha and of Khartum, they were completely routed at Toski by Lord Grenfell, and Wad-an-Nejumi was killed. In 1894-5 the vicinity of Suakin was freed from these marauders and the eastern Sudan reconquered, Italy greatly aiding by her gallant capture of Kasalá^[195]. The terrible disaster which befell the Italian arms in Abyssinia in 1896 caused the British Government to press forward the conquest of the Sudan in order to distract the Dervishes from attacking the Italians. The Egyptian commander-in-chief—Sir Herbert Kitchener, now Lord Kitchener of Khartum—had thoroughly reorganized the native Egyptian army under British officers; and with this material and a small contingent of British troops he reconquered the province of Dongola during the summer of 1896. In 1897 (Battle of the Atbara) and the early part of 1898 the advance up the Nile valley was continued; and on the 2nd of September, 1898, occurred the decisive battle of Omdurman, in which a mixed army of British and Egyptian regiments, under Sir Herbert Kitchener, finally shattered the Khalifa’s power and avenged Gordon’s death. Anglo-Egyptian control was rapidly extended eastward to the Abyssinian frontier and southward to the Sobat river, but a half-expected obstacle came to light which imposed a temporary check on the southward advance towards Uganda. Major Marchand had reached Fashoda, near the confluence of the White Nile and the Bahr-al-Ghazal, and had hoisted the French flag over that abandoned Egyptian post. Before the determined attitude of Great Britain, France, after two months’ delay, withdrew Major Marchand, and later on in 1899 concluded with Great Britain a supplement to the Niger Convention (p. 222), by which, broadly speaking, the whole western Nile basin and Darfur were admitted to be an exclusively British “sphere of influence.” Although France had not yet specifically recognized the peculiar position of Great Britain in Egypt, she had prepared the way for the Convention of 1904, in which this recognition was given in return for a similar acknowledgement of French interest in Morocco. This 1904 Convention definitely closed the long era of Anglo-French rivalry and diplomatic conflict in Egypt; and thenceforth the British met with no obstacle from any outside nation but Turkey in their task of reforming and rehabilitating the country of the Pharaohs. Turkey in 1906 attempted to withdraw the greater part of the Sinai peninsula from Egyptian rule, to bring Turkish posts down to the vicinity of the east bank of the Suez Canal, and to hold both shores of the Gulf of Akaba. It required a virtual ultimatum from Great Britain before Turkey would give way; and this crisis (which ended by the definite inclusion of all the Sinai Peninsula within the Egyptian dominions, while the Turks as definitely regained those former Egyptian posts in the land of Midian held by Egypt since 1832) gave occasion to the British Government to assign to the British occupation of Egypt a more definite and permanent character than it had hitherto been accorded in diplomatic documents.

But from this period (1906) onwards there was much “national” unrest in the towns of the Nile Delta, chiefly Cairo and Alexandria. The prosperity which Egypt was enjoying, the spread of a modern, European type of education, the downfall of Sultan Abd-al-Hamid in 1908, and the promise of a constitutionally governed, modernized Turkey, were conditions which caused the Muhammadan Egyptian townsfolk—mostly the professional classes—to think the time had come for the establishment of a completely constitutional régime in Egypt, coupled with a removal of British control and military occupancy. This movement had begun in 1892 with the accession of the young Khedive, Abbas Hilmi; but of late years the Khedive has dissociated himself from attacks on, or even coldness towards, the British occupation. His approximation to the British point of view was more apparent after the Earl of Cromer’s retirement in 1907. Sir John Gorst, Lord Cromer’s successor, sympathized to some extent with “nationalist” ideals, but he regarded the Christian Copt as being just as much an Egyptian as the Muhammadan Arab, Egyptian or Turk. Copts were enabled to rise high in the public service of Egypt. In 1908 a Copt—Boutros Pasha—became Prime Minister of the Khedive’s Government. Christian ministers of state—Armenians, Copts, Levantines—were no novelty in Egypt; but the idea was most repellent to the aggressive “Pan-Islamism” of the Muhammadan “nationalists,” and the excitations of the Nationalist Press excited a student, Al Wardani, to murder Boutros Pasha in February 1910—an event which so deeply affected Sir John Gorst (a sincere friend towards real “nationalism” in Egypt) that he contracted an illness which caused his death a year later. Viscount Kitchener of Khartum succeeded him as British representative in Egypt. In 1911-12 the “nationalist” agitation was resumed, and a plot was arranged for the nearly simultaneous assassination of the Khedive, Lord Kitchener, and the Egyptian Premier. It must be remembered by all who are disposed to sympathize with the growth and achievement of nationalism that Egypt contains, in addition to some 10,500,000 Muhammadans (only about 5 per cent. of whom are literates), a million Christians of Egyptian and of European race, who represent—for the most part—the brains and wealth of the country. Until this important minority is regarded by the Nationalist party as equally entitled to full Egyptian citizenship, until the Muhammadanism of Egypt sheds its intense fanaticism and its contempt for science, sanitation, for ancient history and modern learning, the British Government in its capacity of guardian over the land of the Pharaohs, the land of deathless history which the Arab, Turk, and Circassian have done so much to destroy and deface, is right in withstanding a movement which is not strictly national, in the Egyptian sense, but a revival of Islamic intolerance and civic dishonesty.

The Anglo-French Convention of 1904 having accorded a limited but distinct recognition on the part of France to the British control over the Egyptian Khediviate, various important reforms in finance and administration followed, and the way was paved for the abolition of the capitulations, of the last vestiges of mistrust felt by Europe for the tribunals of a Muhammadan nation. Since 1876, the separate consular courts in Egypt had been done away with in favour of the mixed tribunals on which were conferred the powers formerly attributed to the consular courts and which now try all civil and criminal cases in which foreigners are concerned. These foreign tribunals may be succeeded in time by national Egyptian courts. At any rate, the Anglo-French agreement of 1904 tends in that direction. Owing to this agreement Egypt is now allowed to apply her surplus, after the service of the Funded Debt has been provided for, to any purposes she may deem advisable in the interests of the country, either for the extension of public works or the diminution of taxation. Prior to the facilities accorded by this agreement, however, the Earl of Cromer (the creator of modern Egypt) had, with the financial assistance of Sir Ernest Cassel and the engineering skill of Sir William Willcocks and others, commenced those great irrigation works above Assuan which will triple the productive capabilities of Lower Egypt and proportionately increase the prosperity of the Khedive’s country. Under the British control (since 1882) the Funded Debt has been diminished by 12 millions sterling; taxation has been greatly reduced, yet the revenue has increased by 4 millions of pounds; the total trade of Egypt has more than doubled; and the population has risen from 6,832,000 in 1882 to nearly 12,000,000 in 1912. Forced labour has been abolished; the position of the peasantry has been enormously improved; twice the former area of land is cultivated and under cultivation; and the boundaries of the country have been definitely extended to the frontier of Syria and to the Cyrenaica.

In the Sudan great changes followed the victories of Lord Kitchener in 1898. A convention with Egypt in January 1899 determined the constitution of the, henceforth, Anglo-Egyptian-Sudan south of Wadi Halfa. This was to be a joint dominion of Britain and Egypt. The Governor-General was to be selected by the British Government and appointed by the Khedive. By a stroke of the pen the cumbersome system of Consular or Mixed Tribunal Courts which had formerly existed in the Egyptian Sudan was abolished and the direct jurisdiction of the Anglo-Egyptian Government substituted. By 1900, the reconquest of the Egyptian Sudan, begun in 1896, had been effectually completed. In November 1899, after Lord Kitchener had been despatched to South Africa, his successor in the Sudan, Sir Reginald Wingate, pursued the fugitive Khalifa into the recesses of Kordofan; and this successor of the Mahdi lost his life on the field of battle of Om Dubreikat, on November 25, 1899. Osman Digna, the other great Dervish leader, was taken prisoner in the Tokar hills near Suakin on January 19, 1900. Gradually in the succeeding years the boundaries of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan were adjusted with Abyssinia. Darfur remains a semi-independent kingdom, accepting somewhat grudgingly an Anglo-Egyptian suzerainty. The region of the Bahr-al-Ghazal was occupied by the Sudan Government in pursuance of the claims of Egypt over this region and in opposition to the aspirations of the King-Sovereign of the Congo State, who at one period (1894) had received permission from the British, without prejudice to the dormant claims of Egypt, to exercise control over this region. The King did not take immediate advantage of this opportunity; and in the interval Egypt had revived her claims to the original dominions of the Egyptian Sudan after the shattering of the Khalifa’s forces at Omdurman. But, although the Congo State was not allowed to exercise authority over the Bahr-al-Ghazal, it maintained its sway in the smaller Lado enclave between the Congo frontier and the western bank of the White or Mountain Nile by a lease which terminated at the death of Leopold II in 1909, when the Lado enclave passed under the control of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan Government in 1910.

Apart from the Arabs, the British have had but little trouble in imposing their supervising rule over the natives of the Sudan, the government of which is directed from Khartum. The only tribe that adopted a hostile attitude towards the British, prior to 1904, was a section of the Dinka people between the Mountain or White Nile on the west and the affluents of the Sobat on the east. But in the autumn of 1904 a strong expedition had to be directed against the powerful Nyamnyam tribes of the Western Bahr-al-Ghazal. This people, armed with about 20,000 modern rifles obtained by purchase or pillage from the Belgian stations, was disposed to question the “Pax Sudanica” and to resume its former slave raids. In 1903, another Mahdi—a Tunisian Arab—arose in Kordofan, but he was promptly captured and executed. In 1908, yet another fanatic, an Arab of the Halawi tribe in Sennar, declared himself to be Jesus Christ, returning to earth to expel the European from the Sudan. He murdered a British official but was caught soon afterwards and hanged for his crimes. In 1911-12 two expeditions were rendered necessary against the Annaks, a Nilotic negro tribe on the Sobat river. The Annaks had armed themselves with thousands of French rifles sold by French merchants on the frontiers of Abyssinia and passed on to the Annaks in trade by the Abyssinians. From this direction much more trouble may occur eventually.

A good deal of commercial development has taken place in the northern regions of the Egyptian Sudan and in Southern Egypt owing to the resumption of gold-mining operations which had been dormant since ancient Egyptian days, or at any rate since the Muhammadan conquest, and the great increase in cotton planting. The advance of the Sudan towards prosperity is only hampered by the present dearth of indigenous population. It has been computed that the Mahdi’s revolt and the Khalifa’s massacres must have cost the Sudan something like three millions of lives, this loss being entailed by direct massacre (at some places on the Nile 70,000 people—men, women, and children—were killed in the course of two or three days), by the unchecked spread of disease, by starvation owing to the destruction of crops and the neglect of agriculture, and by loss in battle against the Anglo-Egyptian forces. Efforts are being made by the enlightened administration which rules from Khartum to encourage agriculture and to educate the people. The Gordon College was founded at Khartum in 1899 with the special purpose of giving a practical and secular education to the Arabs and negroes of that dominion. One splendid feat, among others, due to British courage and tenacity of purpose was the cutting through the Sadd (as it is pronounced, or Sudd as it is ordinarily written), the dense growth of floating water vegetation which from time immemorial has blocked the courses of the Mountain Nile and its tributaries between Boz and the 6th degree of latitude, and the confluence of the Sobat. At intervals between 1871 and 1882 this sadd had completely barred the way to steamer or boat journeys between Khartum and the Equatorial provinces. The great work of cutting through the sadd was finally achieved under the direction of Sir William Garstin between 1899 and 1904 by Major Malcom Peake, Lieut. Drury, R.N., and Major G. E. Matthews. Since that time the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan has been completely linked up by a steamer mail service with the British Protectorate of Uganda.

The area of this vast dominion, between Wadi Halfa on the north, Gondokoro and the 5th degree of latitude and the Nile-Congo-Shari waterparting on the south, is 984,520 square miles; yet the population is still only estimated at 2,600,000, though it is capable of supporting 50,000,000 black or brown men and is healthy in a few parts for Europeans.

Aden, at the south-west extremity of Arabia, was occupied by the Indian Government in 1839 in view of the opening up to steam-ships of the Egyptian route to India. To Aden were added in 1840, by treaties of purchase or exclusive influence, Zeila and Musha Island on the Somali coast, the island of Perim in 1858, and the island of Sokotra in 1876^[196]. Egypt in 1875 had annexed the coast of Somaliland opposite Aden, with the exception of the French post of Obok. When the Egyptian dominion of the Sudan collapsed, it was necessary to our interests that the Somali coast opposite Aden should not come under the influence of another European power; so a British protectorate was established there (1884-89) by accord with France and Italy, France extending her Obok territory to meet the British Somali Protectorate, while the town of Harrar in the interior, which was likely to be a bone of contention, was transferred to Abyssinia together with a small adjoining piece of territory in 1897.

In 1898, a considerable slice off the south-west portion of British Somaliland was surrendered to the Empire of Ethiopia (Abyssinia) by the Rennell Rodd agreement made in 1897. The Italians between 1889 and 1892 had acquired rights over all the sea-board east and south of British Somaliland, but, as time went on, the interior—never well disposed towards Europeans—became disturbed. The eastern and southern parts of this Protectorate were ravaged between 1899 and 1904, and again between 1908 and 1910, by a Somali leader, Muhammad bin Abdallah, called most inappropriately the Mad Mullah. This man—a native of southern Ogadein Somaliland—appears at first to have been the exponent of legitimate grievances on the part of some of the coast Somalis. The British administration of Somaliland during the close of the 19th century was not fortunate in its dealings with a turbulent and fickle people. Some of the earlier officials seemed to be more interested in the hunting of big game than in acquiring knowledge as to the predilections, traditions, and general affairs of the Somali tribes under their government. Gradually Somali opinion grew restless under restrictions which were seemingly not backed by adequate force, and leant towards the side of their national leader, the Mullah. The latter attacked successfully those tribes on the coast which remained faithful to the British rule. A succession of expeditions against the Mullah culminated in an elaborate and expensive campaign conducted by the British War Office in 1903-4. The Mullah was repeatedly driven into Italian territory, and the permission of Italy was obtained to use the coast of Italian Somaliland as a fresh base of operations against the Somalis. Somewhat dubious and half-hearted assistance was also supposed to be rendered by Abyssinia. As the result of these operations, the Mullah and his forces were repeatedly defeated (after more than one disaster had happened to the British troops), and he was driven out of British territory into the no-man’s-land in dispute between Italy and Ethiopia. Between 1905 and 1908, there was peace, the Mullah being content to settle down under Italian supervision. Then he broke out again and finally attacked the tribes under British protection. Previous Somali wars (1900-4) having cost the British government the lives of many British officers and negro and Indian soldiers, besides over two million sterling expended in maintaining armies of 7000 men, it was decided to leave the interior of British Somaliland—a barren and sparsely inhabited region—alone, and confine the British occupation to the coast towns. This decision was carried into effect in 1910. The Mullah Muhammad bin Abdallah is still at large, but the interior tribes are gradually asserting themselves against him. The area of the Protectorate is about 68,000 square miles. Prior to 1902, this territory, alone amongst the British Protectorates in Africa (excepting Zanzibar), paid its own way without a subsidy, the revenue being derived from the considerable receipts at the Customs Houses. Unfortunately, the war destroyed so much in the way of live-stock as to make it difficult for years to come for Somaliland to recover the partial prosperity it enjoyed in earlier days. But nevertheless considerable towns are springing up on the coast-line, where they can be easily defended by garrisons of Indian troops and Somali police.

After the Portuguese had been expelled by the Arabs from Zanzibar and Mombasa, all the East coast of Africa from Somaliland to the Ruvuma river came under the control of the Imam of Maskat, who usually deputed a brother or some other relation to be his viceroy at Zanzibar. Owing to internecine quarrels which arose in the princely family of Maskat, the British Government intervened in 1861, and definitely separated the Sultanate of Zanzibar from the Imamate of ’Oman or Maskat. As the French were beginning to take a keen interest in the affairs of Zanzibar and Maskat, the British Government at that time (1863) concluded a treaty with the French Empire by which both powers bound themselves to respect the independence of Zanzibar and Maskat. Many years previously, in 1824, a Lieutenant Reitz, by the orders of Captain W. F. W. Owen, had hoisted the British flag at Mombasa, and had endeavoured to occupy that town for the East India Company, but his action was disallowed. Nevertheless, British influence at Zanzibar grew very strong through the Political Agent whom we established at the court of the Sayyid or representative of the Imam of Maskat (known later as the Sultan of Zanzibar)^[197], and the powerful squadron of cruisers which were maintained in Zanzibar waters to put down the slave trade. In 1866 Dr, afterwards Sir John, Kirk, who had been Livingstone’s second in command on the Zambezi, was appointed Vice-Consul and gradually rose to be Consul and then Political Agent and Consul-General. He threw himself zealously into the task of suppressing the Zanzibar slave trade, which had become an outrage on humanity. The British Government supported him; and in 1873 Sir Bartle Frere was sent to Zanzibar to negotiate a treaty with the Sultan.

The Sultan (Barghash) was recalcitrant, and even went to the length of offering his territory to France. Finally, however, before a threatened British bombardment could take place or the French squadron arrive, Sir John Kirk had persuaded the Sultan to sign the treaty, after which Sayyid Barghash bin Said resolved to visit England, which he did in 1874. It is said that even at that date he had some idea of invoking German protection, provided he were allowed to tear up the slave-trade treaty. However, the wisdom and tact of Sir John Kirk did wonders for British influence at Zanzibar; and in 1876 the Sultan offered the lease of nearly all his continental territories to Mr, afterwards Sir William, Mackinnon, the chairman of the British India Steam Navigation Company. But Mr Mackinnon was an over-cautious man. Instead of accepting, and then forcing the hand of the British Government, he refused to take the Sultan’s concession unless he could first obtain a British guarantee, an action to which the Government was naturally unwilling to commit itself. In 1881 Sir John Kirk thought of another plan, that of inducing the Sultan to employ capable Britons, who would develop his territories as governors or commissioners. He secured the services of Mr Joseph Thomson to develop the resources of the Ruvuma Province, an appointment which might have effectually prevented any future German intervention; but Mr Joseph Thomson was too pessimistic and perhaps shortsighted. The country seemed to him poor in resources, though it has long since been shown to be more productive than he thought. He bluntly told the Sultan so and therefore was relieved of his appointment. In 1883 Sir John Kirk returned from England, having induced the Government to appoint a number of salaried vice-consuls at various points in the Sultan’s territories. It must be noted that at this period a very large proportion of the Zanzibar trade was in the hands of British subjects, natives of British India.

In 1882-4 took place the remarkable exploring journey of Mr Joseph Thomson under the auspices of the Royal Geographical Society. Thomson travelled from Mombasa to the verge of Busoga, on the north coast of the Victoria Nyanza, and revealed all the most striking features of British East Africa. Sir John Kirk had also about the same time entered into friendly relations with Mandara, a chief on Mt Kilima-njaro, and had urged the sending out of a scientific expedition, to the leadership of which Mr H. H. Johnston was appointed in 1884, in order to explore that mountain. After some months’ stay on Kilima-njaro Mr Johnston reported the great advantages this region possessed as a sanatorium, and, while waiting for instructions from Sir John Kirk, concluded treaties with several chiefs. The response of the British government was favourable to the establishment of British interests in this direction; but various obstacles arose which required consideration, amongst others the remembrance of the 1862 agreement with France. Another European power, however, was bound by no such agreement, and had no such scruples, as will be related in Chapter XIV. Although Mr Johnston’s treaties with Chaga (South Kilima-njaro) and Taveita (the eastern slopes) proved the basis on which the British East Africa Company was eventually founded, the actual mountain district of Kilima-njaro finally fell to Germany. By 1885, the British Government had more or less indicated to Germany that portion of the Zanzibar dominions which must come under British influence if there was to be a division of those territories; and after several years of diplomatic conflict, the whole question was settled with fairness to both parties by the 1890 Convention between Great Britain and Germany, and by a secondary agreement with France, which definitely allotted to Great Britain the northern half of the Sultan of Zanzibar’s dominions, the islands of Zanzibar and Pemba, and a sphere of influence in the interior which included Uganda and Lake Albert Nyanza.

The British East Africa Company, organized in 1886, was chartered in 1888, and undertook the government of the vast territories lying between the Mombasa coast and the Victoria Nyanza. For the first two years things went smoothly. The company possessed a capable administrator, Mr (afterwards Sir) George Mackenzie, who solved the slavery difficulty by redeeming the slaves of the Arab gentry and then setting them free. This no doubt prevented the coast Arabs from attacking the British régime at a time when they had nearly destroyed that of Germany in the regions farther south.

But the Imperial British East Africa company had undertaken a task far too great for its resources in capital. It was expected by the people and government of Great Britain to maintain and defend British interests over a vast hinterland. The country of Uganda^[198], on the north-west of this greatest of African lakes, had been allotted to the British sphere by the German Convention; but unfortunately for British interests the country had been entered by French Roman Catholic missionaries of Cardinal Lavigerie’s White Fathers’ mission (cf. pp. 245-6), who were such ardent Frenchmen that they rather forgot the religious purpose for which they had come, and fomented serious quarrels between the king and the Protestant missionaries who had preceded them. The great King Mtesa died in 1884, peevish and disgusted with the missionary disputes and religious recriminations that buzzed in his ears, and longing for the old, easy, pagan life he had led before pressing Stanley (p. 326) to send him Christian teachers. After his death, the Arab party prejudiced his son Mwanga against the Christian foreigners and native converts. Bishop Hannington, of the Church Missionary Society, newly appointed to East Equatorial Africa, persisted in entering Uganda along Mr Thomson’s route by what the king called the “back way.” Frightened lest the bishop might be coming to take the country by the methods which the Germans had employed farther south, the king ordered him to be murdered in Busoga, not far from the Victoria Nile. Soon after this, the missionaries, Protestants and Catholics, were expelled from Uganda. Then later on there was a Muhammadan revolt, which drove Mwanga flying. He took refuge with the Catholic missionaries at the south end of the lake, and became a Christian. He was restored to his throne by the aid of Mr Stokes, who was afterwards hanged by Major Lothaire (p. 347). Then the French missionaries got control over the king, and attempted to prevent the country from becoming a British protectorate—if it could not be French, at any rate let it be German; and Dr Peters arriving on the scene strove to make it German; but his efforts were annulled by the 1890 Convention. After this, to prevent the country from falling under the sway of the Muhammadans, who might have joined the Mahdists or become French, the British East Africa Company was obliged by public opinion to intervene, although it did not possess sufficient funds to administer such an expensive empire. Captain, now General Sir Frederick, Lugard not long returned from the Arab war in Nyasaland, was sent there as their agent in 1890-1, and in an exceedingly able and courageous manner restored order, obtaining from the king a treaty with the Company, and putting down revolts of the Roman Catholic Christians and of the Muhammadans. But the East Africa Company was obliged to appeal to the British Government to come to its assistance lest Uganda should swallow up all its resources. The late Sir Gerald Portal, Agent and Consul-General at Zanzibar, was sent to Uganda to report on the advisability and the means of retaining this country under British influence. Unhappily, he died soon after his return to England in 1894, but his report led to the establishment of a British protectorate. Through the intervention of the Pope, some appeasement of bitterness was obtained in regard to the White Fathers’ mission, whose field of work was bounded on the east by the Victoria Nile. A new Roman Catholic mission under Bishop Hanlon, an Irishman, supported by English, Irish and Dutch priests, has since carried on the conversion and teaching of the natives in the eastern half of the protectorate on harmonious terms with the British administration; though indeed since 1900 all bitterness of feeling between the White Fathers’ mission and the British officials or the native chiefs is completely at an end. The French missionaries were compensated in 1895 for the destruction of some of their stations in the civil war by a payment of £10,000.

After the withdrawal of Emin Pasha from his Equatorial province a number of his former Sudanese soldiers volunteered for employment in Uganda, and were eagerly recruited as a capable fighting force. But they were Muhammadans, and always inclined to intrigue against a Christian power. Added to this, Mwanga, the Kabaka or King of Buganda, was the most unstable of men, and an exceedingly bad character to boot. His vices and his cruelty had made him so hateful in the eyes of his subjects, that without British support he would probably have been deposed or killed. As it was, the presence of the British prevented this, but did not arrest his intrigues with that section of the populace which disliked European intervention. After an undecided behaviour which lasted several years he finally attempted to massacre a few of the British officers and missionaries, but was defeated, and fled across the German border. Then the Sudanese troops revolted, seized a fortress and some guns, and for nearly a year set the British and the loyal Baganda at defiance. Finally, a detachment of 450 Sikhs reached the country (a handful of these splendid soldiers had already enabled the European officers to face the Muhammadan mutineers), order was to some extent restored, and a determined effort was made to capture the truant king Mwanga and that aged scoundrel Kabarega, the King of Bunyoro, who has been justly hated by Europeans since Speke and Baker’s time^[199]. This capture was achieved by Colonel John Evatt in June, 1899. The British Government having decided that the military and civil organization of Uganda should now be settled definitely, decided in the same year to dispatch Sir Harry Johnston as a Special Commissioner to frame and inaugurate a suitable scheme of administration in these countries round the Nyanzas and the Upper Nile^[200].

Prior to these troubles, continual warfare was carried on for some years with the Bunyoro kingdom to the north, which was finally conquered and eventually annexed to the Protectorate. In these wars with Bunyoro (commencing with unprovoked hostilities on the part of Kabarega) Major A. B. Thurston greatly distinguished himself. This gallant officer and able linguist was afterwards killed by the mutineer Sudanese soldiers (1897). Major ‘Roddy’ Owen had hoisted the British flag at Wadelai, on the White Nile (in 1894), but this action was not confirmed by the British Government. Nevertheless, with the movement towards Khartum in prospect, and the eventual reconquest of the Sudan, it was decided to send out a well-equipped surveying expedition under Colonel (Sir) J. R. L. Macdonald which should explore thoroughly the lands between the Victoria Nyanza and the Mountain Nile. It was partly the demand that this expedition should be escorted by a Sudanese battalion which precipitated the mutiny of these discontented soldiers. Sir James Macdonald cooperated in breaking the chief resistance of these mutineers and then proceeded on an epoch-making survey which revealed new mountains, new lakes, new peoples and new languages, and laid the foundations of British influence on the northern part of the Uganda Protectorate.

The Special Commission of Sir Harry Johnston arrived in Uganda at the close of 1899, when the Sudanese mutiny and other troubles were nearly over. As the results of this Special Commission the boundaries of the Uganda Protectorate were carried northward to Gondokoro on the Mountain Nile, to the 5th degree of N. latitude and to Lake Rudolf; the state of Ankole on the south-west was also included up to the German frontier. A definite constitution was given to the kingdom of Buganda. The native ruler of Buganda received the title of His Highness the Kabaka^[201]; the native Parliament or Lukiko was recognized; and the kingdom was divided into a number of administrative counties. A land settlement was arrived at, by which at least half of the land of the kingdom of Buganda was secured to native owners. Settlements somewhat similar to that effected in the province or kingdom of Buganda have been carried out in the adjoining provinces of Ankole, Toro, and Bunyoro. In 1903, the Eastern (Masai) province was transferred to the administration of the adjoining East African Protectorate, thus reducing the total area of the Uganda Protectorate at the present day to 117,681 square miles, with a population—almost entirely negroes—of about 2,900,000 (650 Europeans).

In the summer of 1901 a new portent appeared in Uganda—the terrible disease known as sleeping sickness. This is a malady caused by the injection into the human system through the proboscis of a Tsetse fly of trypanosome animalcules which after swarming in the blood reach the spinal marrow and then kill the patient—negro or European. This terrible disease, which has existed for centuries in West Africa, penetrated from the Congo forest into Uganda in 1901-2 and killed many thousands of the natives year after year along the shores and islands of the Victoria Nyanza. It is being carefully studied with a view to its extirpation.

After the Zanzibar Sultanate had been placed under British protection it was necessary to reorganize its administration. The islands of Zanzibar and Pemba remained under the more or less direct rule of the Sultan, who, however, appointed English ministers to control the various departments of state, and was at the same time subject to the advice and financial control of the British Agent and Consul-General. Several Sultans succeeded one another and died in a few years; and on the occasion of the death of Sultan Hamid bin Thwain (1896) a palace revolt occurred, occasioned by a disappointed claimant to the throne. This revolt, however, was really a premature outbreak on the part of the Arab party, who frankly disliked British interference which entailed the abolition of the slave trade and even the disappearance of slavery, and were sufficiently foolish to imagine that they were strong enough to resist a European nation. A few hours’ bombardment of the Sultan’s head-quarters quelled this rebellion. Since that time, by degrees, and with a wise system of gradation, slavery is being abolished, and will soon cease to exist as a recognized status. In 1911 the young Sultan of Zanzibar (Ali bin Hamūd) abdicated for reasons of health; and his son, Sū’id bin Ali, was proclaimed under a regency, the Regent-and-First Minister being a British official. Between 1903-5 there was considerable local dissatisfaction with the methods of government employed in Zanzibar, and a deputation of Zanzibaris came to London to make representations on the subject; but since reforms were instituted in 1906 the people of Zanzibar and Pemba have been quiet and prosperous. The total area of these two islands is 1020 square miles and the population (200,000) mainly negro, with about 10,000 Arabs, 10,000 Indians, and 300 Europeans. Zanzibar Island is a great rendezvous for shipping and is the head-quarters of a great ocean cable company; apart from this, it produces cloves and other tropical vegetable products, and Pemba is rich in cattle.

On the mainland between the Umba river and Mombasa on the south and the Juba river and Somaliland on the north, the Imperial British East Africa Company continued to rule until 1894. But as soon as the British Government had undertaken to govern Uganda as a Protectorate (1894) it was evident that the company’s rule over the intervening district from Kikuyu to the coast could not continue. Accordingly in 1894 the company’s charter was annulled and they were compensated with £450,000. On July 1, 1895, Sir Arthur Hardinge took over the administration of the British East Africa Protectorate.

The new administration had scarcely been installed on the Mombasa coast than it found itself obliged to deal with the question of the Mazrui Arabs. It has been mentioned elsewhere in this work that early in the 18th century the Arab power on the coast between the Rufu River on the south and Malindi on the north was exercised nominally on behalf of the Imam of Maskat by an Arab family known as the Mazrui. Various explanations are given of this name and of the origin of this clan, some deriving them from an old colony of Egyptian Arabs (Masr is the Arab name for Egypt); but more probably they came from Southern Arabia, or even from Oman, prior to the arrival of the Portuguese, who dispossessed them for a time. In the 17th century they had made common cause with the Arabs of Oman in attacking and expelling the Portuguese, but, when it came to their accepting the Imam of Maskat as their sovereign lord, they usually evaded the direct issue by partial compliance. In the early part of the 19th century they had defied the representative of the Imam at Zanzibar and had attempted to place Mombasa under British protection. During the latter part of the 19th century the Sultan of Zanzibar, backed by Sir John Kirk, had asserted Zanzibar rule over the coast strip as far north as Somaliland. He held, indeed, all the principal ports of what is now Italian Somaliland, as well as Lamu, Malindi, and Mombasa. In the hinterland of Lamu was another semi-independent Arab Sultanate, that of Vitu, on the Ozi River; while the Mazrui clan between Mombasa and the German frontier was represented by a line of Sultans usually called Sidi Mubarak or Mbaruk (Sidi means lord, the rest of the name is a varying form of the Arab word for blessing). The Germans in their dealings with East Africa had early appreciated the dissidence between the Sultan of Zanzibar and the independent Arab powers on the mainland; and, when Germany and Britain were striving in the eighties for an East African dominion, Germany had recognized the independence of the Sultanate of Vitu. By the 1890 agreement Vitu was transferred to the protectorate of Great Britain, much against its will. It was a country rendered inaccessible by an extravagant growth of forest nourished by the delta of the Rivers Ozi and Tana, but was nevertheless captured in the late autumn of 1890 by a naval expedition under Admiral Sir E. Fremantle, to punish the Sultan for resuming the trade in slaves and ordering a party of German timber-cutters to be massacred. A little further action on behalf of British officials resulted in the tranquillity of this small state being re-established with a reasonable degree of self-government.

Sir Arthur Hardinge, on assuming the control of British East Africa, found that he had first of all to fight a long war of skirmishes, ambushes, and repelled raids, against the Sultan Mubarak, whose strongholds were a series of small Arab towns in the hinterland regions, south-west of Mombasa. This difficulty was not finally disposed of till the following year, 1896, when Mubarak after several defeats inflicted on him by the negro and Indian troops of the British, took refuge on German territory. Since that time there has been no further difficulty with the Arabs in this part of East Africa.

The Masai of the East African hinterland, who, it was thought, would give the most serious trouble to any overruling power, very soon acquiesced in the idea of a British protectorate and have really been the allies of the British in many of their difficulties with recalcitrant tribes. In the Kikuyu forest country, which was once the western borderland of the East African Protectorate, a few police operations had to be carried out, as the industrious Kikuyu people, suspicious after many years of raiding by the Masai, at first looked upon the white man as another enemy, and attacked British settlers or big-game hunters in the neighbourhood of their country.

In 1902-3, as already mentioned, the Protectorate of East Africa was extended over the eastern province of Uganda up to the shores of the Victoria Nyanza, the slopes of Mount Elgon, and the south-west coast of Lake Rudolf. On the south it was of course bounded by the Anglo-German frontier, which last was accurately defined between 1903-5. On the north, after long negotiations with Abyssinia, its boundaries were so drawn as to admit the Abyssinian Empire to the north-east corner of Lake Rudolf. From this point the East African boundary is drawn along the Goro escarpment to the Juba River, which it then follows down to the sea. The total area of the Protectorate is about 200,000 square miles, and the total population at the present day is guessed at 4,040,000^[202]. It consists mainly of negroes and negroids, the negroids being the result of ancient or modern intermixture between the Hamitic tribes of Ethiopia and Somaliland and the negroes of Equatorial Africa. The Gala, a handsome and interesting Hamitic people, displaying their kinship with the white man by their use of the plough, by their possession of a sex-denoting language, and by many other features, inhabit a portion of the northern parts of the Protectorate, coming as far south as the Tana River. In the north-east, on either side of the Jub or Juba River, are the Somali clans chiefly belonging to the group known as Ogadein. These southern Somalis are much mixed with negro blood, and are not such a handsome or Caucasian people as those of Northern Somaliland. Alike to the Italians and to the British—and perhaps even more markedly towards the British—they have shown themselves inimical from the very first. It will be remembered how cruelly they treated in older times the Portuguese Catholic missionaries who attempted to travel through their country into Abyssinia. Since 1896 they have murdered several British officials stationed at Kismayu, or other places in their territory; and punitory expeditions have been directed against them in 1898 and in 1901. This last expedition ended somewhat disastrously for the British arms, but was wisely not followed up by an expensive avenging campaign, as the country is not at present worth conquering, and is only inhabited by semi-nomad, warlike Somalis, who are, however, by the lure of commerce gradually settling down into a peaceable condition. In the Borān Gala country in the northernmost parts of the Protectorate, raids of Abyssinian soldiers take place from time to time and are particularly exasperating by the reckless damage which is done to the big game of the country. In this portion of East Africa the big game is being rapidly exterminated by the Abyssinians.

Big game, indeed, has been found to be one of the assets of this East African Protectorate. The writings of Joseph Thomson, H. H. Johnston, F. G. Jackson, Count Teleki, and Lieutenant Höhnel—explorers of this region between 1882 and 1888—revealed to the world the amazing wealth of mammalian life in this region, formerly so abundant as to rival in this respect the South Africa of the early 19th century. Not long after the definite establishment of a British administration, measures were taken to preserve this wonderful fauna from a too rapid extinction at the hands both of European and of native hunters; and game reserves were established.

But perhaps the most important feat performed by the British Government, and one which has irradiated good as an exemplar and as a transport agency over all East and Central Africa, was the building of the Uganda railway between 1897 and 1903. The railway commences at Mombasa, with another station at the great harbour of Kilindini on the south side of Mombasa Island, and pursues a course of 585 miles till it reaches the head of Kavirondo Gulf on the north-east of the Victoria Nyanza. Before long it will no doubt be extended through Kavirondo and Busoga till it attains the Victoria Nile and links up with railways which are being made from the birthplace of that river to the Albert Nyanza and Gondokoro. The Uganda railway, so early as the commencement of the 20th century, enabled European tourists and settlers to penetrate far into Eastern Africa, and thus brought to public notice what had for some time past been realised by a few individuals—the fact that a good deal of the interior of British East Africa is a high and healthy plateau, possessing a very good climate, a kind of mild, perpetual summer, but invigorating, genial, and sufficiently rainy to support an abundant vegetation, In British East Africa there are, in fact, scattered areas of relatively-uninhabited, healthy upland amounting in all to about 30,000 square miles, uninhabited at the beginning of the 20th century because the native population had either been dispersed or exterminated by intertribal wars and famines, or found the climate too cold and preferred the lower-lying lands. At one time there was a project of offering a region about the size of Wales, carved out of these plateaus, to the distressed Russian, Rumanian, and Galician Jews through the Jewish Territorial Organization Committee. But the offer was foolishly declined by that body, and it is most unlikely it will ever be renewed, for, no sooner was the South African War over, than Boer settlers to the number of 600 or 700 with their wives and families proceeded to this interior part of East Africa and began to take up land from the British Government. Before and subsequent to their arrival there came not a few British for the same purpose, and at the present day there is a settled white population in British East Africa numbering at least 2000. Without injustice to the indigenous peoples, there is no reason why some 30,000 square miles of East Africa should not be set aside for white settlement and nourish in course of time a sturdy population of three or four millions, which might prove to be a very potent factor in the politics of Equatorial Africa. It is not to be supposed that this region is without disease, but the disease arises not from the climate, but from the co-existence of black men with germs in their blood, and mosquitoes, ticks, and tsetse flies, whose odious purpose in life is to transfer these germs from the blood of one man to that of another. But the mosquito is often absent from both the high and the dry parts of East Africa, and in that case germ-diseases cannot be spread, or it is possible by cultivating the land to get rid of this and other pests. No doubt also in the plans which will be adopted for the eventual settlement of the whole country, some policy of segregation will be adopted, separating to a certain extent the colonies of the white man and of the British Indian. For, amongst other things which are happening as the result of the British development of East Africa, is the in-pouring of a number of British Indian colonists, and even of Persians; and this Asiatic population shows every sign of prospering. It would be more reasonable, however, to reserve for Asiatic colonization the vacant lands near the coast and in the more northern parts of the Protectorate, which are hot and low-lying, and therefore unsuited to European settlement, but which would be well adapted for the cultivation of cotton and grain crops and the rearing of cattle by agricultural colonies of Asiatics.