The historical dictionaries present essential information on a broad range of subjects,

including American and world history, art, business, cities, countries, cultures, customs,
film, global conflicts, international relations, literature, music, philosophy, religion,
sports, and theater. Written by experts, all contain highly informative introductory essays
of the topic and detailed chronologies that, in some cases, cover vast historical time
periods but still manage to heavily feature more recent events.
Brief A–Z entries describe the main people, events, politics, social issues, institutions,
and policies that make the topic unique, and entries are cross-referenced for ease of
browsing. Extensive bibliographies are divided into several general subject areas, provid-
ing excellent access points for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more.
Additionally, maps, photographs, and appendixes of supplemental information aid high
school and college students doing term papers or introductory research projects. In short,
the historical dictionaries are the perfect starting point for anyone looking to research in
these fields.
 HISTORICAL DICTIONARIES OF ANCIENT
CIVILIZATIONS AND HISTORICAL ERAS

Jon Woronoff, Series Editor

Pre-Colonial Africa, by Robert O. Collins, 2001.

Medieval Russia, by Lawrence N. Langer, 2001.
Napoleonic Era, by George F. Nafziger, 2001.
Mongol World Empire, by Paul D. Buell, 2003.
Ancient and Medieval Nubia, by Richard A. Lobban Jr., 2003.
The Vikings, by Katherine Holman, 2003.
The Renaissance, by Charles G. Nauert, 2004.
Ancient Israel, by Niels Peter Lemche, 2004.
The Hittites, by Charles Burney, 2004.
Early North America, by Cameron B. Wesson, 2005.
The Enlightenment, by Harvey Chisick, 2005.
Cultural Revolution, by Guo Jian, Yongyi Song, and Yuan Zhou, 2006.
Ancient Southeast Asia, by John N. Miksic, 2007.
Medieval China, by Victor Cunrui Xiong, 2009.
Medieval India, by Iqtidar Alam Khan, 2008.
Ancient South America, by Martin Giesso, 2008.
Ancient Egypt, Second Edition, by Morris L. Bierbrier, 2008.
India, by Kumkum Roy, 2009.
The Etruscans, by Simon K. F. Stoddart, 2009.
Modern China (1800–1949), by James Z. Gao, 2009.
Mesopotamia, Second Edition, by Gwendolyn Leick, 2010.
Byzantium, Second Edition, by John H. Rosser, 2012.
Ottoman Empire, Second Edition, by Selcuk Aksin Somel, 2012.
Mesoamerica, by Walter R. T. Witschey and Clifford T. Brown, 2012.
Japan to 1945, by Kenneth Henshall, 2013.
British Empire, by Kenneth J. Panton, 2015.
Historical Dictionary of
the British Empire

Kenneth J. Panton

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD

Lanham • Boulder • New York • London
Published by Rowman & Littlefield
A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706
www.rowman.com

Unit A, Whitacre Mews, 26-34 Stannary Street, London SE11 4AB

Copyright © 2015 by Kenneth J. Panton

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any
electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems,
without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote
passages in a review.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Panton, Kenneth J. (Kenneth John), 1945–

Historical dictionary of the British Empire / Kenneth J. Panton.
pages cm. — (Historical dictionaries of ancient civilizations and historical eras)
Summary: “The Historical Dictionary of the British Empire contains a chronology, an introduction,
appendixes, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has more than 700 cross-refer-
enced entries on important personalities as well as aspect of the British Empire’s politics, economy,
foreign relations, religion, and culture”—Provided by publisher.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-0-8108-7801-3 (hardback) — ISBN 978-0-8108-7524-1 (ebook)
1. Great Britain—Colonies—History—Dictionaries. 2. Imperialism—History—Dictionaries. 3.
Commonwealth countries—History—Dictionaries. 4. Great Britain—Foreign relations—Dictionar-
ies. I. Title.
DA16.P315 2015
909’.0971241003—dc23
2014047310

TM
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American
National Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for Printed Library
Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

For my mother
 Contents

Editor’s Foreword ix

Preface xi

Acronyms and Abbreviations xiii

Map xvii

Chronology xix

Introduction 1

THE DICTIONARY 17

Appendix A: Secretaries of State with Responsibilities for the Colonies 585

Appendix B: The Changing Membership of the Commonwealth of

Nations 597

Bibliography 603

About the Author 727

vii
 Editor’s Foreword

There have been many empires in the history of the world: the Assyrian
Empire, the Egyptian Empire, the Roman Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the
Spanish Empire on which “the sun never set,” and other more recent colonial
empires including the Portuguese, the French, and the British. All are now
gone except the British Empire, which included possessions on all continents
and regions in the fairly recent past and which currently maintains the British
Commonwealth of Nations.
The core of this book is the dictionary section, with an impressive 630
entries on significant institutions and events; components of various itera-
tions of the British Empire, such as India, Pakistan, Australia, South Africa,
Canada, and the United States; and people who created and expanded the
Empire, those who shaped and ruled it, and ultimately those who dismantled
it. The current Empire is still evolving, as can be seen by Hong Kong’s
absorption into China, ongoing conflicts over Gibraltar, the recent referen-
dum on whether Scotland should remain part of the United Kingdom, and
discussions of whether the United Kingdom should remain with the Euro-
pean Union or leave it.
This Historical Dictionary of the British Empire was written by Kenneth J.
Panton, the author or coauthor of several other books, such as a two-volume
work on the United Kingdom and volumes on the contemporary United
Kingdom, the British Monarchy, and London. In his earlier career, Ken lived
in England and Scotland and taught at London Guildhall University, teaching
geography mainly to Brits. He later moved to the United States, where he led
the British Studies Program of the University of Southern Mississippi, not
only teaching Americans about Great Britain but taking about 200 students to
the United Kingdom each summer. He currently splits his time between
Scotland and New Zealand and continues writing.

Jon Woronoff
Series Editor

ix
 Preface

For more than half a millennium, European nations sought wealth and status
through control of imperial possessions around the globe. Great Britain’s
empire, which took embryo form through England’s acquisition of territories
in the Americas and the establishment of trading posts in Asia in the late 16th
and early 17th centuries, had, by the early 20th century, become the most
extensive the world had known, encompassing nearly one-quarter of the
earth’s land surface and one-fifth of its population. Britain was the dominant
global economic and political power, with a significant military presence on
every continent and economic tentacles that stretched far beyond the territo-
ries that it had colonized, yet within a few decades all of the subjugated
peoples had won their freedom and the United Kingdom had lost much of its
international diplomatic clout.
The rise and fall of that Empire has been the subject of works by many
distinguished scholars so it was a privilege to accept Rowman & Littlefield’s
invitation to prepare this book, which complements earlier volumes. The
two-part Historical Dictionary of the United Kingdom and the Historical
Dictionary of the Contemporary United Kingdom were written with Keith
Cowlard and published in 1997/1998 and 2008, respectively. The Historical
Dictionary of London appeared in 2002 and the Historical Dictionary of the
British Monarchy in 2011. Together, they provide comprehensive coverage
of the principal characters, events, and institutions that have shaped the coun-
try’s development.
This dictionary is intended as a work of reference rather than a source of
new interpretations or developments of theory, so the text is extensively
cross-referenced in order to facilitate the reader’s information gathering. In
individual entries, a term that heads another entry is indicated by boldface
type the first time it is used. Other related entries are indicated by the use of
see (in the body of the text) or see also (at the end of an entry). Major
changes in the composition and structure of the Empire are listed in the
chronology, and the appendixes provide the names of the secretaries of state
who shaped government policy relating to the Empire and outline changes in
the membership of the Commonwealth of Nations, which succeeded the
Empire as colonies won independence.
The preparation of books such as these requires many hours of library
research and even more in front of a computer. Reading and writing are
largely solitary pursuits, but every author stands on the shoulders of col-
leagues, friends, and relatives who provide support. I am grateful to all who
xi
xii • PREFACE
have helped while this book has been under way. A work such as this relies
heavily on previously published studies, so I acknowledge the debt owed to
earlier writers; there is insufficient space to name all of them here, but the
bibliography will give some indication of the biographies, geographies, his-
tories, political analyses, and other publications on which I have drawn.
Librarians at the Clackmannanshire Council Library Service, the National
Library of Scotland, Taupo Library, and the University of Southern Missis-
sippi Libraries responded to calls for help with much courtesy, and the pro-
duction team at Rowman & Littlefield, with technical skills that leave me in
awe of their talents, have taken the typed manuscript and turned it into an
attractive publication. Jon Woronoff, the series editor, has made a huge con-
tribution, not simply through perceptive comments on drafts of the text but
also by demonstrating superhuman levels of patience while deadline after
deadline passed as three house moves slowed progress on the manuscript.
Also, through the ups and downs of the past few years, I have relied very
heavily, and in different ways, on Peter Allen, Sharon and Nick Gerogiannis,
Judy Hunter, Paula Mathis, Karen Rae, Stacey Ready, Peggy Varnado, Alan
Williams, and the ladies in the Tillicoultry Congregational Church, who
provided weekly supplies of shortbread even though I am not a member of
their congregation. Nick Weight, my son-in-law, worked wonders in easing
the problems of establishing a home in New Zealand and undoubtedly helped
to avoid the passage of yet another editorial deadline. Mhorbhaine continues
to be both the tower of strength and gentle critic that makes me glad she is
my daughter. Each of these people has helped to shape this book, and it is
difficult to find words that will adequately express my thanks, but the short-
comings are mine and mine alone.
 Acronyms and Abbreviations

AFPFL Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League

ANC African National Congress
BBC British Broadcasting Corporation
BDP Bechuanaland Democratic Party
BI British India Steam Navigation Company
BLP Barbados Labour Party
BOAC British Overseas Airways Corporation
BSAC British South Africa Company
CMS Church Missionary (or Mission) Society
CPP Convention People’s Party
CWM Council for World Mission
DC District of Columbia
DP Democratic Party
EEC European Economic Community
EFTA European Free Trade Association
EIC East India Company
EOKA Ethnikí Orgánosis Kipriakoú Agónos (National
Organization of Cypriot Struggle)
EU European Union
FLOSY Front for the Liberation of Occupied South Yemen
HBC Hudson’s Bay Company
HMS Her (or His) Majesty’s Ship
IBEAC Imperial British East Africa Company
IRA Irish Republican Army
ITT International Telephone & Telegraph
KCA Kikuyu Central Association
LEL League of Empire Loyalists
LMS London Missionary Society

xiii
xiv • ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS
LPP Lever’s Pacific Plantations
MNLA Malayan National Liberation Army
NAC National African Company Nyasaland African Congress
NASA National Aeronautics and Space Administration
NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization
NCO Non-Commissioned Officer
NLF National Liberation Front
NWC North West Company
P&O Peninsular and Orient Steam Navigation Company
PNC People’s National Congress
PNP Progressive National Party
PPC Pacific Phosphate Company
PPP People’s Progressive Party
QANTAS Queensland and Northern Territories Aerial Services
Limited
RAC Royal African Company
RGS Royal Geographical Society
RNC Royal Niger Company
SDP Seychelles Democratic Party
SPG Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts
SPUP Seychelles People’s United Party
SWAPO South West Africa People’s Organization
TANU Tanganyika African National Union
UAC United African Company
UANC United African National Council
UBP United Bahamian Party
UDI Unilateral Declaration of Independence
UE United Empire Loyalist
UGCC United Gold Coast Convention
UMCA Universities’ Mission to Central Africa
UMNO United Malays National Organization
UN United Nations
 ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS • xv
UNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural
Organization
UP United Party
UPC Uganda People’s Congress
USS United States Ship
ZANC Zambian African National Congress
ZANLA Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army
ZANU Zimbabwe African National Union
ZAPU Zimbabwe African People’s Union
ZIPRA Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army
Map

xvii
 Chronology

1497 24 June: John Cabot lands somewhere on the northeastern coast of

North America and claims the land for England.
1577 July: Martin Frobisher declares sovereignty over Baffin Island, and
neighboring islands, on behalf of the English crown; Queen Elizabeth I later
names the colony “Meta Incognita” (“Unknown Shore”).
1578 20 June: Martin Frobisher claims southern Greenland for England,
naming it “West England” and believing it to be the land marked on some
charts as “Friesland.” 24 August: Francis Drake claims Elizabeth Island, St.
Bartholomew’s Island, and St. George’s Island, at the southern tip of South
America, in the name of Queen Elizabeth I.
1579 17 June: Francis Drake lands on the west coast of North America,
names the territory north of Spanish settlement “Nova Albion,” and declares
Queen Elizabeth I of England sovereign over the new colony.
1583 5 August: Sir Humphrey Gilbert claims Newfoundland for England.
1584 25 March: Queen Elizabeth I grants Walter Raleigh a charter to estab-
lish a colony in North America.
1585 17 August: A group of settlers, sponsored by Walter Raleigh, lands on
Roanoke Island, off the east coast of North America.
1586 19 June: Hungry and facing the hostility of indigenous people, the
settlers on Roanoke abandon their village and return to England.
1587 22 July: A second group of settlers, sponsored by Walter Raleigh,
arrives to colonize Roanoke; by 1590 they had vanished.
1600 31 December: Queen Elizabeth I grants the East India Company a
monopoly of English trade east of the Cape of Good Hope and west of the
Straits of Magellan.
1602 16 December: Captain James Lancaster arrives at Bantam, on Java,
and establishes the East India Company’s first trading post in Asia.
1606 10 April: King James I grants the Virginia Company a charter to settle
the land from the 34th to the 45th parallels of latitude in North America.
1609 25 July: Passengers on ships bound for James Town, Virginia, become
Bermuda’s first settlers after their vessels are driven on to rocks in a storm.
xix
xx • CHRONOLOGY
1612 22 March: Bermuda is added to the Virginia Company’s area of opera-
tions in the Americas.
1614 23 November: The Virginia Company returns Bermuda to the crown,
believing that investment would be unprofitable.
1615 29 June: The Somers Isles Company receives a grant from King James
I allowing it to exploit Bermuda’s resources.
1620 21 December: The Pilgrim Fathers found Plymouth Settlement, on the
northeastern coast of North America.
1624 28 January: Thomas Warner establishes the first successful English
colony in the Caribbean, building a settlement at St. Christopher (now more
usually known as St. Kitts). 24 May: King James I revokes the charter
granted to the Virginia Company of London and makes Virginia a royal
colony.
1625 14 May: John Powell claims Barbados for England.
1628 Settlers from St. Kitts begin to colonize Nevis.
1629 24 December: Settlers from Bermuda establish a colony on Providence
Island.
1632 Irish Catholics settle on Montserrat. English colonists from St. Kitts
settle on Antigua. 20 June: King Charles I grants Cecil Calvert, Lord Balti-
more, a warrant to settle Maryland, on the east coast of North America.
1633 8 October: Migrants from Plymouth settlement form a town govern-
ment at Dorchester, beginning English settlement of the area now occupied
by the U.S. State of Connecticut.
1641 25 May: The colony on Providence Island surrenders to a strong Span-
ish invading force.
1648 English Puritans establish the first permanent European settlement in
the Bahamas.
1650 English settlers from St. Kitts begin to colonize Anguilla.
1655 11 May: English settlers start to wrest Jamaica from Spain.
1659 5 May: The East India Company takes possession of St. Helena “with
trumpet and drum.”
1661 3 April: King Charles II issues a charter confirming the East India
Company’s rights to colonize and garrison St. Helena.
 CHRONOLOGY • xxi
1662 21 May: King Charles II marries Catherine of Braganza, daughter of
King John IV of Portugal; the bride brings rights to Bombay and Tangier in
her dowry.
1663 24 March: King Charles II gives eight of his courtiers a charter to
settle the Province of Carolina. 8 July: King Charles II issues a charter
confirming the independent identity of the colony of Rhode Island and Provi-
dence Plantations.
1664 12 March: King Charles II gives his brother—James, duke of York—
proprietorial rights over the territory between the Connecticut and Delaware
Rivers, on the Atlantic coast of North America. 24 June: The duke of York
leases the land between the Delaware and Hudson Rivers to John Berkeley,
Baron Stratton, and Sir George Carteret, declaring that the tract will be
named “New Jersey.” 27 August: New Netherland, on the east coast of
North America, falls to an English fleet of just four ships.
1665 19 July: Privateer John Wentworth claims Tortola for England, begin-
ning the process of acquisition of the Virgin Islands.
1666 English immigrants establish a permanent settlement on Barbuda.
1667 31 July: The Treaty of Breda confirms English sovereignty over the
former Dutch colony of New Netherland on the east coast of North America
but cedes control of parts of America’s Atlantic coast to the French, Run (in
the Moluccas) to the Netherlands, and Surinam to the Dutch; France returns
Antigua, Montserrat, and St. Kitts to England.
1670 8 July: Through the Treaty of Madrid, Spain recognizes England’s
sovereignty over “all those lands, islands, colonies and places whatsoever
situated in the West Indies” that the English had settled.
1678 The Turks Islands are settled by English salt collectors from Bermuda.
1679 18 September: New Hampshire is detached, administratively, from
Massachusetts and made a separate province.
1681 4 March: King Charles II grants William Penn land, in North America,
on which to found a colony for Quakers.
1684 5 February: The English abandon Tangier. 27 November: The Eng-
lish courts dissolve the Somers Isles Company and return Bermuda to crown
control.
1713 April-September: Under the terms of the peace of Utrecht, Spain
cedes sovereignty over Gibraltar and Minorca to Britain; France acknowl-
edges British sovereignty over territories in North America, including New-
foundland and Nova Scotia.
xxii • CHRONOLOGY
1718 26 July: King George I declares The Bahamas a crown colony.
1729 25 July: South Carolina formally becomes a royal colony when King
George II purchases the land from private proprietors. 5 August: North
Carolina becomes a royal colony.
1732 21 April: King George II grants a charter authorizing James Ogle-
thorpe and his supporters to found the colony of Georgia.
1740 March 16: Robert Hodgson, a representative of the governor of Jamai-
ca, signs a Treaty of Friendship with the Moskito people, effectively making
the Mosquito Coast a British protectorate.
1763 10 February: Under the terms of the Treaty of Paris, France cedes its
territories in Dominica, Grenada, the Grenadines, northern North America,
parts of Louisiana, St. Vincent, and the lands between the Mississippi River
and the Appalachian Mountains to Britain and recognizes British sovereignty
over Minorca; Spain cedes Florida to Britain; Britain recognizes French sov-
ereignty over Gorée, Guadeloupe, Martinique, a number of trading posts in
India, and St. Lucia, and returns Cuba and Manila to Spain. 7 October 1763:
King George III creates the Province of Quebec by royal proclamation.
1765 22 January: John Byron claims West Falkland Island for Britain.
1768 28 June: Prince Edward Island (then known as St. John’s Island) is
detached, administratively, from Nova Scotia and made a separate colony.
1770 22 August: Captain James Cook claims the east coast of Australia for
Britain, naming it New South Wales.
1774 22 June: The Quebec Act receives royal assent, extending the Prov-
ince’s boundaries to encompass the Great Lakes and areas of the Mississippi
River and Ohio River valleys.
1775 17 January: Captain James Cook claims the islands of South Georgia
for Britain.
1776 4 May: Rhode Island becomes the first of Britain’s North American
colonies to declare independence. 4 July: Representatives of thirteen colo-
nies in North America sign a document declaring that they are no longer
subjects of the British crown.
1778 18-20 January. The first British settlers arrive in New South Wales on
convict ships.
 CHRONOLOGY • xxiii
1783 British loyalists fleeing the United States settle in the Caicos Islands. 3
September: The Treaty of Paris ends Britain’s control of thirteen North
American colonies: other agreements recognize British sovereignty over The
Bahamas, Dominica, The Gambia, Grenada, and Montserrat, and Spanish
sovereignty over Minorca and Florida.
1784 13 August: Parliament approves the India Act, which gives the govern-
ment direct control over the political activities of the East India Company. 16
August: New Brunswick is detached, administratively, from Nova Scotia
and made a separate colony. 26 August: Cape Breton Island is detached from
Nova Scotia and made a separate colony.
1786 31 August: Captain Francis Light takes possession of Penang for the
East India Company.
1788 17 February: Lieutenant Henry Lidgbird Ball of HMS Supply claims
Lord Howe Island for Britain. 6 March: Britain claims sovereignty over
Norfolk Island and establishes a penal colony.
1790 23 January: Mutineers from HMS Bounty settle on Pitcairn Island.
1791 The more northerly of the Grenadine Islands are attached, administra-
tively, to St. Vincent and the more southerly to Grenada. 29 November:
Captain William R. Broughton, of HMS Chatham, claims the Chatham Is-
lands for Britain. 26 December: Quebec is partitioned into Lower and Upper
Canada.
1792 19 March: The Treaty of Seringapatam ends the Third Mysore War
and adds Anantapur, Bellary, Malabar, and Salem to the territory controlled
by the East India Company.
1794 19 June: Corsica becomes a kingdom under the British crown.
1796 15 October: France absorbs Corsica.
1799 The Bahamas annexes the Turks and Caicos Islands. 3 May: Lieuten-
ant-Colonel John Murray establishes a garrison on Perim Island for the East
India Company.
1800 2 July: Parliament approves legislation uniting Great Britain and Ire-
land as a single state.
1802 25 March: Under the terms of the Treaty of Amiens, France recognizes
British sovereignty over Ceylon, Malta, and Trinidad, but Britain cedes con-
trol of Cape Colony, the Dutch West Indies, and the Moluccas to the Bata-
vian Republic, returns Martinique to France, and returns Minorca to Spain.
1803 7 September: Britain establishes a penal colony as its first settlement
in Van Diemen’s Land.
xxiv • CHRONOLOGY
1807 20 October: Abraham Bristow claims the Auckland Islands for Britain.
1808 1 January: Sierra Leone is declared a crown colony.
1810 11 July: Frederick Hasselborough claims Macquarie Island for Britain.
1812 17 May: The sultan of Palembang cedes Bangka Island to Britain.
1814 14 January: The Treaty of Kiel confirms British sovereignty over
Heligoland. 30 May: Under the terms of the Treaty of Paris, France recog-
nizes British sovereignty over Malta, Mauritius, Rodrigues, the Seychelles,
St. Lucia, and Tobago; Britain returns Martinique to France; Rodrigues is
made a dependency of Mauritius. 13 August: An Anglo-Dutch treaty con-
firms British sovereignty over the Cape of Good Hope and territories near the
mouths of the Berbice, Demerara, and Essequibo Rivers, on the South
American mainland; Britain also gains Bernagore (in India) in return for an
annual fee, exchanges Bangka (an island off the Sumatran coast) for Cochin
(on India’s west coast), and returns territories captured during the Napoleon-
ic wars to the Netherlands.
1815 22 October: Britain annexes Ascension Island. 5 November: The Ioni-
an Islands become a British protectorate. 2 December: Nepal signs a treaty
that, according to some writers, makes it a de facto British protectorate.
1816 4 March: The Treaty of Sugauli ends the war between Great Britain
and Nepal; Nepal is forced to cede much territory to the East India Company
and to withdraw from areas of Sikkim that it had occupied. 14 August:
Britain annexes Tristan da Cunha. 16 October: The Leeward Islands colony
is divided, administratively, into two territorial units.
1817 10 February: Sikkim becomes a de facto British protectorate.
1818 3 June: Baji Rao, head of the Maratha people, surrenders to East India
Company forces, ending a series of conflicts that leaves Britain in control of
India south of the Sutlej River. 20 October: Great Britain and the United
States agree on a border between British North America and the United
States that, for the most part, follows the 49th parallel of latitude.
1819 6 February: Sir Thomas Stanford Raffles negotiates rights to establish
an East India Company base in Singapore. 16 October: William Smith, in
command of the brig Williams, claims King George Land, in the South
Shetland Islands, for Britain.
1820 9 October: Cape Breton Island is re-annexed to Nova Scotia.
 CHRONOLOGY • xxv
1824 17 March: An Anglo-Dutch Treaty cedes all of the Netherlands’ pos-
sessions in India to Britain and recognizes British sovereignty over Malacca
and Singapore; Britain cedes its territories in Sumatra to the Dutch. 17 June:
Newfoundland is made a crown colony.
1825 3 December: The colony of Van Diemen’s Land is carved out of New
South Wales.
1826 24 February: The Treaty of Yandopo ends the First Anglo-Burmese
War, with Britain acquiring Arakan, Assam, Manipur, and the Tenasserim
coast south of the Salween River. 14 August: The East India Company
groups Malacca, Penang, and Singapore into an administrative unit known as
the Straits Settlements.
1827 9 June: Captain Frederick Beechey of HMS Blossom claims the Bonin
Islands for Britain.
1829 2 May: Charles Fremantle, of HMS Challenger, claims British sove-
reignty over all regions of Australia that are not part of New South Wales. 31
May: A settlement is founded at Swan River, on Australia’s western coast.
1830 20 June: Gibraltar becomes a crown colony.
1831 21 July: Britain’s possessions near the mouths of the Berbice, Demera-
ra, and Essequibo Rivers in South America are combined as a single colony,
named British Guiana.
1832 6 February: Swan River Colony is renamed “Western Australia.”
1833 The Leeward Islands, subdivided in 1816, are reunited as a single
colony. 1 April: British possessions in the southern area of the Lesser
Antilles (Barbados, Grenada, the Grenadines, St. Lucia, St. Vincent, and
Tobago) are merged, administratively, as the British Windward Islands colo-
ny.
1834 22 April: St. Helena becomes a crown colony. 7 May: The East India
Company annexes Coorg. 15 August: King William IV gives royal assent to
the South Australia Colonisation Act, which creates the colony of South
Australia.
1835 1 February: Chogyal Tsudpud Namgyal of Sikkim cedes Darjeeling to
British India.
1838 29 November: Pitcairn Island is made a British protectorate.
1839 19 January: Britain annexes Aden.
xxvi • CHRONOLOGY
1840 6 February: British representatives and Maori chiefs sign the Treaty of
Waitangi. 21 May: William Hobson asserts British sovereignty over the
whole of New Zealand, annexing North Island on the basis of the Treaty of
Waitangi and South Island on a dubious claim of right of discovery; adminis-
tratively, the territory is considered part of New South Wales.
1841 5 February: Lower and Upper Canada are reunited as the Province of
Canada. 3 May: New Zealand is separated from New South Wales and made
a crown colony.
1842 4 April: Britain extends the boundaries of the crown colony of New
Zealand to include the Chatham Islands. 29 August: China cedes Hong Kong
island to Britain.
1843 11 April: The Gambia is made a crown colony. 4 May: Britain annexes
Natal.
1845 11 October: The British East India Company purchases Serampore
(and other territories) from the Danish East India Company for 1,200,000
rupees.
1846 9 March: The Treaty of Lahore ends the first Sikh War, with Great
Britain acquiring Hazara, Jammu, Kashmir, and other territories of the Sikh
kingdom. 15 June: The boundary between British North America and the
United States is extended along the 49th parallel, through Oregon Country, to
the Pacific Ocean. 24 December: Captain G. R. Mundy of HMS Iris claims
Labuan for Queen Victoria.
1847 23 December: Sir Harry Smith, governor of Cape Colony, annexes
tribal lands of the Xhosa people, making the territory, which he names “Brit-
ish Kaffraria,” a crown dependency.
1848 25 December: The Turks and Caicos Islands are detached, administra-
tively, from the Bahamas and made a separate colony.
1849 29 March: Lord Dalhousie, governor-general of India, annexes Punjab.
16 July: Vancouver Island is made a crown colony.
1850 30 March: Britain acquires Danish interests on the Gold Coast, in West
Africa. 19 April: Britain and the United States sign the Clayton-Bulwer
Treaty, agreeing not to “occupy, or fortify, or colonize, or assume or exercise
any dominion over Nicaragua, Costa Rica, the Mosquito Coast or any part of
Central America.”
1851 1 July: The colony of Victoria is carved out of New South Wales.
 CHRONOLOGY • xxvii
1852 1 February: Britain declares a protectorate over coastal areas of the
Bight of Benin. 13 June: Britain declares the Bay Islands, in the Gulf of
Honduras, a crown colony. 20 December: Britain annexes Pegu, occupied
during the Second Burmese War.
1854 14 July: Saud bin Sultan, Sultan of Muscat, gifts the Kuria Muria
Islands to Queen Victoria.
1856 1 January: Van Diemen’s Land is renamed Tasmania. 6 June: Lord
Howe Island is annexed to New South Wales. 15 July: Natal is given crown
colony status.
1857 31 March: The Cocos (or Keeling) Islands are annexed.
1858 2 August: Britain declares British Columbia a crown colony. Parlia-
ment transfers control of British India from the East India Company to the
crown.
1859 30 April: Britain cedes the Bay Islands to Honduras. 10 December:
The colony of Queensland is carved out of New South Wales.
1860 7 March: British Kaffraria is made a crown colony. 24 October: China
cedes the Kowloon Peninsula to Britain, expanding the crown colony of
Hong Kong.
1861 28 March: The Treaty of Tumlong stamps British authority on Sikkim
without defining sovereignty. 31 May: Britain signs a “Treaty of Friendship”
with Bahrain, making the islands a protectorate. 21 June: Captain Oliver J.
Jones, of HMS Furious, takes possession of Ichaboe Island, one of the Pen-
guin Islands, in the name of Queen Victoria. 6 August: Docemo, oba of
Lagos, cedes his territory to the British crown. The Bight of Benin and Bight
of Biafra protectorates are merged to create a single administrative unit.
1862 12 May: Britain declares the territory drained by the Belize, Hondo,
and Sarstoon Rivers, in central America, a colony, naming it British Hondu-
ras. 19 July: The British government assumes responsibility for the adminis-
tration of Stikine Territory in northwestern North America. 20 December:
The Second Anglo-Burmese War ends, with Britain annexing Lower Burma.
1863 8 June: Queen Victoria gives assent to the New Zealand Boundaries
Act, which transfers administrative responsibility for the Auckland Islands
and Campbell Island from Great Britain to New Zealand. 29 July: The
Queen Charlotte Islands and most of Stikine Territory are attached to the
colony of British Columbia.
1864 29 March: The Ionian Islands are ceded to Greece. 15 October: B. B.
Nicholson, a Melbourne firm, claims Malden Island for Britain and begins
extraction of phosphate from the guano reserves.
xxviii • CHRONOLOGY
1866 19 February: British colonies in West Africa are grouped under a
central administration as the British West African Settlements. 17 April:
British Kaffraria is absorbed by Cape Colony. 5 May: Captain C. C. Forsyth
of HMS Valourous annexes 11 of the Penguin Islands for the British crown.
11 June: Jamaica is given crown colony status. 19 November: British Co-
lumbia and Vancouver Island are united as a single colony. 26 December:
Commander William Swinburne of the corvette HMS Mutine claims Star-
buck Island for Great Britain.
1867 1 April: The Straits Settlements is declared a crown colony. 1 July:
New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and the Province of Canada (Ontario and
Quebec) unite as the Dominion of Canada.
1868 12 March: Following an appeal by King Moshoeshoe I, Britain makes
Basutoland a protectorate. 9 July: Commander George Nares, of HMS Rein-
deer, claims Caroline Island for the British crown. 16 October: Denmark
abandons its claim to the Nicobar Islands; Great Britain assumes responsibil-
ity for government.
1870 9 July: Captain George Palmer of HMS Rosario claims the Bounty
Islands for Britain. 15 July: The Hudson’s Bay Company sells most of its
territory to the Canadian government.
1871 21 February: Britain purchases Dutch interests on the Gold Coast, in
West Africa. 20 July: British Columbia joins the Dominion of Canada. 11
August: Basutoland is merged with Cape Colony. 27 October: Griqualand
West is declared a protectorate.
1872 26 March: The island of Redonda is made a parish of Antigua.
1873 4 April: The Turks and Caicos Islands are made a dependency of
Jamaica. 1 July: Prince Edward Island joins the Dominion of Canada. 17
July: Griqualand West is made a crown colony.
1874 20 January: Perak becomes a protectorate. 17 February: Lagos is
detached from the British West African settlements and made a separate
colony. 21 April: Sungai Ulong is the first area of Negeri Sembilan to
become a British protectorate. 8 July: The Penguin Islands are annexed to
Cape Colony. 24 July: Britain declares the Gold Coast (including Lagos) a
crown colony. 10 October: Fiji becomes a crown colony.
1875 24 November: Japan annexes the Bonin Islands, which were claimed
by Britain in 1827; the British government raises no objection.
1876 13 July: Baluchistan becomes a British protectorate.
 CHRONOLOGY • xxix
1877 12 April: Britain annexes The Transvaal (known to the Boer settlers as
the South African Republic). 13 August: Britain asserts sovereignty over all
Pacific Ocean islands that are not claimed by other powers and creates the
British Western Pacific Territories to encompass them.
1878 Britain annexes the Ashmore Islands. 12 March: Britain annexes Wal-
vis Bay. 12 July: The Ottoman Empire cedes the right of administration on
Cyprus to Britain.
1879 26 May: Mohammed Yaqub Khan, the emir of Afghanistan, agrees to
make his country a British protectorate and cedes southern areas of his terri-
tory to Great Britain.
1880 1 September: Britain transfers sovereignty over its remaining territori-
al possessions in North America (with the exception of Newfoundland) to the
Dominion of Canada. 15 October: Griqualand West is absorbed by Cape
Colony. 16 December: The South African Republic declares independence
from Britain, an action that precipitates the First Boer War.
1881 3 August: The Pretoria Convention gives the South African Republic
(known to the British as The Transvaal) self-government under British suze-
rainty. 26 August: The British North Borneo Company assumes responsibil-
ity for administration in North Borneo.
1882 14 September: A British force occupies Cairo, supporting the ruling
khedive in his struggle against rebels, and, in effect, making Egypt a protec-
torate.
1884 18 March: Basutoland is detached from Cape Colony and declared a
crown colony. 16 July: The Protectorate of the Bights of Biafra and Benin is
extended through the addition of Aboh, Bonny, Brass, Old Calabar (with the
exception of the colony of Lagos), and Opobo. 6 November: Britain creates
a protectorate in southeastern New Guinea.
1885 5 June: The Protectorate of the Bights of Biafra and Benin, in West
Africa, is renamed the Oil Rivers Protectorate. 30 September: Southern
Bechuanaland is declared a colony and the area to the north is made a protec-
torate. 15 November-26 November: At a conference in Berlin, the European
powers divide Africa into “spheres of influence” in which each will operate
without competition from the others. 24 November: The British West
African Settlements is disbanded and the territories in the region become
individual colonies. 11 December: Johore is made a protectorate.
1886 1 January: Britain annexes Upper Burma. 1 February: The Straits
Settlements government is made responsible for the administration of the
Cocos (or Keeling) Islands. 13 January: Lagos is detached from the Gold
Coast and made a crown colony.
xxx • CHRONOLOGY
1887 21 June: Britain annexes Zululand. 20 July: Somaliland is declared a
protectorate. 17 August: The Kermadec Islands are annexed to New Zea-
land. 16 September: Pitcairn Island is made a crown colony. 1 November:
Baluchistan becomes a province of British India. 18 October: Britain de-
clares a protectorate over the hinterland of Lagos. 16 December: Britain
forces Sultan Mohamed Mueenuddin II of the Maldives to sign an agreement
accepting protection against foreign aggression in return for an understand-
ing that he and his successors will not conduct negotiations with other states
unless the British government first gives its approval.
1888 15 March: Britain annexes Fanning Island. 17 March: Christmas Is-
land, in the Pacific Ocean, is annexed. 12 May: North Borneo is declared a
protectorate. 6 June: Britain annexes another Christmas Island, in the Indian
Ocean. 14 June: Sarawak is declared a protectorate. 24 August: The Sultan
of Pahang asks Britain to assist him “in matters relating to the Government.”
4 September: Britain’s New Guinea protectorate becomes a crown colony.
17 September: Brunei becomes a British protectorate. 26 October: The
Cook Islands become a British protectorate.
1889 6 April: Tobago is detached from the British Windward Islands and
linked to Trinidad. 29 May: Washington Island is annexed. 3 June: Britain
claims Jarvis Island. 21 June: The Union Islands are declared a protectorate.
26 June: Sydney Island is declared a protectorate. 29 June: Phoenix Island
is declared a protectorate. 10 July: Britain claims sovereignty over Birnie
Island. 11 July: Hull Island is declared a protectorate. 21 September: The
Shire Highlands, in east-central Africa, are declared a British protectorate.
1890 30 June: Bechuanaland protectorate is extended northward to absorb
Ngamiland. 1 July: Under the terms of the Heligoland-Zanzibar Treaty,
Britain cedes sovereignty over Heligoland to Germany and Germany accepts
British control of Wituland and of Zanzibar. 7 November: The islands of
Zanzibar are declared a protectorate. 15 November: Wituland is declared a
protectorate.
1891 15 May: The Shire Highlands Protectorate is extended and renamed the
Nyasaland Districts Protectorate.
1892 8 March: The Trucial States become a protectorate. 27 May: The
Gilbert Islands are declared a protectorate. 28 May: Gardner Island is de-
clared a protectorate. 9 October: The Ellice Islands are declared a protecto-
rate.
1893 23 February: The Nyasaland Districts Protectorate is renamed the
British Central Africa Protectorate. 15 March: Britain declares a protecto-
rate over the southern Solomon Islands. 13 May: The Oil Rivers Protectorate
is extended northward and renamed Niger Coast Protectorate.
 CHRONOLOGY • xxxi
1894 11 April: The Kingdom of Buganda is made the territorial basis of the
Protectorate of Uganda. 28 December: Britain declares a protectorate over
territories along the Gambia River beyond Bathurst.
1895 1 July: The area of mainland Africa claimed by the sultan of Zanzibar
is given protectorate status, with the coastal territories named the Kenya
Protectorate and their hinterland the East Africa Protectorate. Wituland is
incorporated within the East Africa Protectorate. 16 November: Bechuana-
land colony is absorbed by Cape Colony.
1896 1 July: Hereditary leaders of Pahang, Perak, Negeri Sembilan, and
Selangor sign a treaty that unites them in a protectorate known as the Feder-
ated Malay States. 16 August: Britain declares a protectorate over the
Ashanti kingdom. 31 August: The hinterland of Freeport, Sierra Leone, is
declared a protectorate (even though most local chiefs had not asked to be
protected).
1897 15 January: Despite bitter protests from residents, Norfolk Island’s
rights to self-government are revoked and the territory is placed under the
executive authority of the governor of New South Wales. 9 February: The
Kingdom of Benin is invaded by British troops and added to the Niger Coast
Protectorate. 30 December: Zululand is incorporated within Natal.
1898 3 May: Pitcairn Island is placed under the jurisdiction of the high
commissioner for the British Western Pacific Territories. 8 June: Britain
leases the New Territories from China for 99 years and adds them to Hong
Kong. 1 July: China grants Great Britain a lease of Weihaiwei, some 80
miles across the Yellow Sea from Russian-occupied Port Arthur.
1899 1 January: Tobago is made a ward in the colony of Trinidad and
Tobago. 19 January: The Sudan becomes an Anglo-Egyptian condominium.
23 January: Britain and Kuwait sign an agreement that, in effect, makes
Kuwait a protectorate. 21 March: Britain and France agree that the wa-
tershed of the River Congo and the River Nile will mark the boundary of
their spheres of influence in Africa. 14 November: Britain withdraws claims
to Samoa in return for acquisition of German rights in Tonga, German with-
drawal of all claims to Zanzibar, and a redrawing of boundaries between
German and British possessions in the Solomon Islands.
1900 1 January: Territories formerly administered by the Royal Niger Com-
pany are merged with the Niger Coast Protectorate to form the Southern
Nigeria Protectorate. 20 April: Britain makes Niue a protectorate. 18 May:
Tonga becomes a protected state. 1 September: Britain annexes the South
African Republic. Christmas Island, in the Indian Ocean, is made a depen-
dency of Singapore and thus part of the Straits Settlements crown colony. 6
xxxii • CHRONOLOGY
October: Britain annexes the Orange Free State. 7 October: Administrative
responsibility for the Cook Islands Protectorate is transferred to New Zea-
land. 17 October: Barotseland becomes a protectorate.
1901 1 January: The colonies of New South Wales, Queensland, South
Australia, Tasmania, Victoria, and Western Australia combine to form the
Commonwealth of Australia and are accorded dominion status. 11 June:
Britain transfers administrative responsibility for Niue to New Zealand. The
Cook Islands become part of the colony of New Zealand. 28 September:
Britain annexes Ocean Island.
1902 1 January: The Ashanti protectorate is declared a colony and the
hinterland becomes a protectorate. 31 May: The Treaty of Vereeniging ends
the Second Boer War and confirms British sovereignty over the Orange Free
State and the South African Republic. 1 July: Britain annexes Henderson
Island. 10 July: Britain annexes Oeno Island. 19 December: Britain annexes
Ducie Island.
1903 1 April: The Cocos Islands are made a dependency of Singapore. 7
August: Britain makes Swaziland a protectorate. 31 August: The Seychelles
is made a crown colony.
1905 1 April: The Protectorate of Uganda is declared a crown colony.
1906 16 February: The Colony of Lagos and the Southern Nigeria Protecto-
rate are merged as the Colony and Protectorate of Southern Nigeria. 1 Sep-
tember: Responsibility for the administration of British New Guinea is
transferred to the Commonwealth of Australia, which renames the area Terri-
tory of Papua. 20 October: Britain and France agree to administer the New
Hebrides as a condominium.
1907 1 January: Labuan is annexed to the Straits Settlements. 6 July: The
British Central Africa Protectorate is renamed Nyasaland. 26 September:
New Zealand and Newfoundland are accorded dominion status.
1908 1 February: The British government assumes ownership of the Prince
Edward Islands and grants Dr. William Newton a license to exploit the guano
reserves. 21 July: Graham Land (on the Antarctic Peninsula), South Georgia,
the South Orkney Islands, the South Sandwich Islands, and the South Shet-
land Islands are grouped, administratively, as the Falkland Islands Depen-
dencies.
1909 10 March: Siam cedes Kedah, Kelantan, Perlis, and Terengganu to
Britain. 17 May: Britain annexes Cartier Island.
 CHRONOLOGY • xxxiii
1910 8 January: Bhutan becomes a protectorate. 25 March: Britain annexes
Heard Island and the McDonald Islands. 31 May: Cape Colony, Natal,
Orange River Colony, and The Transvaal merge as the Union of South Africa
and are accorded dominion status.
1914 1 January: The Colony and Protectorate of Southern Nigeria is com-
bined with the Northern Nigeria Protectorate to form the Colony and Protec-
torate of Nigeria. 1 July: Norfolk Island becomes Australian territory. 3
November: Britain formalizes Kuwait’s protectorate status. 5 November:
Britain annexes Cyprus. 10 November: The Gilbert and Ellice Islands be-
come a crown colony. 18 December: Britain declares Egypt a protectorate.
1916 27 January: Fanning, Ocean, and Washington Islands are incorporated
within the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony. 29 February: The Union Is-
lands become part of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands crown colony. 3 Novem-
ber: The sultan of Qatar signs a treaty that makes his territory a British
protectorate.
1917 28 March: Britain redefines its Antarctic claims to include several
offshore islands and territory on the mainland stretching to the South Pole.
1919 8 August: Afghanistan wins independence. 30 July: Christmas Island,
in the Pacific Ocean, becomes part of the crown colony of the Gilbert and
Ellice Islands.
1920 23 July: The East Africa Protectorate becomes Kenya Colony, admin-
istered as a unit with Kenya Protectorate. 17 December: Areas of New
Guinea formerly held by Germany are made a League of Nations mandated
territory, with Australia named as trustee; Nauru and German Samoa are
similarly mandated, with Australia, Britain, and New Zealand as trustees in
the former and Britain and New Zealand in the latter.
1921 6 December: The southern counties of Ireland are separated from the
northern counties to form the Irish Free State, which is accorded dominion
status; the northern counties remain part of the United Kingdom.
1922 28 February: Britain declares Egypt independent but retains control of
defense, protection of foreign interests, and other matters. 20 July: The
League of Nations grants Britain a mandate to administer areas of German
East Africa and German Togoland that it had occupied during World War I.
24 July: The League of Nations grants Britain a mandate to govern Palestine
and Transjordan. 12 September: Ascension Island is made a dependency of
St. Helena. 16 September: Administratively, Britain detaches Transjordan
from Palestine.
xxxiv • CHRONOLOGY
1923 23 July: The United Kingdom annexes the Ross Dependency, in Ant-
arctica. 30 July: Britain transfers responsibility for the administration of the
Ross Dependency to New Zealand. 21 September: Britain assumes respon-
sibility for the government of Southern Rhodesia, making it a crown colony.
21 December: Britain recognizes Nepal’s independence.
1924 26 April: The British government assumes control of Northern Rhode-
sia, making it a protectorate.
1925 10 March: Cyprus becomes a crown colony. 4 November: Adminis-
trative responsibility for the Union Islands is transferred to New Zealand.
1926 15 November: Approving the recommendations of a committee
chaired by former Prime Minister Arthur Balfour, imperial political leaders
agree that the six dominions should be accorded a status equal to that of the
United Kingdom.
1930 1 October: Britain voluntarily relinquishes its lease of Weihaiwei,
returning the territory to China.
1931 11 December: King George V gives royal assent to the Statute of
Westminster, which concedes political independence to the six dominions.
1932 3 October: Britain surrenders its League of Nations mandate to govern
Iraq, which becomes (at least nominally) an independent state.
1933 7 February: The United Kingdom transfers sovereignty over many of
its territories in Antarctica to Australia.
1934 3 May: The Ashmore Islands and Cartier Island are transferred to
Australian administration.
1936 6 August: Britain asserts sovereignty over Canton and Enderbury Is-
lands. 13 May: The United States annexes Baker, Howland, and Jarvis Is-
lands, all previously claimed by Britain. 13 November: Egypt gains full
independence but allows Britain to station troops in the country.
1937 18 March: The Phoenix Islands (Birnie Island, Canton Island, Ender-
bury Island, Gardner Island, Hull Island, McKean Island, Phoenix Island, and
Sydney Island) become part of the crown colony of the Gilbert and Ellice
Islands. 1 April: Aden and Burma are detached from British India and ad-
ministered as crown colonies.
1938 Ducie Island, Henderson Island, and Oeno Island merge with Pitcairn
Island to form a single administrative unit. 12 January: Tristan da Cunha is
made a dependency of St. Helena. 28 March: Britain annexes Gough Island.
1940 1 January: Dominica is detached from the Leeward Islands colony and
becomes, administratively, part of the British Windward Islands.
 CHRONOLOGY • xxxv
1946 1 April: The Federated States merge with Malacca, Penang, and the
Unfederated Malay States to form a short-lived, and never fully implement-
ed, Malayan Union; the Straits Settlements colony is dissolved as Christmas
Island, the Cocos Islands, and Labuan are annexed to Singapore, which be-
comes a separate crown colony. 18 April: At its final meeting, the League of
Nations recognizes Transjordan’s independence. 1 July: Charles Vyner
Brooke, the “white rajah” of Sarawak, cedes his territory to the United King-
dom, which declares it a crown colony. 15 July: North Borneo and Labuan
are merged to form a crown colony.
1947 15 August: British India wins its independence, with Hindu areas
forming the new state of India and Moslem areas forming the state of Paki-
stan; India assumes Britain’s former role as protector of Bhutan and Sikkim.
26 December: Administrative control over Heard Island and the McDonald
Islands is transferred to Australia. 29 December: Marion Island (in the
Prince Edward Islands) is annexed to South Africa.
1948 4 January: Burma wins independence. Prince Edward Island is an-
nexed to South Africa. 31 January: The Federation of Malaya replaces the
Malayan Union. 4 February: Ceylon wins independence. 15 May: Britain
withdraws from Palestine. 12 August: Baluchistan declares independence.
1949 1 January: New Zealand assumes full sovereignty over the Union
Islands, which it renames Tokelau Islands. 31 March: Newfoundland joins
the Dominion of Canada. 18 April: Ireland discards all constitutional ties to
the United Kingdom and becomes a fully independent republic. 1 July:
Papua and New Guinea are consolidated as a single territory, governed by
Australia.
1950 19 December: Britain transfers sovereignty over Heard Island and the
McDonald Islands to Australia.
1953 1 August: Northern Rhodesia, Nyasaland, and Southern Rhodesia are
merged as the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland.
1954 1 October: The Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria is restructured as
the Federation of Nigeria.
1955 23 November: Sovereignty over the Cocos (or Keeling) Islands is
transferred to Australia.
1956 1 January: The Sudan wins independence. 13 December: British To-
goland merges with the Gold Coast.
xxxvi • CHRONOLOGY
1957 6 March: The Gold Coast wins independence as Ghana. 1 July: The
Leeward Islands colony is dissolved and the constituent islands renamed the
“Territory of the Leeward Islands.” 31 August: The Federation of Malaya
wins independence.
1958 3 January: Twelve of Britain’s Caribbean possessions merge in a West
Indies Federation. 1 October: The United Kingdom transfers sovereignty
over Christmas Island, in the Indian Ocean, to Australia.
1959 11 February: Protectorates in the hinterland of the crown colony of
Aden are persuaded to merge as the Federation of Arab Emirates of the
South.
1960 1 January: The Virgin Islands are accorded crown colony status. 26
June: Somaliland wins independence (and unites with former Italian Somali-
land on 1 July to form the Somali Republic). 16 August: Cyprus wins inde-
pendence. 1 October: Nigeria wins independence.
1961 27 April: The colony and protectorate of Sierra Leone win indepen-
dence. 31 May: The northern sector of British Cameroons merges with Nige-
ria. South Africa declares itself a republic, severing its connection with the
crown. 19 June: Kuwait achieves independence. 1 October: The southern
sector of British Cameroons becomes part of the Federal Republic of Came-
roon. 9 December: Tanganyika wins independence.
1962 1 January: Western Samoa becomes the first small island in the Pacif-
ic Ocean to win independence from a colonial power. 3 March: Nine months
after the Antarctic Treaty comes into force, British possessions south of the
60th parallel of latitude are designated British Antarctic Territory. 4 April:
Britain dissolves the Federation of Arab Emirates of the South and re-creates
it as the Federation of South Arabia. 31 May: The West Indies Federation is
dissolved. 6 August: Jamaica wins independence. The Turks and Caicos
Islands are made a crown colony. 31 August: Trinidad and Tobago wins
independence. 9 October: Uganda wins independence.
1963 18 January: Aden is added to the Federation of South Arabia; easterly
protectorates in the south of the Arabian Peninsula are merged as the Protec-
torate of South Arabia. 31 August: Singapore declares independence. 16
September: The Federation of Malaya, North Borneo, Sarawak, and Singa-
pore unite as Malaysia. 10 December: The islands of Zanzibar win indepen-
dence. 12 December: Kenya Colony and Protectorate win independence. 31
December: The Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland is dissolved.
1964 6 July: Nyasaland wins independence as the Commonwealth of Mala-
wi. 21 September 1964: Malta wins independence. 24 October: Northern
Rhodesia wins independence as the Republic of Zambia.
 CHRONOLOGY • xxxvii
1965 18 February: The Gambia wins independence. 26 July: Britain termi-
nates its agreement to defend the Maldive Islands and surrenders responsibil-
ity for conducting the territory’s external affairs. 8 November: Britain
creates the Indian Ocean Territory by transferring areas of its colonies in
Mauritius and Seychelles to the new administrative unit. 11 November:
Southern Rhodesia makes a unilateral declaration of independence.
1966 26 May: British Guiana wins independence as Guyana. 30 September:
Bechuanaland wins independence as the Republic of Botswana. 4 October:
Basutoland wins independence as the Kingdom of Lesotho. 30 November:
Barbados wins independence.
1967 27 February: Antigua and St. Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla are designated
“associated states” of the United Kingdom. 1 March: Dominica and St.
Lucia are designated “associated states.” 3 March: Grenada is added to the
list of “associated states.” 29 November: Britain leaves Aden. 30 Novem-
ber: The Marxist-oriented National Liberation Front takes control in Aden,
creating the People’s Republic of South Yemen. The United Kingdom cedes
the Kuria Muria Islands to the state of Muscat and Oman.
1968 16 January: Britain announces its intention to withdraw all of its
troops from “East of Suez,” a decision interpreted by many commentators as
the end of the United Kingdom’s role as a world power. 31 January: Nauru
wins independence. 12 March: Mauritius wins independence. 6 September:
Swaziland wins independence.
1969 27 October: St. Vincent is designated an “associated state” of the
United Kingdom.
1970 2 March: Southern Rhodesia declares itself a republic. 4 June: Tonga
wins independence. 10 October: Fiji wins independence.
1971 15 August: Bahrain declares independence. 3 September: Qatar de-
clares independence. 2 December: Six of the Trucial States form the United
Arab Emirates, ending their protectorate status.
1972 1 January: Caroline Island, Flint Island, Malden Island, Starbuck Is-
land, and Vostok Island are incorporated within the Gilbert and Ellice Islands
crown colony. 2 January: The administrative area known as the British
Western Pacific Territories is abolished.
1973 1 June: British Honduras is renamed Belize. 10 July: The Bahamas
wins independence.
1974 7 February: Grenada wins independence.
1975 16 September: Papua New Guinea wins independence. 1 October:
The Gilbert Islands and the Ellice Islands become separate colonies.
xxxviii • CHRONOLOGY
1976 29 June: The Seychelles wins independence.
1978 7 July: The Solomon Islands win independence. 1 October: The Ellice
Islands win independence as the Dominion of Tuvalu. 3 November: Domini-
ca wins independence.
1979 22 February: St. Lucia wins independence. 12 July: The Gilbert Is-
lands win independence as the Republic of Kiribiti. 27 October: St. Vincent
and the Grenadines wins independence. 21 December: Britain resumes re-
sponsibility for the government of Southern Rhodesia.
1980 18 April: Southern Rhodesia wins independence as the Republic of
Zimbabwe. 30 July: The New Hebrides wins independence as Vanuatu. 19
December: Anguilla is detached, administratively, from St. Kitts-Nevis and
becomes a separate crown colony.
1981 21 September: Belize (formerly British Honduras) wins independence.
1 November: Antigua and Barbuda wins independence.
1982 25 March: Parliament approves the Canada Act, which formally ends
all British legislative control over Canadian affairs.
1983 1 January: The British Nationality Act (1981) comes into force; crown
colonies are renamed “British Dependent Territories.” 19 September: St.
Kitts and Nevis wins independence.
1984 1 January: Brunei wins independence.
1985 3 October: South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands are declared
a British Dependent Territory.
1986 3 March: Implementation of the Australia Acts severs the final coloni-
al bonds between Britain and Australia by ending the practice of referring
appeals from Australian law courts to the Judicial Committee of the Privy
Council.
1997 1 July: Hong Kong returns to Chinese sovereignty.
2002 26 February: British Dependent Territories, the last outposts of Em-
pire, are renamed “British Overseas Territories.”
2009 8 July: Queen Elizabeth II creates the British Overseas Territory of St.
Helena, Ascension, and Tristan da Cunha, giving all three territories equal
status.
2012 18 December: The United Kingdom ruffles diplomatic feathers by
renaming the area of Antarctica that lies south of the Weddell Sea and be-
tween longitudes 20º West and 80º West “Queen Elizabeth Land” in honor of
Queen Elizabeth II.
 Introduction

For much of the 19th and early 20th centuries, Britain was the dominant
world power, its strength based in large part on its command of an Empire
that, in the years immediately after World War I, encompassed almost one-
quarter of the earth’s land surface and one-fifth of its population. Writers
boasted that the sun never set on British possessions, which provided raw
materials that, processed in British factories, could be re-exported as manu-
factured products to expanding colonial markets. The commercial and politi-
cal might was not based on any grand strategic plan of territorial acquisition,
however. The Empire grew piecemeal, shaped by the diplomatic, economic,
and military circumstances of the times, and its speedy dismemberment in
the mid-20th century was, similarly, a reaction to the realities of geopolitics
in post–World War II conditions.

THE FIRST EMPIRE

There is no obvious date at which Britain’s empire building began. In many

ways, the process of acquiring territorial possessions can be seen as a contin-
uation of the “land grabs” made by the Normans, led by William the Con-
queror, who invaded southern England in 1066 and spread throughout the
British Isles, subjugating Anglo-Saxon England within four years, claiming
sovereignty over Ireland by the late 12th century, forcing the Welsh princes
into submission by the end of the 13th century, and, in Scotland, founding
noble families who would eventually win control of the monarchy. Even so,
England was later than other European countries in expanding its influence
beyond the shores of the continent. By the early 16th century, Portugal and
Spain had already divided newly discovered lands beyond Europe between
them, the Americas through the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494 and Asia and
the Pacific through the Treaty of Zaragoza in 1529. Unlike their Mediterra-
nean counterparts, though, the English monarchs were unwilling to invest in
exploration, so most of England’s 15th- and 16th-century maritime adventur-
ers were more concerned with piracy and privateering than with attempts to
found colonies.
Some scholars argue that England’s first serious imperial gesture was King
Henry VII’s “patent” (or charter), granted in 1496, that authorized John
Cabot to “sail to all parts, regions, and coasts of the eastern, western, and

1
2 • INTRODUCTION
northern sea, under our banners, flags, and ensigns . . . to find, discover, and
investigate whatever islands, countries, regions, or provinces of heathens and
infidels, in whatsoever part of the world placed, before this time were un-
known to all Christians.” Cabot was assured of a monopoly of any trade that
he could establish with the territories he discovered, provided he gave one-
fifth of the profits to the crown, but the patent did not require him to claim or
to settle those territories. Commercial gain, rather than acquisition of land,
was the driving force of English exploration. In 1576, Martin Frobisher left
Blackwall, on the River Thames, in search of a “Northwest Passage” to Asia
along the, then wholly unmapped, northern coast of North America—a quest
supported by London merchants because English vessels sailing to the Indian
Ocean around the Cape of Good Hope or to the Pacific through the Strait of
Magellan were liable to be captured by Portuguese and Spanish ships that
patrolled the southern seas. Then, on New Year’s Eve in 1600, Queen Eliza-
beth I granted a royal charter to 216 investors in the East India Company,
ensuring them of a monopoly of all trade with communities east of the Cape
and west of the Strait.
In 1578–79, Francis Drake claimed three (still unidentified) small islands
off the southern coast of South America, as well as areas of the western coast
of North America, for the English queen, but no villages were built on those
lands and Elizabeth had no means of defending the claims militarily. Howev-
er, several Caribbean islands and much of the eastern coast of North America
lay outside Spanish control and were much more readily supplied and pro-
tected by English ships. Sir Humphrey Gilbert—a committed advocate of
searches for a Northwest Passage and one of Frobisher’s sponsors—peti-
tioned the queen for permission to “annoy the King of Spayne” by establish-
ing an English colony in the West Indies and using it as a base from which to
attack Spanish shipping. Also, he proposed to disrupt the activities of Portu-
guese and Spanish fishing fleets operating in the rich waters off the coast of
Newfoundland. Elizabeth, convinced by her courtier’s persuasiveness,
granted him rights to search for “remote heathen and barbarous lands” that
were not under the sovereignty of a Christian overlord; if he found such
territories, he and his heirs could occupy the lands for all time. As a result, on
5 August 1583, Gilbert founded England’s first colony in the Americas when
he sailed into the harbor at St. John’s, Newfoundland, claimed all of the land
within 200 leagues’ radius of the anchorage for the queen, and established his
authority by taxing the fisherman.
New colonies were possessions of the crown, but monarchs, lacking funds
to develop the lands themselves, granted charters that allowed companies or
individuals to settle specified territories. Thus, for example, in 1584 Queen
Elizabeth I gave Walter Raleigh—Gilbert’s half brother—a royal license to
establish a colony on the eastern coast of North America (with both parties
understanding that it would be a focus of supply and support for English
 INTRODUCTION • 3
vessels intent on plundering Spanish craft), and in 1606 her successor, King
James I, gave the two branches of the Virginia Company rights to lands
between the 34th and 45th parallels of latitude on the continent. For most
entrepreneurs, the attraction of the Americas was the potential wealth to be
gained from commerce, but in order to realize that potential they had to grow
crops or mine precious metals, and that meant finding a supply of labor. In
the more northerly areas of the region, that was achieved by attracting settlers
from Europe, many drawn by the prospect of land grants, others seeking
escape from religious persecution or imprisonment for debt. The new arrivals
cleared the forest and scrub, established family farms, and founded small
industries (such as corn mills and shipbuilding yards) that shaped landscapes
of fields and villages similar, in many ways, to those of their homelands, but
initially they produced little that could profitably be exported to England. At
more southerly locations, however, incomes were based on cotton, sugar, and
tobacco, which were much in demand in Europe and most profitably grown
under a plantation system. With few European settlers willing to work for
wages in the cotton fields when they could farm their own land elsewhere
and with local sources of workers insufficient to meet needs, the owners of
those plantations, from Virginia to the Caribbean, copied the practices of
their Portuguese counterparts in Brazil and imported slaves, principally from
Africa.
Many of the early colonies had brief histories, victims of internal disputes,
predations by indigenous groups, and the vagaries of unfamiliar environ-
ments. Frequently, too, charters were revoked as businesses failed or because
the crown decided to exercise more control itself; in 1624, for example, King
James I rescinded the charter of the debt-ridden Virginia Company and made
its territories a royal colony, much like Ireland in that it was ruled by officials
who were directly responsible to the monarch. However, many of the settle-
ments survived and evolved systems of administration that reflected the
structures and values of the societies that were being shaped in the New
World. In 1619, immigrants gathered “to establish one equal and uniform
government” for Virginia and to create “just laws for the happy guiding and
governing of the people.” Farther north, in New England, Puritan commu-
nities adopted very different regulations for community control, based on
their religious values, but common to all was a sense of independence and a
resistance to attempts by outsiders to impose change. Given the slow nature
of transatlantic communication in the 17th and 18th centuries, it was impos-
sible for an English (or, from 1707, when the parliaments of England and
Scotland united, a British) government to exercise close oversight over activ-
ities in the colonies, and moreover, until 1768, when the British government
created a Colonial Department, responsibility for territorial possessions
rested largely with the Lords Commissioners of Trade and Plantations, which
4 • INTRODUCTION
served more as an advisor to the monarch than as a policy-making unit. As a
result, the American colonies and their governors were left largely to their
own devices.
The sole colonial issue that concerned British parliamentarians was com-
merce. Legislation controlling imperial trade took two forms, both of which
were intended to benefit the mother country rather than its territorial posses-
sions. From 1650, a series of measures, now collectively known as the Navi-
gation Acts, limited the transport of imperial commodities by ensuring that
all cargoes taken to or from the colonies were carried on English ships
(including vessels built in the colonies). Also, all goods destined for the
imperial market, whatever their foreign source, had to pass through English
ports, as did specified products exported from colonial locations. That pack-
age of regulations, framed to ensure that Britain exercised a monopoly over
imperial trade, was designed to exclude vessels of other European countries
from the import and export business and thus boost the profits of English
shipping firms, but it also increased demand for vessels, stimulating work in
shipbuilding yards, both in England and in the American colonies, and en-
larged the merchant marine, which could be used to support the Royal Navy
in times of war.
A second group of measures attempted to protect English-based industries
by restricting colonial output of commodities that were likely to compete
with those of English producers. In 1699, for instance, a Wool Act required
that all wool and woolen goods produced in the colonies had to be sold on the
English market; in England, the wool was made up into finished garments
then, with the imported clothing, re-exported to colonial buyers, ensuring
that English manufacturers benefited from the value-added element of indus-
trial processing and that government coffers benefited from the taxes im-
posed at various stages of the import and export process. In 1732, a Hat Act
limited hat manufacture and sale in the Americas (by restricting the number
of workers that hatmakers could employ, for example), and in 1750 an Iron
Act forbade the construction of rolling and slitting mills in British colonies,
thus potentially limiting the manufacture of such commodities as knives and
nails and obliging settlers to buy from British sources. Measures such as
these were often loosely enforced—Alexander Spotswood and Sir William
Gooch, governors of Virginia from 1710–22 and 1727–49, respectively,
owned ironworks in the province so were never likely to rigorously apply
laws that reduced their income—and colonists found means of circumventing
legislation (by making their clothing from flax or hemp, rather than wool, for
instance). Smuggling became an important source of supply for some goods,
as from 1733, when the British parliament, through the Molasses Act, im-
posed a tax of six pence per gallon on molasses imported to the colonies from
non-British possessions; the measure was intended to make molasses from
British-owned plantations on the islands of the West Indies cheaper than that
 INTRODUCTION • 5
from their Dutch, French, and Spanish competitors, but, by forcing up prices
in an effort to protect the more expensive Caribbean supplies, it threatened
the very existence of the burgeoning rum-distilling industry in New England
and so promoted a huge contraband trade, which was largely ignored by
officials, who were well paid to turn a blind eye.
Nevertheless, although settlers demonstrated considerable ingenuity in
finding ways to circumvent the laws they were unable to ignore them com-
pletely and, increasingly, resented their imposition. In 1774, philosopher and
statesman Edmund Burke described the situation in the American colonies as
one of “commercial servitude and civil liberty” that fell short of “perfect
freedom.” By the time he made that speech, the tensions between servitude
and liberty had caused a political crisis. From 1754, Britain and other powers
became embroiled in a conflict known as the Seven Years’ War (because the
main struggle lasted from 1756–63), with the North American theater usually
termed the French and Indian War. Victory over France and Spain gave
Britain control of Quebec and, farther south on the continent, of most of the
territory from the Mississippi River to the Atlantic coast. However, the cost
of war drained the country’s coffers, nearly doubling the national debt, and
both Prime Minister John Stuart, earl of Bute, and his successor, George
Grenville, were determined that the North American colonies would make a
contribution to future costs of their defense.
Grenville worked out the details, deciding, for the first time, to raise the
necessary funds by taxing colonists directly rather than by continuing the
established practice of restricting fiscal intervention to regulations designed
to shape the nature of trade. A Stamp Act, approved by parliament in 1765,
required that all documents and newspapers used in the colonies bear an
embossed revenue stamp and be printed on paper produced in Britain, with
the tax paid in sterling rather than in colonial currencies. The measure raised
fundamental issues about the right of the London legislature to levy taxes on
communities that were not represented in it, but neither side was in a mood
for calm discussion of principles. Senior British politicians were by no means
united over the new policy—William Pitt the Elder, who had been respon-
sible for the much of the conduct of the war, believed that local assemblies in
each colony should be responsible for fiscal matters, for instance—and
Americans themselves were divided. Initially, the radicals calling for a com-
plete break with the mother country were in a minority, in part because many
settlers wanted to retain links to Great Britain for economic or family rea-
sons, but in thirteen of the provinces they garnered support, particularly from
1774, when parliament approved a series of bills, widely described in the
colonies as “The Intolerable Acts,” which attempted to exact retribution from
the people of Massachusetts after opponents of tariffs on tea boarded East
India Company ships in Boston harbor and dumped the cargoes into the
harbor. Outbreaks of fighting between rebels and British troops became in-
6 • INTRODUCTION
creasingly frequent, and, on 4 July 1776, delegates from the thirteen colo-
nies, at a congress in Philadelphia, declared themselves independent. Britain
attempted to assert its sovereignty militarily, but the intervention of Holland,
France, and Spain on the side of the colonists meant that the war had been
lost by 1781. In 1783, through the Treaty of Paris, Great Britain relinquished
all claims to the territories that had united to form the United States of
America.

THE SECOND EMPIRE

Not all of Britain’s possessions in the Americas rebelled. The regions that
became present-day Canada remained loyal to King George III, as did the
Caribbean islands, but, even so, the loss of such a large group of revenue-
producing areas inevitably had serious economic implications. From the be-
ginning of the 17th century, England had been extending its influence be-
yond the boundaries of Europe, but the emphasis had been on accruing
wealth through commerce rather than on acquiring colonies. In North Ameri-
ca, exploitation of resources had depended on settlement of the land by
migrants, either freely or under duress, because the territories of the New
World had very small indigenous populations and little to offer, by way of
trade, to European markets. Africa and Asia, by contrast, had larger popula-
tions that produced goods, such as silks and spices, that could be sold in
Europe as luxury items and so command a high price. Settlement by colonists
and slaves was not, therefore, a necessary precursor of the development of
trade in these areas. Instead, the English crown granted trading rights to
chartered companies and other groups, allowing them monopolies over the
buying and selling of goods in specified regions of the world. The East India
Company, for example, established bases (known as “factories” because they
were managed by “factors”) at Bantam, on Java, in 1603 and at Surat, on the
western coast of India, in 1612, and the Royal African Company exported
slaves from Africa’s western coast from 1672. Ventures such as these proved
to be the foundations on which a second Empire was built in the 19th centu-
ry, focusing in large part on Africa and Asia, rather than on the Americas,
and on already well-populated regions of those continents.
As the power of the Mughal emperors in India declined from around 1700,
local leaders, formerly under their control, increasingly asserted independent
authority. In 1756, one of those nawabs—Sirajud-Daulah—overran the East
India Company settlement at Calcutta. The following year, Robert Clive and
the Company’s armies took revenge at the Battle of Plassey, replaced Siraj
with a more cooperative ruler, and assumed control of Bengal. Later, victory
in the Seven Years’ War resulted in acquisition of French colonies on the
 INTRODUCTION • 7
Indian subcontinent, and in 1770, in the southern Pacific Ocean, Captain
James Cook claimed the eastern coast of Australia for Britain. Inexorably,
therefore, as Great Britain competed politically with other European powers
and sought to maintain its status as a major trading nation, it exercised
control over larger and larger geographical areas. That, in turn, raised strate-
gic issues that led to further acquisitions. For example, the Dutch had settled
the Cape of Good Hope in 1652, but when, in 1795, the Dutch Republic was
occupied by the French, with whom Great Britain was at war, British forces
invaded the territory because it commanded sea routes from the Atlantic
Ocean to India round the southern tip of Africa. Sovereignty was confirmed
by the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1814 and proved to be a focus for expansion
northward into the interior of the African continent. Similarly, Ceylon (occu-
pied in 1796), Mauritius (1810), Singapore (1819), Aden (1839), and other
locations were annexed because they provided supply bases for Royal Navy
vessels, allowing them to patrol the Indian Ocean, and because asserting
control prevented the French from acquiring the sites, thus limiting French
influence in the region. In the Pacific, the eastern coast of Australia was used
as a location for penal colonies from 1788 and the western coast was settled
from 1826, again primarily to pre-empt French claims to the area. New
Zealand (visited by Cook in 1769 and claimed as part of New South Wales in
1788) was the subject of British assertions of sovereignty in 1840 (once
more, at least in part, to forestall the French). On the Asian mainland, fears of
Russian expansion southward led to Great Britain’s intervention in Afghani-
stan and the Himalayan territories of Bhutan, Nepal, Sikkim, and Tibet as it
attempted to create buffer states between the tsarist empire and its own
lucrative possessions on the Indian subcontinent.
For most of the 19th century, however, the process of colonial acquisition
was carried out piecemeal as a reaction to events rather than as a carefully
designed strategy of imperial expansion. As a result, the British Empire
evolved as a very diverse unit, with elements, spread across the globe and
including vast expanses of land (such as 3,854,000-square-mile Canada) as
well as tiny oceanic islets (for example, eight-square-mile Nauru), that en-
compassed very diverse cultural traditions. In most areas—and particularly
in areas with large non-European populations—administration of the people
who had fallen under the authority of the British crown was autocratic, with a
governor, formally appointed by the monarch, carrying out executive func-
tions, usually in conjunction with an advisory council (whom he appointed)
and a legislative assembly (which was often dominated by gubernatorial
appointees and whose elected members, when they were included, were cho-
sen by a franchise, determined by property qualifications, that favored Euro-
pean immigrants). However, compromises were inevitable because Britain
had neither the funds nor the population to staff every colonial government
office with British-born citizens. Such compromises were developed by trial
8 • INTRODUCTION
and error and varied according to circumstances. In India, many areas were
left under the control of traditional princely rulers, though treaty arrange-
ments gave the imperial power responsibility for foreign affairs and defense
while the rajahs exercised authority over domestic matters. Similarly, in
Northern Nigeria, Frederick Lugard, the governor, realizing that Africans
were more likely to accept the edicts of an African administrator than to obey
the commands of a European, ensured that uncooperative emirs were re-
placed and gave considerable managerial authority, albeit under the close
supervision of a British advisor, to substitutes more willing to submit to
British overlordship.
In areas dominated by white settlers used to British principles of govern-
ance, circumstances were often different, particularly from 1838, when John
Lambton, earl of Durham, was dispatched by the government to investigate
the cause of unrest in Lower and Upper Canada. His report, radical for the
times, recommended the creation of elected legislative assemblies, with ex-
ecutive decisions made by members of those assemblies. Britain, he argued,
should concern itself solely with constitutional matters, disposal of waste-
lands, foreign relations, and international trade. Those proposals were much
too far-reaching for the administration led by Prime Minister William Lamb,
Viscount Melbourne, but Henry Grey, Earl Grey, appointed secretary of state
for war and the colonies by Prime Minister Lord John Russell just eight years
later, in 1846, took the view that colonies should be governed for their own
benefit, not for the good of the mother country, so in 1848 he allowed Nova
Scotia and the Province of Canada to form cabinet governments. Over the
next two decades, politicians in Britain increasingly accepted the principle
that territorial possessions with significant populations of European descent
could qualify for the establishment of “responsible government,” thus unwit-
tingly creating an imperial elite of colonies, known as “dominions” from
1907, that eventually aspired to independent statehood on the European mod-
el.

IMPERIAL DECLINE

The British Empire’s territorial expansion during the 19th century was ac-
companied by industrial expansion at home, much of it based on raw materi-
als, such as cotton and rubber, that were imported from the colonies for
conversion into finished goods in mills and factories, providing employment
for families forced out of rural areas by agricultural innovation and attracted
by the higher wages offered in the burgeoning towns and cities. Learned
bodies, including the African Association and the Royal Geographical Soci-
ety, funded explorations intended to provide detail for the blank areas on the
 INTRODUCTION • 9
world map, and missionary societies sent representatives to “heathen” peo-
ples in an effort to convert them to the Christian faith. By the 1880s, howev-
er, enthusiasm for further colonial acquisitions was waning. Some voices,
such as that of Edwin Arnold, editor of the Daily Telegraph newspaper, and
industrialist Cecil Rhodes, called for the construction of a railroad from
Cairo to the Cape of Good Hope through a chain of British colonies in
eastern Africa, and imperial expansion remained popular with many voters,
but, increasingly, humanitarian groups were questioning the behavior of Eu-
ropeans who deprived indigenous groups of their land, condemning them to
forms of labor that amounted to near-slavery, and other critics saw little
prospect of commercial gain through further territorial augmentation of Em-
pire.
Politicians, however, respond to political situations so the changing com-
position and structure of the Empire in the late 19th and in the 20th centuries
reflected a desire to protect national interests in a world that was becoming
more economically and politically interconnected and in which, while other
powers—notably France and Germany—were seeking to extend their
spheres of influence, colonies were seen as useful bargaining tools in interna-
tional negotiations. In the Pacific arena, diplomats in Australia and New
Zealand were concerned by the expansionist policies of the French and Ger-
man governments as well as those of the United States, so they pressured
Great Britain into making protectorates of southeastern New Guinea (to pre-
vent a German takeover) and of the Cook Islands (to keep the French out) in
1888. In 1899, British claims to Samoa were dropped in return for the acqui-
sition of German rights (in particular, the right to build a naval base) on
Tonga, the redrawing of boundaries between British and German possessions
on the Solomon Islands, and the withdrawal of German rights of extraterrito-
riality in Zanzibar. Christmas Island and Fanning Island were annexed in
1888 because they were under consideration as locations for possible relay
stations needed for a proposed transpacific telegraph cable.
In 1884, at a conference in Berlin, Great Britain, France, Germany, and
Portugal carved the African continent into spheres of interest in which each
would have a monopoly of operation. In 1882, Britain invaded Egypt, prob-
ably fearing that it would default on its international debts following a revolt
against Muhammed Tewfik Pasha, the ruling khedive, but also in order to
ensure uninterrupted passage for ships heading to India through the Suez
Canal, which had opened 13 years earlier. Then, during World War I, it
added to its territories in the Middle East by occupying Mesopotamia and
Palestine (both of which had been part of the Ottoman Empire, an ally of
Germany) and, in Africa, took the German colonies of Kamerun and Togo-
land and the portion of German East Africa that became Tanganyika. When
the conflict ended, the League of Nations granted Britain mandates to govern
all of the captured territories.
10 • INTRODUCTION
The four decades from 1880–1920 were, therefore, a period of rapid impe-
rial expansion that did nothing to enhance uniformity. Several colonies, most
of them in the tropics, produced raw materials that could be transported to
Europe for processing. India had a large population that provided a market
for goods manufactured in Britain and was a crucial source of manpower for
the British army. Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and other territories
where the settlers of European descent outnumbered the indigenous popula-
tion were valuable potential allies. However, many possessions had been
acquired in order to keep other powers out, and neither served a useful
commercial purpose nor had great strategic value in the post–World War I
world. Also, problems of governance remained, and the criticisms of Empire
increasingly heard in the United Kingdom (U.K.) were being augmented, in
the territories Britain administered, by the voices of colonial citizens, who
considered a say in running their own affairs a just return for the men and
money they had invested in the conflict.
In 1926, the U.K. accepted that independence for the dominions—Austra-
lia, Canada, the Irish Free State, New Zealand, Newfoundland, and the Union
of South Africa—was the price to be paid for their military commitment,
recognizing that they and the U.K. were “autonomous communities within
the British Empire, equal in status, in no way subordinate one to another in
any aspect of their domestic or external affairs.” The new relationship was
given legal status by parliament in 1931, with opponents mollified by an
agreement that each of the dominions would retain the British monarch as its
head of state. Not surprisingly, those moves fueled the aspirations of nation-
alists elsewhere. In India, an Indian National Congress had been formed in
1885, with the aim of winning Indians a greater say in the government of the
subcontinent, and by 1920 was being led by Mahatma Gandhi, a London-
trained attorney (like many figures in the nationalist movements) who advo-
cated non-violent opposition to British rule. In Kenya, Henry Thuku, a news-
paper-compositor-turned-government-telephone-operator, shaped the first
organized political resistance to the regime through his Young Kikuyu Asso-
ciation, founded in June 1921 and renamed the East Africa Association the
following month. In Jamaica, dissatisfaction with a white-dominated admin-
istration that was unrepresentative of a population largely of African descent
led, in 1938, to the formation of labor unions and the left-wing People’s
National Party, with Norman Manley at its head.
World War II brought further strains. The Irish Free State (which had
achieved dominion status in 1921 after centuries of harsh British rule and
parliamentary resistance to calls for independence) declared itself neutral,
emphasizing a lack of unity in imperial foreign policy that was echoed by
Canada’s decision to underscore its independence by delaying a declaration
of war against Germany until seven days after the United Kingdom had taken
that step. Japan’s occupation of Singapore (which had been considered im-
 INTRODUCTION • 11
pregnable), and the fall of other British possessions on the Malay Peninsula,
convinced many Asian peoples that Europeans were not invincible and en-
couraged Australia and New Zealand to seek closer relationships with the
United States. The 2,000,000 soldiers from India, and the more than one
million from Africa, who fought on the allied side, learned of common inter-
ests with other troops from the colonies and, at the end of the fighting,
expected concessions toward self-government as a reward for their service,
arguing that a country that had fought to preserve its freedoms should not
deny freedom to people elsewhere. Also, although the United Kingdom
emerged victorious from the war, the country was near bankrupt, much of the
physical infrastructure of roads and factories was in ruins, and funds avail-
able for administering an empire were very limited.
Imperial disengagement was fraught with problems, however. Prime Min-
ister Clement Attlee, who led the U.K.’s first postwar government, gave
priority to independence for India, where the Hindu-dominated Indian Na-
tional Congress wanted the area retained as a single administrative unit but
where the Moslem League, fearing Hindu control, campaigned for its own
state. In an effort to withdraw quickly, with minimum damage to Britain’s
reputation, Attlee opted for partition, creating India and Pakistan, which
became independent in 1947; the decision precipitated a mass migration as
12 million members of religious minorities crossed the new national boun-
daries in a search for safety and some one million were murdered before they
could find sanctuary. The situation in Palestine was similar, with Arabs op-
posing plans to allow 100,000 Jewish refugees from Europe to settle in the
territory. Seeing no way of satisfying both groups, and unwilling to bear the
cost of maintaining a large military presence, in February 1947 Britain in-
formed the United Nations (which had assumed responsibility for territories
mandated by the League of Nations) that it intended to withdraw from the
region, a task achieved in May the following year. In Malaya and Kenya,
lengthy rebellions necessitated large commitments of troops in attempts to
keep order and the press printed regular reports of atrocities by both sides.
Some island possessions had populations that were too small and econo-
mies that were considered, by government advisors, too limited to allow
them to function as independent states. Also, and particularly in Africa,
several colonies contained such a mixture of ethnic groups, languages, and
religions that unity under a single authority seemed unlikely. Nevertheless,
world political opinion supported the rights of communities to determine
their own futures, and domestic economic pressures pushed governments
toward the same end. Alan Lennox-Boyd, appointed secretary of state for the
colonies by Prime Minister Winston Churchill in 1954, firmly believed that
colonial rule had done far more good than harm to the colonized so he was in
no hurry to further the cause of the Empire’s nationalist movements, but he
was also a pragmatist, well aware of the implications of opposing those
12 • INTRODUCTION
movements, and thus was happy to negotiate when talks seemed politically
expedient. The Federation of Malaya had been formed in 1948 through the
merger of eleven British possessions on the Malay Peninsula and had a
government headed by a British high commissioner who exercised executive
authority, acting on the advice of executive and legislative councils. The
territory experienced much ethnic violence in the late 1940s and early 1950s
as Chinese citizens, supported by communist sources, opposed the British
presence so, believing that attempts to retain control would push the territory
fully into the communist fold, as had happened in French Indo-China, Len-
nox-Boyd initiated discussions that led to independence in 1957. The Gold
Coast—the wealthiest British colony in West Africa, with a relatively high
literacy rate—posed different problems because some political organizations
favored the creation of a centralized state after independence while others,
dominated by the Ashanti people, advocated a form of federation that would
give a significant role to traditional leaders. Although several British politi-
cians protested that the internal differences could lead to civil disorder if the
United Kingdom withdrew, Lennox-Boyd nonetheless approved indepen-
dence in 1957 because he considered that Kwame Nkrumah and his Conven-
tion People’s Party offered the best hope for a pro-British ally in the region
and because, he felt, delaying self-government would swell support for mili-
tant nationalists in other colonies.
Circumstances in Central and East Africa were even less auspicious be-
cause colonies in those areas had minority white populations that were im-
placably opposed to black African majority rule, but Iain Macleod, who
followed Lennox-Boyd to the Colonial Office in 1959, took the view that “if
you give independence to West Africa, you cannot deny it in East Africa just
because there is a white settler community there.” He quickly grasped the
nettle in Kenya, which had some 68,000 whites but where 90,000 suspected
rebels were incarcerated in detention camps amid rumors of torture by their
British guards. Most of the detainees were freed within weeks, and in Janu-
ary 1960 Macleod told a meeting of black and white leaders in London that
“there must be majority rule.” Independence followed in 1963. Discussions
with Julius Nyerere of Tanganyika, which had experienced less violence than
other colonies in the region, led to arrangements for independence in 1961.
In April 1960, Hastings Banda was released from prison in Nyasaland, de-
spite opposition from Sir Robert Armitage, the protectorate’s governor, and
invited to London for a constitutional conference, which concluded with an
understanding that the territory would secede from the Federation of Rhode-
sia and Nyasaland and become fully independent, as Malawi, in 1964. Delib-
erations over Northern Rhodesia were, by Macleod’s own admission, “in-
credibly devious and torturous,” but it, too, eventually became self-govern-
ing, as the Republic of Zambia, in 1964.
 INTRODUCTION • 13
Macleod accepted that these countries were not fully prepared to function
as independent states but, he argued, “we could not possibly have held by
force to our territories in Africa . . . Of course, there were risks in moving
quickly, but the risks of moving more slowly were far greater.” Prime Minis-
ter Harold Macmillan was fully supportive, quoting essayist and historian
Lord Thomas Babington Macaulay, who wrote in 1851 that “many politi-
cians of our time are in the habit of laying it down as a self-evident proposi-
tion that no people ought to be free until they are fit to use their freedom. The
maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story who resolved not to get into the
water till he had learned to swim. If men are to wait for liberty until they
become wise and good in slavery, they may indeed wait forever.”
Macmillan took the view that if the cost of maintaining an imperial posses-
sion outweighed the benefits, then the colony should be given its indepen-
dence or merged with another area. His prime ministerial successors adopted
a similar stance, not least as a result of the rising cost of maintaining the
United Kingdom’s armed forces. Although the Royal Naval base at Aden had
long been considered essential to the defense of British interests in the Per-
sian Gulf, Harold Wilson’s Labour Party government—faced with domestic
economic pressures (that eventually led to a devaluation of sterling)—with-
drew troops in 1967 without making any arrangements for a handover of
power to either of the groups competing for dominance in the colony. In the
same year, in a move that some commentators have interpreted as the last
step in Britain’s retreat from a world role, Defence Secretary Denis Healey
told parliament of plans to withdraw all British forces from “East of Suez.”
The United Kingdom therefore entered the 1970s with only the remnants
of an empire remaining, most of them small island communities, including
several in the Caribbean and the Pacific, that achieved full self-government
during the next decade. In Africa, Southern Rhodesia, where the white lead-
ership had unilaterally declared independence in 1965, lost the political sup-
port of Madagascar and South Africa and faced mounting bills for counterin-
surgency measures, forcing its government to the negotiating table and to the
acceptance of black rule, in an independent Republic of Zimbabwe, in 1980.
In 2002, the last outposts of the once worldwide imperial community were
named British Overseas Territories. Two of these—British Antarctic Territo-
ry, and South Georgia and the South Shetland Islands—have no resident
populations. Akrotiri and Dhekelia, on Cyprus, and British Indian Ocean
Territory are military bases. The others (Anguilla; Bermuda; the Cayman
Islands; the Falkland Islands; Gibraltar; Montserrat; the Pitcairn Islands; St.
Helena, Ascension, and Tristan da Cunha; the Turks and Caicos Islands; and
the Virgin Islands) are small in land area and population, with only the
Falklands exceeding 200 square miles and only Bermuda and the Cayman
Islands having more than 50,000 residents.
14 • INTRODUCTION
THE IMPERIAL LEGACY

The legacy of Empire is a fruitful source of discussion for scholars from

many academic disciplines. One group considers that the negative impacts
greatly outweigh the positive. They point to the misery caused by slavery,
which was criminalized by the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 but continued
in often near-similar forms through practices of indentured labor. Indigenous
groups were deprived of their land and forced to work for European over-
lords. Ethnic groups divided as imperial powers drew boundaries along rivers
or mountain ridges, rather than around social groups, so communities found
themselves in colonies with peoples who spoke different tongues and wor-
shipped different gods. Traditional forms of government were replaced by
European administrative processes, and traditional ways of life were ended
by Europeans who imposed their own norms. All colonized peoples lost
control of their natural resources and the right to govern themselves. Some
critics, too, claim that the hasty process of decolonization had a negative
impact because relatively well-run bureaucracies were replaced by corrupt
dictatorships, particularly in Africa, and that immigration to the United King-
dom from former colonies has led to ethnic tensions—and sometimes to
violence—in British cities.
On the other hand, apologists contend that Britain’s Empire building was
an inevitable result of power struggles between European nations and that,
outside the African continent, most former British colonies have stable forms
of democratic government based on the Westminster model. Also, the major-
ity of former colonies have adopted legal systems that incorporate the tenets
of English common law, which is based on precedent rather than on execu-
tive action and so, according to its proponents, ensures consistency and fair-
ness in systems of justice. Advocates for the positive impact of Empire also
suggest that, although many traditional cultural practices were repressed,
Europeans did much to end such inhumane activities as cannibalism and the
suttee (the Indian custom of a widow burning herself to death on her hus-
band’s funeral pyre). In addition, the development of Empire led to the
expansion of English as a world language and to the introduction of British
forms of education to colonial territories. It may also be significant that most
colonies, on achieving independence, have opted to join the Commonwealth
of Nations, an organization of states that is linked more by shared heritage
than by political goals and that houses about one-third of the world’s popula-
tion on about one-fifth of the earth’s land surface. Fifteen of the states,
known as Commonwealth Realms, recognize the monarch of the United
Kingdom as their own head of state and adopt the same line of succession to
the throne as that adopted in Britain.
 INTRODUCTION • 15
In the second decade of the 20th century, British governments grappled
with constitutional issues stemming from Ireland’s demands for freedom
from colonial rule. By the second decade of the 21st century, constitutional
issues still dogged political agendas, a reflection of the loss of sovereignty
implied by membership of the European Union and by the implications of a
referendum, held in 2014, which showed that 45 percent of Scotland’s electo-
rate wanted to secede from the United Kingdom. Imperial matters have faded
from British administrative minds, and the closure of Bristol’s British Em-
pire and Commonwealth Museum, because of poor visitor numbers, in 2008
suggested that the public was apathetic—or, according to some observers,
embarrassed—about its colonial past. However, Queen Elizabeth II is known
to take her role of head of the Commonwealth very seriously, and that organ-
ization has revised its membership criteria so that countries such as Algeria
and Madagascar, which have shown an interest in joining even though they
had never been part of the British Empire, could have applications consid-
ered. Critics have pointed out that the body has limited political impact—it
cannot, for example, impose sanctions in the way that the European Union or
the United Nations can do—but for small countries it is an important means
of networking, promoting cultural and trading links, and providing access to
more politically influential states. The Empire has gone, but it has left a
legacy that remains of great significance in the modern world.
 A
ABDUL RAHMAN, TUNKU (1903–1990). Tunku (or Prince) Abdul Rah-
man is considered by many Malaysians the principal strategist behind their
country’s transition from colonial status to independent nationhood. The son
of Sultan Abdul Hamid Shah, ruler of Kedah, and his fourth wife, Che
Manjalara, Abdul Rahman was born in Alor Setar (Kedah’s capital city) on 8
February 1903, traveled to England in 1920, and studied at Cambridge Uni-
versity, where he earned a greater reputation for partying than for scholarship
and left without taking a degree. A period of training as a lawyer in London
also proved unproductive when he failed to pass examinations so, in 1931, he
returned, in some disgrace, to his homeland and joined Kedah’s civil service,
working in posts that enabled him to learn about the problems faced by
peasant farmers but that also led to arguments with administrators as he tried
to win funds to drain swamps (which provided a habitat for malaria-carrying
mosquitoes) and improve infrastructure. He went back to the United King-
dom in 1947, resumed his legal studies, this time with greater diligence,
qualified as a barrister in 1949, then took a post as prosecutor in the Kuala
Lumpur courts.
In those years immediately following World War II, nationalist move-
ments gained ground on the Malay Peninsula. Japanese occupation of the
region during the conflict had shown that British power was not invincible,
and, in 1946, the imperial authority’s attempt to form a Malayan Union,
placing several colonies under a single administration, had met such strong
opposition that the organization had to be restructured as the Federation of
Malaya just two years later. Increasingly, Abdul Rahman was drawn into
pro-independence politics, his combination of administrative expertise, first-
hand experience of Britain, and legal training combining to make him a
formidable negotiator. He joined the United Malays National Organization
(UMNO), which had been created specifically to oppose the formation of the
Malayan Union, becoming president in 1951 after an acrimonious internal
debate in which most participants refused to consider allowing Chinese and
other non-Malays to become members. Rather than accept those ethnic divi-
sions, Abdul Rahman worked to promote unity and, in 1954, led a deputation

17
18 • ABOLITION OF THE SLAVE TRADE ACT (1807)
to London in the hope of winning agreement on a timetable for indepen-
dence. British officials proved unwilling to listen, however, arguing that the
nationalists would have to provide evidence that Malaya’s racial groups
would cooperate in government before any plans could be made for self-
determination and underestimating the tunku’s ability to weld the different
communities into a cooperative political unit. The necessary proofs appeared
the following year when the Alliance Party—a coalition of the UMNO, the
Malayan Chinese Association, and the Malayan Indian Congress that was
forged largely as a result of Abdul Rahman’s efforts—won 51 of the 52 seats
(and 80 percent of the vote) at the federal general election held on 27 July.
Abdul Rahman was appointed chief minister of the Federation, completed
arrangements for independence on 31 August 1957, and dominated politics
in the new country for the next 13 years. In 1963, he successfully incorporat-
ed the Federation of Malaya, British North Borneo (renamed Sabah), Sa-
rawak, and Singapore into the state of Malaysia. However, tensions be-
tween the Malay and Chinese communities resulted in Singapore’s expulsion
in 1965, and criticisms of his leadership during race riots in Kuala Lumpur
four years later led to to his resignation in 1970. He died on 6 December
1990.

ABOLITION OF THE SLAVE TRADE ACT (1807). Throughout the

18th century, Great Britain was the dominant nation in a commerce that
carried clothing, guns, and other manufactured products to West Africa, bar-
tered them for slaves at markets from Sierra Leone to the Gold Coast, then
shipped the human cargoes to plantations in the West Indies and on the
mainland of North America. There, the proceeds from the sale of the captives
were used to buy molasses, raw cotton, rum, sugar, and tobacco for transport
to British markets. The slave traffic, in addition to creating wealth for mer-
chants and shipowners, allowed Britain to make a commercial success of
such Caribbean possessions as Jamaica and Trinidad as well as of Georgia,
South Carolina, and other southerly American colonies. However, from the
1770s, humanitarian organizations (often led by women) and nonconformist
religious groups (notably the Quakers) led increasingly vociferous protests
against the trade, arguing not just that it was degrading and unchristian but
that it damaged British interests in Africa because it provoked conflict by
encouraging strong tribes to prey on weaker peoples in order to gather cap-
tives for the Europeans.
From 1789, William Wilberforce, the leader of the abolitionist movement
in parliament, made several attempts to introduce legislation that would out-
law the dealings, but he was unsuccessful, outnumbered by colleagues with a
financial interest in the transactions until, at the beginning of the 19th centu-
ry, a series of unconnected events helped his cause. In 1800, the union of
Great Britain and Ireland brought 100 Irishmen into the parliament, most of
 ADEN • 19
them favoring abolition and thus altering the voting balance. Then, in Janu-
ary 1806, King George III appointed Baron William Grenville, for long an
opponent of the trade, prime minister following the death of William Pitt the
Younger. Also, Great Britain was at war with Napoleonic France, and al-
though most of the ships taking slaves to the French colonies flew the
American flag they were crewed by British seamen and sailed from British
ports. In the spring of 1806, soon after Grenville’s appointment, James Ste-
phen (a maritime lawyer married to Wilberforce’s sister, Sarah) prepared a
draft of a Foreign Slave Trade Act, which would prohibit British subjects
from transporting slaves to the territories of a foreign state. Presented to
parliament as a war measure, it won speedy approval, receiving royal assent
(the final stage in the passage of legislation) on 23 May 1806 and taking
effect from 1 January the following year. According to some historians, the
legislation cut the transatlantic slave trade by as much as 75 percent, paving
the way for the Abolition of the Slave Trade Bill, which Grenville introduced
to the House of Lords (the upper chamber in Britain’s bicameral parliament)
on 2 January 1807 and which received royal assent on 25 March. The act
made trading in slaves illegal throughout the Empire and banned British
vessels from carrying slaves, but many shipowners ignored the law so the
Royal Navy’s West Africa Squadron was formed to enforce its provisions.
Despite the merchants’ opposition to control measures, the commerce de-
clined quite rapidly, but slave ownership continued until after the passage of
the Slavery Abolition Act in 1833.

ADEN. Napoleon Bonaparte’s occupation of Egypt from 1798–1801 posed

a threat to Britain’s communications with the Indian subcontinent (because it
offered the possibility of French control of the Red Sea) so officials of the
East India Company (EIC) were forced to consider measures that would
enable them to prevent attacks on the area’s shipping (see PERIM ISLAND).
In 1802, as part of that strategy, Richard Wellesley, Marquess Wellesley and
governor-general of the Company’s Bengal Presidency, dispatched Com-
mander Home Riggs Popham, a Royal Navy officer, to negotiate trade trea-
ties with leaders of communities in the region. Popham’s only success was
with Sultan Ahmed I of Lahej, but that agreement was commercially signifi-
cant because it gave the EIC rights to the deep-water harbor at Aden, on
Arabia’s southern coast. In 1835, a further understanding allowed the firm to
use the port as a coaling station as it made the transition from sailing vessels
to steamships, then, in 1837, Sultan Muhsin offered to sell the port to the
Company after a vessel flying a British flag was shipwrecked and the crew
and passengers were abused by his subjects. When members of the sultan’s
family resisted the sale, the EIC sent Captain Stafford Bettesworth Haines,
with 700 men, to take control, a task achieved on 19 January 1839. Aden was
integrated, administratively, into British India—the first of many additions
20 • ADEN
to the Empire during the reign of Queen Victoria—and Haines remained as
the EIC’s agent. The opening of the Suez Canal, in 1869, added to the
location’s economic and strategic importance but also fueled the Ottoman
Empire’s interest in the region, so during the last quarter of the 19th century
Britain sought to shield the colony from attack by negotiating protectorate
agreements with the sheikhs who controlled the territory’s hinterland. As a
result, by 1900 much of the coastline and interior from Dhofar (in the east) to
the Red Sea (in the west) had been added to the Empire, and the process of
acquisition continued in the decades that followed.
On 1 April 1937, with officials on the Indian subcontinent focusing in-
creasingly on growing indigenous demands for independence, Aden was
detached from British India and the port was designated a crown colony.
Nearby sultanates were grouped into the Western Aden Protectorate and the
other, more distant territories into the Eastern Aden Protectorate. After
World War II (and particularly after India and Pakistan won independence
in 1947) all of those areas heard calls for an end to colonial rule. Labor
unions were the focus of dissent in the colony, but the British presence had
made many merchants wealthy and the sheikhs feared a loss of their power,
so the enthusiasm for an end to imperialism was by no means universal.
Also, the political situation was complicated by appeals from King Ahmad
ibn Yahya of Yemen for the unification of southern Arabia in a Greater
Yemeni state and by British unwillingness to withdraw troops because the
government considered the military base in Aden crucial to the protection of
imperial oil interests in the Persian Gulf.
The United Kingdom countered the demands for self-government by
creating a Federation of South Arabia that merged the colony and 15 of the
protectorates under a single administration from 18 January 1963, with the
remaining territories (apart from Upper Aulaqi, which joined the Federation
in 1964) grouped together as the Protectorate of South Arabia. Then, on 7
July, Duncan Sandys (the secretary of state for Commonwealth relations and
for the colonies (see COLONIAL OFFICE) told members of parliament that,
although Britain was committed to the retention of a military presence in
Aden in order to fulfill its worldwide defense commitments, the Federation
would be granted independence by 1968. The announcement served only to
fuel civil war as the Egyptian-backed Front for the Liberation of Occupied
South Yemen (FLOSY) battled for supremacy with the National Liberation
Front (NLF), and both attacked British administrators and troops in order to
demonstrate that they were taking independence, not having it granted to
them (see ADEN EMERGENCY (1963–1967)). A general election in Octo-
ber 1964 brought a change of government in Britain and, with that, a change
of policy. In February 1966, faced with economic problems and the mount-
ing cost of defense commitments, Prime Minister Harold Wilson’s adminis-
tration announced that the United Kingdom would withdraw from Aden in
 ADEN EMERGENCY (1963–1967) • 21
1968—a decision that left the Federation leaders under no illusion that they
would receive diplomatic or military support from the imperial power after
that date and gave them little option but to leave, to support the insurgents, or
to continue to work within a domestic regime that had neither popular sup-
port nor any means of maintaining law and order. As the internal strife
continued, strategists opted to speed up the withdrawal so the last detachment
of the Royal Marines left on 29 November 1967, their band playing “Things
Ain’t What They Used to Be.” British officials had made no arrangement to
transfer authority to local rulers so the colony’s last governor—Sir Hum-
phrey Trevelyan—simply had to close his office door and leave (though he
did have Government House painted as a mark of respect to whomever
became head of the new state). The next day, the NLF, which had emerged as
the dominant nationalist organization, announced the creation of a commu-
nist People’s Republic of South Yemen, deposing the traditional leaders in
the sheikhdoms and sultanates.
See also ARAB EMIRATES OF THE SOUTH, FEDERATION OF;
BRITISH SOMALILAND; KAMARAN ISLAND; KURIA MURIA IS-
LANDS.

ADEN EMERGENCY (1963–1967). In January 1963, the United King-

dom added the crown colony of Aden to the Federation of South Arabia.
At the time, a British military presence in the territory was considered essen-
tial in order to protect wider interests in the Persian Gulf, but resistance to
imperial control was hardening and nationalist movements were turning to
violence in order to achieve their aims. A grenade attack on the high com-
missioner, Sir Kennedy Trevaskis, on 10 December 1963 led to a declaration
of a state of emergency. Then, in an effort to reduce tensions, on 7 July the
following year Duncan Sandys (the secretary of state for Commonwealth
relations and for the colonies—see COLONIAL OFFICE) told the House of
Commons (the lower chamber in Britain’s bicameral parliament) that the
government would grant the Federation independence by no later than 1968
but that, beyond that date, the United Kingdom would retain its military base
in Aden “for the defence of the Federation and the fulfilment of her world-
wide responsibilities.” The announcement stoked a civil war as the Egyptian-
backed Front for the Liberation of Occupied South Yemen (FLOSY) fought
the Marxist-oriented National Liberation Front (NLF) for dominance in the
region and British forces attempted to maintain order. On 1 September 1965,
as the violence intensified, Sir Arthur Charles, the speaker (or chairman) of
the Federation’s legislative council, was killed by rebels and Abdul Qawi
Makkawi, the council’s president, refused to condemn the murder, so, on 25
September, Britain suspended the Federation’s constitution and imposed di-
rect rule. However, the terrain in the region favored the guerilla war tactics
adopted by local militias (the vast expanse of desert made roadblocks easy to
22 • AFGHANISTAN
circumvent, for instance). As a result, despite some successes (as on 5 July
1967, when Lieutenant-Colonel Colin “Mad Mitch” Mitchell led his Argyll
and Sutherland Highlanders on an assault that recaptured the Crater district
from insurgents) and an intensive leafleting campaign (designed to counter-
act the “Voice of Arab Radio” broadcasting from Egypt), British troops were
always under pressure. As the cost of maintaining an army in Aden mounted,
and as economic considerations forced Britain to end its military presence
“East of Suez,” Prime Minister Harold Wilson’s Labour Party government
decided to withdraw troops from Aden. An evacuation program began in
May 1967 and continued until 29 November, when the last of some 30,000
service personnel were airlifted to Bahrain, along with the remaining admin-
istrators. The following day, the NLF, which had won its battle for suprema-
cy with FLOSY, announced the creation of a People’s Republic of South
Yemen.

AFGHANISTAN. While Russia expanded into Central Asia in the early

years of the 19th century, British governments worried that its tsars would
use Afghanistan as a base for launching attacks on imperial possessions in
India. As early as 1809, Great Britain negotiated a defense treaty with
Shuja Shah Durrani, the self-proclaimed king of Afghanistan, in the hope of
deterring potential aggressors. Soon afterward, Shuja was deposed, but in
1839 Britain used East India Company troops to restore him to the throne
(see FIRST AFGHAN WAR (1839–1842)), primarily because the governor-
general of India, George Eden, earl of Auckland, believed that the installa-
tion of a puppet ruler over the lands to the north of the Bolan and Khyber
Passes would prevent Russia from advancing southward through the Hima-
layan Mountains. However, most Afghans resented both the foreign army
and the monarch it imposed on them. In November and December 1841, that
resentment flared into violence when several British officials were murdered,
but to the disgust of his officers, Major-General William Elphinstone, the
officer in charge of the army garrison in Kabul (the Afghan capital), failed to
punish the culprits or take any other action until 6 January 1842, when he
ordered a withdrawal. The 4,500 soldiers and their 12,000 administrative
personnel and dependants headed for Jalalabad, some 90 miles away, but
were trapped by tribesmen and massacred. Later in the year, troops led by
Major-Generals William Nott and George Pollock exacted reprisals, burning
stock and villages and destroying the bazaar in Kabul before retiring to India,
but, even so, the imperial power’s image of invincibility was badly dented.
Despite the loss of prestige, many politicans in Britain (and particularly
those in the Liberal Party) continued to consider Afghanistan an important
buffer between tsarist expansion and British interests on the Indian subconti-
nent (see DISRAELI, BENJAMIN, EARL OF BEACONSFIELD
(1804–1881)). That worldview led to a second conflict in 1878–1880 after
 AFRICAN ASSOCIATION • 23
Sher Ali Khan, the emir of Afghanistan, refused to meet a British diplomatic
mission because he wanted to maintain a policy of political neutrality rather
than align with any major European power. Britain responded with a 40,000-
strong invasion force that left Mohammed Yaqub Khan (the emir’s son and
successor) with no option but to sign a treaty, on 26 May 1879, that made his
country a British protectorate, surrendering all rights to negotiate with
foreign governments and ceding territory in return for assistance to resist
aggressors “in whatsoever manner the British government may judge best.”
Following a rebellion later in the year, Britain replaced Yaqub Khan with his
cousin, Abdur Rahman Khan (see SECOND AFGHAN WAR (1878–1880)).
For nearly four decades after that conflict ended, British officials main-
tained cordial relations with the Afghan leaders, who seemed willing to
accept the restrictions on their external relations in return for financial help
and freedom of control over domestic matters. However, in 1919, Amanullah
Khan, Abdur Rahman Khan’s grandson (who had assumed control of the
country after his father, Habibullah Khan, was assassinated in February of
the same year), took advantage of political uncertainties caused by the
Bolshevik revolution in Russia and by civil unrest in Britain’s Indian Empire
to build support for his rule by promising to make his country fully indepen-
dent of British influence. On 3 May, he marched his army through the Khy-
ber Pass and occupied the strategically important village at Bagh (now in
Pakistan). British and Indian troops recaptured the settlement on 11 May
then pressed on into Afghanistan, supported by aircraft that bombed Jalala-
bad and Kabul. Amanullah sued for peace on 31 May, but Great Britain, its
armies much weakened by the effects of World War I, was in no mood to
assert itself. On 8 August, at Rawalpindi, it recognized Afghanistan’s inde-
pendence and gave assurances that it would not attempt to extend its Empire
north of the Khyber Pass (see THIRD AFGHAN WAR (1919)). Even so,
independent-minded tribesman continued to cause problems for Britain along
the northwest frontier between India and Afghanistan, and those problems
were inherited by Pakistan when it became independent in 1947.
See also THE GREAT GAME; NEPAL; THIRD BURMESE WAR
(1885); ZULU WAR (1879).

AFRICAN ASSOCIATION. On 9 June 1788, 12 wealthy and well-con-

nected members of Saturday’s—a London dining club—founded the Associ-
ation for Promoting the Discovery of the Interior Parts of Africa (an organ-
ization usually known as the African Association). Asserting that they were
“desirous of rescuing the age from a charge of ignorance, which in other
respects, belongs so little to its character,” they each committed to subscribe
five guineas every year to fund explorations of the African continent, which,
at the time, was largely unmapped. Early ventures were inauspicious. Within
three weeks, they had arranged for John Ledyard (an American who had
24 • ALL RED LINE
accompanied Captain James Cook on his third voyage) to travel from the
Red Sea to the Atlantic Ocean, but he accidentally poisoned himself with
sulfuric acid and died in Cairo on 10 January 1789. In the same year, a
second journey—by Simon Lucas, an acquaintance of Henry Beaufoy, who
was a founder member of the Association, a member of parliament, and an
opponent of slavery—had to be abandoned because tribal wars blocked
routes across the deserts of Libya from the north. Then, in 1790, Daniel
Houghton, a retired army major, was recruited to journey up the Gambia
River, locate the source of the River Niger, and find the city of Timbuktu
(which had not been visited by a European since 1512). Houghton managed
to travel farther inland than any European explorer before him but, in Sep-
tember 1791, was lured into the desert by Moorish merchants and died, either
at their hands or as a result of starvation. The African Association, now
numbering 95 members (including 25 lords and ladies), did nothing to help
his wife and three children, who were sent to a debtors’ prison, but continued
with their mission and experienced considerable success through Mungo
Park, who, in 1796, reached the Niger at the middle of its course and, in
1799, became a national celebrity when he published his account of the
journey. The Association continued to support expeditions in the early years
of the 19th century, but by then the British government, spurred by commer-
cial and political considerations, was increasingly prepared to fund explora-
tions of the continental interior itself, rather than leave the task to private
interests, so the role of the organization decreased in importance. It merged
with the Royal Geographical Society in 1831, having had limited success
with the expeditions it sponsored, apart from that of Park, but doing much to
stimulate interest in exploration in Africa.
See also BANKS, JOSEPH (1743–1820); BRUCE OF KINNAIRD,
JAMES (1730–1794).

ALL RED LINE. Prior to the invention of wireless technologies, messages

had to be sent around the Empire either as packages or by means of subma-
rine telegraph cables. For commercial and strategic reasons, Britain favored
the latter, much faster, system and encouraged the development of a network
during the second half of the 19th century. The first transatlantic cable—
between Ireland and Newfoundland—was laid in 1857–1858 and reduced
the time taken to send a communication across the ocean from some 10 days
to a few minutes, but it functioned for only three weeks before breaking
down. A more successful link was opened in 1866 and by 1886 the Canadian
Pacific Railway Company had extended the cable across the North American
continent, allowing telegraph communication between London and Vancou-
ver. Eastward, cables had been laid from Great Britain to India by 1865 and
to Australia and New Zealand by 1876. However, messages could be inter-
cepted, and contacts broken, at any point where the cable touched foreign
 AMERICAN REVOLUTION • 25
soil so military and political minds advocated the laying of lines that would
have landfalls on British territories only and would encircle the globe, allow-
ing messages to be sent in either direction from any point. The concept was
discussed at a meeting of colonial representatives in London on 4–6 May
1887, during celebrations held to mark the golden jubilee of Queen Victor-
ia’s accession to the throne, and again at a further meeting of self-governing
colonies in Ottawa, Canada, from 29 June–9 July 1894 (see COLONIAL
CONFERENCE). The route—which made much use of islands such as As-
cension, Mauritius, and Saint Helena and became known as the All Red
Line because British possessions were colored red on world maps—was
completed in 1902 and inaugurated on 31 October that year when the
governor-general of Canada (Albert Grey, Earl Grey) sent the same mes-
sage round the world, in both directions, from Ottawa. (The message sent
eastward took 8 hours 35 minutes to return and that sent westward took 10
hours 25 minutes.) By 1911, augmentations meant that the network would
have to be severed at 49 points before communications were prevented from
reaching Great Britain. The system proved valuable during World War I,
functioning throughout the conflict, but was gradually superseded by more
modern equipment during the 20th century (see IMPERIAL WIRELESS
CHAIN) although the mid-Pacific cable station on Fanning Island was
manned until 1964.
See also ALL-RED ROUTE; EMPIRE AIR MAIL SCHEME; IMPERIAL
AIRSHIP SCHEME; IMPERIAL AIRWAYS; PHOENIX ISLANDS.

ALL-RED ROUTE. The term “All-Red Route” was initially used with ref-
erence to the 19th-century itineraries of steamship companies that called only
at ports in the British colonies, which were usually colored red on maps of
the world. It was later also applied to other forms of communication and
transport that linked territories in the Empire, including air services (see
IMPERIAL AIRSHIP SCHEME) and the cable telegraph (see ALL RED
LINE), as well as to Cecil Rhodes’s dream of a Cape to Cairo Railway that
would run through a chain of British possessions in East Africa and to the
first automobile journey across Canada, made by Thomas Wilby and Jack
Haney in a four-cylinder REO in 1912.
See also EMPIRE AIR MAIL SCHEME; IMPERIAL AIRWAYS; IMPE-
RIAL WIRELESS CHAIN.

AMERICAN REVOLUTION. In 1775, 13 of Britain’s North American

possessions joined forces in a revolution that severed colonial ties and led to
the formation of the United States of America. The insurrection was the
culmination of a growing estrangement between crown and colonists that had
its source in the London parliament’s efforts to exert control over govern-
26 • AMERICAN REVOLUTION
ment of the American territories and to levy taxes on the settlers. From 1756
until 1763, Great Britain was embroiled in a Seven Years’ War that in-
volved most world powers and brought conflict to Africa, the Americas,
India, and the Philipines as well as to Europe. The North American theater
(known as the French and Indian War) left Britain dominant in the east of
the continent, but the cost of attaining that dominance was high so, in the
aftermath of the struggle, politicians focused on strategies that would force
the colonies to make a greater contribution toward the cost of administering
the Empire and particularly toward the finances needed for defense. The
funds required for the maintenance of a military presence in North America
and the West Indies were estimated at £200,000 (a figure several modern
historians consider too low), and Prime Minister George Grenville argued
that the areas in which the armies were to be based should fund £78,000 of
that total so he prepared a program of direct and indirect taxes that would
raise the desired sum. For example, the Sugar Act, which received royal
assent on 5 April 1764, halved the existing tax on molasses but provided for
stricter enforcement of collection. The Stamp Act, approved by King George
III on 22 March 1765, required that much printed material (such as news-
papers and official documents) be distributed on paper produced in Britain
and carrying a revenue stamp, and the Quartering Act, signed by the monarch
two days later, obliged the American colonies to provide soldiers with ac-
commodation and food. Then, in 1767, the Townshend Acts (named after
Chancellor of the Exchequer Charles Townshend, who devised them) placed
levies on such imported goods as glass, paint, paper, and tea, which could be
acquired solely from British sources.
British politicians, the slow communications of the age limiting their
awareness of feelings in the colonies, underestimated the strength of reac-
tions to those measures. Colonists did what they could to circumvent the new
regulations (by bribing customs officials, for example), but they also com-
plained bitterly about the economic impact of the laws and they argued that
the mother country had no right to levy the taxes because citizens of North
America were not represented in the British parliament. Speakers at colonial
Assemblies denounced the legislation, “committees of correspondence” were
formed to coordinate protest action at local and colony-wide levels, and, as
tension mounted, there were several outbreaks of violence, as at Boston, in
the Massachusetts Bay Colony, on 5 March 1770, when a mob attacked a
group of British soldiers, who defended themselves by firing on the crowd,
killing five people.
The Townshend levies, with the exception of that on tea, were abolished
in 1770, but the Tea Act, which became law on 10 May 1773, added fuel to
the flames. The legislation changed excise regulations in order to help the
ailing East India Company (EIC) by allowing it to sell 17,000,000 lbs of tea
stocks, all languishing in British warehouses, at a price that permitted pay-
 AMERICAN REVOLUTION • 27
ment of the Townshend tariff but still enabled the firm to undercut the fees
charged by commercial rivals. However, the colonists viewed the measure
more as an attempt by parliamentarians to validate Townshend’s fiscal re-
gime than an effort to support the financially vulnerable EIC. Also, some
merchants believed that their livelihoods would be threatened because the
cargoes would be imported only through designated agents (many of them
friends of the colonial governor, who was appointed by the British proprie-
tor or by the crown), while others, who traded in tea from Holland (a practice
that the British considered illegal), felt that their incomes would be slashed
because the EIC shipments would be cheaper, reducing their turnover.
In Boston, on 16 December 1773, a group of men took matters into their
own hands, boarding three East India Company vessels that were anchored in
the harbor and dumping 342 chests of tea overboard. Parliament responded
the following year with a series of bills that became known in the colonies as
“The Intolerable Acts.” The Massachusetts Government Act limited the pow-
ers of town meetings in the Massachusetts Bay Colony and placed adminis-
trative authority solely in the hands of Governor Thomas Gage, who was
charged with making appointments to all important posts. The Boston Port
Act closed the harbor until citizens reimbursed the East India Company the
cost of the destroyed tea. The Administration of Justice Act authorized Gage
to move trials of royal officials from Massachusetts to other colonies, or to
Great Britain, to ensure that they got a fair hearing (but few witnesses could
afford the time to travel to London so the measure was interpreted as a
charter for representatives of the crown to behave aggressively without fear
of retribution). The Quartering Act allowed governors to house British troops
in unoccupied buildings, and the Quebec Act extended the boundaries of the
Province of Quebec southward, offending the sensibilities of Protestant colo-
nists by introducing reforms that favored the territory’s French (and predomi-
nantly Roman Catholic) inhabitants.
That barrage of measures was intended to cow radical settlers into submis-
sion but had quite the opposite effect because the new laws were interpreted
as coercive, depriving settlers of hard-won constitutional rights. On 5 Sep-
tember, representatives of 12 of the colonies met in Philadelphia, as a “Conti-
nental Congress,” to consider united action, the Province of Georgia de-
clined to attend because it needed the help of the British army to deal with
attacks by Indians in frontier areas. The delegates agreed to boycott British
imports from 1 December, to petition the king to rescind the Intolerable Acts,
and to meet again, at the same location, on 10 May 1775. By that time,
however, the first shots of the American Revolutionary War had already
been fired at Lexington. On 23 August, King George III issued a proclama-
tion declaring that the colonies were in “open and avowed rebellion” (in
effect, condemning the settlers as traitors), and although the Continental
Congress (now including Georgia) affirmed its loyalty to the monarch on 5
28 • AMERICAN REVOLUTIONARY WAR (1775–1783)
July and again on 6 December its consistent rejection of the right of the
British parliament to impose taxes made compromise impossible. On 4 July
1776, the delegates declared that each colony considered itself a sovereign
entity outside the British Empire, then, the following year, the territories
prepared “articles of confederation” that created the United States as a con-
federation of independent states.
See also CONNECTICUT; DELAWARE; MARYLAND; NAVIGATION
ACTS; NEW HAMPSHIRE; NEW JERSEY; NEW YORK; NORTH CAR-
OLINA; PENNSYLVANIA; PITT THE ELDER, WILLIAM, EARL OF
CHATHAM; REGULATING ACT (1773); RHODE ISLAND AND PROV-
IDENCE PLANTATIONS; SOUTH CAROLINA; THE THIRTEEN COL-
ONIES; WATSON-WENTWORTH, CHARLES, MARQUESS OF ROCK-
INGHAM (1730–1782).

AMERICAN REVOLUTIONARY WAR (1775–1783). The American

Revolutionary War (also known as the American War of Independence)
followed a lengthy period of growing discord between British politicians and
the settlers in British colonies on the eastern coast of North America. Ten-
sions developed after the conclusion of the French and Indian War—the
American theater of a wider conflict, known as the Seven Years’ War, that
ended in 1763—because Great Britain insisted that its imperial possessions
should bear a greater proportion of the cost of their own defense (see
AMERICAN REVOLUTION). The London parliament approved a series of
fiscal measures intended to raise revenue for that purpose, but citizens of
thirteen of the territories strung along the Atlantic shore protested, partly at
the mother country’s attempts to assert stronger control over their affairs but
also at the imposition of taxes by a legislature in which they had no represen-
tation. In 1775, as the political tensions mounted, anger turned into insurrec-
tion. On 19 April, British troops—dispatched by Governor Thomas Gage of
the Massachusetts Bay Colony to confiscate rebel munitions stored in Con-
cord—entered Lexington to find a group of some 80 militiamen determined
to prevent them from passing; shots were fired and eight colonists killed. As
news of the action spread, “patriots” throughout the region took up arms and
George Washington (a tobacco growing Virginian aristocrat and experienced
soldier) was appointed commander-in-chief of a “continental army” created
on 14 June by delegates sent by the colonies to a Continental Congress in
Philadelphia.
In the early months of the conflict that followed, both sides experienced
mixed success. The Americans, under General Richard Montgomery, pushed
north and captured Montreal on 13 November but failed to take Quebec
(where Montgomery died in action on 31 December) and, the following
spring, were forced—by the arrival of British reinforcements and the spread
of smallpox—to retreat south, allowing Great Britain to reassert control.
 AMERICAN REVOLUTIONARY WAR (1775–1783) • 29
However, on 17 March 1776, Major-General William Howe, the command-
er-in-chief of the British troops (and a critic of government attempts to penal-
ize colonists who failed to pay taxes), abandoned Boston, and by June the
rebels ruled the whole area from New Hampshire (in the north) to Georgia
(in the south). That administrative stranglehold ended just weeks later when
Howe took New York, landing 22,000 men on Long Island on 27 August
and entering Manhattan on 15 September, but European politics were begin-
ning to affect the balance of power in North America and constrain British
attempts to regain the lands lost to the patriots. From early 1776, France,
Holland, and Spain covertly supplied the insurgents with arms. Then, on 6
February 1778, France signed a Treaty of Alliance with the Americans,
promising military support in the event of British attacks and inviting other
states “who may have received injuries from England” to align themselves
with the cause. Spain responded the following year and the Dutch Republic
in 1780, forming a coalition with the French that invaded Dominica, Grena-
da, and other British possessions in the Caribbean, laid siege to Gibraltar,
occupied Minorca, provoked conflict in India, and threatened invasion of
Britain itself. The North American struggle thus became a global war that
stretched British military resources and seriously limited the number of men
who could be sent to defend the Empire’s interests in the region.
Even after six years of strife, British officials believed that a rising of
colonists who accepted the rule of King George III could end the war in their
favor, but although an estimated 15–20 percent of Americans of European
descent in the thirteen colonies opposed the rebellion, many settlers fled to
more peaceful parts of the Empire so Britain could exercise administrative
control only in areas where it had a strong military presence (as in New
York). By the summer of 1781, Yorktown, Virginia, had become the focus
of conflict on the continent. Lieutenant General Charles Cornwallis, one of
the senior British commanders, had been ordered to establish a deep-water
port that could be supplied by vessels entering Chesapeake Bay, but the
French navy, under François-Joseph Paul, Comte de Grasse, blockaded the
harbor, driving off a British fleet commanded by Rear-Admiral Sir Thomas
Graves, and on 28 September an army of American and French soldiers laid
siege to the garrison, bombarding it into submission on 19 October.
The capture of some 8,000 fighting men was too serious a blow for Great
Britain to overcome. Political support for the war declined rapidly after news
of the defeat reached London, and on 27 February 1782 the House of Com-
mons (the lower house in Britain’s bicameral legislature) voted to end the
conflict. Peace negotiations led to a formal conclusion of the war through the
Treaty of Paris, which was signed on 3 September 1783, recognized the
United States of America (U.S.A.) as an independent country, and delineated
boundaries between the U.S.A. and British North America.
30 • AMIENS, TREATY OF (1802)
See also THE BAHAMAS; CANADA; CAPE BRETON ISLAND; CON-
NECTICUT; DELAWARE; LOWER CANADA; MARYLAND; MYSORE
WARS (1767–1769, 1780–1784, 1790–1792, AND 1799); NEW BRUNS-
WICK; NEW JERSEY; NORTH CAROLINA; NOVA SCOTIA; PENN-
SYLVANIA; RHODE ISLAND AND PROVIDENCE PLANTATIONS;
SAINT EUSTACE; SOUTH CAROLINA; UNITED EMPIRE LOYALIST;
UPPER CANADA; WATSON-WENTWORTH, CHARLES, MARQUESS
OF ROCKINGHAM (1730–1782).

AMIENS, TREATY OF (1802). The Treaty of Amiens, signed on 25 March

1802, brought a temporary end to a war with France that had begun a decade
earlier and had involved the Netherlands (then known as the Batavian Repub-
lic), Spain, and other European nations as well as Great Britain. Under the
terms of the agreement, Britain withdrew from most of the Dutch territories
that it had invaded during the hostilities, including Bonaire and Curaçao
(both occupied in 1800), Demerara and Essequibo (1796), the Moluccas
(1796), Saba, Saint Eustace, and Saint Martin (all conquered in 1801), and
Surinam (1799). It also returned Martinique (taken in 1794) to France and
Minorca (1798) to Spain and recognized Dutch sovereignty over the Cape of
Good Hope (see CAPE COLONY) but retained control of formerly Dutch
Ceylon (which it overran from 1796) and Spanish Trinidad (occupied in
1797). In addition, the treaty provisions required Britain to remove its forces
from Egypt and Malta, but the government refused to take action, consider-
ing that its negotiators had made too many concessions and that Napoleon
Bonaparte, emperor of France, was intent on a program of conquest rather
than of peace. Napoleon goaded British leaders over the lack of action so,
despite international diplomatic efforts and offers of mediation, the tensions
mounted, and by May 1803 Europe was at war again.
See also SAINT-PIERRE AND MIQUELON.

ANDAMAN ISLANDS. The Andaman Islands, lying in the Bay of Bengal

at latitude 12° 30ʹ North and longitude 92° 45ʹ East, between India (to the
west) and Myanmar (to the east), were well known to mariners who plied the
shipping routes between the Indian subcontinent and East Asia. The first
European settlement was a penal colony established by the East India Com-
pany in 1789 but soon abandoned because of high death rates and the inci-
dence of disease. From 1796, the islands were left to local tribal groups until
1858, when a jail was constructed to house political prisoners detained dur-
ing the Indian Mutiny, which had erupted the previous year. The territory’s
function as a base for detainees continued through the first decades of the
20th century as it was used to incarcerate troublesome supporters of Indian
independence movements.
 ANGLO-AMERICAN CONVENTION OF 1818 • 31
In 1872, the Andamans were united administratively with their southerly
neighbors, the Nicobar Islands, acquired from Denmark four years earlier,
and in 1942 they were invaded by Japan—an action opposed by the indige-
nous peoples but supported by some Indian nationalists. When Britain re-
gained control in 1945, it promised that former inmates of the prison would
be given free passage to the islands from the Indian mainland if they agreed
to participate in schemes designed to develop agriculture, fisheries, and
forestry. Then, during the negotiations that led to colonial withdrawal from
India, the government proposed that the Andaman and Nicobar Islands
should become self-governing, but the proposal was not pursued by any of
the parties to the discussions, and in 1950 they were absorbed by India,
which had won independence three years earlier.
See also COCOS (OR KEELING) ISLANDS.

ANGLO-AMERICAN CONVENTION OF 1818. The Anglo-American

Convention—signed on 20 October 1818 and also known as the London
Convention, the Treaty of 1818, and other names—resolved disputes over
territory, and other disagreements, between British North America and the
United States. In 1783, the Treaty of Paris, which ended the war between
Great Britain and its rebellious American colonies, had decreed that the
boundary between the two political units would stretch westward from the
Lake of the Woods (now on the borders of Ontario, Manitoba, and Minneso-
ta) to the Mississippi River, but the negotiators did not realize that Lake
Itasca, the source of the Mississippi, lay south of that line so the diplomats of
1818, bolstered by more accurate geographical information, decided that the
border would stretch from the Lake of the Woods’s most northwesterly point
southward to the 49th parallel of latitude and from there westward to the
Rockies, then known as the Stony Mountains. (The geography was not per-
fect, however, because the new line left the United States with an exclave of
some 600 square miles, which is now attached politically, but not physically,
to the State of Minnesota.) As a result of the accord, Britain gained part of
the Milk River watershed, now in the Canadian province of Alberta, but
ceded a much larger territory, previously administered by the Hudson’s Bay
Company and including southern areas of the Red River Colony, to the
Americans. The Convention also allowed for joint exploitation, over a ten-
year period, of the area known to the British as Columbia District and to the
Americans as Oregon Country, but in 1846 further discussions led to an
extension of the boundary through the region, along the 49th parallel, to the
Pacific Ocean. The 1818 accord also confirmed commercial agreements be-
tween the signatories and gave the Americans fishing rights off Labrador and
Newfoundland.
32 • ANGLO-AMERICAN WAR OF 1812 (1812–1815)
ANGLO-AMERICAN WAR OF 1812 (1812–1815). On 18 June 1812,
United States (U.S.) President James Madison, spurred by multiple grie-
vances and, perhaps, by personal ambition, committed his country to armed
confrontation with Great Britain. In part, the annoyance stemmed from
British efforts to blockade the ports of Napoleonic France, with whom it was
at war; America was neutral in the conflict and resented the interference with
the trade of its growing merchant navy. Also, Royal Navy ships were inter-
cepting vessels sailing under the American flag and press-ganging British-
born members of their crews (whom the United States considered American
citizens) into service under the crown, while, on the American mainland,
Britain—believing that an independent Indian political unit would form a
buffer between the U.S. and British North America—was allegedly encour-
aging insurrection among the indigenous tribes in the Northwest Territory
(now occupied by the states of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Wis-
consin). In addition, war served Madison’s political interests, allowing his
Democratic-Republican Party to drum up popular support against its more
pro-British Federalist Party opponents, and according to some historians, it
provided an excuse both for expansion of the United States into British North
America and for an assertion of American identity some three decades after
the thirteen colonies had declared independence from Britain. Following
early skirmishing, major hostilities commenced on 12 July, when General
William Hull and a complement of some 1,000 U.S. militiamen occupied the
town of Sandwich (now Windsor) in Upper Canada. However, despite the
posturing, America, with a military that had fewer than 10,000 men, was not
prepared for war, and even though Congress authorized an expansion of the
force the recruits were not experienced soldiers. Britain, on the other hand,
had a strong navy and an army of battle-hardened veterans, but most of its
manpower was committed to the war in Europe, which politicans considered
much more important than the sideshow in North America. For almost two
years, the sides faced each other—principally along the northern shores of
the Gulf of Mexico, in Lower Canada and Upper Canada, on the southern
shores of the Great Lakes, and in the Atlantic—with neither gaining perma-
nent advantage.
The ending of the European conflict (on 4 April 1814, as Napoleon Bona-
parte’s generals mutinied and he was forced to abdicate) changed the politi-
cal climate. Britain and France became allies when the French monarchy was
restored, the impressment of sailors ended, and the trading restrictions that
had upset the Americans were lifted. Also, British strategists were able to
commit a stronger force to the troubles in the New World, sending an army
under Major-General Robert Ross to attack the eastern seaboard of North
America and, on 24 August, to occupy Washington, D.C., and burn public
buildings (including the White House, home of the U.S. president) in reprisal
for raids into the Canadas. By then, however, many people in both countries
 ANGLO-DUTCH TREATY (1824) • 33
were tired of strife and much of the initial rationale for the war was no longer
valid. Representatives of the two sides met in Ghent (then in the Netherlands
but now in Belgium) on 24 December and signed a treaty that ended the war
with neither of the participants losing any territory and with all captured
vessels returned to the original owner. The technology of the time limited the
speed with which news of the peace could be carried across the Atlantic so
fighting continued for several weeks, marked by a heavy defeat for the Brit-
ish at New Orleans on 8 January 1815. (Some historians argue that Great
Britain would have ignored the Ghent treaty and continued to advance had it
won that battle.) In British North America, the agreement was interpreted by
loyalists as a victory because American attempts to invade had been
thwarted. In the United States, many of the successful military leaders (in-
cluding Andrew Jackson, who later won election to the presidency) were
hailed as heroes and the burning of Washington is still considered a signifi-
cant event in the evolution of the nation, but in Britain the events of the War
of 1812 are rarely acknowledged as anything more than a footnote in the
history of Empire even though they were followed by a lengthy period of
commercial and diplomatic cooperation with the U.S.A.
See also BERMUDA; NOVA SCOTIA.

ANGLO-CORSICAN KINGDOM. See CORSICA.

ANGLO-DUTCH TREATY (1814). On 13 August 1814, during the later

stages of the Napoleonic Wars, Britain agreed to relinquish many of the
Dutch territories that it had occupied from 1 January 1803 and return them to
the Netherlands. However, in return for payments amounting to £6,000,000,
it retained control of the Cape of Good Hope (see CAPE COLONY) and of
territories near the mouths of the Berbice, Demerara and Essequibo Rivers
that, in 1831, were united under a single administration as British Guiana.
Also, it acquired Bernagore (located near Calcutta in India) in return for an
annual fee and exchanged the island of Bangka, which lies off the east coast
of Sumatra, for Cochin, on India’s west coast. The treaty is also known as
the Convention of London.
See also ANGLO-DUTCH TREATY (1824); BONAIRE; CURAÇAO;
JAVA; SABA; SAINT EUSTACE; SURINAM.

ANGLO-DUTCH TREATY (1824). The Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1814

failed to resolve all differences between Britain and the Netherlands so, on
17 March 1824, representatives of the two countries signed a further agree-
ment designed to stop the bickering. Most of the treaty’s terms related to
trade in colonial possessions, but the Dutch also confirmed British sovereign-
ty over Singapore and ceded Malacca (on the Malay Peninsula) and all of its
34 • ANGLO-EGYPTIAN SUDAN
territories in India in return for British lands on Sumatra and recognition of
rights to Bencoolen, an East India Company trading post on Sumatra’s
southwestern coast. In effect, the negotiations created two spheres of interest,
with Britain controlling the Malay Peninsula and the Netherlands dominating
the islands of the Dutch East Indies.

ANGLO-EGYPTIAN SUDAN. See THE SUDAN.

ANGLO-SIAMESE (OR BANGKOK) TREATY (1909). Throughout the

19th century, Britain recognized Siamese suzerainty over several sultanates
on the Malay Peninsula. However, from 1901, Sir Frank Swettenham, high
commissioner for the Malay States, argued persuasively that the policy
should change, pointing out that some of these sultanates were in a state of
unrest as a result of maladministration and that rival European powers might
take advantage of the situation to extend their spheres of influence. The
British government accepted the argument and put pressure on King Chula-
longkorn of Siam to relinquish sovereignty over his client states. The mon-
arch was reluctant to agree but, faced with French pressure on his border-
lands, opted to accept a loan of £4,000,000 in return for ceding Kedah,
Kelantan, Perlis, and Terengganu, concessions that added to Britain’s con-
trol of sea routes between India and China. The treaty was signed in Bang-
kok on 10 March 1909, with the sultans too weak to do anything but accept
the arrangement. Britain left the local rulers in nominal charge of domestic
affairs but appointed advisors (who, in practice, held the reins of power) to
each sultanate.

ANGLO-ZANZIBAR WAR (1896). See ZANZIBAR WAR (1896).

ANGUILLA. The 35-square mile island of Anguilla—a British Overseas

Territory—lies at the northern end of the Leeward Islands, in the eastern
Caribbean Sea, at latitude 18° 15ʹ North and longitude 63° 10ʹ West. It was
colonized from 1650 by English settlers arriving from St. Christopher (now
more usually known as Saint Kitts), who fought off attempts by the French
to take the territory and imported African slaves to work tobacco, cotton, and
then sugar plantations as they strove to win a living from the thin soils.
Although Anguilla was initially considered part of the Leeward Islands colo-
ny, economic development was promoted entirely by private individuals,
who were left to their own devices, largely untroubled by government agen-
cies, until 1825, when, much against the planters’ wishes, the island was
amalgamated administratively with St. Kitts, whose residents were equally
unhappy about the arrangement. On several occasions over the next 140
years, the Anguillans, believing that politicians on St. Kitts had no interest in
 ANTIGUA • 35
their affairs, attempted to persuade the British government to break the politi-
cal ties to their more southerly neighbor, but the pleas fell on deaf ears until
1967, when (on 26 February) the colony—then known as St. Christopher-
Nevis-Anguilla—was granted full control over domestic issues. Residents on
Anguilla (which still had no electricity, no paved roads, and no telephones)
believed that the plans for self-government would leave them even worse off
so they took action, setting Government House alight on 8 March, forcing the
island’s police force to leave on 30 May. On 11 July, the island held a
referendum in which they voted by 1813 votes to five in favor of secession
from the embryo state. On 19 March 1969, as the political situation became
increasingly unstable, Britain reasserted direct rule of the territory, dispatch-
ing some 400 paratroopers and police to the island, ostensibly to ensure that
order was maintained, and later the same year (to the condemnation of many
Caribbean nations) parliament passed the Anguilla Act, which took effect on
27 July and made provision for the eventual separation of Anguilla from St.
Kitts. For the next decade, although technically still part of the colony, An-
guilla was governed from London, but on 19 December 1980 the links with
St. Kitts were finally severed and the island became a British dependency in
its own right. Executive power is exercised by a governor, who represents
the British monarch, and a chief minister chosen by the governor from the
House of Assembly, which has 11 members, seven of whom are elected. The
population, numbering some 13,500, derives its income primarily from luxu-
ry tourism and offshore financial services.
See also ASSOCIATED STATE; BRITISH DEPENDENT TERRITORY;
BRITISH WEST INDIES; WEST INDIES FEDERATION.

ANTIGUA. For much of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Antigua,
lying at latitude 17° 5ʹ North and longitude 61° 48ʹ West, was one of the
jewels in Britain’s Caribbean crown. The first European settlers arrived from
Saint Kitts in 1632, and apart from a few months in 1666–1667, when it was
occupied by the French (see BREDA, TREATY OF (1667)), the island re-
mained in British hands for the next 300 years. From 1684, Sir Christopher
Codrington developed lucrative sugar plantations, using slave labor imported
from Africa, and the colony’s location astride major shipping routes added to
its political importance, allowing it to become a major base for the Royal
Navy from 1725. However, the development, from the early 1800s, of tech-
niques that allowed sugar to be produced from beet grown on large farms
close to European consumers had a serious impact on agricultural exports,
making Antigua’s output much less attractive to foreign markets, and chang-
ing political priorities reduced the military value of the dockyards, which
closed in 1889. Also, emancipation of the slaves, in 1834 (see SLAVERY
ABOLITION ACT (1833)), added to economic difficulties because the new
36 • ARAB EMIRATES OF THE SOUTH, FEDERATION OF
freemen had no access to land, no alternative job opportunities, no funds for
investment, and no means of acquiring loans. As a result, by the beginning of
the 20th century poverty had superseded prosperity.
For most of the period of British rule, Antigua was administratively part of
the Leeward Islands colony. By the 1930s, however, the combination of a
harsh economic environment and frustration over the lack of representative
government was causing much dissent. The Antigua Trades and Labour Un-
ion became a focus of the protest movement and, led by Vere Cornwall Bird,
who was elected president in 1943, made universal adult suffrage and self-
government twin aims, as did the Antigua Labour Party, which developed
from it. The first of those goals was achieved in 1951 and a major step
toward the second taken in 1967, when Antigua negotiated a status as asso-
ciated state with the United Kingdom—an arrangement that gave it author-
ity over domestic affairs but left Britain with responsibility for defense and
foreign policy. Full independence followed on 1 November 1981, with Bird
as the first prime minister.
See also BARBUDA; BRITISH WEST INDIES; COMMONWEALTH
REALM; REDONDA; WEST INDIES FEDERATION.

ARAB EMIRATES OF THE SOUTH, FEDERATION OF. On 11 Febru-

ary 1959, the United Kingdom, under pressure from the growing influence
of nationalist groups in its possessions in the Persian Gulf, took steps toward
decolonization by persuading the rulers of six of the administrative units in
the Western Aden Protectorate—Audhali, Beihan, Dhala, Fadhli, Lower
Yafa, and the Upper Aulaqi Sheikhdom—to form a Federation of Arab Emi-
rates of the South. A further nine territories—Alawi, Aqrabi, Dathina, Hau-
shabi, Lahej, Lower Aulaqi, Maflahi, Shaib, and Wahibi—joined shortly
afterward as local leaders attempted to preserve their privileged positions and
accepted British assurances of military protection, along with other assis-
tance, after the area became independent. The territory was renamed the
Federation of South Arabia on 4 April 1962.
See also LENNOX-BOYD, ALAN TINDAL (1904–1983).

ARCTIC ARCHIPELAGO. On 3 January 1874, Mr. A. W. Harvey, a

London businessman who owned fishing vessels that operated in northern
Atlantic waters and wanted permission to erect buildings on the islands of the
Arctic archipelago, wrote to the Colonial Office to ask whether “the land
known as Cumberland on the West of Davis Straits [which lies between
Baffin Island and Greenland] belongs to Great Britain and if it does—is it
under the Government of the Dominion of Canada?” A few weeks later, on
10 February, Lieutenant William A. Mintzer of the United States Navy’s
Corps of Engineers asked George Crump, Great Britain’s acting consul in
 ARUNDEL, JOHN THOMAS (1841–1919) • 37
Philadelphia, for authorization to establish a mining camp in the same area.
Those inquiries caused a flurry of concern in British government circles
because, although Martin Frobisher had claimed territory in the region in
1577 and 1578 and other explorers had asserted sovereignty during the
search for a sea route along the northern coast of North America in the late
18th and early 19th centuries (see NORTHWEST PASSAGE), officials were
unclear about exactly which islands were under the jurisdiction of the crown
and admitted that “knowledge of the geography and resources of this region
is very imperfect.” Also, Canadian politicians were well aware that the north-
ern boundary of the dominion was undefined, and, in Britain, strategists
feared that if Lieutenant Mintzer, described in one document as a “Yankee
adventurer,” was told that the place where he wanted to mine was outside the
bounds of the British Empire then “he would no doubt think himself entitled
to hoist the ‘Stars and Stripes,’ which might produce no end of complica-
tions.” The situation was not resolved until 1 September 1880, when the
British government transferred, to its Canadian counterpart, “such British
possessions in North America (with the exception of the Colony of New-
foundland and its dependencies) as are not already included in the Domin-
ion,” the lack of any clear definition of boundaries reflecting the uncertainty
about exactly which areas were being transferred.
See also FRANKLIN, JOHN (1786–1847).

ARUBA. Aruba lies in the southern Caribbean Sea at latitude 12° 31ʹ North
and longitude 70° 2ʹ West, some 18 miles north of the Venezuelan coast. It
was colonized by the Dutch in 1636 but occupied by Britain in 1799, when
Napoleon seized power in France, which had dominated the Netherlands
since 1795. Control remained in British hands for most of the period until 11
March 1816, when the territory returned to Dutch administration under the
terms of the treaties that ended the Napoleonic Wars.

ARUNDEL, JOHN THOMAS (1841–1919). John T. Arundel built a com-

mercial empire mining phosphates on islands in the Pacific Ocean and so
provided a foothold for British influence in the region. The son of a gentle-
man’s outfitter (also named John), and grandson of the home secretary of the
London Missionary Society (another John), he was raised in Gravesend, on
the River Thames in southeastern England, and as a child was a regular
attender with his parents at services in the local Congregational Church.
Through those church connections, he obtained a post in the emigration
department of Houlder Brothers & Company (a London shipping firm
formed in 1856) and was given the task of persuading agricultural families
that “had been hit by the industrial revolution and bad seasons” to move to
Australia or New Zealand. However, in 1860 he fell ill—a result of over-
38 • ASCENSION ISLAND
work, according to some sources—and was sent to the South Seas on one of
the Houlder vessels so that he could recover. While on the Chincha Islands,
off the coast of Peru and then a source of guano (from which phosphates
could be extracted and used in such agricultural and industral processes as
the manufacture of fertilizer), he learned of other Pacific islands with unex-
ploited reserves. In 1870, Houlders sent Arundel to extract the resources on
Starbuck Island, an uninhabited coral atoll in the southwestern Pacific
Ocean that had been annexed by Great Britain in 1866. With the help of
local representatives of the London Missionary Society, he persuaded 21
men from Rarotonga, in the Cook Islands, to work for him, but the difficult
physical environment, coupled with Arundel’s belief that hard graft was a
requirement of all Christians, meant that labor turnover was high. However,
from 1873 he found more resilient employees on Savage Island (now Niue)
and—having gone into business on his own account, as John T. Arundel &
Company, in 1871 and headquartered his firm in Sydney, New South
Wales—used them to mine phosphate at such locations as Baker Island,
Canton Island, and Howland Island.
Aware that the guano would eventually be worked out, Arundel also at-
tempted to develop coconut plantations (see BIRNIE ISLAND; FLINT IS-
LAND) in order to produce copra, which could be used as livestock feed or
as a source of coconut oil for soap manufacturers. In 1897, he merged his
business with the New Zealand firm of Henderson and Macfarlane (a
shipping operator that also owned coconut plantations) to form the Pacific
Islands Company Limited, which, five years later, merged with Jaluit Ge-
sellschaft of Hamburg to create the Pacific Phosphate Company Limited
(PPC), with the specific intention of mining guano on Nauru (which had
been annexed by Germany in 1888) and on Ocean Island (now known as
Banaba and annexed by Britain in 1901). However, Australian troops occu-
pied Nauru during World War I, and in 1919, as the fighting ended, Austra-
lia, Great Britain, and New Zealand acquired PPC’s interests both there and
on Ocean Island and placed them, along with phosphate interests on Christ-
mas Island (Indian Ocean), under the jurisdiction of a British Phosphate
Commission, which was charged with looking after the welfare of the is-
lands’ inhabitants as well as extracting physical resources. By then, Arundel
had severed his connections with the company, resigning from the deputy
chairmanship in 1909 after suffering a heart attack. He died at Bournemouth,
in southern England, on 30 November 1919.
See also CAROLINE ISLAND; GARDNER ISLAND; JARVIS ISLAND;
SYDNEY ISLAND.

ASCENSION ISLAND. Ascension—34 square miles of near-barren volcan-

ic rock—lies in the south-central Atlantic Ocean at latitude 7° 56ʹ South and
longitude 14° 25ʹ West, some 1,000 miles from Angola (on the western coast
 ASHANTI WARS • 39
of Africa) and 1,400 miles from Brazil (on the eastern coast of South Ameri-
ca). It was discovered by the Portuguese in the early 16th century (getting its
name because it was sighted on Ascension Day) but was unpopulated until
1815, when Britain (having imprisoned France’s Emperor Napoleon I on
Saint Helena, 700 miles to the southeast) annexed it (on 22 October) and
established a garrison in order to prevent the territory being taken over by the
French. By 1820, the island had become an important supply base for mer-
chant and naval shipping and, soon afterward, for vessels attempting to sup-
press the African slave trade (see WEST AFRICA SQUADRON). Then,
from 1898, it developed as a focus for international communications after the
Eastern Telegraph Company (which became Cable and Wireless in 1934)
laid an underwater line that linked Britain to its African colonies. During
World War II, the United States (U.S.) built the Wideawake airfield, which,
in 1982, was used as a base for British forces attempting to retake the Falk-
land Islands after the Argentinian invasion. (According to some sources,
America at first refused to let Royal Air Force planes land on the runways,
but Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher eventually persuaded U.S. President
Ronald Reagan to authorize use of the facilities.) The British Broadcasting
Corporation (BBC) constructed a relay station for broadcasts to Africa and
South America in 1966 and the National Aeronautics and Space Administra-
tion (NASA) added a tracking station the following year. With a population
of around 1,000, consisting mainly of transient workers, and a tiny economy
reliant on the communications industry, a limited number of tourists, and the
sale of postage stamps, Ascension lacks the resources needed for survival as
an independent country. It was made a dependency of St. Helena on 12
September 1922, but until 1964 (when Britain appointed an administrator)
such local government organization as existed was provided by the armed
services and the telecommunications companies. Parliamentary legislation
early in 2002 designated St. Helena and its dependencies a British Overseas
Territory, and on 1 November that year David Hollamby, governor of the
Territory, approved the formation of an elected Island Council on Ascension.
On 8 July 2009, the island was made an equal partner with its larger neighbor
and the Territory was renamed St. Helena, Ascension, and Tristan da Cun-
ha.
See also ALL RED LINE; COOK, JAMES (1728–1779); UNION-CAS-
TLE LINE.

ASHANTI WARS. From the early 19th century, as British merchants estab-
lished trading bases along the Gulf of Guinea, in West Africa, they faced
opposition from the Ashanti people, who had created an empire that stretched
from the present-day Côte d’Ivoire in the west to Benin in the east. The first
major confrontations occurred from 1823–1826, when the Ashanti attempted
to subjugate the smaller Fanti Confederacy, which had developed trading
40 • ASHANTI WARS
links with British firms on the Gold Coast. Sir Charles MacCarthy, the
governor of the Gold Coast region (and previously governor of Gorée and
Senegal—see SENEGAMBIA—from 1811–1814 and of Sierra Leone on
four occasions in the decade from 1814), led a force of about 500 (mostly
African) troops against the aggressors but, short of ammunition and ex-
hausted after marching in heavy rain, was overwhelmed by a much larger
army of warriors at Nsamankow on 21 January 1824. For a time, the Ashanti
were able to move south but on 7 August 1826 defeat at Katamansu (on the
coastal plains near Accra), when the British used Congreve rockets, forced
them back, and in April 1831 representatives of the two sides agreed that the
Pra River would form the boundary between their domains (and, implicitly,
place the coastal tribes under British protection).
Trouble flared again in 1863–1864, when the European authorities refused
to return an Ashanti chief and a slave who had fled into their sector, seeking
protection. The angry Ashanti reacted by invading and burning several vil-
lages, but requests by Gold Coast Governor Richard Pine for troops from
Britain were rejected by the London government, and although British forces
were deployed along the Pra the tussles ended in stalemate as the Ashanti
withdrew and the British soldiers suffered more from disease than from battle
wounds. Then, on 21 February 1871, Britain purchased Dutch interests on
the Gold Coast, including the fort at Elmina, which the Ashanti considered
their own property and which provided their only remaining trading outlet on
the ocean. In October 1873, they attempted to recover it but were repulsed,
and Edward Cardwell, the British secretary of state for war, sent Major-
General Garnet Wolseley (a distinguished soldier with experience in Burma,
India, and North America) to deal with the incursion. Working with locally
raised troops and with three battalions sent from Britain, he pushed the
invaders beyond the Pra then, on 27 January 1874, defeated them at Amoaful
and, eight days later, burned Kumasi, their capital. At that stage, Britain had
no plans to acquire territory. Aiming simply to establish the security of the
coastal area, it attempted to achieve that end through the Treaty of Fomena,
which was signed on 14 March and, among other provisions, required that
the Ashanti keep road links between Kumasi and the River Pra open to
commerce, pay “the sum of 50,000 ounces of approved gold as indemnity for
the expenses . . . occasioned to Her Majesty the Queen of England by the late
war,” renounce claims to lands on the Gulf of Guinea, and trade peacefully.
By the last decade of the 19th century, however, geopolitical circumstances
had changed and Britain was anxious to prevent France and Germany from
gaining influence over the Ashanti (and, therefore, over the gold reserves in
the region). In January 1896, when the Ashanti failed to respond positively to
an offer of protectorate status, British officials provoked conflict by accus-
ing them of failure to pay the fine levied in 1874, sent soldiers into Kumasi,
 ASSOCIATED STATE • 41
declared the area a protectorate on 16 August, and exiled Asantehene (or
King) Prempeh I and other leading members of the community to the Sey-
chelles.
On 1 January 1902, after the army had quelled another uprising, Britain
formally annexed the territory, giving it crown colony status but entrusting
administration to a chief commissioner responsible to the governor of the
Gold Coast. On the same date, areas to the north of the core Ashanti region
were designated the Protectorate of the Northern Territories of the Gold
Coast and all three political units—the Ashanti and Gold Coast colonies and
the protectorate—were, for most purposes, treated as a single political unit.
The Ashanti confederacy was reestablished on 31 January 1935, under Asan-
tehene Prempeh II, with a Confederacy Council that had limited powers to
control lawbreaking and establish a treasury. Then, in 1946, the Ashanti were
allotted four of the 18 elected places on a newly created Legislative Council
that represented the three colonial territories, which, in 1957, together won
independence as Ghana.
See also CHAMBERLAIN, JOSEPH (1836–1914).

ASHMORE ISLANDS AND CARTIER ISLAND. The coral Ashmore

Islands, with a land area of just 0.04 square miles, lie in the Indian Ocean at
latitude 12° 14ʹ South and longitude 123° 5ʹ East, midway between Austra-
lia’s northwestern coast and the island of Timor. Cartier Island, some 0.007
square miles in extent and composed of sand rather than coral, is located 45
miles to the southeast. The first European visitor to Cartier, in 1800, was a
Captain Nash, who named it after his ship. Ashmore takes its name from
Captain Samuel Ashmore, who sighted the reef in 1811. The seas in the area
were popular with American whalers in the mid-19th century so the United
States laid claim to the unpopulated islets, but Britain annexed the Ashmore
reef in 1878 (exploiting the extensive guano deposits for phosphate) and
Cartier in 1909. They were transferred to Australia on 3 May 1934, linked to
Northern Territory in 1938, and, more recently, designated wildlife re-
serves (Ashmore in 1983 and Cartier in 2000).

ASSOCIATED STATE. In 1967, the United Kingdom (U.K.) designated

five of its Caribbean colonies—Antigua (27 February), Dominica (1
March), Grenada (3 March), Saint Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla (27 February), and
Saint Lucia (1 March)—associated states, an arrangement that gave each
island complete control over its domestic affairs but left Britain responsible
for defense and foreign relations. Saint Vincent was added to the group on
27 October 1969. By 1983, all of the territories (with the exception of An-
guilla, where the U.K. authorities had resumed direct rule on 19 March
1969, following a period of civil unrest) had negotiated full independence.
42 • ATTLEE, CLEMENT RICHARD (1883–1967)
See also BRITISH DEPENDENT TERRITORY; BRITISH OVERSEAS
TERRITORY; CHARTER COLONY; COLONY; CROWN COLONY;
CROWN DEPENDENCY; DOMINION; LEAGUE OF NATIONS MAN-
DATED TERRITORY; PROPRIETARY COLONY; PROTECTED
STATE; PROTECTORATE; ROYAL COLONY; UNITED NATIONS
TRUST TERRITORY.

ATTLEE, CLEMENT RICHARD (1883–1967). In the years following

World War II, Prime Minister Clement Attlee presided over the initial stages
of the dismantling of the British Empire, albeit without realizing how exten-
sive that dismantling would eventually be. The seventh of eight children in
the family of lawyer Henry Attlee and his wife, Ellen, he was born in Putney
(now a suburb of London) on 3 January 1883 and educated at Oxford Univer-
sity, where he graduated with a degree in modern history. He entered parlia-
ment in 1922, representing the Labour Party and the solidly working-class
east London constituency of Stepney, and was given his first government
post, in January 1924, as under-secretary of state for war in the administra-
tion led by Prime Minister Ramsay Macdonald. Macdonald resigned in Octo-
ber of the same year after losing a vote in the House of Commons (the lower
chamber in Britain’s bicameral legislature) and Labour lost the ensuing gen-
eral election so Attlee’s period in that office was limited, but he returned to
ministerial duties as chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, again under Mac-
donald, on 23 May 1930, was elected deputy leader of the Labour Party in
1933 (two years after a general election defeat at which many senior figures,
who may, in other circumstances, have been competitors for the position, had
lost their parliamentary seats), and then, on 2 October 1935, won the leader-
ship position.
During World War II, Attlee held several posts in Winston Churchill’s
coalition government then, to the surprise of many (including, apparently,
himself), led Labour to victory in the first postwar general election, becom-
ing prime minister on 26 July 1945. His primary concerns were the restruc-
turing of the country’s economy and the implementation of his party’s wel-
fare state policies, which included provision for a publicly funded health-care
system, free of charge at the point of use. However, foreign policy was
important too, not least because of the expense of maintaining a military
presence in strategic areas around the world. The development of much of
that policy was left to Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin, but Attlee took per-
sonal charge of the arrangements for granting independence to India, ap-
pointing Viscount Louis Mountbatten viceroy on 17 March 1947 and in-
structing him to negotiate a path to self-rule by 1948, preferably by retaining
the colony as a single entity and without damaging the United Kingdom’s
international reputation. Religious schisms made the first of those goals im-
possible to achieve because the Indian Moslem community (in the United
 AUCKLAND ISLANDS • 43
Kingdom as well as on the subcontinent) was adamant that it should be given
a separate state. Attlee quickly realized that the army would have difficulty
containing civil disorder if he pushed ahead with a scheme for just one
political unit so he persuaded his cabinet to approve proposals for a Hindu-
dominated independent India and a Moslem Pakistan, with independence
brought forward to midnight on 14 August 1947 in order to avoid the pos-
sibility of a chaotic, embarrassing, and hasty withdrawal if British troops
were unable to quell insurrection. Attlee also played a role in the negotiations
that led to independence for Burma on 4 January 1948 and for Ceylon on 4
February while dealing with criticism from the United States and from Zion-
ist groups that his government’s policies in Palestine were anti-Jewish and
pro-Arab. With the Palestinian commitment deeply unpopular with the Brit-
ish electorate, on 18 February 1947 the United Kingdom announced its inten-
tion to surrender its mandate to administer the region, originally granted by
the League of Nations in 1922 (see LEAGUE OF NATIONS MANDATED
TERRITORY), and asked the United Nations to determine the area’s future.
More positively (but ultimately with little success), the administration initiat-
ed efforts to improve standards of living in the African colonies (see
GROUNDNUT SCHEME).
A modest, unassuming family man, Attlee lacked the charisma normally
associated with politicans who seek high office, but he was able to meld
more dominant personalities into a team until senior members of his cabinet
resigned over policy differences in April 1951. A general election, held in the
autumn, was lost, and on 26 October he resigned. He was created Earl Attlee
in 1955 and died in London on 8 October 1967.
See also BECHUANALAND; IMPERIAL WIRELESS CHAIN;
NORTHERN RHODESIA; UNITED KINGDOM IMMIGRATION LEGIS-
LATION.

AUCKLAND ISLANDS. The Auckland archipelago, with a land area of

some 240 square miles, lies in the southern Pacific Ocean between latitudes
50° 30ʹ and 50° 55ʹ South and longitudes 165° 50ʹ and 166° 20ʹ East, 290
miles south of New Zealand. Abraham Bristow, captain of the whaler
Ocean, chanced upon them during a voyage to England from Van Diemen’s
Land (now Tasmania) in 1806 and, on 30 August, named them after his
father’s friend, William Eden, Baron Auckland, who a few months earlier
had been made president of the Board of Trade in Prime Minister George
Grenville’s Whig government. On 20 October the following year, he re-
turned and claimed the territory for Britain. Although the Aucklands quickly
became a major base for sealers, exploitation lasted for only a few years
before the herds were nearly annihilated, Captain Benjamin Morrell of the
United States schooner Antarctic reporting in 1829 that he could find no fur
seals and only five sea lions. Morrell also commented on the prospects of
44 • AUSTRALIA
establishing settlement, but his favorable assessments proved overoptimistic.
Groups of Maori numbering (with their Moriori slaves) some 200, who ar-
rived from the Chatham Islands in 1841–1843, survived only until 1856 and
an attempt to attract Europeans was even shorter-lived. Charles Enderby (a
grandson of Samuel Enderby, who had founded the company that owned the
Ocean) formed the Southern Whale Fishery Company in 1846 in an effort to
reverse declining family fortunes and, in December 1849, built a supply and
provisioning station at the northeastern end of Auckland Island. However,
the whaling proved unproductive and the cold, wet climate limited agricultu-
ral development so the project was abandoned in August 1852. The Auck-
lands were incorporated within New Zealand (then a British colony) through
the provisions of the New Zealand Boundaries Act, which received royal
assent on 8 June 1863. In 1934, the islands were given protection as a wild-
life reserve and in 1998 (along with other sub-antarctic islands administered
by New Zealand) were designated a World Heritage Site by the United
Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO); they
remain uninhabited, and visits by scientists and tourists are restricted in order
to protect such threatened species as the New Zealand sea lion and the
yellow-eyed penguin.
See also CAMPBELL ISLAND.

AUSTRALIA. It is not clear why British politicians pursued an energetic

colonial interest in terra australis incognita—the “unknown land in the
south.” For many years, historians have claimed that the primary rationale
was a need to build penal colonies that would relieve pressure on prisons,
but, more recently, some scholars have argued that the real motive was a
desire to establish a strong naval presence in the southwestern Pacific Ocean,
and others have suggested that there were also good economic reasons for the
enterprise. Certainly, from the mid-18th century, government promoted sev-
eral exploratory ventures led by men such as James Cook (who claimed the
east coast for King George III, and named it New South Wales, on 22
August 1770), George Vancouver (who surveyed the southwest coastline in
1791), George Bass (who, with Matthew Flinders, circumnavigated Tas-
mania in 1798–1799), and Flinders himself, who sailed round the continent
in 1801–3 and proposed “Australia” as a name for the landmass. The coloni-
zation process began on 18–20 January 1788, when a fleet of 11 vessels,
commanded by Captain Arthur Philip and carrying about 1,350 passengers
(half of them convicts), dropped anchor at Botany Bay in New South Wales.
Tasmania (initially thought to be part of the mainland) was first settled by
Europeans in 1803 and was made a separate colony in 1825; a military
barracks was built at Albany (in Western Australia) in 1826; and South
Australia, Victoria, and Queensland were made colonies by detaching ter-
ritory from New South Wales in 1834, 1851, and 1859, respectively. Most of
 AUSTRALIA • 45
the early free settlers were farmers, rearing sheep, at first for their meat but
increasingly for wool. From the 1840s, however, discoveries of copper, then
gold, attracted influxes of miners, and by the 1860s cotton and sugar planta-
tions were being established in Queensland and cattle ranchers were spread-
ing into the interior. As the number of Britons on the continent increased, and
as their influence expanded, the aboriginal groups attempted to resist the loss
of traditional homelands so violence flared at several places, but, crippled by
European diseases to which they had no resistance and hampered by a limit-
ed technology, the native peoples were no match for the immigrants and
eventually—much reduced in number—they became dependent on them for
jobs and income.
The first forms of government in the newly founded penal settlements
were authoritarian and autocratic, but the free settlers were determined to
exert some influence over the management of the territories so by 1860 all of
the colonies except Western Australia had bicameral parliaments responsible
for internal self-government, with Britain retaining control of defense and
external relations. Proposals for forms of federation were discussed from the
mid-19th century but received popular support only from the 1880s, partly
because by that time Australians were developing a sense of common iden-
tity but partly, too, because they favored cooperation on matters relating to
defense, feared an influx of Asian immigration, and believed that free trade
would foster economic progress. Although substantial minorities in the least
populated colonies opposed the move, thinking that a national government
would be dominated by the large communities in New South Wales and
Victoria, a series of referenda in 1899 and 1900 showed that most people in
all six colonies favored the plan. On 5 July 1900, the British parliament
passed a Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act, which took effect
from 1 January the following year, creating an Australian legislative assem-
bly located in Canberra. From 1907, Australia was accorded the status of
“dominion” within the British Empire, but several politicians campaigned
for complete autonomy and those demands grew in the 1920s, with many
citizens demanding independence as the price for supporting Britain in
World War I. The Balfour Declaration of 1926 and the Statute of West-
minster (1931) conceded those demands, recognizing the country as a politi-
cal equal of the United Kingdom but retaining the monarch as head of state.
The Australia Acts, which were passed by the Australian parliament in 1985
and the British parliament in 1986 and implemented on 3 March 1986, se-
vered the final imperial bonds, ending the practice of referring appeals from
Australian courts to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London.
See also ASHMORE ISLANDS AND CARTIER ISLAND; AUSTRA-
LIAN ANTARCTIC TERRITORY; BANKS, JOSEPH (1743–1820);
BLACKBIRDING; CHRISTMAS ISLAND (INDIAN OCEAN); COCOS
(OR KEELING) ISLANDS; COMMONWEALTH REALM; EMPIRE SET-
46 • AUSTRALIAN ANTARCTIC TERRITORY
TLEMENT ACT (1922); GOVERNOR; GOVERNOR-GENERAL; LORD
HOWE ISLAND; MACQUARIE ISLAND; NAURU; NORFOLK ISLAND;
NORTHERN TERRITORY (AUSTRALIA); OLD COMMONWEALTH;
OVERSEAS SETTLEMENT SCHEME; PAPUA NEW GUINEA.

AUSTRALIAN ANTARCTIC TERRITORY. On 7 February 1933, the

United Kingdom transferred authority over “That part of His Majesty’s
dominions in the Antarctic Seas which comprises all the islands and territo-
ries other than Adélie Land which are situated south of the 60th degree of
South Latitude and lying between the 160th degree of East Longitude and the
45th degree of East Longitude” to the Commonwealth of Australia. On 26
December 1947, control of Heard Island and the McDonald Islands was
also transferred, and on 18 May 1948 all of the Antarctic areas administered
by Australia were merged into a single administrative unit known as Austra-
lian Antarctic Territory. In 1954, the Australian government opened the
Mawson Research Station—a scientific base—at Holme Bay in Mac Robert-
son Land (one of several sites that Sir Douglas Mawson, leader of a joint
British, Australian, and New Zealand expedition, had claimed for the United
Kingdom in 1930–1931 on the assumption that sovereignty would later be
transferred to Australia). The Antarctic Treaty, which came into force on 23
June 1961, and to which Australia is a signatory, prohibits promotion of
territorial claims to areas of the continent.
 B
BADEN-POWELL, ROBERT STEPHENSON SMYTH (1857–1941).
Baden-Powell’s experiences as an imperial army officer led directly to the
creation of the Boy Scouts movement in 1907. The son of the Reverend
Baden-Powell, a professor of geometry at Oxford University, and his third
wife, Henrietta, Robert was born in London on 22 February 1857. He failed
to pass his university entrance exams so, in 1876, joined the army as a
lieutenant and was stationed in Afghanistan, Cape Colony, the Gold Coast,
India, Ireland, and Natal, as well is in Malta, from where he undertook spy
missions in the eastern Mediterranean, disguising himself as a butterfly col-
lector and incorporating drawings of military installations into his sketches of
butterflies’ wings. He took part in the Second Matabele War in 1896–1897
and, although cleared by an official inquiry, was excoriated by some journal-
ists for ordering the execution of an enemy chief who had surrendered. Then,
from 13 October 1899 until 17 May 1900, he defied a Boer force by resisting
a 219-day siege at Mafeking. This time, the press treated him as a hero and
news of the arrival of relief troops resulted in street celebrations throughout
Britain. Baden-Powell was promoted to major-general and given the task of
organizing a South African Constabulary that would assist in keeping the
peace after the wars with the Boers had ended. In 1902, that job completed,
he was appointed inspector-general of cavalry and established a cavalry
training school in Wiltshire, in southern England, but the routine of office
work and the opposition of senior colleagues proved frustrating so he turned
to other outlets for his energies.
In 1899, Baden-Powell had published Aids to Scouting for NCOs (non-
commissioned officers) and Men as a training manual for military personnel,
but, as a result of his celebrity status, the book had become a bestseller and
had been adopted by a range of school and youth groups, including the Boys’
Brigade and the Young Men’s Christian Association, who used it to teach
skills of observation and of interpreting evidence. Convinced that the text,
which placed much emphasis on the importance of individual responsibility
and moral character, could help to build better citizens, he rewrote the work
as Scouting for Boys: A Handbook for Instruction in Good Citizenship, with

47
48 • THE BAHAMAS
chapters on camp life, chivalry, endurance, healthy living, life-saving, path
finding, self-discipline, self-improvement, tracking, and similar themes. The
principles were tested with a group of boys at a camp in 1907 and the work
appeared early the following year, initially in six instalments then, in May, in
a book form that has been regularly revised and, by the early 21st century,
had sold an estimated 150,000,000 copies. Independent scout groups formed
at locations around the country and became so numerous that, in 1908, Ba-
den-Powell established an umbrella organization, known as the Boy Scouts,
to coordinate their activities. In 1910, as scouting began to spread to the
territories of the British Empire and to other countries, he gave up his mili-
tary commitments in order to manage the movement and, in the same year,
encouraged the formation of the Girl Guides as a companion organization for
girls, taking its name from that of the Corps of Guides, an elite regiment that
had served on the northwest frontier of India in various forms from 1846. In
1916, he added the Wolf Cubs for boys under 11 years of age. Baden-Powell,
who assumed the title of chief scout, remained at the center of the scouting
fraternity until 1937 then, with his wife, Olave (whom he had married in
1912), retired to Kenya, where he died on 8 January 1941. Since then, his
reputation has fluctuated, some writers accusing him of incompetence and
racism at Mafeking and of flirting with fascism in the years prior to World
War II, while others have praised his enterprise in creating a structure that
encouraged personal initiative and self-development in young people world-
wide.
See also KIPLING, JOSEPH RUDYARD (1865–1936).

THE BAHAMAS. The first European settlers on the Bahamas (located in

the western Atlantic Ocean at latitude 25° 4ʹ North and longitude 77° 20ʹ
West) were Puritans, who, in 1648, sailed more than 900 miles from Bermu-
da so that they could practice their religious beliefs unhindered. Within a few
years, however, the islands (which, at their closest, are just 60 miles from the
southeastern coast of Florida) had become a lawless pirate stronghold so the
British government declared them a crown colony on 26 July 1718 and, the
following year, appointed sea captain and privateer Woodes Rogers as
governor with a commission to restore order, a task that he achieved within
six months through a judicious mixture of clemency for men who promised
future good conduct and execution for those who refused. When the
American Revolutionary War ended in 1783 with victory for the rebel
United States, many North Americans loyal to the British crown moved to
the Bahamas, taking their slaves with them and adding to a population that
was further enhanced by Africans released from slave ships by the Royal
Navy in the early years of the 19th century. The abolition of slavery in 1834
(see SLAVERY ABOLITION ACT (1833)) sounded the death knell for
cotton plantations already on the margins of economic viability as a result of
 BAHRAIN • 49
insect infestation and declining soil fertility, but there were few alternative
employment options available to the islanders, who for the rest of the 19th
century and the first half of the 20th tried to scrape a living from sponge
fishing, subsistence farming, and the sale of citrus fruit and other agricultural
produce. It was only with the closing of Cuba to American travelers in 1960,
after a revolution had propelled a communist government to power under
Fidel Castro, that tourists seeking beaches and a congenial climate turned to
The Bahamas, encouraging investment in hotel and transport infrastructure
and thus creating jobs. At the same time, political groups were coalescing
into formal organizations, with the Progressive Liberal Party formed in 1950
to further the interests of the residents of African descent who comprised the
majority of citizens and the United Bahamian Party (UBP) established in
1958 with backing largely from Bahamians who had a British background.
On 7 January 1964, the United Kingdom ceded control over domestic affairs
to a House of Assembly dominated by the UBP, but three years later their
rivals, led by Lynden Pindling (a black, London-educated attorney), won a
close election and led the country to full independence (as The Common-
wealth of the Bahamas) on 10 July 1973.
See also BRITISH WEST INDIES; COMMONWEALTH REALM;
EAST FLORIDA; PARIS, TREATY OF (1783); TURKS AND CAICOS
ISLANDS.

BAHRAIN. The Bahrain archipelago lies in the western Persian Gulf at

latitude 26° 13ʹ North and longitude 50° 35ʹ East, covering some 255 square
miles close to the mainland states of Qatar and Saudi Arabia. In the early
19th century, its good harborage was a base for pirates who harried East
India Company vessels so in 1820 the powerful Al Khalifa family signed an
agreement promising to end the raiding in return for British recognition of
their rule on the islands. Four decades later, on 31 May 1861, when Bahrain
was a major trading center in the Gulf and Britain was the dominant military
power, they gave reluctant approval to a further treaty that turned the sheikh-
dom into a British protectorate, ceding all authority over dealings with
foreign governments in return for promises of protection from attack. Initial-
ly, Britain made little attempt to interfere with island politics (though it took
action when its interests seemed threatened, as in 1911, when a group of
merchants who voiced opposition to British influence in the territory was
deported to India). However, in 1923, the resistance of conservative groups
to fiscal and legal reforms designed to reduce inequalities between Shia
Moslem and Sunni Moslem members of the population led to allegations that
the colonial power was condoning maltreatment of the Shias and forced
administrators to take action. Sheikh Isa (then nearly 80 years old) was
deprived of his authority and day-to-day control of the territory was handed
to his son, Hamad. Then, in 1926, Charles Belgrave, a civil servant with
50 • BAKER, SAMUEL WHITE (1821–1893)
colonial experience in Tanganyika, was appointed adviser to Hamad after
answering an advertisement in The Times newspaper. Belgrave’s close in-
volvement with the Al Khalifa family and his identification with imperial
overlordship made him an unpopular figure in many quarters but, even so, he
remained in his post until 1957, using revenues from the oil production that
had begun in 1932 to develop education and health services, redesign the
justice system, and improve the country’s economic infrastructure as he ex-
tended his influence over Bahrain’s internal affairs.
After World War II, Britain concentrated most of its administrative offices
for the lower Persian Gulf region in Bahrain, but demands for an end to the
imperial presence mounted. A National Union Committee, formed in 1954,
coordinated strike action by workers and organized demonstrations, includ-
ing one in which stones were thrown at Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd
during a visit in 1956. Similar disturbances were common throughout the
1950s and 1960s, notably after the British invasion of the Suez Canal area in
1956 (see SUEZ CRISIS (1956–1957)) and when the Bahrain Petroleum
Company laid off hundreds of its workforce in 1965. The unrest continued
until 1968, when Britain announced its decision to withdraw from “East of
Suez” and close its Persian Gulf bases by 1971. On 15 August 1971, Sheikh
Isa ibn Sulman Al Khalifa signed a treaty of friendship with Britain and
proclaimed Bahrain independent. Britain formally withdrew on 16 December
but retained close political and trade relations with its former protectorate, as
does the United States, which bases its 5th Fleet at the port in Manama. As a
result, both countries have been accused of turning a blind eye to human
rights infringements on the islands and of failing to apply pressure for consti-
tutional reform.

BAKER, SAMUEL WHITE (1821–1893). Baker identified Lake Albert as

an important link in the complex headwater system of the River Nile, thus
solving a mystery that had fascinated explorers and scholars for decades. He
was born (the second of eight children in the family of wealthy shipowner
and sugar merchant Samuel Baker and Mary, his first wife) in London on 8
June 1821 and sent to Mauritius to manage the family sugar plantation early
in 1845. Finding the task tedious, he moved, after only a few months, to
Ceylon, where he bought land at Nuwara Eliya, some 115 miles inland from
the headquarters of the British colonial administration at the port of Colom-
bo, and established a settlement, bringing cattle, immigrants, and seed from
Britain. Following the death of his wife, Henrietta, in 1855 (after a 12-year
marriage), Baker wandered Europe and in 1859, while on a hunting trip with
Duleep Singh (the hereditary ruler of the Sikh Empire, who had been de-
posed as maharajah after the Second Sikh War and British annexation of the
Punjab in 1849), visited the slave market at Widden, then part of the Ottoman
Empire but now in Bulgaria and usually known as Viden. There, acting on
 BAKER, SAMUEL WHITE (1821–1893) • 51
impulse, he tried to buy Florence von Sass, a young white woman who had
been groomed for service in a harem. According to some sources, his bid was
the highest in the auction so he purchased her outright. According to others,
he was outbid but helped her to escape by bribing her guards. Whatever the
truth of the matter, they traveled together in a happy partnership for the rest
of their lives though rumors of Baker’s unconventional method of acquiring
a second wife filtered into British court circles and, as a result, Queen Victor-
ia refused to meet her.
On 25 April 1861, the couple set off from Cairo with the declared intention
of discovering the sources of the Nile and meeting John Hanning Speke,
who, in the company of James Augustus Grant, was undertaking a second
expedition to the African interior. The journey was to last for more than four
years, including five months spent investigating Nile tributaries on the border
of Abyssinia (now Ethiopia) and the Sudan. On 18 December 1862, they left
Khartoum to follow the course of the White Nile and on 2 February the
following year met Speke and Grant at Gondoroko (now in South Sudan).
Baker was despondent when his fellow-explorers told him they had con-
firmed that Lake Victoria was the river’s source, but his spirits improved
when he learned that they had deviated from the Nile’s course as they at-
tempted to follow it downstream and that there were rumors of another large
lake they had not visited. Despite delays caused by rain, slave traders who
resented his presence (because they believed that he was a British agent
intent on ending their commerce), troublesome porters (who were unwilling
to march through hostile territory), and detention by Kamrasi, the chief of the
Kingdom of Bunyoro (who persisted in offering several of his wives in
exchange for Florence), Baker reached the lake on 14 March 1864 and
named it Lake Albert after Queen Victoria’s husband, who had died in De-
cember 1861. Investigations during the rest of the month showed that the
White Nile flowed into the lake, a discovery that proved to be the last major
piece in a jigsaw of reports, by European visitors, that pieced together a
picture of the course of the waterway. The couple eventually returned to
Khartoum on 5 May 1865 and, on 14 October, reached England, where they
married three weeks later. Baker was lionized by the British establishment—
awarded the Royal Geographical Society’s gold medal (its most prestigous
accolade for those who contribute to geography), given an honorary degree
by Cambridge University, and knighted by the queen—and his books de-
scribing his travels were published in multiple editions.
In 1869, as a result of his fame, Ismai’il Pasha, khedive of Egypt and the
Sudan, appointed him governor-general of the equatorial region of the Nile
basin, instructing him to abolish the slave trade, annex the area south of
Gondoroko and establish Egyptian authority in the region, build trading sta-
tions, introduce cotton growing, and open the lakes to navigation. Baker
created the Province of Equatoria (which included Lake Albert as well as
52 • BAKER ISLAND
territories now within the boundaries of South Sudan and Uganda), but the
project was never an economic or political success because Arab traders
resisted efforts to end slavery and native peoples were unwilling to accept
Egyptian rule. At the end of his four-year term of office, he returned to
Britain, handing over the reins of governorship to Charles George Gordon,
who did manage to build trading posts but who squabbled with the Egyptian
authorities and remained in the post for only two years. For the remainder of
his life, Baker wrote articles and books and hunted at sites around the world,
killing 22 tigers during seven visits to India. He died at his home in Devon,
in southwestern England, on 30 December 1893. Biographers have portrayed
him as typical of the self-reliant, strong-willed Victorian explorers who
helped to expand the boundaries of Britain’s Empire but also emphasize his
intolerance of the customs of non-Europeans.
See also STANLEY, HENRY MORTON (1841–1904).

BAKER ISLAND. Baker Island—a Pacific Ocean atoll covering less than
one square mile and located about halfway between Australia and Hawaii at
latitude 0° 11ʹ North and longitude 176° 28ʹ West—was visited by several
American whaling vessels in the early years of the 19th century and, in 1832,
was named after Michael Baker, one of the fleet’s captains. In 1857, the
United States (U.S.) took possession of the territory, claiming it under the
provisions of the Guano Islands Act, which had been passed by Congress the
previous year and allowed the U.S. to acquire uninhabited islands that were
not already under the jurisdiction of other governments. The guano deposits,
then much in demand as a source of phosphate, which was used in the
production of agricultural fertilizers, were exploited by the American Guano
Company from 1859 but abandoned in 1878. Britain had claimed the island
from 1858 so, eight years after the Americans left, the Colonial Office
authorized John T. Arundel & Company to work the guano reserves. The
firm made Baker Island the headquarters of its extensive Pacific operations
until 1891, but the atoll then lay unoccupied until 3 April 1935, when a group
of Americans from Hawaii attempted, unsuccessfully, to establish a perma-
nent settlement. The territory was annexed to the United States on 13 May
1936, along with Howland Island and Jarvis Island, and was used by the
U.S. Air Force during World War II. In 1974, it was incorporated within
America’s system of wildlife refuges.

BALFOUR DECLARATION (1926). In October and November, 1926, the

political leaders of the six dominions—Australia, Canada, the Irish Free
State (see IRELAND), New Zealand, Newfoundland, and South Africa—
and the United Kingdom (U.K.) met at an Imperial Conference (see COLO-
NIAL CONFERENCE) in London to negotiate a new political relationship
 BALUCHISTAN • 53
based on the recommendations of a report prepared by a committee chaired
by 78-year-old former British prime minister Arthur Balfour. Over the previ-
ous decade, these territories had argued for greater independence from the
colonial power, partly as the price for military help given to Britain during
World War I, and Balfour’s document gave them what they required. The
committee had actually been asked to draw up a constitution for the whole
British Empire but had decided that such an enterprise would make little
sense because of the differing histories of the colonial units, the global spread
of colonies, and the wide range of cultures contained within the imperial
embrace. Those factors, Balfour and his colleagues believed, would condemn
any attempt to create a form of federal structure to failure so, they argued, a
loosening of ties was both right and inevitable. However, none of the domin-
ions, all of which had large numbers of residents who had been born in the
U.K., wanted to sever connections with the mother country completely so the
leaders agreed, on 15 November, that their countries would be “autonomous
communities within the British Empire, equal in status, in no way subordi-
nate one to another in any aspect of their domestic or external affairs”—a
form of words that allowed them to claim that they were on the same diplo-
matic footing as Britain rather than subservient. On the other hand, the agree-
ment that they remained “united by a common allegiance to the crown”
helped mollify domestic opponents of the change. The accord also paved the
way for adjustments to the role of governors-general, who would continue
to represent the monarch in the former dominions but would no longer act as
agents of the British government. Instead, each country would appoint “high
commissioners” who would serve as ambassadors to the other states. In the
U.K., where there was a widespread feeling that little had been conceded,
legislation approving the changes was approved by parliament in 1931 (see
WESTMINSTER, STATUTE OF (1931)).
See also COMMONWEALTH OF NATIONS; OLD COMMON-
WEALTH.

BALUCHISTAN. To 19th-century British politicians, Baluchistan’s strate-

gic location was much more important than any potential for commerce. A
barren mountain region of southwestern Asia, it lay at the frontier of British
India and so could serve as a buffer against the southward expansion of the
Russian empire (see THE GREAT GAME). During the First Afghan War
in 1839–42, British troops required safe passage for soldiers on their way to
Afghanistan through the Bolan Pass so administrators attempted to negotiate
agreements with local leaders. Believing, wrongly, that Mir Mehrab Khan,
the khan of Kalat, who controlled the area, would attempt to interrupt the
movements of men and supplies, they had him murdered in 1839 and re-
placed him, first with the more compliant Shah Nawaz Khan then (after Shah
Nawaz abdicated the following year, following a tribal rebellion) with Mir
54 • BANDA, HASTINGS KAMUZU (1898?–1997)
Nasir Khan II. On 6 October 1841, Nasir Khan agreed that he would “always
be guided by the advice of the British officer residing at his Durbar.” Then,
on 14 May 1854, he accepted an extension of European influence when, in
return for an annual payment of 50,000 rupees that would help him quell
opposition to his rule, he signed an accord that committed him to “act in
subordinate co-operation” with the British government and “to enter into no
negotiation with other States without [the British government’s] consent.”
Even so, Baluchistan was considered independent until 1876, when a further
treaty, signed on 13 July, provided for British agents, who would be resident
at the khan’s court, to act as referees in disputes between the khan and the
sirdars (the tribal chiefs), thus authorizing direct British intervention in inter-
nal affairs. Also, the document’s terms provided for the establishment of
permanent British garrisons in the khanate “in recognition of the intimate
relations existing between the two countries.”
Over the next decade, colonial officials developed irrigation schemes, es-
tablished facilities for health care, and introduced forestry programs as the
area of the protectorate expanded, but, on 1 November 1887, the territory
was made a province of British India and, in the years that followed, was
much neglected compared with other parts of the subcontinent. Nationalist
groups began to campaign for control of their own affairs in the 1930s, and
on 12 August 1947—just three days before the United Kingdom withdrew
from the Indian subcontinent—Mir Ahmad Yar Khan declared his country
independent. The freedom lasted for less than a year, though, because on 27
March 1948 the khan, under pressure from the government of Pakistan,
agreed to his territory’s absorption by its larger neighbor. That decision
proved unpalatable to many of his countrymen so the area has been a source
of conflict ever since as “liberation” movements have attempted to restore
the sovereign state, with the Pakistani government accusing its Indian
counterpart of covertly supporting the “rebels.”

BANDA, HASTINGS KAMUZU (1898?–1997). As autocratic as he was

charismatic, Hastings Banda led Nyasaland to independence as the Com-
monwealth (later the Republic) of Malawi then ruled the new state as a
dictator for three decades. Officially, he was born on 14 May 1906, but
several of his biographers believe that a date in the last years of the 19th
century, possibly 1896 or 1898, is more likely. His parents—Mphonongo and
Akupingamnyama Banda—were subsistence farmers living near Kasungu, in
central Nyasaland, and as a child he was known as Kamuzu (or “little root”)
because his mother had been advised by a local medicine man to eat roots as
a means of enhancing her fertility. Later, he added Hastings to his name
because he admired John Hastings, a Church of Scotland missionary work-
ing in the area. Under the influence of the missionaries, Banda adopted the
Christian faith, accepted education as a path to progress, and in his early
 BANDA, HASTINGS KAMUZU (1898?–1997) • 55
teens, set out to walk to South Africa, where he intended to begin the studies
that would lead to a medical qualification. En route, he worked as a sweeper
in a hospital in Hartley, Southern Rhodesia, then found employment in the
gold mines near Johannesburg, eventually saving the funds and securing the
sponsorship that enabled him to register at Wilberforce University, an
African Methodist Episcopal Church institution based in Ohio, in the United
States. From there, he moved to Indiana University and then to the Univer-
sity of Chicago, where he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in 1931. A
good examination performance at Meharry Medical College in Nashville,
Tennessee, earned him the right to work as a doctor in the United States in
1937, but in order to seek employment as a physician in the United King-
dom and its colonies he needed further certification so he traveled on to
Scotland and completed graduate diploma courses at the medical schools at
Edinburgh and Glasgow in 1941.
For the next 12 years, Banda provided medical care for working-class
communities in Scotland, the north of England, and the inner London suburb
of Harlesden, earning a reputation as a caring, conscientious family doctor
who waived fees for the poorest patients and adopting the dress—a dark
three-piece suit, homburg hat, and furled umbrella—that he was to retain
even after his return to the tropics. He also expressed very conservative
views on social mores (he objected to the way men and women danced
together, for example), but that did not prevent him from fathering a son by
his married secretary, Margaret French, or from ignoring both Mrs. French
and the child when they later followed him to West Africa.
In 1943, black Africans in Banda’s homeland formed a Nyasaland African
Congress (NAC) that would promote self-government for the protectorate.
Banda represented the organization at a meeting of the Pan-African Congress
in Manchester, England, in 1946 and, with increasing vociferousness, op-
posed the formation of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, con-
demning it as “stupid.” He moved from Britain to the Gold Coast (now
Ghana) in 1953, probably to escape the publicity that followed exposure of
his affair, and again worked as a physician among the poor but once more
faced allegations of misconduct when, in 1957, his clinic was forced to close
amid allegations that he was conducting abortions. By that time, however, he
was under pressure to lead the NAC’s campaign for independence. On 6 July
1958, after an absence of more than 40 years, Banda returned to Nyasaland.
Speaking through an interpreter because he no longer knew his Chichewa
mother tongue, he stomped the territory, shouting “To Hell with federation”
at assemblies and drumming up support for change. Early the following year,
Roy Welensky, the Federation’s prime minister, claimed to have evidence
that the Congress was planning to overthrow the government, murdering
black as well as white officials. Welensky ordered additional troops into
Nyasaland on 21 February, and less than two weeks later, on 3 March, Sir
56 • BANDA ISLANDS
Robert Armitage, the protectorate’s governor, declared a state of emergency,
banned the NAC, and arrested Banda, along with many of his colleagues.
Some 50 Africans died in the disturbances that followed.
Harold Macmillan, the British prime minister, and his Conservative Party
government regarded Banda as a rabble-rouser but, at the same time, they
were keen—for economic and political reasons—to divest themselves of
colonial possessions and well aware that the influence Banda exerted in
Nyasaland greatly exceeded that of any other nationalist leader in the colony
so they released him on 1 April 1960 and flew him to London for talks. The
discussions led to agreement on a new constitution for the protectorate, to the
territory’s withdrawal from the Federation on 9 May 1963, and to indepen-
dence as the Commonwealth of Malawi on 6 July 1964. Later in the year,
Banda, the first prime minister of the new state, survived a rebellion by
several members of his cabinet who found him too autocratic, and in 1966 he
orchestrated constitutional changes that made him president of a one-party
republic. Unafraid to plow his own furrow, he forged diplomatic relations
with the white governments of Mozambique and South Africa, annoying
black African leaders as a result, and he favored links with western democra-
cies rather than with China, the Soviet Union, or other communist states. At
home, he invested in infrastructural improvements (such as roads), promoted
education, and championed aspects of women’s rights but, at the same time,
accrued vast personal wealth, banned the wearing of miniskirts and trouser
suits, brooked no opposition (he had no qualms about eliminating political
opponents), and promoted a cult of adulation (requiring his portrait to be on
prominent display in private as well as government buildings, for example).
By the early 1990s, however, international aid organizations were demanding
more evidence of democratic decision-making, forcing him, in 1993, to le-
galize political organizations that would compete with his own Malawi Con-
gress Party. On 14 May 1994, he was defeated at a presidential election and
the following August he retired from politics. Hastings Banda died at a
Johannesburg hospital on 25 November 1997, aged about 100 and revered by
those who remembered him as a black messiah but condemned by those who
considered him one of the worst of Africa’s dictators.
See also NKOMO, JOSHUA MQABUKO NYONGOLO (1917–1999);
NKRUMAH, KWAME (1909–1972).

BANDA ISLANDS. See MOLUCCAS.

BANGKA ISLAND. In January 1812, Stamford Raffles, lieutenant-

governor of Java (which had been captured from the Dutch the previous
year), ordered Rollo Gillespie, the commander of the imperial forces in the
region, to take control of Bangka Island, which lay to the north, off Sumatra.
 BANKS, JOSEPH (1743–1820) • 57
Bangka had considerable reserves of tin, which were much in demand by the
Chinese, who used it to make tinfoil for packaging tea. Mahmud Badaruddin,
the sultan of Palembang, claimed sovereignty over the territory but resisted
European intrusions so Rollo replaced him with his more compliant younger
brother, Ahmad Najamuddin, who, on 17 May, ceded the island to Britain in
perpetuity. From headquarters in Mentok, the main settlement, officials ap-
pointed an administrator to each tin mine, ensuring that output was exported
to British-designated markets. Chinese coolies were recruited to work the
mines, navy vessels patrolled the seas in an effort to prevent smuggling, and
village headmen were required to register population numbers so that plan-
ners could estimate the size of the local labor force available for development
projects. However, the British presence was short-lived. Under the provi-
sions of an Anglo-Dutch Treaty, signed on 13 August 1814, Britain ex-
changed Bangka for Cochin, a Dutch East India Company possession on
India’s west coast that Britain had occupied in 1795 in order to prevent it
falling into French hands and which offered more attractive opportunities for
commerce.

BANKS, JOSEPH (1743–1820). Joseph Banks participated in Captain

James Cook’s first voyage to the Pacific Ocean in 1768–1771 then spent
much of the rest of his life promoting activities and explorations that would
further the commercial and scientific interests of the British Empire. The
only son of landowner and member of parliament William Banks and his
wife, Sarah, he was born in London on 13 February 1743 and attended
Oxford University but (like many scions of the wealthy classes at the time)
left without completing a degree program. His father’s death in 1761 made
him financially independent so he was able to indulge his interest in botany
and, in 1766, to accompany former school friend Lieutenant Constantine
Phipps as the naturalist on a Royal Navy venture to chart areas of the Labra-
dor and Newfoundland coasts. During that trip, Banks collected numerous
species of fauna and flora unknown to European biologists, classifying them
according to the Linnean system, which was being increasingly accepted by
the scientific community in mid-18th-century Britain. Also, through Thomas
Adams, a mutual acquaintance, he met Captain Cook at St. John’s, New-
foundland, and, as a result of intervention by his friend, John Montagu, earl
of Sandwich and three times first lord of the Admiralty, was able to join
Cook’s first voyage to the southern Pacific Ocean. He paid his own ex-
penses—which included financing four assistants, three of whom died during
the journey—but the personal and scientific proceeds from that investment
were enormous because he garnered details of some 800 species of plant new
to science, most of them from Australia, and, as a result, received greater
attention on his return to Britain than did Cook. Apart from visits to Iceland
58 • BANKS, JOSEPH (1743–1820)
in 1772 and to Holland in 1773, he made no further trips abroad during his
lifetime, but the success of the Pacific voyage gave him enormous influence
at home.
An introduction to King George III led to a friendship with the monarch
that gave Banks an unofficial role as the sovereign’s adviser on agricultural
and scientific matters, and positions on numerous organizations (such as the
Royal Society, a learned society for scientists) enhanced that influence.
Banks was a founder-member of the African Association, which sponsored
Mungo Park’s exploration of the River Niger in 1795–1797. Also, he pro-
moted voyages such as those during which George Vancouver searched for
a passage from the northeastern Pacific Ocean to the northwestern Atlantic
Ocean in 1791–1795 (see NORTHWEST PASSAGE) and Matthew Flind-
ers circumnavigated Australia in 1801–1803. Such ventures furthered the
cause of science (for example, travelers were instructed to return with plant
samples and give them to the Royal Botanic Gardens, which, under Banks’s
supervision, evolved from a recreational site into a center of botanical in-
quiry), but they also promoted imperial interests (breadfruit was introduced
to the West Indies from Tahiti in order to provide a cheap food for slaves, for
instance, and crops with commercial potential, such as cotton and tea, were
similarly carried to suitable locations around the British Empire). Politically,
he took a particular interest in Australia, advocating the development of New
South Wales through the establishment of a convict colony at Botany Bay
and promoting the development of agriculture and commerce.
In the early years of the 19th century, Banks’s powers waned, in part
because his health declined (he suffered, in particular, from gout) but also
because his major patron, King George, experienced increasingly frequent
bouts of madness. Nevertheless, he continued to advise public and private
bodies until his death at his home at Isleworth, on the River Thames, on 19
June 1820. His name is commemorated in numerous landmarks around the
world, including Banks Island (off Canada’s Arctic coast), the Banks Penin-
sula (on New Zealand’s South Island), and the Banks Strait (which separates
Tasmania’s northern coast from the Furneaux Islands). Banks was criticized
by some fellow-scientists for using his authority too autocratically (for exam-
ple, by discriminating against self-trained—rather than formally educated—
scientists), and, as scientific knowledge advanced rapidly in the later 19th
century, he became something of a forgotten figure but his reputation has
been restored in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, not least as a result of
the publicity surrounding the publication, in 34 parts from 1980–1989, of his
Florilegium (the copperplate engravings of plants collected on the voyage to
the Pacific that were the foundation of Banks’s standing in the scientific
community).
 BARBADOS • 59
BANTAM. The trading post established in 1602 at Bantam (now Banten), on
the north coast of Java, was the East India Company’s first foothold in
Asia. By the early 17th century, the settlement was already a major market
for spices, which were highly prized in Europe as food preservatives and
flavorings and also as medicines. The commerce was controlled largely by
Dutch and Portuguese merchants, but England wanted a share of the lucrative
market and used Bantam as a base for its operations, making the port the
headquarters for other “factories” (so-called because they were managed by
“factors”) in the East Indies and along the Coromandel coast of southeastern
India, turning it into the largest source of pepper imports to London and
using it to pioneer trade with China. However, the environmental conditions
were difficult because Company officials had to cope with high tempera-
tures, the constant threat of cholera and malaria, and a long rainy season.
Moreover, as Dutch power in the region increased, the small English pres-
ence felt increasingly threatened. Eventually, in 1682, Haji, the sultan who
ruled the area, sought Dutch assistance in dealing with supporters of his
father, whom he had ousted two years earlier. The Dutch agreed, but only if
all other Europeans were banned from trading at Bantam. Haji was in no
position to negotiate so the East India Company’s representatives left on 11
April.
See also BENCOOLEN (OR BENKULEN); MADRAS PRESIDENCY.

BARBADOS. Barbados, lying in the western Atlantic Ocean at latitude 13°

6ʹ North and longitude 59° 37ʹ West, about 200 miles northeast of Venezuela,
was claimed for England by John Powell, a mariner, on 14 May 1625, when
his ship chanced upon the uninhabited island after being blown off course
during a voyage to Brazil. Unusually for a Caribbean territory, it did not
change hands throughout its period as the possession of a European power.
Initially, settlers (the first of whom arrived two years after Powell’s brief
visit) cultivated cotton and tobacco, but from the 1640s the agricultural em-
phasis moved to sugarcane, grown on plantations that were worked by inden-
tured and slave labor. For 300 years, the planters’ hold on power was suffi-
cient to repress the occasional rebellions, even surviving the abolition of
slavery throughout the British Empire in 1834 (see SLAVERY ABOLITION
ACT (1833)), but from the 1930s their grasp slipped as Barbados’s black
population formed political parties that would campaign on its behalf by
advocating improvements in social services, arguing for a relaxation in the
income and property qualifications that limited voting rights, and supporting
an extension of the franchise to women. As the Barbados Progressive League
(now the Barbados Labour Party [BLP]) increased its share of the vote it
gained in authority, wringing concesssions from the House of Assembly
(which had been established, as the House of Burgesses, in 1639), so in 1954,
when a system of ministerial government was introduced, Grantley Adams,
60 • BARBUDA
the party leader, was appointed premier by the territory’s governor, Briga-
dier Sir Robert Arundell. From 1958–1962, Barbados was a member of the
West Indies Federation, with Adams as that organization’s prime minister,
but the union was always fragile, its cohesion weakened by the nationalistic
policies of the 12 component territories, and Adams also found himself under
attack at home from the more liberal Democratic Labour Party (DLP),
founded in 1955 and led by Errol Barrow. In 1961, the DLP ousted the BLP
and the following year the Federation dissolved, leaving Barbados as a
crown colony responsible for administering its own internal affairs. On 30
November 1966, it won complete independence from the United Kingdom,
with Barrow as the first prime minister.
See also BARBUDA; BERBICE; BRITISH WEST INDIES; COMMON-
WEALTH IMMIGRATION TO THE UNITED KINGDOM; COMMON-
WEALTH REALM; DEMERARA-ESSEQUIBO; SOCIETY FOR THE
PROPAGATION OF THE GOSPEL IN FOREIGN PARTS; SURINAM;
WINDWARD ISLANDS.

BARBUDA. The 61-square-mile island of Barbuda lies in the Lesser

Antilles archipelago, 25 miles north of Antigua at latitude 17° 37ʹ North and
longitude 61° 48ʹ West. Initial European attempts at colonization—including
one by a group of settlers from Saint Kitts—were repulsed by disease and by
the territory’s Carib occupants, but a party of English immigrants managed to
establish a permanent village in 1666 and in 1685 King Charles II granted the
Codrington family a lease of the land (a lease that, 20 years later, Queen
Anne extended at a rent of “one fat sheep yearly, if demanded”). Christopher
Codrington used the island as a base for supplying his sugar plantations on
Antigua (with some sources suggesting that part of the provisioning process
involved the breeding of slaves) then, on his death in 1710, bequeathed parts
of the property to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign
Parts so that it could found a theological college—the first in the New
World—in Barbados. In 1860, the British government annexed Barbuda to
Antigua and in 1872, when the Codringtons’ control ended, made it a depen-
dency of its larger neighbor. That merger was never fully accepted, with the
Barbudans feeling that they were poor relations who failed to get a fair share
of investment income, so after Antigua negotiated associated statehood with
the United Kingdom in 1967 the people of Barbuda formed a council that
opposed development of the tourist (and particularly casino-oriented) econo-
my that the larger island felt would provide employment and boost funds. On
several occasions, representatives from that council attempted to persuade
Britain to allow Barbuda to sever its link to Antigua, but although they were
granted limited control over the island’s internal affairs their pleas for the
right to secede were rejected and Antigua became independent on 1 Novem-
ber 1981 with Barbuda still part of the state.
 BASUTOLAND • 61
See also BRITISH WEST INDIES; COMMONWEALTH REALM; LEE-
WARD ISLANDS.

BAROTSELAND. In the late 1880s, the Barotse (or Lozi) people, who lived
on a floodplain on the upper reaches of the Zambezi River, were under
pressure from the Germans to their southwest, the Matabele (or Ndebele) to
their south, and the Portuguese to their east and west. Lewanika, their lutinga
(or king), felt that a link with Britain would protect his territory’s indepen-
dence so on 26 June 1890, having been duped into believing that he was
dealing with the personal representatives of Queen Victoria, he agreed to
grant Cecil Rhodes’s British South Africa Company (BSAC) the right to
mine diamonds, gold, and other precious metals in return for an annual
payment of £2,000 and protection from external aggressors. On 28 Novem-
ber 1899, the British government took the territory—which became known
as Barotseland-Northwestern Rhodesia—under its administrative jurisdic-
tion, with BSAC acting as its agent, then in a further treaty, signed on 17
October 1900, Lewinka confirmed BSAC’s monopoly mining rights and, in
effect, made his lands a British protectorate by agreeing not to enter into
any “concession, treaty, or alliance with any person, company, or State” and
by allowing BSAC “to appoint and maintain a British resident . . . to reside
permanently with the King.” The Company, in return, promised to make
infrastructural improvements, to protect the Barotse against attack, and to
refrain from interfering in matters concerning Lewinka’s authority over his
subjects. In practice, very little mineral wealth was discovered, but adminis-
tration remained largely in Company hands as Lewanika’s powers gradually
dwindled. BSAC merged the area with Northeast Rhodesia on 17 August
1911 to form Northern Rhodesia, which was made a British protectorate on
26 April 1924, when the Colonial Office took responsibility for government.
After World War II, as the majority of black Africans agitated for an end to
the colonial presence, the Barotse people leaned against the wind of change.
While Northern Rhodesia’s representatives negotiated self-rule in discus-
sions that colonial secretary Iain Macleod described as “incredibly devious
and tortuous,” the Barotse attempted to persuade the British government to
retain their territory as a protectorate but won just limited rights to domestic
autonomy after the area won independence, as the Republic of Zambia, on 24
October 1964.

BASUTOLAND. From 1824, the Basuto people spread from their home in
the grasslands of southern Africa into neighboring areas and formed a king-
dom under Moshoeshoe I. However, Boer settlers began to impinge on that
territory in the late 1830s, provoking violent clashes as the Europeans tried to
acquire African land and the Africans rustled European cattle in retaliation.
62 • BAY ISLANDS
Britain, too, was having trouble with the Boers so signed a treaty that placed
Moshoeshoe’s realm under its protection in 1843 but ended the agreement 11
years later, frustrated by frequent conflict with the Basuto and between the
Basuto, other tribal groups, and the Boer. However, it was evident to Mo-
shoeshoe that he could not hold out against increasing Boer numbers indefi-
nitely so in 1868 he appealed to Britain for help once more, asking that his
subjects should “rest and live under the large folds of the flag of England.”
On 12 March that year, Britain again declared a protectorate and ordered the
Boers out. Three years later, on 11 August 1871, colonial officials attached
Basutoland to Cape Colony, but the area continued to be plagued by fight-
ing, sometimes between British troops and Basuto who rebelled against colo-
nial rule, sometimes between factions of the Basuto people themselves. As a
result, when, in 1884, the Africans appealed for the British government to
administer them directly, Cape Colony’s administrators raised no objection
(and even offered an annual subsidy to the territory) so Basutoland was given
crown colony status under a resident British commissioner on 18 March.
Basuto farmers took advantage of the British presence in southern Africa to
market their grain in the growing towns, but declining soil fertility, overpop-
ulation, and the perceived advantages of urban life encouraged many citizens
to migrate to the South African mining communities, which increasingly
regarded Basutoland as a source of labor. British agents allowed the local
chiefs considerable autonomy but did little to develop the economic infra-
structure of the colony or to improve social conditions; the only educational
establishments were those provided by missionary groups, for example.
Moreover, the vagaries of climate—and particularly periods of drought—
often caused considerable suffering. After World War II, realizing that there
was little prospect of an improvement in living standards under colonial rule,
community leaders talked increasingly of self-government, with political
parties forming from 1952 but vehemently opposing union with South Afri-
ca, which had adopted white supremacist policies of apartheid in 1948. In
1955, the Basutoland Council, which had existed since 1903 but had no
elected members, assumed responsibility for governing the colony’s internal
affairs. An elected legislature followed in 1960, and on 4 October 1966
Basutoland won full independence, with a bicameral parliament, as the King-
dom of Lesotho.
See also HIGH COMMISSION TERRITORIES.

BAY ISLANDS. The Bay Islands—Útila, Roatán, Guanaja, and several

smaller parcels of land—occupy about 100 square miles in the Gulf of Hon-
duras some 35–45 miles off the Honduran Coast at latitude 16° 17ʹ North and
longitude 86° 24ʹ West. They were sighted by Christopher Columbus in 1502
during his fourth voyage to the New World, claimed on several occasions by
Britain and Spain, then incorporated within Honduras in the middle years of
 BAY ISLANDS • 63
the 19th century. The first English attempts at settlement were made in 1638
on Roatán, the largest of the group, by William Claiborne, who accepted a
commission from the Providence Company, which had been formed by a
group of Puritans nine years earlier with the initial aim of establishing a God-
fearing population on Providence Island, located near the Mosquito Coast
(now part of Nicaragua but then claimed by Spain as well as by England).
Claiborne’s pioneers managed to establish a community at Port Royal, in the
southeast of Roatán, but were driven out by Spanish attacks in 1650. For the
next 90 years, the islands were occupied temporarily by buccaneers and
pirates, but from 1742, at a time when it was attempting to extend its influ-
ence in Central America, Great Britain made another attempt to assert con-
trol, rebuilding the fort that the Puritans had constructed at Port Royal. It is
clear from a letter written in 1745 by a Major Caulfield to Edward Trelawny,
governor of Jamaica, that this second group of settlers was as plagued by
Spanish attacks as its predecessors had been, and eventually, on 2 March
1782, while British military attention was focused on the American Revolu-
tionary War and on troubles in India, Spain mounted a full-scale attack.
The defenders resisted for two weeks but were forced to surrender on the
16th then watch as their buildings were destroyed.
Spain’s sovereignty over the islands was confirmed by the Treaty of Ver-
sailles, one of several pacts that ended the American Revolutionary War on 3
September 1783 (see PARIS, TREATY OF (1783)). British residents de-
parted five years later, leaving the Bay Islands largely deserted until 1797,
when warships dumped 5,000 “Black Caribs,” who had been resisting British
control in Saint Vincent, on the beaches and left them to survive as best they
could. Then, following the abolition of slavery throughout the Empire in
1834 (see SLAVERY ABOLITION ACT (1833)), new settlers began to
arrive from the Cayman Islands as plantation owners there found that, with-
out slave labor, they could not compete with cotton growers in the United
States. As the number of immigrants with British connections grew, they
asked Queen Victoria to annex the islands, and on 13 June 1852 the govern-
ment complied, making them a crown colony. However, the United States
objected, citing the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, signed on 19 April 1850, which
contained a provision that neither Great Britain nor the U.S. would seek new
colonies in the western hemisphere. At a meeting to resolve the dispute, held
in Guatemala on 30 April 1859, British negotiators agreed to cede the islands
to the Republic of Honduras in return for an assurance of recognition of full
sovereignty over British Honduras. Honduras, more concerned about deal-
ing with unrest on the mainland, ignored the arrangement until Britain de-
manded action and insisted on handing over the territories on 1 June 1861.
64 • BECHUANALAND
BECHUANALAND. Landlocked Bechuanaland lay in southern Africa,
where nomadic Tswana (or Bechuana) cattle herders survived in the arid
environment of the Kalahari Desert and in the savannah and steppe on its
fringes. In 1816, the London Missionary Society established a base at Mar-
uping, near Kuruman (in the south of the region and now in South Africa),
but although Robert Moffat spent 50 years preaching the Christian gospel in
the area (and translating the Bible into Setswana) few Europeans followed
him because the lack of groundwater inhibited most forms of agriculture.
However, knowledge of the geography of the region improved after David
Livingstone arrived in 1841, and the discovery of gold at Tati, in Hartley
Hills, by the German explorer, Karl Mauch, led to an influx of fortune seek-
ers from 1867–1869. By 1882, Boer settlers were annexing territory, estab-
lishing the republics of Stellaland and Goshen to the east, and in 1884 Ger-
many declared South-West Africa (now Namibia) a colony. As early as 1874,
Montsoia, chief of the Barolong people, asked Britain for protection against
the Boers, who were attempting to take possession of his land and tax the
inhabitants, but the British government proved unwilling to intervene until
1884. Then, amid fears that transport routes from Cape Colony to British
possessions farther north would be threatened if Bechuanaland was lost to
some form of Boer-German alliance, parliament authorized funds for a mili-
tary expedition that would occupy the new Boer republics—a task achieved
early the following year, without casualties on either side, by a 4,000-strong
army under Sir Charles Warren (an army officer who had played an impor-
tant role in quelling a rebellion in Griqualand West in 1878–1879). On 30
September 1885, Goshen and Stellaland, along with the area south of the
Molope River, were declared a crown colony; the rest of the land, north as
far as latitude 22° South and west as far as longitude 20° East, was made a
protectorate. On 30 June 1890, the northern boundary of the protectorate
was extended to incorporate Ngamiland, dominated by the Tawana people
and the Okavango River delta, and on 1 July Germany, through the Heligo-
land-Zanzibar Treaty, formally recognized the acquisition as part of a
package of agreements that gave it sovereignty over the Caprivi Strip, a 250-
mile ribbon of land running east–west along the northern edge of the protec-
torate. (The Strip was intended to give South-West Africa access to the
Zambezi River and thus to German East Africa—most of which became
Tanganyika after World War I—but the waterway proved to be unnavi-
gable.)
Great Britain never intended to maintain either the colony or the protec-
torate as independent administrative units. On 9 May 1891, both were placed
under the managerial control of the high commissioner for southern Africa,
and on 16 November 1895 the colony was absorbed by Cape Colony. How-
ever, plans to hand responsibility for the protectorate to the British South
Africa Company (BSAC)—which made much use of the road through the
 BELIZE • 65
area for access to its territories in Southern Rhodesia—were sabotaged by
Khama III (chief of the Ngwato people), who visited London, along with
Bathoen (of the Ngwaketse) and Sebele (of the Kwene), and told both Colo-
nial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain and Queen Victoria that they did not
trust either the firm or its founder, Cecil Rhodes. Chamberlain, unreceptive,
informed the Africans that they had no choice but to negotiate with Rhodes
then went on vacation. While he was away, the London Missionary Society,
in concert with other groups that feared violence if the government proposals
were confirmed, arranged a tour of Britain for the visitors and drummed up
enthusiastic support for their cause in the press. Chamberlain, when he re-
turned, found that public opinion was very much on the side of the chiefs
and, fearful of electoral consequences, conceded defeat in return for agree-
ments that BSAC would be granted land on which to build a railroad and that
taxes would be levied to cover the costs of administering the protectorate.
The story over the next half century was one of benign neglect as Bechua-
naland became a source of migrant labor for farms and mines in the British
possessions that formed the Union of South Africa in 1910. However, in
1948, Seretse Khama, grandson of Khama and chief of the Ngwato, married
Ruth Williams, a white Englishwoman. Prime Minister Clement Attlee’s
Labour Party government, unwilling to lose access to a major source of gold
and uranium in the difficult economic times after World War II, bowed to
pressure from South Africa, where interracial marriage was illegal, and ex-
iled the couple to London. The decision caused a political storm, but the
couple returned in 1956, by which time South Africa’s apartheid regulations,
governing racial segregation, had tightened even further and Alec Douglas-
Home, earl of Home and secretary of state for Commonwealth relations, was
taking a less conciliatory approach to that country’s demands. The formation
of a legislative council in 1960 proved to be a catalyst for the formation of
political organizations, including, in 1961, a Bechuanaland Democratic Party
(BDP) that had Khama at its head and was favored by British officials be-
cause it was less radical than other factions. Constitutional negotiations be-
gan in 1963, then in March 1965, at the first universal franchise election for a
national assembly, the BDP swept the polls, winning 90 percent of the vote
and 28 of the 31 seats. On 30 September the following year, the protectorate
became independent, as the Republic of Botswana, with Seretse Khama as
the first president. The new, sparsely populated country was one of the poor-
est in Africa, but the discovery of diamonds at Orapa in 1967 transformed the
economy, leading to improvements in social services and a rapid rise in per
capita incomes in succeeding decades.
See also GLADSTONE, WILLIAM EWART (1809–1898); HIGH COM-
MISSION TERRITORIES; RESIDENT COMMISSIONER.

BELIZE. See BRITISH HONDURAS.

66 • BENCOOLEN (OR BENKULEN)
BENCOOLEN (OR BENKULEN). In 1682, the Dutch forced the East
India Company (EIC) out of its base in Bantam, on the island of Java, but
three years later, on 12 July 1685, the English traders, unwilling to surrender
their role in the lucrative spice trade, obtained permission from the rulers of
the Selebar area of neighboring Sumatra to establish a trading post at Ben-
coolen. Sumatra was an important source of pepper, which was much in
demand in Europe, but Bencoolen was remote from the main trading routes,
the local population was small, and conditions in the swampy environment
were harsh, with cholera, dysentery, and malaria rife. Convicts and slaves
were imported to work on plantations in an effort to raise production, but the
base was never an economic success. (In July 1716, the liquor bill at the post
exceeded the value of pepper exported by a considerable margin.) The EIC
was unwilling to leave Bencoolen because it had no wish to abandon the East
Indian trade to the Dutch and, in any case, it had made a substantial invest-
ment in the construction of Fort Marlborough from 1714–1719. When Stam-
ford Raffles arrived at Bencoolen as lieutenant-governor and head of EIC
operations in 1817, he developed ambitious plans to increase British influ-
ence in Southeast Asia by enhancing its presence in Sumatra but found little
support for the proposals so, in 1819, he turned his attention to Singapore,
believing that it offered potential for trade with China. Malacca, held by the
Netherlands, guarded the sea routes to Singapore from the northwest and thus
was strategically more important than Bencoolen so British diplomats nego-
tiated a swap under the terms of the Anglo-Dutch Treaty signed on 17
March 1824.

BENGAL PRESIDENCY. During the late 18th century, Bengal presidency

(or province), with its administrative center in Calcutta (now Kolkata),
evolved into the principal commercial and political focus of East India
Company (EIC) activities on the Indian subcontinent. In 1634, Shah Jahan,
the Mughal emperor, gave EIC officials permission to build a trading post
(known as a “factory’ because it was managed by a “factor”) at Pipili, which
had a harbor on the River Subarnarekha, giving access to the Bay of Bengal.
Other bases were established farther north at Balasore in 1640 and at Hoogh-
ly in 1642, largely as a reward from the emperor to the Company, which had
allowed Dr. Gabriel Boughton to treat his family and retainers. Then on 24
August 1690—although relationships with local leaders had not always been
amicable—Job Charnock, the EIC’s chief agent in northeastern India, set up
a headquarters at a site he referred to as Calcutta, on the Hooghly River (the
principal distributary of the Ganges) and close to cloth merchants who had
relocated downstream from Satgaon, where silting had affected the port
trade. From 1696, the settlers built a defensive structure—named Fort
William after King William III of England and II of Scotland—and on 26
 BENGAL PRESIDENCY • 67
May 1700 the settlement was made a “presidency” town (formally, the Presi-
dency of Fort William but widely known as the Presidency of Bengal) with
Charles Eyre (Charnock’s son-in-law) as president and governor.
As the authority of the predominantly Moslem Mughal Empire declined
during the early 18th century in the face of attacks from the Hindu Maratha
peoples, the nawabs (or leaders) of the indigenous communities in Bengal
became increasingly independent and challenged the growing power of the
EIC. On 20 June 1756, the armies of Siraj-ud-Daula overran the settlement
(see BLACK HOLE OF CALCUTTA), but the town was retaken on 2 Janu-
ary the following year by EIC troops commanded by Robert Clive, who
followed that success with victory at the Battle of Plassey on 23 June 1757
and replaced the nawab with a more compliant substitute, thus gaining access
to the wealth in Siraj’s treasury. The riches were used to strengthen the EIC
army, drive Dutch and French competitors from the region, and build a
political heartland from which Britain would expand its influence and be-
come the dominant power in India.
The governor-general of the Presidency of Fort William, resident in Cal-
cutta, supervised all EIC employees in India from 1772 and from 1833, as
governor-general of India, had authority over all of British India. Also, the
boundaries of the presidency were extended to include areas that are now
parts of the Indian states of Assam, Bihar, Meghalaya, Odisha, Tripura, and
West Bengal, as well as regions of modern Bangladesh and the territories of
Aden (now in Yemen), Burma (now Myanmar), Penang (now in Malaysia),
and Singapore. In addition to its role as a trading center, Calcutta developed
as a focus of cultural and intellectual activity; for example, the Asiatic Soci-
ety of Bengal was formed in 1784 in order to promote research throughout
the continent, an Indian Museum was founded in 1814, and the second half
of the 19th century brought a burgeoning literature that often questioned
social norms. In the countryside, cotton, jute, opium, and rice became impor-
tant crops despite a famine that caused an estimated 10,000,000 deaths from
1769–1773 and problems caused by a system of taxes that gave great finan-
cial power to landlords, many of whom exploited their farmer tenants. Then,
from the 1850s, industry (particularly textile production) offered additional
sources of employment to complement the financial and trading services in
the city. However, the huge area of the presidency—nearly 200,000 square
miles—was difficult to administer because it had a population of more than
60,000,000 people who spoke several different languages and held differing
religious beliefs. Moreover, many of those people lived in regions, notably
eastern Bengal, where development had been limited because of poor trans-
port links or locations distant from the center of government.
On 16 October 1905, the governor-general—George Curzon, Marquess
Curzon of Kedleston—attempted to improve government of the territory by
uniting Assam with much of eastern Bengal to form a new province (East
68 • BERBICE
Bengal and Assam), with Dacca (now Dakka) as its capital, and by merging
western Bengal with Bihar and Orissa to form the province of Bengal, whose
administrative center remained at Calcutta. The decision met with much
approval in the east, which provided many of the raw materials used in
industry but lacked the factories and mills (and the public institutions, such
as schools) that were common in the west. However, East Bengal and Assam
was predominantly Muslim, and the educated Hindus who dominated indige-
nous political life in western Bengal interpreted the move as an attempt by
the British to divide and rule the growingly vociferous nationalist movement.
Boycotts of British goods, mass protests, and other forms of civil unrest
forced a change of policy on 1 April 1912, when Bengal was reunified (as the
Fort William Presidency). Assam was placed under the authority of a chief
commissioner, Bihar and Orissa formed separate provinces, and the capital of
British India moved to New Delhi. That, however, simply inflamed Muslim
opinion in the east, where economic and social conditions had improved after
the partition in 1905, and fueled disputes between the two religious commu-
nities that continued long after negotiations for self-rule, in 1947, resulted in
western Bengal joining India and East Bengal joining Pakistan, as East
Pakistan. In 1971, East Pakistan became the independent state of Bangla-
desh.
See also BOMBAY PRESIDENCY; CAREY, WILLIAM (1761–1834);
FIRST BURMESE WAR (1824–1826); GRENVILLE, GEORGE
(1712–1770); HASTINGS, WARREN (1732–1818); INDIA ACT (1784);
MADRAS PRESIDENCY; PARTITION OF INDIA; PITT THE YOUNG-
ER, WILLIAM (1759–1806); REGULATING ACT (1773).

BERBICE. From 1627, Dutch merchants established trading posts along the
Berbice River, which flows northward for 370 miles from the interior of
South America to the Atlantic Ocean. The area was occupied by British
troops in February 1781 but was taken by the French the following year and
returned to Dutch control in 1783. During their brief stay, British authorities
encouraged immigration by offering grants of land, attracting, in particular,
planters from Barbados who grew cotton on the fertile coastal plains and the
mudflats on the west bank of the river. Later officials pursued the same
policy from 2 May 1796, when Captain John Parr of the 54-gun warship
HMS Malabar and a detachment of troops led by Major-General John Whyte
recaptured the territory during war with France and Holland. Over the next
six years, more than 100 new cotton plantations were established and some
9,000 African slaves were imported to work the land. However, from 1803 a
series of crop failures caused serious financial problems for the plantation
owners in Berbice and the neighboring territories of Demerara and Essequi-
bo. Many of the farmers owed mortgage payments to Dutch lenders and felt
that the difficulties would not be resolved unless the areas were ceded, for-
 BERMUDA • 69
mally, to Great Britain so on 13 August 1814, through an Anglo-Dutch
Treaty that dealt with several European-held lands in the Caribbean, India,
and Southeast Asia, Britain agreed to purchase all three areas. Demerara and
Essequibo were united under a single governor, but Berbice was adminis-
tered as a separate unit until 21 July 1831, when the colonies were merged to
form British Guiana.
See also SURINAM.

BERLIN CONFERENCE (1884–1885). See SCRAMBLE FOR AFRICA.

BERMUDA. Bermuda is the oldest of Britain’s remaining colonies, settled

from 25 July 1609 when the emigrant ship Sea Venture, heading for James
Town, Virginia, was caught in a storm and wrecked on a reef—an event that,
several scholars maintain, provided the inspiration for William Shake-
speare’s play, The Tempest. The islands, which lie in the Atlantic Ocean at
32° 18´ North and longitude 64° 47´ West, about 650 miles east of the United
States mainland at Cape Hatteras, cover only 21 square miles so, with land
for agriculture limited, the growing population turned to salt production and
seafaring (including privateering and whaling as well as merchant shipping)
in order to earn an income (see SOMERS ISLES COMPANY). After Britain
lost its North American colonies in 1783, the Royal Navy established a large
base on Ireland Island (in the northwest of the group), using it to monitor
Atlantic shipping lanes and launch attacks on Baltimore and Washington,
D.C., in the Anglo-American War of 1812. Later, during the American
Civil War of 1861–1865, Bermudan harbors provided havens for vessels
attempting to evade Union efforts to blockade Confederate-held ports in the
southern states. The colony’s strategic importance declined during the 20th
century—the Royal Navy withdrew everything except a small supply base in
1957 and left completely in 1995—but by the late 1930s tourism had become
a significant source of revenue (with wealthy visitors arriving by plane as
well as by ship), and after World War II a policy of maintaining low taxes on
commercial enterprises enabled the islands to evolve into one of the world’s
main centers of offshore finance, particularly for reinsurance. King James I
granted Bermuda limited rights to self-government in 1620 so its parliament
claims to be the world’s fifth oldest. The territory became a crown colony in
1684 and assumed full authority over domestic matters on 8 June 1968, with
the United Kingdom (U.K.) retaining responsibility for defense and foreign
relations. The monarch is represented by a governor, whose role is largely
ceremonial. Although some political parties on the islands have advocated
independence, most opinion polls have indicated that the majority of citizens
prefers to retain the link with the U.K.
70 • BHUTAN
See also THE BAHAMAS; BRITISH WEST INDIES; CAROLINA;
EAST FLORIDA; PROVIDENCE ISLAND; SAINT CROIX; TURKS AND
CAICOS ISLANDS; VIRGINIA COMPANY.

BHUTAN. From 1772, for almost a century, British India had a fractious
relationship with Bhutan, its small but assertive northern neighbor. The trou-
bles began in 1773, when the East India Company helped to restore the
rulers of Cooch Behar to their throne after the principality had been invaded
by Bhutanese forces, and continued from 1826 with disputes over control of
the duars (low hills, ideal for tea plantations) in Assam and Bengal. Eventu-
ally, in November 1864, Britain went to war and, vastly superior in arms,
forced Bhutan to accept an annual payment of 50,000 rupees in return for
surrendering all claims to the contested areas and ceding other territory to the
colonial power. By the early years of the 20th century, however, the political
climate had changed, China was laying claim to sovereignty over Bhutan (as
well as over Nepal, Sikkim, and Tibet) and the Bhutanese preferred an
alliance with Britain. On 8 January 1910, they signed a treaty that made the
territory a British protectorate, accepting a doubling of the annual payment
and an assurance that Great Britain would “exercise no interference in the
internal administration of Bhutan” in return for an understanding that the
Bhutanese government would “be guided by the advice of the British govern-
ment in regard to its external relations.” The arrangement remained in place
until 15 August 1947, when Britain withdrew from the Indian subcontinent.
Bhutan was given the option of becoming part of the new Indian state or of
maintaining its independence, with India assuming the role of protector. It
opted for the latter, an arrangement formalized on 8 August 1949, when India
increased the annual payment to 500,000 rupees and returned some of the
land ceded in 1865. At the time, India had relatively cordial relationships
with communist China; had the political climate been chillier, as it was in the
early 1960s, India might well have been less willing to let the Bhutanese go
their own way.
See also INDIA OFFICE.

BIGHT OF BENIN. Great Britain established a protectorate over coastal

areas of the Bight of Benin, in West Africa, on 1 February 1852, placing
administration in the hands of a consul who also acted as the British repre-
sentative in the Bight of Biafra protectorate, which lay to the east. The two
areas were merged as a single unit—the protectorate of the Bights of Biafra
and Benin—on 6 August 1861 and, on 16 July 1884, were further extended
through the addition of Aboh, Bonny, Brass, Old Calabar (with the exception
of the colony of Lagos), and Opobo to form a new territory that was named
Oil Rivers Protectorate on 5 June the following year (see SOUTHERN NI-
 BIGHT OF BIAFRA • 71
GERIA). In part, British interest in the region reflected a desire to eliminate
the slave trade, but the principal focus was the commerce in palm oil and
rubber, both of which could be used by Europe’s manufacturing industries.
However, by no means all of the communities in the region were willing to
submit weakly to imperialist might. In particular, the Edo people of the
kingdom of Benin resisted pressures to accept protectorate status until 1892,
when British officials asked Oba (or King) Ovonramwen to approve a docu-
ment that would commit him to end practices of human sacrifice and slavery
and to “refrain from entering into any correspondence, Agreement or Treaty
with any foreign nation or power except with the knowledge of Her Britannic
Majesty’s Government.” Some writers claim that the monarch signed the
papers, believing that he could no longer resist European incursion. Others
have argued that he would never have handed over his kingdom without
resistance. Subsequently, Ovonramwen barred all British officals and traders
from entering his territory so, early in 1897, James Phillips, the acting con-
sul-general in the region, led a delegation to Benin (despite being asked by
the Edo to delay his visit until after a program of ritual celebrations from
which foreigners were barred). Some sources allege that the group was intent
on discussing trade, others that it was an armed party determined to over-
throw the ruler, but there is no dispute that, on 4 January, it was ambushed
and all but two of the nine white members killed, including Phillips. On 9
February, Britain launched a punitive invasion with 1,200 men under the
command of Rear-Admiral Harry Rawson. Benin was looted, homes were
razed, artworks were taken to London (where they were auctioned to pay for
the expedition), and Benin was added to the Niger Coast Protectorate, which
had been formed on 13 May 1893 through a northward extension of the Oil
Rivers Protectorate.
See also FROBISHER, MARTIN (c1535–1594).

BIGHT OF BIAFRA. On 30 June 1849, the British government established

a protectorate over the Bight of Biafra in West Africa, appointing a consul
whose primary task was to protect the commercial interests, and the safety,
of British subjects trading in the palm oil that was the region’s principal
export. On 6 August 1861, the territory was merged with the Bight of Benin
protectorate, which lay to the west, to form the protectorate of the Bights of
Biafra and Benin. Consular responsibilities for that unit were extended, on 16
July 1884, to cover Aboh, Bonny, Brass, Old Calabar (with the exception of
the colony of Lagos), and Opobo, then, on 5 June the following year, the
whole area was declared the Oil Rivers Protectorate as Great Britain com-
peted with France and Germany for commercial and political influence in the
region (see SOUTHERN NIGERIA).
72 • BIRNIE ISLAND
BIRNIE ISLAND. Birnie, the smallest of eight atolls in the Phoenix Is-
lands group, lies in the central Pacific Ocean some 250 miles from the
equator at latitude 3° 35´ South and longitude 171° 31´ West, covering a land
area of less than 0.1 square miles. Early reports of European visitors are
contradictory, but it is probable that the first sighting was made in 1823 by
the crew of the Sydney or Sydney Packet, whose captain—a Mr. Emmett,
Emment, or Emmert—named it after a senior member of London-based Al-
exander Birnie and Company, the owners of the vessel (see SYDNEY IS-
LAND). Birnie was claimed by the United States under the terms of the
Guano Islands Act, which was passed by Congress in 1856 and allowed
American citizens to take possession of any islands, anywhere in the world,
that had guano deposits provided that those islands were uninhabited and not
claimed by any other government. However, the resources, a potential source
of phosphate for the fertilizer industry, were never exploited so on 10 July
1889 Great Britain declared sovereignty over the area, anticipating that it
could be used during the construction of a trans-Pacific telegraph cable (see
ALL RED LINE). Ten years later, the island was leased to John T. Arun-
del’s Pacific Islands Company, which intended to develop coconut planta-
tions, but although the license was later transferred to the Samoan Shipping
and Trading Company and then to Burns Philp (South Sea) & Company no
development was undertaken. On 18 March 1937, Birnie was incorporated
within the crown colony of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands and on 12 July
1979 became part of the new Republic of Kiribati when the Gilberts won
independence. The dormant American claim to the area was renounced in the
Treaty of Tarawa, signed by representatives of Kiribati and the U.S.A. on 20
September the same year. Still uninhabited, the atoll now forms part of the
Phoenix Islands Protected Area, the largest marine wildlife sanctuary in the
Pacific.

BLACK HOLE OF CALCUTTA. In 1756, anticipating an attack by

French forces, the East India Company fortified Calcutta, the headquarters
of the Bengal Presidency, by building Fort William, naming it in honor of
King William III of England and II of Scotland. The local ruler—Siraj-ud-
Daula, nawab of Bengal—perceived the structure as a threat so on 20 June he
attacked and overran the garrison. According to John Zephania Holwell, a
member of the company’s medical staff, 146 prisoners were confined over-
night in a guard room measuring only 18 feet by 14 feet in stifling heat and
with no water. His report that only 23 people were still alive the next morn-
ing was not contradicted by survivors, leading contemporaries to depict the
incident as an example of British heroism in the face of the nawab’s cruelty.
However, later writers have questioned the authenticity of the account, sug-
 BOER WARS (1880–1881 AND 1899–1902) • 73
gesting that the number of people incarcerated may have been many fewer
than Holwell suggested and that he may even have fabricated the story in
order to stoke anti-Indian sentiment.

BLACKBIRDING. Prior to the introduction of mechanization, cotton and

sugar cultivation were heavily dependent on cheap labor. When slavery was
abolished throughout the British Empire in 1834 (see SLAVERY ABOLI-
TION ACT (1833)), plantation owners had to find a new workforce, and
from the 1860s those on Fiji and in Queensland turned to “blackbirding,”
employing men from the New Hebrides, Savage Island (now Niue), and
other western Pacific Ocean islands who were kidnapped or tricked into
service as indentured laborers and (although paid a wage) lived in conditions
little better than those of slaves. Scholars vary in their estimates of the num-
ber of individuals blackbirded but as many as 60,000 may have been trans-
ported to Queensland alone. The British government attempted to limit the
practice from the 1870s, appointing agents to travel on recruiting vessels
heading for the islands, ordering Royal Navy warships to board the vessels
and free workers who had been coerced, and passing legislation designed to
protect the islanders. Those efforts did reduce the exploitation, but abuses
continued in Queensland until 1901, when the Australian parliament ap-
proved the Pacific Island Labourers Act, which provided for the deportation
of all immigrant workers in the colony from 1906. Recruitment for Fiji
persisted until the outbreak of World War I in 1914. The origin of the term
“blackbirding” is unclear but the word may derive from slang references to
the islanders as “blackbirds.”
See also BRITISH SOLOMON ISLANDS.

BOER WARS (1880–1881 AND 1899–1902). For much of the 19th centu-
ry, British dominance in southern Africa was challenged by the Boers, a
farming people, also known as Afrikaners, who were descended from work-
ers at the supply base established by the Dutch East India Company at the
Cape of Good Hope in 1652. Great Britain’s interest in the region was
stimulated initially by the strategic imperative of controlling maritime routes
round the Cape to colonial possessions in India but was fueled from 1867 by
the discovery of diamond deposits in the area and then, from 1884, by the
competition between European powers for influence on the continent (see
SCRAMBLE FOR AFRICA). In 1852, however, the Boers had created the
South African Republic in an area known to the British as the Transvaal
and, two years later, had formed a government for the Orange Free State (see
ORANGE RIVER COLONY; ORANGE RIVER SOVEREIGNTY).
74 • BOER WARS (1880–1881 AND 1899–1902)
On 12 April 1877, Britain annexed the Transvaal but the action was much
resented by the territory’s citizens, leading to a declaration of independence
by the Boers on 16 December 1880 and thus to war. The conflict (usually
known as the First Boer War or the First Anglo-Boer War) actually
amounted to a series of skirmishes rather than to set-piece battles between
trained armies, but, even so, British losses significantly exceeded Boer casu-
alties, partly because of poor leadership by Major General Sir George Pome-
roy Colley, the military commander, but also because the Afrikaners were
much more skilled at guerilla warfare. Eventually, Prime Minister William
Gladstone ordered an end to the hostilities, realizing that victory would
require a greater commitment of troops and financial resources than his
government could afford. The two sides negotiated a peace agreement on 23
March 1881, then on 3 August, under the terms of the Pretoria Convention,
British diplomats conceded Afrikaner self-government in the Transvaal; in
return, the Boers agreed to recognize the nominal sovereignty of Queen
Victoria and undertook not to enter into treaty arrangements with any coun-
try other than the Orange Free State.
The calm did not last for long. In 1886, the discovery of gold in the
Transvaal’s Witwatersrand hills brought an influx of fortune-seeking
foreigners, known as uitlanders. The Transvaal government was unwilling to
give these men voting rights because many came from Britain and could
have contested Boer control as their numbers rose. The British government,
keen to form a federation of territories under British control in southern
Africa (and thus command the wealth of the gold fields), put pressure on the
Afrikaners to concede uitlander demands and reinforced its military garrisons
close to the Transvaal’s borders. On 9 October 1899, the Boers demanded
that the troops withdraw and two days later, when that demand was ignored,
declared war. In the first months of the conflict (sometimes known as the
Second Boer War and sometimes as the Anglo-Boer War or the South
African War) the Afrikaners recorded a series of successes, advancing into
Cape Colony and Natal, besieging the towns of Kimberley, Ladysmith,
and Mafeking, and winning a series of battles in quick succession at Storm-
berg (10 December), Magersfontein (11 December), and Colenso (15 De-
cember). However, with the arrival of additional troops the British forces,
under the command of Frederick Roberts, Earl Roberts, were able to take the
offensive, raising the sieges and then, in June 1900, occupying Pretoria, the
Transvaal capital. The Boers responded by reverting to guerilla warfare,
attacking communication links and equipment depots as well as soldiers, but
Herbert Kitchener, Lord Kitchener, who took command of the campaign in
November 1900, adopted a scorched earth policy, destroying farms and con-
fining noncombatants in concentration camps. That brutal approach proved
controversial as disease spread through the unsanitary settlements, killing an
estimated 26,000 women and children, but it forced the Boers into submis-
 BOMBAY PRESIDENCY • 75
sion. On 31 May 1902, the Afrikaners formally surrendered, signing the
Treaty of Vereeniging, which established British supremacy in the area and
paved the way for the formation of the Union of South Africa in 1910.
See also BECHUANALAND; CHAMBERLAIN, JOSEPH (1836–1914);
JAMESON RAID (1895–1896); LLOYD GEORGE, DAVID (1863–1945);
SAVAGE ISLAND; SWAZILAND.

BOMBAY PRESIDENCY. The arrangements for the wedding of King

Charles II to Catherine of Braganza, daughter of King John IV of Portugal,
on 21 May 1662, included an agreement that rights to the seven islands that
composed Bombay (on the western coast of India) and to the port of Tangi-
er (on the northern coast of Africa) would form part of the bride’s dowry.
Charles, much more interested in his African than in his Asian acquisition,
transferred authority over Bombay to the East India Company (EIC) in
1668, charging a rent of £10.00 a year (to be paid in gold), and the EIC
capitalized on the defensible site, the location on the Arabian Sea, and the
natural harbor to make the province (or “presidency”) one of the major
centers of commerce and political power on the subcontinent. The process
began under the governorship of Gerald Aungier, who arrived in 1672 and
set about establishing an infrastructure that would make Bombay “the city
which by God’s assistance is intended to be built.” In particular, he author-
ized the construction of stronger fortifications, devised incentives that would
attract skilled migrants from other areas of India and encourage them to set
up businesses, drained marshlands, founded a hospital and a mint, inaugurat-
ed a house-building program in order to provide accommodation for new
citizens, introduced a legal system that treated English residents and Indians
as equals, and reorganized the system of land tenure. The cost of those
ventures raised concerns among the firm’s directors, who treated him very
shabbily but eventually, in 1687, moved their headquarters to the port from
Surat, where they had been based since 1618.
By the mid-18th century, Bombay was an important trading center and that
commerce was boosted after 1813, when the government ended the EIC’s
trade monpolies (except those involving tea and business with China) and
the port became available to other merchants. The defeat of the Maratha
Empire in 1818 (see MARATHA WARS (1775–1782, 1803–1805, AND
1817–1818)) facilitated the development of transport links to the mainland
and a series of land reclamation works, begun in 1782, merged the islands
into a single landmass in 1845. India’s first railroad linked the town to
Thane, 21 miles away, in 1853 then, from 1861–1865, while civil war in
North America deprived industrial Europe of supplies of cotton, Bombay
became the chief source of the commodity. The opening of the Suez Canal in
76 • BONAIRE
1869 brought further growth, shifting the emphasis of India’s export and
import trade from the east coast of the subcontinent to the west and making
Bombay the principal maritime gateway to the colony.
As the settlement’s commercial power expanded, it became (with Calcut-
ta—see BENGAL PRESIDENCY—and Madras) one of the major centers
of the East India Company’s political influence, extending its territory to
include much of central and western India (including all of present-day Guju-
rat, as well as northwestern Karnataka and the western two-thirds of Maha-
rashtra), Aden, and Sindh (now part of Pakistan). Under the EIC, it was
subdivided into four “commissionerships” and 26 districts, with Bombay city
as the administrative capital, but after 1858, when the British government
took control of the Company’s properties and assumed direct responsibility
for managing the lands it had controlled, executive duties were performed by
a governor and two other officials, all of whom were appointed by the crown.
Laws were shaped by a legislative council, and that emphasis on legal and
other managerial services attracted many articulate, educated Indians to the
region, providing a receptive audience for activists advocating independence.
The Indian National Congress, formed in Bombay in 1885, argued for greater
Indian involvement in decision making, and in 1908 the imprisonment of Bal
Gangadhar Tilak, who had advocated a boycott of British goods and had
supported violence as a means of achieving self-rule, caused widespread
protest in the city. Also, at a park in Bombay on 8 August 1942, “Mahatma”
Gandhi called for passive resistance to British rule, and in February 1946
sailors of the Royal Indian Navy in Bombay refused to carry out their duties,
sparking a revolt that spread to ships and shore establishments in other ports.
In 1950, three years after the nationalists had achieved their aim and India
had become self-governing, the area was reorganized into the State of Bom-
bay. Then, in 1960, it was divided into the State of Gujurat and the State of
Maharashtra, with Bombay (now known as Mumbai) as the capital of the
latter.
See also INDIA ACT (1784); MADRAS PRESIDENCY; PITT THE
YOUNGER, WILLIAM (1759–1806); REGULATING ACT (1773).

BONAIRE. The island of Bonaire, some 113 square miles in extent, lies in
the southern Caribbean Sea 20 miles east of Curaçao and 50 miles north of
the Venezuelan coast at latitude 12° 9ʹ North and longitude 68° 16ʹ West.
From 1635 until the last decade of the 18th century, it was administered by
the Dutch West India Company as a penal colony, slave market, and source
of sea salt (which was much in demand for preserving fish). In 1795, howev-
er, control of Dutch possessions passed to France, with whom Britain was at
war. British forces occupied many of the territories, taking Bonaire in 1800,
returning it in 1803 (under the terms of the Treaty of Amiens, which was
signed on 25 March 1802, temporarily ending the conflict), and retaking it in
 BOUNTY ISLANDS • 77
January 1807 after hostilities broke out again. In 1810, Britain leased the
whole area to Joseph Foulkes, who made his fortune by cutting down trees
and selling the timber but, in the process, left the land vulnerable to soil
erosion. The island was returned to Holland on 27 May 1815 in accordance
with the provisions of the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 13 August 1814.

BONIN ISLANDS. The Bonin group consists of about 30 islands of volcan-

ic origin and with a total land area of some 28 square miles, located in the
central Pacific Ocean 600 miles southeast of the Japanese coast at latitude
26° 59´ North and longitude 142° 13´ East. They were known to European
mariners from the mid-16th century and claimed for Britain by Captain
Frederick Beechey of the HMS Blossom on 9 June 1827. The earliest attempt
at settlement was made by Nathaniel Savory, a native of Massachusetts,
who arrived on 26 June 1830 with around 30 companions (including 25
Hawaiian Islanders) and the support of Richard Charlton, the British consul
on Hawaii (then known as the Sandwich Islands). The islands’ population
was augmented by the arrival of another small group of settlers aboard the
whaler Howard in 1846 (one of that number, a lady named Hypa, allegedly
lived to an age of around 112, dying in 1897) and, in 1853, attracted the
attention of Commodore Matthew Perry of the United States Navy; noting
that “The islands were visited by Captain Beechey in 1827, and, with the
proverbial modesty and justice of English surveyors, named by him, as if
they had been then first observed” but considering that “The English have
not a particle of claim to priority of discovery” and that “the inhabitants
practically disown the paternity of the English sovereign,” Perry ordered
Commander Kelly of the U.S.S. Plymouth to take possession of the most
southerly of the Bonin Islands in the name of the U.S.A., a task performed on
30 October that year. Japan made an abortive attempt to establish a settle-
ment in 1861 then, despite the failure, sent a further delegation to lay claim to
the whole territory on 24 November 1875. British diplomats made no fuss
over the annexation, probably because the formerly secretive Japanese state
was becoming increasingly open to trade so maintenance of good relations
was a political priority.

BOUNTY ISLANDS. On 19 September 1788, while on a voyage to collect

breadfruit from Tahiti, Captain William Bligh sighted a group of about 20
uninhabited islands in the southern Pacific Ocean at latitude 47° 45´ South
and longitude 179° 3´ East, some 420 miles east-southeast of New Zealand,
and named them after his ship, HMS Bounty. (Seven months later, on 28
April 1789, several of Bligh’s crew mutinied, for reasons still not fully
understood, and cast him adrift on a small boat with 18 companions.) In the
early years of the 19th century, the islands’ seal colonies were exploited for
78 • BOURBON
their fur, but by the 1830s only a handful of survivors remained and the
sealers had moved on. Captain George Palmer of HMS Rosario claimed the
group for Great Britain on 9 July 1870, describing them as “Rocky Islets,
perfectly barren, destitute of any covering, and exposed on every side to the
fury of the sea.” The Bounty Islands were attached, administratively, to New
Zealand (then a crown colony) and now form part of the New Zealand
Subantarctic Islands World Heritage Site, designated by the United Nations
Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 1988. The
seas around the islands were declared a marine reserve by the government of
New Zealand in 2014.

BOURBON. Victory over the combined French and Spanish fleets at the
Battle of Trafalgar on 21 October 1805 confirmed the Royal Navy’s com-
mand of the high seas, but, even so, by sailing from harbors on the Île
Bonaparte (now Réunion), in the southwestern Indian Ocean some 420 miles
east of Madgascar at latitude 21° 6ʹ South and longitude 55° 31ʹ East, the
French remained able to harass merchant vessels that plied routes between
British ports and India round the Cape of Good Hope. From 21–28 Septem-
ber 1809, Commodore Josias Rowley and Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Keating
led retaliatory raids on the west coast of Bonaparte, capturing the frigate
Caroline and other ships in the anchorage at Saint-Paul. The following year,
they returned with a stronger force, landing on 7 July and, on the 9th, accept-
ing the surrender of the French garrison at Saint Denis (the island’s capital).
The new colonial overlords referred to the territory as “Bourbon,” the name
initially given to it, in honor of the royal house, when it was claimed by the
French in 1649 but discarded in favor of “Réunion” in 1793 (during the
French Revolution) and then “Île Bonaparte” (after Emperor Napoleon Bona-
parte) in 1801. Keating and Rowley utilized the island’s harbors as bases for
warships that could be sent to attack settlements on the Îsle de France (now
Mauritius), another French stronghold, located 110 miles to the northeast.
Also, Bourbon’s first governor—Robert Townsend Farquhar (who later
moved to a similar post on Mauritius after that island surrendered on 3
December 1810)—promoted the cultivation of sugarcane because it was the
only financially viable crop that could withstand the ravages of the tropical
cyclones that hit the island from November until April. The period of British
sovereignty was brief because Bourbon returned to French control in April
1815 under agreements made at the Congress of Vienna, which was con-
vened following the defeat of Napoleonic France the previous May. Howev-
er, the economic consequences of the occupation were more long-lasting
because sugar rapidly ousted coffee and food crops as small farmers sold
their land to wealthy planters who had funds to invest in the new commodity,
which, more than two centuries later, is still the most important crop grown
on the island and the principal export.
 BRITISH ANTARCTIC TERRITORY • 79
See also RODRIGUES; SEYCHELLES.

BREDA, TREATY OF (1667). On 4 March 1665, after several months of

friction, King Charles II declared war on the Netherlands, primarily in an
effort to establish control over maritime trade routes. The following year,
Denmark and France allied with the Dutch, the former enticed by financial
gain, the latter for political ends. The Treaty of Breda, signed on 31 July
1667, formally ended a conflict in which Holland won several decisive victo-
ries, while in England an outbreak of bubonic plague (in 1665) and the loss
of much of London to fire (in 1666) added to the despair engendered by
military setbacks that included the destruction of many of the Royal Navy’s
largest warships when the Dutch raided dockyards at Chatham, on the River
Thames, in June 1667. Under the provisions of the treaty, England retained
control of New Netherland (lands on the eastern coast of North America that
had been claimed by the Dutch but were occupied by the English in 1664,
prior to the outbreak of the war, and which later became the core of the
modern U.S. states of Delaware, New Jersey, and New York, as well as
forming parts of Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island). The Car-
ibbean islands of Antigua and Montserrat were returned to England by the
French, along with the portion of Saint Kitts that they had occupied in April
1666. England restored unspecified areas on America’s Atlantic coast,
known as Acadia, to France and Saint Eustace (in the West Indies) and Run
(in the Moluccas) to the Netherlands (the latter giving the Dutch a monopoly
over world trade in nutmeg). The Dutch also retained the former English
colony of Surinam, which it had invaded the previous February. Within five
years, however, England and the Netherlands were at war again, necessitat-
ing further negotiations over colonial possessions (see WESTMINSTER,
TREATY OF (1674)).

BRITISH ANTARCTIC TERRITORY. British interest in Antarctica dates

from 1773, when Captain James Cook sailed to within 75 miles of the
mainland before being forced back by ice. John Biscoe circumnavigated the
continent in 1831–1832, James Clark Ross mapped sections of the coastline
from 1839–1843, members of an expedition led by Ernest Shackleton
reached the south magnetic pole in 1909, and Robert Falcon Scott led a
team to the South Pole in 1910 but died, with his companions, on the return
journey. The first formal assertion of sovereignty was made on 21 July 1908,
when Graham Land—an area, then believed to be an archipelago but now
known to be part of the Antarctic peninsula, that was named by Biscoe in
1832 in honor of Sir James Graham, the first lord of the admiralty—was
included within the Falkland Islands Dependencies. On 28 March 1917, the
claim was more precisely defined, in terms of latitude and longitude, to
80 • BRITISH BALUCHISTAN
ensure the inclusion of several islands and of areas of the interior stretching
to the South Pole, then on 3 March 1962, nine months after the Antarctic
Treaty had confirmed the rights of all states to conduct scientific research on
the continent south of the 60th parallel of latitude, the sector south of that
parallel was redesignated British Antarctic Territory. Argentina and Chile
also assert sovereignty over parts of the area but most states do not recognize
any claims in the region. The United Kingdom maintains two permanently
manned research stations within the Territory, one on the Brunt Ice Shelf in
the Weddell Sea and one on the Antarctic Peninsula, as well as two seasonal
stations and a museum that attracts some 10,000 visitors every year. The area
is administered as a British Overseas Territory, with revenue from local
income tax and the sale of postage stamps (most of them to overseas collec-
tors) making it financially self-sufficient. On 18 December 2012, the United
Kingdom government announced that the area lying south of the Weddell
Sea and between longitudes 20° West and 80° West would be named Queen
Elizabeth Land in honor of Queen Elizabeth II—an action that brought a
protest from Argentina and a reminder from Russia that signatories to the
Antarctic Treaty should refrain from activities that could be interpreted as
claiming territorial sovereignty over any part of the continent.
See also AUSTRALIAN ANTARCTIC TERRITORY; HEARD ISLAND
AND THE McDONALD ISLANDS; ROSS DEPENDENCY; SOUTH OR-
KNEY ISLANDS; SOUTH SANDWICH ISLANDS; SOUTH SHETLAND
ISLANDS.

BRITISH BALUCHISTAN. See BALUCHISTAN.

BRITISH BECHUANALAND. See BECHUANALAND.

BRITISH CAMEROONS. From 1840, representatives of the British

government signed a series of treaties with West African leaders on lands
near the mouth of the Cameroon River in the hope of ending the slave trade
and enhancing commerce. As a result, Great Britain dominated the region’s
import and export trade by the late 1870s. In March 1883, Edward Hyde
Hewett, the consul for the Bights of Biafra and Benin, obtained the consent
of the local rulers to make the area a protectorate, but ministers in London
dallied and on 14 July 1884 Germany announced its sovereignty over the
region—a move to which Foreign Secretary Granville Leveson-Gower, Lord
Granville, responded by asking Sir Edward Malet, the British ambassador to
the German Empire, to suggest to the Germans that they might care to go
even further and extend their authority “over the adjoining rivers in a south-
erly direction.”
 BRITISH CENTRAL AFRICA PROTECTORATE • 81
From 26 September 1914, in the early days of World War I, Belgian,
British, and French troops invaded the German protectorate, ultimately forc-
ing a surrender on 4 March 1916 and partitioning the area between them,
with Britain taking two narrow, noncontiguous strips of land adjacent to
Nigeria’s eastern border and France taking the much more extensive remain-
der of the territory. After the conflict ended, Germany renounced all claims
to sovereignty over its African colonies so on 20 July 1922 the League of
Nations gave Great Britain a mandate (see LEAGUE OF NATIONS MAN-
DATED TERRITORY) to administer the land it occupied as British Came-
roons, and on 13 December 1946, after World War II, the United Nations
(UN) confirmed that control, designating the area a United Nations Trust
Territory. For administrative purposes, officials divided the area into North-
ern and Southern Cameroons, managing both from bases in Nigeria and
regarding them as parts of that colony. However, neither region possessed
the economic potential of richer parts of the Empire so, for most of its period
of rule, Britain made only limited investment in infrastructural improve-
ments. As a result, development lagged behind that of the French sector, with
export earnings derived largely from the banana, cocoa, coffee, and rubber
plantations first introduced by German entrepreneurs.
In 1954, after petitioning the United Kingdom government, the popula-
tion of Southern Cameroons was given a considerable degree of autonomy
over the management of domestic affairs within a federal structure of govern-
ment created for the Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria, but plans to grant
full independence both to Nigeria and to the area mandated to France raised
questions about its future as well as that of Northern Cameroons. A UN
resolution in 1960 recognized the right of trust territories to self-government,
but Britain argued that British Cameroons was not an economically viable
unit so, after much discussion, the United Nations held plebiscites in both
sectors of the territory on 11 February 1961, giving residents the choice of
“independence by joining” either Nigeria or the Republic of Cameroon (the
former French-held area). Northern Cameroons, strongly Moslem, voted to
join Nigeria and was absorbed on 31 May 1961. Southern Cameroons, with a
larger Christian group, opted for Cameroon and, although the government of
Cameroon voted against the move at the United Nations, was attached to that
country, which was reconstituted as the Federal Republic of Cameroon, on 1
October. Since 1984, when Cameroon became a unitary state, political lead-
ers in former South Cameroons have campaigned for greater autonomy, and
in 2006, secessionist groups declared the area independent, as the Republic
of Ambazonia, albeit without receiving any international recognition as a
legitimate government.
See also BRITISH WEST AFRICA.

BRITISH CENTRAL AFRICA PROTECTORATE. See NYASALAND.

82 • BRITISH COLUMBIA
BRITISH COLUMBIA. In 1806, Simon Fraser of the North West Compa-
ny (a fur trading enterprise) gave the name “New Caledonia” (“New Scot-
land”) to the area of mountain and plateau in northwestern North America
that is drained by the Bulkley, Peace, and Stuart Rivers, explaining his deci-
sion with a comment that the landscape reminded him of his mother’s de-
scriptions of her home in the Scottish Highlands. The British government
granted the Hudson’s Bay Company a trading monopoly in the territory in
1821 (the year in which it merged with North West), but the climate and
terrain were unsuitable for agriculture, and little was known of exploitable
mineral reserves, so for several decades the nonnative population remained
small, consisting mainly of about 100 of the firm’s employees and their
families. That situation changed radically over just a few weeks after gold
was discovered in alluvial deposits along the Fraser River in 1858. An influx
of some 30,000 fortune-hunters, the vast majority traveling from the United
States, raised fears that the Americans could lay claim to sovereignty as well
as to gold so the British government reacted quickly, declaring the area a
crown colony on 2 August and renaming it “British Columbia” at Queen
Victoria’s request. James Douglas was made governor but had to resign
from his job as chief factor of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s operations in the
region in order to take up the post. An aloof, arrogant man, he much pre-
ferred to live on Vancouver Island, where he had been in charge of adminis-
tration since 1851, and he resisted demands that the colony should become
self-governing so—although he did much to help the gold miners and to
maintain law and order in a very boisterous environment—condemnations of
despotic rule became increasingly common and demands for a resident
governor and for political reform mounted. In 1864, Douglas retired, osten-
sibly on grounds of ill health, and was replaced by Frederick Seymour, who
had wide experience of administration in Antigua, British Honduras, and
other areas of the Empire. Seymour inherited a legacy of debt as well as of
political dissent because his predecessor had invested heavily in infrastructu-
ral projects (such as the construction of the Cariboo Wagon Road through the
Fraser River Canyon to the gold mines at Barkerville), and, despite efforts to
raise income and reduce liabilities, the financial situation continued to deteri-
orate so, in an effort to reduce the cost of administration, the British govern-
ment merged the colony with Vancouver Island, which faced similar prob-
lems, on 19 November 1866.
Just eight months later, on 1 July 1867, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia,
and the Province of Canada united as the Dominion of Canada, which was
enlarged on 15 July 1870 when the Canadian authorities bought the North-
West Territories and Rupert’s Land from the Hudson’s Bay Company. Al-
though some influential figures in British Columbia argued that the best
means of acquiring a system of “responsible government” (in which decision
makers were answerable to an electorate) and of eliminating the colony’s
 BRITISH EMPIRE AND COMMONWEALTH GAMES • 83
debt would be to join the United States of America, others preferred to
become part of the Dominion. In 1868, newspaper proprietor Amor de Cos-
mos founded a Confederation League to promote that cause. Governor Sey-
mour dragged his heels, feeling that any change in status would be disloyal to
Britain, but when he died in 1869 he was replaced by Anthony Musgrave,
who was encouraged by Colonial Secretary Granville Leveson-Gower, Earl
Granville, to facilitate negotiations with Canadian officials. As a result of the
discussions, British Columbia joined the Dominion on 20 July 1871, with
Canada agreeing to accept responsibility for the former colony’s debt and to
build a transcontinental railroad that would provide a link to markets in the
east.
See also BRITISH NORTH AMERICA; COLUMBIA DISTRICT;
MACKENZIE, ALEXANDER (1764/1765–1820); QUEEN CHARLOTTE
ISLANDS; STIKINE (OR STICKEEN) TERRITORY.

BRITISH COMMONWEALTH GAMES. See EMPIRE GAMES.

BRITISH DEPENDENT TERRITORY. The British Nationality Act,

which received royal assent on 30 October 1981 and took effect from 1
January 1983, renamed Britain’s remaining crown colonies “British Depen-
dent Territories.” Further legislation changed the title to “British Overseas
Territories” in 2002.
See also ASSOCIATED STATE; CHARTER COLONY; COLONY;
CROWN DEPENDENCY; DOMINION; LEAGUE OF NATIONS MAN-
DATED TERRITORY; PROPRIETARY COLONY; PROTECTED
STATE; PROTECTORATE; RESTORATION COLONY; ROYAL COLO-
NY; UNITED NATIONS TRUST TERRITORY.

BRITISH EAST AFRICA. The phrase “British East Africa” is sometimes

used as a synonym for the East Africa Protectorate. However, after World
War I, it was also widely employed as a general term for all of Great
Britain’s colonial interests in East Africa, including the crown colony of
Kenya, the League of Nations Mandated Territory (and later United Na-
tions Trust Territory) of Tanganyika, and the protectorates of Kenya,
Uganda, and Zanzibar.

BRITISH EAST AFRICA COMPANY. See IMPERIAL BRITISH EAST

AFRICA COMPANY.

BRITISH EMPIRE AND COMMONWEALTH GAMES. See EMPIRE

GAMES.
84 • BRITISH GUIANA
BRITISH GUIANA. Britain’s only successful colony in South America was
acquired in 1796, when a small force from Barbados occupied Dutch-held
territories near the mouths of the Berbice, Demerara, and Essequibo Rivers
at a time when Britain was at war with France and France dominated the
Netherlands. The Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1814 formally recognized British
sovereignty over the area, which was constituted as a single colony on 21
July 1831. Sugarcane cultivation, introduced by the Dutch, remained the
mainstay of the economy until the 1880s, when competition from European-
grown sugar beet forced prices down and stimulated diversification into min-
ing (particularly for bauxite), rice growing, and timber production. In the
1850s, the discovery of gold in the west of British Guiana reignited a boun-
dary dispute with Venezuela that had first flared up in 1840 and still has not
been resolved, with some modern Venezuelan maps asserting land rights
eastward as far as the Essequibo River.
After assuming control, Britain retained the Dutch administrative system,
which placed authority firmly in the hands of a governor and the sugar
producers, and constitutional reforms in 1891 and 1928 did little to satisfy
advocates of more representative decision making structures, with the 1928
changes, in particular, strengthening the governor’s position. However, labor
unrest in the colony (and also throughout the British Caribbean) during the
1930s led to reforms that culminated, in 1953, with the creation of a bicamer-
al legislature (consisting of an elected lower House of Assembly and an
upper State Council to which some members were nominated by the House
and others by the governor), the extension of the franchise to all adults, and
the introduction of a ministerial system of government similar to that of the
United Kingdom. These more democratic institutions were designed with
the best of intentions but created headaches for colonial administrators be-
cause the first elections, on 27 April 1953, were dominated by Cheddi Ja-
gan’s People’s Progressive Party (PPP), which drew much of its support
from poorer sectors of the population and immediately set about changing
the labor laws. Believing that local politicians were too strongly influenced
by the Soviet Union, the governor (Sir Arthur Savage) suspended the consti-
tution on 9 October and Britain (spurred on by the United States) sent 700
troops to the colony, ostensibly to quell disturbances. On 12 August 1957,
further elections produced another win for the PPP but by that time the
organization was deeply divided, with a left-wing group (led by Jagan) con-
sisting largely of descendants of indentured Indian workers and a more right-
wing faction composed principally of citizens of African ancestry, led by
Forbes Burnham. The following year, Burnham and his supporters defected
in order to form a People’s National Congress (PNC), partly because they
disagreed with Jagan’s decision not to join the West Indies Federation, but
attempts to oust their former colleagues when the next elections were held on
21 August 1961 were unsuccessful. Self-government over all matters except
 BRITISH HONDURAS • 85
defense and foreign affairs, introduced at the time of the 1961 elections,
failed to bring peace to a land now deeply divided on racial as well as
economic lines. For three years, the territory was wracked by civil distur-
bances as the major political organizations differed over proposals for a
complete break from the United Kingdom. Eventually, Britain imposed plans
for a unicameral legislature, using a form of proportional representation that,
administrators felt, would reduce Jagan’s chances of maintaining power.
They were right. Elections in December 1964 allowed the PNC to form a
coalition government with the smaller, and politically conservative, United
Force. Negotiations with colonial authorities began soon afterward, under
Burnham’s leadership, and led to full independence, as Guyana, on 26 May
1966. The arrangements retained Queen Elizabeth II as head of state, repre-
sented by a governor-general, but on 23 February 1970 the Guyanese
government broke the monarchical ties, declaring their country a “coopera-
tive republic.”
See also BRITISH WEST INDIES; CHAMBERLAIN, JOSEPH
(1836–1914); LONDON MISSIONARY SOCIETY; MISSIONARIES.

BRITISH HONDURAS. British interest in the climatically hostile east

coast of Central America dates from the early 17th century, stimulated in-
itially by resources of logwood (which produced a dye used in the textile
industry) then by demand for mahogany. From the early 16th century, the
region was dominated by Spain, which resisted other nations’ efforts to es-
tablish settlements and never formally conceded sovereignty, but by 1800
Britain held de facto control of much of the lowland drained by the Belize,
Hondo, and Sarstoon Rivers and was pushing westward in the search for
hardwood timber, using African slaves as laborers. That westward expansion
led to conflict with the indigenous Maya peoples, who were not subdued
until 1872.
In 1738, the settlers (known as “baymen”) appointed magistrates who
would shape a system of law and order but in 1786 the British government
intervened, sending “superintendents,” who gradually extended their author-
ity, assuming control of land grants in 1817 and choosing the magistrates
from 1832. The territory formally became a colony on 12 May 1862, ruled
by a lieutenant-governor dispatched by the Colonial Office in London and
(until 1884) subordinated to the governor of Jamaica. Nine years later, in
April 1871, it was accorded crown colony status.
As the constitutional situation changed, ethnic diversity increased. In the
early 19th century, Garifuna (or Black Carib) groups—people of mixed
African and Carib background—settled in the south of the area, after being
exiled as troublemakers from the island of Saint Vincent, and added to the
African, British, and Mayan populations. In mid-century, large numbers of
Spanish-speakers arrived from the north, fleeing strife in the Yucatán Penin-
86 • BRITISH INDIA
sula. Then, in the 1860s and 1870s, Chinese and Indian laborers were im-
ported to work on sugar plantations, several of which were established by
Confederate supporters who left the United States after the civil war of
1861–1865. Most of these immigrants eked out a precarious existence
through subsistence farming and low-paid work for the forestry interests and
for banana, cocoa, coconut, coffee, cotton, and sugarcane concerns that regu-
larly failed to produce profits. For many years, they had little influence on
government, but on 10 September 1931 a hurricane hit Belize City, the
principal town, and the devastation combined with a worldwide financial
depression to cause much unemployment. Widespread poverty led to de-
mands for independence from Britain, campaigns for a widening of the fran-
chise, and the formation of labor unions. Initially, the colonial authorities
resisted the movements, but in 1954 they conceded universal adult suffrage
and saw the staunchly nationalist People’s United Party sweep to victory at
elections held on 28 April. Internal self-government followed in 1964 but by
then Guatemala, British Honduras’s southern neighbor, was claiming that it
had inherited Spain’s claims to sovereignty over the colony’s land. At first,
other countries in the region championed Guatemala’s cause but from 1975
they gradually changed tack, increasingly championing the Honduran popu-
lation’s right to determine its own future, and in November 1980 the United
Nations passed a resolution calling on the United Kingdom to grant the
colony full autonomy. Britain complied, surrendering its last colony in the
Americas by making Belize (a name that British Honduras had adopted in
1973) independent on 21 September 1981. Agreements with local politicians
included a British commitment to defend the new state, but the military
presence was withdrawn in 1994 even though the dispute with Guatemala
still simmered.
See also BAY ISLANDS; BRITISH WEST INDIES; MOSQUITO
COAST.

BRITISH INDIA. The territories controlled by the East India Company

from 1612 (when it established a trading post in Bengal) until 1858 and by
the British crown from then until the period of decolonization following
World War II are often collectively known as British India. The size of the
area varied over time as new land was incorporated and some regions were
detached to form separate colonies, but, at its maximum extent, it covered
much of the mainland of the Indian subcontinent and southern Asia, sharing
frontiers with Persia in the west, Afghanistan and Tibet in the north, and
China, French Indo-China, and Siam in the east. For a time, Aden (on the
Arabian Peninsula) was also considered part of British India (as were Bhu-
tan, Burma, Nepal, and Sikkim), but the term did not apply to Ceylon,
which lay off the southern coast of India and was administered as a distinct
 BRITISH KAFFRARIA • 87
colony. Britain withdrew from most of its Indian possessions on 15 August
1947, when India and Pakistan became independent states, but remained in
Burma until 4 January 1948.
See also BALUCHISTAN; BENGAL PRESIDENCY; BRITISH RAJ;
FIRST BURMESE WAR (1824–1826); FIRST SIKH WAR (1845–1846);
GURKHA (OR NEPALESE) WAR (1814–1816); INDIAN PRINCELY
STATES; NICOBAR ISLANDS; SECOND SIKH WAR (1848–1849); SE-
RAMPORE.

BRITISH INDIA STEAM NAVIGATION COMPANY. See MACKIN-

NON, WILLIAM (1823–1893).

BRITISH INDIAN OCEAN TERRITORY. The Indian Ocean Territory

was created on 8 November 1965, at a time when Cold War tensions were
heightening and Western powers could see advantages in the development of
a military and communications base strategically located in the middle of the
Indian Ocean. The United Kingdom separated the Chagos archipelago from
the Mauritian crown colony, and the islands of Aldabra, Farquhar, and Des
Roches from the Seychelles, to create the new unit then forced the residents,
numbering some 2,000, to move to Mauritius and other sites. In 1971, while
the resettlement program was under way, the United States was given per-
mission to build runways and a harbor on Diego Garcia, the largest of the
islands, in a deal that earned Britain a reduction in the cost of its U.S.-
manufactured nuclear submarines armed with Polaris missiles. The Sey-
chelles won independence on 29 June 1976 and, with it, retrieved Aldabra
and the other islands that had been detached 11 years earlier. Since the
1980s, Mauritian political leaders have claimed sovereignty over the Chagos
group and Britain has given an undertaking to cede control when the defense
facilities are no longer required. Also, the former residents have sought legal
support for a return to their homeland. On 11 May 2006, they won a High
Court of Justice decision that their expulsion was unlawful, but on 22 Octo-
ber 2008 the House of Lords (England’s highest court at the time) overturned
the ruling, deciding that government had the authority to refuse repatriation.
On 1 April 2010, the United Kingdom established a 210,000-square-mile
marine reserve around the islands, which are administered as a British Over-
seas Territory.

BRITISH KAFFRARIA. Friction between white settlers and Xhosa tribes-

men was a constant feature of life on the eastern frontier of Cape Colony for
much of the 19th century. In 1835, faced with an outbreak of fighting, Sir
Benjamin D’Urban (the colony’s governor) authorized a punitive military
campaign in the area between the Kei and Keiskamma Rivers, laying the
88 • BRITISH LEEWARD ISLANDS
tribal lands waste by destroying crops, razing villages, and killing merciless-
ly. With victory secure, he annexed the territory for Great Britain, naming it
Queen Adelaide Province in honor of King William IV’s consort, but Charles
Grant, Baron Glenelg, the colonial secretary (see COLONIAL OFFICE), was
appalled by the severity of the repressive measures adopted, condemned
D’Urban’s activities as “repugnant to every just feeling,” and refused to
confirm the annexation. Then, in 1847 and with yet another war under way,
Sir Harry Smith, who had been second-in-command to D’Urban in the army
responsible for the destruction, arrived to take up the post of governor and
high commissioner in the Cape. On 23 December, he reannexed most of the
region, naming it British Kaffraria and making it a crown dependency, but
the strife continued, with another clash between settlers and the Xhosa begin-
ning in 1850 and lasting for three years.
Sir George Grey, who had earned a reputation for firm but sensitive deal-
ings with native peoples while he acted as governor of South Australia from
1841–1845 and of New Zealand from 1845–1853, adopted a different ap-
proach to the search for peace after his arrival in 1854. Arguing that assimila-
tion would solve the problem by converting Africans to European ways of
living, he built clinics and schools and encouraged settlers to establish homes
among the Xhosa. However, from 1856–1858, Nongqawuse, a teenage
prophetess, convinced the tribespeople that, if they destroyed their cattle and
crops, their ancestors would rise from the dead and force the white immi-
grants to leave. The resulting famine killed more than 40,000 people, but
Grey refused to provide food for the starving unless they left their homes and
moved to jobs in Cape Colony or agreed to work on public projects, such as
improvements to the transport infrastructure. Then, when the Xhosa left to
find employment, he encouraged German settlers to farm their land, a policy
that introduced an agricultural system of white landowners and paid black
workers. On 7 March 1860, the Colonial Office made British Kaffraria a
separate crown colony, but it was never economically viable and on 17 April
1866 the British government insisted on its assimilation by Cape Colony
despite vehement protest by the members of the Cape legislature.

BRITISH LEEWARD ISLANDS. See LEEWARD ISLANDS.

BRITISH MALAYA. “British Malaya” is a collective term that includes all

of the areas under British influence on the Malay Peninsula. Intervention
began with the acquisition of Penang by the East India Company in 1786
and at its peak, before the initial moves toward decolonization in the late
1940s, included the Federated Malay States (Negeri Sembilan, Pahang,
Perak, and Selangor), the Straits Settlements (Malacca, Penang, and Sin-
gapore), and the Unfederated Malay States (Johore, Kedah, Kelantan,
 BRITISH NORTH BORNEO • 89
Perlis, and Terengganu). These colonies were of great economic impor-
tance to Britain during the 19th and early 20th centuries, producing tin and
rubber, which were much in demand during Europe’s industrial revolution.
However, after World War II demands for self-government increased and
British governments found that the cost of maintaining an Empire was too
much for a country whose economy had been devastated by six years of
conflict. Most of the possessions were united as the Federation of Malaya in
1948 and achieved independence in 1957, with the island of Singapore fol-
lowing in 1963.

BRITISH NEW GUINEA. See PAPUA NEW GUINEA.

BRITISH NORTH AMERICA. The term “British North America” was

originally applied to those areas of North America that were under the con-
trol of Great Britain for all or part of the period from 1783 (when the
thirteen colonies won independence as the United States of America) until
1867 (when New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and the Province of Canada
formed the Dominion of Canada). In addition to the North-West Territo-
ries and Rupert’s Land (which the Hudson’s Bay Company and its compet-
itors exploited for furs), these included British Columbia, Newfoundland,
Nova Scotia (from which Cape Breton Island and New Brunswick were
detached as separate colonies in 1794), the Province of Canada (created by
the merger of Lower Canada and Upper Canada in 1841), Quebec (di-
vided into Lower Canada and Upper Canada in 1791), St. John’s Island
(renamed Prince Edward Island in 1799), and Vancouver Island. Howev-
er, many modern writers use the phrase with reference to all former British
possessions in North America, including the areas that now form part of the
United States.
See also AMERICAN REVOLUTION; AMERICAN REVOLUTION-
ARY WAR (1775–1783); ANGLO-AMERICAN CONVENTION OF 1818;
ANGLO-AMERICAN WAR OF 1812 (1812–1815); COLUMBIA DIS-
TRICT; NORTHWEST PASSAGE; RED RIVER COLONY; UNITED EM-
PIRE LOYALIST.

BRITISH NORTH BORNEO. From 1888 until 1946, the lands in the
northeast of the island of Borneo were a British protectorate. In 1875, Baron
Von Overbeck (the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s consul in Hong Kong)
bought the rights to the area from American interests. Five years later, how-
ever, he withdrew from the arrangement, leaving control in the hands of his
London-based financial backers, brothers Alfred and Edward Dent, who, in
1881, formed the British North Borneo Chartered Company to administer the
territory. High overheads and weak management meant that the business was
90 • BRITISH OVERSEAS TERRITORY
never very prosperous, but it did create basic economic and social infrastruc-
tures, abolishing slavery, helping to establish rubber and tobacco plantations,
promoting the timber industry, and providing education and health services
for the local population. North Borneo was made a protectorate on 12 May
1888 but was run by the Company until January 1942, when Japanese troops
invaded. Civil government was restored in 1945, at the end of World War II,
but the North Borneo Chartered Company lacked the resources needed to
rebuild the devastated economy so sold its interests to the British govern-
ment, who combined the area with Labuan to form a crown colony on 15
July 1946. The area became self-governing on 31 August 1963 and just two
weeks later, on 16 September and renamed Sabah, joined the Federation of
Malaya, Sarawak, and Singapore to create the sovereign state of Malaysia.
See also BRUNEI.

BRITISH OVERSEAS TERRITORY. On 26 February 2002, Queen Eliza-

beth II gave royal assent to the British Overseas Territories Act, which re-
classified the 14 British Dependent Territories as British Overseas Territo-
ries. The areas in the group—Anguilla; Bermuda; British Antarctic Terri-
tory; British Indian Ocean Territory; the Virgin Islands; the Cayman
Islands; the Falkland Islands; Gibraltar; Montserrat; the Pitcairn Is-
lands; Saint Helena, Ascension, and Tristan da Cunha; South Georgia
and the South Sandwich Islands; the Sovereign Base Areas on Cyprus
(Akrotiri and Dhekélia); and the Turks and Caicos Islands—include com-
munities that have indicated a desire to retain existing relationships with the
United Kingdom, parts of the world that have no permanent population and
are used for defense purposes or for scientific research, and tiny units that
would have difficulty surviving economically if they were independent.
See also ASSOCIATED STATE; BRITISH DEPENDENT TERRITORY;
CHARTER COLONY; COLONY; CROWN COLONY; CROWN DEPEN-
DENCY; DOMINION; LEAGUE OF NATIONS MANDATED TERRITO-
RY; PROPRIETARY COLONY; PROTECTED STATE; PROTECTO-
RATE; ROYAL COLONY; UNITED NATIONS TRUST TERRITORY.

BRITISH RAJ. The term raj (an anglicization of a Hindi word meaning
“rule”) is often applied as a label for the period of British jurisdiction in
South Asia from 1858 (when responsibility for territories governed by the
East India Company passed to the crown) until 1947 (when India and
Pakistan became independent states) but is also sometimes used to circum-
scribe the areas administered. Although many writers employ the word solely
with reference to the Indian subcontinent, a number include other British-
controlled territories in the region (Aden, Burma, and Singapore, for exam-
ple) and some restrict it to areas of India over which Britain had direct
 BRITISH SOLOMON ISLANDS • 91
control, this excluding the Indian princely states, which numbered well
over 500 and were nominally independent but whose rulers were answerable
to colonial administrators. The India Office, created in 1858, was respon-
sible for the shaping of government policies throughout the raj; its political
head was the secretary of state for India, who had a seat in the cabinet but
rarely had any direct experience of the lands over which he exercised his
authority; Edwin Montagu, in 1917, was the first to visit. Implementation of
policy—normally achieved through a combination of cooperation with local
people and military force—was the responsibility of the viceroy and govern-
or-general, appointed by the monarch but answerable to the secretary of
state.
See also KIPLING, JOSEPH RUDYARD (1865–1936).

BRITISH SOLOMON ISLANDS. The coral and volcanic islands in the

Solomon group form an archipelago in the southwestern Pacific Ocean about
1,200 miles northeast of Australia at latitude 9° 28´ South and longitude
159° 49´ East. The first European visitors were Spaniards, who landed in the
late 16th century, but British interest increased from 1788 because the settle-
ment of Sydney, New South Wales, led to a growth in shipping traffic in
nearby waters. By the second half of the 19th century, owners of sugar
plantations in Fiji, Queensland, and other locations needed labor to tend
their crops, dispatching recruiters (known as “blackbirders”) to find work-
ers. The recruitment was often achieved by brutal means that sparked violent
resistance from the islanders so on 15 March 1893, ostensibly in an effort to
impose peace (but in large part to forestall the threat of annexation by the
French), Britain declared the southern Solomons a protectorate. Other is-
lands were added in 1898, then on 14 November 1899 Germany ceded most
of the northern territories in return for British recognition of German claims
to Western Samoa. During World War II, Japan invaded the Solomon Is-
lands, which became the scene of some of the bloodiest fighting of the
conflict, with 1,600 Americans and 24,000 Japanese dying in 1942–1943 at
the Battle of Guadalcanal alone. However, the association with U.S. troops
broadened the islanders’ horizons, making them less accepting of their colo-
nial status and encouraging the development of pro-independence organiza-
tions. From 1944 until 1951, the Maasina Ruru (or “Marching Rule”) move-
ment conducted a campaign of civil disobedience that resulted in the impris-
onment of many of its leaders but proved to be the first stage of a process that
led to self-government, initially (from 1953) through the establishment of
advisory councils then (in 1960) through the creation of executive and legis-
lative councils with an elected minority and (from 2 January 1976) the as-
sumption of local control over domestic affairs. Complete independence (as
Solomon Islands) followed on 7 July 1978.
92 • BRITISH SOMALILAND
See also BRITISH WESTERN PACIFIC TERRITORIES; CHAMBER-
LAIN, JOSEPH (1836–1914); COMMONWEALTH REALM; GARDNER
ISLAND; HULL ISLAND; SYDNEY ISLAND.

BRITISH SOMALILAND. When Britain created a naval base at Aden in

1839, it provided food for the workforce and for sailors by importing live-
stock that had been reared by herdsmen across the Gulf of Aden on the
Somali coast. Other powers, too, were establishing a presence in the Somali
Peninsula, with France building a coaling station at Obock in 1862, Italy
following suit at Assab in 1869, and Egypt occupying Berbera and Bulhar in
1870. The Egyptians remained only until 1885, when they were forced out by
a rebellion in the Sudan, over which they claimed sovereignty. Britain, with-
out great enthusiasm but unwilling to allow competing nations to expand into
areas that Egypt had vacated, then persuaded Somali clan leaders to approve
treaties that bound them “never to cede, sell, mortgage, or otherwise give
[their lands] for occupation” except to the colonial government. The area was
declared a protectorate on 20 July 1887—a political move that, as well as
ensuring an uninterrupted supply of meat to Aden, gave Great Britain con-
trol over strategically important ports that commanded the maritime supply
routes to India through the Suez Canal and Red Sea.
Negotiators concluded boundary agreements with Italy (which occupied
the territory to the south) in 1884, with Emperor Menelik II’s increasingly
powerful Abyssinia (to the west) in 1897, and with France (in the area of
present-day Djibouti) in 1888, but a revolt by Sheikh Mohammed Abdullah
Hussan (nicknamed “the mad mullah” by British officials) proved much less
amenable to diplomatic solution. From 1899, the sheikh and his followers
(known as “dervishes”) mounted a campaign against the colonial powers,
using guerrilla tactics to combat the European and Ethiopian forces and
eventually compelling British troops (who had difficulty finding food and
water in the arid landscape) to withdraw to the coast in 1910. European might
prevailed only in 1920, when air attacks, led by the Royal Air Force (formed
just two years earlier), supported the Army’s more traditional ground opera-
tions; most of Hussan’s men had never seen an aircraft and, petrified by the
bombing, ran away.
After the defeat of the dervishes, Britain reasserted its administrative hold
on Somaliland until August 1940, when Italian troops invaded (eight weeks
after their country had entered World War II in alliance with Nazi Germany)
and British personnel were evacuated by sea. The occupation lasted for only
seven months but the event seriously dented Britain’s prestige in Somali eyes
even though the process of reacquiring the territory also involved the libera-
tion of Italian-controlled Abyssinia, a seaborne invasion by Indian regiments,
and a successful advance through Italian Somaliland by black soldiers from
British colonies in Africa. When the war ended, Ernest Bevin, the secretary
 BRITISH SOUTH AFRICA COMPANY • 93
of state for foreign affairs, advocated the creation of a single Somali nation
by uniting the areas of Somaliland held by the British with Djibouti (held by
the French), the Ogaden (claimed by Abyssinia), and northern sectors of
Kenya (a British colony). However, after the United Nations (UN) decided,
in 1948, to place former Italian Somaliland under Italian trusteeship, Great
Britain bowed to U.S. pressure and accepted Abyssinian sovereignty over the
Ogaden, despite strong Somali objections that they had neither cultural nor
economic affiliations to the Abyssinian people. Italy returned to its former
protectorate in 1950 and, acting on UN instructions to prepare the area for
independence, introduced a program of agricultural development, expansion
of educational facilities, and infrastructural improvement. British Somaliland
received much less investment so the economy stagnated and few Somalis
had opportunities to find administrative jobs, but, even so, there was little
grassroots demand for representative government until the mid-1950s, when
local leaders—seeing the cession of Ogaden territory in 1954 as a betrayal—
organized politically and pressed for unification of the British and Italian
zones. British military advisers argued that control of Somaliland was essen-
tial to defense interests, but politicians were convinced that there would be
no way of retaining the protectorate after the Italian sector became indepen-
dent so from 1957, when a Legislative Council was appointed, discussions
centered on arrangements for self-government. Somaliland became a sove-
reign state on 26 June 1960 then, five days later, united with Italian Somali-
land to form the Somali Republic. That union did not fulfill the hopes of its
founders; in 1991 the former British area broke away to form an independent
Somaliland state and, despite receiving no international recognition, formed
a government that proved to be much more stable than the administration in
the country it had left.

BRITISH SOUTH AFRICA COMPANY. The British South Africa Com-

pany (BSAC) was incorporated by royal charter in 1889, primarily because
industrialist Cecil Rhodes wanted to use it as a means of exploiting the
resources of south-central Africa and expanding British colonial interests in
the region. For the government, the plans were attractive because they pro-
vided a means of extending and strengthening economic and political influ-
ence in Africa at a time when European nations were competing for territory
on the continent. Moreover, there would be little cost to the public purse
because the work was being undertaken by a private concern. The firm was
authorized to own land, establish banks, form a police force, and create other
administrative infrastructure, but requirements to respect local customs were
ignored as mineral deposits and territory were acquired by deceit and by
force. Efforts to invade Mozambique in 1890–1891 failed and proposals that
BSAC should assume responsibility for administering Bechuanaland were
dropped in 1895 after three Bechuana chiefs traveled to London to protest.
94 • BRITISH TOGOLAND
However, invasions of Mashonaland in 1890 and Matabeleland in 1893 were
successful (see MATABELE WARS (1893–1894 AND 1896–1897)) and,
with other land gained partly by treaty and partly by armed might, allowed
BSAC to win control of the area between the Limpopo River and Lake
Tanganyika that later became the colonies of Northern Rhodesia and
Southern Rhodesia. Rhodes used tales of gold deposits to attract white
settlers then, when those stories were shown to be exaggerated, extolled the
virtues of the region for farming. In 1923, the government opted not to renew
BSAC’s charter to manage Southern Rhodesia, preferring to concede to the
settlers’ demands for “responsible self-government,” and the following year
Northern Rhodesia was given protectorate status, a move that also ended
BSAC administration. The changes did not affect the company’s commercial
interests, but when Northern Rhodesia won independence (as Zambia) in
1964 the new government took the country’s mineral rights under state con-
trol and the following year BSAC merged with two other British compa-
nies—the Central Mining & Investment Corporation Ltd. and the Consolidat-
ed Mines Selection Company Ltd.—to form Charter Consolidated Ltd.,
which disposed of its South African business to the Anglo-American Corpo-
ration of South Africa in 1979.
See also BAROTSELAND; JAMESON RAID (1895–1896); NYASA-
LAND; THOMSON, JOSEPH (1858–1895); WELENSKY, RAPHAEL
“ROY” (1907–1991).

BRITISH TOGOLAND. On 8 August 1914, two weeks after the outbreak

of World War I, British and French troops invaded the German protectorate
of Togoland, in West Africa. On 22 August, 73 members of the Royal
African Frontier Force died in a battle at a bridging point on the River Chra,
but elsewhere resistance was limited, and four days later the deputy govern-
or, Major Hans-Georg von Döring, surrendered at Kamina (an important
communications center, with a powerful radio station capable of linking
directly to Berlin). The victorious allies divided the territory between them,
with France taking the eastern two-thirds (which bordered its Dahomey colo-
ny) and Britain taking the remainder (which bordered the Gold Coast). The
partition was formalized on 27 December 1916 and received international
sanction on 20 July 1922, when the League of Nations gave both countries
mandates to manage the regions they had occupied (see LEAGUE OF NA-
TIONS MANDATED TERRITORY); Britain was permitted to base its ad-
ministration in the Gold Coast because several ethnic groups spanned the
boundary separating the territories.
The United Kingdom saw little incentive to invest in Togoland, partly
because the land lacked the mineral resources and extensive areas of planta-
tion agriculture that provided commercial attractions in other African coloni-
al possessions, partly because the area’s political future depended on deci-
 BRITISH WEST AFRICA • 95
sions of the League, not on those of the British parliament. When the League
of Nations dissolved on 20 April 1946, international responsibility for its
mandates passed to the United Nations (UN), which had formed the previous
year (see UNITED NATIONS TRUST TERRITORY). However, in the
post–World War II diplomatic climate, rights to self-determination were
more important than rights to retain colonies and, in any case, Great Britain
was unwilling to spend money on overseas possessions at a time when it
needed funds to restructure its domestic economy for peacetime conditions.
By the early 1950s, the reins of power in the Gold Coast were being trans-
ferred from white hands to black so in 1954 the United Kingdom told the UN
that it would not be able to honor its obligations as trustee in Togoland after
the Gold Coast became independent and colonial authorities withdrew. In
December 1955, the UN General Assembly agreed to organize a plebiscite,
asking the Togolese people whether they would prefer to merge with the
Gold Coast and form a new country or to seek independence as a separate
entity. The vote, held on 9 May 1956, produced a majority for integration but
the overall figure (58 percent in favor) hid considerable regional differences,
with the Ewe people of the south voting heavily for separation and the more
ethnically diverse groups in the north voting for the merger, which was
implemented on 13 December. The enlarged territory became a sovereign
state on 6 March 1957, the first European colony in sub-Saharan Africa to
win that status.
See also BRITISH WEST AFRICA.

BRITISH VIRGIN ISLANDS. See VIRGIN ISLANDS.

BRITISH WEST AFRICA. On 17 October 1821, the Gambia, Sierra Le-

one, and the areas of British mercantile dominance along the Gold Coast
(see COMPANY OF MERCHANTS TRADING TO AFRICA) were united
as the British West African Territories under an administration led by a
governor-in-chief who also acted as governor (or, from 1828–1837, lieuten-
ant-governor) of Sierra Leone. The unit was dissolved on 13 January 1850
but re-formed, with the addition of Lagos and renamed the British West
African Settlements (though under the same administrative arrangements),
on 19 February 1866 then dismembered again on 24 November 1888 (though
Lagos had been detached on 24 July 1874). More generally, all territories in
western Africa that were administered by Great Britain as colonies or pro-
tectorates, or under League of Nations mandates, were sometimes termed
“British West Africa.” Geographically, these stretched from the Gambia in
the west to British Cameroons in the east and included British Togoland,
the Gold Coast, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone. The process of colonial with-
96 • BRITISH WEST INDIES
drawal from the region began with independence for the Gold Coast on 6
March 1957 and ended when the Gambia became self-governing on 18 Feb-
ruary 1965.
See also WEST AFRICA SQUADRON.

BRITISH WEST INDIES. The term “British West Indies” encompasses all
of Britain’s possessions in the area of the Caribbean Sea, but the composition
of the group and the names of the administrative units it incorporates have
changed over time. The territories include Anguilla, Antigua, Barbuda,
Montserrat, Nevis, Saint Kitts, and the Virgin Islands (all of which were,
at times, part of the British Leeward Islands colony); Barbados, Grenada,
the Grenadines, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent, Tobago, and Trinidad (all
components of the Windward Islands colony at various dates); the Baha-
mas and Bermuda (both located in the western Atlantic Ocean rather than
the Caribbean); British Guiana (on the South American mainland but often
grouped with the Caribbean islands for administrative convenience); Domin-
ica (part of the Federal Colony of the Leeward Islands from 1871–1940 and
of the Windwards from 1940–60); Jamaica and its dependencies (British
Honduras from 1742–1884 and the Cayman Islands from 1670–1959); and
the Turks and Caicos Islands (dependencies of the Bahamas from
1799–1848 and of Jamaica from 1873–1959). During the second half of the
20th century, most of the colonies became independent states, but Anguilla,
Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, Montserrat, and the Turks and Caicos Islands
remain British Overseas Territories and sometimes are still referred to,
collectively, as the British West Indies.

BRITISH WESTERN PACIFIC TERRITORIES. On 13 August 1877,

the British government asserted sovereignty over all Pacific Ocean islands
that had not been claimed by other powers, grouping them into the British
Western Pacific Territories. Administration was in the hands of a high com-
missioner, who from 1877–1952 also held the post of governor of Fiji and,
in addition, was governor of the British Solomon Islands from 1952–1976.
The colony was disbanded on 2 January 1972 because nearly all of the
component units had achieved independence. Its composition varied over the
years, including the Union Islands (1877–1926), Fiji (1877–1952), the Cook
Islands (1893–1900), the British Solomon Islands (1893–1971), the Pitcairn
Islands (1898–1952), Savage Island (1900–1901), Tonga (1900–1952), the
New Hebrides (1906–1971), Nauru (1914–1921), the Gilbert and Ellice
Islands (1916–1971), and the Canton and Enderbury Islands
(1937–1971).

BRITISH WINDWARD ISLANDS. See WINDWARD ISLANDS.

 BRUCE OF KINNAIRD, JAMES (1730–1794) • 97
BRUCE OF KINNAIRD, JAMES (1730–1794). James Bruce claimed,
probably wrongly, that he was the first European to reach the headwaters of
the Blue Nile (which he, like many other educated mid-18th-century men,
believed was the main source of the River Nile), but he was almost certainly
the first European to trace the course of that river from its infant springs in
the Lake Tana region of Ethiopia to its confluence with the White Nile at
Khartoum, in the Sudan. The son of landowner David Bruce and his first
wife, Marion, he was born at Kinnaird House, near Stirling, on 14 December
1730, inherited his father’s estate at the age of 27, and in 1760 signed
contracts to supply coal to the Carron Company from lands on his property—
a deal that gave him the financial resources to spend much of the next 14
years traveling. Bruce had made his first forays into mainland Europe in
1757–1758 and had included a visit to northern Spain, where he had gathered
much information about the naval facilities at Ferrol. At the time, Spain was
adopting a neutral stance in the Seven Years’ War, in which Britain was
pitted against France (see FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR (1754–1763)), but
the Spanish forces were expected to enter the conflict in support of the
French. Late in 1760, Bruce devised a scheme to capture Ferrol and, through
his friend Robert Wood, the undersecretary of state at the Southern Depart-
ment (see COLONIAL OFFICE), submitted it to William Pitt the Elder,
who was directing the British war effort. The plan was never implemented
but it made Bruce’s name known in senior political circles and encouraged
George Montagu-Dunk, earl of Halifax and president of the board of trade, to
offer him the post of consul-general at Algiers. Bruce arrived in March 1763
and remained until June 1765, when he was replaced, his domineering per-
sonality and short temper having annoyed senior colleagues. Then, employ-
ing Luigi Balugani, a young Italian artist, as his secretary, he toured the
Roman remains in Algiers and Tunis (and later presented King George III
with a set of drawings that he claimed was his own work). That task com-
pleted, he moved on to Tripoli, was shipwrecked near Benghazi and had to
swim ashore, made his way to Aleppo, crossed the desert to Palmyra and
Baalbek, and, on 20 June 1768, reached Alexandria, on the Egyptian coast.
Intent, by that time, on finding the source of the Nile, he followed the river to
Aswan, went from there to Al-Qusayr (on the Red Sea), sailed to Jeddah (on
the Arabian Peninsula) then back to the African coast at Massawa (now in
Eritrea), and eventually (disguised as a Syrian doctor) reached Gondar, the
capital of Abyssinia (now Ethiopia), on 14 February 1770.
Although the territory was in the midst of a civil war, he made himself a
favorite of all parties, aided by his ability to tame a wild horse, his marks-
manship, his medical skills (which he had picked up largely from Patrick
Russel, a British doctor in Aleppo who had told him how to treat tropical
diseases), his stature (he was 6 feet 4 inches tall and had flaming red hair),
and his willingness to speak Amharic and Tigrinya (the local languages). A
98 • BRUNEI
first attempt to get to the Blue Nile headwaters at Gish failed because of the
fighting, but a second endeavor was more successful, his party reaching the
springs at Gish Abbai on 14 November. Bruce’s return to Europe was de-
layed for more than a year because of the civil war, but he eventually left
Abyssinia on 28 December 1771 (carrying numerous archaeological, botani-
cal, and zoological specimens), traced the Blue Nile to its meeting with the
White Nile, reached Cairo (suffering from guinea worm in his leg, malaria,
and swollen feet) on 15 January 1773, sailed to France (where he was fêted at
the court of King Louis XV), then went to Italy (where he met Pope Clement
XIV), and eventually arrived in Britain on 21 June 1774. There, praise for his
achievements gradually turned to scepticism as such influential figures as
writer Samuel Johnson scoffed at tales of men who ate meat cut from living
animals. Offended, Bruce retired to Kinnaird and did not publish his account
of his travels until 1790. The five volumes quickly sold out, but their veracity
was contested by other adventurers, including Henry Salt, who had visited
Abyssinia in 1805.
In many ways, Bruce was his own worst enemy. He refused to accept that
Pedro Páez, a Portuguese missionary, had almost certainly reached the source
of the Blue Nile more than 150 years before him, in 1618, and—probably so
that he would not have to share the glory of the discovery with anyone—he
wrongly claimed that Balugani had died before the visit to Gish, rather than
afterward. He passed away, still asserting the truth of his stories, on 26 April
1794, after a fall at his house, and later scholars have, to a considerable
extent, vindicated him by demonstrating that his descriptions of Abyssinia
were, in most respects, accurate. Also, Bruce’s experiences led members of
Saturday’s—a London dining club—to fund further explorations through the
formation of the African Association in 1788, and they played a role in
encouraging several other Scots (including David Livingstone, Robert
Moffat, Mungo Park, and Joseph Thomson) to contribute to the spread of
British influence in Africa.
See also BURTON, RICHARD FRANCIS (1821–1890); SPEKE, JOHN
HANNING (1827–1864).

BRUNEI. In the early years of the 16th century, the sultan of Brunei con-
trolled most of the island of Borneo, but internal strife, piracy, and wars with
European powers resulted in a gradual erosion of territory that culminated in
the loss of Sarawak to “White Rajah” James Brooke from 1841, the cession
of Labuan to Britain in 1847, and the lease (and later surrender) of land to
the British North Borneo Chartered Company in 1877. On 17 September
1888, his realm much reduced from earlier times and vulnerable to colonial
predators, Sultan Hashim Jalilul Alam Aqamaddin signed a treaty that made
Brunei a British protectorate. However, after Charles Brooke (James
Brooke’s nephew) seized Limbang (Brunei’s richest food-producing region)
 BURMA • 99
in 1890 and attempted to annex other areas five years later, Hashim decided
that Britain was not producing the promised protection and sought help from
Sultan Hamid of Turkey. The British authorities, learning of the move, in-
stalled a “resident” in Brunei in 1906, requiring the sultan to make decisions
only by acting on his advice, which extended to all matters except those
relating to the Islamic religion and local customs, but a lack of funds greatly
limited the official’s ability to further the economic development of the area.
Brunei’s fortunes changed for the better with the discovery of oil, close to the
Seria River, in 1929, and although occupation by Japanese forces from
1941–1945, during World War II, brought much hardship it also helped to
sow the seeds of a nationalism that ultimately led to independence. Oil reve-
nues financed a five-year development plan that greatly improved the protec-
torate’s infrastructure from 1953–1958 and in 1959 Britain surrendered con-
trol of internal affairs to a partially elected assembly while retaining respon-
sibility for defense, foreign affairs, and security. At the same time, the sultan
of Brunei was looking favorably on proposals to link Brunei to British North
Borneo, the Federation of Malaya, and Sarawak in a new country that
would be named Malaysia. Eventually, however, he rejected the plans, partly
because of differences over the use of oil royalties and disagreements about
the political structure of the new nation but also because a rebellion in
1962–1963 demonstrated significant resistance among the people of Brunei,
who felt that their interests would be subordinated to those of Malaya and
Singapore. Benefiting from its oil income, Brunei was one of the world’s
wealthiest states by the late 1970s and on 1 January 1984 became fully
independent, with Indonesia and Malaysia both offering assurances that they
would recognize that status, thus allaying the fears of many citizens that the
new nation would be absorbed by larger and more powerful neighbors.

BURMA. Over six decades—and three wars—in the middle years of the
19th century, Britain gradually absorbed Burma into its growing Asian Em-
pire (see FIRST BURMESE WAR (1824–1826); SECOND BURMESE
WAR (1852); THIRD BURMESE WAR (1885)). The final conflict was
followed by annexation of the last remnants of the formerly independent
kingdom on 1 January 1886 and its incorporation as a province of British
India on 26 February. Culturally, the effects of the colonial takeover were
devastating because Britain exiled King Thibaw, the Burmese monarch, and
deprived the Buddhist monks of their role in government, thus eliminating
the traditional means of exercising authority in the territory. Also, Buddhist
schools were replaced by secular institutions and by establishments founded
by Christian missions, settlements were razed if the authorities believed that
they were harboring guerilla fighters intent on harassing British troops, and
supporters of the new regime were installed as village headmen. Economic
conditions changed too, with farmers forced to convert their self-sufficient
100 • BURMA OFFICE
agricultural system to export-oriented production geared to the cultivation of
rice for markets in Europe; in order to adapt their land to meet the new
demands, many of those farmers had to borrow funds at high interest rates
and were dispossessed when they could not make the repayments.
By the early 20th century, however, educated Burmese citizens—some of
them London-trained attorneys—were beginning to make a case for change.
Initially, they believed that they could achieve their ends through negotiation,
but progress was slow and, although a legislature with elected members was
formed in 1923, dissatisfaction with colonial rule mounted, particularly as
constitutional developments in India were not immediately replicated in
Burma. A boycott of British goods, refusals to pay taxes, and student protests
were followed by more violent action that ultimately persuaded the British
government to detach Burma from India on 1 April 1937, administer it as a
separate colony (see BURMA OFFICE), and allow the Burmese to govern
their own internal affairs. Japanese troops occupied Burma from 1942, dur-
ing World War II, but the demands for independence resurfaced after they
surrendered in 1945, and in the postwar political climate, with an economy to
rebuild, an initially reluctant Labour Party government, led by Prime Minis-
ter Clement Attlee, was persuaded to listen by Sir Hubert Rance, who had
been appointed governor of the colony in August 1946. Rance initiated
discussions with the Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League (AFPFL), led by
the popular Aung San, who had cooperated with the Japanese invaders.
Those discussions led, on 27 January 1947, to an understanding between
Attlee and Aung Sun about the steps that would have to be taken before
Burma achieved self-government. The following month, Aung Sun reached
agreement on a unified Burma with the Chin, Kachin, and Shan ethnic mi-
norities (who had previously opposed Burmese control), then in April his
party won an overwhelming majority of the seats at the new Constituent
Assembly. Even Aung San’s murder, on 19 July, by supporters of his conser-
vative rival, U Saw (Galon V Saw), did not alter the political agenda. The
AFPFL leadership passed to U Nu (also known as Thakin Nu), whose views
were close kin to those of his predecessor, and Burma became an indepen-
dent republic, formally known as the Union of Burma, on 4 January 1948.
The country’s name changed to the Socialist Republic of the Union of Burma
in 1974, to the Union of Myanmar in 1989, and to the Republic of the Union
of Myanmar in 2008, reflecting changing postcolonial internal politics.
See also BENGAL PRESIDENCY; BRITISH RAJ; INDIA OFFICE;
MACKINNON, WILLIAM (1823–1893).

BURMA OFFICE. On 1 April 1937, when Burma was made a crown

colony, responsibility for the territory’s administration was transferred from
the India Office to a new Burma Office. For most of its history, the Office
was led by a secretary of state who held cabinet rank and also acted as
 BURTON, RICHARD FRANCIS (1821–1890) • 101
secretary of state for India. Also, its civil servants worked in the same
building as their India Office colleagues. However, on 15 August 1947, when
India became independent, the secretary of state was made responsible for
Burma alone. The Office was disbanded on 4 January the following year,
when Burma itself became fully self-governing.
See also COLONIAL OFFICE.

BURTON, RICHARD FRANCIS (1821–1890). Richard Burton was, with

companion John Hanning Speke, the first European to set eyes on Lake
Tanganyika, but although his anthropological writings are still much admired
by scholars, his mid-Victorian reputation was sullied by an apparent need to
shock middle-class society, by arguments with colleagues in the diplomatic
service, and by a very public dispute with Speke over the source of the White
Nile. The eldest of three children in the family of army officer Joseph Burton
and his wife, Martha, Richard was born in Torquay on 19 March 1821 but
spent much of his youth in France and Italy, where he first demonstrated a
considerable linguistic talent that, by the time of his death, he had used to
learn more than 30 languages and dialects, including tongues as different as
Aramaic, Fang (the speech of Bantu peoples in West Africa), and Latin. He
attended Oxford University from 1840–1842 but was expelled for breaking
institutional rules by attending a steeplechase and then telling the University
authorities why he thought the rules should be changed. Feeling “fit for
nothing but to be shot at for six pence a day,” the former undergraduate went
to India, joined the Bengal Infantry, added to his catalog of languages, and
studied indigenous cultures so closely that he was able to pass himself off as
a Moslem merchant in the bazaars. Emphasizing his skills of disguise and his
ability to speak like a native of Arab regions, he persuaded the Royal Geo-
graphical Society (RGS) to support a journey to the Islamic cities of Mecca
and Medina, which were barred to nonbelievers but which he visited, unde-
tected, from July–September 1853. Then, rather than return to London and
bask in congratulations, he set off on another trek, again under the auspices
of the RGS but also with the support of the Bombay Presidency of the East
India Company. This time, the initial intention was to travel down the coast
of East Africa with a party that included John Hanning Speke, but when the
group reached Aden, Burton decided to strike out on his own and gain access
to Harar, a religious and slave trading center now located in Ethiopia. That
journey, too, was successful, although he spent 10 days as the “guest” of the
local ruler in January 1855 before being allowed to leave and rejoin Speke
and his other colleagues at Berbera, in British Somaliland. However, before
the group could travel any farther it was attacked by Somali warriors and
both Burton and Speke were seriously injured, Burton suffering a spear
through his face from one cheek to the other.
102 • BURTON, RICHARD FRANCIS (1821–1890)
Undaunted, the two explorers joined forces again on 27 June 1857 when,
supported by the Foreign Office and the RGS (and with Burton on leave
granted by the East India Company), they set off from Zanzibar to seek the
great lakes, in the African interior, that were rumored to be the source of the
White Nile (the western branch of the River Nile). On 13 February the
following year, they became the first Europeans to reach Lake Tanganyika,
but as they trekked back to the coast Burton decided to rest at Tabora (where
Arab slave dealers bought and sold) in order to recover from illness and to
study the ways of life of the inhabitants. Speke, hearing rumors of another
extensive body of water to the north, decided to go exploring alone rather
than watch Burton recuperate and, on 30 July, sighted a lake that he named
Lake Victoria in honor of the British queen. When Burton returned to Lon-
don on 21 May 1859 he was taken aback to find that his colleague, who had
arrived a few days earlier, had already delivered a lecture to the RGS and
claimed that the Nile issued from Lake Victoria. The men had very different
personalities—Burton educated and socially sophisticated, Speke more rough
and ready—and Burton felt that Speke was attempting to steal the glory of
the “discovery” for himself so a bitter disagreement ensued, with Burton
refusing to accept Speke’s claim and arguing that Lake Tanganyika was as
likely a source of the river as was Lake Victoria. The argument rumbled on
until Speke’s death in 1864.
In 1860, Burton traveled to the United States, taking a stagecoach trip to
Utah and later writing a well-regarded study of Mormonism that included a
dispassionate account of the practice of polygamy, which was incensing
many mid-19th-century Americans. On 27 March 1861, after his return to
Britain, he accepted the post of British consul at Fernando Po, an island that
he described as “the very abomination of desolation,” but was transferred to
Santos, in Brazil, in 1864, then in 1869 (after much lobbying of the govern-
ment by his wife, Isabel, whom he had married in 1861), to Damascus and
finally, in 1872, to Trieste, where he died on 20 October 1890. His activities
as a diplomat were not wholly successful (his move from Damascus was
precipitated by disagreements with superiors and by animosities involving
members of local ethnic and religious groups), but he used the time to pro-
duce a series of translations and numerous anthropological and travel books.
Isabel strongly disapproved of the emphasis on sexual matters in the writings
(which included, in 1883 and in collaboration with others, a celebrated trans-
lation of the Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana from Sanskrit) so she destroyed
many of Burton’s papers after his death and wrote a biography that presented
an image of her husband, whom she adored, as a faithful, God-fearing, and
humble spouse. Scholars have presented a rather different portrait of an
atheistic, talented, scholar-explorer, who may have indulged in the sexual
 BUSTAMANTE, ALEXANDER (1884–1977) • 103
practices of the peoples with whom he lived and made valuable contributions
to the ethnography of societies in several regions of the British Empire but
who also delighted in questioning the mores of Victorian society.

BUSTAMANTE, ALEXANDER (1884–1977). With his cousin, Norman

Manley, Bustamante was instrumental in transforming Jamaica—the largest
territory in Britain’s Caribbean Empire—from colony to independent state.
The son of Irishman Robert Clarke (whom some sources record as a book-
keeper and others as a planter) and Mary, his mixed-race wife, he was born in
Blenheim, Hanover Parish, Jamaica, on 24 February 1884. Years later, he
claimed that he changed his surname in honor of a Spanish mariner who
adopted him, a tale that was probably invented in order to romanticize his
background. Bustamante left Jamaica in 1905 and traveled the world until he
was in his late thirties, returning in about 1932 to establish a money-lending
business. That trade heightened his awareness of poverty on the island, en-
couraging him to commit his charismatic personality and forceful oratory to
campaigns aimed at improving the conditions of the working classes. Very
quickly, Bustamante became a leader of protest movements that were spread-
ing throughout the region—so much so that, in 1938, when he sanctioned
strike action as a means of hastening change, Sir Arthur Richards (Jamaica’s
British governor) declared a state of emergency and held him in prison until
Manley could negotiate his release in return for an end to the disruption. In
1943, Bustamante formed the Jamaican Labour Party, which took 22 of the
32 seats in the House of Representatives when elections were held the fol-
lowing year and thus provided another platform for his views. Domestically,
his major political opponent was Manley, whose People’s National Party
won the 1955 election contest and, three years later, led the colony into the
West Indies Federation. Initially, Bustamante led his political weight to the
proposals that united 12 of the United Kingdom’s Caribbean colonies in an
entity that, according to its proponents, would eventually negotiate indepen-
dence as a single state. Increasingly, however, he became a vocal critic,
arguing that Jamaica’s finances would suffer because it would have to sup-
port the economically weak members of the group. A referendum in 1961
showed that a majority of voters shared his concerns so Jamaica withdrew
from the Federation and, on 6 August the following year, became indepen-
dent, with Bustamante as the first prime minister, a post that he held until
deteriorating health forced him into retirement on 23 February 1967 (the day
before his 83rd birthday). He died at Irish Town, in St. Andrew Parish,
Jamaica, on 6 August 1977.
 C
CABOT, JOHN (c. 1451–1498?). Although the first certain English claim
to Newfoundland was not made until 1583, when Sir Humphrey Gilbert
arrived with four vessels crewed largely by criminals and pirates, John Cabot
is often credited with making the first European voyage to the territory since
the Vikings’ discovery of the island in the 11th century. An Italian by birth,
Cabot was granted Venetian citizenship in 1476 and was in southern England
by 1494 or 1495, seeking financial support for a transatlantic voyage that
would be shorter than those from Mediterranean ports because the British
Isles lie at more northerly latitudes. The Bardi banking firm of London gave
him 50 nobles so that he could “go and find new land” and he may also have
received sponsorship from merchants in Bristol who were keen to find new
fishing grounds for their fleets. Probably through his connections with Lon-
don’s Italian community, on 5 March 1496 Cabot received authorization
from King Henry VII to “sail to all parts, regions and coasts of the eastern,
western and northern sea, under our banners, flags and ensigns, . . . to find,
discover and investigate whatsoever islands, countries, regions or provinces
of heathens and infidels, in whatsoever part of the world placed, which
before this time were unknown to all Christians” and was granted a monopo-
ly of any trade that he could establish in newly discovered lands, with the
crown taking one-fifth of the profits. A first attempt at a crossing, probably in
the summer of 1496, ended in failure because of adverse weather conditions,
a shortage of provisions, and troubles with the crew, but in May 1497, on the
50-ton Matthew, he set out again. Sources of information about this second
voyage are few, but, according to one report, Cabot sighted land on 24 June,
disembarked, claimed the territory in the name of the English crown, and
planted the flags of England, Pope Alexander VI, and, possibly, Venice. The
site of that landing has long been a source of scholarly disagreement, with
some writers suggesting that it was as far south as Maine, others that it lay as
far north as Labrador, but, for the purposes of the governments of Canada
and the United Kingdom, it took place at Cape Bonavista, on the east coast
of Newfoundland, where Queen Elizabeth II greeted a replica of the Matthew
when it arrived on 24 June 1997 after sailing from Bristol to commemorate

105
106 • CAICOS ISLANDS
the 500th aniversary of Cabot’s visit. Cabot himself believed that he had
reached Asia and, on 3 February 1498, was granted permission from the king
to undertake a second voyage, which left, with five vessels, in early May.
The fate of the passengers and crews is unknown. A Spanish envoy in Lon-
don reported, two months later, that one of the ships had been caught in a
storm and had put into port in Ireland but that the other four had continued
on their journey, some carrying cargoes of merchandise, presumably as spec-
ulative trading goods. Most historians have assumed that those vessels were
lost at sea because no records of their fate have been found, but one scholar,
Alwyn Ruddock, who died before publishing evidence for her argument, has
claimed that Cabot returned to England in 1500 after a two-year voyage that
took him along the eastern coast of North America and into the Caribbean
Sea. Also, she suggests that Father Giovanni Antonio de Carbonariis, Pope
Alexander’s tax collector in England, accompanied Cabot, along with a
group of friars, and that they founded North America’s first Christian com-
munity at a site now known as Carbonear, on the Avalon Peninsula in New-
foundland.
See also DELAWARE; FIRST BRITISH EMPIRE.

CAICOS ISLANDS. See TURKS AND CAICOS ISLANDS.

CAMEROONS. See BRITISH CAMEROONS.

CAMPBELL ISLAND. Campbell Island, some 44 square miles in area, lies

in the subantarctic, about 400 miles south of New Zealand, at latitude 52°
32´ South and longitude 169° 8´ East. The first European sighting was made
on 4 January 1810 by Frederick Hasselburg (also known as Hasselburgh and
Hasselborough), who had been employed by Robert Campbell & Company
of Sydney, New South Wales, to seek sealing grounds in the southern Pacif-
ic Ocean. Exactly 10 months later, Hasselburg drowned on the island in a
harborage that he had named after his brig, Perseverance, and soon afterward
news of the large fur seal colonies leaked to the firm’s competitors, drawing
vessels from the Auckland Islands and other sites where stocks were being
annihilated. Within a few years, the seals had vanished from Campbell as
well but whaling in the surrounding seas attracted ships from the 1830s until
the last decade of the century. Attempts to use the land for sheep rearing
began in the 1890s and continued until 1931, when mutton and wool prices
fell sharply during the world economic depression. Since then, the island has
had no residents apart from small units of “coast watchers” who monitored
shipping from 1941–1945, during World War II, and groups of meteorolo-
gists who manned a weather station from 1945–1995. Campbell Island and
its neighboring islets were incorporated within the colony of New Zealand
 CANADA • 107
under the terms of the New Zealand Boundaries Act, which received royal
assent from Queen Victoria on 8 June 1863. They were designated a nature
reserve in 1954 and, in 1998, were included, along with the Aucklands and
other sub-Antarctic islands administered by New Zealand, in the list of
World Heritage Sites compiled by the United Nations Educational, Scientific
and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

CANADA. English interest in northern North America dates from 1496,

when, having learned of Christopher Columbus’s travels and not wishing to
be outdone by Spain, King Henry VII authorized John Cabot to search for
lands “which before this time were unknown to all Christians.” Cabot—who,
like Columbus, was intrigued by the possibility of finding a route to Asia by
sailing west from Europe—made landfall somewhere on the American coast
between Labrador and Maine on 24 June 1497 and claimed the land for
England. On 5 August 1583, Sir Humphrey Gilbert asserted Queen Elizabeth
I’s sovereignty over Newfoundland, in 1621 King James VI of Scotland
gave Sir William Alexander permission to establish settlements on a vast
tract of land that Alexander named “Nova Scotia,” in 1629 James Stewart of
Killeith, Lord Ochiltree, received King Charles I’s blessing to colonize Cape
Breton Island, and from 1670 the Hudson’s Bay Company exercised au-
thority over much of the extensive Hudson Bay drainage basin. Those asser-
tions of control did not go unchallenged, the French, in particular, investing
much effort in colonial expansion in the region from 1534. However,
France’s defeat in the War of the Spanish Succession resulted in cession of
many of its possessions to Britain through the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713.
The Treaty of Paris, which ended the Seven Years’ War on 10 February
1763, provided for the transfer of nearly all of the remaining French territo-
ries, east of the Mississippi River, to the British crown.
The 18th-century treaties meant that Great Britain acquired new colonies
in which most members of the European population were French-speaking
Roman Catholics rather than Protestants of British descent. From 1755, in
areas along the Atlantic coast, the francophones, whose acceptance of British
rule was considered suspect, were forcibly ejected from their farms and
deported. However, in the Province of Quebec, on the north bank of the St.
Lawrence River, officials adopted a more tolerant—and politically expedi-
ent—approach. Hoping to win hearts and dissuade the settlers of French
ancestry from supporting a rebellion in the thirteen colonies to the south, on
22 June 1774 parliament approved a Quebec Act that allowed Catholics to
hold public office (a privilege denied to that faith’s adherents in Britain) and
provided for the application of French law in civil courts. Then, from 1775,
some 50,000 migrants loyal to King George III flocked north, fleeing the
American Revolutionary War. These refugees sought land but they also
wanted to influence the way in which they were governed so in 1784 New
108 • CANADA
Brunswick was detached, administratively, from Nova Scotia and given in-
dependent crown colony status. Seven years later Quebec was divided into
Lower Canada (where French customs and language dominated) and Upper
Canada (where British institutions prevailed).
That partition of Quebec was never a political success because both in
Lower and Upper Canada the legislative process was controlled by an oligar-
chy unrepresentative of the majority of the population. Rebellions in 1837
encouraged the British government to dispatch John Lambton, earl of Dur-
ham, to investigate the causes of the unrest and recommend measures that
would lead to greater stability; his report, published early in 1839, argued for
the creation of elected legislative assemblies with significant powers, encour-
agement of immigration from Britain as a means of diluting French culture in
the region, and reunification of the two Canadas as a first step toward merg-
ing all of the colonies in British North America in a single administrative
unit. The reintegration was effected on 5 February 1841 through the forma-
tion of the Province of Canada, but “responsible government” did not follow
until March 1848 when the governor-general—James Bruce, earl of El-
gin—appointed a cabinet nominated by the coalition group that formed a
majority in the Legislative Assembly (the elected lower house in the Prov-
ince’s bicameral parliament). Nova Scotia had achieved a similar level of
self-government the previous month and New Brunswick followed in May.
In the last years of the 18th century and the early years of the 19th, the
colonies’ population was boosted by families evicted from their homes when
landowners in the Scottish Highlands replaced subsistence farming with
sheep rearing. Then, from 1845, large numbers of immigrants arrived from
Ireland, where the failure of potato crops had reduced many people to near-
starvation. As numbers rose, the economy flourished, aided by a Reciprocity
Treaty, signed in 1854, that eliminated customs barriers between Canadian
territories and the United States. However, in 1864 the U.S. government
announced that it intended to end the trade agreement (partly because it was
angered by British support for the southern states during the American Civil
War) so politicians began to examine the possibility of merging all of Brit-
ain’s possessions in North America into one unit that would justify the con-
struction of improved transport links, present an obstacle to any northward
expansion by the United States, and provide a single market for domestic
goods. Parliament, keen to shed its obligation to defend the colonies, ap-
proved of the discussions, passing a British North America Act that created
the Dominion of Canada by dividing the Province of Canada into Ontario
and Quebec and uniting them with New Brunswick and Nova Scotia on 1
July 1867. British Columbia joined the group in 1871 and Prince Edward
Island in 1873. Then, on 15 July 1870, the Canadian authorities bought the
North-West Territories and Rupert’s Land from the Hudson’s Bay Compa-
ny, and, on 1 September 1880, the British government transferred all of the
 CANTON (OR KANTON) AND ENDERBURY ISLANDS • 109
crown’s remaining territorial possessions in North America, with the excep-
tion of Newfoundland, to the Dominion, thus adding many Arctic islands to
Canadian administrative control. Debt-ridden Newfoundland eventually
opted to join the federation on 31 March 1949.
The 1867 legislation that created the Dominion provided Canada with
forms of government similar to those in Great Britain, but Britain retained
responsibility for the conduct of foreign affairs. However, in 1909, the Cana-
dian government formed a Department of External Affairs, and in 1931,
through the Statute of Westminster, Great Britain effectively conceded full
independence to Canada (and to the other dominions in the Empire). The
formal ending of British legislative influence on Canadian affairs followed
on 25 March 1982 with parliament’s approval of the Canada Act, a measure
much opposed by many people in Quebec who would have preferred to
separate from Canada and form an independent state.
See also ALL RED LINE; ALL-RED ROUTE; AMERICAN REVOLU-
TION; ANGLO-AMERICAN WAR OF 1812 (1812–1815); ARCTIC AR-
CHIPELAGO; BALFOUR DECLARATION (1926); COLONIAL CON-
FERENCE; COMMONWEALTH REALM; EMPIRE DAY; EMPIRE
GAMES; EMPIRE SETTLEMENT ACT (1922); FRANKLIN, JOHN
(1786–1847); GOVERNOR; IMPERIAL PREFERENCE; MACKENZIE,
ALEXANDER (1764/1765–1820); NOOTKA SOUND CONVENTIONS;
NORTHWEST PASSAGE; OLD COMMONWEALTH; OVERSEAS SET-
TLEMENT SCHEME; PARIS, TREATY OF (1783); RED RIVER COLO-
NY; TURKS AND CAICOS ISLANDS; UNITED EMPIRE LOYALIST;
VANCOUVER, GEORGE (1757–1798); VANCOUVER ISLAND.

CANTON (OR KANTON) AND ENDERBURY ISLANDS. Canton and

Enderbury Islands—the northernmost atolls in the Phoenix Islands group—
lie in the central Pacific Ocean, Canton at latitude 2° 50´ South and longitude
171° 43´ West and Enderbury at 3° 8´ South and 171° 5´ West. Canton has a
land area of about 3.5 square miles surrounding a central lagoon and Ender-
bury has some 1.9 square miles, also with a lagoon. The United States
claimed both under the provisions of the Guano Islands Act, which was
passed by Congress in 1856 and allowed American citizens to take posses-
sion of uninhabited islands, not controlled by any other government, that had
deposits of guano. Little attempt was made to exploit the reserves on Canton
but, from 1860–1877, the Phoenix Guano Company was a major producer on
Enderbury, exporting the phosphate-rich material for use in the manufacture
of fertilizer. After the Americans left, Sydney-based John T. Arundel &
Company worked the reserves on both islands for a few years, but then, apart
from the planting of some coconut palms on Enderbury by the Samoan
Shipping and Trading Company from 1916, the land was ignored until 6
August 1936, when officers from the sloop HMS Leith landed on Canton and
110 • CAPE BRETON ISLAND
erected a sign asserting Britain’s sovereignty. On 18 March the following
year, the United Kingdom government attached Canton and Enderbury
(along with others in the Phoenix group) to the Gilbert and Ellice Islands
colony, but the United States (considering the islands a potentially important
refueling base for civil aircraft flying between North America and Australa-
sia) disputed British jurisdiction. After President Franklin D. Roosevelt au-
thorized the Department of the Interior to administer both atolls from 3
March 1938, the two countries spent several months in delicate negotiations
before agreeing to manage the area as a condominium from 6 April 1939.
During World War II, Canton was used as a base by the United States Navy,
then, after hostilities ceased, it served as a stopover for civil flights between
Australia, New Zealand, North America, and the Philippines. However, as
technology improved, the introduction of passenger jet aircraft capable of
flying long distances without refueling reduced the airport’s importance;
long-distance flights ended in 1958, and although the United States contin-
ued to maintain a missile tracking station until 1976 the military value of the
location also declined as defense priorities changed. On 12 July 1979, Can-
ton (now sometimes known as Abariringa) and Enderbury both became part
of the independent Republic of Kiribati, created when the Gilbert Islands
won independence from Britain, and on 20 September the same year the
United States, through the Treaty of Tarawa, surrendered its territorial
claims. The atolls now form part of the Phoenix Islands Protected Area, a
sanctuary for marine wildlife.

CAPE BRETON ISLAND. In 1629, James Stewart of Killeith, Lord Ochil-

tree, won permission from King Charles I to establish a colony of some 60
settlers at Baleine on Cape Breton Island, which lies off the Atlantic coast of
North America at the southern edge of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Within
weeks, however, the little community had been ousted by the French and
transported back to Europe. Nominally, the island remained in French hands
after that incident, but it was devoid of European settlement during the sec-
ond half of the 17th century and so was easily occupied by British troops on
15 September 1711 when the two countries found themselves on opposite
sides during the War of the Spanish Succession. France (which knew the
island as Île Royale) regained control through the terms of the Treaty of
Utrecht in 1713 and built a formidable fortress at Louisbourg, but, despite its
impressive defenses, an army of American colonists, supported by 90 Royal
Navy vessels, forced the garrison to surrender on 28 June 1745 following a
siege that had lasted since early May. The Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, which
ended the War of the Austrian Succession on 24 April 1748, returned admin-
istration to France yet again (and the French withdrew from the Indian settle-
ment at Madras, which they had captured from Great Britain in 1746), but
British armies entered Louisbourg for a second time on 26 July 1758, while
 CAPE COLONY • 111
the European powers were involved in a global Seven Years’ War, and held
on to it when France withdrew from mainland North America on signing the
Treaty of Paris on 10 February 1763.
Britain attached Cape Breton Island to the colony of Nova Scotia but did
nothing to promote settlement or stimulate the coal mining and fisheries that
had developed under French rule because the imperial authorities saw no
reason why industries based in overseas possessions should be allowed to
compete with those at home. The economic landscape changed radically after
the American Revolutionary War broke out in 1775, however, because tens
of thousands of colonists loyal to King George III flocked north, their num-
bers creating such problems for administrators that, on 26 August 1784, Cape
Breton was detached from Nova Scotia and made a separate colony under a
lieutenant-governor with offices in Sydney. Then, in the early years of the
19th century, the population was supplemented by large numbers of Scots,
ousted from their homeland as landlords in the Highlands converted tenant
holdings into sheep grazings. These newcomers established farms on the
arable land along the coast and, more centrally, around Bras d’Or Lake and
stamped a long-lasting culture on island society; for example, the Gaelic
College at St. Ann’s Bay still offers classes in bagpipe and fiddle music and
in Scottish dancing as well as in the Gaelic language. Cape Breton was
reannexed to Nova Scotia on 9 October 1820 despite protests that the two
seats it was allocated in the colony’s House of Assembly (the legislative
branch of government) were insufficient and that Halifax (the capital) was so
far away that people living there had very different priorities from those of
the islanders. Nevertheless, despite the perceived political disadvantages, the
grant of monopoly rights over Nova Scotia’s coal reserves to Frederick,
Prince of Wales (and, through him, to the General Mining Association), in
1826 created considerable wealth because it led to the development of a
major mining and steel production complex in the Sydney area that provided
jobs for underemployed men from the overpopulated rural areas (albeit at the
cost of considerable blight and poverty when the industry collapsed after
World War II). Cape Breton became part of the Dominion of Canada when
New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and the Province of Canada (Ontario and
Quebec) were amalgamated on 1 July 1867 following the passage of the
British North America Act.
See also PELHAM-HOLLES, THOMAS, DUKE OF NEWCASTLE
(1693–1768).

CAPE COLONY. In 1652, the Dutch East India Company established a

township near the Cape of Good Hope, at the southern tip of Africa, so that
supplies (particularly food and water) could be made available to its ships as
they sailed between Holland and the East Indies. Britain occupied the area in
1795 (when the Netherlands fell under the influence of postrevolution
112 • CAPE COLONY
France), withdrew in 1803 (at a time of “friendship, and good understanding”
with the leaders of the French republic), returned in 1806 (after the fragile
peace with Napoleon Bonaparte’s France had disintegrated), and had its sov-
ereignty over the region confirmed on 13 August 1814, when the Dutch
formally ceded the territory (see ANGLO-DUTCH TREATY (1814)). Ad-
ministration of the Cape proved difficult. As early as 1811, British troops
were involved in conflicts with the native Xhosa people, a cattle-raising
group, who resented the encroachments on their land and often opposed
attempts by Christian missionaries to alter traditional cultural practices. A
series of violent struggles, known as the Cape Frontier Wars or the Xhosa
Wars, punctuated the next seven decades, flaring up in 1811–1812,
1818–1819, 1834–1836, 1846–1847, 1850–1853, 1856–1858 and 1877–1879
and resulting both in the extension of British control and in the incorporation
of the Xhosa within British colonial territory (see BRITISH KAFFRARIA).
The descendants of the Dutch settlers also caused problems. Known as Boers
(from the Dutch word for “farmer”), they opposed anglicization of the region
(objecting, for example, to the proclamation by Lord Charles Somerset,
governor of the territory, that English would be the sole language used in
judicial proceedings from 1827) and they resisted moves to abolish slavery.
Eventually, some 12,000 opted to move away, participating in a “Great Trek”
that took them eastward and northeastward to establish the republics of Na-
talia (see NATAL), Orange Free State, and the Transvaal on land beyond
the reach of British officials.
The costs of managing an Empire were high, so the Colonial Office in-
sisted that the Cape Colony should pay its own way while producing com-
modities that could be shipped to Europe either for immediate consumption
or for conversion into manufactured goods. Initially, that led to a concentra-
tion on wheat and wine, then (as more Xhosa land was acquired) to sheep
farming, extraction of copper ores (from 1854), and diamond mining (from
the late 1860s), with railroads spreading tentacles into the interior from
coastal towns. In Cape Town, the largest settlement in the colony, the admin-
istrative and merchant classes placed pressure on successive governors to
permit the establishment of representative institutions and, in 1854, were
rewarded with the creation of an elected bicameral legislature whose fran-
chise was based on income and property ownership rather than on skin color
(arrangements that were intended to mollify the Boers and the mixed-race
population). The legislature won full powers of internal self-government in
1872, but in 1887 and 1892 voting arrangements were altered in order to
restrict the numbers of the black population eligible to participate in elec-
tions. As early as 1858, Sir George Grey, Cape Colony’s governor, was
advocating the formation of a confederation of British and Boer territories in
southern Africa, but the proposals were rejected by the London government.
However, the first steps toward a customs union were taken in 1888, and
 CAPE TO CAIRO RAILWAY • 113
when Britain acquired former Afrikaner territory after the Second Boer War
(fought from 1899–1902) moves toward integration accelerated, resulting in
the formation, in 1910, of a Union of South Africa that incorporated Cape
Colony as Cape Province.
See also AMIENS, TREATY OF (1802); BASUTOLAND; BECHUANA-
LAND; CAPE TO CAIRO RAILWAY; CHAMBERLAIN, JOSEPH
(1836–1914); DISRAELI, BENJAMIN, EARL OF BEACONSFIELD
(1804–1881); GRIQUALAND WEST; JAMESON RAID (1895–1896);
KIMBERLEY, SIEGE OF (1899–1900); MAFEKING, SIEGE OF; PEN-
GUIN ISLANDS; RHODES, CECIL JOHN (1852–1902); UNION-CASTLE
LINE.

CAPE TO CAIRO RAILWAY. In 1874, Edwin Arnold, editor of the Daily

Telegraph newspaper, proposed construction of a railroad that would stretch
along the full 4,200-mile length of the African continent, connecting the
Cape of Good Hope (in Cape Colony, on the southern tip of the landmass) to
Cairo (on Egypt’s Mediterranean coast). Two decades later, the idea was
enthusiastically promoted by industrialist Cecil Rhodes, who had made his
fortune in the diamond mining industry and believed that a rail system could
both supplement that wealth and link a string of British colonial possessions,
emphasizing the imperial presence. The number of passengers covering the
whole distance would be few, he argued, but the train would carry freight and
travelers on shorter journeys along each sector of the line, making it econom-
ically viable, and would also allow soldiers to be transported easily in times
of unrest. Despite a lack of financial support from government, by the early
1920s about two-thirds of the route had been built in piecemeal fashion by
business interests (particularly in the mineral-rich areas of the south) and to
meet military requirements (especially during campaigns in Egypt and the
Sudan). However, the development of air transport, the difficulty of con-
structing track through jungle and swamp, and the lower cost of carrying
goods by sea combined to stifle interest in the project in the period between
the two world wars. Then, political change seemed to end all possibility of
extending the lines as growing demands for self-government led to a pro-
gram of decolonization that replaced the uniformity of British control with a
string of independent states, each with a different economic agenda. Howev-
er, some commentators have suggested that commercial considerations may
lead to renewed interest in laying track from the Sudan to East Africa, thus
connecting the existing railheads, even though long-distance journeys would
be hampered by variations in gauge.
See also ALL-RED ROUTE; NYASALAND; SCRAMBLE FOR AFRI-
CA.
114 • CAREY, WILLIAM (1761–1834)
CAREY, WILLIAM (1761–1834). William Carey’s efforts to convert In-
dians to Christianity brought limited returns, but he laid a foundation for
19th-century missionary work throughout the British Empire and, in India,
pioneered educational innovations and social reforms that reflected British
cultural norms. The son of weavers Edmund and Elizabeth Carey, he was
born in Paulersbury, in Northamptonshire, England, on 17 August 1761 and
received his only formal education from his father, who was appointed vil-
lage schoolmaster when William was six years old. As a boy, he attended
Church of England services with his parents, but from the age of 14 (when he
was apprenticed to a shoemaker) he associated with members of noncon-
formist sects and, in 1783, was baptized as a Baptist. Shortly afterward,
while reading accounts of Captain James Cook’s voyages, he became con-
cerned about the spiritual health of populations that were being brought into
contact with Europeans, presenting his thoughts in a pamphlet entitled An
Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion
of the Heathens. That publication, which appeared in 1792, encouraged a
group of ministers to join him in forming a Particular Baptist Society for the
Propagation of the Gospel among the Heathen. The first of numerous British
evangelical missionary associations, it was later renamed the Baptist Mis-
sionary Society and provided a template for similar organizations founded in
Europe and North America (see LONDON MISSIONARY SOCIETY). In
December of 1793, Carey traveled to India with John Thomas, a former East
India Company (EIC) doctor who had decided to become a missionary.
Initially, the men settled in Calcutta (now Kolkata) with their families, but, as
funds diminished, Carey moved west to Midnapore, taking a job as manager
of an indigo factory. However, the EIC opposed missionary work, believing
that it would disrupt commerce, so in 1800 he uprooted himself again and, on
10 January, joined teacher Joshua Marshman and printer William Ward in
Serampore, then a Danish colony.
Before he left Britain, Carey had learned Greek, Hebrew, and Latin. In
India, he became fluent in Bengali and Hindi, preaching in both languages
and translating the whole Bible into Bengali (1801), Assamese (1813), Oriya
(1815), Hindi (1818), Marathi (1819), and Sanskrit (1822) while converting
sections of the text into 29 other tongues and producing numerous grammars.
In 1801, Richard Wellesley, Marquess Wellesley and governor-general of
India, established a college at Fort William, the EIC headquarters on the
subcontinent (see BENGAL PRESIDENCY), as a base for training civil
servants. Recognizing Carey’s linguistic skills, he offered him a post as
professor of Bengali, Marathi, and Sanskrit, a position that helped to provide
security for the missionary cause despite official EIC opposition. In 1818,
with Marshman and Ward, Carey founded Serampore College as a center
“for the instruction of Asiatic, Christian, and other youth in Eastern literature
and European science.” (King Frederick VI of Denmark granted the institu-
 CARNATIC (OR KARNATIC) WARS • 115
tion a charter that, in 1827, made it the first degree-granting college in Asia.
In the early 21st century, it was still taking students, awarding its own theolo-
gy degrees and University of Calcutta degrees in arts, business, and the
sciences.) Also, having established (again with Marshman and Ward) the
first press in India to cast type in an Indian alphabet, he printed two pioneer-
ing works on the plant life of India by horticulturalist William Roxburgh—
Hortus Bengalensis in 1814 and Flora Indica in 1832—and pursued his
academic interest in botany by playing a major role in the founding of the
Agri Horticultural Society of India in 1820. According to some scholars, the
cultural and educational activities of the “Serampore Trio” paved the way for
a mid-19th-century cultural renaissance in Bengal, but Carey also cam-
paigned for social reform, including the abolition of such practices as infanti-
cide and suttee (in which a Hindu widow was set ablaze on the funeral pyre
built to cremate her husband’s body). The strength of the Hindu caste system
limited the number of converts to Christianty in the region, but, even so,
Willliam Wilberforce, who was instrumental in ending slavery throughout
the British Empire, described the Serampore mission as “one of the chief
glories of our country” and several writers have argued that Carey was the
“father” of imperial missions because his experiences helped to inspire such
influential Protestant evangelists as David Livingstone and Robert Moffat.
However, in his later years Carey often found himself at odds with newer,
younger arrivals at Serampore who had been instructed to take their orders
directly from Baptist Mission officials in London and who concentrated on
areas where churches were already established rather than venture into new
territory. By 1827, he had broken his ties with the organization that had sent
him to India. He died at Serampore on 9 June 1834.

CARNATIC (OR KARNATIC) WARS (1746–1748, 1749–1754, AND

1757–1763). The Carnatic (or Karnatic) region of southern India lies be-
tween the Coromandel coast and the mountain ranges of the Eastern Ghats.
In the early years of the 18th century, it was a dependency of Hyderabad,
which was part of the Mughal Empire, but three conflicts over two decades
placed it firmly under the control of the East India Company (EIC). The
first clash began in 1746, two years after Great Britain had entered the War
of the Austrian Succession in opposition to France and its allies, and escalat-
ed after a British fleet, under Commander Curtis Barnett, captured several
French merchant vessels in the area. Madras (now Chennai) fell to the
French on 21 September—Robert Clive, who was to be instrumental in
extending EIC influence on the subcontinent, was taken prisoner but escaped,
disguised as a native—and, in 1748, British forces under Admiral Edward
Bosacawen laid siege to Pondicherry but withdrew with the arrival of the
October monsoons.
116 • CARNATIC (OR KARNATIC) WARS
Under the terms of the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, which ended the war on
18 October 1748, Madras returned to British administration in exchange for
the French fortress at Louisborg (on Cape Breton Island), which had fallen
to British colonists on 28 June 1745. The peace in India did not last long,
though. The death of Mir Qamar-ud-din Khan Siddiqi, the nizam of Hydera-
bad, on 1 June 1748 led to a civil war over the succession. France entered the
lists in support of Muzaffar Jang (the nizam’s grandson) and his ally, Chanda
Sahib, who had aspirations to become ruler of the Carnatic as nawab of
Arcot. Britain then sided with Nasir Jang (the nizam’s son, who, seven years
earlier, had led a rebellion against his father) and Muhammad Ali Khan
Wallajah, son of Anwaruddin Khan, nawab of Arcot, who was killed at
Ambur in the first major battle of the Second Carnatic War on 3 August
1749. Initially, the French were successful, installing Muzaffar Jang on the
throne at Hyderabad and Chanda Sahib at Arcot. However, on 1 September
1751, Robert Clive and a force of some 500 EIC troops occupied the fort at
Arcot while Chanda Sahib was attempting to drive Muhammad Ali Khan
Wallajah from his base in Trichinopoly. Then, from 23 September, Clive
held the site against offenses by an army of more than 7,000 men led by Raju
Sahib, Chanda Sahib’s son. On 14 November, the attackers gave up, leaving
Clive in control and thus enormously enhancing both his prestige and an
impression of British dominance that was augmented by further military
successes at Arni and Kaveripak as well as by the death of Chanda Sahib,
who was beheaded, despite being given assurances that his life would be
spared, after surrendering to General Monakji of Tanjore.
Following the signing of the Treaty of Pondicherry, which brought an end
to the conflict on 31 December 1754, Muhammad Ali Khan Wallajah re-
placed Chanda Sahib as nawab of Arcot, but the peace lasted only until the
outbreak of the Seven Years’ War (see FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR
(1754–1763)), which led, in 1757, to a Third Carnatic War between EIC and
French troops. The French, determined to oust Britain from India, were under
the command of Thomas Arthur, comte de Lally, an experienced soldier who
had fought in the War of the Austrian Succession and had accompanied
Bonnie Prince Charlie on his campaign to regain the British crown for the
Stuarts in 1744–1745. Leading four battalions, Arthur pushed the EIC army
inland from the coast then, in December 1758, laid siege to Madras. Howev-
er, when, the following February, six ships arrived with reinforcements for
the beleaguered garrison he decided to withdraw. Suffering from a lack of
naval support, he was defeated by Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Eyre Coote at
Wandiwash on 22 January 1760 and retreated to Pondicherry, where, be-
sieged and starving, he surrendered on 15 January 1761. The Treaty of
Paris, signed on 10 February 1763, ended the Seven Years’ War. Captured
settlements, including Chandernagore (then the main focus of European trade
in Bengal) and Pondicherry (the principal center of administration in French
 CARNATIC (OR KARNATIC) WARS • 117
India) were returned to France but were permitted to function only as com-
mercial foci, without garrisons—provisions that, in effect, ended French im-
perial aspirations on the Indian subcontinent and left the East India Company
as the unchallenged European power in the region.

CAROLINA. Initial English efforts to establish colonies in the area of North

America (now occupied by North Carolina and South Carolina) were un-
successful. On 17 August 1585, a group of 108 people, sponsored by Walter
Raleigh, founded a small settlement on Roanoke Island but, demoralized by
starvation and the predations of indigenous groups, left on 19 June the fol-
lowing year (taking maize, potato, and tobacco plants to England with them).
Just days after their departure, relief ships arrived to find the area abandoned
so the captains deposited 15 men (as a means of maintaining Raleigh’s claim
to the territory) then sailed off. Sir Walter, undaunted and determined to
create a viable community in the Americas, organized a further party of
immigrants, led by John White. When those colonists reached the island on
22 July 1587, they could find no trace of the small garrison that had been left
the previous year, with the exception of a skeleton that may have been the
remains of one of its members. White returned to England for supplies, but
by the time he got back to Roanoke in August 1590 all 118 of those who had
landed in 1587 (and Virginia, White’s granddaughter, who was the first child
born to English parents in America) had also vanished. Their fate has never
been established.
Raleigh’s lack of success did not deter other aristocrats from seeking to
populate the area with Europeans. On 30 October 1629, King Charles I
granted his attorney general, Sir Robert Heath, a “patent” (or charter) to
settle the region between latitudes 31° North and 36° North, which would be
named the “province of Carolina” (a word derived from Carolus, the Latin
for “Charles”), but Heath had intended to make use of the territory as a base
for French Huguenot settlers so he lost interest when the monarch insisted
that colonists should be adherents of the Church of England. As a result, the
first permanent English residents in Carolina were families who moved south
from Virginia in the 1650s, seeking land to farm. Their success prompted
King Charles II to award a further charter, on 24 March 1663, to Edward
Hyde (earl of Clarendon), George Monck (duke of Albemarle), and six other
courtiers, some of whom also acquired interests in colonial ventures else-
where. (Two years later, for example, John, Baron Berkeley, and Sir George
Carteret obtained rights to land in New Jersey.) Initially, the grant to these
“lords proprietors” covered the same territory as that given to Heath, but in
1665 it was extended northward to 36° 30´ North (to include the migrant
Virginians’ homesteads along the Albermarle Sound) and southward to 29°
0´ North (to include the Spanish settlement of St. Augustine, now in Flori-
da). In 1670, the eight proprietors attracted settlers from Bermuda to found
118 • CAROLINE ISLAND
Charles Towne (now Charleston, South Carolina) on the west bank of the
Ashley River, at a more southerly location than any other English settlement
on the continental mainland. The town grew into the chief commercial and
administrative center of the province, becoming, in 1691, the seat of
Governor Philip Ludwell. Because transport was limited and slow, Ludwell
and his successors administered the northern areas of the territory through
deputies, an arrangement that increasingly led to a division between North
Carolina and South Carolina (though there was no precise physical demarca-
tion of boundaries).
Tensions between Quakers and adherents of the Church of England led to
an uprising in North Carolina in 1711 and were followed by the outbreak of a
war with the Tuscarowa Indians. In 1712, the proprietors attempted to end
the resultant chaos by giving the region its own governor, and some histo-
rians consider that to signify the creation of two colonies. However, other
administrative changes were soon to follow. In 1719, the South Carolinians
ousted Robert Johnson, the governor installed by the proprietors, replaced
him with James Moore, and invited King George I to make the territory a
royal colony with a governor of his own choosing. The monarch accepted
the invitation on 20 May 1721, though the formal change of ownership did
not occur until 25 July 1729, when his son, King George II, revoked the
proprietors’ charter and purchased the shares held by all but one of their
descendants for the sum of £17,500 (plus £5,000 for arrears of quitrents).
North Carolina’s conversion to royal colony status followed on 5 August
1729. The sole individual who refused to sell up—Baron John Carteret, later
earl of Granville—was given the 60-mile wide stretch of land between 35°
34´ North and 36° 30´ North, adjoining the Virginia boundary. For nearly 50
years, the Granville District, as it became known, was a continuing source of
friction (partly because of differences between the absentee landlord, his
agents, and the landholders, and partly because the crown was responsible for
ensuring the security of the area but received no financial benefit from it). It
was eventually confiscated by the rebel government in 1777, during the
American Revolutionary War, and afterward became part of the State of
North Carolina.
See also RESTORATION COLONY.

CAROLINE ISLAND. Caroline, located at latitude 9° 57´ South and longi-

tude 150° 13´ West, is the easternmost of the Line Islands, which lie in the
mid-Pacific Ocean, straddling the equator for some 1,450 miles from north to
south and including Christmas Island, Fanning Island, Flint Island, Jar-
vis Island, Malden Island, Starbuck Island, Vostok Island, and Washing-
ton Island. The first recorded sighting of Caroline Island by a European was
made on 21 February 1606 by Pedro Fernández de Quirós, a Portuguese
navigator commissioned by King Philip of Spain to search for Terra Austra-
 CAYMAN ISLANDS • 119
lis, the continent that was believed to exist in the southern hemisphere, bal-
ancing the landmasses north of the equator. (During that voyage, Pedro de
Quirós also chanced upon Ducie Island and Henderson Island, now adminis-
tratively part of the Pitcairn Islands, and the New Hebrides, which he
thought was the mythical continent and which now form the Republic of
Vanuatu.) After that visit, the atoll, which has a land area of just 1.5 square
miles, was forgotten until 16 December 1795, when it was visited by the
sloop HMS Providence, commanded by William Broughton, who, four years
earlier, had claimed the Chatham Islands for Great Britain while on a
voyage of exploration with George Vancouver. Broughton named the island
Carolina after the daughter of Sir Philip Stephens, a lord commissioner of the
Admiralty: over the years, the name changed to Caroline, but the territory
was also known to 19th-century mariners as Hirst Island, Independence Is-
land, Thornton Island, and other appellations. The atoll was claimed for the
British crown on 9 July 1868 by Commander George Nares of the sloop
HMS Reindeer. Four years later, the government authorized Houlder Broth-
ers, a London company, to extract guano (a source of phosphate, which was
much in demand as a fertilizer). Those rights were transferred, in 1881, to
John T. Arundel, who continued operations until the reserves were ex-
hausted in 1895 and also attempted to establish a plantation of coconut
palms. On 7 January 1911, S. R. Maxwell and Company was granted a
license to plant further palms and export copra, which is used in livestock
feed and also produces coconut oil for such industrial processes as soap
making. However, the venture ran into difficult economic times so all of the
employees had left by the late 1930s. The island, uninhabited, was incorpo-
rated within the crown colony of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands on 1 Janu-
ary 1972 and became part of the Republic of Kiribati when the Gilberts won
independence on 12 July 1979. Through the Treaty of Tarawa, signed on 20
September 1979, the United States withdrew a claim to sovereignty that was
based on the provisions of the 1856 Guano Islands Act, which authorized
Americans to acquire uninhabited islands that were not already under the
jurisdiction of other governments. The territory was renamed Millenium Is-
land in 1999 because it was one of the first land areas over which the sun rose
on 1 January 2000.

CARTIER ISLAND. See ASHMORE ISLANDS AND CARTIER IS-

LAND.

CAYMAN ISLANDS. The Caymans are the summits of a mountain range

that lies beneath the western Caribbean Sea some 180 miles northwest of
Jamaica and 400 miles south of Miami at latitude 19° 20´ North and longi-
tude 81° 24´ West. Ceded to England by Spain on 18 July 1670 through the
120 • CENTRAL AFRICA PROTECTORATE
Treaty of Madrid (which recognized England’s sovereignty over “all those
lands, islands, colonies and places whatsoever situated in the West Indies”
that the English had settled) but not permanently occupied for another 60
years, they developed an economy based on the harvesting of sea turtles,
supplemented by fishing and shipbuilding. Although administered as a de-
pendency of Jamaica, the Caymans enjoyed a considerable measure of self-
government, largely as a result of their remoteness, with an elected legisla-
tive assembly formed in 1831. The link to Jamaica was severed on 4 July
1959, when the islands became part of the West Indies Federation, and
when that organization disintegrated on 31 May 1962 the islanders opted to
remain a crown colony rather than seek independence. In the decades that
followed, the Cayman government pursued policies that attracted tourists and
companies offering offshore financial services—a strategy that earned it one
of the world’s highest rates of gross domestic product per capita. Now ad-
ministered as a British Overseas Territory, and with a constitution (revised
in 2009) that gives it authority over domestic affairs, the Caymans have a
Legislative Assembly of 18 members (15 of whom are elected). Executive
authority is vested in the governor, who is appointed by the British monarch
and (except in very unusual circumstances) acts on the advice of the Cayman
Islands’ premier (the head of government) and cabinet.
See also BAY ISLANDS; BRITISH WEST INDIES; MOSQUITO
COAST.

CENTRAL AFRICA PROTECTORATE. See NYASALAND.

CENTRAL AFRICAN FEDERATION. See RHODESIA AND NYASA-

LAND, FEDERATION OF.

CEYLON. Eighteenth-century Ceylon was in the hands of the Dutch until

1795, when the Netherlands fell under French influence. Fearing that its old
foe would use the balance of power in Europe to exert control over the island,
which was an important harbor and naval base for ships traveling between
the Middle East and Southeast Asia, Britain—through the East India Com-
pany—systematically overran the Dutch possessions from 1796, formally
acquiring them through the Treaty of Amiens (signed with France on 25
March 1802) and turning them into a crown colony. The Kingdom of Kandy,
which occupied the mountainous core of Ceylon, initially proved resistant to
conquest but by 1815 it too had fallen and by 1817 it was integrated with the
rest of the colony, giving Great Britain command of the whole island. From
an administrative center at Colombo, on the west coast, British administra-
tors transformed the agricultural economy, encouraging the development of
plantation agriculture, initially of coffee and then, from the 1880s, of coco-
 CHAMBERLAIN, JOSEPH (1836–1914) • 121
nuts, rubber, and tea (though by importing indentured Tamil labor from
India they also laid the foundation for political problems after the colony
became independent). Construction of rail and road networks improved com-
munication between settlements but not all Sinhalese welcomed change be-
cause many viewed the building of churches and schools as evidence of
cultural, as well as political, overlordship.
By the last years of the 19th century, educated local leaders were demand-
ing greater participation in decision-making processes and from 1910, when
the Ceylon National Congress was formed as a forum for indigenous views,
those demands grew louder. A constitution, introduced in 1920 and amended
four years later, made many concessions (including elections to the colony’s
legislature) but also exposed differences in the reformers’ ranks as represen-
tatives of the various ethnic and social groups struggled to preserve their
individual community interests. Further change, in 1931, extended the fran-
chise to all adults and included the formation of a state council that gave the
Sinhalese people an executive as well as a legislative role in government, but
those innovations, too, added to the internecine strife because they replaced
representation based on communities (an arrangement that favored minority
interests) with representation based on defined territories and because many
middle-class Sinhalese objected to the extension of the vote to poorer, unedu-
cated individuals.
In 1944, while Ceylon’s ports were serving as depots for Allied armies and
navies during World War II, a British government commission, led by Her-
wald Ramsbotham, Viscount Soulbury, shaped a new consititution that, two
years later, gave the colony domestic self-government. Then, in 1947, Cey-
lon won dominion status (in effect, becoming an equal partner with Britain
on the international stage but recognizing King George VI, the British mon-
arch, as its head of state), with full independence following on 4 February
1948. On 22 May 1972, the country changed its name from Ceylon to the
Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka (“Sri Lanka” means “resplendent
land” in Sanskrit), but the ethnic discord that had complicated pre-indepen-
dence negotiations with the British continued, flaring into civil war from the
1980s as Tamils demanded self-government.
See also MALDIVE ISLANDS; MOLUCCAS.

CHAMBERLAIN, JOSEPH (1836–1914). Joseph (Joe) Chamberlain never

attained the rank of prime minister but nevertheless had considerable influ-
ence on British policy toward the colonies in the late 19th and early 20th
centuries, so much so that his contemporaries sometimes referred to him as
“the first minister of the Empire.” The first of nine children in the family of
shoe manufacturer Joseph Chamberlain and his wife, Caroline, he was born
in Camberwell (now part of London) on 8 July 1836 and was unusual among
senior politicians of the time because he never went to university, entering
122 • CHAMBERLAIN, JOSEPH (1836–1914)
parliament in 1876 after using his position as mayor of Birmingham to pro-
mote social reform programs, including educational improvement and slum
clearance. Appointed president of the Board of Trade in William Glad-
stone’s second Liberal Party administration, in 1880, he initially supported
the prime minister’s policy of attempting to eliminate civil dissent in Ireland
through legislation rather than by force, but he differed from his leader over
proposals to allow the island to govern its domestic affairs, arguing that
“home rule” would dilute imperial unity and, if granted widely, would lead to
the dissolution of the Empire. The issue divided the Liberals, who were
heavily defeated at the 1886 general election by an alliance of Conservative
Party supporters and a splinter group, known as the Liberal Unionists, who
included Chamberlain in their number. Politically, the election coincided
with a growing pro-imperialist sentiment among voters and Chamberlain
pandered to that mood in his speeches. On 29 June 1895, he joined the
government of similarly imperialist Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, marquess of
Salisbury, taking the post of secretary of state for the colonies (see COLONI-
AL OFFICE) in preference to other, ostensibly more prestigious, offices.
Within months, he was being accused of complicity in the abortive Jameson
Raid, in which settlers from Cape Colony invaded the neighboring Boer
republic of Transvaal in the hope of sparking an uprising, but a formal
parliamentary inquiry could find no proof of the allegations. At the same
time, he was dealing with the United States’ intervention in a territorial
dispute over the boundary between the Essequibo area of British Guiana
(see DEMERARA-ESSEQUIBO) and Venezuela. On 17 December 1895,
U.S. President Grover Cleveland told Congress that any attempt by Great
Britain to exercise jurisdiction over land that Americans considered Vene-
zuelan should be considered “willful aggression” and resisted “by every
means.” Chamberlain, whose wife was American, was willing to oppose the
U.S. stance but Salisbury preferred a less confrontational approach, agreed to
arbitration, and was vindicated when the tribunal awarded Britain the bulk of
the contested region.
Salisbury also favored a conciliatory approach toward French colonial
aspirations in West Africa but Chamberlain adopted an altogether more vig-
orous policy, forcing the Ashanti people to accept protectorate status in
1896 and thus preventing France from expanding its sphere of influence (see
ASHANTI WARS). Two years later, as Russia gained a lease of Port Arthur,
in China, and threatened British commercial power in the region, Salisbury’s
cabinet insisted on a similar lease of Weihaiwei; Chamberlain regarded that
as little more than a political gesture and attempted (with limited success) to
tackle the competition through diplomatic arrangements with Germany, Ja-
pan, and the United States. Then, in November 1899, he negotiated a with-
drawal from Samoa in return for German concessions over the Solomon
Islands (see BRITISH SOLOMON ISLANDS), Tonga, and territories in
 CHANNEL ISLANDS • 123
Africa. However, the Second Boer War, which began in 1899 and which
Chamberlain supported with enthusiasm, left Britain diplomatically isolated
from its European neighbors after the press published stories of General
Horatio Kitchener’s scorched earth strategy and of the insanitary conditions
in the concentration camps in which many of the Boers were confined. In
1903, in an effort to combat that isolation, the colonial secretary (see COLO-
NIAL OFFICE) proposed “a treaty of preference and reciprocity” with terri-
tories of the Empire and the imposition of tariffs that discriminated against
countries that threatened Great Britain’s imperial interests (see IMPERIAL
PREFERENCE). That scheme was staunchly opposed by proponents of free
trade so Chamberlain resigned from the government and launched a cam-
paign designed to make the British public “think imperially.” Divided on the
issue as deeply as the Liberals had been divided over home rule for Ireland in
1886, the Conservative Party and its Liberal Unionist allies lost the general
election held in January and February 1906 even though Chamberlain was
reelected as the member of parliament for Birmingham. He had little chance
to build on that success, though, because on 13 July he suffered a stroke that
left him partially paralyzed and unable to continue his political career. He
died, following a heart attack, on 2 July 1914.
See also BECHUANALAND; GOLDIE, GEORGE DASHWOOD
TAUBMAN (1846–1925); KINGSLEY, MARY HENRIETTA
(1862–1900); LUGARD, FREDERICK JOHN DEALTRY (1858–1945);
MACLEOD, IAIN NORMAN (1913–1970); ROYAL NIGER COMPANY;
UGANDA PROGRAMME.

CHANNEL ISLANDS. The Channel Islands lie in the English Channel,

about 80 miles south of Britain’s southern coast and, at their closest point,
less than 10 miles from the coast of France. They were annexed by the duchy
of Normandy in 933 and so were among the territories ruled by William the
Conqueror when he launched his successful invasion of England in 1066.
Since then, they have been possessions of the English (and later, British)
crown although some areas were occupied by France from 1338–1345 and
1461–1468 and by Germany from 1940–1945. Five of the islands—Alder-
ney, Guernsey, Herm, Jersey, and Sark—are inhabited. Administratively,
they and the smaller, unpopulated islands, are divided into the Bailiwick of
Guernsey and the Bailiwick of Jersey, with a bailiff as head of the civic
authorities and of the judiciary. Because the territories are a crown depen-
dency, rather than parts of the United Kingdom, the British sovereign gov-
erns as duke of Normandy, not as monarch. Sovereignty over two groups of
islets—the Ecréhous (six miles northeast of Jersey) and the Minquiers (nine
miles south of Jersey)—was contested by both Britain and France for many
years, but in 1953 the International Court of Justice ruled in favor of the
United Kingdom. However, some French nationals still occasionally “occu-
124 • CHARTER COLONY
py” the areas for brief periods of protest and there is potential for political
tension because sovereignty affects rights to oil and gas reserves on the
continental shelf. The Channel Islands are not part of the European Union
(EU) but benefit from free movement of goods to and from EU countries.
Islanders are British citizens but are not represented in the British parliament
and, unless they can demonstrate a close connection to the United Kingdom,
may face restrictions if they seek employment within EU boundaries. Horti-
culture and tourism play considerable roles in the economy, and (because
they are outside the United Kingdom’s tax regime) Guernsey and Jersey have
developed as important offshore financial centers.
See also NEW JERSEY; RESTORATION COLONY.

CHARTER COLONY. Charter colonies were developed by trading compa-

nies, or other groups, that were granted royal charters prescribing the condi-
tions under which territories could be developed and circumscribing the
boundaries of those territories. In most cases, settlers were accorded more
extensive civil and political liberties than those enjoyed by their counterparts
in other British possessions; for example, the Rhode Island charter, signed
by King Charles II in 1663, guaranteed religious freedoms and provided for
an elected bicameral legislature. However, there were no guarantees of a
document’s longevity. King James I revoked the Virginia Company’s pow-
ers in 1624, only 18 years after granting them, because the firm was in
financial difficulty and, also, had lost more than 300 people when Powhatan
Indians attacked Jamestown, its principal settlement in Virginia, in 1622. On
the other hand, Connecticut retained the principles of government enshrined
in its charter of 1662 (granted to the “Governour and Company of the Eng-
lish Colony of Connecticut in New England in America”) until it introduced
constitutional changes in 1818, more than 40 years after the United States
had declared itself independent of the British crown.
See also ASSOCIATED STATE; BRITISH DEPENDENT TERRITORY;
BRITISH OVERSEAS TERRITORY; CROWN COLONY; CROWN DE-
PENDENCY; DOMINION; FIRST BRITISH EMPIRE; LEAGUE OF NA-
TIONS MANDATED TERRITORY; PROPRIETARY COLONY; PRO-
TECTED STATE; PROTECTORATE; RESTORATION COLONY; ROY-
AL COLONY; UNITED NATIONS TRUST TERRITORY.

CHATHAM ISLANDS. The Chatham Islands cover an area of some 370

square miles in the southwest Pacific Ocean at latitude 44° 2´ South and
longitude 176° 26´ West, about 500 miles east of Christchurch, New Zea-
land. The first European sighting—on 29 November 1791—was made by the
men of HMS Chatham, an armed tender accompanying Captain George
Vancouver’s HMS Discovery on a voyage of exploration in the region.
 CHOLMONDELEY, HUGH, BARON DELAMERE (1870–1931) • 125
William Broughton, the Chatham’s commander, claimed the archipelago for
Great Britain and named it after Captain John Pitt, earl of Chatham and first
lord of the admiralty (see CAROLINE ISLAND). As news of the islands’
location spread, they became a base for sealing and whaling vessels, whose
crews brought diseases to which the indigenous Moriori people had little
resistance and which reduced the population from around 2,000 to about
1,700. Then, in 1835, Maori tribes invaded, killing many of the remaining
islanders (whose laws forbade the taking of human life) and enslaving those
who survived. Using the forced labor, the Maori immigrants cultivated vege-
tables with considerable success, selling the produce to visiting ships and
exporting potatoes to markets in Australia and New Zealand. However, in
October 1841, the British government learned that the New Zealand Compa-
ny (a business formed in London in 1839 with the aim of sending emigrants
to New Zealand) claimed to have bought the Chatham Islands from represen-
tatives of the Maori and intended to sell them to the German Free Cities. That
consortium, consisting of Hamburg and other members of the former Han-
seatic League, intended to found a settlement in the territory but the War and
Colonial Office intervened on 4 April 1842, extending the boundaries of the
crown colony of New Zealand (which had been created the previous year) in
order to annex the islands and ensure British control. The small 21st-century
population, numbering fewer than 700, earns a living from crayfishing and
fishing.
See also AUCKLAND ISLANDS.

CHOLMONDELEY, HUGH, BARON DELAMERE (1870–1931). A

controversial white supremacist, Delamere was the chief spokesman of the
European community in the East Africa Protectorate and did much to intro-
duce commercial farming to the White Highlands region of Kenya Colony.
The elder child of Hugh Cholmondeley, Baron Delamere, and Augusta, his
second wife, he inherited his father’s estate at the age of 17, traveled to
British Somaliland on a lion-hunting trip in 1891, made regular journeys to
Africa in succeeding years, and, in 1897, on his fifth visit, became the first
Briton to enter the protectorate from the north, after traveling more than
1,000 miles from Somaliland through Ethiopia. In 1903, convinced of the
agricultural potential of the area, he persuaded the colonial government to
give him a 99-year lease of 100,000 acres of land in the Njoro area, between
the Mau escarpment in the west and the Aberdare ranges in the east. He
named his new acquisition “Equator Ranch” and acquired further estates that
made him one of the largest landholders in the territory, but early farming
initiatives were unsuccessful and improvements were made largely by trial
and error, backed by huge financial investments. Five hundred merino sheep
were imported from New Zealand, but 400 died of pleuritic pneumonia that
had been carried by oxen brought from the Lake Victoria area. Wheat
126 • CHRISTMAS ISLAND (INDIAN OCEAN)
contracted rust and attempts to rear ostriches for their feathers failed when
feathered hats became unfashionable. Cattle imported from Australia died
from nakurnitis, a disease caused by eating grasses grown on iron-deficient
soils.
However, wheat production improved after the government established a
research station at Njoro and crossbreeding with local animals increased
immunity to illness. Also, Delamere promoted white immigration and en-
couraged the settlers to grow coffee, which still plays an important role in the
Kenyan economy. A flour mill that he built at Njoro in 1908 developed into
Unga Ltd., now a major supplier of animal feed, flour, and maize products.
Early experiments in dairy farming resulted in the formation of Kenya Co-
operative Creameries in 1925. Also, Cholmondeley spread his business
wings beyond farming—for example, by founding the Times of East Africa
newspaper, which was published from 1905 until 1932—and took a leading
role in politics, representing Europeans on the colony’s legislative council
from 1920 until his death. His political views were founded on a belief that
the Kenyan Highlands, and certain other areas, should be reserved for Euro-
peans and that white settlers should be able to employ cheap African labor
until appropriate white labor was available. He opposed pre–World War I
proposals to establish a Jewish community in the protectorate, contested
postwar plans to give Indians equality of citizenship with whites, and cam-
paigned for a union of Kenya, Tanganyika, and Uganda that would be
dominated by white legislators. From 1920, when the British government
declared that the interests of Africans should have priority in Kenya, Dela-
mere was in almost permanent conflict with Colonial Office officials and
managed to secure several concessions that retained the Europeans’ en-
trenched economic position. Much given to childish pranks (such as riding
his horse into the dining room of Nairobi’s Norfolk Hotel), he was also a
member of the Happy Valley Set, a group of wealthy aristocrats, who settled
in the Happy Valley region of the Wanjoho Valley and enjoyed a lifestyle of
drug taking and spouse swapping. Never in strong health, Delamere died at
Loresho, near Nairobi, on 13 November 1931, admired by many because of
his contribution to agricultural development, his determination to overcome
the economic obstacles posed by terrain and climate, and his strong work
ethic, but despised by others because of his arrogance, intolerance, and ra-
cism. When Kenya won independence in 1963, many of the descendants of
the white settlers opted to leave, rather than accept black rule, but Cholmon-
deley’s son, Tom, remained, took Kenyan citizenship, and continued to work
the family lands under the new regime.

CHRISTMAS ISLAND (INDIAN OCEAN). Christmas Island, which lies

in the Indian Ocean about 225 miles south of Java and 875 miles northwest
of the Australian coast at latitude 10° 29´ South and 105° 38´ East, was
 CHRISTMAS ISLAND (PACIFIC OCEAN) • 127
named by Captain William Mynors when he passed it on the East India
Company’s ship Royal Mary on 25 December 1643. The discovery of nearly
pure phosphate of lime in guano deposits encouraged Britain to annex the
territory on 6 June 1888 and to grant a 99-year lease to George Clunies-Ross,
who was already exploiting the coconut palms on the Cocos Islands, some
550 miles to the southwest. Six years later, Clunies-Ross transferred the lease
to the Christmas Island Phosphate Company (in which he had a financial
interest), and on 1 September 1900 the land was added to the Straits Settle-
ments as a dependency of Singapore. From 1942–1945, during World War
II, the island was occupied by Japanese troops and most of the population
was incarcerated in prison camps on Java. Then, after the Straits Settlements
crown colony was dissolved in 1946, it was administered from Singapore.
However, in 1948, the governments of Australia and New Zealand acquired
the phosphate company’s assets, and on 1 October 1958 Christmas Island
became Australian territory after the Australian authorities had paid Singa-
pore £2,900,000 as compensation for phosphate proceeds foregone. In May
1994, in an unofficial referendum, residents voted not to secede from Austra-
lia.
See also OCEAN ISLAND.

CHRISTMAS ISLAND (PACIFIC OCEAN). The largest coral atoll in the

world, with a land area of some 150 square miles and a shoreline of about 95
miles, Christmas Island (now known as Kiritimati) lies in the west-central
Pacific Ocean at latitude 1° 52´ North and longitude 157° 24´ West, 1,330
miles south of Hawaii. The first European sighting was made by Spanish
mariners in 1537, but it was named by Captain James Cook, who arrived on
Christmas Eve in 1777, stayed for nine days, observed an eclipse of the sun,
planted coconuts and melon seeds, then left with 300 turtles “of the green
kind, and perhaps as good as any in the world.” Cook’s report of his visit
encouraged other mariners to follow his example and seek provisions, but
economic development did not begin until 1857, when Captain J. L. Pendle-
ton, of the ship John Marshall, claimed Christmas Island for the United
States under the provisons of the Guano Islands Act, which had received
Congressional approval the previous year and authorized Americans to ac-
quire uninhabited islands that were not already under the jurisdiction of other
governments. The U.S. Guano Company was granted exploitation rights in
1858, but in 1865 the British government gave a competing firm—the An-
glo-Australian Guano Company—a license to extract the phosphate reserves
then on 17 March 1888, ignoring U.S. protests, ordered Captain William
Wiseman, of HMS Caroline, to proclaim Queen Victoria’s sovereignty over
the territory because it lay on the planned route of a trans-Pacific telegraph
cable (see FANNING ISLAND (OR FANNING ATOLL)). In 1902, Great
Britain leased the island to Lever Brothers, which planted coconut palms
128 • CHURCH MISSIONARY (OR MISSION) SOCIETY
and cultivated silver-lip pearl oysters. On 30 July 1919, it was incorporated
within the crown colony of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands. International
tensions heightened again in the mid-1930s, as the U.S. sought to establish
air bases on Pacific islands, so in 1937, in an effort to confirm its rights,
Great Britain dispatched a permanent representative, who was expected to
send daily weather reports by radio while maintaining a watching brief over
developments on the atoll. In 1956–1957, the British used the island as a base
for testing hydrogen bombs (see MALDEN ISLAND), as did the Americans
in 1962, but by 1969 the military and the scientists had left. In the 1970s, as
prices for copra and other coconut products fell, small firms attempted to use
local resources to develop other enterprises, including game fishing, produc-
ing salt by using the sun to evaporate water, and raising milkfish for sale in
Hawaii. The atoll became part of the Republic of Kiribati when the Gilbert
Islands won independence on 12 July 1979 and is now a wildlife sanctuary.
On 23 September 1983, through the Treaty of Tarawa, the United States
renounced its claim to Christmas Island.

CHURCH MISSIONARY (OR MISSION) SOCIETY. On 12 April 1799,

a group of evangelical Christians (including William Wilberforce, one of the
strongest voices advocating an end to the slave trade) formed a Society for
Missions to Africa and the East, renaming it the Church Missionary Society
for Africa and the East (CMS) in 1812. Initially linked to the Church of
England, the CMS quickly developed contacts with other Protestant organ-
izations when, to its surprise, it found that few Anglican clergy were willing
to commit themselves to its cause. The first missionaries sent overseas—
Peter Hartwig and Melchior Renner of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in
Wurtemburg—had trained in Berlin and arrived in Sierra Leone to work
with a community of freed slaves in 1804. In succeeding decades, their
colleagues spread widely across the globe, attempting to take the Christian
faith to areas as far apart as the West Indies (from 1813), New Zealand
(from 1814), India (from 1816), the Hudson Bay area of North America
(from 1822), Australia (from 1825), East Africa (from 1844, in the area that
became the East Africa Protectorate), and Nigeria (also from 1844). They
also ventured well beyond the bounds of the British Empire, basing them-
selves in Abyssinia from 1829, in China from 1844, in Japan (where the first
mission post was established at Nagasaki in 1869), and in Rwanda (where
missionaries proselytized from 1914). Like similar groups, the CMS invested
considerable effort in providing educational and training facilities as well as
in evangelizing. Thus, for example, the colleges founded in Kottayam, India,
in 1817 and at Fourah Bay, Sierra Leone, in 1827 evolved into degree-
granting institutions, and the hospital established at Hangzhou, China, in
1817 is now affiliated to Zhejiang University’s medical school. Many of the
first workers at the 19th-century schools and clinics were the wives of mis-
 CLIVE, ROBERT (1725–1774) • 129
sionaries, but in 1897 a recruitment campaign aimed at unmarried women
met with an enthusiastic response so within four years more than 300 addi-
tional females were based at foreign locations. In 1922, the Society split
when a group of conservative members broke away to form the Bible
Churchmen’s Missionary Society (renamed Crosslinks in 1992), but, despite
increasing secularization in the United Kingdom, it still had strong represen-
tation abroad at the start of the 21st century, with nearly 40 workers stationed
in former British colonies and about 100 in other locations, principally in
South America.
See also LONDON MISSIONARY SOCIETY; UGANDA.

CLIVE, ROBERT (1725–1774). A skilled soldier and statesman, Clive was

instrumental in establishing East India Company rule in India and thereby
securing Britain’s access to the wealth of the subcontinent. He was born at
Styche (in Shropshire) on 29 September 1725, the first of 13 children who
would make up the family of Richard Clive, an attorney and politician, and
his wife, Rebecca. Never much of a scholar, he was placed in Company
service in 1743 and, at the age of 17, dispatched as a clerk to Madras (now
Chennai), where, lonely and miserable, he attempted to commit suicide but
gave up after his pistol misfired twice.
Although Clive spent many hours reading in his firm’s well-stocked li-
brary, he was essentially a man of action so clashes with French troops from
1746–48 gave him an opportunity to demonstrate both his bravery and his
military skills (see CARNATIC (OR KARNATIC) WARS (1746–1748,
1749–1754, AND 1757–1763)). In 1751, holding the rank of captain, he
resisted a 53-day siege of Fort Arcot by the French and their allies then
gained control of several other bases, demonstrating a talent for guerilla
tactics that helped ensure that Britain would keep control of the territory.
When a dispute over Calcutta’s defenses led to the occupation of the city’s
fort, in June 1756, by Siraj-ud-Daula, the nawab of Bengal (see BLACK
HOLE OF CALCUTTA), Clive was given command of a relief force, which
recaptured the settlement on 2 January the following year. Initially, he nego-
tiated a peace treaty with the Indian ruler but, anxious to have a more pliant
individual in the post, ousted him after the Battle of Plassey on 23 June and
installed, in his stead, Mir Jafar, a general in the nawab’s army. The change
cemented British authority in the region and greatly enhanced Clive’s pres-
tige (he was made governor of Bengal Presidency) as well as (through
plunder from the former nawab’s treasury and gifts from the new incumbent)
his wealth, but his willingess to use his position to fill his own coffers
undoubtedly contributed to a culture of greed that spread through his admin-
istration.
130 • COCHIN
Clive spent the five years from 1760 in Britain, returning to India in 1765
at the request of the East India Company and Prime Minister George Gren-
ville because both the military situation and standards of government had
deteriorated in his absence. He reestablished his authority by negotiating
rights for the Company to collect taxes in the rich provinces of Bengal and
Bihar, by prohibiting Company employees from indulging in trade on their
own behalf or from accepting gifts from rich Indian rulers, and by restructur-
ing army pay. Those schemes undoubtedly provided a foundation from
which Britain could expand its Empire in India but they also caused much
animosity so when, in 1772, parliamentary investigations uncovered evi-
dence of corruption in the East India Company there were many critics
willing to make Clive a scapegoat. He defended himself well—so much so
that the House of Commons (the lower chamber in Britain’s bicameral legis-
lature) eventually passed a motion declaring that he had rendered “great and
meritorious service” to his country—but the melancholia that had affected
him in his youth still dogged him and, on 22 November 1774, he killed
himself at his London home by stabbing his throat with a penknife. Biogra-
phers have since differed in their assessment of the man, some considering
him an architect of Empire, others condemning him as acquisitive, greedy,
and high-handed, but all accept that he exerted great influence over mid-
18th-century British policy in India.

COCHIN. In the winter of 1794–1795, French troops invaded Holland, forc-

ing the country’s unpopular leader, William V, Prince of Orange, to flee to
England. From Kew Palace, near London, William wrote to the governors of
Dutch possessions, ordering them to surrender to British forces “for safe-
keeping.” Jan van Spall, commander of the colony at Cochin (now Kochi),
on India’s southwest coast, initially resisted the takeover but eventually
complied on 19 October after a brief, three-day siege and bombardment by
East India Company troops led by Major George Petrie. Through the provi-
sions of the Anglo-Dutch Treaty, signed on 13 August 1814, Britain
coerced Holland’s negotiators into ceding the territory in exchange for Bang-
ka Island, which the British felt showed considerably less commercial po-
tential. Cochin had long been a center of the spice trade but its business
increased and diversified after 1869, when the opening of the Suez Canal led
to its development as a coaling station for steamships plying between Europe
and the Far East. However, a large sandbar obstructed entrance to the docks
so most vessels anchored offshore, where they were at the mercy of the
weather, and loaded their cargoes into lighters for transporting to land. In
1920, as merchants pressed for better facilities, Freeman Freeman-Thomas,
marquess of Willingdon and governor of Madras Presidency (and later
governor-general of Canada and of India), commissioned engineer Robert
Bristow to supervise improvements. Bristow remained for 21 years, creating
 COCOS (OR KEELING) ISLANDS • 131
a new inner harbor and using material dredged during the construction pro-
cess to create the artificial Willingdon Island, which became the hub of the
new port. Britain confined its direct administration in the area to Fort Cochin
and Ernakulam, leaving government of the remainder of the territory, under
supervision, to the traditional rule of the rajahs and their diwans (or “prime
ministers”). The Fort was made a municipality in 1866, with an elected
municipal council from 1883, and Maharajah Ramavarma XV—a Sanskrit
scholar of considerable repute—established town councils in Ernakulam and
Mattancherry in 1896. A legislative assembly, with an elected majority, was
formed in April 1925 and on 14 August 1947 Maharajah Kerala Varma
announced his attention to end dynastic rule and introduce “responsible
government,” with decision makers answerable to an electorate. Cochin en-
thusiastically became part of independent India when Britain withdrew from
the subcontinent the same year. It merged with Travancore in 1949 then,
from 1956, developed into State of Kerala’s principal trading community.

COCOS (OR KEELING) ISLANDS. The coral atolls of the Cocos Islands
lie in the eastern Indian Ocean at latitude 12° 7´ South and longitude 96° 54´
East, about halfway between Australia and Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon).
They are also known as the Keeling Islands because William Keeling—a sea
captain employed by the East India Company—made the first recorded
sighting by a European when his ship passed on a journey from Java to
England in 1609. Alexander Hare, who had taken part in Stamford Raffles’s
invasion of Java in 1811, attempted to found a settlement in 1826, but he
treated his slaves (and his harem of 40 Malay women) harshly so many
defected to the more humane employment of John Clunies-Ross, a Scottish
merchant seaman, who arrived with his family in 1827 (see CHRISTMAS
ISLAND (INDIAN OCEAN)). Most of the 600-strong modern population of
the islands is descended from the Malay workers imported by Clunies-Ross
to produce copra from the native coconut palms. The Cocos Islands have had
a checkered administrative history. They were annexed as a British crown
colony by Captain Stephen Fremantle of HMS Juno on 31 March 1857
(apparently in error; Fremantle was supposed to annex the Coco Islands, part
of the Andaman group, but misinterpreted his orders). In 1878, they were
placed under the control of the governor of Ceylon but eight years later were
granted to the Clunies-Ross family in perpetuity by Queen Victoria and
transferred to the Straits Settlements. On 1 April 1903, the territory was
made a dependency of Singapore, in 1942 (after Singapore was occupied by
Japanese forces) they reverted to Singalese jurisdiction, in 1946 they were
returned to Singapore, then on 23 November 1955 (following the passage of
legislation by the British and Australian parliaments) the Australian govern-
ment took administrative control. In a referendum on 6 April 1984, the resi-
dents voted in favor of full integration with Australia.
132 • COLLINS, MICHAEL (1890–1922)
COLLINS, MICHAEL (1890–1922). As director of intelligence for the
Irish Republican Army, Michael Collins devised a program of targeted at-
tacks on British agents during the final years of Ireland’s campaign for
independence and thus initiated the strategy of guerilla warfare that preceded
the creation of the Irish Free State in 1922. The youngest of eight children in
the family of Michael John Collins and his wife, Mary Anne, who were aged
60 and 23, respectively, at the time of their marriage in 1876, he was born at
Sam’s Cross (in County Cork, southwestern Ireland) on 16 October 1890 but,
in 1906, joined his sister, Johanna, in London. There, he associated with
members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, which was dedicated to the
cause of Irish self-government, and, through them, learned of plans for a
rebellion on the island. In 1915, he moved to Dublin where, when the upris-
ing began on Easter Monday the following year, he acted as aide to Joseph
Plunkett, the insurgency’s principal organizer. The attempt at revolution was
a failure and Collins was imprisoned when it was suppressed, but after his
release on 23 December 1916, he immediately began preparing for further
action, becoming one of the leading figures in the post–rising independence
movement. At the general election held on 18 December 1918, the radical
nationalist Sinn Féin party won 73 of the 105 Irish seats in the House of
Commons (the lower chamber in Great Britain’s bicameral legislature),
with Collins elected to represent Cork South. Rather than attend the London
parliament, the Sinn Féin representatives set up their own assembly—the
Dáil Éireann—in Dublin on 21 January 1919 and declared Ireland a republic.
Collins briefly acted as minister of home affairs while arranging for Eamon
de Valera, the Dáil’s president, to escape from Lincoln Prison (where he had
been incarcerated in May the previous year). Then, as finance minister, he
organized a “national loan” to fund the revolutionary government before
taking over the role of director of intelligence. From 30 July 1991, he com-
manded a group of men (known as “The Squad”) who murdered intelligence
agents, plainclothes policemen, and others who supplied information to the
British authorities. Collins justified those attacks by pointing out that govern-
ments regularly authorized the execution of spies during wartime, and that
stance was widely accepted by the Irish people, who supported not just
Collins’s operatives but others who adopted similar guerilla practices under
the guise of the Irish Republican Army, which formed in 1920.
By the time a truce was agreed by both sides on 11 July 1921, Collins was
one of the most powerful men in Ireland so de Valera included him in the
delegation sent to London to negotiate a permanent peace. However, hard-
line nationalists considered the Anglo-Irish Treaty, signed on 6 December, a
surrender because the Dáil’s representatives agreed that Ireland would be-
come a self-governing dominion within the British Empire (rather than an
independent state), that the representatives elected to the Dublin parliament
would swear allegiance to the British crown, and that six Protestant-dominat-
 COLONIAL LAWS VALIDITY ACT (1865) • 133
ed counties in the north of the island would remain an integral part of Britain.
Collins, who believed that the deal was the best that could be achieved,
managed to convince the Dáil to accept the document (even though de Valera
was opposed) and was appointed chairman of a transitional provisional
government, but as the schism between pro-treaty and anti-treaty groups in
the nationalist movement widened the embryo Irish Free State became en-
gulfed in civil war. Collins took charge of the army in an effort to suppress
the opposition but, on 22 August 1922, was killed by a guman when his car
was ambushed in County Cork. By the last quarter of the 20th century, he
had taken on almost legendary status, some admirers considering him a hero
of the struggle for independence, others regarding him as a model political
pragmatist.

COLONIAL CONFERENCE. In 1887, delegates from more than 100 im-

perial possessions met in London, at a time of celebrations to mark the
golden jubilee of Queen Victoria’s accession to the throne, and discussed,
among other matters, proposals to lay a telegraph cable from Canada to
Australia (see ALL RED LINE). Further Colonial Conferences, primarily
involving territories that had won some degree of internal self-government,
were held in 1894, 1897, and 1902. From 1907, the sessions were known as
“Imperial Conferences” and were held on 10 occasions before the outbreak
of World War II in 1939. Agendas were usually dominated by defense and
economic issues, but the 1926 meeting produced an agreement that the do-
minions—Australia, Canada, the Irish Free State (see IRELAND), New
Zealand, Newfoundland, and South Africa—were “autonomous commu-
nities within the British Empire,” equal in political status to the United
Kingdom (see BALFOUR DECLARATION (1926)). As World War II
ended, the Imperial Conferences were replaced by “Commonwealth Prime
Ministers’ Conferences,” held on 17 occasions from 1944 until 1969, and
then, from 1971, by “Commonwealth Heads of Government Meetings,”
which take place biennially at sites in Commonwealth of Nations countries.
See also IMPERIAL WIRELESS CHAIN.

COLONIAL LAWS VALIDITY ACT (1865). By the mid-19th century,

administrators in several colonies that had been accorded a measure of self-
government were being frustrated by judges who struck down laws passed by
local legislatures on the grounds that the legislation contradicted provisions
of bills approved by the British parliament. Frequently, these rulings were
made even though there was never any intention that the British law would
apply in the colony so, in order to ensure legal stability, the Westminster
assembly sanctioned the Colonial Laws Validity Act, which declared that
colonial legislation would be valid within the territory in which it was passed
134 • COLONIAL OFFICE
unless it was “repugnant” to (that is, contradicted) laws made by the British
parliament with the intention that they should apply to that colony. The Act
received royal assent on 29 June 1865.
See also COLONIAL CONFERENCE.

COLONIAL OFFICE. For most of the late 17th and early 18th centuries,
the administration of Britain’s colonies was primarily the responsibility of
the Lords Commissioners of Trade and Plantations (a committee of the Privy
Council, which advised the monarch), with executive decisions made by a
senior government minister, known as the secretary of state for the Southern
Department. In 1768, growing dissidence among settlers in North America
was reflected in the creation of a Colonial Department, formed primarily to
deal with possessions there. However, in 1782, after the American Revolu-
tionary War and the loss of many territories on the continent, the office was
disbanded and its duties transferred initially to the Home Office and later, in
1801, to the War and Colonial Office. In 1825, with overseas responsibilities
growing in terms of political sensitivity as well as workload, a permanent
undersecretary of state (a senior civil servant) was appointed to deal with the
implementation of colonial policies. Then, in 1854, civil service reforms and
the outbreak of the Crimean War encouraged the government to create a
separate Colonial Office led by a secretary of state—a government post that
became very influential during Britain’s aggressive international expansion
in the second half of the 19th century (see CHAMBERLAIN, JOSEPH
(1836–1914)). The Colonial Office’s purview was not exclusive because the
Indian subcontinent and adjacent territories were the responsibility of the
India Office (created in 1858 when responsibility for the administration of
lands in those regions passed from the East India Company to the British
government) and some other areas (notably Egypt and several protecto-
rates) were controlled by the Foreign Office. Moreover, as its duties in-
creased and the status of colonies changed, the Colonial Office had to adapt.
In 1907, a Dominion Division was formed to deal with colonies that had won
self-government, and that Division was made a separate entity, with its own
secretary of state, in 1925. In 1947, when India negotiated independence, the
India Office merged with the Dominion Office to form a Commonwealth
Relations Office, which—with Empire contracting as colonies won the right
to determine their own destinies—reunited with the Colonial Office in 1966
to create a Commonwealth Office. Two years later, the Commonwealth Of-
fice and the Foreign Office merged, forming the Foreign and Commonwealth
Office.
See also BURMA OFFICE.
 COLUMBIA DISTRICT • 135
COLONIAL SECRETARY. Refer to appendix A. See COLONIAL OF-
FICE.

COLONY. The term “colony” is used to identify individual territorial units

in Britain’s Empire, but the descriptor can imply greater uniformity of con-
trol than actually existed because administrative practices differed consider-
ably. Great Britain claimed unrestricted sovereignty over areas that were
designated crown colonies and managed them through resident European
officials, who represented the British crown and acted on behalf of the Brit-
ish government. However, many writers also use colony with reference to
protectorates, which were not formal possessions of the crown but where
local leaders ceded authority over defense and foreign affairs to Britain, often
under duress, but retained some authority (albeit sometimes only nominally)
over domestic matters. Other colonial administrative systems operated in
Associated States, British Dependent Territories, British Overseas Ter-
ritories, Charter Colonies, Crown Dependencies, Dominions, League of
Nations Mandated Territories, Restoration Colonies, Proprietary Colo-
nies, Protected States, Royal Colonies, and United Nations Trust Territo-
ries.

COLUMBIA DISTRICT. The region of northwest North America known

to British fur traders as “Columbia District” and to Americans as “Oregon
Country” covered all of the area that now forms the United States’ states of
Idaho, Oregon, and Washington as well as parts of Montana and Wyoming
and of the Canadian province of British Columbia. It was claimed, at vari-
ous times in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, by Russia, Spain, and the
United States as well as by Great Britain. Britain’s assertions of sovereignty
were based on the coastal explorations of such travelers as George Vancou-
ver (who declared the lands around Puget Sound a British possession in
1792) and on overland journeys made by Alexander Mackenzie (who com-
pleted the first continental crossing of North America, north of Mexico, in
1793) and by David Thompson (who, in 1811, made his way through the
Athabasca Pass, which became the major trade route between the Columbia
District and the Hudson’s Bay Company’s core area of operations in Ru-
pert’s Land). America, on the other hand, cited Robert Gray’s 13-mile jour-
ney up the Columbia River (which he named after his ship) in 1792 and the
excursions by William Clark and Meriwether Lewis in 1805–1806. In 1818,
Britain and the United States agreed on joint occupancy of the territory (see
ANGLO-AMERICAN CONVENTION OF 1818) and in 1819 Spain ceded,
to the United States, all claims to lands north of the 42nd parallel of latitude.
136 • COMMONWEALTH DAY
Then, in 1824, Russia surrendered, also to the United States, its claims to
areas south of latitude 54° 40´ North and, in 1825, negotiated a boundary
with British North America at the same point.
Americans dominated the coastal fur trade until the 1830s but were unable
to compete successfully in the interior of the region with the North West
Company or with the Hudson’s Bay Company, which merged with North
West in 1821. The Hudson’s Bay firm created a Columbia Department in
1827 and deliberately disrupted the supply of furs to American competi-
tors—by exterminating species in areas close to American trading bases, for
example—so, by the late 1830s, it controlled trade from the Yukon River (in
the north) to the Colorado River (in the south). However, although the British
fur interests attempted to prevent settlement (because it interfered with their
lucrative commerce), by 1840 Americans were pouring into the south of the
region along the Oregon Trail from the Missouri River. In 1841, realizing
that the area could be lost to Britain, the Company reversed its policy and
assisted British migrants, but the U.S. government, keen to have control of
the mouth of the Columbia River, which provided a deep-water port on the
Pacific coast, was in a mood to assert its claims. In 1846, Congress approved
a resolution terminating the joint occupancy agreement. Many Americans
campaigned for an extension of U.S. territory north to 54° 40´, but more
cautious minds feared the strength of British naval power. For Great Britain,
the area had diminishing economic importance as the Hudson’s Bay Compa-
ny diversified its business activities so on 15 June 1846 the two countries
agreed on a compromise, extending the 49th parallel to the Strait of Georgia,
on the Pacific coast. On 2 August 1858, the British sector of Columbia
District, north of that line, was included in the newly created colony of
British Columbia.
See also NOOTKA SOUND CONVENTIONS.

COMMONWEALTH DAY. See EMPIRE DAY.

COMMONWEALTH GAMES. See EMPIRE GAMES.

COMMONWEALTH IMMIGRATION TO THE UNITED KINGDOM.

The geographical extent of Britain’s Empire meant that a wide range of
colonial peoples left their homelands and traveled to the mother country,
some arriving voluntarily, some under duress. Black slaves began to appear
as status symbols in wealthy English households toward the end of the 16th
century, failing to impress Queen Elizabeth I, who, in 1601, announced that
that she was “highly discontented” by the “great numbers of negars and
Blackamoores which are crept into this realm.” Until well into the 20th
century, however, colored immigrants were uncommon in most parts of the
 COMMONWEALTH IMMIGRATION TO THE UNITED KINGDOM • 137
United Kingdom (U.K.), with only about 11,000 people of African descent,
and 43,000 from south Asia, resident in 1951. The major influx prior to that
date was from Ireland (then part of the British state), with some 400,000
individuals reaching British ports in 1845–1850 alone as they fled a rural
poverty exacerbated by the failure of the potato crop, the women seeking
employment as domestic servants and the men as laborers on the expanding
transport network.
Despite Elizabeth’s displeasure and occasional outbreaks of racial vio-
lence (as in some ports in 1919, when white British seamen felt that black
and colored workers were “stealing” their jobs), the relatively low levels of
immigration caused few political problems so parliament made no attempt to
impose entry restrictions on citizens of the Empire and the Commonwealth
of Nations until after World War II. The War widened the horizons of those
of King George VI’s colonial subjects who served with the British forces
(some 2,000,000 from India alone), and the rebuilding of the United King-
dom’s economy after the conflict ended in 1945 created semi-skilled and
unskilled jobs in health care, transport, and other services that they could fill.
Many historians date the start of mass immigration to the United Kingdom to
22 June 1948, when the Empire Windrush, a converted troopship, landed 492
Jamaican passengers and one stowaway at Tilbury, near London. Indians
and Pakistanis arrived in growing numbers from about the same time, seek-
ing jobs in the textile industry and opening small businesses, including post
offices and restaurants. From 1949, the Ministry of Health recruited nurses
and hospital domestic staff from the West Indies and by 1955 was hiring in
16 colonies or former colonies. In 1956, London Transport began recruiting
Caribbean workers (initially at the invitation of the government of Barba-
dos) and British Railways, hotels, and other businesses were also seeking
cheap labor so the annual inflow of migrants from the New Commonwealth
(former colonies, several with large indigenous populations, that had won
independence after 1945) rose from 3,000 in 1953 to 136,000 in 1961. These
new residents settled in distinct areas (Barbadians in Reading, Jamaicans in
the Brixton suburb of London, Kashmiri Pakistanis in Bradford, and Punjabi
Indians in Southall, for example), but their arrival was not always welcomed.
In the early years, housing shortages, caused by wartime bombing, led to
tensions as local communities complained that people from the colonies were
occupying homes that could have been used by white, British-born citizens.
Moreover, many of the colored immigrants found themselves victims of a
prejudice that denied them access to dance halls, employment, rented accom-
modation, and even churches. Frequently, the racial antagonisms were fueled
by right-wing organizations (such as the League of Empire Loyalists) and
flared into violence, as on 29 August 1958, when a crowd of 300–400 people
attacked the homes of West Indians in the Notting Hill area of west London,
igniting two weeks of disturbances.
138 • COMMONWEALTH OFFICE
There was little political response until 1962, when Prime Minister Har-
old Macmillan’s Conservative Party government ended its “open door” poli-
cy and restricted the immigration of Commonwealth citizens to holders of
work vouchers (see UNITED KINGDOM IMMIGRATION LEGISLA-
TION). The rules were tightened further in 1968 and 1971, but by then
several ethnic groups from former Empire territories had formed well-estab-
lished communities in the country (the Caribbean-born population had risen
from 15,000 in 1951 to 548,000 in 1971, for instance) and their numbers
were being augmented by the children of immigrants so inter-racial tensions
continued despite parliamentary attempts—through Race Relations Acts in
1965, 1968, and 1976, for example—to contain the problems. Following
rioting in Brixton in 1981, a government-commissioned report by Lord Les-
lie Scarman, a High Court judge, concluded that “racial disadvantage is a
current fact of British life,” and in 1999, in an official inquiry prompted by
concerns about investigations of the murder of Stephen Lawrence, a black
Briton, Sir William Macpherson found that London’s Metropolitan Police
force was permeated by “institutional racism.”
In the 2011 population census, 4,143,000 people (7.8 percent of all U.K.
residents) identified themselves as “British Asians.” Of these, 1,396,000
were of Indian heritage, 1,112,000 traced their ancestry to Pakistan, 437,000
had a Bangladeshi background, and 380,000 were Chinese (principally from
Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Singapore). Black Britons numbered 1,847,000
(3.5 percent of the total), with 978,000 of those claiming an African back-
ground and 591,000 identifying themselves with the Caribbean. A further
1,193,000 individuals were of mixed race. Other sources suggest that, at the
same period, about 216,000 people born in South Africa (and perhaps
500,000 people of South African descent, 90 percent of them white) were
living in the United Kingdom, along with 118,000 born in Australia (and
400,000 of Australian descent), 82,000 born in Canada, and 58,000 born in
New Zealand.

COMMONWEALTH OFFICE. See COLONIAL OFFICE.

COMMONWEALTH OF NATIONS. The membership of the Common-

wealth of Nations (which is usually referred to simply as The Common-
wealth) consists primarily of the United Kingdom (U.K.) and those of its
imperial possessions that have won independence but have chosen to retain
cultural, economic, and other links with the former colonial power. The
organization—whose symbolic head is the British monarch—evolved from
the series of meetings, held from 1887, between the prime ministers of Great
Britain and of the territories of the Empire that had acquired a considerable
measure of internal self-government (see COLONIAL CONFERENCE). At
 COMMONWEALTH OF NATIONS • 139
the 1926 conference, the representatives of the six dominions—Australia,
Canada, the Irish Free State (see IRELAND), Newfoundland, New Zea-
land, and South Africa—and of the U.K. agreed that their countries were
“equal in status, in no way subordinate one to another in any aspect of their
domestic or external affairs” (see BALFOUR DECLARATION (1926);
WESTMINSTER, STATUTE OF (1931)). However, those dominions all
had significant populations descended from European immigrants and were
willing to retain the British monarch as their own head of state so the rapid
process of decolonization after World War II required a conceptual change of
direction because Europeans formed a minority of the citizenry in most of the
new nations, many of which had no wish for constitutional ties to a monar-
chy. In 1949, India (which had gained independence two years earlier) indi-
cated its intention to become a republic. Nevertheless, it wanted to retain its
membership of the Commonwealth so at a meeting in London on 28 April
that year the heads of government of the member countries dropped the
adjective “British” from the organization’s title and agreed to admit all for-
mer British possessions provided that they accepted the crown as a “symbol
of the free association” of the community of states. By the second decade of
the 21st century, membership had grown to 52 countries (refer to appendix
B), with a combined population of some 2.25 billion people (just under one-
third of the world total) and a territorial area of 11,500,000 square miles
(one-fifth of the planet’s landmass).
Unlike most international organizations, the Commonwealth has no formal
constitution. Member countries do not consider each other to be “foreign”
states so they exchange high commissioners rather than ambassadors. Ac-
tions are initiated after consultation between representatives of member
countries, and administration is undertaken by a Commonwealth Secretariat,
which was formed in 1965 and is led by a Commonwealth secretary-general,
who is elected by the heads of government at their biennial meetings and
holds the post for a maximum of two four-year terms. Cultural links are
promoted (see EMPIRE GAMES) and, from 1971, the organization has been
committed to the eradication of inequalities in wealth, opposition to racism,
and promotion of world peace. The elimination of gender inequalities was
added to the goals in 1979, support for moves toward the creation of environ-
mental sustainability in 1989, and the furtherance of democracy and human
rights in 1991. Also, membership has been enlarged, controversially, to in-
clude Mozambique and Rwanda, neither of which has any history of colonial
rule by Great Britain, the former gaining admission in 1995 because it had
supported the Commonwealth in opposition to racial policies in South Africa
and Southern Rhodesia “despite a heavy cost to its own economy” and the
latter in 2009, ostensibly because it had taken considerable steps toward
improving the social conditions of its people and because it wanted closer
links with the Anglophone world following strained relations with France.
140 • COMMONWEALTH REALM
See also COLONIAL OFFICE; COMMONWEALTH IMMIGRATION
TO THE UNITED KINGDOM; COMMONWEALTH REALM; EMPIRE
DAY; IMPERIAL FEDERATION; NEW COMMONWEALTH; OLD
COMMONWEALTH; UNITED KINGDOM IMMIGRATION LEGISLA-
TION.

COMMONWEALTH REALM. Independent countries, including the Unit-

ed Kingdom (U.K.), that are members of the Commonwealth of Nations
and also recognize Britain’s monarch as their own head of state are known as
Commonwealth realms. Those states, other than the U.K., with the year in
which they joined the group in parenthesis, are Antigua and Barbuda
(1981), Australia (1942), the Bahamas (1973), Barbados (1966), Belize
(formerly British Honduras, 1981), Canada (1931), Grenada (1974), Ja-
maica (1962), New Zealand (1947), Papua New Guinea (1975), Saint
Kitts and Nevis (1983), Saint Lucia (1979), Saint Vincent and the Grena-
dines (1979), the Solomon Islands (formerly the British Solomon Islands,
1978), and Tuvalu (formerly the Ellice Islands, 1978; see GILBERT AND
ELLICE ISLANDS). All are former British possessions, though Papua New
Guinea was administered by Australia prior to winning independence in
1975. A further 18 nations, once Commonwealth realms, have changed their
political status and become republics. In each realm, apart from the United
Kingdom, the monarch is represented by a governor-general, appointed on
the advice of the country’s prime minister (and, in some cases, its legisla-
ture), who carries out ceremonial and constitutional duties on behalf of the
sovereign. However, the multiple monarchy arrangement can create constitu-
tional anomalies, as in 1939, when Britain declared war on Germany before
Canada took the same action; because George VI was king of both countries,
he was, even though only for seven days, technically both at war with Ger-
many and at peace with Germany at the same time. Problems can also arise
when, for example, the monarch makes a speech that conflicts with the
policy of one of her or his governments, as occurred when Australia’s politi-
cal leaders took issue with aspects of an address made by Queen Elizabeth II
in Jordan in 1984 even though she was acting in her capacity as British
monarch and expressing the views of the British government. Partly as a
result of such complications, and because of a desire for complete indepen-
dence, republican sentiments are regularly expressed in several Common-
wealth realms, but, for many people, the concept of a politically neutral head
of state remains attractive.
See also DOMINION.

COMMONWEALTH RELATIONS OFFICE. See COLONIAL OFFICE.

 CONNECTICUT • 141
COMPANY OF MERCHANTS TRADING TO AFRICA. In 1672, the
Royal African Company (RAC) was given monopoly rights over the Eng-
lish trade in slaves between West Africa and plantations on the Caribbean
islands and the North American mainland. However, the profits of the com-
merce went largely to London-based merchants so in 1698, bowing to the
objections of businessmen in other ports and to the arguments of the increas-
ingly vocal advocates of free trade, parliament repealed the firm’s charter.
The RAC quickly succumbed to the challenge of the new competition and,
by the 1740s, was near-moribund, but the British government wanted to
maintain relations with tribal groups in the region and also ensure that the
forts and trading bases established by the firm were kept in good order. For
those reasons, it created, in 1750, a Company of Merchants Trading to Afri-
ca, opening membership to all who would pay the 40 shillings joining fee.
Some 500 merchants signed up (more than half of them from Bristol) under
an arrangement that allowed them to indulge in trade while the Company
invested in infrastructure, funded by an annual parliamentary grant. The new
business took over the RAC’s facilities, most of them along the Gold Coast,
on 23 June 1751, basing its headquarters at Cape Coast. The traffic proved
lucrative for many years, but opposition from humanitarian groups and non-
conformist religious organizations was mounting by the 1770s and in 1807
parliament passed an Abolition of the Slave Trade Act that made the buy-
ing and selling of slaves illegal throughout the Empire. After the firm was
dissolved in 1821, the area in which it had operated was incorporated within
the British West African Territories (see BRITISH WEST AFRICA), admin-
istered by a governor-in-chief based in Freetown, Sierra Leone.
See also THE GAMBIA; SENEGAMBIA.

COMPANY OF ROYAL ADVENTURERS OF ENGLAND TRADING

WITH AFRICA. See ROYAL AFRICAN COMPANY.

CONNECTICUT. In 1633, leaders of the Puritan English settlement at Ply-

mouth (see MASSACHUSETTS), on the coast of northeast North America,
built a trading post near the confluence of the Connecticut and Farmington
Rivers, intending to take advantage of the wealth that could be garnered from
the fur trade in the area. They formed a town government on 8 October,
calling their little base “Dorchester” but changing the name to “Windsor” in
1637. Other Puritan groups established communities in the mid-Connecticut
River Valley at Watertowne (later Wethersfield) in 1634 and Newtowne
(later Hartford) in 1636 and on the northern shores of Long Island Sound at
Saybrook (1635) and New Haven (1637). Troubled by the depredations of
Native American raiding parties, on 1 May 1637 the three “river towns”
combined to form a militia and eliminated the problem by setting fire to a
142 • CONNECTICUT
Pequot tribal village, killing 400–700 of the inhabitants (most of whom were
children, elderly men, or women), selling captives as slaves, and taking
possession of the land. (The clerics led their congregations in prayers of
thanks to a God who “was pleased to smite our Enemies in their hinder Parts,
and to give us their Land as an Inheritance” but Lion Gardiner, who had
fought in the campaign, had misgivings, commenting that he had no wish “to
have a sharp stake set in the ground and thrust into my fundament and to
have my skin flayed off by piecemeal and cut in pieces and bits of my flesh
roasted and thrust down my throat as these people have done.”)
The experience of a defense alliance led to steps toward a common system
of government then, on 14 January 1639, to the adoption of “Fundamental
Orders” that documented the principles and nature of administration (by
stating, for example, that “the foundation of authority is laid in the free
consent of the people”) and are considered by some historians to be Ameri-
ca’s first written constitution. Saybrook merged with the Connecticut River
colony in 1644 and, through a royal charter issued on 22 April 1662, King
Charles II confirmed arrangements for self-government, granting all freemen
the same rights as natural-born Englishmen provided that they took an oath
of allegiance to the crown. New Haven colony had retained an individual
identity as the river colony expanded, but the monarch’s charter provided for
its absorption by its northern neighbor, partly as a punishment for providing
refuge to three of the judges who had condemned Charles’s father, King
Charles I, to death in 1649; the completion of the merger process, on 5
January 1665, brought much of the area occupied by the present-day State of
Connecticut under a single authority although the boundaries were not fully
delineated until 1881. Independence was threatened briefly in 1687, when Sir
Edmund Andros, governor of the short-lived Dominion of New England in
America, attempted to remove the charter, but, according to legend, during
discussions in Hartford, candles were blown out and by the time they were
relit the document had vanished from the table, removed by Captain Joseph
Wadsworth, who hid it in a nearby oak tree.
Most of the early settlers were farmers, but during the 18th century, as
populations grew, land was divided into smaller and smaller units so many
people turned to commerce and industry to make a living. Shipbuilding was
particularly important along the Connecticut River and Long Island Sound
and merchants in settlements such as Middletown exported foodstuffs, live-
stock, and lumber, much of it to sugar plantations in the West Indies. Copper
was mined from 1705 and North America’s first steel mill opened at Sims-
bury in 1728. However, as Great Britain imposed increasingly heavy taxes
on its territorial possessions while it attempted to defray the cost of the Seven
Years’ War and other conflicts, the colony’s citizens became less and less
willing to comply. When the American Revolutionary War broke out in
1775, they played a crucial role, supplying men to fight for the cause of
 COOK, JAMES (1728–1779) • 143
freedom but also manufacturing arms and gunpowder and providing food for
General George Washington’s troops. On 9 January 1788, Connecticut
joined the infant United States of America, becoming the fifth state to sign
the constitution that had been drawn up the previous year.
See also BREDA, TREATY OF (1667); CHARTER COLONY; NEW
JERSEY; NEW YORK; THE THIRTEEN COLONIES.

COOK, JAMES (1728–1779). Cook’s three voyages—in 1768–1771,

1772–1775, and 1776–1779—contributed greatly to the expansion of Brit-
ain’s Empire, adding the entire east coast of Australia to the territories
claimed for the crown and accurately mapping the location of numerous
Pacific Ocean and subantarctic islands. The second of eight children in the
family of farmworker James Cook and his wife, Grace, he was born in the
Yorkshire village of Marton-in-Cleveland on 27 October 1728 and first went
to sea at the age of 18, working on barks carrying coal between North Sea
ports. In 1755, he volunteered for service in the Royal Navy, seeing action in
the Bay of Biscay and also in North America, where he mapped parts of the
St. Lawrence River and sections of the complex Newfoundland coast. In
May 1768, Cook was given command of HMS Endeavour and tasked by the
Royal Society (a learned body of scientists) and the Admiralty with trans-
porting a group of astronomers to Tahiti so that they could observe the
passage of Venus across the face of the sun on 3 June the following year.
That accomplished, he was instructed to search for Terra Australis—the great
continent in the southern oceans that, geographers argued, would balance the
large landmasses of the northern hemisphere. Sailing south then west, he
reached the land that the Dutch had called Nova Zeelandia, anglicized the
name as New Zealand, and spent six months charting the shoreline. With the
cartography complete, he continued westward, becoming the first European
to see Australia’s east coast, naming it New South Wales and claiming it for
King George III.
Cook returned to Britain in July 1771, argued that the great southern
continent might actually exist, even though he had not found it, and proposed
another expedition that would attempt to confirm its presence by circumnavi-
gating the globe at a high latitude, taking advantage of the prevailing wester-
ly winds. Supported once again by the Royal Society, he was given two ships
(Resolution and Adventure), left England on 13 July 1772, became the first
person known to have crossed the Antarctic Circle, mapped Tonga and New
Caledonia, claimed South Georgia for Britain, discovered the southern is-
lands in the South Sandwich group, named the New Hebrides, and visited
Ascension Island, Easter Island, the Marquesas Islands, New Zealand, Nor-
folk Island, Saint Helena, and Tierra del Fuego before returning to England
on 30 July 1775. Not all of the lands he saw were new to Europeans, but his
extensive coverage of the seas ended speculation about a large continent in
144 • COOK ISLANDS
the south and his careful mapping provided a framework for British colonial
expansion into the southern Pacific Ocean. Knowledge of other parts of the
globe remained scant, however, and, in particular, politicians and traders
were keen to find out whether it was possible to reach the Pacific by sailing
along the northern coast of North America. Attempts to find a Northwest
Passage from the Atlantic had failed so Cook was placed in charge of an
expedition that would attempt to find a route from the west, with Resolution
accompanied, this time, by Discovery. The ships left Plymouth, in southwest
England, on 12 July 1776, and although the search was unavailing, because a
route that could be utilized by sailing ships does not exist, Cook mapped
much of the northwest coast of America, turning back only when he found
impenetrable ice north of Alaska. Early in 1779, the expedition anchored off
Hawaii (see SANDWICH ISLANDS), intending to remain in a congenial
climate for the rest of the winter. However, on 14 February Cook was killed
during an argument with local people over the theft of a boat. His flesh was
burned but his bones were returned to his crew and buried at sea. The Cook
Islands and numerous other landforms—including Cook Crater on the
moon—are named after him.
See also BANKS, JOSEPH (1743–1820); BRITISH ANTARCTIC TER-
RITORY; CAREY, WILLIAM (1761–1834); CHRISTMAS ISLAND (PA-
CIFIC OCEAN); PRINCE EDWARD ISLANDS; QUEEN CHARLOTTE
ISLANDS; SAVAGE ISLAND; SOUTH AUSTRALIA.

COOK ISLANDS. The Cook Islands, volcanic in origin, cover only some
240 square miles of land surface but are spread across more than 700,000
square miles of the southern Pacific Ocean, lying northeast of New Zealand
between latitudes 9° 0´ and 21° 55´ South and 157° 34´ and 165° 51´ West.
Several were visited by Captain James Cook from 1773–1777, but the first
Britons to settle were representatives of the London Missionary Society,
who arrived in 1821, converted many of the local leaders to Christianity,
discouraged cannibalism, and founded a theological college on Rarotonga.
When France embarked on a process of annexing neighboring Tahiti from
1842, the Cook Islanders’ leadership asked Britain to protect them. The
British government was reluctant but eventually acquiesced on 26 October
1888, turning the individual territories into a federal organization by estab-
lishing a single parliament for the area. On 7 October 1900, administrative
responsibilities were transferred to New Zealand, which absorbed the pro-
tectorate within the colony on 11 June the following year but did very little
to promote either economic or social development, failing to arrange for the
parliament to meet between 1912 and 1946. By the late 1950s, however, New
Zealand had long discarded its own colonial cloak and was well aware that
world political opinion favored the granting of sovereignty to dependent
territories so on 4 August 1965 the Cook Islands became a self-governing
 CORSICA • 145
parliamentary democracy in “free association” with its larger neighbor—an
arrangement that means New Zealand provides economic aid to the island
government and gives islanders an automatic right to New Zealand citizen-
ship.
See also ARUNDEL, JOHN THOMAS (1841–1919); BRITISH WEST-
ERN PACIFIC TERRITORIES; FANNING ISLAND (OR FANNING
ATOLL); HOWLAND ISLAND; MISSIONARIES; SAMOA; SAVAGE IS-
LAND.

COORG. Coorg (now usually known as Kodagu) occupies some 1,660

square miles sloping inland on the Western Ghats Mountains of southwest
India. On 25 October 1790, Dodda Vira Rajanedra, ruler of the area’s pre-
dominantly Hindu Kodava people, sought the help of the East India Com-
pany (EIC) in protecting his land from attacks by Tipu Sultan, the Moslem
leader of Mysore. In return for the Company’s aid, the rajah was allowed to
administer Coorg relatively independently of European interference but had
to send his male subjects—traditionally warriors—to support EIC armies.
The arrangement proved satisfactory to both parties until 1834, when Chikka
Virarajendra (who had succeeded his father, Lingaraja, as leader in 1820)
was accused of tyrannizing his people and of plotting to prevent the Compa-
ny from driving roads through his territory. The EIC used the accusations
(many of which later proved to be inaccurate) to invade the territory with a
7,000-strong army under the command of Colonel Patrick Lindsay and, on 7
May, to annex it. The rajah was sent into exile but, in 1853, visited London,
where Queen Victoria stood sponsor at the Christian baptism of his favorite
daughter, Guaramma, who later married Colonel John Campbell of the 38th
Madras Native Infantry. In 1854, John Fowler established a coffee planta-
tion near Madikeri and the crop’s popularity spread quickly, with more than
130 estates in operation by 1870 and nearly 20,000 acres under cultivation by
1883. In 1858, when the Britain assumed direct responsibility for governing
India, Coorg, because of its remoteness rather than beause of its political or
commercial unimportance, was made a minor province, with the resident at
Mysore responsible for administration. Then, when India won independence
in 1947, it became one of the new country’s 27 states. In 1956 it merged with
Mysore (now Karnatka) but coffee remained the major pillar of the economy
in the early 21st century as the estates attract growing numbers of tourists,
many of whom vacation in bungalows, which were erected during the Brit-
ish Raj and later converted into bed and breakfast establishments.

CORSICA. France purchased the Mediterranean island of Corsica from the

republic of Genoa in 1764 then, in 1770, absorbed it as a province within the
French state. However, in 1794, Pasquale Paoli, leader of the Corsican peo-
146 • CROWN COLONY
ple, approached the British government with a proposal that his homeland
should become an autonomous kingdom under King George III in a relation-
ship to Great Britain similar to that of Ireland. Paoli, who had lived in
London from 1769–1789 and had met the monarch on several occasions, had
initially supported the aims of the French Revolution, which began in 1789.
However, France’s new leaders accused him of treason when he opposed the
execution of King Louis XVI in 1793 so he sought British help to expel
French troops from Corsica’s coastal settlements. At the time, Britain was at
war with France and seeking a Mediterranean base for its navy so the invita-
tion seemed attractive. A fleet, commanded by Vice-Admiral Lord Samuel
Hood, was dispatched on 24 January 1794 and by 21 May had driven the
French out. On 10 June, Paoli called a consulta (or “assembly”) of village
representatives and private citizens and persuaded it to declare the island
independent, justifying the decision on the grounds that France had become a
lawless society. The same meeting accepted the principle of political union
with Great Britain so, nine days later, George III was declared king of Corsi-
ca and Sir Gilbert Elliot (later Gilbert Elliot-Murray-Kynynmound, Baron
Minto and head of the East India Company’s operations in India) was
appointed viceroy.
From the start, relations between the monarch’s British administrators and
his Corsican subjects were uneasy, in part because the constitution drawn up
by Elliot and a committee of 36 advisors failed to define British and Corsican
government roles clearly but also because it did not accommodate the par-
ties’ differing cultural and political traditions. Also, Elliot appointed Carlo
Andrea Pozzo di Borgo, an opponent of Paoli, as president of the council of
state that acted as his principal advisory body although Paoli remained head
of the government. As the months passed, tensions increased and the initial
welcoming of the British presence turned to opposition. At the same time,
British politicians were suggesting that Corsica could be sacrificed as part of
a price to be paid for peace with France. In October 1795, Paoli agreed to
return to London in return for a pension from the British crown, and in
August 1796 Spain allied with France in the war against Britain. Facing new
threats, including expected Franco-Spanish support for possible rebellions in
Ireland, Britain withdrew its fleet from Corsica, an exercise completed by the
end of October. Simultaneously, the French returned to reconquer the island,
bringing the Anglo-Corsican kingdom to an end.

CROWN COLONY. Foreign territories ruled by the crown and wholly

under British jurisdiction were known as crown colonies (or, particularly in
the 17th century, as royal colonies). In some of those areas, administration
was solely the responsibility of a governor appointed by the monarch (usual-
ly on the advice of government ministers), but in others that official was
advised by local people; in Fiji, for example, Sir Arthur Gordon formed a
 CROWN DEPENDENCY • 147
Council of Chiefs in 1876, with each leader having considerable autonomy
within his tribal area but forbidden from going to war with neighbors. By the
mid-20th century, most of the crown colonies were being governed by
elected bodies exercising executive powers devolved from the governor,
whose position had become largely ceremonial (although Britain retained
responsibility for defense and foreign relations). None was represented in the
British parliament and most had gained independence by the late 1960s. The
British Nationality Act of 1981 renamed the few that remained British De-
pendent Territories, with further legislation changing the nomenclature to
British Overseas Territories in 2002.
See also ASSOCIATED STATE; BRITISH DEPENDENT TERRITORY;
BRITISH OVERSEAS TERRITORY; CHARTER COLONY; CROWN DE-
PENDENCY; DOMINION; LEAGUE OF NATIONS MANDATED TER-
RITORY; PROPRIETARY COLONY; PROTECTED STATE; PROTEC-
TORATE; RESTORATION COLONY; UNITED NATIONS TRUST TER-
RITORY.

CROWN DEPENDENCY. The crown dependencies—the Channel Islands

and the Isle of Man—are self-governing possessions of the crown that have
independent administrative, legal, and fiscal systems but for which the Unit-
ed Kingdom provides defense and representation abroad. The Channel Is-
lands formed part of the Duchy of Normandy and thus were held by William
the Conqueror, duke of Normandy, when he successfully invaded England in
1066 and the Isle of Man was ceded to the Scottish crown by Norway in 1266
so, unlike most colonies, they were not acquired by Britain either through
conquest or by right of discovery. The British monarch is represented by a
lieutenant-governor in the dependencies, which are neither represented in the
British parliament nor signatories to the European Union (EU) but which
nevertheless benefit from the provisions for free movement of agricultural
and industrial goods (but not people) within EU member states. Because of
their independence, they have developed as important foci of offshore finan-
cial services. The 1981 British Nationality Act confers British citizenship on
residents of the dependencies.
See also ASSOCIATED STATE; BRITISH DEPENDENT TERRITORY;
BRITISH KAFFRARIA; BRITISH OVERSEAS TERRITORY; CHARTER
COLONY; COLONY; CROWN COLONY; DOMINION; LEAGUE OF
NATIONS MANDATED TERRITORY; PROPRIETARY COLONY; PRO-
TECTED STATE; PROTECTORATE; RESTORATION COLONY; ROY-
AL COLONY; UNITED NATIONS TRUST TERRITORY.
148 • CUBA
CUBA. In 1761, Spain entered the Seven Years’ War as an ally of Austria
and France, intending to invade Portugal and take Gibraltar and Jamaica
from Great Britain. Britain responded by launching an attack on Havana,
capital of Cuba, center of Spanish administration in the Caribbean Sea re-
gion, and (with some 70,000 residents) third most populous settlement in the
Americas after Lima and Mexico City. The invasion force, commanded by
George Keppel, earl of Albemarle, arrived on 6 June 1762 and placed the city
under siege, forcing it to surrender on 14 August. (Some writers have criti-
cized Albermarle’s reliance on conventional siege warfare, claiming that by
prolonging the action it led to unnecessarily high losses, the 16,000-strong
army losing 5,366 men, 4,708 of them to yellow fever and other diseases.)
Cuba’s membership of the British Empire lasted for only a few months
because, under the terms of the Treaty of Paris, which formally ended the
Seven Years’ War on 10 February the following year, the island was returned
to Spain in June 1763 in exchange for Florida (a deal that many businessmen
in Britain thought was a poor bargain). However, the brief occupation revolu-
tionized the economy. Under Spanish rule, trade had stagnated because Spain
allowed merchants to export goods on Spanish vessels only and to Spain
alone. British administrators liberalized the regime, bringing an estimated
10,000 slaves to work on sugar and tobacco plantations, introducing new
markets (including North America) and new products, and restructuring rela-
tionships with Creole merchants. As a result, when Spain resumed control, it
found the local population unwilling to return to old ways so it permitted
unrestricted commerce in African slaves, relaxed trade restrictions, and thus
paved the way for Cuba’s emergence as the world’s major producer of sugar
(and one of the world’s richest colonies) by the early years of the 19th
century. The loss of Havana (and, a few weeks later, of Manila, in the
Philippines) also had political consequences, confirming British naval su-
premacy over Spain and forcing the Spanish authorities to review their mili-
tary commitments.

CURAÇAO. Curaçao lies in the southern Caribbean Sea, some 37 miles off
the coast of Venezuela at latitude 12° 11´ North and longitude 69° 0´ West.
From 1634, the Dutch West India Company used the island’s fine natural
harbors to make the territory a center of international maritime trade, particu-
larly in slaves, but when Holland succumbed to French domination in 1795
France assumed control of its new client kingdom’s colonial possessions.
Curaçao’s merchants resented that takeover so when French troops arrived
from Guadeloupe, on 23 July 1800, they resisted occupation, and Britain
(which had been at war with France for the previous seven years) dispatched
Captain Frederick Watkins in the frigate Nereide to take advantage of the
situation. Faced with a choice of colonial overlords, members of the island
council decided that their interests would be better served by placing them-
 CYPRUS • 149
selves “under the protection of his Britannic Majesty [King George III]”
rather than by falling into the hands of “the ferocious gang of robbers laying
siege to us” so they surrendered to Watkins on 13 September. Faced with
American, as well as British, naval opposition to their presence, the French
left, but Britain’s administration may only have been the lesser of two evils
because traders (especially Jewish traders) found their goods requisitioned by
the new imperial power and imports and exports directed toward other Brit-
ish possessions in the region, including the Bahamas, Jamaica, and Trini-
dad. The Treaty of Amiens, signed on 25 March 1802, ended hostilities
between Great Britain and France and resulted in the return of Curaçao to
the Netherlands the following year. Nevertheless, Holland remained under
French rule so from 1804 British vessels regularly visited the island, the
crews wreaking havoc as they destroyed property and terrified residents. By
1806, the European powers were at war again and on 1 January of the
following year Britain reoccupied the territory, once more allowing trade
only with other British possessions or on British ships—measures that forced
prices of many commodities upward and encouraged traders to leave for
more profitable locations. On 13 August 1814, however, as the conflicts
subsided, an Anglo-Dutch Treaty made arrangements for the return of
Curaçao to Holland, and on 4 March 1816 the British administrators de-
parted. The island remains a constituent part of the Kingdom of the Nether-
lands in the 21st century.

CYPRUS. Cyprus, an island of some 2,275 square miles, lies in the eastern
Mediterranean Sea approximately 40 miles south of Turkey and 60 miles
west of Syria at latitude 35° 10´ North and longitude 33° 22´ East. It fell
under British control in 1878, when the Ottoman Empire ceded rights of
administration, though not of sovereignty, in return for promises of military
support if Russia invaded its territory. To the British government, the attrac-
tions of the arrangement were primarily strategic because the land could be
used as a base for military operations in a part of the world where the
imperial presence was increasing and which was close to the Suez Canal,
which had opened nine years earlier and was much used by vessels trading
between Europe and Britain’s possessions in India.
Great Britain annexed Cyprus on 5 November 1914, in the early weeks of
World War I (in which the Ottomans allied with Germany), had its rule
recognized by the Turks through the Treaty of Lausanne (which delineated
Turkey’s boundaries) in 1923, and declared the area a crown colony in 1925.
However, the Greek Cypriots (who formed more than 70 percent of the
island’s population) wanted enosis (union with Greece, located about 500
miles to the northwest), and that call was strongly opposed by the minority
Turkish Cypriot community, who understandably preferred integration with
Turkey. The tensions mounted after World War II, with Greek Cypriot politi-
150 • CYRENAICA
cal leaders refusing to entertain proposals for greater self-government and
demanding nothing less than enosis, while George Grivas, the military head
of EOKA (Ethnikí Orgánosis Kipriakoú Agónos or National Organization of
Cypriot Struggle), organized a campaign of violence from April 1955. In
November of that year, the British government declared a state of emergency
on the island and, on 9 March 1956, exiled Archbishop Makarios III—head
of the Cypriot Orthodox Church and leader of the Greek Cypriot people—to
the Seychelles, where he remained for the next 12 months.
Britain’s humiliating retreat from Suez at the end of 1956 changed much
of the strategic rationale for retaining control of Cyprus and provided encour-
agement for the supporters of enosis (including EOKA, which increased its
attacks on British personnel and property). However, the attitudes of the
Turkish Cypriot community also hardened, ultimately forcing the Greek
government to recognize that absorbing Cyprus was not politically feasible
and that a solution to the island’s problems could only be achieved through
negotiations with Turkey. Meetings in Zurich and London eventually led to
compromise, with Britain retaining sovereignty over military bases in Akro-
tiri and Dhekélia (both on the southern coast) and Cyprus becoming a self-
governing state where public offices were allocated according to ethnic quo-
tas. The island became independent on 16 August 1960, Makarios serving as
its first president, but freedom from British rule did nothing to heal the deep
internal wounds and in 1974 Turkey invaded. Since then, Cyprus has been
divided into a Turkish Cypriot north and a Greek Cypriot south, with United
Nations Peacekeeping Forces maintaining a buffer zone between the two.
See also BRITISH OVERSEAS TERRITORY; GASCOYNE-CECIL,
ROBERT ARTHUR TALBOT, MARQUESS OF SALISBURY
(1830–1903); LENNOX-BOYD, ALAN TINDAL (1904–1983).

CYRENAICA. In October 1911, Italy invaded Ottoman Empire territories in

North Africa and on 15 October the following year made Cyrenaica a protec-
torate. The desert territory was the scene of much conflict during World War
II, but after Lieutenant-General Bernard Montgomery’s Eighth Army defeat-
ed the Axis forces at El Alamein, in Egypt, in October and November 1942,
the area fell to British troops, with Benghazi (the largest city) taken on 20
November. In 1947, under the terms of a peace treaty signed with the victori-
ous powers, Italy relinquished its claim to Cyrenaica, but the United King-
dom’s administration remained in control while those powers debated how
best to deal with the Italians’ former colonies. On 1 March 1949, Idris as-
Senussi, a Moslem leader who had campaigned for Cyrenaican independence
during the years of Italian rule and had brought his nationalists into the war
on the Allied side, declared Cyrenaica an independent emirate, with himself
as head of state. Britain recognized the regime, but, in a resolution passed on
21 November 1949, the United Nations ordered France (which had occupied
 CYRENAICA • 151
neighboring Fezzan during the war) and the United Kingdom (which also
controlled Tripolitania, to the northwest) to unite the three regions as an
independent Libya. The new country was created on 24 December 1951 and
Idris was enthroned as king on the 27th. Some 60 years later, Benghazi
became the focus of rebellion against Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, who had
seized power in a coup in 1969. On 6 March 2012, five months after Gaddafi
was killed by Libyan National Liberation Army fighters, tribal leaders de-
clared semi-autonomy, setting up a Cyrenaica Transitional Council with Ah-
med al-Senussi, Idris’s great-nephew, at its head.
 D
DARIEN SCHEME. In the last years of the 17th century, England and
Scotland had the same monarchs—William III (of the former) and II (of the
latter), and Mary II (of both)—but they were still independent countries. The
Scots’ economy was much the weaker but many citizens had aspirations to
emulate English colonial success so in 1695 the Three Estates—the Scottish
parliament—passed legislation creating a Company of Scotland Trading to
Africa and the Indies that was given monopoly rights to Scottish commerce
with Africa, the Americas, and India. Fired by the enthusiasm and salesman-
ship of William Paterson, who had founded the Bank of England in the same
year, it raised some £400,000 (about one-fifth of the nation’s entire wealth)
from investors, with the intention of founding a settlement at Darien, on the
Isthmus of Panama. The venture—poorly devised, poorly led, and poorly
planned—was a disaster. Five ships, with some 1,200 passengers, sailed from
Leith, near Edinburgh, on 12 July 1698 and claimed the land, which they
named the “Colony of Caledonia,” on 2 November. Unfortunately, they had
chosen one of the most climatically inhospitable, mosquito-infested areas of
Central America. As the settlers fell ill—more than 400 died of dysentery,
malaria, and other diseases within seven months of the group’s arrival—food
supplies grew short (partly as a result of inadequate storage, partly because
farming the swampy landscape proved difficult), neither the indigenous
groups nor the rare passing vessels were interested in the limited goods
available to trade, power struggles developed among the colony’s leaders,
and English authorities were unwilling to provide support because they did
not want to annoy Spain, which also claimed the region. In July 1699, the
community gave up the struggle and left, but in August, before news of their
departure reached Scotland, another contingent of 1,300 pioneers set out in
six vessels. This second party, which arrived on 30 November, fared no
better than the first. Demoralized by the conditions and besieged by Spanish
troops, they abandoned the colony on 12 April 1700. Only about 300 of the
2,500 aspirant settlers survived to return to Scotland and the loss of invest-
ment nearly bankrupted the country, pushing it into union with England in
1707. Article 15 of the Treaty of Union provided that England would give

153
154 • DELAWARE
Scotland nearly £400,000, a portion of which was to be used to repay those
who had invested in the Darien venture, with the addition of 5 percent inter-
est on their capital.

DELAWARE. The first European settlers to establish communities along

the lower reaches of the Delaware River, on the east coast of North America,
arrived from Holland in 1631 and from Sweden in 1638. The Dutch drove the
Swedes out in 1655 but just nine years later were, in turn, removed by
English pioneers, who—led by Sir Robert Carr and financed by James, duke
of York (later King James II of England and VII of Scotland)—claimed the
area on the basis of explorations by John Cabot in 1497. Although Cecil
Calvert, Baron Baltimore and governor of the Province of Maryland, be-
lieved that the land was his, the territory was ruled from the Province of New
York (a colony granted to James in 1664) until, on 24 August 1682, the duke
leased the western side of Delaware Bay to William Penn, who was anxious
to secure access to the sea for the Province of Pennsylvania, which he had
acquired from King Charles II the previous year. Penn attempted to form a
single legislature for Pennsylvania and “the three Lower Counties on the
Delaware River”—New Castle, Deal, and St. Jones (the last two of which he
renamed Sussex and Kent, respectively)—but the effort was unsuccessful.
Economic, ethnic, and religious differences led to squabbles as delegates
from rapidly urbanizing Philadelphia, the principal settlement in Pennsylva-
nia, begrudged having to journey to much smaller New Castle for meetings,
while the people of the sparsely populated lands in Delaware believed that
they were being poorly served by a judicial system whose judges visited
irregularly, felt that they were ill-defended, and resented the Pennsylvanians’
unwillingness to allow them parity of seats in the legislature. In 1704, the
Lower Counties’ intransigence won them the right to establish their own
assembly, but they remained under the control of the same governor as
Pennsylvania so never achieved the status of a separate colony.
The area’s population expanded in the early years of the 18th century, with
Quaker and Scotch-Irish immigrants (many of the latter arriving as inden-
tured laborers) favoring the good farmland in the north while, elsewhere,
adherents of the Church of England moved from neighboring Maryland,
bringing African slaves, who worked as domestic servants or cleared land for
corn and tobacco cultivation. As numbers grew, boundary problems with
Maryland simmered and were resolved only after careful surveys by Jeremi-
ah Dixon and Charles Mason in 1763–1767; also, a tiny area of about one
square mile was disputed with Pennsylvania until 1921, when it was finally
allocated to the Delawareans. Like other residents on the continent, the peo-
ple of Delaware were angered by the heavy taxes imposed by Britain on its
territorial possessions in an effort to defray the cost of the expensive Seven
Years’ War that had engulfed much of the world from 1756–1763, but even
 DEMERARA-ESSEQUIBO • 155
so, many (particularly in the south of the area) were reluctant to involve
themselves in outright rebellion. Nevertheless, on 15 June 1776 the legisla-
tive assembly “suspended government under the crown” and declared itself
independent of Pennsylvania. On 7 December 1787, its representatives were
the first to sign the constitution of the infant United States of America.
See also AMERICAN REVOLUTION; AMERICAN REVOLUTION-
ARY WAR (1775–1783); BREDA, TREATY OF (1667); NEW JERSEY;
PROPRIETARY COLONY; RESTORATION COLONY; THE THIRTEEN
COLONIES.

DEMERARA-ESSEQUIBO. From the late 16th century, Dutch traders es-

tablished bases on the Demerara and Essequibo Rivers, which flowed north-
ward from the interior of South America to the Atlantic Ocean. Those pio-
neers were followed by planters, who imported African slaves to work sugar-
cane plantations, and then by other Europeans, who cultivated the fertile soils
along the coastal mudflats and estuaries, with British colonists from Barba-
dos becoming particularly numerous from about 1745 and growing cotton
that was dispatched to English textile mills. The land changed hands between
Dutch, French, and British overlords on several occasions until 1795, when
France, with whom Britain was at war, made Holland a puppet republic.
Admiral Sir John Laforey, commander of British forces on the Leeward
Islands, was unwilling to let Dutch possessions in the Americas fall into the
hands of his country’s enemies or to sacrifice sources of raw materials im-
portant to British manufacturers so he dispatched Captain John Parr of the
54-gun HMS Malabar and 1,200 troops under Major-General John Whyte
with orders to occupy Demerara and Essequibo, both of which surrendered
on 22 April 1796 without offering any resistance. Over the next six years,
coffee, sugar, and rum production all increased, and by 25 March 1802, when
the colonies were returned to the Netherlands under the terms of the Treaty
of Amiens, which temporarily ended hostilities between Britain and France,
nearly 90 percent of the land in the territories was British-owned.
Great Britain resumed control on 20 September the following year, after
war had broken out again, and retained sovereignty through the provisions of
the Anglo-Dutch Treaty signed on 13 August 1814, uniting Demerara and
Essequibo as a single crown colony. In 1823, a revolt by more than 10,000
of some 77,000 slaves in the area led to the imposition of martial law for a
period of nearly five months and to the deaths of 100–250 of the rebels. The
treatment, by British officials, of John Smith, a London Missionary Society
representative who had supported the slaves’ cause, led to a debate in the
British parliament and, according to some writers, fueled the campaign that
resulted in the passage of the Slavery Abolition Act in 1833 (though in
Demerara the planters’ anger virtually ended missionary work for some
time). On 21 July 1831, authorities merged Demerara-Essequibo with Ber-
156 • DIRECT RULE
bice to form British Guiana, with an administrative headquarters at George-
town, a former Dutch settlement, at the mouth of the Demerara River, re-
named in honor of King George III in 1812.
See also CHAMBERLAIN, JOSEPH (1836–1914).

DIRECT RULE. Britain adopted a variety of approaches to the administra-

tion of its territorial possessions. One of the options was direct rule, which
involved the replacement of indigenous institutions of government with
structures imposed by the imperial power and with representatives of that
power responsible for all decision making. Thus, the annexation of Burma,
in 1886, was followed by the abolition of the Burmese monarchy, the imposi-
tion of a European judicial system, the replacement of village headmen, and
severance of the link between the Buddhist religion and the exercise of
authority. However, direct rule involved large numbers of resident European
bureaucrats so it was expensive. For that reason, British governments tended
to favor forms of indirect rule, developed by Frederick Lugard in North-
ern Nigeria, that retained local leadership systems and allowed traditional
rulers to exercise authority, albeit often with a resident British “advisor”
who would ensure that pronouncements conformed to colonial policy.

DISRAELI, BENJAMIN, EARL OF BEACONSFIELD (1804–1881).

Benjamin Disraeli, prime minister of Great Britain for most of 1868 and
again from 1874–1880, was a strong proponent of Empire, considering it not
simply a symbol of British standing in world politics but also a means of
distracting the public from domestic problems and of garnering working-
class support for the Conservative Party that he led. The eldest son of Jewish-
Italian historian and literary critic Isaac D’Israeli and his wife, Maria, he was
born on 21 December 1804, entered parliament in July 1837 (representing
Maidstone, in southern England), and established a considerable reputation
as an orator, largely because of his scathing denigration of the government
led by Sir Robert Peel. In February 1852, Edward Smith-Stanley, earl of
Derby, accepted Queen Victoria’s invitation to form an administration and
made Disraeli his chancellor of the exchequer, a post that gave the incumbent
much public exposure, which he used to reissue the novels that he had been
publishing since the 1820s. In December, however, parliament voted to reject
the budget that he introduced and Derby resigned. Disraeli followed him but
gained further experience in the post in Smith-Stanley’s later governments
(from February 1858–June 1859 and from July 1866–February 1868) then,
on 27 February 1868, after Derby was forced into resignation by ill health,
was asked by the monarch to take office as prime minister.
 DISRAELI, BENJAMIN, EARL OF BEACONSFIELD (1804–1881) • 157
The premiership lasted for just nine months, dogged by disputes over
proposals to create a Roman Catholic university in Ireland and disagree-
ments about the status of the Church in Ireland, which was a Protestant state
institution funded by tithes imposed on the overwhelmingly Catholic Irish
population. A general election, held in early winter, resulted in an over-
whelming victory for William Ewart Gladstone’s Liberal Party so Disraeli
resigned on 1 December, but, as political fortunes changed, a more success-
ful election performance returned him to office on 20 February 1874, able to
command a sizable majority in the House of Commons (the lower chamber
in Britain’s bicameral legislature).
The new government introduced a series of domestic reforms (for exam-
ple, the Public Health Act improved urban sanitary conditions from 1875)
but, for Disraeli, foreign and imperial affairs were always much more intri-
guing. The Suez Canal had opened in 1869, reducing the maritime distance
between Great Britain and India by 4,500 miles, and Khedive Ismail Pasha
of Egypt, who owned about half of the operating company, was keen to sell a
large portion of his interest to a French firm in order to finance his lavish
lifestyle. Without waiting for parliamentary approval, Disraeli intervened,
paid 100,000,000 French francs for the shares on 25 November 1875 (with
banker Lionel de Rothschild lending the funds), and thus prevented France
from taking control of a trade route vital to British commercial interests. The
following year, at Victoria’s request but in the face of criticism that the title
was “un-English,” he piloted a Royal Titles Act through parliament, making
the monarch empress of India and cementing an already close relationship
with the queen, who created him earl of Beaconsfield.
Although Gladstone regularly condemned Disraeli for pursuing a policy of
territorial aggrandizement, the prime minister actually had no coherent strat-
egy for enlarging the Empire and added little to its boundaries during his
period in office, tending to react to events rather than pursue acquisitions. He
feared Russia’s involvement in Central Asia (see THE GREAT GAME), and
particularly its relationship with Afghanistan, which formed a buffer be-
tween the tsarist power and British India. In 1876, Beaconsfield instructed
the viceroy in India, Robert Bulwer-Lytton, earl of Lytton, to establish a
British mission in Kabul, the Afghan capital, but Lytton was unable to get the
necessary permission from the emir, Sher Ali Khan. In 1878, hearing that a
Russian delegation had received a warm welcome from the Afghan leader,
Lytton (despite receiving government orders to the contrary) dispatched a
party of British representatives to negotiate further, but, humiliatingly, the
group was refused entry to the territory and turned back as it reached the
entrance to the Khyber Pass. On 21 November, with Great Britain’s prestige
at stake, Disraeli’s government authorized a full-scale invasion of the territo-
ry by 40,000 infantrymen, who crushed the Afghan forces in a matter of
weeks, leaving Mohammed Yaqub Khan (the emir’s son and successor) little
158 • DOMINICA
option but to sign the Treaty of Gandamak, which made his country a British
protectorate on 26 May 1879 (see SECOND AFGHAN WAR
(1878–1880)). Beaconsfield justified the conflict because it established a
“scientific” frontier between India and Russia and because it emphasized
British military power, but on 6 September the entire British mission in
Kabul was killed, necessitating another invasion. That, too, was successful,
allowing Britain to take control of southern areas of the region, but the
viciousness of the conflicts, and the cost in equipment and lives, seriously
damaged Disraeli’s reputation and became issues at the general election in
1880, as did war in southern Africa, where Sir Henry Bartle Frere, governor
of Cape Colony, provoked trouble with the Zulu people that led to the
massacre of more than 1,300 British troops at Isandlwana on 22 January
1879. Disraeli, who had ignored imperial matters in Africa, leaving them to
the attention of his colonial secretaries, was concerned that the incident
would “reduce our Continental influence, and embarrass our finances” so,
fearing yet further loss of British prestige, he refused demands to relieve
Frere of his post but sent Sir Garnet Wolseley to act as high commissioner
and commander-in-chief in the region (see ZULULAND; ZULU WAR
(1879)). Domestically, too, problems were mounting, with the economy af-
fected by industrial depression and a series of poor harvests. Despite Bea-
consfield’s attempt to present himself as the defender of national interests,
his Liberal Party opponents won a decisive victory at the general election
held in April 1880. Disraeli resigned on 21 April and (much to the queen’s
dismay) was succeeded by Gladstone. For Beaconsfield, increasingly trou-
bled by illness, it was the end of a political career. He returned to his writing
and died on 19 April the following year.

DOMINICA. Dominica forms part of the Lesser Antilles archipelago, lying

at the eastern edge of the Caribbean Sea at latitude 15° 25´ North and longi-
tude 20° 0´ West. On 10 February 1763, France ceded the island to Britain
through the Treaty of Paris, which ended the Seven Years’ War that had
engulfed all major European powers. Fifteen years later, during the
American Revolutionary War, the French mounted an invasion that re-
claimed the island, but on 3 September 1783, as one of the agreements
associated with another Treaty of Paris (see PARIS, TREATY OF (1783))
they relinquished it for a second time, leaving Britain in control for a further
two centuries. Dominica’s early economy was based on coffee and sugar
plantations, worked by African slaves, who were accorded civil and social
rights much earlier than their counterparts in other parts of the Caribbean
Empire. In 1838, black community leaders won control of the territory’s
legislature, but racial tensions increased as white planters watched the new
government frame policies designed to improve conditions for the poorest
members of the population. Seeing their privileged position erode, those
 DOMINION • 159
plantation owners used their influence to pressure the British government
into adopting a more interventionist stance and, in 1865, persuaded colonial
authorities to replace the elected House of Assembly with a new body, half of
whose members were appointed by colonial authorities. Then, in 1871, Brit-
ain attached Dominica to the newly created Federal Colony of the Leeward
Islands, an administrative move that conferred power on a white-dominated
body in Antigua, further eroding the influence of the territory’s black politi-
cians. By the mid-20th century, however, social contexts and values had
changed. Dominica transferred from the Leewards to the Windward Islands
in 1940 (with a governor based in Grenada), the first labor union formed in
1945, universal adult suffrage replaced payment of taxes and property own-
ership as the basis of voting rights in 1951, and Phyllis Shand Allfrey
founded the first formal political party (the Labour Party) with Emmanuel
Christopher Loblack in 1955. The island joined the West Indies Federation,
as part of the Windwards, in 1958 and was accorded crown colony status
when that organization dissolved in 1962, but by then Britain was intent on
divesting itself of its colonial responsibilities. Dominicans took full control
of their own domestic affairs in 1967 and achieved independence on 3 No-
vember 1978 under Prime Minister Patrick John, who was later jailed for 12
years after attempting to overthrow the government of Eugenia Charles, one
of his successors, in 1981.
See also AMERICAN REVOLUTIONARY WAR (1775–1783); ASSO-
CIATED STATE; BRITISH WEST INDIES.

DOMINION. The term “dominion” was used in four contexts in relation to

the British Empire:

1. Her or his majesty’s dominions were the territories over which the king
or queen claimed sovereignty;
2. King Charles II gave Virginia Colony the title “Old Dominion” in
recognition of its support for the monarchy during the English civil
wars of 1642–1651 (and Old Dominion remains the nickname of the
State of Virginia within the United States);
3. In 1686, King James VII of Scotland and II of England established a
Dominion of New England in America, partly in an effort to ensure
that all goods carried beween North America and Britain were trans-
ported on British ships and partly in order to coordinate defense of the
area, but attempts to centralize control were resisted and in 1689, after
James was forced to flee his throne by William of Orange (later King
William III of England and II of Scotland), the colonists rebelled and
the Dominion was dismantled;
160 • DOMINION OFFICE
4. The term was applied to Canada when it was formed through the
merger of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Ontario, and Quebec in
1867—the rationale for the use of the word was the assertion in Psalm
72, verse 8, that “He shall have dominion also from sea to sea, and
from the river unto the ends of the earth”—then extended to Australia,
New Zealand, and Newfoundland from 1907, South Africa from
1910, and the Irish Free State from 1922. The Balfour Declaration of
15 November 1926 recognized these as “autonomous communities
within the British Empire” that were “equal in status” to each other and
to the United Kingdom. The monarch was retained as head of state,
but, unlike other colonies, dominions could act as independent coun-
tries, joining international organizations, making treaties, and sending
ambassadors to foreign capitals. India and Pakistan won dominion
status in 1947 and Ceylon the following year, but in the post–World
War II political climate the term was considered to imply subordina-
tion so its use declined as “Commonwealth realm” gained favor.

See also ASSOCIATED STATE; AUSTRALIAN ANTARCTIC TERRITO-

RY; BRITISH DEPENDENT TERRITORY; BRITISH OVERSEAS TER-
RITORY; CHARTER COLONY; COLLINS, MICHAEL (1890–1922); CO-
LONIAL CONFERENCE; COLONIAL OFFICE; COLONY; COMMON-
WEALTH OF NATIONS; CROWN COLONY; CROWN DEPENDENCY;
GIBRALTAR; IMPERIAL FEDERATION; LEAGUE OF NATIONS
MANDATED TERRITORY; MALTA; NEHRU, JAWAHARLAL “PAN-
DIT” (1889–1964); NIGERIA; OLD COMMONWEALTH; OVERSEAS
SETTLEMENT SCHEME; PROPRIETARY COLONY; PROTECTED
STATE; PROTECTORATE; RESTORATION COLONY; ROYAL COLO-
NY; UNITED NATIONS TRUST TERRITORY; WESTMINSTER, STAT-
UTE OF (1931).

DOMINION OFFICE. See COLONIAL OFFICE.

DRAKE, FRANCIS (c1540–1596). In 1577–1580, Francis Drake made ear-

ly claims to English sovereignty over areas of the Americas while undertak-
ing a second circumnavigation of the world, following that organized by
Ferdinand Magellan and completed by Juan Sebastián Elcano in 1519–1522.
The eldest of five known children in the family of Edmund Drake (a shearer
of woolen cloth whose wife’s name is not recorded), he was born at Crown-
dale, near Tavistock, in southwestern England, probably in February or
March 1540, but was raised in Plymouth by relatives who taught him sea-
manship and trained him in skills of piracy and slave trading. On 23 Septem-
ber 1568, he was in the harbor at San Juan de Ulúa, an island off the coast of
 DRAKE, FRANCIS (C1540–1596) • 161
Mexico, when ships commanded by Sir John Hawkins, his second cousin,
were attacked by Spanish vesssels. Drake escaped but vowed revenge and
spent much of the rest of his life getting rich at Spain’s expense. From
1570–1573, he made three voyages to the West Indies and Panama, the last
of which resulted in the successful plunder of a mule train that carried a load
of silver and made him a wealthy man. Those escapades brought him to the
attention of Queen Elizabeth I, who, in 1577, commissioned him to lead an
expedition that would pass the southern tip of the South American mainland
and explore the continent’s Pacific Ocean coastline. Elizabeth made plain
that she “would gladly be revenged on the King of Spain for divers injuries,”
a statement that Drake intepreted as a justification for piracy even though the
official object of the voyage was to identify places with which England could
trade. On 13 December, five vessels set sail from Plymouth, adding a sixth to
their number when a Portuguese merchant ship was captured off the coast of
Africa. (The captain of one of the craft returned to England after being
separated from Drake’s ship in a storm that sank another of the fleet, the
merchantman was found to have rotten timbers so was abandoned, and two
of the ships were scuttled, so Drake was left with just one vessel—the Peli-
can, which he renamed Golden Hind—for the later stages of the journey.) On
21 August 1578, Drake began his passage through the Strait of Magellan,
taking 16 days to complete the journey and, on 24 August, naming St. Bar-
tholomew’s Island, Elizabeth Island, and St. George’s Island and taking
possession of them for England, though their defense was impossible and
their location still disputed. Sailing along America’s Pacific coastline, he
attacked Spanish shipping and raided Spanish settlements, accruing loot as
he went. According to his own claims, he reached latitude 48° North while
searching for a Northwest Passage from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic
Ocean and thus back to England but was forced southward by the cold and,
on 17 June 1579, landed at a location probably near the present site of San
Francisco. There, he laid claim, in the queen’s name, to the lands that lay
north of Spanish-held territories in North America and named them Nova
Albion (or New Albion).
In July 1579, the Golden Hind headed westward across the Pacific and
Indian Oceans, rounding the Cape of Good Hope, at the southern tip of
Africa, and reaching Plymouth on 26 September 1580, its holds laden with
pirated treasure and valuable spices. Queen Elizabeth awarded Drake a
knighthood, despite vehement Spanish protests about his conduct, and canni-
ly got a French envoy, the Marquis de Marchaumont (who was attempting to
negotiate the monarch’s marriage to Francis, duke of Anjou and brother of
King Henry III of France) to carry out the ceremony, thus implying French
support for Drake’s activities. Five years later, when war broke out with
Spain Elizabeth gave Drake command of a fleet of 25 ships and ordered him
to cause as much havoc to Spanish interests as possible—a task that he
162 • DRAKE, FRANCIS (C1540–1596)
undertook with enthusiasm, plundering settlements in the Cape Verde Islands
and the Americas. Then, in 1588, he was vice-admiral of the fleet, led by
Lord High Admiral Charles Howard, earl of Nottingham, that repulsed the
Spanish Armada, which had threatened to invade England (though stories
that he refused to interrupt a game of bowls in order to commence hostilities
are almost certainly apocryphal). That, however, proved to be the final
achievement of Drake’s seafaring career. A mission against Spain and Portu-
gal, in 1589, resulted in the loss of 40 ships (26 of them in storms on the
return voyage), and in 1595–1596, raids on Spanish possessions in the West
Indies proved disastrous as crews succumbed to illness. On 27 January 1596,
Drake himself died after contracting dysentry. The Spaniards were happy to
see him go and even many Englishmen showed little sorrow, fellow sea
captains having found him unreliable, others having shunned his company
because he was boastful and self-seeking. Later biographers have tended to
accord him almost legendary status, painting a picture of a brave leader who
helped to shape English dominance of the oceans and justifying his piracy as
legitimate strikes against his country’s enemies.
See also RALEIGH, WALTER (c. 1554–1618).
 E
EAST AFRICA PROTECTORATE. By the last decades of the 19th centu-
ry, the East African coast was assuming considerable importance in the
foreign policies of major European powers because it commanded important
maritime routes to India and the Far East, including those from the southern
terminus of the Suez Canal. In 1886, in order to avoid conflict, Great Brit-
ain and Germany divided the region into separate spheres of interest, with
Britain taking the area north of a line drawn from the Indian Ocean shore,
near the Pangani River, inland to Lake Victoria (an arrangement that gave
Mount Kilimanjaro to Germany though there is no evidence for the popular
belief that Queen Victoria intended it as a birthday present for her grandson,
the future Kaiser Wilhelm II). The Heligoland-Zanzibar Treaty extended
the boundary to the Belgian Congo (now the Democratic Republic of the
Congo) in 1890. Sultan Barghash of Zanzibar claimed sovereignty over
most of that land but was powerless to prevent the annexation and was left
with only a 10-mile-wide strip of territory that later also fell under British
control (see KENYA PROTECTORATE).
Unwilling to assume responsibility for managing an area of some 250,000
square miles about which little was known, the Prime Minister, Robert Gas-
coyne-Cecil, Lord Salisbury, persuaded William Mackinnon to form a pri-
vate firm that, while administering the region on the government’s behalf,
would promote trade by opening up the interior. Mackinnon, a shipping
entrepreneur, had established a mail service between Zanzibar and Aden in
the early 1870s, had forged a friendship with Barghash, and had encouraged
the ruler to accept the British and German intrusion into the African main-
land. He created a British East Africa Association in 1887 to promote
interest in Salisbury’s proposal then, the following year, founded the Imperi-
al British East Africa Company (IBEAC) with the aim of building a rail-
road from the port of Mombasa to Lake Victoria, encouraging commerce and
ending the slave trade in the region. However, the business was always
under-capitalized and had to use a large portion of its finances on peace-
keeping measures so by 1895 it was near-bankrupt and unable either to make
investments or see the possibility of profit from its operations. As a result,

163
164 • EAST FLORIDA
the government stepped in on 1 July, paid IBEAC a sum of £200,000, re-
lieved the firm of its responsibilities, and declared the area a protectorate,
placing it under the jurisdiction of the consul-general in Zanzibar but with
the administrative headquarters based in the port of Mombasa, in Kenya
Protectorate then, from 1905, in Nairobi.
At first, officials could exercise only limited control over the region’s
interior because of poor transport links but, from 1895 until 1903, some
32,000 laborers were imported from India to work on the construction of a
railroad that ran from the coast to Lake Victoria and enhanced communica-
tion with the fertile lands of the Buganda Plateau. The improved infrastruc-
ture led to the appointment of a resident governor (Sir James Hayes Sadler)
in 1905, but the £5,500,000 cost of building a rail link over nearly 600 miles
of difficult terrain posed serious monetary problems for British officials, who
were required by the government to make the colony financially self-suffi-
cient. Convinced that the Africans would not generate enough trade to justify
the existence of the track, Sir Charles Eliot (the commissioner in charge of
the territory from late December 1900 until May 1904) encouraged white
settlers (many of them from southern Africa) to develop plantations of cash
crops, a move that pushed native peoples into less fertile areas, increasing
racial segregation. Because little detail was available about the soils and
climate in the area, the new farmers planted a wide range of products (includ-
ing coffee, cotton, pineapples, sisal, and tea) and also established large cattle
ranches. However, they found that the Africans were unwilling to work for
them so, in 1903, Eliot imposed a hut tax that forced local men to seek
employment on the plantations in order to pay the levies. As the white settler
numbers increased, the government acceded to their demands for formal
influence over decision making, allocating them seats on a legislative council
that first met in 1907. By 1912–1913, the protectorate was nearly balancing
its budget, with revenue of £952,525 almost equaling expenditure of
£961,178, but World War I proved a considerable drain on resources as
European men voluntarily enlisted with military units, able-bodied African
men were forced to enlist, and food production was geared to support of the
war effort. Although Great Britain and its allies prevailed in the conflict, the
economic and political conditions in the aftermath were very different from
those that preceded it, and on 9 July 1920, as government attempted to
balance African interests with those of the white farmers, it converted the
East Africa Protectorate into Kenya Colony.
See also WITULAND.

EAST FLORIDA. The provisions of the Treaty of Paris, which formally

ended the Seven Years’ War on 10 February 1763, included agreements that
all of French Louisiana east of the Mississippi River (with the exception of
the city of New Orleans) should be ceded to Great Britain, along with the
 EAST INDIA COMPANY • 165
Spanish colony of Florida. That acquisition of Florida was strategically im-
portant because it both complemented the Royal Navy’s domination of the
western Atlantic seaboard and supplemented the defense of Britain’s Carib-
bean possessions. However, administrators considered the area much too
large to manage as a single unit so they divided it into two colonies, with
East Florida covering the land east of the Apalachicola River and governed
from the former Spanish base at St. Augustine. Spain had done little to attract
settlers to its colony so James Grant, who was appointed governor of East
Florida in 1764, found the territory a “New World in a State of Nature” and
quickly set about the task of attracting immigrants who would cultivate crops
that could be exported and thus produce revenue. Believing that grants of
estates to absentee landlords would do little to help, he led by example,
establishing an indigo plantation in 1769, employing 70 slaves, and produc-
ing annual profits of £1,000. Not all of the individuals who accepted the
20,000-acre lots offered free by the Board of Trade if they contracted to settle
land at a density of one resident per 100 acres within 10 years were as
successful. Denys Rolle brought petty criminals and unemployed laborers
from Britain to a plantation on the St. John’s River but found that they could
not cope with either the hard work or the harsh environment, and the 900
impoverished peasants that Andrew Turnbull transported from Greece, Italy,
Minorca, and other locations in the Mediterranean eventually protested
about the cruel treatment of indentured employees on his cotton and sugar
plantation, persuading Patrick Tonyn (the colony’s third governor) to free
them from their contracts. However, other migrants, who arrived from Brit-
ain’s American colonies (notably Georgia and South Carolina) as well as
from Europe, built up viable businesses (the Levett family, for example,
grew corn, grapes, indigo, peas, potatoes, and rice on their Julianton Planta-
tion). The East Florida settlers, enjoying a relative prosperity, remained loyal
to the crown when other colonies rebelled in 1775 (see AMERICAN REVO-
LUTION) and saw the territory’s population increase as it became a base for
attacks on the rebels and a haven for supporters of King George III. Howev-
er, another Treaty of Paris, which ended the American Revolutionary War
on 3 September 1783 (see PARIS, TREATY OF (1783)) returned East Flori-
da to Spain and many residents of British descent moved on again, finding
new homes in the Bahamas, Bermuda, or British possessions in the Carib-
bean.
See also WEST FLORIDA.

EAST INDIA COMPANY. A joint stock business incorporated by royal

charter on 31 December 1600, the East India Company (EIC) promoted the
commercial, military, and political interests of the British Empire in the
Indian subcontinent, and in much of southern and eastern Asia, for more than
250 years. Initially, the attraction for merchants was the spice trade, but over
166 • EAST INDIA COMPANY
time, cotton, indigo, opium, saltpetre, silk, and tea all made major contribu-
tions to the firm’s profits. By 1720, around 15 percent of Britain’s imports
were originating in India and most were Company goods, creating great
wealth for officers and shareholders. Moreover, by retaining its own army,
the firm was able to control vast areas of India, suppressing local resistance
by force of arms. By the second half of the 18th century, however, it was
clear that resources were strained, with recession in Europe reducing demand
for many products and the cost of maintaining order escalating as soldiers
struggled to establish their authority over increasingly extensive territories.
Concerned that an institution created to conduct business was acting more
and more like an independent state, the government assumed greater control
over many of the Company’s operations from 1773, attempting to separate
political activities (which were considered to be the responsibility of the
crown) from commercial activities (which were considered the responsibility
of the firm’s officers). In 1813, the EIC was deprived of its trading monopo-
ly, with the exception of commerce in tea and with China, and in 1834 it lost
its remaining privileges, becoming simply an agent managing India on behalf
of the British crown. Then, in 1857, the Company was blamed for many of
the events that led to the unsuccessful and bloody Indian Mutiny. On 2
August the following year, Queen Victoria gave royal assent to the Govern-
ment of India Act, which transferred the firm’s powers and properties to the
crown, ending all elements of Company rule and inaugurating the period of
the British Raj that lasted until India and Pakistan won independence in
1947. The East India Company was dissolved on 1 January 1874, but the
East India Club, founded in 1849 as a gentlemen’s club for senior employees,
survives, with premises in St. James’s Square, London.
See also ADEN; AFGHANISTAN; AMERICAN REVOLUTION; AN-
DAMAN ISLANDS; BAHRAIN; BANTAM; BENCOOLEN (OR BENKU-
LEN); BENGAL PRESIDENCY; BHUTAN; BLACK HOLE OF CALCUT-
TA; BOMBAY PRESIDENCY; BRITISH INDIA; BRITISH MALAYA;
CAREY, WILLIAM (1761–1834); CARNATIC (OR KARNATIC) WARS
(1746–1748, 1749–1754, AND 1757–1763); CEYLON; CLIVE, ROBERT
(1725–1774); COCHIN; COORG; FIRST BURMESE WAR (1824–1826);
FIRST SIKH WAR (1845–1846); GURKHA (OR NEPALESE) WAR
(1814–1816); HASTINGS, WARREN (1732–1818); HIRADO; INDIA ACT
(1784); JAVA; KEDAH; KUWAIT; MADRAS PRESIDENCY; MALAC-
CA; MARATHA WARS (1775–1782, 1803–1805, AND 1817–1818); MIS-
SIONARIES; MOLUCCAS; MYSORE WARS (1767–1769, 1780–1784,
1790–1792, AND 1799); NEPAL; NORTH, FREDERICK, LORD NORTH
(1732–1792); PAPUA NEW GUINEA; PENANG; PERAK; PERIM IS-
LAND; PERSIAN GULF; PLASSEY, BATTLE OF (23 JUNE 1757);
PULO CONDOR ISLAND; RAFFLES, THOMAS STAMFORD BINGLEY
(1781–1826); REGULATING ACT (1773); SAINT HELENA; SECOND
 EAST OF SUEZ • 167
BURMESE WAR (1852); SECOND SIKH WAR (1848–1849); SERAM-
PORE; SIKKIM; SINGAPORE; STRAITS SETTLEMENTS; SURAT;
TRANQUEBAR.

EAST OF SUEZ. In 1892, in Barrack-Room Ballads, and Other Verses,

Rudyard Kipling published a poem, entitled “Mandalay,” that included the
lines “Ship me somewhere east of Suez, where the best is like the worst/
Where there aren’t no Ten Commandments an’ a man can raise a thirst.”
During the 20th century, Kipling’s “East of Suez” phrase became a shorthand
term, used by historians and politicans as well as by senior military person-
nel, to encompass Britain’s imperial interests in Asia and the Persian Gulf
(though sometimes also including the Middle East). In February 1967, much
to the annoyance of many members of the Labour Party, Prime Minister
Harold Wilson’s government revealed plans to retain a United Kingdom
(U.K.) military presence east of Suez. However, British forces in the Gulf
were unable to prevent Bahrain, Iraq, and other states from imposing an
embargo on oil supplies to the United Kingdom, which supported Israel
militarily in the Arab-Israeli war fought in June of the same year, and that
failure, coupled with the country’s parlous economic situation and the con-
tinuing difficulty of finding recruits for the armed forces, forced a rethink.
On 18 July, Defence Secretary Denis Healey announced that forces east of
Suez would be halved by 1971 and withdrawn completely by the end of
1976. Then devaluation of sterling, on 18 November, caused a further revi-
sion of the plans, leading Roy Jenkins, the chancellor of the exchequer, to
announce on 16 January 1968 that the withdrawal would be sped up and that
forces would be “concentrated in Europe” from 1971. The decision was
much criticized in the United States and by right-wing groups in the U.K.,
but although Edward Heath, Wilson’s Conservative Party successor, strove
to reverse the policy most troops had left their bases in Malaysia and Singa-
pore by the mid-1970s, with only small contingents remaining at such loca-
tions as Brunei and Hong Kong. Recent commentators have interpreted the
withdrawal as the last step in the British retreat from a world role that had
begun with the granting of independence to India and Pakistan in 1947.
However, in 2012, Sir David Richards, the United Kingdom’s chief of de-
fense staff, commented that “After Afghanistan, the [Persian] Gulf will
become our main military effort” and, the following year, the Royal Services
Institute (a defense and security think tank) published a report that drew
attention to a growing British presence in the United Arab Emirates. Other
sources have referred to increased commitment of resources in Bahrain, Ku-
wait, Oman, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia and have suggested that the United
Kingdom may become the major Western presence in the area as the United
States concentrates increasingly on the Pacific region.
168 • EAST PAKISTAN
See also ADEN EMERGENCY (1963–1967); MALDIVE ISLANDS;
SOUTH ARABIA, FEDERATION OF; SOUTH ARABIA, PROTECTO-
RATE OF; TRUCIAL STATES.

EAST PAKISTAN. See PAKISTAN.

EDEN, ROBERT ANTHONY (1897–1977). Anthony Eden had the misfor-

tune to be Britain’s prime minister at the time of the Suez Crisis in
1956–1957. The fourth of five children in the family of landowner Sir
William Eden and his wife, Sybil, he was born at Windlestone Hall, in
northeastern England, on 12 June 1897 and educated at Oxford University,
where he graduated in 1922 with a degree in oriental languages, specializing
in Arabic and Persian and thus acquiring a particular interest in the Middle
East. He entered parliament in 1923, representing the Conservative Party and
the constituency of Warwick and Leamington, and, on 3 September 1931,
was given his first government post—as an under-secretary of state at the
Foreign Office—in the coalition administration formed by Prime Minister
Ramsay Macdonald. That experience was augmented, before the outbreak of
World War II, by service as lord privy seal (6 January1934–7 June 1935),
minister for League of Nations affairs (7 June 1935–22 December 1935), and
foreign secretary (22 December 1935–20 February 1938). On 3 September
1939, at the start of the conflict, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain made
Eden secretary of state for dominion affairs (see COLONIAL OFFICE), but
Winston Churchill, Chamberlain’s successor, promoted him to secretary of
state for war (11 May 1940) then, on 22 December the same year, to foreign
secretary. Throughout the war, Eden was one of Churchill’s closest advisors,
acting as leader of the House of Commons (the lower chamber in Britain’s
bicameral legislature), as well as heading the Foreign Office, from 22 Febru-
ary 1942. The Labour Party’s surprise victory at the first postwar general
election in 1945 forced him out of office, but he returned as deputy prime
minister to Winston Churchill (and again as foreign secretary) on 26 October
1951. When Churchill resigned on 6 April 1955, at the age of 80, Eden was
the natural successor.
The new premier—good looking and charming—was popular in the coun-
try, but his political experience was almost entirely in foreign affairs so he
tended to leave domestic policy in the hands of his ministers. Economic
problems (a result, in part, of industrial unrest in the transport industry)
caused much concern but world issues were an even greater worry, particu-
larly after Gamal Abdel Nasser, Egypt’s president, nationalized the Suez
Canal in July 1956. At the time, two-thirds of Western Europe’s oil supplies
passed through the canal and one-third of all the shipping was registered in
the United Kingdom. Eden was convinced that if Nasser was allowed to
 EGYPT • 169
prevail then Egypt and other Arab countries would align themselves with the
Soviet Union so, believing that the United States would support him because
Nasser had been attempting to undermine Western-oriented administrations
in the Middle East, he worked on a tripartite plan of invasion by Britain,
France, and Israel. Israel attacked on 29 October. The British and French
followed on 5 and 6 November, declaring that they would act as a peacekeep-
ing force but intent on overthrowing Nasser and regaining control of the
shipping lanes. In the United Kingdom, opinion polls showed that public
opinion was divided. Abroad, the Soviet Union, the United Nations, and the
United States all condemned the action, and when his military commanders
told him that it could take as much as six days to make the area secure the
prime minister succumbed to the political pressure, calling for a ceasefire. On
19 November, Eden’s aides announced that he was cancelling engagements
on grounds of ill health and on 21 November he traveled to Jamaica for rest.
That period of relaxation did little good. He appeared again in parliament on
20 December to deny that he had any foreknowledge of Israel’s plans to
attack Egypt and faced much criticism that he had not seen the action through
to the end, but doctors warned him that his life was in danger if he attempted
to continue as prime minister so on 9 January 1957 he resigned. Eden died on
14 January 1977, bolstered by a swelling of support from writers who
claimed that if the United States had backed him the West would not have
appeared divided over the Middle East and that a successful invasion in 1956
would have prevented later Arab-Israeli conflicts.
See also LEAGUE OF EMPIRE LOYALISTS; MACMILLAN, MAU-
RICE HAROLD (1894–1986).

EGYPT. By the third quarter of the 19th century, Egypt was deeply in debt
to the major European powers, partly as a result of an expensive war against
Abyssinia. In 1876, an international commission placed control of the coun-
try’s finances in the hands of Britain and France, but those foreign influences
annoyed many Egyptians and the dissatisfaction led to a revolt in 1882.
Britain—for reasons that are still not clear but probably reflected both a fear
that Egypt would default on its debts and a desire to maintain uninterrupted
communications to India through the Suez Canal—supported the ruling khe-
dive, Muhammed Tawfiq Pasha, by sending an invasion force that defeated
the rebels at Tel al-Kabīr on 13 September and occupied Cairo the following
day. In effect, that military action made Egypt a protectorate. The British
government was unwilling to assert formal control over the territory because
that would worsen internal tensions and annoy other colonial powers (and
France in particular), but, even so, some form of presence was necessary in
order to protect strategic interests. In 1883, Sir Evelyn Baring (later the earl
of Cromer) was appointed consul-general, with a brief to introduce adminis-
trative reforms, and from then until his resignation in 1907 was the de facto
170 • ELIZABETH ISLAND
ruler of the area, returning the country to solvency in 1897 and presiding over
a period of peace that helped to increase commercial activity and restore
political stability. On 18 December 1914, five months after the outbreak of
World War I in 1914, Britain formally declared Egypt a protectorate, but in
1919, after the conflict ended, nationalist sentiments led to violence once
again. On 28 February 1922, acting on the advice of Viscount Edmund
Allenby (the high commissioner to Egypt and the Sudan), the British
government declared Egypt independent, as a kingdom under Fu’ād I, but
retained control over defense and several other matters, including aspects of
foreign affairs. That independence was largely illusory because both King
Fu’ād and the nationalist-dominated parliament (which nominally opposed
both foreign influence and royal autocracy) competed for British support in
their struggles for power. However, on 26 August 1936, spurred by the
Italian invasion of Ethiopia the previous fall, King Farouk (Fu’ād’s son and
successor) signed an Anglo-Egyptian treaty that ended the British political
presence but created a 20-year military alliance that allowed Britain to retain
an air force base at Alexandria and to provide barracks for up to 10,000 army
and air force personnel who could protect the Suez Canal. The alliance was
ended, unilaterally, by the Egyptian parliament in 1951.
See also ADEN; BAKER, SAMUEL WHITE (1821–1893); CAPE TO
CAIRO RAILWAY; DISRAELI, BENJAMIN, EARL OF BEACONS-
FIELD (1804–1881); EDEN, ROBERT ANTHONY (1897–1977); GLAD-
STONE, WILLIAM EWART (1809–1898); KITCHENER, HORATIO
HERBERT (1850–1916); SOUTH ARABIA, FEDERATION OF; STAN-
LEY, HENRY MORTON (1841–1904); SUEZ CRISIS (1956–1957).

ELIZABETH ISLAND. Francis Fletcher, a clergyman who accompanied

Francis Drake on his circumnavigation of the world in 1577–1580, noted
that, on 24 August 1578, the ships “fell in with 3 islands, bearing triangle-
wise one from the other” as they passed through the Strait of Magellan, at the
southern tip of South America. Drake named one of the islands “Elizabeth
Island,” in honor of Queen Elizabeth I. On the others the crews found “great
store of strange birds, which could not fly at all” and “killed no less than
3,000” on a single day. These small landmasses were named St. Bartholo-
mew’s Island (because 24 August is St. Bartholomew’s feast day) and St.
George’s Island (because St. George is the patron saint of England). Queen
Elizabeth was declared sovereign over all three. However, although 16th-
century mariners were able to calculate latitude with a fair degree of accura-
cy, the means of determining longitude with precision lay nearly 200 years in
the future so the islands’ positions could not be located correctly and, more-
over, Fletcher’s simple map and descriptions lacked detail. As a result, 21st-
century scholars remain uncertain where Drake actually landed, but the
claims to possession are significant because they were among England’s
 EMPIRE AIR MAIL SCHEME • 171
earliest assertions of Empire in the New World and the first in South Ameri-
ca, even though there was no means by which the monarch could have
defended her right to the lands militarily.
See also NOVA ALBION (OR NEW ALBION).

ELLICE ISLANDS. See COMMONWEALTH REALM; GILBERT AND

ELLICE ISLANDS.

EMPIRE AIR MAIL SCHEME. From the early 1920s, strategists in Brit-
ain considered the possibility of carrying first-class mail to all parts of the
Empire by air, partly for commercial reasons but also because they believed
that a fast form of international mail transport would help to bind imperial
territories together more closely. The creation of Imperial Airways, in 1924,
provided a means of converting concept into reality but the practicalities
were not worked out by the airline’s chairman, Sir Eric Geddes, until 1933
and not formally adopted by the British government until 20 December 1934,
after a series of experimental trials of the system. The logistical problems
were considerable, with more than 20 tons of mail expected annually at a rate
of 1½ pence per half ounce for letters and one penny for postcards. Imperial
would be guaranteed a sum of £2,150,000 each year for the first three years,
with Britain and 31 colonies combining to provide £935,000 of that amount.
Geddes (who was delighted that British possessions were contributing to the
subsidy because that meant they would be less likely to help fund competi-
tors based in their own areas) invested in flying boats because, he argued,
that would be less expensive than attempting to build airfields for land-based
planes. Services began with a flight from Southampton (in southern England)
to Sudan, East Africa, and South Africa on 29 June 1937. Further routes
were developed to Egypt, India, Burma, and the Malay States from 23
February 1938, to Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific islands from 29
July the same year, to Hong Kong from 2 September, and to Iraq from 15
May 1939. The airline experienced much financial and political turbulence.
Some critics objected to its monopoly carrier rights and several colonies
complained about costs. The flying boats were heavy (so cargoes were limit-
ed) and aircraft structures damaged easily (so maintenance costs were high).
However, the scheme was enormously popular—so much so that as Christ-
mas loomed in 1938 Imperial had to scramble around to find additional
planes on short-term leases. The experience convinced managements that the
flying boats should be replaced by land-based planes but World War II broke
out before the transition could be made. The Empire Air Mail Scheme was
suspended and was not reintroduced after the conflict ended in 1945.
See also ALL RED LINE; ALL-RED ROUTE; IMPERIAL AIRSHIP
SCHEME; IMPERIAL WIRELESS CHAIN.
172 • EMPIRE DAY
EMPIRE DAY. In 1898—primarily as a result of a campaign by writer
Clementina Trenholme—schools in Dundas, Ontario, designated the school
day closest to 24 May (Queen Victoria’s birthday) a time for celebrating the
achievements of the British Empire. From there, the innovation spread to
other areas of Canada, and, in Great Britain, was adopted enthusiastically by
Reginald Brabazon, earl of Meath, after he read accounts of a ceremony held
at Hamilton, Ontario, in 1896. Meath organized an event in London on 24
May 1904 but got little support from politicians, and in 1908—much to the
delight of Irish nationalists—the House of Commons (the lower chamber in
Britain’s bicameral parliament) rejected plans to give the day official recog-
nition. Undeterred, the earl continued to press his case, buoyed by the enthu-
siasm of the British public (in Hyde Park, London, in 1911 an estimated
200,000 people attended parades and other activities that, according to the
Times newspaper, provided a “spectacle . . . to kindle the dullest imagination
and stir the most sluggish heart”), and eventually, in 1916, he succeeded in
convincing a majority of parliamentarians, aided by the heightened sense of
patriotism generated by World War I. The name was altered to Commonealth
Day in 1958—a reflection of the United Kingdom’s changing political rela-
tionships with its former colonial possessions—and in 1976 the date was
moved to the second Monday in March because schools throughout the
Commonwealth of Nations are in session at that time. Nowadays, too, Com-
monwealth Day is usually linked to a theme (“Women as Agents of Change”
in 2011, for example, and “Opportunity through Enterprise” in 2013) and the
monarch attends a service in Westminster Abbey, London, along with other
members of the royal family, but it is a designated national holiday only in
Gibraltar so, although some educational establishments organize special
activities, for the most part it is ignored.

EMPIRE EXHIBITIONS. Proposals to mount an exhibition that would

showcase the commercial products of the British Empire, and thus stimulate
trade, were mooted in 1913 but discarded at the outbreak of World War I. In
1922, however, parliament authorized an expenditure of £115,000 to stage an
event at Wembley, then an undeveloped site northwest of central London.
The money was used to build roads and rail links, construct buildings (in-
cluding the Empire Stadium, which later, as Wembley Stadium, became a
popular venue for sporting competitions and other events that attracted large
numbers of spectators), landscape grounds, and install water supplies and
sewage systems. Most of the structures were innovatory, made of concrete
(then a new building material) and including the world’s first “motor omni-
bus station,” and the opening address by King George V on 23 April 1924
was the first speech by a British sovereign to be broadcast on radio. The core
of the Exhibition was 16 buildings housing displays by the territories of the
Empire (for example, Ceylon had a pavilion modeled on the Temple of the
 EMPIRE GAMES • 173
Tooth in Kandy, and the West Indies and British Guiana had a series of
exhibits based on sugar production). British government departments offered
their own presentations (the Post Office had an automatic telephone ex-
change), railroad companies brought their most modern locomotives, the
Royal Air Force (formed just six years earlier) excited crowds by firing blank
ammunition, and Frank Lascelles (who had designed a pageant for the Festi-
val of Empire in 1911) mounted a series of historically themed extravagan-
zas (such as “King George III and the Departure of Captain [James] Cook”)
that required a 15,000-strong cast, 730 camels, 500 donkeys, and seven ele-
phants. The Exhibition—which cost £12,000,000 to stage, attracted
27,000,000 visitors, and lost £1,500,000—ran over two summers, closing on
31 October 1925.
A second Empire Exhibition, held in Glasgow in 1938, was the brainchild
of a group of Scots businessmen, including Cecil Weir (whose family firm
dealt in leather and hides) and shipbuilder James Lithgow. Construction be-
gan in Bellahouston Park in the autumn of 1936 and the Exhibition was
opened by King George VI on 3 May 1938. The attractions had a strong
industrial emphasis, as befitted Glasgow’s reputation as a center of heavy
engineering, but the 12,500,000 visitors were also able to climb a 470-foot-
high tower, designed by architect Thomas S. Tait, that offered a view of up to
100 miles from the top, and to tour pavilions, erected by the territories of the
Empire, that offered such sights as an illuminated map of Canada and a
working model of the Victoria Falls. The exhibition closed on 29 October.

EMPIRE GAMES. Proposals that the territories of the British Empire

should compete against each other at a multisport event were made in the late
19th century and contests in boxing, wrestling, and other activities featured
as part of the Festival of Empire in London in 1911, but the outbreak of
World War I in 1914 meant that embryo plans for a regular sporting jambor-
ee had to be discarded. However, the concept was resurrected by Melville
Marks (“Bobby”) Robinson, a journalist and sports administrator, who at-
tended the 1928 Olympic Games in Amsterdam as manager of the Canadian
track and field team. Robinson persuaded the city council in Hamilton, Onta-
rio, to build a stadium and swimming pool large enough to house athletes and
spectators and visited other Empire countries in an effort to encourage partic-
ipation. Despite the problems of a world economic recession, he persuaded
11 teams, with 400 members, to attend and compete in seven sports from
16–23 August 1930, with Hamilton City Council contributing $30,000 to
assist with travel costs. The Games were organized again in 1934 and 1938,
were interrupted by World War II, resumed in 1950, and have been held
every four years since, with 7,000 athletes from more than 70 member coun-
tries of the Commonwealth of Nations taking part in some 17 sports at the
events held in the early 21st century. As political contexts changed and the
174 • EMPIRE SETTLEMENT ACT (1922)
speed of decolonization grew, the name changed to British Empire and Com-
monwealth Games in 1954, then to British Commonwealth Games in 1970
and to Commonwealth Games in 1974. From 2002, events for disabled ath-
letes have been included in the program and a Youth Games, for competitors
aged 14–18, was introduced in 2000.

EMPIRE SETTLEMENT ACT (1922). In 1919, the British government

introduced an Overseas Settlement Scheme that assisted military personnel,
returning from World War I, to move to the territories of the Empire with
their families and build new lives. On 31 May 1922, the arrangements were
expanded, through the Empire Settlement Act, to extend those opportunities
to all “suitable persons,” including married couples, single farm laborers,
single women (particularly those seeking jobs as domestic servants), and
teenagers aged 14–17. However, although free passages, and promises of
land and of training opportunities, encouraged 212,000 people to move to
Australia and 130,000 to Canada, the program never fulfilled politicians’
aspirations. Education and jobs often failed to materialize. Women—many of
whom had experienced, during the war, work formerly done by men—were
unwilling to sacrifice freedom of opportunity and independence for the drud-
gery of work as a scullery maid. Also, critics in the United Kingdom com-
plained that the arrangements were depriving the country of “the best blood
of our land, the young and vigorous.” By the end of the decade, the number
of applicants had dwindled to a trickle as world economic conditions forced
governments in the dominions to cut their financial support, and although
the legislation was renewed in 1937 World War II made it irrelevant. After
hostilities ended, support for migrants continued at a reduced level until the
act and its successors, known from 1962 as the Commonwealth Settlement
Acts, were repealed in 1976.

EMPIRE WIRELESS CHAIN. See IMPERIAL WIRELESS CHAIN.

ENDERBURY ISLAND. See BRITISH WESTERN PACIFIC TERRITO-

RIES; CANTON (OR KANTON) AND ENDERBURY ISLANDS; GIL-
BERT AND ELLICE ISLANDS; PHOENIX ISLAND; PHOENIX IS-
LANDS.

ENGLISH LANGUAGE. Some 360,000,000 people speak English as a first

language, and estimates of numbers who use it as a second language range
from some 450,000,000 to more than one billion depending on the rigor with
which fluency is measured. The spread of the language reflects the expansion
of Britain’s Empire. It was taken to North America and the Caribbean by
settlers from the early 17th century and to Australia by the convicts exiled to
 ERITREA • 175
penal settlements from 1788. In both locations, the vocabulary evolved as
new words (such as “bluff,” “notch,” and “underbrush”) were coined to cope
with new environments, while others (such as “tomahawk” and “wigwam”)
were borrowed from the tongues of indigenous peoples so, over time, distinc-
tive dialects of English developed in different areas. In West Africa, English
was first introduced as the language of trade (particularly, from the mid-16th
century, the slave trade), initiating the evolution of pidgin tongues in order to
facilitate commerce. As contacts increased, some of these became estab-
lished creoles; in Sierra Leone, for instance, the most common language is
Krio, which emerged from the pidgin languages of several groups of escaped
or freed slaves, including individuals from Jamaica and Nova Scotia as well
as from other areas of Africa.
Both in Africa and in Asia, as the Empire expanded, native populations
had to learn English in order to communicate with their colonial masters
because, although missionaries such as William Carey in India and Robert
Moffat in southern Africa learned local lingua franca so that they could
deliver their Christian message, most official contacts in education, govern-
ment, and the judicial system were conducted in English. After indepen-
dence, many former colonies decided to retain English for official purposes,
partly because most educated residents spoke the language and many of their
political leaders, such as Hastings Banda of Nyasaland and Julius Nyerere
of Tanganyika, were fluent because they had attended colleges or univer-
sities in Britain. (Banda, in fact, had spent so long abroad that, when he
returned to Nyasaland, he had to harangue crowds through an interpreter
because he had forgotten the Chichewa tongue he had used as a child.) Also,
in countries such as Nigeria, where hundreds of languages are spoken (be-
cause imperial boundaries were drawn with reference to the features of phys-
ical rather than social geography and thus grouped disparate peoples in a
single territory), English provides a form of cultural unity while avoiding
charges that one powerful linguistic group is discriminating against speakers
of other tongues.

EOKA (ETHNIKÍ ORGÁNOSIS KIPRIAKOÚ AGÓNOS). See CY-

PRUS; GRIVAS, GEORGE (1898–1974); MAKARIOS III, ARCHBISHOP
(1913–1977).

ERITREA. Eritrea, on Africa’s Red Sea coast, was colonized by Italy from
1882 and occupied by the United Kingdom (U.K.) after British, French, and
Indian troops defeated Italian forces at Keren, a strategically important com-
mercial and route center, in February and March 1941, during World War II.
The U.K. established military rule in the territory but, faced with the heavy
requirements of funds and manpower needed to pursue the war, retained the
176 • ERITREA
Italian administrators, including judges, who continued to apply Italian colo-
nial law. Politically, several British strategists favored a postwar world in
which Eritrea would be partitioned on religious grounds, with the Moslem
west being attached to the Sudan, a British colony, and the Christian east
being annexed by Ethiopia, which, after five years of Italian control, was also
occupied by Allied armies in 1941. However, the other Great Powers had
different priorities, with France preferring the creation of a United Nations
Trust Territory under Italian supervision, the Soviet Union arguing for a
similar arrangement but with international supervision, and the United States
(which was keen to establish a naval base on the Red Sea at Massawa)
advocating annexation by Ethiopia. As diplomats bickered, Britain disman-
tled much of the industrial and military infrastructure of the region, including
a floating dock at Massawa and parts of the railroad network. The materials
were then sold off in order to pay war debts, though the cost to Eritreans was
considerable because of the loss of employment. Also, some writers argue
that the policy was a deliberate attempt to destroy the region’s economy, thus
allowing the proponents of partition to claim that Eritrea could not survive as
an independent state.
Expansion of the education system, the promotion of a secular press, and
the formation (from 1946) of political parties combined to make the resi-
dents’ opinions about their preferred future more evident than was possible
under Italian rule, but reports by visiting commissions from the four Allied
powers (from 12 November 1947 until 3 January 1948) and by the United
Nations (from 9 February until 9 April 1950) concluded that those views
were sharply divided, with most followers of Islam strongly opposed to
joining Christian Ethiopia, where fellow Moslems had suffered much dis-
crimination, and many members of both dominant religious groups prefer-
ring independence. John Foster Dulles, the American ambassador to the
United Nations, paid lip service to the principle of local self-determination,
claiming that “From the point of view of justice, the opinions of the Eritrean
people must receive consideration,” but that, nevertheless, “the strategic
interest of the United States in the Red Sea basin and the considerations of
security and world peace make it necessary that the country has to be linked
with our ally, Ethiopia.” On 2 December 1950, the United Nations’ General
Assembly, much pressured by the United States, decided that Eritrea should
become “an autonomous unit federated with Ethiopia under the sovereignty
of the Ethiopian Crown” and ordered Britain to surrender control by 15
September 1952. The federation was not a success because Emperor Haile
Selasse’s Ethiopian government made such determined efforts to exert cultu-
ral, economic, and political domination over Eritrea that it stoked a resistance
movement, which conducted a 30-year-long guerilla war that ended with
independence in 1993.
 ESSEQUIBO • 177
ESSEQUIBO. See AMIENS, TREATY OF (1802); ANGLO-DUTCH
TREATY (1814); BERBICE; BRITISH GUIANA; CHAMBERLAIN, JO-
SEPH (1836–1914); DEMERARA-ESSEQUIBO.
 F
FALKLAND ISLANDS. The Falkland archipelago lies in the southern At-
lantic Ocean, about 300 miles east of the South American mainland, at lati-
tude 51° 41´ South and longitude 59° 10´ West. First settled by the French in
1764, it was a base for sealing and whaling fleets, and an important source of
supplies for ships rounding Cape Horn, for most of the 19th century then
developed an extensive sheep farming industry from the 1870s and, in the
last years of the 20th century, increased income from fishing (through the
sale of licenses to foreign fleets) and from tourism. The first British claims to
territory were made on 22 January 1765 by John Byron, a naval officer
undertaking a circumnavigation of the globe (see UNION ISLANDS). Set-
tlers arrived to establish Port Egmont the following year but withdrew in
1774, leaving a plaque stating that the withdrawal did not indicate a surren-
der of sovereignty. Early in 1833, the navy returned and expelled Argentinian
administrators, who had taken up residence in 1830 and were asserting that
the islands were Argentinian soil. Britain has exercised control over the
Falklands ever since, with the government taking a decision to support colo-
nization of the area in 1840 and appointing a lieutenant-governor the follow-
ing year. By the end of the century, the population numbered about 2,000, the
vast majority with British (and principally Scottish) ancestry, but Argentina
continued to reject United Kingdom (U.K.) rights to the territory so in 1964
the competing claims were considered by the United Nations Committee on
Decolonization, which asked both countries to enter negotiations that would
lead to a peaceful resolution of the dispute. Those discussions dragged on
until April 1982, when the Argentinian government ordered a military occu-
pation of the Falklands, starting a conflict that lasted for 10 weeks before
U.K. troops regained control (see FALKLANDS WAR (1982)). In the after-
math of the war, the British government made major investments in the
Falklands’ infrastructure (particularly in transport) and encouraged diversifi-
cation of the economy. Administratively, the islands are now a British Over-
seas Territory with a governor (who exercises executive authority on behalf
of the monarch) and a Legislative Assembly, with an elected majority, that
can enact laws promoting “peace, order and good government.” Argentina

179
180 • FALKLAND ISLANDS DEPENDENCIES
has regularly restated its right to sovereignty and in 2010 U.S. Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton called for discussions about the dispute, but the British
government asserts that its control of the archipelago is not negotiable.
See also FALKLAND ISLANDS DEPENDENCIES; NORTH, FREDE-
RICK, LORD NORTH (1732–1792).

FALKLAND ISLANDS DEPENDENCIES. From 1843 until 1985, Britain

grouped Antarctic and sub-Antarctic possessions in a single administrative
unit nominally attached to the Falkland Islands. The composition of the unit
was not clearly defined until 21 July 1908, when, in response to much prod-
ding from Norway (which had a large whaling fleet operating in the south
Atlantic), government papers listed South Georgia, the South Orkney Is-
lands, the South Sandwich Islands, the South Shetland Islands and Gra-
ham Land (on the Antarctic Pensinsula) as areas claimed on the basis of right
of discovery. Nine years later, additional documentation used lines of latitude
and longitude to delineate the claim more clearly by asserting sovereignty
over a wedge of the Antarctic mainland stretching to the South Pole and by
including seas around the islands. However, on 3 March 1962 (nine months
after the Antarctic Treaty had given all states the right to conduct scientific
research anywhere on the continent) the dependencies south of the 60th
parallel of latitude were redesignated British Antarctic Territory, leaving
only South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands as Falkland Islands
Dependencies and they were converted into a British Dependent Territory
on 3 October 1985.

FALKLANDS WAR (1982). The Falkland Islands lie at latitude 51° 41´
South and longitude 59° 10´ West in the southern Atlantic Ocean, some 300
miles from the mainland of South America. They are claimed both by Britain
and by Argentina, which knows them as Las Islas Malvinas. On 2 April
1982, General Leopoldo Galtieri, Argentina’s leader, ordered his troops to
take control of the territory. The small British garrison surrendered, the Unit-
ed Nations called on Galtieri to withdraw, and the European Economic Com-
munity (EEC) imposed trade sanctions on Argentina, but the invading force
stayed put. On 5 April, a naval task force left the United Kingdom, intent on
establishing a 200 mile “exclusion zone” around the island by preventing any
ships or aircraft from entering the area, and on 25 April commando groups
took South Georgia, which lies about 850 miles east of the main island
group and had been occupied on 19 March. Then, on 2 May, the Argentinian
cruiser Belgrano was sunk, with the loss of 321 lives (the Sun, a tabloid
newspaper, hailed the event with the headline “GOTCHA”). Two days later,
the Argentinian air force replied by attacking the cruiser HMS Sheffield with
exocet missiles, killing 22 of the crew and forcing the survivors to abandon
 FANNING ISLAND (OR FANNING ATOLL) • 181
ship as fire spread. Four other British vessels were sunk during the conflict,
but, from 27 May, United Kingdom forces began to win back strategic sites
on the Falklands mainland, including Goose Green, Darwin, Tumbledown
Hill, and ultimately, on 14 June, Port Stanley, the principal settlement, forc-
ing an Argentinian surrender. By that time, about 650 Argentinian military
personnel, and 256 British seamen and soldiers had been killed, along with
one Royal Air Force officer and three Falklanders. Politically, the war did
much to increase the popularity of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher even
though it cost an estimated £1.6 billion to fight. After it ended, Britain
adopted a Fortress Falklands policy, strengthening its military presence and
attempting to develop the islands’ economy. Politically, the official stance is
that the Falklands are British and will stay that way.
See also ASCENSION ISLAND.

FANNING ISLAND (OR FANNING ATOLL). Fanning Island (now

known as Tabuaeran) lies in the central Pacific Ocean, some 1,200 miles
south of Hawaii, at latitude 3° 51´ North and longitude 159° 21´ West. It is
named after Captain Edmund Fanning, an American citizen, who chanced
upon the 13-square-mile coral atoll on 11 June 1798 while heading for China
with a cargo of sealskins on his whaler, Betsy (see WASHINGTON IS-
LAND). At the time, the island was uninhabited, and although visited occa-
sionally in subsequent years by other whaling vessels it was not permanently
settled until 1846, when Scotsman William Greig laid claim to the territory
and began to farm the coconuts. Five years later, he sold the rights to Charles
Wilson. In 1852, he, in turn, passed them on to Henry English, who brought
150 workmen from Manihiki, one of the Cook Islands, and developed a
business exporting the coconut oil, which was in demand for soap making
and other manufacturing processes. When Captain William H. Morshead’s
corvette, HMS Dido, dropped anchor on 16 October 1855, the two men
agreed that the territory should be placed under British protection but it was
not formally annexed (by Captain Sir William Wiseman of HMS Caroline)
until 15 March 1888. In addition to coconut products, the atoll’s guano
reserves were exploited during the 1870s and 1880s, but Great Britain’s
primary interest in Fanning was as a midpoint relay station for a transpacific
telegraph cable that would run from Bamfield (2,200 miles to the east, in
Canada) to Suva (3,300 miles to the west, on Fiji) and then on to Australia
(see ALL RED LINE). The station opened in 1902 and was manned until
1964, when it was rendered obsolete by a decision to use Hawaii as a relay
station for a new Commonwealth Pacific Cable System (COMPAC). From
1966 until 1981 (when funds dried up), the building functioned as an oceano-
graphic research base for scientists from the University of Hawaii. The coco-
nut plantations changed hands on several occasions until 1935 when they
were bought by Burns, Philp & Company, an Australian firm with trading
182 • FASHODA INCIDENT
interests on several Pacific Ocean islands that operated under the name of
Fanning Island Plantations Ltd. Fanning was incorporated within the crown
colony of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands on 27 January 1916 and became
part of the Republic of Kiribati when the Gilberts won independence on 12
July 1979. The government of the new state purchased Fanning Islands Plan-
tations in 1983 and has since used the atoll to resettle families from the small
country’s overpopulated islands.

FASHODA INCIDENT. In the last years of the 19th century, Britain and
France were striving for command of territory in Africa, with the former
attempting to build a north-south chain of colonies from Egypt to the Cape
of Good Hope and the latter concentrating on an east–west chain of colonies
that would give it control of trade in the Sahel (the vast semiarid region south
of the Sahara Desert). The town of Fashoda (now Kodok, in South Sudan)
lay at the crossroads of those axes, controlling the headwaters of the River
Nile, and in the late summer of 1898 was occupied by both powers, with
neither keen to concede authority to the other. However, France needed
British support in disputes with Germany so on 4 November Théophile Del-
cassé (the French foreign minister) ordered his troops to withdraw, and on 21
March the following year the two governments agreed that the watershed of
the River Congo and the River Nile would mark the boundary of their respec-
tive spheres of influence on the continent. The diplomatic contretemps was
the last major colonial dispute between Britain and France but some writers
believe that it produced a “Fashoda Syndrome” in French foreign policy that,
even toward the end of the 20th century, was encouraging France to assert
itself in areas of Africa that could fall under Britain’s sway, as in Rwanda in
1990.
See also GASCOYNE-CECIL, ROBERT ARTHUR TALBOT, MAR-
QUESS OF SALISBURY (1830–1903); OMDURMAN, BATTLE OF (2
SEPTEMBER 1898).

FEDERATED MALAY STATES. On 1 July 1896, the hereditary rulers of

Negeri Sembilan, Pahang, Perak, and Selangor—protectorates on the
Malay Peninsula—signed a treaty of federation that provided for a central-
ized administration based at Kuala Lumpur. Britain was responsible for the
conduct of the new protectorate’s foreign relations and for providing defense.
Nominally, the local leaders retained control of domestic affairs but, in prac-
tice, were bound by the terms of the agreement to act on the advice of a
British resident unless the issues related specifically to Islamic or traditional
concerns. The following decades brought the creation of a road network, the
development of extensive rubber plantations (with much of the labor pro-
vided by immigrants from India), the exploitation of tin ores (using workers
 FERNANDO PO • 183
from China), and the provision of educational institutions and health ser-
vices. Economic progress was interrupted by World War II, when (from late
1941 until 1945) the area was occupied by Japanese forces, and postwar
political pressures were very different from those of the prewar period. On 1
April 1946, as Britain attempted to reduce the cost of running its Empire, the
Federated States merged with Malacca and Penang (formerly parts of the
Straits Settlements) and with the Unfederated Malay States to form the
Malayan Union. However, the Union was very unpopular with residents so
was replaced on 31 January 1948 by the Federation of Malaya.
See also BRITISH MALAYA.

FEDERATION OF THE WEST INDIES. See WEST INDIES FEDERA-

TION.

FERNANDO PO. The 780-square-mile island of Fernando Po (now Bioko)

lies in the Gulf of Guinea some 20 miles off the coast of Cameroon at latitude
3° 30´ North and longitude 8° 42´ East. It was claimed by Portugal in 1494
but ceded to Spain in 1778 in return for Spanish recognition of Portuguese
territorial claims in South America. Neither country did much with the land,
largely because it lay in a region of West Africa that was known to Euro-
peans as the “White Man’s Grave” because so many diseases were endemic,
but after the passage of the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act in 1807
Britain’s Royal Navy needed a base from which to intercept vessels carrying
captives from Africa to the Americas and Fernando Po was strategically
ideal. From 27 October 1827, the British government leased a harbor on the
island’s north coast, naming it Port Clarence in honor of William, duke of
Clarence (later King William IV), and appointing John Beecroft master of
works, with responsibility for the construction of docks and shore facilities.
The Rev. John Clarke and Dr. George K. Price of the Baptist Missionary
Society arrived in 1841, intending to stay only briefly before investigating
the possibility of preaching the Christian gospel to groups along the River
Niger but finding their reception by the freed slaves on Fernando Po so
welcoming that they remained. However, the growing community and the
apparent success of the Protestant missionaries encouraged Roman Catholic
Spain to reassert sovereignty. In March 1843, Captain Juan José Lerena
hoisted the Spanish flag over Port Clarence, renamed it Santa Isabel, and
made Beecroft governor of the predominantly English and African popula-
tion (a post that he held until his death in 1854 while also acting, during the
last five years of his life, as British consul to the Bights of Biafra and
Benin). Britain recognized Spain’s right to rule on 27 June and, by 1861, had
relocated the Royal Navy to Lagos, where, in 1851, Beecroft had supported a
coup that had installed a ruler willing to suppress the commerce in slaves.
184 • FESTIVAL OF EMPIRE (1911)
Fernando Po merged with other Spanish possessions to form Spanish Guinea
in 1926 then, when that colony won independence as Equatorial Guinea in
1963, Santa Isabel—rechristened Malabo in 1973—became the new state’s
capital. Descendants of slaves freed by the British fleet still form a distinct
ethnic group in the city; known as Krios Fernandinos, they have a consider-
able reputation for business success and educational achievement.
See also BURTON, RICHARD FRANCIS (1821–1890).

FESTIVAL OF EMPIRE (1911). The celebrations organized for the coro-

nation of King George V in 1911 included a Festival of Empire, held at
Crystal Palace in London and opened on 12 May with a concert presented by
the London Symphony Orchestra, the Queen’s Hall Orchestra, military band-
smen, and a 4,500-voice “Imperial choir.” The centerpiece, however, was a
pageant, designed by Frank Lascelles, who was well known for staging lav-
ish displays (see EMPIRE EXHIBITIONS). Presented in four parts over
three days and repeated regularly over a three-month period, it told the story
of “the gradual growth and development of the English nation, as seen in the
history of this, the Empire City” with the aid of some 15,000 performers, 500
choristers, a military band, and music prepared by such distinguished com-
posers as Gustav Holst and Ralph Vaughan Williams. Other events included
sports contests that attracted participants from Canada, Great Britain,
South Africa, and a combined team from Australia and New Zealand.
Also, an All-British Exhibition of Arts and Industries showcased the mother
country’s achievements in fields as disparate as applied chemistry and piano
making, and a Country Life area included a model village and farm stock.
Parliament buildings from around the Empire were constructed in three-
quarter size and housed displays that allowed visitors to view a Canadian
logging camp, an Indian tea plantation, a South African diamond mine, and
other scenes from the colonies. The Festival—part education, part entertain-
ment, part imperialist propaganda—ended on 16 September.

FIJI. Fiji consists of about 100 inhabited islands, and several hundred islets
with no population, that lie in the Pacific Ocean about 1,300 miles north of
New Zealand at latitude 18° 10´ South and longitude 178° 27´ East. Their
existence was known to Europeans from 1643 (when Abel Tasman, a Dutch
explorer, landed), but commercial interest was limited until resources of
sandalwood and sea cucumber were exploited in the early 19th century. In
the early 1860s, a world shortage of cotton, caused by the American Civil
War, encouraged an influx of settlers—many of them from Australia—who
attempted to capitalize on high prices by establishing plantations. However,
disputes over land and labor led to much friction and, in 1870, a hurricane
destroyed the crop. With falling returns adding to the pressures and domestic
 FIRST AFGHAN WAR (1839–1842) • 185
efforts to solve the problems compounding (rather than alleviating) debts,
local leaders offered to cede the territory to Britain so on 10 October 1874
Fiji became a crown colony. Sir Arthur Gordon, who was appointed govern-
or in 1875 after administrative experience in Mauritius and Trinidad,
adopted a series of measures designed to promote the interests of native
Fijians, attracting external investment in sugarcane enterprises that replaced
cotton growing, establishing a Great Council of Chiefs to advise him on
matters relating to the island peoples, and prohibiting sales of land to immi-
grants. Also, he encouraged the use of indentured Indian workers—a scheme
that prevented exploitation of Fijian labor but which later contributed to
ethnic tensions because many of the incomers opted to remain after their
service obligations had been met. Initially, the governor was advised by an
appointed council (in addition to the Great Council of Chiefs), but from 1904
some members were elected and in 1953 the group was restructured to ensure
representation of European, Indo-Fijian, and native Fijian interests. By that
time, the Indo-Fijians outnumbered indigenous Fijians in the islands’ popula-
tion and were enthusiastic about prospects of self-rule. Native Fijians were
much less keen on change, preferring British control to possible domination
by rulers of Indian origin, but the United Kingdom had emerged from World
War II with a badly damaged economy and world opinion did not favor
retention of colonies. Full adult franchise was introduced in 1963, a cabinet
form of government followed four years later, and, in April 1970, agreement
was reached on the formation of a bicameral parliament that appeared to
guarantee political control for native Fijians provided they could align them-
selves with representatives of non-Indo-Fijian stock. Independence followed
on 10 October, the 96th anniversary of the cession of the islands to Britain,
but the territory has been dogged by political tensions ever since, with a
series of coups and much military involvement in government.
See also BLACKBIRDING; BRITISH SOLOMON ISLANDS; BRITISH
WESTERN PACIFIC TERRITORIES; FANNING ISLAND (OR FAN-
NING ATOLL); MISSIONARIES; OCEAN ISLAND; PITCAIRN IS-
LANDS.

FIRST AFGHAN WAR (1839–1842). The First Afghan War was one of the
early conflicts in the “Great Game” as Britain and Russia competed for
influence in Central Asia. Britain controlled the Indian subcontinent but was
concerned about Russian advances southward toward the Himalaya and keen
to establish Afghanistan as a buffer state between the two powers. However,
British attempts to court Dōst Mohammed, the emir of Afghanistan, failed
so, in 1838, George Eden, earl of Auckland and governor-general of India,
plotted to replace him with the more pliant Shah Shuja, who had declared
himself ruler of Afghanistan in 1801 but been deposed eight years later and
lived in exile in India. A 21,000-strong force of British and Indian soldiers
186 • FIRST BRITISH EMPIRE
marched north in December 1838 and, after a difficult journey through
mountainous terrain, captured Kandahar on 25 April the following year.
When they took the fortress at Ghazni on 23 July, the Afghan fighters,
unused to facing an organized and well-equipped European army, melted
away, leaving the road to Kabul (the Afghan capital) open to the invaders,
who reached the city on 6 August and reinstalled Shah Shuja on the throne.
The campaign’s aims achieved, most of the troops went back to India,
leaving a garrison in Kabul, but the majority of Afghans resented both the
foreign occupation of their territory and the monarch imposed by an alien
authority. Moreover, William Hay Macnaghten, the senior British civil repre-
sentative in the territory, allowed army personnel to arrange for their families
to move to Afghanistan, further annoying the local people, who used guerilla
tactics to harry the British community. Macnaghten, one of Auckland’s clos-
est advisors, tried to placate Afghan leaders with bribes, but on 23 December
1841 he was captured by Dōst Mohammed’s son, Akbar Khan, who put a
pistol in his mouth and shot him. Major-General William Elphinstone, who
was in command of the garrison, made no attempt to seek retribution, to the
disgust of his officers and the encouragement of the resistance fighters. Be-
leaguered, he negotiated a withdrawal and set out on 6 January 1842, accom-
panied by 4,500 soldiers and 12,000 family members and other camp follow-
ers. Despite being given assurances of safe conduct, the lengthy column was
attacked at several points as it trudged through the snows and all but one
individual—Assistant Surgeon William Brydon—were captured or killed.
Auckland suffered a stroke when he was given the news and was replaced as
governor-general of India by Edward Law, earl of Ellenborough, who was
ordered by Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel to bring the war, which many
British politicians had believed was unnecessary, to an end after exacting
reprisals, a task that he completed when his armies reentered Kabul, released
several captives, restored some national pride, then withdrew and allowed
Dōst Mohammed to resume his rule.
See also BALUCHISTAN; FIRST SIKH WAR (1845–1846); SECOND
AFGHAN WAR (1878–1880); THIRD AFGHAN WAR (1919).

FIRST BRITISH EMPIRE. For convenience, historians often divide the

evolution of the British Empire into two phases, although there is no agree-
ment about when those periods start and finish. For some writers, the initial
stages of empire building began in the late 15th century, when King Henry
VII commissioned John Cabot to mount an, ultimately unsuccessful, expe-
dition to find a route to Asia by crossing the North Atlantic Ocean. Others
date the first British Empire from 9 October 1651, when parliament passed a
Navigation Act, which became a template for later legislation and stipulated
that all commodities imported to England, or to territories over which Eng-
land claimed sovereignty, had to be carried either on English ships or on
 FIRST BURMESE WAR (1824–1826) • 187
vessels of the country producing the goods—a measure designed to strike at
the Dutch, who controlled much of Europe’s international freight trade.
There is a wider consensus that the principal, although by no means the
exclusive, geographical focus of the early Empire was the east coast of North
America and the Caribbean Sea and that the colonization process was under-
taken not by government but by chartered firms (see CHARTER COLONY)
or by private individuals (see PROPRIETARY COLONY). Moreover, most
writers argue that the primary motive for territorial acquisition was profit,
with the colonies seen both as a source of raw materials and as a market for
merchandise from the mother country. The strength of the Royal Navy is
considered a key factor in that process, facilitating the defense of imperial
possessions but also giving England (and later, Great Britain) a command
of the seas that, coupled with a well-trained army, served it well in the
conflicts that proved to be regular features of the 17th and 18th centuries,
thus allowing it to acquire further lands through the negotiations that led to
such agreements as the Treaties of Utrecht (1713) and Paris (1763). Some
authorities claim that the first stage of Empire ended with the American
Revolutionary War of 1775–1783, others that it continued until the last of
the Navigation Acts were repealed in the mid-19th century.
See also SECOND BRITISH EMPIRE.

FIRST BURMESE WAR (1824–1826). From 1817, tensions mounted in

northeastern India as Burmese armies overran Assam and Manipur, driving
large numbers of refugees into Bengal, which was administered by the East
India Company (EIC) on behalf of the British government. When Burma
attempted to extend its influence further by exerting control over Cachar and
Jaintia in 1823, Britain responded by declaring both areas protectorates,
partly in an effort to maintain a buffer zone between Burma and India but
partly, too, because it had no wish to lose a potential market for its growing
output of manufactured goods. Then, early the following year, General Tha-
do Maha Bandula gathered an army in Arakan (which had fallen to the
Burmese in 1784–1785) in preparation for an advance on Chittagong that, if
successful, would open the way to Calcutta and Burmese control of Bengal.
With little option, Britain declared war on 5 March 1824. The EIC com-
manders surprised Burmese military leaders by avoiding a major confronta-
tion with Bandula’s troops and sending a 10,000-strong naval force to attack
Rangoon, which capitulated with little resistance on 11 May. The plan was
that an army, led by General Sir Archibald Campbell, would then march up
the Irrawaddy River toward Amarapura, Burma’s capital, while other troops
harried the enemy in Arakan and Assam. However, the transport facilities
available to support the advance were woefully inadequate and the conse-
quent delay kept soldiers quartered in the Rangoon area, where many fell
victim to dysentery and other diseases. Then the monsoon rains arrived,
188 • FIRST SIKH WAR (1845–1846)
ending all possibility of upriver travel. However, the ploy was sufficiently
threatening to make King Bagyidaw, the Burmese monarch, send instructions
that Bandula should abandon efforts to invade Bengal and march south—a
task that involved leading his army across the Arakan Yoma mountain range
at the worst of the rainy season—then recapture Rangoon. The demands were
too great. On 30 November, the 30,000 Burmese soldiers under Bandula’s
command launched an attack on the 10,000 British and Indian troops defend-
ing the settlement; exhausted after tramping across the hills and immensely
inferior in weaponry, they were mowed down in large numbers, an estimated
rump of only 7,000 surviving by 7 December. With his disintegrating army
greatly reduced in number, Bandula withdrew to the settlement of Danubyu,
in the Irrawaddy delta, but the British forces followed and on 1 April 1825 he
was killed by a mortar shell. His men retreated in disarray, allowing Camp-
bell to push on to Prome, where he settled down to await a second rainy
season.
As Sir Archibald’s soldiers were causing havoc at Danubya, other British
infantry units were winning the war in Arakan and Assam and a further
decisive victory at Prome in late November and early December 1825 forced
Burma’s leaders to sue for peace. Through the Treaty of Yandabo, signed on
24 February 1826, they ceded Arakan, Assam, Manipur, and the Tenasserim
coast south of the Salween River to Great Britain, which incorporated them
within British India under the jurisdiction of the governor-general of the
East India Company. Also, they agreed to withdraw from Cachar and Jaintia
and to pay Britain £1,000,000 in return for a British retreat from Rangoon
and neighboring areas. In effect, the provisions of the treaty crippled Burma
economically and deprived it of a long stretch of coastline. The acquisition of
Assam helped Britain to protect India’s northeastern frontier and the compre-
hensive victory laid foundations for further advances that led to occupation
of the whole of Burma by the end of the century (see SECOND BURMESE
WAR (1852); THIRD BURMESE WAR (1885)). However, those gains were
achieved at a price of 15,000 British and Indian lives (only about 600 of
whom were lost to enemy action) and an expenditure of (according to some
estimates) £13,000,000 that caused serious financial problems for the East
India Company.

FIRST SIKH WAR (1845–1846). In the 1840s, the Sikh kingdom occupied
much of the area of the Indian subcontinent drained by the upper reaches of
the River Indus and its tributaries, extending from Kashmir in the north to the
Sutlej River in the south and from the hinterland of the ancient Punjab city of
Multan in the west to regions of modern Tibet in the east. For Great Britain,
the territory was a convenient buffer zone between India and Afghanistan
but it became politically unstable after the death of Maharajah Ranjit Singh,
who ruled for nearly half a century from 1792 until 1839. As the Sikh army
 FIRST WAR OF INDIAN INDEPENDENCE (1857–1858) • 189
expanded and became a significant power in the kingdom, relations with
British India deteriorated. The Sikhs refused to allow East India Company
(EIC) troops to march through their lands during the First Afghan War,
fought from 1839–1842, and the British gave the Sikhs cause to worry about
possible expansionist policies as they annexed Sind (to the south of the
Punjab) in 1843 and strengthened their military presence near the borders of
the kingdom.
On 11 December 1845, the Sikh army crossed to the east bank of the
Sutlej, claiming that it was preparing to prevent a British attack. The EIC,
which administered India on behalf of the British government, interpreted
that advance as a hostile act and declared war. A week later, on 18 Decem-
ber, the armies clashed at Mudki in a somewhat disorganized battle that
resulted in a British victory but at the cost of 872 men (including several
senior officers) from a force of some 12,000. Further Sikh defeats in closely
fought contests at Ferozeshah (21–22 December) and Aliwal (28 January
1846) were followed by a decisive confrontation at Sobraon on 10 February
1846, when the EIC again emerged victorious but lost 2,383 dead and
slaughtered 8,000–10,000 Sikhs. On 20 February, the British army marched
unopposed into Lahore, the Sikh capital, effectively ending the war. Under
the punitive terms of the Treaty of Kahore, signed on 9 March, the Sikhs
(who were unable to pay the 15,000,000 rupees demanded by the EIC as
reparations for the cost of the war) were forced to cede Hazara, Jammu,
Kashmir, and other territories to their British conquerors. Also, Britain
gained control of navigation on the Boas and Sutlej Rivers, as well as on
sections of the Indus, and was given permission to station forces in Lahore
until the end of the year “for the purpose of protecting the person of the
Maharajah and the inhabitants.” On 16 March, through the Treaty of Amrit-
sar, Kashmir was sold for 7,500,000 rupees to Gulab Singh, Rajah of Jammu,
who had acted as an advisor to the EIC generals at Sobraon, thus making the
territory one of the largest of the Indian princely states that, though not
formally part of the Empire, were subject to British control. Also, on 26
December, British and Sikh representatives reached a further agreement,
known as the Treaty of Bhyroval, which allowed Great Britain to appoint a
resident official who would control government administration in Lahore—a
situation that, in effect, converted what remained of the Sikh kingdom into a
British protectorate.
See also SECOND SIKH WAR (1848–1849).

FIRST WAR OF INDIAN INDEPENDENCE (1857–1858). See INDIAN

MUTINY (1857–1858).
190 • FLINDERS, MATTHEW (1774–1814)
FLINDERS, MATTHEW (1774–1814). Flinders’s accurate charting of the
Australian coastline added much to British knowledge of the continent and
facilitated the expansion of settlement and trade, particularly in South Aus-
tralia. The son of surgeon Matthew Flinders and his wife, Susannah, he was
born at Donington, Lincolnshire, on 16 March 1774, taught himself the prin-
ciples of geometry and trigonometery, then, at the age of 15 and after reading
Daniel Defoe’s novel Robinson Crusoe, went to sea with the Royal Navy. In
1795, while he served as a midshipman on HMS Reliance, which was trans-
porting John Hunter to his post as governor of New South Wales, Flinders
made friends with George Bass, the ship’s doctor. For five years, the two
men explored the coast and in 1798–1799 sailed round Van Diemen’s Land
(now known as Tasmania), confirming that it was an island and opening up
new routes to sailing ships. When Flinders returned to England in 1800, he
contacted Sir Joseph Banks, a distinguished scientist, and told him of a plan
to map the whole of Australia’s shoreline. Banks used his influence with
George, Earl Spencer, the first lord of the Admiralty, to secure Flinders’s
promotion to the rank of commander on the 334-ton Investigator and to
obtain a specialist staff (including a naturalist and two artists) who would
accompany him on the journey. From 6 December 1801 until 9 May 1802 he
surveyed Australia’s south coast from Cape Leeuwin (in the west) to Port
Jackson (in the east), littering charts with the names of crew members and
places in his native Lincolnshire by attaching them to bays, headlands, and
other natural features. On 22 July 1802, after taking on provisions, he set sail
again, surveying the east coast as far as the Gulf of Carpentaria. By that time,
however, the Investigator was leaking badly so Flinders abandoned his map-
ping but completed the first circumnavigation of Australia, returning to Port
Jackson on 9 June 1803.
With no ship on which to continue his survey, Flinders decided to head
back to Britain, but the first vessel on which he embarked was shipwrecked
and the second was forced to put into French-held Mauritius, in the Indian
Ocean, for repairs after taking on water. The French held him captive for
seven years so by the time he returned to England in October 1810 his health
had deteriorated significantly. Despite his weakness, he prepared an account
of his journeys in A Voyage to Terra Australis and advocated that the south-
ern continent, then known as New Holland, should be called Australia. The
book was published on 18 July 1814, the day before Flinders died in London,
and was widely read, popularizing “Australia,” which was adopted as the
name for the territory by the Admiralty in 1824. Flinders’s own name is
commemorated in the Flinders Range of mountains in South Australia, in
Flinders Bay in Western Australia, and in several educational institutions
and street names.
See also FRANKLIN, JOHN (1786–1847).
 FORT WILLIAM PRESIDENCY • 191
FLINT ISLAND. Flint Island, a coral atoll with a land area of some 1.25
square miles, lies in the central Pacific Ocean at latitude 11° 25´ South and
longitude 151° 49´ West, approximately 460 miles northwest of Tahiti. It
was sighted by Ferdinand Magellan on 4 February 1521, during an expedi-
tion, funded by King Charles V of Spain, that completed the first circumnavi-
gation of the earth (even though Magellan died in battle in the Philippines),
but there are no records of vessels landing until the second half of the 19th
century. The territory was claimed by the United States under the terms of
the 1856 Guano Islands Act (which authorized American citizens to take
possession of uninhabited islands that had guano deposits, provided that
those islands were not under the control of another authority), but the re-
sources were not exploited so in the early 1870s the British government
granted the London firm of Houlder Brothers rights to mine the reserves and
produce the phosphate that was much in demand as a fertilizer for farmland.
The operation was taken over in 1881 by John T. Arundel, who also grew
coconut palms and exported copra, which was used as a livestock feed and as
a source of the coconut oil needed by soap makers and other manufacturers.
By 1890, however, the guano reserves were much depleted so Arundel aban-
doned the atoll, which remained uninhabited until 1902, when Lever’s Pacif-
ic Plantations (LPP) brought 25 workers from other islands to harvest the
copra. Exports amounted to some 200 tons annually until 1911, when pro-
duction was taken over by S. R. Maxwell and Company, which had been
acting as the LPP agent on Tahiti. However, Maxwell went into voluntary
liquidation in 1935 and the labor force left, leaving Flint uninhabited. The
atoll was incorporated within the crown colony of the Gilbert and Ellice
Islands on 1 January 1972 and became part of the Republic of Kiribati when
the Gilberts won independence on 12 July 1979. Under the provisions of the
Treaty of Tarawa, signed on 20 September 1979, the United States withdrew
its claims to sovereignty over the territory.

FLORIDA. See CUBA; EAST FLORIDA; WEST FLORIDA.

FORMAL EMPIRE. Britain’s formal Empire was the area ruled directly by
the British government and thus included all British Overseas Territories
and crown colonies but excluded protected states, protectorates, and other
areas where local leaders retained some independent authority.
See also INFORMAL EMPIRE.

FORT SAINT GEORGE PRESIDENCY. See MADRAS PRESIDENCY.

FORT WILLIAM PRESIDENCY. See BENGAL PRESIDENCY.

192 • FRANKLIN, JOHN (1786–1847)
FRANKLIN, JOHN (1786–1847). John Franklin served the British Empire
as an administrator and naval officer but is most remembered for an attempt
to find a sea route from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean (see
NORTHWEST PASSAGE) that ended with his death, and the disappearance
of his entire crew, in 1845–1847. The ninth of 10 children in the family of
mercer Willingham Franklin and his wife, Hannah, he was born in Spilsby,
Lincolnshire, on 16 April 1786 and joined the Royal Navy in October 1800,
at the age of 14. In April the following year, he saw action against the
Kingdom of Denmark and Norway in the Battle of Copenhagen then joined
his uncle, Captain Matthew Flinders, on the first circumnavigation of Aus-
tralia in 1801–1803. In October 1805, he was with Admiral Horatio Nel-
son’s fleet when it defeated the French and Spanish navies at Trafalgar and in
1815 was part of a force that attempted, unsuccessfully, to capture New
Orleans during the Anglo-American War of 1812. In 1818, Franklin gained
his first experience of the Arctic in an abortive Royal Navy venture, led by
Captain David Buchan, to sail directly to the North Pole then, in 1819 and
with the rank of lieutenant, he was given command of a naval expedition that
was dispatched—as one of a series of efforts to find a Northwest Passage—
with instructions to travel overland from Hudson Bay and map the northern
coast of the American continent eastward from the Coppermine River.
By most standards, the venture was a disaster from start to finish. The
group left Gravesend, on the River Thames, on 23 May 1819, hoping to pick
up volunteers who would act as guides and manhaul provisions, but such
men were hard to find. Supplies were to be provided by the Hudson’s Bay
Company and the North West Company, which traded in northern Cana-
da, but the area to be explored lay well beyond those firms’ normal zone of
operations so communications were difficult and the supply chain unreliable.
Game was scarce during winter, progress was slow, the starving travelers
were reduced to eating lichens (as well as their leather shoes and probably
themselves), the area mapped was small, and just eight of the 19 people
under Franklin’s leadership survived. However, when the remnants of the
group reached London in October 1822, criticisms that Franklin had exer-
cised his authority in a high-handed, inflexible manner were brushed aside by
a public that lauded him as a stoic hero who had faced adversity and tri-
umphed. Franklin, for his part, learned from the experience so his second
overland expedition in the region was better planned. He sailed from Britain
on 16 February 1825 and took established fur trading routes to the Great Bear
Lake, where he overwintered. From there, he followed the Mackenzie River
to its delta on the Arctic Ocean coast and explored the land to the west, while
his companion, John Richardson, led a party east to the mouth of the Copper-
mouth. Their combined efforts resulted in the charting of a substantial por-
tion of North America’s Arctic coast as well as contributions to knowledge
 FRANKLIN, JOHN (1786–1847) • 193
of the geology, meteorology, and natural history of the polar fringes. Again,
he was treated as a celebrity on his return to Britain on 26 September 1827
and on 29 April 1829 was knighted by King George IV.
Franklin resumed service with the navy for some years then, on 6 January
1837, arrived in Hobart to take up the post of lieutenant-governor of Van
Diemen’s Land (now Tasmania but, at the time, a penal colony). A deeply
committed Christian, he followed his religious principles by attempting to
improve the convicts’ conditions (by providing educational faciltities, for
instance) but those efforts, and his pleas for the establishment of a represen-
tative assembly in the territory, got no support from his political masters at
the War and Colonial Office in London, and when his contract expired in
1843 it was not renewed. By then, however, all but some 300 miles of North
America’s Arctic shoreline had been mapped and the British government was
anxious to complete the surveys. Franklin lobbied successfully to take charge
of the mission and left the port at Greenhithe, on the south bank of the River
Thames, on 19 May 1845 with HMS Erebus and HMS Terror carrying a
complement of 24 officers and 110 men. On 26 July, they were seen in
Lancaster Sound, between Baffin Island and Devon Island (at the eastern
entrance to the Northwest Passage), by the crew of a whaling vessel but then
they vanished. From 1847, a series of search parties was sent to find the ships
but nothing was discovered until 1851, when several British and American
vessels converged on Beechey Island and found the graves of three expedi-
tion members. Then, in 1854, explorer John Rae learned from Inuit hunters
that Franklin’s vessels had become icebound and that the crews had tried to
find safety on foot but had died of hunger and exposure on King William
Island. From the artifacts he was given, and the details provided by his local
informants, Rae concluded that the starving seamen had resorted to cannibal-
ism in an attempt to survive but his report was ridiculed by British officials,
who refused to believe that their countrymen would descend to such depths,
even in the face of death. Other relics, uncovered in 1859, included a written
message noting that Franklin had died on 11 June 1847 but giving no infor-
mation about the cause of his death or the location of his grave. Biographers
have criticized Franklin’s inflexibility and insistence on adhering to orders
while praising his compassionate treatment of the inmates in Van Diemen’s
Land, his courage, and his successful charting of much of the North Ameri-
ca’s Arctic coastline. Also, late 20th-century scientific studies of bodies dis-
covered vindicated Rae’s claims of cannibalism and suggested that a combi-
nation of hunger, lead poisoning, pneumonia, scurvy, severe cold, and tuber-
culosis had killed all of the crew.
See also ARCTIC ARCHIPELAGO; ROSS, JAMES CLARK
(1800–1862).
194 • FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR (1754–1763)
FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR (1754–1763). The French and Indian War
between Britain and France formed the American theater of the Seven Years’
War, which involved all of the major European powers from 1756 and be-
came a worldwide conflict, ending with the signing of the Treaty of Paris in
1763. The troubles began with a contest for control of the upper Ohio River
valley, which British interests considered ripe for settlement and trade by
colonists from Pennsylvania and Virginia but where the French had built
trading bases and created alliances with Indian groups. In 1749, King George
II gave the Ohio Company of Virginia rights to develop 500,000 acres of
land in the area. The French, in response, attempted to dissuade the Indians
from trading with the British, built a series of forts, and took British traders
captive. The dispute escalated rapidly after a small troop of colonists and
Mingo Indians, led by Lieutenant-Colonel George Washington, defeated a
French patrol at Jumonville Glen (the site of present-day Uniontown, Penn-
sylvania) on 28 May 1754, and the French retaliated by taking the nearby
British-held Fort Necessity on 3 July. When news of the tussles reached
London, Prime Minister Thomas Pelham-Holles, duke of Newcastle, under
pressure from advisors and ministerial colleagues, sent Major-General Ed-
ward Braddock to capture France’s Fort Duquesne at the strategically impor-
tant confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers (where the city of
Pittsburgh now stands) but, on 9 July 1755, the 1,300-strong army was de-
feated, and Braddock mortally wounded, on the banks of the Monongahela.
Over the next three years, as the area of conflict in North America ex-
panded northward along the frontier of British and French influence toward
Nova Scotia, British armies suffered a series of setbacks, principally because
the French and Indian units who opposed them were better led, better man-
aged, and better organized. However, the balance began to shift from mid-
1757, when William Pitt the Elder took control of the war strategy. Great
Britain had formally declared war on France on 18 May 1756 and the two
countries were harassing each other throughout their empires, but Pitt viewed
North America as the key to overall military and political victory so he
increased the number of regular soldiers on the continent, reducing depen-
dence on the local militias, and reinforced the Royal Navy. France, on the
other hand, was experiencing economic problems and had suffered defeats in
other theaters of the Seven Years’ War so Etienne François, its foreign minis-
ter, chose to withdraw troops and plan an invasion of Britain. Pitt devised a
three-pronged attack, with John Campbell, earl of Loudon, who had been
commander-in-chief of British forces in America but was recalled in Decem-
ber 1757 after a series of embarrassing losses, responsible for the detailed
logistics. Campbell proved to be more competent as an administrator than as
a soldier because, although the campaign started inauspiciously on 8 July
1758 when General James Abercrombie’s 18,000-strong infantry was defeat-
ed by a French contingent of just 3,600 men at the Battle of Carillon, near
 FROBISHER, MARTIN (C1535–1594) • 195
Fort Carillon (now Fort Ticonderoga), at the southern end of Lake Cham-
plain, it was boosted on 26 July by the capitulation of the fortress at Louis-
bourg on Île Royale (see CAPE BRETON ISLAND) after a six-week siege
and by the capture of Fort Duquesne (and thus assertion of control over the
Ohio River valley) on 25 November.
Then, as naval blockades of the French coast and the Gulf of the St.
Lawrence became increasingly effective, French defenders were forced to
withdraw from Fort Ticonderoga on 26 July 1759. Fort Niagara (near
present-day Youngstown, New York) surrendered on the same day, after a
three-week siege, and on 18 September Quebec formally capitulated. On 8
September 1760, Montreal, too, surrendered. By the end of that year, the
French and Indian War was over (although France occupied St. John’s, New-
foundland, for nearly three months in the summer of 1762), but the Seven
Years’ War continued until the signing of the Treaty of Paris on 10 February
1763. Under the terms of that agreement, France ceded all of its territory on
mainland North America, east of the Mississippi River, to Britain. However,
although the acquisitions greatly expanded Britain’s sphere of influence on
the continent, they also brought problems of administration and defense.
Attempts to raise funds for those services, by taxing the colonists, led direct-
ly to the American Revolution little more than a decade later.
See also GRENVILLE, GEORGE (1712–1770).

FRIENDLY ISLES. See TONGA.

FROBISHER, MARTIN (c1535–1594). Frobisher’s claims to English sov-

ereignty over regions of the Arctic were among the earliest made in North
America on behalf of the crown. The son of merchant Bernard Frobisher and
his wife, Margaret, Martin was born at Altofts, in Yorkshire, in about 1535
and raised in London. As a teenager, he sailed on Thomas Wyndham’s voy-
age to Guinea and the Bight of Benin in 1553—the first recorded visit to the
region by English mariners—and was one of only 40 survivors, the other 100
men in the company falling victim to tropical diseases. The following year,
in a second expedition to the region, he offered himself as hostage in order to
further trade with one of the African leaders but was abandoned when his
companions were frightened off by the arrival of a fleet of Portuguese ships
and was held until 1556 or 1557. After his release, he earned a living as a
merchant in Morocco then took to privateering and was imprisoned several
times on charges of piracy. In 1576, however, plans hatched with Michael
Lok, a London trader, led to an expedition seeking a Northwest Passage that
would take English vessels to Asia along the northern coast of North Ameri-
ca, far from the Portuguese and Spanish ships that patrolled the southern
Atlantic Ocean. On 7 June, he left Blackwall, on the River Thames, and on
196 • FROBISHER, MARTIN (C1535–1594)
28 July put ashore briefly at Resolution Island, off the southeastern coast of
Baffin Island, then entered a large inlet, which Frobisher thought was a
strait—as did other sailors and cartographers until as late as 1861—and is
now known as Frobisher Bay. When five of his men were captured by the
Inuit and the weather deteriorated, Frobisher set sail for home, taking with
him one of the Inuit and some black rock that Christopher Hall, his ship’s
master, had picked up, believing that it was sea coal. After docking in Lon-
don on 9 October, Frobisher took the black rock to Lok, who found an
assayer willing to confirm that it contained gold.
The prospect of riches was sufficient to tempt investors, including Queen
Elizabeth I, to fund a second expedition so, on 27 May 1577, Frobisher set
out for the Arctic again, this time with instructions to search for gold rather
than for a route to the Orient. On 17 July, he reached the island where Hall
had found the ore. After taking possession of neighboring territories in the
queen’s name, he mined 150–200 tons of rock, abducted three Inuit, then
returned to Britain, reaching Milford Haven, on the Welsh coast, on 23
September. Assays indicated that the rock was unlikely to be a source of
precious metals, but Elizabeth named her new colony Meta Incognita (Latin
for “Unknown Shore”) and Frobisher’s supporters determined to send a third
expedition, this time with the intention of founding a settlement as well as of
searching for gold. On 31 May 1578, 15 vessels left Harwich. On 20 June,
they reached Greenland, which Frobisher believed was the territory then
marked on charts as Friesland, and claimed it for the queen, naming it West
England. However, the voyage was plagued by bad weather, bickering pre-
vented the establishment of a permanent community, and although over
1,000 tons of rock were mined, assays carried out after the party returned to
England on 1 October found no evidence of gold. That failure seriously
tarnished Frobisher’s reputation so although he returned to royal favor from
1585 he never again visited the Arctic. He accompanied Francis Drake on a
privateering venture to the West Indies in 1585–1586, was knighted for his
part in defending England against invasion by the Spanish Armada in 1588,
and, on 22 November 1594, died in Plymouth after being shot in the side
while leading an attack on the Spanish-held fort at Crozon, in northwestern
France.
See also ARCTIC ARCHIPELAGO; NORTH-WEST (OR NORTH-
WESTERN) TERRITORIES (CANADA).
 G
THE GAMBIA. On 3 May 1588, Queen Elizabeth I granted “Certaine Mer-
chants of Exeter, and other of the West parts, and of London” sole rights to
trade between the Gambia and Senegal Rivers, on the west coast of Africa.
However, England made no attempt to establish a permanent presence in the
area until 1661, when an expedition led by Sir Robert Holmes on behalf of
the Company of Royal Adventurers of England Trading with Africa (see
ROYAL AFRICAN COMPANY) wrested an island, located 20 miles up the
Gambia River, from the Duchy of Courland (part of the Polish-Lithuanian
Commonwealth) and established Fort James, naming it after James, duke of
York and later King James VII of Scotland and II of England. Then Britain
and France competed for dominance in the region (see SENEGAMBIA)
until, on 3 September 1783, the Treaty of Versailles, one of several interna-
tional agreements signed in the wake of the American Revolutionary War
(see PARIS, TREATY OF (1783)) guaranteed British sovereignty over the
Gambia valley, with the exception of a military base at Albreda—just two
miles from Fort James—that was not ceded by the French until 1857. Re-
sponsibility for administering the territory was placed in the hands of the
Company of Merchants Trading to Africa, which controlled commerce in
gold, gum arabic, ivory, and slaves from the interior of the continent. After
the island of Gorée, which Britain had occupied during the Napoleonic
Wars, was handed back to France in 1816, imperial forces needed an alterna-
tive garrison at the mouth of the river so Captain Alexander Grant negotiated
the purchase of Banjulo (later St. Mary’s) Island from Tomani Bojang, chief
of the Kombo people, in return for an annual payment of 103 iron bars.
Merchants followed the military, founding the town of Bathurst (now Banjul)
in honor of Henry Bathurst, Earl Bathurst, secretary of state for war and the
colonies (see COLONIAL OFFICE). On 17 October 1821, the Bathurst area
was incorporated within the British West Africa Territories and governed
from Sierra Leone, but its formal name and its status changed several times
through the remainder of the 19th century as—expanded by territorial acqui-
sitions—it became a crown colony on 11 April 1843, was absorbed by the

197
198 • GANDHI, MOHANDAS KARAMCHAND “MAHATMA” (1869–1948)
British West Africa Settlements on 19 February 1866, and was made a separ-
ate colony once again on 24 November 1888, with Sir Gilbert Carter (a
former collector of customs on the Gold Coast) as administrator.
While British arrangements for governing the Gambia region were chang-
ing, France was aggressively expanding its empire in West Africa and press-
ing inland from sites on the coast, establishing a base at Médine (now in
Mali), on the upper reaches of the Senegal River, and reaching Bamako (also
in Mali) on the River Niger. As a result, when the colonial powers negotiated
boundaries in 1889, Britain was able to secure control over only narrow
fingers of land north and south of the Gambia River as far upriver as the
Barrakunda Rapids. On 28 December 1894, the government declared a pro-
tectorate over the areas beyond Bathurst and, from 11 January 1901, main-
tained its authority by indirect rule through 35 chiefdoms. Calls for self-
determination were heard from the 1920s, led by Edward Francis Small, who
formed the territory’s first trade union in 1929, and after political parties
developed following World War II those calls became more strident. Consti-
tutional changes introduced universal suffrage for elections to the legislative
council in the colony from 1954 and in the protectorate from 1960, when the
expanded body became known as the House of Representatives. Internal self-
government followed on 3 October 1963 and independence on 18 February
1965.
See also GRENVILLE, GEORGE (1712–1770); PARK, MUNGO
(1771–1806); PITT THE ELDER, WILLIAM, EARL OF CHATHAM; SO-
CIETY FOR THE PROPAGATION OF THE GOSPEL IN FOREIGN
PARTS.

GANDHI, MOHANDAS KARAMCHAND “MAHATMA” (1869–1948).

Over the last three decades of colonial rule in India—and particularly in
1920–1922, 1930–1934, and 1940–1942—Mahatma Gandhi led opposition
to British rule, advocating mass, nonviolent, protest movements that contrib-
uted to the decision to withdraw from the colony in 1947. The son of Karam-
chand Gandhi and his fourth wife, Putlibai, he was born at Porbander, a
coastal town in Gujurat, on 2 October 1869, graduated from the University of
London with a law degree in 1891, and spent more than 20 years practicing
his legal skills in South Africa before returning to his homeland in 1915 and
joining the Indian National Congress, which had been formed in 1885 with
the aim of winning Indians a greater role in the administration of the subcon-
tinent. In his first years after resettling in India, Gandhi was supportive of
British administrators, helping to recruit Indians to the army during World
War I even though he was avowedly pacifist. However, proposals to intern
suspected terrorists without trial, and the unwillingness of the colonial power
to alleviate the conditions of peasants suffering from famine, alienated him
from the ruling class and encouraged him to initiate a campaign of nonvio-
 GANDHI, MOHANDAS KARAMCHAND “MAHATMA” (1869–1948) • 199
lent opposition to British rule (known as satyagraha in Sanskrit) that in-
volved boycotts of imported goods and of institutions (such as educational
establishments and law courts) established or supported by the British
government. Despite his criticism of Indians who resorted to violence in
support of the nationalist cause, Gandhi was jailed for sedition in 1922. By
1930, however, he was at the forefront of the dissidents once again, calling
for a satyagraha against the salt tax—a fiscal measure that raised the cost of
locally produced salt in order to protect British imports and which weighed
particularly heavily on the poor; a widely publicized 241-mile walk from his
residence at Ahmedabad to the coastal village of Dandi, in order to make salt
himself, triggered other acts of defiance that resulted in the imprisonment of
over 60,000 of his followers. In 1931, the British government responded to
the mass protests by inviting Gandhi to discussions in London, but the talks
failed to satisfy the aspirations of nationalists and the viceroy—Freeman
Freeman-Thomas, Marquess of Willingdon—adopted increasingly repressive
measures designed to discourage resistance. Gandhi was jailed again early
the following year, but incarceration did not prevent him from making politi-
cal points. In September, he embarked on a six-day fast in protest against
British plans to introduce special electoral arrangements for the untouchables
(or Harijans), the lowest-ranking group in the Indian caste system, who, he
felt, should be integrated with the rest of society rather subjected to a scheme
that would preserve differences. Fearing revolution if he died, administrators
hastily revised the plans.
The outbreak of World War II caused Gandhi, who abhorred both conflict
and Fascism, much heart searching but eventually he declared that he could
not support a European fight in the name of freedom from oppression when
freedom was being denied to India, and he continued his campaign for a
British withdrawal. In the aftermath of the war, the Labour government
found the dismemberment of the British Empire politically expedient, but
Gandhi strongly opposed the partition of the subcontinent into a Hindu India
and a Muslim Pakistan and, despite failing health, traveled extensively as he
tried to promote cooperation between religious communities. He was shot
and killed by Nathuram Godse, a Hindu fanatic, while he walked to a prayer
meeting in New Delhi on 30 January 1948. Gandhi’s philosophy of respect
for life, and thus for nonviolence, stemmed from his Hindu faith but was
never fully accepted by his political colleagues, who also rejected many of
his proposals for the moral reinvigoration of his people, including plans for
the development of self-sufficient rural townships. His humility was often
interpreted as a kind of arrogance, but, even so, he was a charismatic figure
who persuaded many of the more radical elements in the colony to exercise
restraint and is regarded by many Indians as the father of their nation. Gan-
dhi’s influence is still felt internationally, with several more recent leaders—
including Martin Luther King Jr. (the advocate of civil rights for African
200 • GARDNER ISLAND
Americans in the United States), Nelson Mandela (opponent of apartheid in
South Africa), and American President Barack Obama—claiming that his
writings and example strongly influenced the development of their own
worldviews. The name Mahatma (Sanskrit for “great soul”) was given to him
by Rabindranath Tagore, the first Asian to be awarded the Nobel Prize for
Literature.
See also BOMBAY PRESIDENCY; JINNAH, MUHAMMAD ALI
(1876–1948); NATAL; NEHRU, JAWAHARLAL “PANDIT” (1889–1964).

GARDNER ISLAND. Gardner Island—the most westerly of the eight coral

atolls in the Phoenix Islands—lies some 280 miles south of the equator at
longitude 174° 31´ West and latitude 4° 40´ South, with a land area amount-
ing to some 1.6 square miles surrounding a central lagoon. The territory was
claimed by the United States under the provisions of the Guano Islands
Act—which was approved by Congress in 1856 and authorized American
citizens to take possession of uninhabited islands that had guano deposits,
provided that those islands were not under the control of another authority—
but the guano (a source of phosphate for the fertilizer industry) was never
exploited. On 28 May 1892, HMS Curaçao arrived to annex the island for
Great Britain but found nowhere to land safely. One of the islanders swam
to the vessel and informed Captain Gibson, the commander, that the people
on Gardner already considered themselves subjects of Queen Victoria be-
cause the land had already been annexed by Sir John B. Thurston, high
commissioner of the British Western Pacific Territories, who had granted
John T. Arundel & Company a license to plant coconut palms in 1891.
Gibson nevertheless read out the declaration of a protectorate to the visitor
then sent him back to the atoll with the news and a British flag.
On 18 March 1937, the United Kingdom government attached Gardner
(and the other Phoenix Islands) to the crown colony of the Gilbert and
Ellice Islands then, the following year, launched a program designed to
boost the population, partly in order to relieve overcrowding on other islands
in the group and partly in an effort to counteract growing American influence
in the region (see HULL ISLAND; SYDNEY ISLAND). However, the ab-
sence of reliable sources of fresh water, diminishing markets for coconuts
(the only export crop), drought, and remoteness combined to hamper devel-
opment so the scheme was abandoned and the inhabitants moved to the
British Solomon Islands in 1963. On 12 July 1979, the island became part
of the new Republic of Kiribati when the Gilberts won independence, and on
20 September the same year the United States, through the Treaty of Tarawa,
formally renounced its long dormant claim to the territory. Still uninhabited,
and now known as Nikumaroro, Gardner is part of the Phoenix Islands Pro-
tected Area, a sanctuary for marine wildlife that was designated by the Kiri-
bati government in 2008. Also, according to some historians, it may provide
 GASCOYNE-CECIL, ROBERT ARTHUR TALBOT (1830–1903) • 201
clues that would help explain the disappearance of aviators Amelia Earhart
and Fred Noonan during their attempt to circumnavigate the world in 1937.
Their last radio messages, on 2 July, came from the area of the Phoenix
Islands, and in 1940 Gerald Gallagher, an official responsible for supervising
the migrants who moved to Gardner under the resettlement program, discov-
ered a skeleton that, in 1998, was identified as that of “a tall white female of
northern European ancestry.” However, neither Noonan’s body nor the air-
craft has yet been found.

GASCOYNE-CECIL, ROBERT ARTHUR TALBOT, MARQUESS OF

SALISBURY (1830–1903). Lord Salisbury, Britain’s prime minister on
three occasions in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, was a stalwart
imperialist, who argued that “if our ancestors had cared for the rights of other
people, the British empire would not have been made.” Nevertheless, he
demonstrated considerable concern for the peoples in the territories his
governments administered. Born on 3 February 1830, the fifth of six children
in the family of James Gascoyne-Cecil, second marquess of Salisbury, and
his first wife, Frances, Lord Robert had a privileged (albeit unhappy) child-
hood then attended Oxford University before entering parliament in 1853 as
the member for the Stamford constituency, representing the Conservative
Party. In July 1866 (and known as Viscount Cranborne following the death
of his elder brother, James, the previous year), he was made secretary of state
for India (see INDIA OFFICE) by Prime Minister Edward Smith-Stanley,
earl of Derby, and quickly impressed colleagues with his grasp of detail,
introducing a budget for the colony within two weeks of taking the post and
condemning officials for failing to deal with the effects of famine in Orissa,
claiming that 750,000 people had died because managers had elected to “run
the risk of losing lives rather than to run the risk of wasting money.” Cran-
borne’s period in office was brief, however, because on 2 March 1867 he
resigned, unable to support Derby’s plans for an extension of the franchise
because, he felt, they would be “the ruin of the Conservative Party.” He
succeeded to the marquessate on his father’s death on 12 April 1868.
Salisbury rejoined the government, again as secretary of state for India,
under Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli in February 1874, imposing his
will on senior administrators on the subcontinent and insisting that, although
British interests should always be paramount, imperial supremacy could be
maintained only if authority appealed “to the coloured against the white as
well as to the white against the coloured”; that need to appeal “to the col-
oured,” he believed, required a widening of Indian access to administrative
posts and necessitated a willingness by Britain’s representatives to accom-
modate the rulers of the Indian princely states. His political skills led, on 2
April 1878, to his appointment as secretary of state for foreign affairs, replac-
ing Edward Stanley, earl of Derby (and son of the former prime minister),
202 • GASCOYNE-CECIL, ROBERT ARTHUR TALBOT (1830–1903)
who had disclosed details of secret government discussions to the Russian
ambassador in London at a time when Great Britain and Russia had ap-
peared to be inching toward war over control of Constantinople (now Istan-
bul). In that role, Salisbury astutely negotiated a series of agreements (in-
cluding Turkish approval of British administrative control of Cyprus in re-
turn for promises of military support against the Russians) that reduced the
tensions.
When Disraeli died in 1881, Salisbury succeeded him as leader of the
Conservative Party. In the spring of the previous year, the Conservatives had
lost a general election and been ousted from power by William Ewart Glad-
stone’s Liberal Party, but on 9 June 1885, following defeat in a parliamen-
tary vote on budget issues, Gladstone tendered his resignation as prime min-
ister to Queen Victoria. Two weeks later, the monarch invited Gascoyne-
Cecil to form a government. Ireland and the Empire were high on the new
prime minister’s political agenda and remained so throughout his three pre-
mierships (23 June 1885–28 January 1886, 25 July 1886–11 August 1892,
and 25 June 1895–11 July 1902). On each occasion, he assumed the role of
foreign secretary as well as that of prime minister, retaining it for all but his
last two years in office. The Irish, Salisbury believed, were wholly opposed
to rule from London but he resisted proposals that would allow them to break
away from Great Britain, in part because he did not believe that the interests
of the land-owning Protestant minority would be protected in a self-govern-
ing Ireland but also, he argued, because a decision by the British parliament
to grant independence would convince nationalists in other areas of the Em-
pire that their campaigns, too, could succeed. Instead, he introduced a series
of land reforms, helping many tenants to take control of the acreages they
farmed and hoping to “kill home rule by kindness.” Also, Salisbury super-
vised a considerable expansion of Britain’s imperial influence, notably in
Africa. Like many politicians of his era, he felt that European—and particu-
larly British—government was the best means of developing “backward”
societies, but, even so, he had no wish to overextend global commitments by
adding territories to the Empire simply for the sake of acquisition. Relations
with other world powers were conducted through diplomacy rather than for-
mal alliances but Salisbury left opponents in no doubt that he would use
force in his country’s interests if necessary (as in the case of the Fashoda
Incident in 1898). Gascoyne-Cecil resigned on 11 July 1902, his health
declining and his party’s fortunes on the wane after the lengthy Boer War in
southern Africa. He died on 22 August the following year. Some historians
have criticized his policies as defensive and have argued that he was opposed
to progress, but others have praised his intellectualism and consider him one
of the most successful of British foreign secretaries.
 GASCOYNE-CECIL, ROBERT ARTHUR TALBOT (1830–1903) • 203
See also EAST AFRICA PROTECTORATE; IMPERIAL FEDERA-
TION; MACKINNON, WILLIAM (1823–1893); ROYAL NIGER COMPA-
NY; THE SUDAN; WEIHAIWEI.

GEORGIA. In 1729, James Oglethorpe, the member of parliament for Has-

lemere, persuaded the House of Commons (the lower chamber in Britain’s
bicameral legislature) to appoint a committee that would investigate condi-
tions in England’s prisons. Shocked by the abuses that the group identified in
debtors’ jails, he developed a plan to provide a base in North America where
individuals who had fallen on difficult times could rebuild their lives by dint
of hard work. Moreover, he reasoned, if the colony was located on the
eastern seaboard, south of the Savannah River, it would serve as a buffer
between French possessions (to the west), Spanish possessions (to the south),
and the British territory of South Carolina, with the settlers acting both as
soldiers and as farmers, growing spices, producing wines, and exporting
commodities that could not easily be cultivated or manufactured in Great
Britain. On 21 April 1732, King George II (after whom the colony was
named) granted Oglethorpe and his supporters, who acted as trustees, a royal
charter, authorizing them to develop the area, and on 12 February the follow-
ing year the first shipload of some 100 migrants landed at the site on which
the city of Savannah was built.
Oglethorpe’s energy and enthusiasm did much to ensure the group’s survi-
val in the difficult early years of settlement. In particular, he built up de-
fenses, formed a militia, and outwitted the Spanish army commanders who
invaded in 1742, forcing them to retreat. However, his economic and social
policies, and his unwillingness to listen to criticism, were not always well
received. Uniquely among Britain’s early 18th-century American colonies,
Georgia banned slavery, partly because Oglethorpe and the trustees believed
that slaves were not needed in order to produce the commodities envisaged
for the community, partly because of fears that slaves would have negative
effects on morality, and partly because of concerns that African slaves would
support attacks on the community by Spain, which also had claims to the
area. Nevertheless, colonists watched with envy as rice growers in South
Carolina accumulated wealth through the use of cheap slave labor and, faced
with Oglethorpe’s intransigent refusal to change, took their protests to the
House of Commons. The trustees conceded defeat in 1750 then, two years
later, surrendered responsibility for the colony to the British government.
Under the new regime, planters moved in from South Carolina, introducing
an agricultural system that focused on indigo, rice, and sugar, with a large
labor force of black slaves that was reminiscent of British colonies in the
Caribbean. The change brought prosperity so, when the American Revolu-
tionary War began in 1775, Georgian loyalties were divided, but, as radical
elements took control of government, loyalists fled (many to East Florida)
204 • GIBRALTAR
and the colony became a significant area of confrontation between American
and British troops until Britain evacuated Savannah, its last stronghold, on 11
July 1782. The crown formally relinquished its claims to the area through the
Treaty of Paris, signed on 3 September 1783.
See also AMERICAN REVOLUTION; THE THIRTEEN COLONIES.

GIBRALTAR. The Rock of Gibraltar has long been a bone of contention

between the United Kingdom (U.K.) and Spain. A British Overseas Terri-
tory covering little more than two and a half square miles, it is located on the
southern tip of the Iberian Peninsula, overlooking the Strait of Gibraltar,
which links the Mediterranean Sea to the Atlantic Ocean. In 1704, during the
War of the Spanish Succession, an Anglo-Dutch force led by Admiral Sir
George Rooke laid siege to the Rock, forcing the Spanish garrison to surren-
der on 4 August. Spain formally recognized British sovereignty over Gibral-
tar nine years later, through the Treaty of Utrecht, signed on 13 July 1713,
but since 1717 has made repeated efforts to get it back. However, referenda
in 1967 and in 2002 demonstrated that an overwhelming majority of Gibral-
tarians wanted to retain the association with the U.K. In 2006, while main-
taining its claim to the territory, Spain recognized Gibraltar’s international
telephone dialing code, eased border controls (which had caused lengthy
delays to commuters and visitors), and permitted airlines to fly from the
airport to Spanish destinations. In return, the U.K. agreed to compensate
some 6,000 Spaniards who had lost their pensions in a British reprisal against
a decision by General Francisco Franco, the Spanish dicatator, to seal the
border in 1969. Toward the end of 2006, the governments of Gibraltar and
the United Kingdom negotiated a new constitution that changed the name of
the territory’s legislature from Gibraltar House of Assembly to Gibraltar
Parliament, strengthened the powers of that legislature, and stressed Gibral-
tarians’ right to determine their own future but, in its preamble, insisted that
the area is “part of Her Majesty’s dominions.” Because of its strategic loca-
tion, Gibraltar is an important military base, with financial services and tour-
ism providing the other major sources of employment.
See also AMERICAN REVOLUTIONARY WAR (1775–1783); EMPIRE
DAY.

GILBERT AND ELLICE ISLANDS. The coral atolls of the Gilbert and
Ellice Islands straddle the equator and the international date line in the west-
ern Pacific Ocean, lying between latitude 5° North and 11° South and be-
tween longitude 172° East and 157° West. British interest dates from 1765,
when Commodore John Byron, a naval officer (see FALKLAND ISLANDS;
UNION ISLANDS), landed on Nikunau (in the Gilberts) and increased from
the 1840s as whaling vessels sought provisions and traders found profits first
 GLADSTONE, WILLIAM EWART (1809–1898) • 205
in coconut oil then in copra. On 27 May 1892, Captain H. M. Davis of HMS
Royalist declared the Gilberts a protectorate and on 9 October the Ellice
Islands were given similar status. The whole group was declared a crown
colony on 10 November 1915, with Fanning, Ocean, and Washington Is-
lands added on 27 January 1916, Christmas Island on 30 July 1919, the
Phoenix Islands (Birnie, Canton, Enderbury, Gardner, Hull, McKean,
Phoenix, and Sydney) on 18 March 1937, and Caroline, Flint, Malden,
Starbuck, and Vostok Islands on 1 January 1972. The Union Islands were
also added, on 29 February 1916, but detached again on 4 November 1925,
when responsibility for their administration was transferred to the govern-
ment of New Zealand. Japanese forces occupied many of the islands in 1941
and 1942 but were expelled from 1943–1945 after bitter fighting, and in the
years afterward the United Kingdom and the United States both used the
area to test hydrogen bombs. From 1963, as Britain took steps to divest itself
of its colonies, the islanders were increasingly involved in political decision
making through advisory and (from 1971) legislative councils. However, the
period of democratization was also marked by growing tensions between the
Gilbert Islands’ Micronesian population and the Polynesian people of the
Ellice Islands, with employment issues providing the focus of many of the
disputes. A referendum on the Ellis Islands in 1974 revealed overwhelming
support for a division of the colony, with the breakup taking place the fol-
lowing year. The Ellis Islands achieved full independence, as the Dominion
of Tuvalu, on 1 October 1978, and the Gilbert Islands, as the Republic of
Kiribati, on 12 July 1979.
See also BRITISH WESTERN PACIFIC TERRITORIES; COMMON-
WEALTH REALM.

GLADSTONE, WILLIAM EWART (1809–1898). William Gladstone was

prime minister of Great Britain on four occasions during a political career
that spanned six decades and greatly influenced the direction of policy to-
ward Ireland. The son of grain merchant Sir John Gladstone and his second
wife, Anne, he was born in Liverpool on 29 December 1809, studied at
Oxford University, trained as a lawyer, entered parliament in 1832, and won
his first government post—the presidency of the Board of Trade—on 15 May
1843 as a member of Sir Robert Peel’s second administration. He resigned
that office on 5 February 1845 on a matter of conscience relating to the
funding of St. Patrick’s College, a Roman Catholic seminary at Maynooth in
Ireland, but rejoined Peel’s cabinet as colonial secretary (see COLONIAL
OFFICE) on 23 December the same year, arguing that settlers in the territo-
ries of the Empire should have a greater say in governing their local affairs
and attempting to establish a new colony in northern areas of New South
Wales (partly by using convict settlers because he felt that arrangement was
more humane than sending criminals to British prisons). The return to mini-
206 • GLADSTONE, WILLIAM EWART (1809–1898)
sterial duties was short-lived because the prime minister resigned on 29 June
1846, following a government defeat in parliament, and Gladstone went with
him, languishing out of office for more than six years. However, on 16
December 1852 he rose from his seat in the House of Commons (the lower
chamber in Britain’s bicameral legislature) and, in the midst of a thunder-
storm, delivered a scathing attack on Benjamin Disraeli’s budget, which he
condemned as socially divisive. In the wake of the assault, Prime Minister
Edward Smith-Stanley, earl of Derby, tendered his resignation to Queen
Victoria, who invited George Hamilton-Gordon, earl of Aberdeen, to suc-
ceed him. On 28 December, Aberdeen offered Gladstone the post of chancel-
lor of the exchequer, a position he was to occupy four times, on two of which
(11 August 1873–17 February 1874 and 28 April 1880–16 December 1882)
he was prime minister himself. In both political offices, much of his concern
was with domestic issues (as chancellor, for example, he succeeded in halv-
ing the rate of income tax in the years from 1861–1865), but, as prime
minister, he declared, his mission was to pacify Ireland, a goal that he in-
tended to achieve through legislation rather than by force because he firmly
believed that parliament had the powers needed to meet the demands of the
Irish people.
Gladstone began his first (and, arguably, his most successful) premiership
on 3 December 1868 and played a major role in designing the Irish Church
Act, which, on 1 January 1871, both ended the role of the Church of Ireland,
a Protestant institution, as the state church in Ireland and terminated its legal
right to collect tithes from Ireland’s residents, the vast majority of whom
were Roman Catholic. Also, he prepared a complex Landlord and Tenant
Act, which received royal assent on 1 August 1870 and gave Ireland’s farm
tenants the right to buy the land they worked (borrowing two-thirds of the
cost from the government). However, attempts to protect farmers against
exorbitant rents failed because the legislation did not define “exorbitant”;
landlords simply raised rents beyond their tenants’ means then evicted the
families, who, as a result, were unable to buy the land. The administration
also promoted far-reaching domestic reforms (introducing secret ballots at
local government and parliamentary elections, for instance, and introducing
compulsory schooling for children aged 5–12 in England and Wales), but the
prime minister had regular disagreements with the queen, who grew to dis-
like him intensely, and faced criticism over many of his policies, not least
those toward Ireland. His Liberal Party was defeated at the general election
in February 1874, but he returned to office on 23 April 1880 after delivering
a series of speeches haranguing Disraeli, his successor, over British conduct
of conflict in Afghanistan (see SECOND AFGHAN WAR (1878–1880))
and the Zulu War in southern Africa. Now 70 years old, he intended that this
 GLADSTONE, WILLIAM EWART (1809–1898) • 207
would be a temporary resumption of political leadership, but he remained in
post for five years, embroiled once again in the problems of governing Ire-
land but also dealing with other colonial issues.
Never an enthusiastic supporter of imperial expansion, which he believed
could have long-term economic and political consequences for Great Britain,
Gladstone ended the first of the Boer Wars by negotiating a settlement in
March 1881 because he felt that Britain could not afford to commit the
monetary resources needed if the army was to be sure of military success.
Despite those financial worries, however, he approved an invasion of Egypt
in 1882 and, in 1884, was unable to prevent parliament from sending troops
to occupy the newly declared Boer republics that became Bechuanaland.
Then, early in 1885, he faced allegations that his failure to act quickly and
send an expedition to end the siege of Khartoum had resulted in the death of
General Charles Gordon. Disturbances in Ireland were tackled with both
iron fist and velvet glove; on 21 March 1881 the queen gave assent to the
Peace Preservation (Ireland) Act, which authorized the viceroy (her represen-
tative on the island) to detain suspected troublemakers for as long as he
thought necessary, but on 22 August the same year she also approved a Land
Law (Ireland) Act that gave farmers greater security of tenure and rights to
fair rents.
On 8 June 1885, the government was defeated in a House of Commons
vote on the budget, and, the next day, the prime minister resigned with few
regrets because he led a Liberal Party that was riven by disagreement over
his policies for Ireland. The relief was short-lived, though, because he was
back in office on 30 January 1886, two days after his successor—Robert
Gascoyne-Cecil, marquess of Salisbury—was also forced into resignation
following the loss of a parliamentary vote. This time, Gladstone survived
only for a few months, dissolving parliament on 26 June after it had rejected,
by 341 votes to 311, a bill that would have created a Dublin-based legislature
to govern Ireland’s internal affairs. The Liberals lost the general election that
followed so Gladstone demitted office on 20 July but remained leader of the
party and, at the age of 82, formed a fourth government on 15 August 1892.
The following year, he tried once again to get parliamentary approval for
plans that would give Ireland home rule. This time, he persuaded the Com-
mons to back the proposals but the bill was heavily defeated in the House of
Lords, where his Conservative Party opponents had an overwhelming major-
ity. He resigned on 3 March 1894, giving his state of health as the reason but
primarily because he disagreed with colleagues over plans to expand the
Royal Navy, and died on 19 May 1898. Modern historians regard him as one
of 19th-century Britain’s most influential politicians, much admired by
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and her supporters a century later.
See also GOLDIE, GEORGE DASHWOOD TAUBMAN (1846–1925);
LUGARD, FREDERICK JOHN DEALTRY (1858–1945); UGANDA.
208 • GOLD COAST
GOLD COAST. The stretch of West African shoreline along the Gulf of
Guinea westward from the Volta River to Axim (now in Ghana) was known
for centuries as the Gold Coast because European traders found it an impor-
tant source of the much-prized metal. By the 18th century, commerce in
slaves was an additional enticement to entrepreneurs so merchants from
competing nations constructed a string of forts as bases from which to con-
duct business. Then, from 1829, George MacLean, the leading figure in the
region’s British mercantile community, built up a reputation as an arbiter in
disputes between chiefs of the Fanti people, encouraging cooperation rather
than conflict and gradually establishing an informal protectorate in the area.
As a result of the peaceful conditions, trade grew rapidly, encouraging the
British government to assume responsibility for the forts in 1843. Seven
years later, on 30 March 1850, it purchased Danish settlements in the region,
on 21 February 1871 it added the Dutch Gold Coast to its territorial portfolio,
and on 24 July 1874 it declared the Gold Coast a colony, including, within its
bounds, the port of Lagos, which was made a colony in its own right in 1886.
Ashanti warriors, to the north, were a thorn in the side of the imperial power
from 1823 (see ASHANTI WARS) but were forced to accept protectorate
status on 16 August 1896. On 1 January 1902, after a further insurrection,
their territory was made a crown colony and a protectorate was declared
over lands to the north, but, for most administrative purposes, those areas and
the Gold Coast were treated as a single political unit. Then, in 1922, the
League of Nations gave Britain a mandate to govern British Togoland,
formerly a German possession, and the United Kingdom managed that area
from the Gold Coast as well, regarding it almost as a province of the colony
(see LEAGUE OF NATIONS MANDATED TERRITORY).
By the early years of the 20th century, the transatlantic trade in slaves was
long gone, and, although gold was still a significant export, the Gold Coast’s
wealth was based largely on the export of cocoa, which was much in demand
by Cadbury, J. S. Fry and Sons, and other chocolate manufacturers. In the
decade after World War I, the Gold Coast was meeting half the world de-
mand for the commodity and generating income that was used to build har-
bors, railroads, and other communications links as well as to provide health
clinics and schools. As those economic and social infrastructures developed,
populations became more anglicized, traditional patterns of life changed, and
the four regions—the mandated territory, the protectorate, and the Gold
Coast and Lagos colonies—evolved increasingly close ties. However, at-
tempts to give greater powers to local chiefs, who acted as agents of indirect
rule, proved unpopular because educated Africans interpreted the moves
merely as devices designed to avoid the introduction of democratically
elected law-making assemblies.
 GOLDIE, GEORGE DASHWOOD TAUBMAN (1846–1925) • 209
Nationalist arguments were first articulated through such groups as the
National Congress of British West Africa, formed in 1919 by London-
trained lawyer and journalist Joseph Casely-Hayford, but did not attract mass
support until the late 1940s. On 28 February 1948, a march by World War II
veterans seeking payment of promised pensions was broken up by police,
who fired into the assembly, killing four people. That action provoked loot-
ing in Accra and other major cities, and the government, believing that the
protests were politically motivated, arrested leaders of the independence
movement, including Kwame Nkrumah, the general secretary of the United
Gold Coast Convention, which had been founded the previous year. Nkru-
mah’s imprisonment lasted for only a few weeks but it gave him the publicity
he needed in order to build up a power base as he traveled the region advo-
cating self-government. In 1949, he organized his supporters into the Con-
vention People’s Party, which, in 1951, following a campaign of “positive
action” that included strikes and other forms of civil disobedience, won 34 of
the 38 elective seats in the new Legislative Assembly. At the time, British
officials retained control of several critical areas of government, including
defense and the administration of justice, but over the next five years—and
despite objections from traditionalists, who were particularly strong in the
Ashanti areas and in the Northern Territories and would have preferred a
more federal structure with greater power for the regions—the Gold Coast
moved toward a centralized parliamentary system of government, with a
wholly elected assembly and with decision-making authority increasingly
transferred to African politicians. On 13 December 1956, British Togoland
merged with the Gold Coast and on 6 March 1957 the whole area became the
first sub-Saharan colony to achieve full independence, with Nkrumah as
prime minister of self-governing Ghana, using his position to further the end
of colonialism in other areas of the continent.
See also COMPANY OF ROYAL ADVENTURERS OF ENGLAND
TRADING WITH AFRICA; LENNOX-BOYD, ALAN TINDAL
(1904–1983); ROYAL AFRICAN COMPANY; UNITED NATIONS
TRUST TERRITORY.

GOLDIE, GEORGE DASHWOOD TAUBMAN (1846–1925). Goldie,

founder of the Royal Niger Company (RNC), epitomized Victorian atti-
tudes to Empire, stressing both commercial gain and territorial aggrandize-
ment. The son of politician and soldier George Taubman Goldie-Taubman
and his second wife, Caroline, he was born on the Isle of Man on 20 May
1846. In 1865, after training at the Royal Military Academy in Woolwich, he
was commissioned as an officer in the Royal Engineers but served for just
two years before resigning and, bolstered by funds from an inheritance,
traveling to Egypt. There, he fell in love with an Arab lady, journeyed with
her to the Sudan, and learned Arabic. Then, within weeks of returning to
210 • GOLDIE, GEORGE DASHWOOD TAUBMAN (1846–1925)
Britain in 1870, he eloped to Paris with Mathilda Elliot, the family govern-
ess, eventually marrying her at St. Marylebone Church in London the follow-
ing year. Such lack of concern for social convention limited Goldie’s em-
ployment options so he was fortunate that in 1875, through a distant relative,
he was able to acquire control of Holland Jacques, a trading company operat-
ing on the River Niger, in West Africa, but experiencing financial difficul-
ties. Goldie, however, was not content to run a small business. At the time,
the Niger region was relatively unexplored so he determined both to develop
its commercial potential and to add it to the territories of the British Empire.
He restructured his firm, amalgamating it with other businesses to form, first,
the Central African Trading Company and then the United African Compa-
ny, which, having absorbed the competition, functioned as a monopoly buyer
that forced down the payments made to Africans who supplied the ivory,
palm oil, and other commodities that it exported to Europe.
Eventually, the low prices attracted other European entrepreneurs, includ-
ing several from France. Knowing that the best means of maintaining his
privileged trading position would be to acquire a royal charter granting the
firm authority to administer the area on behalf of the British government,
Goldie again revamped his business, forming the National African Company
and persuading several politically influential individuals—including Henry
Bruce, Baron Aberdare and friend of Prime Minister William Gladstone—
to join the board of directors. With their backing, and after much negotiation,
he got the powers he wanted through a charter, signed on 10 July 1886, that
ostensibly guaranteed rights to African and foreign traders but contained no
provision for any official supervision of Goldie’s activities. Once more,
Goldie reorganized his enterprise, naming it the Royal Niger Company and
giving the directors powers to pass laws relating to the territory in which it
operated. He established a judiciary and formed an African army but, for the
most part, left day-to-day administration of local populations in the hands of
traditional chiefs—a precursor of the system of indirect rule that would later
be developed in Northern Nigeria by Frederick Lugard. The Company
proved profitable, but its rigorous exclusion of commercial competitors led
to so many complaints that, in 1895–1896, Goldie suggested his firm should
cease trading and simply concentrate on managing the region. The govern-
ment rejected the plan so, in 1897, he was forced to lead a military campaign
against the Moslem emirates of Ilorin and Nupe in order to confirm the
control that the RNC claimed to exercise in those areas. At the same time,
France, having conquered Dahomey (now Benin), was establishing a pres-
ence in Borgu, in the northwest of the territory over which the RNC asserted
territorial rights. The frontier issues were resolved in 1898 by politicians in
Europe, but Joseph Chamberlain, the secretary of state for the colonies (see
COLONIAL OFFICE), decided that Goldie’s charter should be revoked and
that the British government, rather than a private company, should be respon-
 GORDON, CHARLES GEORGE (1833–1885) • 211
sible for administering the Niger possessions. Goldie, deeply affected by his
wife’s sudden death and ready to hand over the reins, negotiated a payment
of £865,000 for the RNC shareholders and transferred the firm’s assets to the
government on 1 January 1900.
Goldie was elected president of the Royal Geographical Society in 1905
and served as an alderman on London County Council from 1907–1912, but
he declined offers of the governorships of New South Wales and Victoria
and took no further role in business enterprises before his death in London on
20 August 1935. He was knighted in 1887 and, at that time, changed his
surname from Goldie-Taubman to Goldie by royal licence, possibly because
he perceived the German-sounding “Taubman” as a disadvantage at a time
when Germany and Britain were competing for dominance in West Africa.

GORDON, CHARLES GEORGE (1833–1885). General Gordon had a

distinguished career as an army officer and administrator in several territories
of the British Empire and particularly in the Sudan. However, it was not so
much his life as the manner in which he left it that elevated him to heroic
stature in the eyes of Victorian Britain. The son of General Henry William
Gordon of the Royal Artillery and his wife, Elizabeth, he was born at Wool-
wich, near London, on 28 January 1933, joined the Royal Engineers in 1852,
served at Sebastopol during the Crimean War (1855–1856), and was in China
at the time of the Opium Wars, taking part in the looting of Peking and the
destruction of the emperor’s summer palace in 1860. Placed in command of a
raggle-taggle militia raised to defend Shanghai from rebels intent on over-
throwing the Qing dynasty, he and his “Ever Victorious Army” defeated the
dissidents in a series of confrontations, quashing the insurrection and earning
himself the enduring nickname “Chinese Gordon” as well as numerous hon-
ors both from China and from Britain.
In 1873, Gordon was appointed governor-general of the province of Equa-
toria, in the Sudan (see BAKER, SAMUEL WHITE (1821–1893)), where he
mapped the course of the River Nile, suppressed the slave traffic, and won a
reputation for traveling great distances by camel. Those achievements en-
couraged Ismail Pasha, khedive of Egypt, to make him governor-general of
the whole Sudan in 1877. Faced with an insurgency, he donned his dress
uniform, rode into the rebel base and persuaded many of the group to change
sides. That accomplished, he convinced the remainder to retreat. By 1879, he
had crushed both the rebellion and the slave trade so, exhausted by years of
strenuous work in difficult environments, he journeyed to Cairo, submitted
his resignation, and went home. Over the next few years, Gordon held posts
in Cape Colony, China, India, and Mauritius and spent several months
studying antiquities in the Holy Land, but in 1884 the British government
sent him back to the Sudan, with instructions to organize an evacuation of
civilians from Khartoum, which was in danger of falling into the hands of a
212 • GORÉE
messianic Islamic group known as the Mahdists. He reached the settlement
on 18 February and evacuated 2,000 women, children, and wounded men in
the four weeks before the town was surrounded and placed under siege.
While politicians in London procrastinated, Gordon sustained the garrison’s
morale purely by force of his own personality, but on 26 January 1885 the
attackers breached the defenses and killed all those inside. A relief force
arrived two days later. When the news of Gordon’s death reached Britain,
press and public treated him as a martyr and condemned Prime Minister
William Gladstone’s government for failing to support imperial ambitions;
novelist and poet Robert Louis Stevenson wrote that “England stands before
the world dripping with blood and daubed with dishonor.” Most biographers
have been similarly laudatory although some have presented more critical
evaluations of his career and personality.
See also KITCHENER, HORATIO HERBERT (1850–1916); OMDUR-
MAN, BATTLE OF (2 SEPTEMBER 1898).

GORÉE. The island of Gorée, less than one-tenth of one square mile in area,
had a strategic importance that belied its size because, as the westernmost
point in Africa, it commanded maritime routes from Europe to India and the
East Indies round the Cape of Good Hope. As a result, it was a frequent site
of conflict between competing powers. First settled by the Portuguese in
1444, Gorée was occupied by England on 23 January 1664, when Captain
Robert Holmes, who was later charged with exceeding his instructions, cap-
tured two Dutch ships, sank two others, then took possession of the island’s
Dutch-held fortresses in the name of the Royal African Company. Control
lasted only until 14 October, when the small garrison, under Sir George
Abercrombie, was forced to surrender by a Dutch fleet of 23 ships, com-
manded by Admiral Michiel de Ruyter (who then sailed across the Atlantic
and seized several English vessels along the American coast). The territory
fell to the French in 1677, but in 1692, learning that England and France
were at war, John Booker (the Royal African Company’s agent at James
Island, in the Gambia River) took advantage of the circumstances to orga-
nize an expedition that captured Gorée on 8 February the following year. He
left after demolishing the defenses, allowing French representatives to re-
sume administration unopposed in July.
British forces returned on 31 December 1758, during the Seven Years’
War, when a naval unit commanded by Augustus Keppel ousted the French
for a second time and established a control that lasted until the Treaty of
Paris, signed on 10 February 1763, ended the conflict and returned sove-
reignty to France. Power changed hands yet again on 5 April 1800, when—
with the two nations once more at war—Sir Charles Hamilton, of the 38-gun
HMS Melpomène, ordered the crews of British merchant ships under his
command to wear red shirts so that they appeared to be seamen in one of the
 GOUGH ISLAND • 213
Royal Navy’s three squadrons; the deception bluffed the French into believ-
ing that Hamilton had brought many more experienced, battle-hardened mar-
iners than he actually had at his disposal and persuaded the defenders to
submit without bloodshed. Fraser’s Corps of Infantry (a regiment raised spe-
cifically to defend Gorée) garrisoned the island until it was forced to capitu-
late to a larger French army on 18 January 1804; Colonel John Fraser, the
commander, reported that because of “a considerable Number of Men being
killed and wounded on both sides, and further Resistance offering only the
Prospect of occasioning an unnecessary Effusion of Blood” he had told his
troops to cease firing. After just seven weeks, the territory was back in
British hands when the French submitted, again without opposition, to Cap-
tain Edward Dickson of the frigate HMS Inconstant.
A further Treaty of Paris, signed on 30 May 1814—see PARIS, TREATY
OF (1814)—returned the island to France, who held it until 1960, when it
became part of the independent Mali Federation and then, just a few weeks
later, of the Republic of Senegal. In 1978, the United Nations Educational,
Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) designated Gorée a World
Heritage Site because of its role in the slave trade, but historians disagree on
exactly how significant that role was, some maintaining that as many as
40,000,000 slaves left for the Americas from the island, others claiming that
the number was much smaller and that, in some years, no slaves at all were
traded.
See also PARK, MUNGO (1771–1806); SENEGAMBIA.

GOUGH ISLAND. Gough—a 35-square-mile island of volcanic origin—

lies in the southern Atlantic Ocean some 1,700 miles southwest of South
Africa and more than 2,000 miles east of Argentina at latitude 40° 19´ South
and 9° 55´ West. It was sighted by the Portuguese in the early 16th century
and named Diego Alvarez, but, in 1735, Captain Charles Gough, command-
ing an East India Company vessel sailing from Britain to China, found land
that he placed some 400 miles to the east and, gradually, sailors realized that
the islands were one and the same. For reasons that are not clear, Gough’s
name prevailed when the territory was depicted on maps. Gough Island was
claimed for the United Kingdom on 28 March 1938 (as a dependency of
Tristan da Cunha) and now forms part of the British Overseas Territory
of Saint Helena, Ascension, and Tristan da Cunha, but its only inhabitants
are the staff of a South African meteorological station, which has operated
since 1956. In 1995, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organization (UNESCO) declared the island (along with Inaccessible Island,
in the Tristan group) a World Heritage Site, recognizing its distinctive land-
scape and wildlife.
214 • GOVERNOR
GOVERNOR. The executive heads of administration in the more important
crown colonies, and in some protectorates, held the post of governor. (In
the smaller, less important territories, their counterparts were known simply
as administrators or commissioners.) The governors were appointed by the
monarch (particularly in the early days of Empire), by proprietors (in the case
of proprietary colonies), or by the government and their duties varied con-
siderably, some ruling as autocrats, others (especially as colonies moved
toward independence) leaving most decision making to legislative councils
composed of local residents. The monarch’s representative in those British
Overseas Territories that have a permanent population also holds the title of
“governor” and carries out the duties of head of state. Moreover, the British
monarch is also—and independently—head of state of Australia and of
Canada, appointing representatives to each state in the former and to each
province in the latter. In Australia, these individuals are known as governors
and in Canada as lieutenant-governors; the roles of those individuals are
almost entirely ceremonial.
See also GOVERNOR-GENERAL; HIGH COMMISSIONER; RESI-
DENT; RESIDENT COMMISSIONER.

GOVERNOR-GENERAL. Governors-general represent the monarch in the

Commonwealth realms, each of which recognizes the British sovereign as
its own head of state. The nomenclature was first used in 1851, when Sir
Charles FitzRoy, governor of New South Wales, was made responsible for
ensuring that the individual Australian colonies, which had been granted
internal self-government in 1847, did not erect tariff barriers favoring their
own producers. As those colonies already had governors, the new title was
needed in order to emphasize FitzRoy’s status (though, in practice, he
adopted a policy of noninterference), and later it was applied to the senior
British representative in colonies that controlled their own domestic affairs.
The first appointees were British nationals exercising all the powers of the
monarch (they could veto legislation, for example), but as the colonial legis-
latures gained more authority the post became more ceremonial than execu-
tive and from 1922 was commonly occupied by a resident of the colonial
territory. In most former colonies that have become Commonwealth realms,
the governor-general is a distinguished citizen of the country, appointed by
the monarch on the advice of that country’s prime minister, but in Papua
New Guinea and the Solomon Islands (formerly British Solomon Islands)
the individual is elected by the respective parliaments.
See also HIGH COMMISSIONER; RESIDENT; RESIDENT COMMIS-
SIONER.

GREAT BRITAIN. See UNITED KINGDOM.

 GRENADA • 215
THE GREAT GAME. In 1839, Arthur Connolly, an intelligence officer
with the East India Company, described the competition between Great
Britain and Russia for control of Central Asia as “the grand game,” and the
phrase became widely popular as “the great game” after writer Rudyard
Kipling used it in Kim, a novel published in 1901. The rivalry dated from
1813, when (after a lengthy conflict) the Russians forced Persia to accept
their control of much territory in the Caucasus Mountains region, including
the area covered by modern Azerbaijan, Dagestan, and eastern Georgia. Brit-
ish politicians feared that the tsars’ expansionist ambitions would carry them
further south and threaten the commercially and strategically important im-
perial possessions in India so the government attempted to make Afghani-
stan a buffer state that would prevent Russian armies from attacking through
the Bolan and Khyber Passes in the Himalayas. In the early 20th century, the
struggle extended to Persia and Tibet, but by then both powers considered
Germany a growing threat so on 31 August 1907, in St. Petersburg, they
signed an entente that circumscribed their areas of influence in Persia and
ended Russian contacts with the Afghans. In 1917, the communist revolution
changed the nature of power in Russia and in 1919 Britain ended Afghani-
stan’s protectorate status, leaving the Afghan leaders free to sign a treaty of
friendship with the Soviet Union in 1921. For 20 years, both sides continued
to woo the Afghan rulers, but World War II led to cooperation, rather than
competition, and ended the struggle for influence.
See also BALUCHISTAN.

GRENADA. Grenada—a group of islands (most of them now uninhabited)

that lies at the southern edge of the Lesser Antilles archipelago, at latitude
12° 3´ North and longitude 61° 45´ West, in the southeastern Caribbean
Sea—fell into French hands in the mid-17th century but was occupied by
Britain in March 1762, during the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763) that in-
volved all of Europe’s major powers. British sovereignty was confirmed
through the Treaty of Paris, signed on 10 February the following year, and
although the French recaptured the islands in 1779 British negotiators re-
trieved them as colonies in the wake of the American Revolutionary War
(see PARIS, TREATY OF (1783)). For the next 195 years, they remained
under British administration. Initially, the colonial economy concentrated on
cane sugar, grown on plantations worked by slaves brought from Africa.
However, nutmeg and cocoa, which were introduced in the late 18th and
early 19th centuries and thrived on the rich volcanic soils, proved more
amenable to production on small and medium-sized farms, thus enhancing
the number of landowners on the islands and still, in the 21st century, con-
tributing substantially to the nation’s export market.
216 • THE GRENADINES
Grenada was included within the Windward Islands when that colony
was formed in 1833 and provided the administrative headquarters from 1885
until 1958, when it joined the short-lived West Indies Federation. After that
organization disbanded in 1962, the British government attempted to link
Grenada politically with neighboring islands, but the efforts proved futile so
in 1967 it was granted associated statehood, an arrangement that gave the
islanders autonomy over domestic affairs and the United Kingdom authority
over defense and foreign relations. Full independence followed on 7 Febru-
ary 1974, with Sir Eric Gairy as the country’s first prime minister. In 1983,
following a military coup in the country, United States troops led an invasion
that restored civilian government but reportedly was much criticized by
Queen Elizabeth II, who had not been informed of the invasion plans even
though she was Grenada’s head of state (see COMMONWEALTH
REALM).
See also BRITISH WEST INDIES; THE GRENADINES; MOLUCCAS.

THE GRENADINES. The Grenadines form a chain of some 600 islands in

the Lesser Antilles archipelago at the eastern edge of the Caribbean Sea,
stretching for 60 miles from Saint Vincent (in the north, at latitude 13° 15´
North and longitude 61° 12´ West) to Grenada (in the south, at latitude 12°
3´ North and longitude 61° 45´ West). Britain acquired them from France in
1763 through the Treaty of Paris, which ended the Seven Years’ War that
had embroiled all of the major European powers, and continued to promote
the sugarcane plantation economy introduced by its colonial rival. At the
time, sugar was in limited supply in the Old World so the West Indies’ output
brought rich returns, but after only a few decades changing agricultural tech-
niques favored production from beet on large farms located closer to the
markets so prices for West Indian produce collapsed and British interest in
the Grenadines waned. In 1791, the government partitioned the group in
order to ensure their defense in times of war, with authorities in St. Vincent
exercising administrative control over the more northerly territories (includ-
ing Bequia, Canouan, Mayreau, and Mustique) and Grenada over the more
southerly (notably Carriacou). St. Vincent achieved independence in 1979,
with its Grenadine islands an integral part of the territory, relying primarily
on tourism as a source of income. Carriacou remains a dependency of Grena-
da, which became independent in the same year.
See also WINDWARD ISLANDS.

GRENVILLE, GEORGE (1712–1770). Grenville served for just two years

as prime minister of Great Britain but his impact on the Empire was enor-
mous because his innovatory policy of taxing American colonists (in order to
recoup the cost of fighting the French and Indian War and fund future
 GRENVILLE, GEORGE (1712–1770) • 217
defense of the territories) incensed the settlers, initiating a series of events
that culminated in the American Revolution. The son of Whig supporter
Richard Grenville and his wife, Hester, George was born on 14 October 1712
and entered parliament as the representative for Buckingham in 1741. He
joined the government in December 1744 as a lord of the Admiralty in Prime
Minister Henry Pelham’s administration then, in June 1747, was made a lord
of the Treasury, holding the post for seven years and, in that time, acquiring a
sound understanding of the intricacies of the national budget. Pelham was
succeeded, in March 1754, by his brother, Thomas Pelham-Holles, duke of
Newcastle, who made Grenville treasurer of the navy but dismissed him on
20 November 1755 for joining William Pitt the Elder in criticizing arrange-
ments for a treaty with Russia that, they felt, would both be costly and
embroil Britain in disputes on the European mainland. However, the alliance
became more tenuous after Pitt formed an uneasy coalition with Newcastle in
1757 because Grenville believed that the new administration was taking too
cavalier an attitude toward the cost of the Seven Years’ War, of which the
French and Indian War was the North American theater. In 1761, when Pitt
resigned his post as secretary of state for the Southern Department (see
COLONIAL OFFICE) after failing to get support for military action against
Spain, which was preparing to join the conflict in opposition to Britain,
Grenville remained in office and, on 28 May 1762, was made secretary of
state for the Northern Department in a government led by John Stuart, earl of
Bute.
The relationship between Bute and his minister was not an easy one be-
cause Grenville adopted a hard line in negotiations to end the Seven Years’
War, demanding considerable compensation for conquered territories that
were to be returned to France, while Bute preferred to take a more generous
approach in order to avoid humiliating the French and thus, possibly, pro-
voke another war. As a result, Grenville was moved to the post of first lord of
the Admiralty on 14 October, after holding the secretaryship for less than
five months, but when Bute, an unpopular figure, resigned in 1763 and Henry
Fox (who had helped to convince parliament of the sense of Bute’s policy
toward France) declined to succeed him, on 16 April King George III, un-
willing to offer the post to Newcastle or to Pitt, made Grenville prime minis-
ter despite his dislike of the man. Grenville was intent on defending imperial
interests, threatening to send naval squadrons to assist British Honduras, the
Gambia, and the Turks and Caicos Islands if they were attacked by France
or Spain and, in 1764, approving the appointment of Robert Clive as
governor of Bengal, with a remit to stabilize the East India Company’s
business in India. Principally, however, he was concerned with North Amer-
ica. The Bute administration had made a decision in principle to tax the
American colonies in order to fund the army there, but Grenville was respon-
sible for the details. His first plans involved halving the import duty on
218 • GRIQUALAND WEST
molasses but insisting on more rigorous enforcement of the law. Also, he
prepared a Stamp Act that required many documents and newspapers to be
printed on paper produced in London and bear an embossed revenue stamp,
with the tax paid in sterling, not in colonial currencies. Such a measure was a
radical departure from previous policies because although British govern-
ments had often framed regulations designed to shape the nature of com-
merce in the colonies they had never before attempted to tax colonists direct-
ly. The proposals were postponed for a year in order to allow colonial repre-
sentatives to suggest other means by which parliament could make the levies
needed in order to raise funds, but the overwhelming message government
ministers received from North America was that parliament should not tax
territories that were not represented in the assembly. Grenville was not per-
suaded and, on 6 February 1765, introduced legislation to the House of
Commons (the lower chamber in Britain’s bicameral legislature) with a care-
fully considered address that justified parliament’s constitutional right to
impose taxes and explained why the measure was needed.
The Stamp Act received royal assent on 22 March and took effect on 1
November despite a storm of political protest in the thirteen colonies and
numerous disturbances in the streets. By then, though, the prime minister was
out of office, dismissed on 10 July by King George, who resented his advis-
or’s lengthy lectures about the monarch’s constitutional role and his insis-
tence on making recommendations for all official appointments (a behavior
that George considered insolent). Grenville never regained royal favor before
his death on 13 November 1770. A verbose and tactless man, he nonetheless
commanded respect because he followed his conscience and because, as
Horace Walpole—a political opponent—admitted, he was “the ablest man of
business in the House of Commons.”
See also WATSON-WENTWORTH, CHARLES, MARQUESS OF
ROCKINGHAM (1730–1782).

GRIQUALAND WEST. The Griqua people of southern Africa are a mixed-

race group with origins in relationships between indigenous Khoikhoi wom-
en and Boer settlers. Faced with the prejudice of white communities in the
Cape of Good Hope, and with the help of Dr. John Philip (the London
Missionary Society’s superintendent of stations in southern Africa), some
moved northward in the 1820s and 1830s in order to avoid Europeans, estab-
lishing themselves in an area that became known as Griqualand West. Most
of the Griqua lived either by hunting or by raising cattle, but that lifestyle
was disrupted after the discovery of diamonds in the territory in 1866 and
particularly after 1871, when diggers arrived in great numbers, seeking the
precious stones that would make their fortunes. The neighboring Orange Free
State, a Boer republic, attempted to lay claim to the area but the Griqua,
aware of the Afrikaners’ harsh treatment of the black and colored popula-
 GRIVAS, GEORGE (1898–1974) • 219
tions, sought help from Great Britain, which declared the area a protecto-
rate on 27 October 1871. Two years later, on 17 July 1873, Griqualand West
was made a crown colony, but the Griqua gained little benefit either from
British rule or from diamonds. A government court declared that they were
nomads, with no rights to land and, therefore, no claim to territory where
diamonds were found. Unable to afford the cost of contesting such judg-
ments, they were forced to relinquish the terrain on which they had eked out
a living and take jobs in the diamond mines, where discrimination against
non-whites was endemic. On 15 October 1880, after attempts at rebellion
were crushed, Griqualand West was absorbed by Cape Colony.

GRIVAS, GEORGE (1898–1974). From 1955 until 1959, George Grivas

led EOKA (Ethnikí Orgánosis Kipriakoú Agónos, the National Organization
of Cypriot Struggle) in a campaign of guerilla warfare designed to force
Britain out of Cyprus and make the island a Greek province rather than a
crown colony. Born on 5 July 1898 at Trikono (now known as Iskele), he
studied at Athens Military Academy and at the Ecole Militaire in Paris then
served with the Greek army, rising to the rank of lieutenant-colonel and
organizing a resistance group in Athens while the country was occupied by
Axis forces during World War II. He returned to Cyprus in 1954, adopted the
code name Digenis (after Digenis Akritas, the hero of a ninth-century Byzan-
tine poem), recruited like-minded Greek Cypriot nationalists into EOKA and,
on 1 April 1955, bombed a series of targets on the island, including a British
Army barracks and a radio broadcasting station. Operating initially from
Nicosia, then from a hideout in the Troodos Mountains, and latterly from
Limassol, he and some 1,200 followers concentrated on military targets,
ambushing convoys, damaging property, killing 105 soldiers and 51 police
officers, and murdering at least 148 Cypriots who were believed to be in-
formers. EOKA’s activities encouraged the Turkish Cypriot community to
form their own Türk Mukavemet Teşkilati (the Turkish Resistance Organiza-
tion), which often found itself in conflict with Grivas’s men, killing 60 and
losing 55 of its own paramilitaries. Britain offered a £10,000 reward for
Grivas’s capture, but he survived unscathed and ordered a ceasefire on 31
March 1959, when arrangements for Cyprus’s independence were com-
pleted. He then left the island for Athens, still believing that enosis—union
with Greece—was preferable to self-government. Grivas returned to Cyprus
twice. From 1964–1968, he was responsible for planning defenses against a
possible attack by Turkey, but he was recalled to Greece after his National
Guard had killed 27 unarmed Turkish Cypriot villagers. He sailed back to the
island secretly the following year but died of a heart attack in Limassol on 27
January 1974. To many Greek Cypriots, Grivas remains a hero of the resis-
tance movement, but several writers have argued that his intransigence
220 • GROUNDNUT SCHEME
heightened ethnic differences in the territory and contributed to the problems
that resulted in partition of the area into Turkish and Greek spheres of inter-
est just six months after his death.
See also MAKARIOS III, ARCHBISHOP (1913–1977).

GROUNDNUT SCHEME. In 1946, while food was being rationed in the

United Kingdom in the aftermath of World War II, Frank Samuel, managing
director of the United Africa Company (see ROYAL NIGER COMPANY),
persuaded Prime Minister Clement Attlee’s Labour Party government to
investigate the possibility of planting groundnuts (or peanuts) on vast tracts
of land in Tanganyika. The scheme was commercially and politically attrac-
tive because, if successful, it would reduce shortages of cooking oil in Britain
while providing agricultural jobs in East Africa, thus staunching the flow of
population from rural areas into the shanty towns of Dar es Salaam and other
cities. John Strachey, the minister of food, appointed a commission (led by
John Wakefield, a former director of agriculture in Tanganyika) to study the
possibilities then, on the basis of an optimistic report, authorized expenditure
of funds to cultivate 150,000 acres, most of them in Tanganyika but some in
Kenya Colony and Northern Rhodesia. The Times newspaper was suppor-
tive, claiming that a project such as this was “the modern justification for
empire,” but implementation of the plan was fraught with difficulties.
One hundred thousand former soldiers volunteered to work at the initial
location—an area of Kongwa, in central Tanganyika, where Africans had
already grown groundnuts on a small scale—but bulldozers and other heavy
equipment required for land clearance had to be imported from Canada and
the Philippines (because none was available in East Africa) and then trans-
ported to the site along a dirt road because a flood destroyed the rail line. The
baobab trees that grew in the area designated for groundnut production were
difficult to uproot and several workers were stung by bees that lived in the
hollow trunks. The planning team ordered anchor chains so that tractors
could pull tree roots out of the ground, but the order was cancelled by a
London administrator who could not work out why anchor chains would be
needed in the middle of landlocked Tanganyika. Local men employed to
drive the bulldozers and tractors were inexperienced and damaged much of
the equipment beyond repair; moreover, after a British official helped the
indigenous workers to form a labor union, they went on strike, demanding
better food and higher wages. Flash floods swept away buildings, hot sun
baked the clay soil (making harvesting extremely difficult), and the director
of the operation (Major-General Desmond Harrison, who had tried to orga-
nize the planting with military discipline) was repatriated to the United King-
dom after suffering a nervous breakdown. In the wake of the problems, the
 GUADELOUPE • 221
government reduced the designated production area from 150,000 acres to
50,000 acres then, in January 1951, cancelled the scheme, which had pro-
duced only 2,000 tons of groundnuts at a cost of £49,000,000.
For Tanganyika, the experience was not entirely negative. A new port
(intended as a location for the import of machinery and the export of ground-
nuts) was built at Mtwara, in the south of the territory, and connected by rail
westward to Nachingwea. The railroad construction stimulated the timber
industry (to the extent that some foresters complained that scientific manage-
ment of resources was taking second place to exploitation), and a more
limited development of peanut production on plots of up to 2,000 acres
encouraged Shell Oil to build a supply pipeline from Mtwara to Mtua. For
Britain, however, the experiment was an embarrassing and expensive disaster
that contributed to the image of an ailing government. Just 10 months after
the program’s cancellation, the Labour Party was forced out of office at a
general election and replaced by a Conservative Party administration under
Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

GUADELOUPE. Guadeloupe, one of the islands in the Lesser Antilles ar-

chipelago, located toward the eastern edge of the Caribbean Sea at latitude
16° 15´ North and longitude 61° 35´ West, was annexed by France in 1674
and, by the early 18th century, had become an important center of the sugar
trade. When the Seven Years’ War broke out in 1756, with Britain and
France on opposite sides, William Pitt the Elder, the secretary of state
responsible for the American colonies (and later, prime minister), took politi-
cal control of strategy and ordered attacks on France’s richer possessions in
the West Indies as a means of diverting French forces from other fronts (and
thus diluting their effect). General Sir Peregrine Hopson (who had been
governor of Nova Scotia from 1752–1753) sailed from Portsmouth in No-
vember 1758, with some 9,000 troops, and on 24 January the following year,
after an abortive attempt to capture Martinique, laid siege to Basse-Terre,
the principal French settlement on Guadeloupe. The attack continued for
more than two months, partly because of poor leadership and partly because
many of the members of the invading army (including Hopson) succumbed
to dysentery, malaria, or other diseases, but the defenders eventually capitu-
lated on 1 May. Over the next four years, Britain constructed a port at Pointe-
a-Pitre, developed the sugar plantations, imported some 18,000 African
slaves to work the land, and opened new markets for Guadeloupean produce
in the Americas and Europe, but the territory returned to France under the
terms of the Treaty of Paris, which was signed on 10 February 1763 and
formally ended the war.
British troops, led by General Sir Charles Grey and Admiral Sir John
Jervis, returned on 11 April 1794, during the turmoil of the French revolu-
tion, after negotiating a deal with planters who supported King Louis XVI
222 • GUIANA
and opposed the revolutionaries’ plans to abolish slavery. By 24 April, they
were in control of the whole island but the French very quickly dispatched
Victor Hugues, with 1,150 soldiers, to reestablish sovereignty. Hugues ar-
rived on 4 June, rallied the slaves to his cause, and on 7 October required the
Berville garrison, commanded by Brigadier General Colin Graham and much
reduced by yellow fever, to surrender. The remainder of the island, virtually
defenseless, fell by the end of the year and Hugues exacted brutal revenge on
his rebellious countrymen, executing some 1,000 royalists.
By the end of 1809, Guadeloupe was France’s only remaining possession
in the Americas, the mainland colonies having been ceded to Britain and
Spain at the end of the Seven Years’ War in 1763 and the Caribbean territo-
ries having fallen to the might of the Royal Navy during the ongoing Napole-
onic Wars, which began in 1803. Lieutenant-General George Beckwith was
deployed, with some 6,700 troops, to occupy the island, where food supplies
were short as a result of a naval blockade, many of the defenders had fallen
victim to disease, and morale was low. Beckwith launched his attack on the
evening of 27 January 1810, compelling Jean Augustin Ernouf, the French
captain general, to surrender, despite a spirited resistance, on 5 February after
his headquarters at Basse-Terre had fallen. Britain ceded the colony to Swe-
den on 3 March 1813 as compensation for losses suffered during the Napole-
onic Wars, but the provisions of another Treaty of Paris (see PARIS, TREA-
TY OF (1814)) which ended the conflict on 30 May 1814, returned it to
France in exchange for a payment of 24,000,000 francs and French support
for the union of Sweden and Norway under a single monarch. France placed
the territory under the governorship of Charles-Alexandre Durand, compte
de Linois, but after Napoleon escaped from his captors on the Isle of Elba in
February 1815 the count changed sides and declared support for the emperor.
Lieutenant-General Sir James Leith, governor of the British Leeward Is-
lands and commander of British forces in the West Indies, collected some
5,000 troops (including a contingent of French royalists), landed on 8 Au-
gust, and accepted Durand’s surrender on 18 August, by which time Napole-
on was already on his way to exile on the remote Atlantic outpost of Saint
Helena. Antoine Philippe, comte de Lardenoy, arrived to establish an admin-
istration on 26 July 1816. British administrators left as the army evacuated,
and, since then, Guadeloupe has been in French hands.

GUIANA. See BRITISH GUIANA.

GURKHA (OR NEPALESE) WAR (1814–1816). In the late 18th and early
19th centuries, the East India Company (EIC) and the Gurkha (or Ghorkha-
li) people of Nepal both had plans for expanding their spheres of influence in
the mountainous north of the Indian subcontinent, almost inevitably guaran-
 GURKHA (OR NEPALESE) WAR (1814–1816) • 223
teeing conflict between the two ambitious powers. Moreover, in 1792, 1795,
and 1801, the EIC had sought permission to develop trading routes through
Nepal to Tibet and, on each occasion, the requests had been turned down.
The lack of a clear boundary between British India and Nepal further com-
plicated matters, as did EIC fears that its armies could find themselves com-
mitted to conflicts farther south (see MARATHA WARS (1775–1782,
1803–1805, AND 1817–1818)). Using, as a pretext, Nepalese raids into the
fertile lands of the Terai—an area of forest and savanna lying between the
foothills of the Himalaya and the Indo-Gangetic plain—the EIC declared war
on 1 November 1814.
Prior to the outbreak of hostilities, Francis Rawdon Hastings, earl of Moira
and governor-general of India, had prepared plans to attack Nepal (using
some 23,500, mainly Indian, troops armed with guns and cannon) on two
fronts, one in the east (in the Makwanpur-Palpa area) and one in the west (at
Dehradun and the hilly country near the Sutlej River). However, the much
smaller Gurkha force was more familiar with the hilly terrain, and, although
Moira—who had seen action in the American Revolutionary War as well
as against the French on the European mainland—took charge of the opera-
tion, several of the EIC generals under his command proved less than ca-
pable, with most showing considerable reluctance to join battle. As a result,
progress was slow, but the capture of the forts at Almora (on 27 April 1815)
and at Malaun (on 15 May) secured a British victory. A formal conclusion to
the war lay some months in the future, though, because the Nepalese leaders
in Kathmandu prevaricated over the ratification of a peace treaty. His pa-
tience at an end, and an ultimatum having expired, Moira appointed Colonel
Sir David Ochterlony (the only army commander to have distinguished him-
self during the campaign) to resume the attacks in the west while allies from
Sikkim occupied the Nepalese in the east. In February 1816, Ochterlony led
his troops through the Churia Ghati Mountains and captured Makwanpur
fort, threatening the Kathamandu valley (and thus the Gurkha capital) and
forcing the Nepalese to negotiate. Under the terms of the Treaty of Sugauli,
ratified on 4 March, Nepal lost about one-third of its territory, including
Garhwal and Kumaon (in the west) to the EIC. The areas of Sikkim that it
had occupied were returned to their former rulers and the lands of the Terai
were ceded to the East India Company in return for an annual payment of
200,000 rupees. In addition, Nepal was forced to accept the presence of a
permanent British resident in Kathmandu and to allow an East India Compa-
ny representative to act as arbitrator in disputes with Sikkim.
However, the EIC never intended to occupy Nepal, which provided a
useful buffer between its own territories and those controlled by China, and,
in practice, the agreement was less punitive than it appeared, partly because
the Company found the Terai difficult to administer, returning much of it to
Nepal later in the year, and partly because the Nepalese leaders gave the
224 • GURKHA (OR NEPALESE) WAR (1814–1816)
British resident little opportunity to influence policy making. Also, the two
armies earned a healthy respect for each other during the fighting so one of
the provisions of the surrender document signed by Ochterlony and Amar
Singh Thapa (the Nepalese commander-in-chief) at Malaun allowed Gurkha
soldiers to join the British army, which still includes a Brigade of Gurkhas,
whose pensions and salaries constitute a significant source of income for
Nepal.
See also BRITISH INDIA.
 H
HASTINGS, WARREN (1732–1818). Warren Hastings was the first
governor-general of India, shaping colonial policy and developing an ad-
ministrative system that enabled a small number of British officials to control
a vast territory. He was born in the village of Churchill, Oxfordshire, on 6
December 1732, but his mother (Hester) died when he was only a few days
old and his impoverished father (Penyston) moved to the West Indies nine
months later, abandoning him, so he was raised by Howard Hastings, a
paternal uncle, and given a sound education in London at Westminster
School. When that uncle died in 1749, Warren got a job with the East India
Company and was posted to Bengal, where, in 1771, he was appointed
governor, with the responsibility of extending his firm’s commercial and
political influence. Although Hastings had greater respect for local customs
than most of his British peers, he nevertheless believed firmly in the para-
mountcy of the colonial power that the East India Company represented so,
under pressure to impose firm government and increase revenues, he central-
ized arrangements for the payment of duty on goods, made radical (though
not entirely successful) changes to the tax collection system, and restructured
the courts. Until 1773, his authority was absolute, but in that year parliament,
in return for a £1,400,000 loan to the East India Company, created a four-
member council with whom he had to share power (see REGULATING ACT
(1773)). Now with the title of governor-general, he was soon at odds with the
government appointees, most of whom were new to the subcontinent and,
taken aback by what they believed were unacceptable levels of corruption,
encouraged disaffected Indians (as well as company employees whom Has-
tings had offended) to provide evidence of malpractice. One of the most
serious allegations was made by an official named Nandkumar, who accused
the governor-general of taking bribes. Eventually, Nandkumar was found
guilty of forging his evidence and hanged, but the episode did little to deter
Hastings’s opponents, who claimed that he had exerted undue influence on
the judges.

225
226 • HAWAII
By 1777, East India Company troops were increasingly being drawn into
conflict with Indian and French armies. Militarily, Hastings was successful in
maintaining territorial control, but the wars put great strain on the business’s
finances and affected its commercial operations, leading to complaints that
the governor-general had not always acted in his employer’s best interests.
When he left India in 1785, the areas over which he exerted authority re-
mained firmly in British hands, but his reputation was badly sullied. In 1787,
he was impeached by parliament, accused of corruption and of unnecessarily
repressive treatment of Indians, but in 1795, after a lengthy trial, he was
cleared and lived out the remainder of his life as a country gentleman. Has-
tings died (insolvent, partly through meeting the cost of his trial) at Dayles-
ford, Oxfordshire, on 22 August 1818. The city of Hastings, New Zealand,
was named in his honor, one of several settlements in the country’s North
Island that commemorate leading figures in British India.
See also MARATHA WARS (1775–1782, 1803–1805, AND 1817–1818);
MYSORE WARS (1767–1769, 1780–1784, 1790–1792, AND 1799).

HAWAII. See SANDWICH ISLANDS.

HEARD ISLAND AND THE McDONALD ISLANDS. The volcanic

Heard and McDonald Islands were among the last subantarctic islands to be
visited by Europeans because, lying at latitude 53° 6´ South and longitude
73° 30´ East, in the southwest Indian Ocean, they are regularly battered by
strong westerly winds and high seas—conditions that deterred mariners, es-
pecially in the days of sailing ships. Also, they are remote from major land-
masses, with South Africa some 2,400 miles to the northwest, Western
Australia a similar distance to the northeast, and Antarctica about 625 miles
to the south. Some historians argue that the 142-square-mile Heard Island
was first sighted by Peter Kemp, master of the merchant ship Magnet, on 27
November 1833, but his chart notes show that the vessel was 120 miles away
at the time (though he may—just—have been able to see the 9,006 feet high
Mawson Peak). More certainly, Captain John J. Heard of the American
barque Oriental passed within 20 miles on 25 November 1853 while en route
from Boston to Melbourne. (His wife, who was traveling with him, reported
in her journal that he was walking on deck at about 10 a.m. when he saw
what he thought was “an immense iceberg” that he later identified as an
island “not laid down on the chart.” It was, she wrote, “a frigid looking
place.”)
Little over a month later, on 4 January 1854, William McDonald, British
master of the 582-ton Samarang, passed the much smaller McDonald Is-
lands, which cover less than two square miles at a site 27 miles west of Heard
Island. As news of the discoveries spread, ships, most of them from
 HELIGOLAND-ZANZIBAR TREATY (1890) • 227
American ports, arrived at Heard to harvest the elephant seals, whose blubber
was rendered to produce high-quality oil for lamps and machines. At times,
some 200 men were employed on the island, but by 1882 most of the seals
had been slaughtered and the workers had gone. Britain annexed all of the
islands on 25 March 1910, when Anton Evensen, master of the whaler Man-
goro, raised the union flag on Heard, but transferred administrative control to
Australia on 26 December 1947. The Australians assumed full sovereignty
through “an exchange of notes” between the two governments on 19 Decem-
ber 1950. Heard Island and the McDonalds (on which the first recorded
landing was made only in 1971) were added to the United Nations Educa-
tional, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) list of World Heri-
tage Sites in 1997 because, as the subantarctic’s sole volcanically active
islands, they contribute to scientists’ understanding of geomorphological and
glaciological processes.
See also AUSTRALIAN ANTARCTIC TERRITORY.

HELIGOLAND. The Heligoland archipelago lies in the southeastern North

Sea about 30 miles off the German coast, covering an area of just 0.8 square
miles at latitude 54° 11´ North and longitude 7° 53´ East. At the beginning of
the 19th century it was Danish territory, but Great Britain considered Den-
mark a hostile nation during the Napoleonic Wars and occupied the two
islands on 5 September 1807. Sovereignty was confirmed by the Treaty of
Kiel, signed on 14 January 1814 (although all of the other Danish posses-
sions seized by British forces were returned). From 1826, Heligoland devel-
oped as a seaside spa, popular with wealthy Germans, political refugees, and
artists and writers (such as Heinrich Heine), who enjoyed a more relaxed
cultural environment than was available on the European mainland. Howev-
er, it was far from other centers of British power and thus very difficult to
defend so on 1 July 1890 it was ceded to Germany (despite objections from
Queen Victoria, who protested that “The people have been always very loy-
al”) in return for German recognition of Britain’s claims to Zanzibar (see
HELIGOLAND-ZANZIBAR TREATY (1890)). The German military built
a large naval base (turning the islands into the “little Gibraltar” that Vice-
Admiral Thomas McNamara Russell had predicted it could become when he
accepted their surrender in 1807) and Britain used the area as a bombing
range after World War II, but, more recently, the area has again become a
playground for vacationers.
See also SLAVE TRADE.

HELIGOLAND-ZANZIBAR TREATY (1890). The Heligoland-Zanzibar

Treaty (also known as the Anglo-German Agreement of 1890 and as the
Zanzibar Treaty) was signed on 1 July 1890, defining British and German
228 • HIGH COMMISSION TERRITORIES
spheres of interest in East Africa. At the time, German policy makers were
withdrawing from alliance with Russia and enthusiastic for closer contacts
with Great Britain. The accord gave them control of the Caprivi Strip (a
ribbon of land, now in Namibia, that gave German South-West Africa access
to the Zambezi River), Heligoland (a small North Sea archipelago that Brit-
ain had occupied in 1807, during the Napoleonic Wars), and the area that
became the heartland of German East Africa and was later known as Tan-
ganyika. In return, Germany recognized British authority in Zanzibar, in
territory on the African mainland north of latitude 1° South that later became
the Uganda Protectorate, and in a small area stretching from the settlement at
Witu (see WITULAND) northward to the Juba River. The agreement was
much criticized by German supporters of colonial expansion because it in-
volved withdrawal of claims to Zanzibar, but it benefited both powers. Heli-
goland lies just 30 miles off the coast of Germany and so was difficult for the
British to garrison and defend, but the location was of great strategic impor-
tance to the Germans, who used it as a site for a large naval base guarding
entry to the German Bight and the Kiel Canal. On the other hand, Britain was
able to declare protectorate status over commercially important Zanzibar,
where Germany had never exercised serious influence.
See also BECHUANALAND; EAST AFRICA PROTECTORATE.

HIGH COMMISSION TERRITORIES. Basutoland, Bechuanaland, and

Swaziland were collectively known as “high commission territories” be-
cause responsibility for their administration lay with the high commissioner
for southern Africa rather than with a resident official. The territories were
not included in the Union of South Africa, formed in 1910, because British
politicians feared that African interests would not be accorded sufficient
importance by the white European settlers who dominated economic and
political life in the remainder of the region. That decision proved to be a
mixed blessing because, although the three areas were not subject to the
segregationist apartheid policies adopted in South Africa from 1948, they
became sources of migrant labor for their much wealthier neighbor. On sev-
eral occasions, South African leaders attempted to persuade their British
counterparts to cede control but they were consistently rebuffed, and by the
late 1950s, as denunciation of the apartheid policies mounted around the
world and as relations between the two countries soured, any transfer of
authority became politically impossible. At the same time, the colonies of
European powers were increasingly agitating for rights to self-government so
Britain initiated independence negotiations with political parties in each of
the high commission territories in the early 1960s, and all three eventually
became sovereign states, Bechuanaland (as Botswana) on 30 September
1966, Basutoland (as Lesotho) on 4 October the same year, and Swaziland
(which retained the colonial name) on 6 September 1968.
 HONDURAS • 229
See also RESIDENT COMMISSIONER.

HIGH COMMISSIONER. High commissioners were senior administrators

in colonial territories. Most commonly, the term was applied to the highest
ranking representative of imperial authority in areas (such as protectorates)
over which Britain did not have full sovereignty, but the title was also some-
times given to an official responsible for groups of possessions (see BRIT-
ISH WESTERN PACIFIC TERRITORIES; HIGH COMMISSION TERRI-
TORIES) or for colonies preparing for independence (such as the Seychelles
in 1975–1976). In modern usage, the head of the diplomatic mission sent by
one Commonwealth of Nations member to another is also known as high
commissioner; these individuals take precedence over ambassadors (the
heads of missions from non-Commonwealth states) at formal events in the
United Kingdom.
See also BALFOUR DECLARATION (1926); GOVERNOR; GOVERN-
OR-GENERAL; RESIDENT; RESIDENT COMMISSIONER.

HIRADO. In 1613, the East India Company (EIC), little over a decade old,
determined to establish a foothold in the Japanese market, which was domi-
nated by Dutch and Portuguese traders. John Saris was dispatched on The
Clove, reaching the islands of southern Japan on 12 June, and was fortunate
that his countryman, William Adams, who had been shipwrecked off the
Japanese coast in 1600, had become a confidant of Shogun Tokugawa Ieya-
su, the hereditary ruler of the area. However, Saris was intolerant of Adams’s
willingness to live in Japan and adopt Japanese lifestyles. Moreover, he
resented Adams’s criticism that the goods brought on the ship—tin, spices,
and woolen broadcloth—were of little commercial value in Japan so when
Adams and Tokugawa suggested that he should create a base at Uraga he
demurred and opted for Hirado, which was much smaller and more distant
from the major markets. The trading post was never a success despite Ad-
ams’s best efforts. The Shogun died in 1616, and his son and successor,
Tokugawa Hidetada, was less willing to listen to his father’s favored advisor.
Moreover, fearing the spread of Christian influences, the new leader prohibit-
ed the EIC from doing business anywhere other than at Hirado. The Dutch
laid siege to the post, some employees were suspected of diverting funds into
their own pockets, and, after The Clove, only three English vessels arrived in
10 years. Seeing little prospect of defending the site or of operating profit-
ably, the EIC abandoned the base in 1623 and concentrated on the more
lucrative commerce of Ceylon and India.

HONDURAS. See BRITISH HONDURAS.

230 • HONG KONG
HONG KONG. In 1839, China attempted to ban the import of opium, which
provided a significant source of income for farmers in British India who
grew the poppies that are the source of the drug as well as for owners of
vessels that carried it to its markets. As Chinese authorities boarded ships to
search for opium cargoes and tried to persuade merchants not to deal in that
commodity, the British government took military action (see OPIUM WARS
(1839–1832 AND 1856–1860)), sending troops into Hong Kong—then a
sparsely populated island off China’s south coast—on 20 January 1841.
Under the terms of the Treaty of Nanjing, which formally ended hostilities on
29 August the following year, China ceded the territory to Great Britain,
with the Kowloon Peninsula and Stonecutter’s Island added on 24 October
1860 after a second conflict, again over opium. The New Territories (includ-
ing other islands and parts of the mainland) were acquired on 8 June 1898 on
a 99-year lease. Under British control, Hong Kong became a major commer-
cial center, providing opportunities for such merchants as William Jardine
and James Matheson, whose firm was the major European trading company
in the Far East by the end of the 19th century and (as Jardine Matheson
Holdings) developed into a multinational corporation. The growth attracted
labor and fed an expanding economic infrastructure of financial services,
office construction, transport, and warehousing, while the London Mission-
ary Society and other Christian organizations built churches, medical facil-
ities, and schools.
Hong Kong was an obvious target for Japanese troops during World War
II. Following the orders of Prime Minister Winston Churchill, the govern-
or—Mark Aitchison Young—held out for as long as possible but simply
delayed inevitable surrender until Christmas Day, 1941. Over the next four
years, faced with harsh treatment by occupation forces, limited food supplies,
and serious reductions in trade, some 1,000,000 of the 1,600,000 population
fled the colony, but the return of British administration on 30 August 1945
(and of Young, who had been confined in prisoner-of-war camps, in May the
following year) led to another phase of immigration, spurred by the commu-
nist takeover of the Chinese mainland in 1949. Many of these newcomers
found jobs in industrial concerns that produced textiles and other products
that could be manufactured cheaply and in small workplaces. By the late
1970s, however, the economy had changed in emphasis, with the service
sector (notably finance and real estate) growing in importance as competition
from Singapore, Taiwan, and other countries reduced the demand for manu-
factured goods. At the same time, political strategists were considering the
implications of the ending of the lease of the New Territories. In 1984, a joint
statement by the British and Chinese governments indicated that the whole of
the area would be returned to Chinese control but that Hong Kong’s capitalist
economy would be retained until 2047. Critics condemned Prime Minister
Margaret Thatcher for surrendering the ceded, as well as the leased, land to
 HOWLAND ISLAND • 231
the communist regime, but proponents of the plan claimed that subdivision of
the 425-square-mile colony would cause economic chaos and that, in any
case, Britain had no way of defending areas left under its control. In Hong
Kong, many residents believed that the Chinese would not keep their prom-
ises, so the United Kingdom government created a new form of national-
ity—the British national overseas—solely for the colony’s inhabitants. Some
3,000,000 passports were issued (even though they did not guarantee a right
of abode in the United Kingdom), but many were sold by the recipients,
allowing people living in mainland China to travel as illegal immigrants to
Europe and North America. Hong Kong returned to Chinese administration
on 1 July 1997, as agreed, but surveys at the end of the first decade of the
21st century suggested that only about one-third of the 7,000,000 population
considered themselves Chinese.
See also COMMONWEALTH IMMIGRATION TO THE UNITED
KINGDOM; LUGARD, FREDERICK JOHN DEALTRY (1858–1945);
UNITED KINGDOM IMMIGRATION LEGISLATION; WEIHAIWEI.

HOWLAND ISLAND. From at least 1822, the crews of whaling ships knew
of Howland Island, a 0.7-square-mile coral atoll lying in the Pacific Ocean
some 1,650 miles southwest of Hawaii at latitude 0° 48´ North and longitude
176° 37´ West. The United States laid claim to the territory in October 1856
under the terms of the Guano Islands Act, which had been approved by
Congress two months earlier and allowed American citizens to take posses-
sion of any uninhabited islands that had guano deposits, provided that the
territory was not administered by another government. The American Guano
Company exploited the resources, which were used to make fertilizer, until
1878 but then left, leaving the island unpopulated. From 1886, Britain also
claimed the island, leasing it to John T. Arundel & Company, which
brought some 100 laborers from the Cook Islands and Savage Island (now
Niue) to mine the guano until 1891, by which time most of the reserves had
been worked out. Britain maintained its right to sovereignty after the miners
left but made no attempt to settle the area so, on 30 March 1935, the United
States (aware of developing aircraft technology and predicting a need for
landing strips and refueling bases for planes flying between Australia and
America’s west coast) landed a small group of colonists. Then, on 13 May
1936, President Franklin D. Roosevelt formally annexed the territory to the
United States, along with Baker Island and Jarvis Island. Howland was
occupied by a battalion of the U.S. Marine Corps from September 1943 until
May 1944 then abandoned once more. It was incorporated into the United
States’s network of National Wildlife Reserves on 27 June 1974, with access
limited to scientists and wildlife officers.
232 • HUDSON’S BAY COMPANY
HUDSON’S BAY COMPANY. For much of the period from the late 18th
century until the second half of the 19th century, the Hudson’s Bay Company
dominated the fur trade in northern North America, often providing the only
official authority exercised over swaths of wilderness between the conti-
nent’s east and west coasts. The firm was founded by two Frenchmen—
Pierre-Esprit Radisson and his brother-in-law, Médard des Groseilliers—
whose plans to establish a trading post on the Bay had failed to enthuse their
countrymen but had aroused the interest of merchants in England and Mas-
sachusetts. A successful trading season in 1668–1669 was enough to con-
vince King Charles II of future profits so on 2 May 1670 he granted the
Company a royal charter giving it monopoly rights to conduct commerce in
the area drained by the rivers flowing into the Bay, a territory of some
1,500,000 square miles that was named Rupert’s Land after Prince Rupert,
count Palatine of the Rhine, the business’s first governor (and a cousin of the
king). The early trading bases, around the southern edge of the Bay, all fell to
the French from 1686 but were returned when France ceded control of the
area to Britain under the terms of the agreements, collectively known as the
Treaty of Utrecht, that ended the War of the Spanish Succession in 1713.
Over the next six decades, the Company constructed a series of settlements at
river mouths along Hudson Bay, but from 1774 increased competition led to
building at sites farther inland.
In 1779, several rival merchants combined to form the North West Com-
pany, which initially operated in the area of Lake Superior and along the
Assiniboine, Red, and Saskatchewan Rivers but then expanded its interests
northward to the Arctic Ocean and westward to the Pacific. As the struggle
for beaver pelts and other furs intensified, conflict between the two compa-
nies became commonplace, as in 1816, when Hudson’s Bay Company em-
ployees destroyed the North West Company’s Fort Gibraltar (at the junction
of the Assiniboine and Red Rivers), North West agents murdered 21 Hud-
son’s Bay Company employees at nearby Seven Oaks, and Hudson’s Bay
Company forces occupied the major North West Company base at Fort
William (at the mouth on the Kaministiquia River on western Lake Superi-
or).
Troubled by the conflicts, and especially by the effect of the clashes on the
firms’ finances, in July 1821 Henry Bathurst, the secretary of state for war
and the colonies (see COLONIAL OFFICE), insisted that the two businesses
should merge, keeping the Hudson’s Bay Company name. The government
gave the amalgamated firm, which had more than 170 trading posts, a
monopoly over commerce in Rupert’s Land and in the North-West Territo-
ries then renewed the lease for a 21-year period in 1838, but after competi-
tion resumed in 1859 the Company’s interest in the fur trade declined, re-
placed by an emphasis on real estate deals and on investment in economic
development in the west of its area of influence. On 15 July 1870, it sold
 HULL ISLAND • 233
Rupert’s Land to the recently formed government of the Dominion of Cana-
da for the sum of £300,000 but retained the property on which it had built its
trading posts as well as one-twentieth of the more fertile areas of the prairies.
As population moved west, those posts grew into large urban centers and the
prairies became profitable farms so the Company evolved into one of western
Canada’s major property developers. It still exists, offering personal financial
services (such as credit cards and mortages) and operating several large
department stores (including the Lord & Taylor chain), but it no longer has a
stake in the fur trade.
See also BRITISH COLUMBIA; BRITISH NORTH AMERICA; CANA-
DA; COLUMBIA DISTRICT; NORTHWEST PASSAGE; QUEEN CHAR-
LOTTE ISLANDS; RED RIVER COLONY; VANCOUVER ISLAND.

HULL ISLAND. Hull Island—one of eight atolls in the Phoenix Islands

group—lies in the central Pacific Ocean, some 250 miles south of the equator
at latitude 4° 30´ South and longitude 172° 10´ West. Roughly rectangular in
shape, it consists of a strip of coral and sand, approximately 1.5 square miles
in extent and never more than 40 feet in height, with a salt lagoon at the
center. Although it was claimed by the United States under the terms of the
Guano Islands Act—which was approved by Congress in 1856 and allowed
American citizens to take possession of any uninhabited islands that had
guano deposits provided that the territory was not administered by another
government—the resources (a source of phosphate that could be used by
fertilizer manufacturers) were never exploited. However, in 1887 Arthur El-
lis (who later directed the Pacific Phosphate Company’s operations on Nau-
ru [see ARUNDEL, JOHN THOMAS (1841–1919)]) and his brother, Jack,
built a camp and planted more than 20,000 coconut palms. From 1916, the
plantations were developed commercially by the Samoan Shipping and Trad-
ing Company and then by the Burns Philp firm, both of whom sold the nuts
for human and animal consumption. Britain declared Hull Island a protecto-
rate on 11 July 1889, anticipating that it might be of use during the construc-
tion of a trans-Pacific telegraph cable (see ALL RED LINE), and attached it
to the Gilbert and Ellice Islands crown colony on 18 March 1937. From
1938, administrators attempted to introduce settlers to the island (and to
neighboring Gardner and Sydney Islands), partly in order to reduce over-
population in other areas of the colony and partly to counterbalance growing
American influence in the region, but, although the community numbered
more than 500 by the 1950s, the migrants had to battle constantly against
drought, a lack of fresh water, limited markets for coconuts (which were their
only source of income), and the remoteness of their location so the project
was abandoned in 1963 and the people evacuated to the British Solomon
Islands. On 12 July 1980, Hull Island became part of the new state of
Kiribati when the Gilberts won independence, and on 20 September the same
234 • HULL ISLAND
year, through the Treaty of Tarawa, the United States formally withdrew its
long dormant claim to the atoll, which is now known as Orona and forms part
of the Phoenix Islands Protected Area, a sanctuary for marine life.
 I
ÎLE BONAPARTE. See BOURBON.

IMMIGRATION CONTROLS. See COMMONWEALTH IMMIGRA-

TION TO THE UNITED KINGDOM; UNITED KINGDOM IMMIGRA-
TION LEGISLATION.

IMPERIAL AIRSHIP SCHEME. In 1922, Charles Dennistoun Burney, an

engineer with the aviation department of Vickers Limited, developed plans to
link Great Britain to India and Australia by airship (which, technologists
of the time believed, would be a more practical form of transoceanic trans-
port than the heavier-than-air airplane). The venture, he argued, would cut
travel times to Bombay, for mail and passengers, from 17 days to six and
those to Australia from four–five weeks to 12 days. Vickers, he argued, could
build six craft at a cost of £4,000,000 and organize their flights with no
capital investment from the state. However, in 1924, Christopher Thomson,
Baron Thomson, the secretary of state for air in Prime Minister Ramsay
MacDonald’s Labour Party government, opted for a different approach,
known as the Imperial Airship Scheme, commissioning Vickers to build one
airship (the R100, quickly named the “capitalist ship” by the press) under
Burney’s direction and using existing methods while the government itself
built another (the R101, named “the socialist ship”), using more innovatory
approaches, at its Royal Airship Works.
After a series of construction delays, caused largely by the cost of the
enterprise, the R100—designed by Barnes Wallis (better known for the
“bouncing bombs” that he invented for the Royal Air Force’s “Dambuster”
raids during World War II) and with stress calculations carried out by Nevil
Shute Norway (who also wrote a popular series of novels under the Nevil
Shute pen name)—made a successful transatlantic crossing to Canada in
1930, leaving Britain on 20 August and taking 78 hours to complete the
journey to Montreal. The R101, also much delayed (by the research and
testing programs), had only one trial flight before setting off for India on 4
October the same year. Shortly after two o’clock the following morning, it

235
236 • IMPERIAL AIRWAYS
crashed in northern France, killing 46 of the 54 people on board, including
the secretary of state. On 31 August 1931, amid a growing world economic
recession, MacDonald’s cabinet decided to bring the Imperial Airship
Scheme to an end.
See also ALL RED LINE; ALL-RED ROUTE; EMPIRE AIR MAIL
SCHEME; IMPERIAL AIRWAYS; IMPERIAL WIRELESS CHAIN.

IMPERIAL AIRWAYS. In the years between the two world wars, Imperial
Airways carried mail and passengers from Great Britain on scheduled ser-
vices to colonial cities in the Far East, India, and South Africa. The business
was formed following a report by a government-appointed inquiry, led by Sir
Herbert Hambling (the deputy chairman of Barclays Bank), that had been
asked to identify the best means of subsidizing civil aviation and promoting
the industry’s growth. The Hambling Committee recommended uniting four
of the largest existing firms—British Marine Air Navigation, Daimler Air-
way, Handley Page Transport, and Instone Airline Company—in a single
enterprise that could compete against French and German concerns, and the
government accepted that recommendation. Created on 31 March 1924, the
new firm was based at Croydon, south of London, and introduced services on
26 April with its first scheduled daily journey to Paris. On 1 January 1927,
Imperial assumed responsibility for the Royal Air Force’s route from Cairo
(in Egypt) to Baghdad (in Iraq) and on 30 March 1929 it inaugurated a
service from London to Karachi (now in Pakistan but then in British India)
that, for the intrepid travelers, involved a flight from London to Basle (in
Switzerland) followed by an onward trip by rail to Genoa (Italy), a flying
boat flight to Alexandria (Egypt), another rail journey (to Cairo), and a final
flight to Karachi—a journey that took seven days (and can now be completed
in about five hours). By 1931, further routes were being operated from Lon-
don to Mwanze (Tanganyika) and Cape Town (South Africa), and by 1933
Calcutta (India), Rangoon (Burma), Singapore, and Brisbane (Australia)
had been added, with the Australian airline Queensland and Northern Ter-
ritory Aerial Services Limited (QANTAS) providing the planes for the Sin-
gapore-Brisbane leg. By 1936, Hong Kong and Kano and Lagos (in Nige-
ria) had been added to the list of destinations. Planes were small, providing
seats for only about 20 passengers, most of whom were men traveling on
business or to posts in colonial administration, and accidents were not unusu-
al (in the first six years of operations, 32 people died in seven incidents).
Never achieving the levels of technological innovation that characterized
most of its competitiors, the airline became a casualty of World War II. On
24 November 1939 (some three months after the conflict began), Prime
Minister Neville Chamberlain’s coalition government created a British Over-
 IMPERIAL BRITISH EAST AFRICA COMPANY • 237
seas Airways Corporation (BOAC) to manage a single, state-owned airline
that was formed, on 1 April the following year, by the merger of Imperial
Airways and British Airways Limited (which had been founded in 1935).
See also ALL RED LINE; ALL-RED ROUTE; EMPIRE AIR MAIL
SCHEME; IMPERIAL AIRSHIP SCHEME; IMPERIAL WIRELESS
CHAIN.

IMPERIAL BRITISH EAST AFRICA COMPANY. In 1886, Great Brit-

ain and Germany assigned themselves separate spheres of interest in East
Africa, but the British government was unwilling to finance development of
a 250,000-square-mile territory that appeared to have little economic poten-
tial and was populated by tribes unwilling to accept its authority so it author-
ized Sir William Mackinnon’s Imperial British East Africa Company
(IBEAC) to administer the area. Mackinnon, who had begun his working life
as a grocer’s assistant and become a wealthy shipowner with vessels trading
across the Indian Ocean, formed IBEAC on 18 April 1888 and negotiated the
grant of a royal charter for the firm on 6 September the same year. However,
the business was always under-capitalized and thus unable to meet either the
government’s political aims (such as the ending of the slave trade between
East Africa and Arabia) or its own commercial goals (including the construc-
tion of a railroad that would link Mombasa, on Africa’s east coast, to fertile
lands on the Buganda Plateau, north of Lake Victoria). Conflict between
British Protestant missionaries and French Catholic missionaries in Buganda
added to the problems, leading to violence in 1892 and compelling the com-
pany to impose a peace by dispatching a detachment of soldiers under the
command of Frederick Lugard, who had originally been employed in 1890
to open a route from Mombasa to the continental interior and later became
high commissioner for Northern Nigeria, where he evolved a much-imitat-
ed system of indirect rule of colonial territories. Mackinnon’s leadership,
too, was questioned; according to some sources, he favored buying slaves
from Arab traders, rather than enforcing an end to the practice, and Horatio
Herbert Kitchener (who had worked with the French and the Germans on a
commission that drew boundaries in the region) apparently recommended
that Prime Minister Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, Lord Salisbury, should get rid
of him.
The cost of ending the troubles in Buganda caused such a drain on
IBEAC’s resources that Mackinnon threatened to withdraw from East Africa
unless he received help from government coffers, but the assistance was
refused. His death on 22 June 1893 compounded the firm’s problems, adding
urgency to a campaign by antislavery groups and missionary societies (sup-
ported by Lugard) to persuade the government that it should take responsibil-
ity for administration in the region. The public pressure proved successful,
partly because British politicians had no wish to see Germany step into the
238 • IMPERIAL CONFERENCE
managerial vacuum that would have resulted if IBEAC had left. On 11 April
1894, Britain declared Buganda a protectorate (which later formed the basis
of the crown colony of Uganda) and on 1 July 1895 designated the remain-
der of the region the East Africa Protectorate (which became Kenya Colo-
ny in 1920), paying IBEAC £200,000 in compensation.
See also KENYA PROTECTORATE; WITULAND.

IMPERIAL CONFERENCE. See COLONIAL CONFERENCE.

IMPERIAL FEDERATION. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the
concept of replacing the Empire with some form of federation was popular-
ized by politicians and writers in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and
other colonial territories as well as in Great Britain. Aware that several
imperial possessions, and particularly the dominions, were assuming ever
greater responsibility for administering their domestic affairs, the proposals’
supporters (who included such influential public figures as novelist E. M.
Forster and Prime Minister Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, Marquess of Salisbury)
argued that Britain’s world role would diminish if the trend continued and
colonies became self-governing, sovereign states. No single plan for federa-
tion received universal approval, but favored suggestions included a scheme
for a single state with an imperial parliament, based in London, that consid-
ered issues of foreign relations and other matters (such as defense) with
implications for the entire federal area. Some parts of the new federation
(including India) would be ruled directly by that parliament, but others (not-
ably the dominions) would have their own legislative assemblies for internal
concerns (as would Scotland, Ireland, and Wales—an arrangement that
some enthusiasts believed would dampen demand for home rule in Ireland).
Critics pointed out that the geography of the Empire made communication
difficult, limiting the effectiveness of a central government, and that the
London parliament would be bedeviled by a multiplicity of competing inter-
ests from different parts of the world, but the ideas found favor with Cana-
dian opponents of proposals for commercial union with the United States,
and, in Australia, some advocates of a merger of British colonies in the
region believed that the move would be a first step toward a more all-encom-
passing federation of imperial possessions. After World War I, supporters of
union quickly lost ground in the face of growing demands for independence,
especially in the dominions, but traces of the concept remain in, for example,
the policies of the United Kingdom Independence Party, whose members
campaign for British withdrawal from the European Union and for a
strengthening of ties with the Commonwealth of Nations.
 IMPERIAL WIRELESS CHAIN • 239
IMPERIAL PREFERENCE. For a period during the 20th century, Great
Britain attempted to boost trade with colonial possessions through a system
of preferential tariff rates. Joseph Chamberlain, secretary of state for the
colonies (see COLONIAL OFFICE) from 1895 until 1903, believed that the
mother country could compete with the growing industrial might of Germany
and the United States, and so maintain Great Power status, if it linked in
some form of federal structure to the territories in its worldwide Empire (and
particularly to areas—such as Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and South
Africa—that had attracted large numbers of British settlers). A system of
differential import charges that gave preference to imperial possessions by
allowing their goods to enter Britain at a lower cost than that of similar
products derived from foreign sources was essential to the success of the
arrangement, but influential economists (such as William Ashley, professor
of economic history at Harvard University) and political colleagues (includ-
ing Chancellor of the Exchequer Charles Ritchie) were strongly in favor of
free trade and Chamberlain was unable to win them over. In 1932, however,
the United Kingdom abandoned its long-held opposition to fiscal constraints
on international commerce as industrialized economies suffered from a
worldwide depression and individual states reacted by adopting measures
designed to protect their own producers. The Import Duties Act, which took
effect on 1 March, introduced a levy of 10 percent on all goods, except
foodstuffs and raw materials, that were brought into the country, with the
exception of commodities from the “dependent Empire.” Then, at a confer-
ence in Ottawa in July and August, discussions with representatives of the
dominions (which were, in effect, independent countries) produced a series
of bilateral agreements on tariff concessions, but geography and politics
limited the duration and impact of all the measures. In 1935, a new govern-
ment in Canada, led by Prime Minister Mackenzie King, abandoned imperial
preference in favor of a trade agreement with the United States, and after
World War II newly independent colonies shaped their own economic strate-
gies. As the political ties with Empire loosened, the United Kingdom forged
closer partnerships with neighbors, initially through membership of the Euro-
pean Free Trade Association (EFTA) in 1960 and then, in 1973, by joining
the European Economic Community (EEC), which restructured to form the
European Union (EU) in 1993.

IMPERIAL WIRELESS CHAIN. The Imperial Wireless Chain (some-

times known as the Empire Wireless Chain) was developed after World War
I as a means of facilitating communication between British colonies. The
scheme was first proposed in 1906 by Marconi’s Wireless Telegraph Compa-
ny, which planned to build lines of wireless stations, 1,000 miles apart,
throughout the Empire but was rejected by the government because it was
believed to be too radical at a time when wireless was a high-cost means of
240 • IMPERIAL WIRELESS CHAIN
transmitting messages and alternative telegraph cables were available (see
ALL RED LINE). However, politicians elsewhere were less cautious. At an
Imperial Conference (see COLONIAL CONFERENCE), held in London in
1911 while representatives from British possessions gathered for the corona-
tion of King George V, delegates approved a motion that “the great impor-
tance of wireless telegraphy for social, commercial and defensive purposes
renders it desirable that a chain of British state-owned wireless stations be
established within the Empire.” By then, other nations, including France and
Germany, were building installations for long-distance wireless transmis-
sions so, in March 1912, Prime Minister Herbert Asquith’s Liberal Party
government authorized Marconi’s firm to develop a network from Britain to
South Africa and from there to Singapore. Construction was delayed, in-
itially while an inquiry considered criticisms that a work of such magnitude
should be carried out by government rather than by a private concern and
then by the outbreak of World War I, so the first link (from Leafield, in
southern England, to Cairo, in Egypt) was not completed until 24 April
1922. Then, on 1 August 1924—after lengthy deliberations and complaints
that the Empire was suffering because of the lack of an efficient wireless
communication system—parliament approved a system that would allow
messages to be sent to Australia, Canada, India, and South Africa using
shortwave “beam” wireless stations, and the last link in the chain (that from
Australia to Canada) became operational on 16 June 1928.
The commercial success of the wireless technology had an immediate
impact on the cable telegraph firms, which were considered strategically
important because messages sent by that method were more difficult to inter-
cept, so on 8 April 1929 the government merged both communication sys-
tems under a single operating company, initially known as Imperial and
International Communications Limited but renamed Cable and Wireless
Limited in 1934. The new firm purchased government-owned cables and
leased the government-owned wireless stations at £250,000 a year but very
soon encountered financial problems as traffic declined in the worldwide
economic depression that began in 1930 and as relatively cheap airmail letter
rates and the services offered by businesses such as International Telephone
& Telegraph (ITT), based in the United States, provided strong competition
for the demand that remained. In 1938, the government attempted to help the
company by giving it the wireless stations in return for 2,600,000 of its
30,000,000 shares, but after World War II, Australia, Canada, India, New
Zealand, South Africa, and Southern Rhodesia all assumed responsibility
for their own external communications services, creating state-owned com-
panies to manage them and thus breaking the imperial chain controlled from
the United Kingdom. In accordance with its philosophy of government own-
ership of public services, Prime Minister Clement Attlee’s Labour Party
administration nationalized Cable and Wireless in the United Kingdom on 1
 INDIA • 241
January 1947 and transferred most of its assets to the Post Office but allowed
the state-owned firm to pursue overseas operations as an independent busi-
ness.
See also ALL-RED ROUTE; EMPIRE AIR MAIL SCHEME; IMPERIAL
AIRSHIP SCHEME; IMPERIAL AIRWAYS.

INDIA. Initial English interest in the Indian subcontinent lay primarily in the
possibility of wealth to be gained from trade in spices, but for the century
after Vasco da Gama pioneered the sea route to southern Asia round the Cape
of Good Hope in 1498 the country’s mercantile ambitions were frustrated
because maritime commerce to the region was dominated by the Portuguese.
Some goods could be transported overland, but England’s commercial influ-
ence in the region remained limited until Portuguese power declined and, on
31 December 1600, Queen Elizabeth I granted the newly formed East India
Company a monopoly of the nation’s trade with all territories to the east of
the Cape.
Although relations with local rulers were sometimes frosty and hostilities
with other European powers, notably the Dutch, were frequent, the Company
had established more than 20 trading posts on the subcontinent by 1650. In
1757, Robert Clive’s victory at the Battle of Plassey ended French aspira-
tions in the region, opening up the whole of the vast landmass to British
influence. However, a rebellion by sepoys (the Indian soldiers in the Compa-
ny’s army) in May 1857 persuaded the government that the firm could not
maintain control of the territory (see INDIAN MUTINY (1857–1858)) so, on
2 August 1858, parliament passed the Government of India Act, which trans-
ferred the East India Company’s capital and authority to the crown. For the
89-year period of the British Raj (the time from the crown’s assumption of
control until the territory won its independence) the land was ruled as a
colony, with some areas directly under British control and others governed
by native princes who were answerable to British agents (see INDIAN
PRINCELY STATES). In the mid-19th century, British India extended to
over 1,000,000 square miles (including the territories of the modern republics
of Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan as well as those of Aden and much of
southern Myanmar) and had more than 225,000,000 inhabitants. The vice-
roys, representatives of the monarch, created an Imperial Forest Service in
order to manage timber resources and improved communications (principally
through the creation of an extensive railroad network), but the economic
system was essentally exploitative, with most raw materials (notably cotton)
exported to Britain and finished products (such as clothing) imported so that
Indians had little opportunity to develop manufacturing skills or create
wealth. Moreover, during the second half of the century, millions of Indians
died in famines that, though partly caused by the variable nature of monsoon
rains, were attributed by many victims to imperial trading practices (in par-
242 • INDIA
ticular, the export of food crops) and the intransigent political attitudes of
their overlords. (For example, Robert Bulwer-Lytton, Baron Lytton, viceroy
from 1876–1880, argued that “indiscriminate alms-giving” would “demoral-
ize the self-reliance of the population.”)
Dissatisfaction led to demands for change. Colonial dominance was main-
tained more by policies of divide and rule—for example, by using tensions
between the Hindu majority and the Moslem minority to enhance division—
than by military might, but the number of British-born residents in India was
always small (well under 0.1 percent of the total population at the start of the
Raj period) so some local participation in government councils was consid-
ered advisable. That, however, gave Indians a taste of power and facilitated
the emergence of local leaders who could become foci of dissident groups.
Moreover, although universities were established at Bengal, Bombay, and
Madras, promises of access to senior posts in the civil service for educated
Indians failed to materialize so, during the last quarter of the 19th century,
politically astute but frustrated individuals formed organizations that were
dedicated to furthering the interests of the great majority of the colony’s
residents, most notable among them the Indian National Congress, which
first met in 1885.
Early protest movements were largely peaceful, but, in 1905, attempts to
partition Bengal into Hindu and Moslem provinces provoked more open
rebellion as a boycott of British-made textiles spread to wider action de-
signed to promote Indian manufactures and to replace British educational
systems with schools based on traditional principles. Britain’s administrators
attempted to end the troubles by extending Indian representation in provin-
cial legislatures, but, with increasing frequency, anger flared into violence, as
on 23 December 1912, when a bomb was thrown at Charles Hardinge, Baron
Hardinge, a viceroy who eventually did much to calm relations between the
colonial power and its Indian subjects.
The 1,500,000 Indians who served with Britain and its allies during World
War I clearly expected that their service would bring political concessions
when the conflict ended, but their hopes were largely unfulfilled. Parliament
gave the provincial councils greater authority and extended the voting fran-
chise, but many combatants returning from the battlefield found themselves
still regarded as second-class citizens with limited employment opportu-
nities. Also, the 1919 Rowlatt Act, which was named after the chairman of
the committee that had recommended its introduction, allowed the viceroy
and judges to muzzle the press and detain suspected terrorists without trial—
measures that angered the great majority of people on the subcontinent. As a
result, Mohandas Karamchand (or “Mahatma”) Gandhi was able to orga-
nize mass noncooperation movements, his cause helped by the action of Raj
troops, who fired on crowds attending a rally at Amritsar, in the Punjab, on
13 April 1919, killing 379 civilians. Gandhi encouraged his countrymen to
 INDIA • 243
boycott all things British—law courts, jobs, manufactured goods, schools,
and taxes—on the grounds that colonial rule would eventually grind to a halt
through lack of income and labor. Administrators responded by jailing him,
extending the voting franchise still further, conceding yet more powers to the
provincial councils, and attempting to retain the support of the most well-
educated Indians and of minority groups, but the results were limited even
though Indian society was much divided on caste and religious grounds.
The Government of India Act of 1935 (which gave greater autonomy to
the provincial councils and increased the voting franchise fivefold) did little
to improve matters, with proposals for federation never implemented because
the different factions could not agree on how federal arrangements would
work and because leaders of many of the Indian princely states simply re-
jected the concept. Even so—and although the legislation contained provi-
sions for the British government to intervene in Indian decision-making pro-
cesses in order to protect its own interests—many politicians in London,
opposed to concessions, believed that the imperial power was surrendering to
the demands of its colonial subjects. World War II heightened internal divi-
sions even further. On 3 September 1939, the viceroy (Victor Hope, mar-
quess of Linlithgow) infuriated the Hindu community by failing to consult
local leaders before announcing that Indian troops would support Britain and
her allies. Although the Muslim community strongly supported Hope, and
more than 2,000,000 volunteers served with the Indian Army in Africa, Asia,
and the Middle East, many Indians fought on the side of Germany and Japan
in anticipation of the removal of the colonial yoke when Britain was defeat-
ed. Gandhi and some 60,000 others were imprisoned as the United Kingdom
attempted to quash subversion, but attempts, in 1945 and 1946, to take repri-
sals against the men who shouldered arms on the Axis side rebounded as
Indians who had been loyal to the Allied cause mutinied, mostly notably at
the navy base in Bombay (now Mumbai).
By the time of those mutinies, Britain was emerging victorious from the
war but with its international political clout much weakened and with its
economic base devastated by the demands of wartime production. Politicians
and public seemed more concerned with domestic reconstruction than with
holding on to colonies that were perceived of as a burden rather than an asset,
and Clement Attlee, who became prime minister after the general election in
1945, believed that a transfer of power to the Indian people was a moral
imperative. In Calcutta, religious tensions flared into violence that spread
throughout the subcontinent. In February 1947, Attlee appointed Lord Louis
Mountbatten viceroy of India and ordered him to prepare the territory for
independence by the middle of the following year, but events forced a re-
shaping of the agenda. Faced with the extent of the killing and fearing further
military mutinies, the British prime minister accepted that a partition of the
subcontinent into an independent, self-governing Hindu-dominated India and
244 • INDIA ACT (1784)
an equally independent and self-governing, but predominantly Muslim, Paki-
stan was inevitable even though Pakistan—separated from the Soviet Union
only by Afghanistan—was considered vulnerable to communist influence.
Gandhi objected to the division, but Jawaharlal “Pandit” Nehru (the head
of an interim government) and Muhammad Ali Jinnah (the leader of the
Muslim faction) welcomed the move, Nehru reluctantly and Jinnah with
enthusiasm. At midnight on 14–15 August 1947, the communities separated
(see PARTITION OF INDIA), precipitating a mass migration as 12,000,000
members of religious minorities crossed the new national boundaries in an
attempt to secure safety: some 1,000,000 were murdered before they could
find sanctuary. For many years afterward, India’s economy was hampered by
the cost of resettling refugees as well as by friction with Pakistan, which
itself divided into Pakistan and Bangladesh in 1971.
See also ANDAMAN ISLANDS; ANGLO-DUTCH TREATY (1814);
ANGLO-DUTCH TREATY (1824); BALUCHISTAN; BENGAL PRESI-
DENCY; BHUTAN; BLACK HOLE OF CALCUTTA; BURMA; CAREY,
WILLIAM (1761–1834); CARNATIC (OR KARNATIC) WARS
(1746–1748, 1749–1754, AND 1757–1763); CEYLON; COCHIN; COM-
MONWEALTH IMMIGRATION TO THE UNITED KINGDOM; COM-
MONWEALTH OF NATIONS; COORG; DISRAELI, BENJAMIN, EARL
OF BEACONSFIELD (1804–1881); EAST AFRICA PROTECTORATE;
FEDERATED MALAY STATES; FIJI; FIRST AFGHAN WAR
(1839–1842); FIRST BURMESE WAR (1824–1826); FIRST SIKH WAR
(1845–1846); GASCOYNE-CECIL, ROBERT ARTHUR TALBOT, MAR-
QUESS OF SALISBURY (1830–1903); THE GREAT GAME; GURKHA
(OR NEPALESE) WAR (1814–1816); HASTINGS, WARREN
(1732–1818); INDIA ACT (1784); INDIA OFFICE; INDIRECT RULE;
KENYA COLONY; KIPLING, JOSEPH RUDYARD (1865–1936); MARA-
THA WARS (1775–1782, 1803–1805, AND 1817–1818); MAURITIUS;
MISSIONARIES; MYSORE WARS (1767–1769, 1780–1784, 1790–1792,
AND 1799); NATAL; NEPAL; PERSIAN GULF; REGULATING ACT
(1773); SAINT LUCIA; SECOND AFGHAN WAR (1878–1880); SECOND
SIKH WAR (1848–1849); SERAMPORE; SEYCHELLES; SIKKIM; SU-
RAT; TEA TRADE; THIRD AFGHAN WAR (1919); TIBET; TRANQUE-
BAR; TRINIDAD.

INDIA ACT (1784). By the early 1770s, the East India Company (EIC),
which had been founded in 1600 and held a monopoly over British trade on
the Indian subcontinent, was facing bankruptcy, partly because of poor man-
agement and partly because its shipments of tea to the American colonies
were failing to find markets (see AMERICAN REVOLUTION). The Regu-
lating Act, passed by parliament in 1773, had failed to improve matters so, in
1784, Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger and his Tory Party support-
 INDIA OFFICE • 245
ers (spurred by the Company’s failure to achieve victory in the Second My-
sore War) introduced further legislation that greatly increased government
supervision of the business. The India Act, which received parliamentary
approval on 13 August, created a Board of Control, consisting of six senior
political figures nominated by the monarch, to “superintend, direct, and con-
trol” the administration of civil and military matters. (That measure meant
that, for the first time, the government would determine certain EIC strate-
gies, but the firm’s Court of Directors was retained so, in effect, one commit-
tee, consisting entirely of politicians, exercised authority over political deci-
sion making and another, consisting of businessmen, exercised authority over
commercial decision making.) Also, the council that worked with the
governor-general (who was also appointed by the monarch) was reduced
from four members to three. The governor-general, based in Bengal Presi-
dency, was granted authority to veto council decisions and was given addi-
tional powers over army, diplomatic, and financial matters, reducing the
power of the presidencies of Bombay and Madras and effectively making
Calcutta, Bengal’s capital, the headquarters of colonial activities on the sub-
continent. Although the areas of interest of the Board, the Court, and the
governor-general were never clearly defined, the managerial arrangements
remained largely unchanged until the government assumed full responsibility
for the Company in 1858.

INDIA OFFICE. On 2 August 1858, Queen Victoria gave royal assent to

the Government of India Act, which ended the East India Company’s
(EIC’s) control of India and transferred its properties and duties to the crown.
Responsibility for administering the territories formerly under EIC supervi-
sion was assigned to the India Office, a department of government led by a
secretary of state for India, who had a seat in the cabinet and was assisted by
a group of advisors known as the Council of India. Initially, day-to-day
control was exercised by a viceroy and provincial governors, who had con-
siderable power because communication between the subcontinent and Lon-
don, and between areas of the subcontinent, was very slow. During the sec-
ond half of the 19th century, however, the construction of a railroad network
in India, the development of telegraph cables, and the opening of the Suez
Canal (in 1869) facilitated the transmission of messages, allowing the Of-
fice’s officials to shape policy more easily. Then, during the early decades of
the 20th century, the gradual devolution of authority from colonizers to rep-
resentatives of the colonized changed the Office’s role from that of absolute
ruler to overseer. On 1 April 1937, as the democratization process advanced,
Aden and Burma (both of which had been ruled as areas of British India)
were made crown colonies. Responsibility for the administration of the for-
mer passed from the India Office to the Colonial Office and that for the latter
to a newly created Burma Office, which shared a secretary of state with the
246 • INDIAN MUTINY (1857–1858)
India Office and was staffed by civil servants who worked in the same
premises as their India Office colleagues but which, constitutionally, was a
separate entity. When India became fully self-governing at midnight on
14–15 August 1947, and was partitioned into the independent states of India
and Pakistan (see PARTITION OF INDIA), the India Office was disbanded
and its staff transferred to a new Commonwealth Relations Office.
The archives of the India Office and related bodies, including the Burma
Office and the EIC, now occupy some nine miles of shelving in the British
Library. Because of India’s political significance in the days of Empire, those
records include much data for scholars working on other areas of British
influence in the region, including Afghanistan, China, East Africa, the Him-
alaya (including Bhutan, Nepal, Tibet, and Sikkim), the Malay Pensinsula,
and the Persian Gulf, as well as for individuals attempting to trace family
histories.
See also BRITISH RAJ; INDIAN MUTINY (1857–1858).

INDIAN MUTINY (1857–1858). The mid-19th-century Indian mutiny

(sometimes known in India as the First War of Indian Independence) forced
Britain into a wholescale restructuring of its administration of the colony.
The spark that ignited the fire was a series of rumors that cartridges for the
newly issued Enfield muskets were greased with beef fat (which Hindus
refused to eat for religious reasons) or pork fat (which was similarly taboo to
Moslems). Sepoys (Indian men serving in the colonial army) had to bite the
cartridges in order to use them; inevitably, that meant they would ingest
some of the prohibited animal product so they refused. The revolt might have
been contained had cartridges been the only focus of grievance, but many
soldiers were unhappy about changes to their conditions of service (new
recruits were to have no pension rights, for example) and they were sup-
ported by the large number of Indian citizens who opposed British efforts to
change traditional practices (such as the marriage of child brides) and to
promote Christianity.
Increasing resentment over punishments meted out to sepoys who dis-
obeyed orders flared into violence at Meerut, where, on 25 April 1857, In-
dian junior ranks shot their British officers then marched the 35 miles to New
Delhi and took control of the settlement. From there, the rebellion spread
through much of northern India, accompanied by considerable bloodshed.
When reports of the killing of 120 women and children at Cawnpore (now
Kanpur) reached Britain, politicians and public were horrified and demanded
reprisals. The garrison at Lucknow, placed under siege in July 1857, was
relieved in March the following year and by 8 July the revolt was quelled, but
the ferocity of the victors exceeded even that of the rebels, with mutineers
hanged, shot from cannon, or tied in front of cannon and blown apart. The
defeat of the rebels ended any prospect of an end to anglicization of Indian
 INDIAN PRINCELY STATES • 247
society and precipitated considerable change. Believing that the East India
Company, which had administered the colony, was no longer able to main-
tain order, parliament passed a Government of India Act that introduced
direct rule from London in 1858, with political responsibility in the hands of
an India Office, whose head was a secretary of state with a seat in the
cabinet. The army was restructured, with the number of Bengali regiments
reduced as the loyalty of their members was considered suspect, and—be-
cause politicians believed that much of the rebels’ frustration stemmed from
the East India Company’s unwillingness to listen to local opinion—Indians
were increasingly given a role in government, initiating a process that led, in
the 20th century, to demands for an end to colonial rule.
See also MISSIONARIES.

INDIAN PRINCELY STATES. The East India Company had neither the
funds nor the personnel to administer all regions of the Indian subcontinent
directly so it left many areas (sometimes known as Native States) under the
control of traditional rulers if those rulers recognized British sovereignty.
After the Company’s responsibilities were transferred to the crown in 1858,
the British government adopted the same policy. Treaties negotiated with
local leaders varied greatly in detail, always giving British officials authority
over the territory’s external affairs but differing in the degree of influence
permitted over domestic matters. The rulers retained their customary titles
(such as maharajah, nawab, nizam, or rajah) and were allocated a place in the
hierarchy of potentates (some were entitled to a 21-gun salute, some to
none), but all were categorized by colonial officials as “princes” in order to
emphasize that their rank was inferior to that of the British king or queen. In
the late 19th century, imperial administrators tried to limit contact between
the princes in order to strengthen the colonial power’s authority, but in the
early 20th century, as nationalist calls for independence in British India (the
area under direct British control) became more strident, concessions (includ-
ing a lessening of imperial influence over internal matters) had to be made in
return for continued support. The formation of a Chamber of Princes gave the
rulers a forum at which to present common views from 1920, but attempts,
during the 1930s, to persuade them to join in federation with British India
failed when they realized that their rule would be threatened by a federal
government. As Britain prepared the subcontinent for full self-determination
in 1947, several tried to retain their independence, but under pressure from
British and nationalist negotiators the vast majority—more than 500 of
them—eventually opted to accept pensions and merge their territories with
India or with Pakistan, although the state of Jammu and Kashmir was di-
vided between both (with control still contested), and Junagadh and Hydera-
248 • INDIRECT RULE
bad were integrated with India only after being invaded in 1947 and 1948,
respectively. In 1971, the Indian parliament voted to abolish all of the rem-
nants of the princely states, including titles.
See also BRITISH RAJ; INDIRECT RULE; RESIDENT.

INDIRECT RULE. Because of their small numbers, British officials could

not control all imperial possessions without the assistance of local rulers,
who were permitted to exercise varying degrees of authority over domestic
affairs. British advisors, often known as “residents,” kept a watchful eye on
these indigenous decision makers and usually retained sole command over
matters relating to foreign relations, military commitments, and, often, taxa-
tion. The practice, known as indirect rule, was first used by the East India
Company in mid-18th-century Indian princely states, but its refinement is
usually attributed to Frederick Lugard, who was high commissioner in
Northern Nigeria from 1900–1906. Lugard believed that Africans would
more willingly obey one of their own people than accept the authority of a
European so he allowed emirs who recognized British sovereignty to retain
prestige by administering justice and maintaining order in their communities,
but he reformed the tax system and used some of the revenue to finance
economic and social projects, such as agricultural improvement and provi-
sion of health care. London governments found the arrangement attractive
because it could operate without a large staff of trained British personnel and
because it kept administrative costs to a minimum so indirect rule was widely
applied in African and Asian colonial territories during the 20th century.
However, its implementation was not always trouble-free. The system
worked well in places that already had strongly centralized forms of govern-
ment (such as the sultanates in Malaya) but was less successful in more
loosely structured regions. For example, after Lugard was appointed govern-
or-general of the whole of Nigeria in 1914, he found that residents in the
Christian south, where tribal organization was relatively weak, were more
unwilling than their counterparts in the Moslem north to follow the edicts of
traditional leaders. Also, as young people acquired an education and became
more anglicized, they often rejected obedience to the authority of ruling
elders, some of whom were, in effect, tyrants because they were answerable
only to the resident and not to their own people.
See also DIRECT RULE; THE GAMBIA; GOLD COAST; GOLDIE,
GEORGE DASHWOOD TAUBMAN (1846–1925); IRAQ; KINGSLEY,
MARY HENRIETTA (1862–1900); NATAL; TANGANYIKA.

INFORMAL EMPIRE. The term “informal Empire” is applied to areas of

the world over which a colonial power has no formal sovereignty but where
it exerts significant commercial and political influence. Historians Ronald
 IONIAN ISLANDS • 249
Robinson and Jack Gallagher popularized the phrase from 1953, arguing that
mid-19th-century British governments aimed to extend Britain’s internation-
al influence by whatever means they had at their disposal but formally ac-
quired territory (as crown colonies, for example) only as a last resort, partly
because of the costs involved. Argentina, China (see OPIUM WARS
(1839–1832 AND 1856–1860)), and the Middle East are frequently cited as
parts of Britain’s informal Empire, but many modern scholars question the
value of the concept, regarding it as difficult to apply to specific cases,
imprecise, and misleading because it underestimates the economic and politi-
cal hurdles that must be overcome if one country is to achieve dominance
over another.
See also FORMAL EMPIRE.

IONIAN ISLANDS. Six of the seven largest Ionian Islands (Cephalonia,

Corfu, Ithaca, Lefkas, Paxos, and Zakynthos) lie in the Ionian Sea, off the
west coast of Greece, with a seventh (Kythira) located south of the Pelopon-
nese peninsula. All were captured by Britain from the French in 1809–1814,
during the Napoleonic Wars, and on 5 November 1815, through a treaty
signed by representatives of Great Britain and Russia, were made “a single,
free and independent State” under the “immediate and exclusive protection
of the British Crown.” The protectorate arrangement did not please Henry
Bathurst, Earl Bathurst, the secretary of state for war and the colonies (see
COLONIAL OFFICE), who would have preferred to have had the islands
under direct British control because of their strategic location close to Greece
(a weak link in the Ottoman Empire) and the greater potential for developing
their economic resources. However, he need not have worried because—
although the United States of the Ionian Islands had a bicameral legislature
with a majority of members elected (rather than appointed)—a constitution
ratified by Queen Victoria in December 1817 ensured that, for several
decades, the lord high commissioner (the local British representative) ran
the territory as though it was a crown colony. Thomas Maitland, who (with
Bathurst’s support) devised the constitution and occupied the commission-
er’s post from 1816–1824 (while also acting as administrator of consular
offices in North Africa, commander-in-chief of British forces in the Mediter-
ranean, and governor of Malta) wrote of the Ionians’ “chicanery” and “du-
plicity”—characteristics that, along with other character flaws, he argued,
made them unfit to make political decisions for themselves. Believing that “a
free Government is incompatible with the existence of a strong one,” he ruled
as a despot but also attempted to eliminate administrative corruption, built
roads, established government banks, increased official salaries, made im-
provements to the court system, and prevented landlords from exploiting
tenants.
250 • IRAQ
Maitland had his critics in London but it was only after John Colborn,
Baron Seaton and former governor of Upper Canada, was appointed com-
missioner in 1843 that the grip of the colonial overlord was loosened. Seaton
extended the franchise, introduced secret ballots, made senior administrative
posts available to Ionians, removed restrictions on the press, and found a
sympathetic ear in Colonial Secretary Henry Grey, Earl Grey, who was
keen to further self-government in other areas of the Empire. However, the
reforms also opened new avenues of protest, allowing the islanders to make
their case for union with Greece. Politicians resisted until 1862, when—
largely as a result of British influence—George, brother of Princess Alexan-
dra of Denmark and therefore brother-in-law of the prince of Wales (later
King Edward VII), became king of Greece. Henry Temple, Viscount Pal-
merston and foreign secretary, realized the political implications. With
George on the Greek throne, links with Britain would be close. Moreover, the
Ionian Islands were a political problem because of the continued dissidence,
they were expensive to administer, and (although some parliamentarians
argued that they should be retained because of their possible value if war
broke out in the Mediterranean) they had lost much of their strategic impor-
tance over the years. After lengthy discussions with Denmark, Greece, and
other interested powers, the territory was formally ceded to Greece through
the Treaty of London, formalized on 29 March 1864.

IRAQ. In November 1914, the Ottoman Empire declared its support for
Germany’s military aspirations in Europe. Britain, which had extensive com-
mercial and political interests in the Middle East, responded by invading
Mesopotamia (then Ottoman territory) and capturing Baghdad on 11 March
1917. Retaining control after the war ended, it merged the Baghdad and
Basra regions into a single administrative unit in 1921 then, in 1926, added
Mosul, thus forming the broad outline of the modern Iraqi state. In April
1920, at a conference in San Remo, Italy, the League of Nations gave Britain
a mandate to govern the area, formally approving the arrangement on 24 July
(see LEAGUE OF NATIONS MANDATED TERRITORY). Those deci-
sions provoked a rebellion that began with peaceful protests in May and was
quelled only in October, after the deaths of some 6,000 Iraqis and about 600
British and Indian troops. Unwilling to heighten passions further, the British
government opted for a policy of indirect rule, creating a monarchy and
installing Faisal ibn Husain as king of Iraq on 23 August 1921 but ensuring
that British advisors were appointed to key positions in government depart-
ments and that British interests in oil exploration were protected. Despite that
“hands-off” approach, the lack of any democratic tradition in the region
created problems for colonial administrators, who were increasingly caught
between the conflicting demands of a British public that wanted international
commitments to be carried out as cheaply as possible, an international com-
 IRELAND • 251
munity that wanted to see the creation of a viable Iraqi state, and an Iraqi
population that wanted to shape its own destiny. From 1927, British policy
concentrated on finding a way to surrender its mandate in the area while
protecting its interests so on 3 October 1932 Iraq became a member of the
League of Nations as an independent country. In reality, however, it contin-
ued to depend heavily on the United Kingdom both for defense and for
finance. Moreover, the lack of any provisions that would protect the interests
of ethnic and religious minorities ensured continued internal turmoil, notably
involving the Kurdish peoples and the Shia and Sunni Moslem groups. In
1930, British and Iraqi authorities signed a treaty that allowed Britain to base
army and air force personnel in the country. On 4 May 1941, following a pro-
Nazi military coup, Britain used that treaty as justification for another inva-
sion that reinstated the monarchy and initiated a second occupation that
lasted until 26 October 1947.

IRELAND. Britain’s domination of Ireland dates from 1171, when King

Henry II of England invaded the island and made his son, John (later King
John), Dominus Hiberniae (Lord of Ireland) in order to forestall the develop-
ment of a rival Norman power center to the west of his English domains. The
geographical extent of monarchical control varied over succeeding centuries,
but by 1500 was confined to a small area around Dublin, where a parliament
had been established in 1297. In 1541, determined to reassert royal authority,
King Henry VIII persuaded that parliament to pass legislation making Ireland
a separate kingdom then introduced policies that, through a mixture of coer-
cion and negotiation, were designed to extend the reach of central govern-
ment while decreasing the autonomy of local landholders and the influence
of traditional practices. The moves sparked a series of rebellions that were
brutally suppressed and led, from 1556, to the confiscation of estates held by
the rebels. Those appropriated lands were reallocated to English, Scottish,
and Welsh settlers—a process (known as “The Plantations”) that increased
the population loyal to the crown but also added to the disaffection of the
Irish population and (particularly after it was applied to Ulster from 1606)
introduced a strong Protestant element into a dominantly Roman Catholic
society. Further revolts by the Catholic community in 1641–1653 and
1689–1691 resulted in more than 250,000 deaths, most of them a result of the
famine and disease that accompanied the fighting.
As the dissension continued through the 18th century, the British govern-
ment took steps to merge Ireland with Great Britain in an effort to ensure
that the territory would not serve as a base for a French invasion of England.
The legislation, approved by the London parliament on 2 July 1800 and by
the Dublin parliament on 1 August, allocated Ireland 100 seats in the House
of Commons (the lower house in Britain’s bicameral legislative assembly),
but King George III blocked plans by Prime Minister William Pitt the
252 • IRELAND
Younger to end official discrimination against the Catholic community, de-
claring that such a step would contradict his coronation oath to defend the
Protestant faith. Irish Catholics were, therefore, unable to become members
of the British parliament until after the passage of the Catholic Relief Act in
1829 even though the majority of the Irish people adhered to the Catholic
faith.
Economic troubles on the island reflected the absence of the coal and iron
reserves that fueled the industrial revolution in Britain and the presence of
inheritance laws that resulted, over time, in subdivision of farms to such an
extent that potatoes became the only crop that could be grown in sufficient
quantity to feed a family and provide fodder for animals. As a result, when
the plants were attacked by blight in 1845–1850, reducing the harvest by 75
percent in 1846 alone, the rural population was devastated by starvation and
disease, with estimates of the death toll over the period ranging from
1,000,000–1,500,000. For many people, the only solution was emigration; in
the decade after the start of the famine, some 1,500,000–2,000,000 citizens
left Ireland, many heading for North America, where they became city dwell-
ers, forming one-quarter of the population in Baltimore, Boston, and New
York in 1850 and accounting for one-half of Toronto’s residents in 1851.
Political activity in the years immediately following the famine focused
more strongly on changes to land tenure arrangements than on the political
relationship with Great Britain, but in 1870 Isaac Butt formed a Home
Government Association that sought domestic self-government and proved
to be the cradle of a successful independence movement. Butt’s organization
was little more than a pressure group of politicians with kindred views on the
advantages of home rule for Ireland, possibly in some kind of federal struc-
ture with the rest of Britain, but after its founder died in 1879 the more
radical nationalists coalesced around Charles Stewart Parnell, who created an
Irish Parliamentary Party (also known as the Home Rule Party) in 1882 and
turned the campaign into a formidable organized program that made “the
Irish Question” the most divisive issue in late 19th-century British politics.
Twice—in 1886 and 1893—Prime Minister William Gladstone tried to per-
suade parliament to approve legislation that would give Ireland an assembly
that had responsibility for governing internal affairs, but on both occasions
he was defeated by Protestant pro-unionists, who feared the commercial and
political implications of a Dublin-based body dominated by Roman Catho-
lics. In 1912, in Northern Ireland, where Protestant sects dominated, 471,414
people signed a covenant “to defeat the present conspiracy to set up a Home
Rule Parliament in Ireland” by “using all means which may be found neces-
sary,” and Edward Carson and James Craig formed a militia, known as the
Ulster Volunteers (later the Ulster Volunteer Force, or UVF) to support the
cause. Nationalist militants responded by creating the Irish Volunteers,
which, with other like-minded organizations, staged an “Easter Rising,” with
 IRELAND • 253
the aim of establishing an independent republic, on 24 April 1916. At first,
the rebellion was condemned by those nationalists who supported more con-
stitutional approaches to change, but the government’s treatment of the
rebels, 15 of whom were executed, changed many minds and led to increased
membership of Sinn Féin, which had been founded on 28 November 1905
with the aim of establishing in Ireland “a national legislature endowed with
the moral authority of the Irish nation.”
In 1919, republican members of the British parliament set up their own
assembly—the Dáil Éireann—in Dublin, and the Irish Republican Army,
descendants of the Irish Volunteers, began a series of guerilla attacks against
the British administration in a conflict known by its supporters as the Irish
War of Independence. The post–World War I British government reacted in
1920 by passing a Government of Ireland Act that created two assemblies,
one in Belfast for the six Protestant-dominated counties in the north and one
in Dublin for the other 26, Roman Catholic–dominated, counties. Sinn Féin
rejected the arrangement because it failed to meet the party’s aspirations but,
in practice, had no means of preventing the political partition of the island
that the legislation had introduced. Faced with the fait accompli, the republi-
cans entered negotiations with Prime Minister David Lloyd George’s
government that led, on 6 December 1921, to the signing of an Anglo-Irish
Treaty that made the 26 counties, which would be known as the Irish Free
State, a self-governing dominion within the British Empire. The Free State
changed its name to Éire on 29 December 1937 and adopted a constitution
that declared that “the whole island of Ireland, its islands and the territorial
seas” was one “national territory” over which the Oireachtas (the Irish parlia-
ment) had sovereignty. Ireland remained neutral during World War II
(though some 50,000 Irishmen fought on the Allied side) then, on 18 April
1949, severed all consititutional connections with the United Kingdom
(U.K.) and became a fully independent republic. Britain reacted with an
Ireland Act, which received royal assent on 2 June 1949 and declared that
(the republic’s constitutional assertions notwithstanding) Northern Ireland
would remain part of the U.K. unless the Belfast assembly declared other-
wise.
See also ABOLITION OF THE SLAVE TRADE ACT (1807); BAL-
FOUR DECLARATION (1926); CHAMBERLAIN, JOSEPH (1836–1914);
COLLINS, MICHAEL (1890–1922); COLONIAL CONFERENCE; DIS-
RAELI, BENJAMIN, EARL OF BEACONSFIELD (1804–1881); GAS-
COYNE-CECIL, ROBERT ARTHUR TALBOT, MARQUESS OF SALIS-
BURY (1830–1903); IMPERIAL FEDERATION; PRINCE EDWARD IS-
LAND; RALEIGH, WALTER (c. 1554–1618); WESTMINSTER, STAT-
UTE OF (1931).
254 • ISANDLWANA, BATTLE OF (22 JANUARY 1879)
ISANDLWANA, BATTLE OF (22 JANUARY 1879). In 1877, Colonial
Secretary Henry Herbert, Lord Carnarvon, appointed Sir Henry Bartle Frere
to the post of high commissioner for southern Africa and charged him with
uniting all of the territories in the region within a confederation. That, the
diplomats believed, would create a large pool of cheap native labor that could
be utilized in mines, plantations, and other white-owned enterprises across
the region. However, in order to achieve his goal, Frere first had to win
control of the independent Zulu people so he provoked an argument by
sending Cetshwayo, their ruler, an ultimatum that, among other demands,
required the Africans to disband their army. Cetshwayo had no intention of
submitting to British hegemony so, when he refused, Frere ordered Lieuten-
ant-General Frederic Thesiger, Baron Chelmsford—whose career had flour-
ished more because of his administrative talents than as a result of inspired
leadership on the battlefield—to make him comply. Chelmsford launched an
advance along several fronts from Natal on 11 January, beginning a Zulu
War that he and Frere both believed would be over quickly because their
troops carried modern breech-loading rifles and faced men armed only with
spears. On 20 January, a British force camped near Isandlwana—an isolated
hill about 100 miles north of Durban—but Chelmsford gave no orders to
prepare defenses because he was confident that precautions were unneces-
sary. The following day, he moved half of his men toward the Qudeni Forest,
on his southeastern flank, hoping to confront the main Zulu army and leaving
1,768 soldiers and civilians at the Isandlwana encampment under the com-
mand of the inexperienced Brevet Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Pulleine. On 22
January, 20,000 warriors overran the depleted group, killing 1,357 of the
camp’s occupants and suffering about 1,000 losses. News of the massacre
caused uproar in Britain, where the public was unused to hearing of heavy
military defeats by ill-equipped African tribesmen. Embarrassed, the govern-
ment (which had never approved Frere’s pursuit of war) sent reinforcements
to Natal, fearing both a Zulu invasion and a considerable loss of prestige
(with implications for its authority elsewhere in the Empire) if it could not
exact an appropriate revenge. A second campaign, launched in June, was
more successful than the ill-fated January advance, ending with the destruc-
tion of Ulundi, Cetshwayo’s royal base, on 4 July.
See also RORKE’S DRIFT, BATTLE (OR DEFENSE) OF (22–23 JANU-
ARY 1880); ZULULAND.

ISLE OF MAN. The Isle of Man lies in the Irish Sea, roughly equidistant
between Great Britain and Ireland. King Magnus VI of Norway sold the
220-square-mile territory to the Scots in 1266, but sovereignty passed be-
tween Scotland and England several times until 1405, when King Henry IV
of England gave it, as a lifetime grant, to Sir John Stanley. The following
year, the grant was extended to Stanley’s heirs, who ruled the island (initially
 ISLE OF MAN • 255
as kings of Mann and then, from 1504, as lords of Mann) until 1736, in return
for an agreement to render homage to the English monarch and present two
falcons to each new occupant of the throne on her or his coronation. When
James Stanley, earl of Derby, died in 1736, leaving no surviving children, the
lordship passed to his heir and first cousin, James Murray, duke of Atholl. By
that time, smuggling had become an important island activity, involving a
range of goods, including beer, brandy, coffee, tea, tobacco, and wine. The
loss of customs revenue to the British treasury was considerable and
mounted steadily in the middle years of the century so in 1765 the London
parliament passed an Isle of Man Purchase Act, which allowed the govern-
ment to buy the island for £70,000 from Atholl’s successors, his daughter
(Charlotte, duchess of Atholl) and her husband and first cousin (John Mur-
ray, who became lord of Mann by right of marriage). The legislation allowed
the Atholl family to retain certain privileges (such as patronage of the bish-
opric), but these, too, were acquired, for the sum of £417,144 in 1828. All of
the rights were revested in the British crown, but the Isle of Man was not
made part of Great Britain. (Plans to merge it with the English County of
Cumberland in 1765 brought vociferous objections from the island’s resi-
dents.) Instead, the territory was ruled by a lieutenant-governor, who repre-
sented the monarch and had sole authority over executive, judicial, and tax
matters. From 1921, however, most of those powers were eroded so the 21st-
century duties are largely ceremonial, and island affairs are governed by the
Tynwald, which claims (on somewhat dubious historical grounds) to be the
world’s oldest continuously functioning legislature, dating from 979. The
United Kingdom (U.K.) is responsible for defense and foreign affairs, but
Man, unlike the U.K., is not a member of the European Union (EU) though it
does benefit from tariff-free trade with EU countries. Because the Tynwald is
responsible for determining the area’s tax regime, the Isle of Man has be-
come an important provider of offshore financial services, with agriculture,
high-tech industries, and tourism adding to the employment opportunities.
See also CROWN DEPENDENCY.
 J
JAMAICA. England captured Jamaica—the largest of its Caribbean colo-
nies—from Spain in May 1655 then, in order to repulse Spanish attempts to
retake the territory, invited buccaneers and pirates to base themselves on the
island. English sovereignty was confirmed through the Treaty of Madrid,
signed on 8 July 1670, but, even so, control was uncertain until the last years
of the 18th century because the Spaniards’ slaves fled into the mountains and
resisted British efforts to assimilate them. Despite the lawlessness, however,
European landowners established coffee and sugarcane plantations, import-
ing their own African slaves as a source of labor. That predominantly agri-
cultural economy created considerable wealth for merchants and planters, but
by the early 1800s profits were being threatened by a growing market for
sugar derived from beet that could be grown closer to the major markets and
emancipation of slaves in the 1830s added to problems (see SLAVERY
ABOLITION ACT (1833)). Plantation owners imported Indian and Chinese
labor to replace the freed slaves, but the increased costs, coupled, in 1847,
with the British parliament’s decision to remove the protective tariffs that
had helped to boost returns, resulted in a collapse of the island’s sugar indus-
try and widespread poverty. Tensions between the white community (which
had administered the island since its earliest days) and the freed slaves led to
outbursts of violence, notably at Morant Bay in October 1865, when more
than 800 people were murdered by rioters, killed by soldiers, or executed in
the aftermath. On 11 June the following year, Britain declared the island a
crown colony and sent Governor Sir John Peter Grant to restore order. He
created a police force, introduced irrigation schemes in an effort to improve
agricultural potential, and reformed the judicial system, but the vast majority
of Jamaicans remained dissatisfied with a white-dominated administration
that was unrepresentative of a population that was largely of African descent.
The economic depression of the 1930s added to the dissatisfaction, leading
to further riots in 1938 and to the formation of labor unions and political
organizations that provided a platform for nationalist views. Norman Man-
ley (who founded the left-wing People’s National Party in 1938) and his
cousin, Alexander Bustamante (who had created the Jamaica Labour Party

257
258 • JAMESON RAID (1895–1896)
six years later), were instrumental in negotiating extensions to the franchise
(the first elections under universal adult suffrage were held in 1944) and,
after World War II ended, supported proposals that encouraged diversifica-
tion of the economy through the development of the tourist industry and the
extension of foreign markets for alumina, bananas, and bauxite. The colony
was granted internal self-government in 1957, then, the following year, Man-
ley led his people into the West Indies Federation, which the United King-
dom had devised as a measure that would allow its Caribbean colonies to
achieve statehood. Bustamante, however, was less enamored of the federal
arrangement and after a referendum in September 1961 demonstrated that the
majority of islanders shared his view; Jamaica withdrew. The country gained
independence on 6 August 1962, with Bustamante as its first prime minister.
See also BRITISH HONDURAS; BRITISH WEST INDIES; CAYMAN
ISLANDS; COMMONWEALTH IMMIGRATION TO THE UNITED
KINGDOM; COMMONWEALTH REALM; MOSQUITO COAST; SLAV-
ERY ABOLITION ACT (1833); TURKS AND CAICOS ISLANDS.

JAMESON RAID (1895–1896). After the discovery of gold in the Witwa-

tersrand area of the South African Republic (see THE TRANSVAAL) in
1886, European migrants arrived in large numbers, all hoping to make their
fortune. Known in Afrikaans as uitlanders (or “foreigners”), they soon out-
numbered the Boer farmers, who had founded the state, but were denied
voting rights and so became thoroughly discontented with their political lot.
Cecil Rhodes, who formed the British South Africa Company in 1889 and
became prime minister of Cape Colony in 1890, was keen that Britain
should take control of the Republic (and also of the Orange Free State, the
other Boer country in southern Africa) so he commissioned Leander Starr
Jameson, one of his mining company employees, to mount a raid that would
encourage the uitlanders to rise in rebellion against the Boer government.
Jameson set off, with a company of some 600 armed men, on 29 December
1895 but was captured on 2 January so the uprising failed to materialize. In
the aftermath, Rhodes was forced to resign his prime ministerial post and the
British South Africa Company was required to pay the South African Repub-
lic compensation amounting to nearly £1,000,000. Jameson was returned to
London, where he was given a 15-month jail sentence but served only six
months. He went went back to Africa, becoming prime minister of Cape
Colony in 1904, and on his death in 1917 was buried beside Rhodes in
Bulawayo, Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). Some historians have
claimed that he and his coconspirators were unfairly treated and that Joseph
Chamberlain, the colonial secretary (see COLONIAL OFFICE), went to
considerable lengths to hide his knowledge of, and support for, the raid. At
the time, British newspapers used the incident as a means of adding fuel to
the flames of anti-Boer prejudices.
 JAVA • 259
See also BOER WARS (1880–1881 AND 1899–1902).

JARVIS ISLAND. Jarvis Island—a 1.75-square-mile coral atoll—is located

in the central Pacific Ocean at latitude 0° 22´ South and longitude 160° 1´
West, roughly midway between the Cook Islands (to the south) and Hawaii
(to the north). The first European sighting is usually credited to the crew of
the Eliza Frances (a British vessel owned by Edward, Thomas, and William
Jarvis) on 21 April 1821 although charts published before that date attach
other names (such as “Bunker Island”) to land at the site. The territory was
annexed by the United States on 27 February 1858, claimed under the Guano
Islands Act of 1856, which allowed Americans to take possession of any
islands that contained guano deposits, provided that those islands were unin-
habited and not under the control of any other government (see BIRNIE
ISLAND; GARDNER ISLAND; McKEAN ISLAND). The American Guano
Company worked the resource, which provided phosphates used in the ferti-
lizer industry, until 1879 but then abandoned the diggings. Henry Winkelman
and Harold Willey Hudson made an attempt to exploit the remaining reserves
on behalf of Henderson and MacFarlane, a New Zealand firm, in 1881 but
departed after only seven months, leaving the island unoccupied. Great Brit-
ain then claimed the area on 3 June 1889 and, in 1906, leased it to John T.
Arundel’s Pacific Phosphate Company, but there is no evidence that the
business ever took advantage of the concession. Three decades later, the
United States was intent on providing refueling bases for planes on routes
from Australia to California so, on 26 March 1935, it landed a small band of
colonists and, on 13 May the following year, formally reannexed the atoll,
along with Baker Island and Howland Island. The settlers were evacuated
in February 1942, during World War II, and since then Jarvis Island has been
uninhabited except for a group of scientists who visited in 1957–1958, during
the International Geophysical Year. It was included in the U.S. system of
National Wildlife Reserves on 27 June 1974, with entry restricted to educa-
tional groups and research teams.

JAVA. On 13 July 1810, Napoleon Bonaparte annexed Holland, incorporat-

ing it within the French Empire. Fearing that the move would result in French
control over the commercially and strategically important Dutch possessions
in the East Indies, Great Britain—whose army and navy had been pitted
against those of Bonaparte since 1803—launched an attack on Java on 4
August the following year. Batavia, the center of the Dutch East India Com-
pany’s operations, fell on 8 August, and the rest of the island was in British
hands by 18 September, when Jan Willem Janssens, the Dutch governor,
surrendered. Gilbert Elliot-Murray-Kynynmound, Baron Minto and head of
the East India Company’s operations in India, appointed Stamford Raffles
260 • JINNAH, MUHAMMAD ALI (1876–1948)
(who had carried out much of the preparatory groundwork for the invasion)
to the post of lieutenant-governor of the newly acquired territory, with wide-
ranging powers. Raffles retained many of the officials who had worked with
the Dutch East India Company but used his authority to promote change,
abolishing forced labor, introducing limited self-government, and restructur-
ing the judicial system. Also, he attempted to restrict the markets in opium
and in slaves. As the war drew to a close, he unsuccessfully opposed the
return of Java to the Netherlands under the terms of the Anglo-Dutch Treaty
signed on 13 August 1814 then saw most of his reforms phased out after the
Dutch resumed control of the area in 1816. One of his innovations proved
long-lasting, however; traffic in Java (now part of Indonesia) drives on the
left, as it does in the United Kingdom.
See also BANGKA ISLAND; BANTAM.

JINNAH, MUHAMMAD ALI (1876–1948). Jinnah was the principal advo-

cate of Moslem interests during the last years of British rule on the Indian
subcontinent and is regarded by many Pakistanis as the father of their nation.
The eldest of seven children in the family of Jinnahbhai Poonja, a prosperous
Karachi merchant, and his wife, Mithibai, he was born on 25 December 1876
and, in 1895, qualified as a barrister in London. From the following year,
Jinnah built up a legal practice in Bombay (now Mumbai), but by 1905 he
was becoming involved in politics, initially joining the Congress Party then,
in 1913, also aligning himself with the All-India Muslim League, which was
founded in 1906 to provide a voice for followers of Islam in the Hindu-
dominated colony. A strong believer in a “one-nation” India, he encouraged
political cooperation between the religious groups but, in 1920, could not
support “Mahatma” Gandhi’s policy of boycotting British goods and insti-
tutions, arguing that Indian aims could be achieved through constitutional
means and that Gandhi’s advocacy of mass protest would drive a wedge
between communities. Those fears proved well founded because although
Jinnah invested much effort in attempts to draw the Hindu and Moslem
factions together, and even lost the support of some of his own people as he
offered concessions, he could never overcome mutual distrust.
The refusal of the Congress Party to form coalition governments with the
Moslem League after the 1937 elections to the provincial authorities, which
exercised limited powers of self-government, may well have convinced Jin-
nah that an independent India would simply replace British rule (many as-
pects of which he admired) with Hindu rule, to the detriment of Islamic
groups. Reluctantly, he accepted the case for an independent Pakistan (an
idea originally advanced by Sir Muhammad Iqbal in 1930) and used it to
unite Moslem opinion despite being ridiculed by Gandhi, Jahawarlal Neh-
ru, and other Congress Party leaders. As late as 1946, in negotiations with
the British government and Hindu political leaders, he was willing to com-
 JOHORE • 261
promise in the cause of a united independent India, but the differences
proved insurmountable and violence erupted all over India in response to his
call for “direct action” in support of the creation of the Moslem state of
Pakistan, with more than 4,000 people killed in Calcutta on 16 August alone.
Given the circumstances, Lord Louis Mountbatten (the last viceroy of India)
decided to proceed with independence arrangements as quickly as possible so
Pakistan became a new Islamic state at midnight on 14–15 August 1947 (see
PARTITION OF INDIA), with Jinnah as its first governor-general. Osten-
sibly, that post should have involved largely ceremonial duties, but Jinnah
also presided over the country’s governing assembly, dominating the young
state’s politics until his death from tuberculosis in Karachi on 11 September
1948.

JOHN T. ARUNDEL & COMPANY. See ARUNDEL, JOHN THOMAS

(1841–1919).

JOHORE. British interest in Johore, the most southerly area of the Malay
Peninsula, dates from 1819, when Stamford Raffles deposed the sultan
(Tunku Abdul Rahman), an ally of the Dutch, and replaced him with Tunku
Hussein (Abdul Rahman’s brother), who, grateful for the support, allowed
the East India Company to establish a trading post at Singapore. The
Anglo-Dutch Treaty that delineated the colonial powers’ spheres of influ-
ence on the Peninsula in 1824 placed Johore (also known as Johor) in British
territory, allowing Britain to cultivate successive local leaders. In 1885, the
British government recognized Abu Bakar as sultan in return for control over
the territory’s foreign affairs and in 1914 forced Ibrahim, Abu Bakar’s suc-
cessor, to accept a British advisor, effectively making the area a protecto-
rate, though it is usually considered one of the Unfederated Malay States.
After World War I, railroad links to the north, coupled with the establishment
of rubber plantations and the discovery of iron and tin reserves, greatly
enhanced the sultanate’s wealth. The territory was occupied by the Japanese
from 1942–1945, during World War II, then, under Sultan Abubakar ibn Tun
Ibrahim, joined the Malayan Union in 1946 and the Federation of Malaya
in 1948.
See also BRITISH MALAYA.
 K
KAFFRARIA. See BRITISH KAFFRARIA.

KAMARAN ISLAND. Kamaran Island, 22 square miles in area, occupies a

strategically important location at the southeastern end of the Red Sea, at
latitude 15° 21´ North and longitude 42° 34´ East, where it commands mari-
time routes from Europe to the Indian Ocean through the Suez Canal. Ab-
sorbed by the Turkish Ottoman Empire in 1620, it was occupied by British
forces on 9 June 1915, during World War I, more because Great Britain
wanted to prevent Italy (its ally) from establishing a presence in the area than
from any military threat from bases held by Turkey (its enemy). After Turkey
surrendered all claims to the former Ottoman territories, through the Treaty
of Lausanne, signed on 24 July 1923, Britain remained in control of Kamaran
by default because the document decreed that the island’s future should be
determined “by the parties concerned” without specifying who those parties
were. The British government ruled the area from Aden (then considered a
province of India) and—without attaching it to that territory—made its pri-
orities clear in discussions with its Italian counterpart in 1927, stressing that
it was “a vital imperial interest that no European Power shall establish itself
on the Arabian shore of the Red Sea” and that, “more particularly,” Kamaran
Island should not be allowed to “fall into the hands of an unfriendly Arab
ruler.”
From 1882, Ottoman authorities had used the island as a quarantine station
for Moslems participating in the hajj to Mecca, in Saudi Arabia, processing
some 44,000 followers of Islam each year. Anticipating a considerable in-
crease in pilgrims after World War I ended, Britain greatly extended the
facility from 1919, building a disinfecting plant, an icehouse, a power-gener-
ating station, sleeping quarters, a water distillation unit, and other infrastruc-
ture that provided much employment for local people. The pilgrimage was
interrupted by World War II (during which the island was used as a base by
Allied troops involved in the East African campaign against Italy), and when
it resumed, after 1945, Saudi Arabia made its own quarantine arrangements
so the number of visitors and the number of jobs both declined. In addition,

263
264 • KAUNDA, KENNETH DAVID
the political climate was changing. The Kingdom of Yemen claimed sove-
reignty over Kamaran Island (in 1956, for example, it protested to the British
government over the granting of licenses to oil exploration companies) and,
from 1963, Aden (still the base from which Kamaran Island was governed)
descended into civil war as nationalist groups battled with each other and
with British troops. When the United Kingdom withdrew from Aden on 29
November 1967, it informed the General Assembly of the United Nations
that the people of Kamaran had indicated that they wished to unite with Aden
and that, accordingly, both would become part of the new, independent Peo-
ple’s Republic of South Yemen.

KAUNDA, KENNETH DAVID. Kenneth Kaunda led Northern Rhodesia

to independence, as Zambia, and held the new state’s presidency for nearly
three decades, becoming a major figure in Africa’s often fraught postcolonial
political scene. He was born on 28 April 1924 at Lubwa, in the protecto-
rate’s Chinsali district, where his father (David) was a missionary and his
mother (Betty) taught in the mission’s school. Kenneth, too, trained as a
teacher but, from 1947–1949, also spent time founding a farmers’ coopera-
tive and working as a welfare officer in a copper mine.
Kaunda has claimed that he became aware of racial prejudices as a child,
when he saw his black father treated differently from the white missionaries
who worked alongside him. His experience in urbanized mining areas height-
ened that awareness, and a period, from 1949, as interpreter and advisor to
Sir Stewart Gore-Brown (a liberal white on Northern Rhodesia’s legislative
council who advocated improvements in educational and social provision for
the black population) provided practical knowledge of colonial administra-
tion and honed political skills that were to stand him in good stead while he
negotiated with British officials in later years. Kaunda joined the Northern
Rhodesia Congress (later the Northern Rhodesia African National Congress),
which had been founded in 1948 to advance the nationalist cause, becoming
its organizing secretary in 1951 and its secretary general in 1953, but clashed
with other senior members over voting strategies in 1958 and broke away to
form the Zambian African National Congress (ZANC). As president of that
body, he persuaded his supporters to join a campaign of civil disobedience
designed to prevent Britain from forging an independent state from the Fed-
eration of Rhodesia and Nyasaland because, he believed, such a move
would entrench the whites’ dominant position in south and south-central
Africa, where the Union of South Africa had already embarked on a series
of segregationist policies. The Federation government reacted by proscribing
ZANC early in 1959 and jailing its leaders in June, but eventually Britain
abandoned plans to grant sovereignty, a decision that greatly enhanced Kaun-
da’s reputation in black Africa.
 KEDAH • 265
Soon after his release from prison in January 1960, Kaunda was elected
president of the United National Independence Party, which had been formed
by militant nationalists the previous October. In December, he traveled to
London for talks on the protectorate’s future and early the following year the
British government announced its intention to withdraw from Northern Rho-
desia, in large part because Kaunda had been able to convince officials that
he would treat whites fairly and that he could persuade the area’s tribal units
to overcome their differences and work together. The protectorate won inde-
pendence, as Zambia, on 24 October 1964, with Kaunda as the new state’s
first president. He held office until 2 November 1991, allowing his country to
act as a base for nationalist groups operating in neighboring white-controlled
territories and imposing one-party rule from 1972. Many Zambians still re-
vere him as the man who ousted colonial overlords, but others condemn him
as a dictator who presided over the progressive impoverishment of his coun-
try.
See also MACLEOD, IAIN NORMAN (1913–1970); NYERERE, JU-
LIUS KAMBARAGE (1922–1999).

KEDAH. British relations with Kedah, in the west of the Malay Peninsula,
date from 1786, when Captain Francis Light persuaded Sultan Abdullah
Mukarram Shah to lease the island of Penang to the East India Company in
return for a promise of military protection against forces from Burma and
Siam. However, Light omitted to tell Company authorities of the details of
the arrangement so in 1790, when the military assistance failed to material-
ize, the sultan attempted to reclaim the area. That proving unsuccessful, he
ceded the territory to the Company in return for an annual payment then, in
1798, added the adjacent mainland, known as Province Wellesley and named
after Richard Wellesley, a talented governor-general of India who later
held the posts of secretary of state for foreign affairs and lord lieutenant of
Ireland.
Siam eventually invaded Kedah in 1811 and held it until 1909, when—
under the terms of the Anglo-Siamese (or Bangkok) Treaty—sovereignty
transferred to Britain, which assumed responsibility for foreign affairs and
promoted investment in rubber plantations but left much authority in the
hands of Sultan Abdul Hamid Hamil Shah (albeit under the watchful eye of a
British advisor). From 1941, during World War II, the area was occupied by
Japan, who returned control to its Siamese ally, but after the conflict ended
Britain regained posssession and, in 1946, merged it with other outposts of
Empire on the Peninsula into the Malayan Union then, in 1948, into the
Federation of Malaya.
See also ABDUL RAHMAN, TUNKU (1903–1990); BRITISH MA-
LAYA; UNFEDERATED MALAY STATES.
266 • KELANTAN
KELANTAN. The sultanate of Kelantan lies toward the south of the Malay
Peninsula. Under Siamese suzerainty for most of the 19th century, it was
transferred to Britain following the signing of the Anglo-Siamese (or Bang-
kok) Treaty in 1909. Although, in theory, the sultan retained power over
internal affairs after the transfer, he acted on the advice of a British advisor,
whose input was not always welcome. In 1915, for example, alterations to
the tax system were considered unfair and deprived local chiefs both of
authority and of funds. To’ Janggut, a farmer, organized a tax boycott that
flared into armed rebellion, his death in the fighting making him a martyr to
the cause of anticolonialism in the region. In December 1941, during World
War II, Kelantan was occupied by Japanese troops and returned to the Sia-
mese, but it reverted to British control in 1945. The following year, it was
merged with other British possessions in the Malayan Union and then, in
1948, joined the Federation of Malaya, which became independent nine
years later.
See also BRITISH MALAYA; UNFEDERATED MALAY STATES.

KENYA COLONY. Great Britain’s decision to convert the East Africa

Protectorate into Kenya Colony on 9 July 1920 was welcomed by white
settlers, who favored the greater imperial control that accompanied crown
colony status, but was opposed by most Africans, who interpreted the change
as a loss of sovereignty, even though that sovereignty was essentially nomi-
nal. The British intent, as outlined in 1923 by Victor Cavendish, duke of
Devonshire and secretary of state for the colonies (see COLONIAL OF-
FICE), was to govern Kenya (which included both the colony and the Kenya
Protectorate) “on behalf of the African population” while safeguarding the
interests of Arab, Asian, and European residents. That aim proved impossible
to achieve, however, because the settlers were the dominant economic pow-
er, utilizing the most fertile land to produce such cash crops as coffee and tea
while Africans were employed as poorly paid laborers on plantations or on
public works projects. Harry Thuku, a newspaper-compositor-turned-govern-
ment-telephone-operator, shaped the first organized political resistance to the
regime though his Young Kikuyu Association, founded in June 1921 and
renamed the East Africa Association the following month. Thuku advocated
civil disobedience as a means of protest against high tax rates, laws that
prevented Africans from growing coffee, low wages, and missionary efforts
to end such traditional practices as female circumcision, but although he had
strong support from young Kikuyu men he had difficulty convincing more
conservative older citizens, and members of other ethnic groups (who feared
Kikuyu dominance), to back his campaign. Nevertheless, the seeds of dissent
were sown, flourishing in the form of societies (such as the Kikuyu Central
Association, formed in 1928) with articulate mission school–educated lead-
ers. Also, in the early years of World War II many Kenyans served with the
 KENYA COLONY • 267
King’s African Rifles in campaigns against the Italians in Abyssinia and
Italian Somaliland, an experience that brought them into contact with sol-
diers from other areas of the continent, broadening horizons and increasing
aspirations for stable, well-paid employment as well as for greater involve-
ment in government decision making (though many were content to pursue
that involvement within a colonial context rather than demand indepen-
dence).
The British government approved the appointment of one African to the
territory’s legislative council in 1944. By 1952, that number had risen to six,
but all of those individuals were appointees of the governor, rather than
delegates from an enfranchised electorate, and represented a population of
5,000,000 people, whereas 14 elected seats were reserved for the 30,000
whites who lived in the colony, six elected seats for the 100,000 Asians
(most of whom had roots in India), and two elected seats for the 24,000
Arabs, with a further 26 for other nominated individuals and for government
officials (the majority of whom were white). In the immediate post–World
War II years, the campaign for increased representation crystallized around
the Kenya African Union, which was formed in 1944 and led from 1946 by
Jomo Kenyatta. Kenyatta and his colleagues agitated for constitutional re-
forms that would improve the lot of Africans, but the pace of change was too
slow for many of their countrymen. In 1952, the Kikuyu-based Mau Mau
group launched a campaign of violence against Europeans and Africans (in-
cluding fellow Kikuyu) who supported the colonial authorities, forcing the
recently arrived governor, Sir Evelyn Baring, to declare a state of emergency
on 20 October.
Neither side emerged from the conflict with credit, as the Mau Mau
hacked women and children to death and colonial officials herded suspected
sympathizers into camps where infectious disease was endemic and malnutri-
tion common. Baring, however, believed that constitutional change alone
would not satisfy African ambitions so he embarked on a program of eco-
nomic development that ended differential salary scales for ethnic groups in
government service and radically reorganized indigenous farming on lines
devised by Roger Swynnerton, the colony’s assistant director for agriculture.
Those reforms were not wholly successful (although land consolidation
schemes made some farmers prosperous, for example, they also produced a
class of poor, landless peasants), but, combined with the suppression of the
Mau Mau in 1956, they changed the political climate in the colony. The
British government ended the state of emergency on 12 January 1960, ac-
cepted the principle of African majority rule on the basis of universal adult
suffrage, and permitted the formation of new political organizations. One
faction—the Kenya African National Union—favored a strong central ad-
ministration and had Kenyatta at its head, but it was opposed by the Kenya
African Democratic Union (founded by Ronald Ngala and Daniel arap Moi),
268 • KENYA EMERGENCY
which argued that a federal structure would cope better with the colony’s
ethnic differences. The parties combined to form a coalition government in
1962, and on 12 December the following year (following considerable dis-
agreement over the wording of a constitution) the colony, along with the
Kenya Protectorate, became independent, as Kenya, with Kenyatta as prime
minister and Queen Elizabeth II as head of state. One year later, the country’s
parliament amended the constitution, appointed Kenyatta president, made the
territory a republic, and strengthened the role of central government.
See also BRITISH EAST AFRICA; BRITISH SOMALILAND; CHOL-
MONDELEY, HUGH, BARON DELAMERE (1870–1931); IMPERIAL
BRITISH EAST AFRICA COMPANY; LENNOX-BOYD, ALAN TINDAL
(1904–1983); MACKINNON, WILLIAM (1823–1893); MACLEOD, IAIN
NORMAN (1913–1970); UNITED KINGDOM IMMIGRATION LEGIS-
LATION; WITULAND.

KENYA EMERGENCY. See MAU MAU UPRISING.

KENYA PROTECTORATE. In 1885, Germany and Great Britain pre-

vailed on Sultan Barghash of Zanzibar to cede them most of the sector of the
African mainland over which he claimed sovereignty (see EAST AFRICA
PROTECTORATE), retaining only a 10-mile-wide strip along the coast from
the Ruvuma (or Romuva) River in the south to the River Tana in the north.
William Mackinnon’s Imperial British East Africa Company (IBEAC)
paid the sultanate a sum of £11,000 each year for various rights in the area
between the Tana and the River Umba, but on 1 July 1895, with the firm all
but bankrupt, the British government acquired IBEAC’s properties, assumed
its responsibilities, increased the payment to £17,000, and declared the area a
protectorate. Britain’s principal interest in the territory lay in the consider-
able commerce generated by the port of Mombasa and in the possibility of
linking the harbor by rail across the East Africa Protectorate to Uganda,
which lay in the continental interior. On 9 July 1920, the East Africa Protec-
torate was declared a colony (see KENYA COLONY), but that status could
not formally be accorded to the coastal strip because France and the United
States had signed treaties recognizing the sultan’s sovereignty and any at-
tempt by Britain to assert formal control could have had international reper-
cussions. Nevertheless, British administrators governed colony and protecto-
rate, from Nairobi, as a single unit even though the coastal lands remained,
technically, under the rule of the sultans of Zanzibar. In the early 1960s,
however, as Britain prepared to concede independence, Arab and Swahili
residents in the littoral (fearing domination by Africans) campaigned for
autonomy for the protectorate area within a federal structure, with guarantees
that Mombasa would provide services to Kenya and Uganda. British negotia-
 KENYATTA, JOMO (C1891–1978) • 269
tors, though, pointed out that Kenya Colony would be landlocked unless the
coastal strip was fully integrated within the new state, that the coastal region
(which had never been clearly defined) would not be an economically viable
unit, and that the sultan’s sovereignty was nominal. As a result, the protecto-
rate became part of a self-governing Kenya on 12 December 1963, but the
protests continued into the 21st century, with the Mombasa Republic Council
leading calls for secession and claiming that Pwani si Kenya (“The coast is
not Kenya”).
See also BRITISH EAST AFRICA.

KENYATTA, JOMO (c1891–1978). Kenyatta was the principal inspiration

for the nationalist movement in Kenya Colony during the last years of Brit-
ish rule and became prime minister, then president, of the territory after it
achieved independence. He was born in the early 1890s (there is no written
record by which to date the birth) in Ngenda, a village of Kikuyu people in
the area that became the East Africa Protectorate in 1895. His parents died
when he was still a child so he was raised by an uncle and a grandfather.
Known as Kamau wa Ngengi, he joined a Church of Scotland mission school
at Thogoto, near Nairobi, in about 1909 then, in 1914, converted to Chris-
tianity and changed his name to Johnstone Kamau. By the end of World War
I he had moved into Nairobi, where he had a succession of jobs (including
interpreter, store clerk, and water meter reader) and was known as Johnstone
Kenyatta after the brightly colored belt (or kinyatta) that he wore.
As a relatively literate, missionary educated, black Kikuyu, Kenyatta was
a member of a distinct group in the urban area, aware of political issues
relating to the colonial presence, such as acquisition of land by white immi-
grants, the imposition of hut taxes, and the introduction of kipande (identity
cards, carried by Africans, that detailed employment history). In 1925, he
joined the Kikuyu Central Association (KCA), a protest group formed with
the intention of making the colonial government aware of ethnic grievances.
Within three years, he was secretary of the organization and had played a role
in shaping a petition asking that Africans be allowed to grow coffee (a
lucrative crop reserved for whites) and requesting that laws be published in
the Kikuyu language. In 1928, he testified about the problems of land aliena-
tion before the Hilton Young Commission, which was taking evidence relat-
ing to Britain’s proposal to merge Kenya in a federation with Tanganyika
and Uganda, and the following year the KCA dispatched him to London to
pursue its demands at the Colonial Office, which ignored him. He returned
home in October 1930 but went back to Britain in May 1931 and remained in
Europe for 15 years, taking economics classes at Moscow State University,
studying anthropology at the London School of Economics, teaching the
Kikuyu language at the School of Oriental and African Studies (part of the
270 • KERMADEC ISLANDS
University of London), working as a farm laborer during World War II, and
(with Kwame Nkrumah, later president of Ghana) helping to organize the
Pan-African Congress at Manchester in March 1945.
Kenyatta’s lengthy exile had political advantages. While in England, he
adopted the name Jomo (meaning “burning spear”) and earned a reputation
for carefully reasoned views that Africans should be proud of their cultures,
including practices (such as female circumcision) that were condemned by
Europeans. Also, the United Kingdom’s distance from Africa, coupled with
the slow communication links of the time, meant that he avoided close in-
volvement with the factionalism that marked nationalist movements in Ken-
ya and that enhanced his image as a unifying force when he made his way
back to his homeland in September 1946 (abandoning the wife he had mar-
ried in Britain). In June 1947, he accepted the presidency of the multiethnic
Kenya African Union and attracted large crowds to rallies designed to meld
disparate groups in support of the cause of self-rule. However, the colonial
government distrusted Kenyatta (partly because they believed, wrongly, that
he had communist leanings), the white settlers understandably resisted
threats to the removal of their powers, and many black Africans found the
pace of change slow. Extremists in the nationalist camp joined the Mau Mau
Uprising, using violence as a means of ending imperial rule, and Kenyatta’s
condemnations of the group failed to convince administrators. He was ar-
rested in October 1952, charged with orchestrating the bloodshed, found
guilty at a trial marked by bribery of the judge and perjury by witnesses, and
kept in custody until August 1961. However, the incarceration entrenched
Kenyatta’s position as a nationalist icon so when he was released he was
immediately involved in independence negotiations with the British govern-
ment, which was rapidly withdrawing from its colonial responsibilities. He
led the Kenya African National Union (a coalition of Kikuyu and Luo inter-
ests) to victory at elections in May 1963 and was prime minister when the
colony won independence on 12 December the same year. The following
December, he was made president. From then, he ruled the country until his
death in Mombasa on 22 August 1978, following a pro-Western foreign
policy and attempting to reconcile differences between ethnic groups within
the state. Critics have commented on his authoritarian management style and
identified widening disparities in wealth during his period in office, but
supporters have claimed that his approach attracted considerable foreign in-
vestment and made Kenya one of the more stable states on the African
continent.
See also MACLEOD, IAIN NORMAN (1913–1970).

KERMADEC ISLANDS. On 31 May 1788, Royal Navy Lieutenant John

Watts, the crew of the sailing ship Lady Penryhn under Master William
Sever, and their cargo of 101 female convicts bound for New South Wales,
 KHAMA, SERETSE (1921–1980) • 271
chanced upon the most southerly of the Kermadec Islands at latitude 30° 32´
South and longitude 178° 33´ West, some 590 miles northeast of New Zea-
land. Then, in 1793, French explorer Bruni d’Entrecasteaux charted the
group, which is composed of volcanic rock, forms a 150-mile-long arc in the
southwest Pacific Ocean, and has a land area of about 13 square miles.
Pioneer settlers arrived on Sunday Island (now Raoul Island) in 1836, at-
tempting to eke out a living by growing fresh produce for passing ships, but
the last colonists—the family of Thomas and Frederica Bell, who had arrived
in 1878—were evacuated in 1914, just before the outbreak of World War I.
(Tom Bell, who was 75 years old when he left, took a job as nightwatchman
at a boatbuilding yard in Auckland, New Zealand, as he neared his 80th
birthday; his son Roy, who was born on the island in 1882, became a distin-
guished naturalist and photographer.) Queen Victoria’s sovereignty over the
Kermadec Islands was proclaimed on 17 August 1887, when they were an-
nexed to the crown colony of New Zealand, primarily in order to prevent
their occupation by Germany, which was extending its influence in the South
Pacific (and to the chagrin of Bell, who was allocated only 275 acres of land
to farm). They have been a nature reserve since 1937, with the only popula-
tion located at a permanently manned meteorological and radio station on
Raoul Island.

KHAMA, SERETSE (1921–1980). Seretse Khama—whose grandfather,

Khama III, had persuaded Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain to retain
control of Bechuanaland in 1895 rather than transfer responsibility for ad-
ministration to Cecil Rhodes’s British South Africa Company—led the
protectorate to independence, as Botswana, in 1966 then played a major role
in transforming the new state’s economic fortunes. The son of Sekgoma
Khama and his wife, Tebogo, he was born at Serowe, in the east of the area,
on 1 July 1921 and succeeded his father as paramount chief of the Ngwato
people when only four years old. Orphaned at the age of nine, Seretse was
shunted between boarding schools in the Union of South Africa and gradu-
ated with a degree from Fort Hare University before traveling to Britain in
1945, intending to train as a lawyer. A year at Oxford University proved
abortive because he did not have the qualification in Latin that was required
of examination candidates so he moved to the Inner Temple, in London,
where he began a course of study that would lead to qualification as a barris-
ter.
At a London Missionary Society dance, Khama met Muriel Williams,
who learned that the African visitor enjoyed listening to jazz music and
introduced him to her sister, Ruth, who had similar musical tastes. Romance
blossomed, but Ruth’s family opposed the match and William Wand, bishop
of London, refused the couple a church wedding unless the government
approved the marriage, which it was unlikely to do because it feared reper-
272 • KHAMA, SERETSE (1921–1980)
cussions in southern Africa if it sanctioned the mixed-race union. The wed-
ding eventually took place at Kensington Register Office on 29 September
1948 (the bride wore black), but the political troubles were not over. Khama
was summoned to Bechuanaland, where his uncle, Tshekedi, who had been
acting as regent, accused him of soiling the royal line through his relationship
with a white woman. A series of public meetings served to convince the
Ngwato people, who had doubts about Tshekedi’s motives, to accept the
relationship and retain Khama as their chief; at one of them, when he asked
those members of the audience “who will not accept my wife” to stand up, 40
rose, then when he invited those who accepted her to stand, the remaining
6,000 got to their feet and applauded. However, the European communities
in Southern Rhodesia and the Union of South Africa remained outraged,
claiming that a black leader with a white wife threatened white supremacy in
southern Africa (and Daniel Malan, prime minister of South Africa, where
marriages between white people and members of other races were made
illegal in 1949, described the match as “nauseating”).
Unwilling to take a moral stand and risk losing the supplies of South
African uranium needed for the United Kingdom’s growing nuclear indus-
try, the British government, which ruled Bechuanaland, bowed to the pres-
sure and forced Khama and his wife into exile in London in 1950, though
Ruth insisted on remaining in the protectorate so that Jacqueline, their first
child, would be born among her husband’s people; the baby appeared on 15
May. By 1956, however, political attitudes had changed; world governments
were more strident in their opposition to South Africa’s segregationist apart-
heid policies and the United Kingdom was less willing to support the regime
so Colonial Secretary Alec Douglas-Home, Lord Home, allowed the couple
to return to Bechuanaland as private citizens. For some years, Khama at-
tempted to make a living—without great success—as a cattle farmer and
played a low-key role in reforms to the territory’s government that led to the
establishment of a legislative council in 1960. However, the creation of that
council seemed to give him a new lease of political life despite the onset of
diabetes. In 1961, he formed the Bechuanaland Democratic Party (BDP),
which was favored by the British government because, although nationalist,
it adopted more moderate policies than those of other organizations seeking
self-government for the territory. The BDP won a landslide victory when
elections for a national assembly were held in March 1965, winning 28 of the
31 seats, and on 30 September 1966 Bechuanaland became independent, as
Botswana, with Khama as president. The outlook for the infant state was not
auspicious because Botswana was one of the poorest countries on the African
continent, but the discovery of diamonds at Orapa changed the economic
situation in 1967. Khama used fiscal returns from the mining companies to
invest in commercial infrastructure, education, and health care, while pro-
moting democracy and adopting measures to limit corruption. Also, he re-
 KIMBERLEY, SIEGE OF (1899–1900) • 273
fused to allow militant nationalist groups to establish bases from which they
could attack Botswana’s neighbors (although he did permit some transit
camps), and he was deeply involved in the negotiations that led to the end of
white majority rule in Southern Rhodesia in 1980. However, the work took a
toll on his health. He had several open-heart surgery operations in
1976–1977 and died of pancreatic cancer at Gaborone, Botswana’s capital,
on 13 July 1980, just a few days after his 59th birthday.

KHARTOUM, SIEGE OF (1884–1885). British troops occupied Egypt in

1882, but initially European administrators made no attempt to interfere with
control of neighboring Sudan, over which Egypt claimed sovereignty. From
1881, however, Sudanese opponents of Egyptian overlordship had united
behind Muhammad Ahmad, who had proclaimed himself the Mahdi that,
according to religious sources, would restore the true Islamic faith in the
years before the end of the world. The Mahdist movement proved to be a
formidable military force and Egypt was deeply in debt to the European
powers so the Egyptian government decided that, rather than face the cost of
asserting its authority, it would withdraw forces from the Sudan. Britain
agreed, with much reluctance, to allow General Charles Gordon, an experi-
enced soldier, to take charge of the operation. Gordon reached Khartoum—
the administrative capital of the Sudan—on 18 February 1884 and evacuated
2,000 of its residents before rebels surrounded the settlement. However, his
pleas for aid were rejected by politicians in London, and on 26 January 1885
the starving defenders were overrun. All 7,000 Egyptian soldiers in the garri-
son were killed, along with 4,000 civilians and General Gordon. A relief
force arrived two days later. The British press reacted furiously, lionizing
Gordon and condemning Prime Minister William Gladstone’s government
for refusing to take decisive action that would have raised the siege. Even
Queen Victoria let her views be known, rebuking Gladstone by telegram.
However, although an army led by Major General Sir Horatio Herbert
Kitchener was sent, in 1896, to avenge Gordon’s death (see OMDURMAN,
BATTLE OF (2 SEPTEMBER 1898)), the public’s enthusiasm for punitive
measures lessened as the costs of sustaining military operations in the Sudan
became more widely known. Modern historians still debate Gordon’s tactics,
some claiming that he was more interested in suppressing the rebellion than
in overseeing a troop withdrawal.
See also STANLEY, HENRY MORTON (1841–1904).

KIMBERLEY, SIEGE OF (1899–1900). Soon after the outbreak of the

Second Boer War, Afrikaner forces laid siege to the diamond mining settle-
ment at Kimberley, in the northeast of Cape Colony. By 14 October 1899,
they had severed railroad links and water supplies to the town, but rather than
274 • KINGSLEY, MARY HENRIETTA (1862–1900)
launch an attack they decided to bombard the buildings with shells, hoping
that the 50,000 residents would eventually capitulate. Lieutenant-Colonel
Robert Kekewich, who commanded the 1,500 soldiers defending Kimberley,
believed that he could hold out for several weeks, but Cecil Rhodes, who
had made his fortune from the diamond mines, used his considerable influ-
ence to persuade the government that the siege should be lifted (along with
those at Ladysmith and Mafeking) as soon as possible and certainly before
British armies advanced into the Boer strongholds of the Orange Free State
and the Transvaal. Public opinion supported that policy, but initial attempts
to carry it out led to heavy casualties at the battles of Modder River (28
November) and Magersfontein (11 December). However, on 15 February
1900, Major-General John French led a cavalry charge through the Boer lines
and ended the blockade. The lifting of the siege was undertaken for political,
rather than military reasons, so it had few strategic implications (even though
it took a heavy toll on the cavalry’s horses, which had covered 120 miles of
difficult terrain in summer heat in order to reach the town), but Rhodes
became increasingly unpopular as public opinion turned against the war.

KINGSLEY, MARY HENRIETTA (1862–1900). In the last years of the

19th century, when solo female travelers were a rarity, Mary Kingsley did
much to further British understanding of West African peoples and their
environments. Born on 13 October 1862 to London physician George King-
sley and his wife, Mary (the housekeeper he married only four days before
their daughter’s birth), she never attended school but consumed the books in
her father’s extensive library of travel literature and helped him prepare
accounts of his own journeys. After her parents died, within a few weeks of
each other, in 1892 she determined to set off on her own adventure so, the
following year, made her way to Sierra Leone then, attired in ladylike skirt
and blouse, sailed along the coastline between Luanda and Cabinda. Aware
that the native peoples would be suspicious of someone who traveled for
travel’s sake, she adopted the role of trader, but she also collected fish,
insects, and plants for the British Museum.
Kingsley returned to Britain in December 1893, just five months after
leaving home, but remained for only a year before going back to West Afri-
ca, visiting Gabon, then following the Ogooué River into the interior of the
continent, spending time with the cannibalistic Fang people, reaching territo-
ry previously unexplored by Europeans and again collecting specimens of
wildlife, several of which were new to science. As news of those journeys
filtered back to the press in her homeland (the Daily Telegraph described her
as “courageous”), she became a celebrity, much in demand for public appear-
ances after she disembarked at Liverpool on 30 November 1895. However,
her independence and lack of conventionality did not make her a feminist; in
a letter to the Telegraph she referred to men as “the superior sex” and in
 KIPLING, JOSEPH RUDYARD (1865–1936) • 275
speeches she argued against giving women the vote at parliamentary elec-
tions. Moreover, she annoyed senior churchmen because she defended polyg-
amy, swore like a trooper, and condemned Christian missionaries who, she
claimed, were peddling a “rubbishy white culture” to African societies. Mary
Kingsley also made enemies in government circles through her criticisms of
“stay-at-home statesmen who think that Africans are awful savages or silly
children” but, even so, Joseph Chamberlain, the colonial secretary (see
COLONIAL OFFICE), sought her advice (albeit covertly, so that he would
not be politically tarnished through association with such a controversial
figure) because of her detailed knowledge of West African cultures.
The demands of book preparation, letter writing, and speech making took
up much time and also had an impact on Kingsley’s health so by 1900 she
was ready to seek respite. She sailed for southern Africa on 11 March and
volunteered to nurse Afrikaner soldiers injured during the Second Boer War
but succumbed to typhoid and died on 3 June, aged just 37. At her own
request, her body was buried at sea. Despite her relative youthfulness and her
lack of formal educational qualifications, her views were influential. Journal-
ist Edmund Morel pursued aspects of her claims of European injustice to
indigenous societies, publishing reports of abuse of Africans working in the
rubber trade, and the formation, in 1901, of the African Society (since 1968,
the Royal African Society) was a direct result of her plea for a body that
would provide a meeting place for merchants, scholars, and others interested
in the continent. Also, some writers have credited her with laying the ground-
work, through criticism of the crown colony system of government, for the
introduction of indirect rule of Moslem emirates under British suzerainty in
Northern Nigeria.
See also SLESSOR, MARY MITCHELL (1848–1915).

KIPLING, JOSEPH RUDYARD (1865–1936). In the late 19th and early

20th centuries, as the Empire reached its maximum extent, Rudyard Kipling
was Great Britain’s most popular teller of imperial tales, their content
underpinning public support for colonial expansion. He was born in Bom-
bay, on 30 December 1865, to John Lockwood Kipling (professor of archi-
tectural sculpture at the Sir Jamsetjee Jeejebhoy School of Art) and his lively
Scots wife, Alice, whom Frederick Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood (marquess
of Dufferin and Ava, governor-general of Canada from 1872–1878, and
viceroy of India from 1884–1888) complimented with a comment that
“Dullness and Mrs. Kipling cannot exist in the same room.” Rudyard was
educated in England but returned to India in 1882 to work as a journalist on
the Civil and Military Gazette in Lahore. In 1886, he published Departmen-
tal Ditties, a series of poems that was well received by India’s British expa-
triate community, which it affectionately lampooned. Two years later, the
more serious short stories in Plain Tales from the Hills, based on experiences
276 • KIPLING, JOSEPH RUDYARD (1865–1936)
during summer vacations at Simla, in the foothills of the Himalaya, was
similarly successful so in October 1889, encouraged by the response, Kipling
went back to Britain, where he found that London publishers were just as
enthusiastic about his work as were readers in India. Aware that the British
public knew little of day-to-day life in the territories of the Empire, he based
many of his poems and stories on the activities of junior civil servants and
the unheralded lower ranks of the army rather than on those of military
commanders and senior administrators. Also, he flavored many of his poems
and tales with references to the occult and to the mysteries of the East, both
of which were a source of fascination for the reading classes. Thus, for
example, Barrack-Room Ballads and Other Verses, published in 1892, was
dedicated to T. A. (the initials of “Tommy Atkins,” a nickname for the
British army private) and contained such poems as “Mandalay,” which deals
with a soldier’s longing for the exoticism of Burma and became a popular
song in late Victorian drawing rooms. Kim, a novel that appeared in book
form in 1901, portrays the varied cultures and regions of India in the context
of the Great Game (the political contest between Great Britain and Russia in
central Asia), and the Jungle Books (published in 1894 and 1895) deal with
Mowgli, a boy raised by wolves in the jungles of India.
Over the years, however, India declined in prominence in his output as he
concentrated more on support for the British effort in the Boer War cam-
paign in southern Africa (which he visited regularly over the decade from
1898, often spending time in the company of fellow imperialist Cecil
Rhodes) and on less regionally focused stories and poems, such as The White
Man’s Burden (1899), which opens with the verse: “Take up the White
Man’s burden, Send forth the best ye breed / Go bind your sons to exile, to
serve your captives’ need; / To wait in heavy harness, On fluttered folk and
wild / Your new-caught, sullen peoples, Half-devil and half-child.” Some
critics have interpreted these and similar lines as exhortations to imperial
expansion and have condemned the sentiments in such poems as “If,” which
encourages the self-discipline and self-reliance expected of servants of the
Empire and is widely reflected in writing of the period, including, for exam-
ple, Robert Baden-Powell’s Scouting for Boys. By contrast, “Recessional,”
written on the occasion of Queen Victoria’s jubilee in 1897, is considered by
other commentators to be a counterpoint to the rampant nationalism of the
period because it emphasizes the transitory nature of imperial power through
such cautionary prophecies as “Far-called our navies melt away— / On dune
and headland sinks the fire— / Lo, all our pomp of yesterday / Is one with
Nineveh and Tyre!” Kipling was certainly committed to the cause of Empire,
convinced that colonization brought benefits to the colonized, but that con-
viction ran counter to the more liberal political mood that prevailed after
World War I so his popularity waned in the 1920s and 1930s. Also, his
literary output decreased as his health declined, and on 12 January 1936 he
 KITCHENER, HORATIO HERBERT (1850–1916) • 277
suffered a perforated ulcer while staying at Brown’s Hotel in London. He
died six days later, on the 44th anniversary of his marriage to American
Caroline Balestier, to whose brother, Walcott, Barrack-Room Ballads was
dedicated. Kipling’s popularity with literary critics never matched that with
the reading public—novelist George Orwell commented, in 1942, that he was
“morally insensitive and aesthetically disgusting”—but he is still much
quoted. “If” was voted “Britain’s Favourite Poem” in a poll organized by the
British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in 1995, the Jungle Book tales have
been a popular source of material for film producers, and a number of postco-
lonial writers have pointed out that some of his work mocks Anglo-Indian
society and identifies many of the hypocrisies of the British Raj.
See also EAST OF SUEZ.

KITCHENER, HORATIO HERBERT (1850–1916). To many members

of the late 19th-century and early 20th-century British public, Kitchener was
a great imperial hero, winning control of the Sudan at the Battle of Omdur-
man in 1898 and forcing southern Africa’s rebellious Boer settlers into sub-
mission in 1902. Later, he combated the German threat in World War I by
assembling the largest volunteer army the Empire had ever known. The
second son of Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Kitchener and his wife, Ann, Her-
bert was born in County Kerry, Ireland, and trained at the Royal Military
Academy in Woolwich before receiving a commission with the Royal Engi-
neers in 1871. He was posted to Egypt in 1883 and, as an aide-de-camp, was
with the expedition that arrived at Khartoum, in the Sudan, on 28 January
1885, two days too late to prevent General Charles Gordon’s garrison from
being overrun by tribesmen led by Muhammad Ahmad, a messianic Islamic
holy man.
Toward the end of 1885, Kitchener was appointed to an international
commission that (after much argument between British, French, and German
delegates) delimited the territory of the sultan of Zanzibar. Then, from 1886,
he spent several months as governor-general of the eastern Sudan and the
British Red Sea territories. In 1888, he was back in Egypt and in 1892 was
promoted to sirdar (or commander-in chief) of the Egyptian army. Having
turned the Egyptians into a formidable fighting force, Kitchener was in-
structed by Prime Minister Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, Lord Salisbury, to se-
cure control of the Sudan, partly in order to ensure that Egypt’s irrigation
supplies from the River Nile would continue uninterrupted and partly in
order to forge one link in a strategically important chain of British colonies
from Cairo (close to the Mediterranean Sea) to the southern tip of Africa.
From March of 1896, he advanced slowly along the river, building a railroad
for his troops’ supplies as he went, until on 2 September 1898, at Omdurman,
he faced the forces of Abdullah al-Taashi, a charismatic Islamic leader who
had attempted to unite the warring Sudanese tribes after Muhammad Ah-
278 • KITCHENER, HORATIO HERBERT (1850–1916)
mad’s death. Greatly outnumbered but overwhelmingly superior in arms,
Kitchener presided over a massacre, avenging Gordon’s death and receiving
a peerage from a grateful Queen Victoria even though he was criticized by
several observers (including a young Winston Churchill) for desecrating the
grave of Muhammad Ahmad, for killing many of the enemy on the battlefield
after the fighting had ended, and for participating in the looting of Khartoum
that followed the victory.
Omdurman was Kitchener’s last experience of action. For the remainder of
his career he was an administrator rather than a soldier, serving initially—
and, because of his autocratic approach, not entirely successfully—as
governor-general of the Sudan for most of 1899. From there, he was posted
to southern Africa, where British control was threatened by the Boer settlers
(see BOER WARS (1880–1881 AND 1899–1902)), whose origins were in
the Netherlands. His tactics after taking command of the campaign in No-
vember 1900 were utterly ruthless, incarcerating women and children in
insanitary concentration camps, where disease was rife, and burning farms as
part of a scorched earth policy. Nevertheless, the strategy was successful
because in 1902 the Boers were forced into a peace agreement.
Kitchener returned to a hero’s welcome in London but was quickly dis-
patched to India, where—as commander-in-chief of the army—he restruc-
tured his forces, preparing them to repulse attacks from outside the colony
rather than simply quell revolts inside. In 1905, disputes over military admin-
istration and personality clashes with George Curzon, the lord Curzon of
Kedleston, led to the viceroy’s resignation; five years later, when he was
promoted to field-marshal (the highest rank in the British army), Kitchener
campaigned hard to get himself appointed to the viceregal post but failed,
primarily because John Morley, the secretary of state for India (see INDIA
OFFICE), felt that offering the position to a serving military officer would be
inappropriate at a time when the government was taking steps to give the
Indian people limited self-government. Instead, Kitchener returned to Africa
in 1911, acting as consul-general in Egypt and the Sudan, where he promoted
the infant cotton-growing industry while attempting to preserve peasants’
rights to retain their land even when in debt. When World War I broke out in
August 1914, Prime Minister Herbert Asquith made Kitchener secretary of
state for war. Unlike most of his government colleagues, Kitchener believed
that the conflict would last for several years and would be won only by a
huge army so he embarked on a major recruitment campaign designed to
attract volunteers. However, his dislike of teamwork and his unwillingness to
delegate provoked criticism, and that, coupled with his support for an ulti-
mately disastrous invasion of Gallipoli in 1915–1916, led to a gradual ero-
sion of his responsibilities. He died on 5 June 1916, when HMS Hampshire,
the cruiser carrying him on a diplomatic mission to Russia, struck a German
mine off the Orkney Islands. Not all commentators expressed regret; C. P.
 KUWAIT • 279
Scott, the editor of the Manchester Guardian, allegedly remarked that “the
old man . . . could not have done better than to have gone down, as he was a
great impediment lately.” However, recent scholars have presented more
positive assessments, stressing his capacity for hard work and his strategic
vision (particularly in forming a large World War I army of volunteer sol-
diers), while pointing out that many of the condemnations leveled at him in
the years immediately following his death stemmed from writers with per-
sonal or political axes to grind.
See also CHAMBERLAIN, JOSEPH (1836–1914).

KURIA MURIA ISLANDS. The five Kuria Muria Islands—Hallaniyah,

Hasikiyah, Qarzawit, Qibliyah, and Sawda—lie some 25 miles off the south-
ern coast of the Arabian Peninsula at latitude 17° 30´ North and longitude
56° 0´ East, stretching for about 45 miles from east–west and covering a land
area of about 28 square miles. They were presented to Queen Victoria on 14
July 1854 as a gift from Saud ibn Sultan, sultan of Muscat (though some
authorities at the time questioned whether they were his to give). The Red
Sea and India Telegraph Company, formed in 1858, planned to use the
islands as a base for a telegraph connexion between Aden and Karachi, but
the scheme was abandoned in 1861 after sections of the cable (laid with
insufficient slack) failed. Also, Captain John Orr and a group of Liverpool
merchants were given monopoly rights to harvest guano, which produced
much-needed phosphates for the fertilizer industry, but after they removed
some 200,000 tons from 1855–1860—and met resistance from local people
(who felt that the rights to the resource were theirs) as well as questions in
parliament about the advisability of granting anybody a monopoly over the
reserves—the diggings were abandoned. In 1868, the British government
attached the Kuria Muria Islands, administratively, to Aden but because they
were so far from that territory, and contacts with officials were so limited, the
inhabitants continued to consider themselves subjects of the sultan of Mus-
cat. As a result, when the United Kingdom withdrew from Aden on 30
November 1967, the islands were ceded to the state of Muscat and Oman
despite vociferous protests from the communist National Liberation Front,
which assumed control of government in Aden and the neighboring protec-
torates, creating a People’s Republic of South Yemen.

KUWAIT. Kuwait borders Iraq and Saudi Arabia in the northeastern Ara-
bian Peninsula. From 1775, the East India Company utilized the advantages
of its deep natural harbor and trading tradition to provide a transshipment
point for cargoes and, in particular, mail and passengers traveling between
Britain and her Indian possessions by the overland route from the Mediterra-
nean Sea to the Persian Gulf. Throughout the 19th century, British govern-
280 • KUWAIT
ment representatives and merchants maintained good relations with the Ku-
waiti rulers so in 1899, when Sheikh Mubarak al-Sabah feared that the Otto-
man Empire might annex his territory he turned to Britain for help. On 23
January the two countries signed an agreement that, in effect, turned Kuwait
into a British protectorate, though that arrangement was not formalized until
3 November 1914, at the outbreak of World War I. Britain benefited from the
relationship through the building of a telegraph communications link, the
development of Shuwaikh as a coaling station for the Royal Navy, and a
(then little appreciated) monopoly over oil exploration rights but, at the same
time, was drawn into the region’s power struggles. In 1922, the border with
Saudi Arabia was delineated (with a considerable loss of Kuwaiti territory),
and the following year the boundary with Iraq was agreed, but the collapse of
the pearl fisheries (a consequence of the invention of artificial pearls) seri-
ously affected the economy, which did not recover until after the discovery
of significant oil reserves in 1938. The Kuwaitis saw their relationship with
Britain primarily as a matter of political expediency, using it as a means of
preventing takeover by other, less appealing, colonial powers. Britain, for its
part, maintained the arrangement for strategic, rather than economic reasons.
The parting of the ways came, suddenly and with little fanfare, on 19 June
1961, while the British government was disengaging itself from Empire and
making deep cuts in military expenditure. Six days later, Iraq restated a claim
to Kuwaiti territory that had first been made in 1938.
See also EAST OF SUEZ.
 L
LABUAN. Labuan, just 30 square miles in area, lies off the coast of the
Malaysian state of Sabah (formerly British North Borneo) at latitude 5° 19´
North and longitude 115° 12´ East. It was uninhabited on 24 December 1846,
when Captain G. R. Mundy of HMS Iris claimed the territory for Queen
Victoria, hoping that it would become a base from which the Royal Navy
could launch attacks against the pirates who pillaged vessels plying the South
China Sea. The island was formally ceded to Britain by the sultan of Brunei
the following year and became a crown colony in 1848 but was never of
great strategic or commercial importance. The coal that was worked in the
north of the island from 1847 until 1911 was of poor quality, few ships made
use of the port facilties, and successive governors took little interest in
administration. On the other hand, the colonial power was unwilling to turn
its back on Labuan for fear that another European power would step in so on
1 January 1890 the Colonial Office transferred responsibility for manage-
ment to the British North Borneo Chartered Company, which had adminis-
tered North Borneo since 1881. However, that arrangement was not a suc-
cess, with much friction evident between Company officials and colonists, so
the island returned to government control in 1906 and was added to the
Straits Settlements on 1 January the following year. It was occupied by
Japanese forces from January 1942 until June 1945 then, when the Straits
Settlements colony was dissolved on 1 April 1946, was initially attached to
Singapore but transferred to North Borneo on 15 July the same year and,
with it, became part of the state of Malaysia in 1963.

LADYSMITH, SIEGE OF (1899–1900). Ladysmith, the major British gar-

rison town in northern Natal, was a strategic target for Afrikaner troops after
the outbreak of the Second Boer War in 1899. By 2 November, the settle-
ment was encircled, with 13,500 soldiers and 8,000 civilians trapped inside.
However, attempts to breach the defenses failed so, increasingly, the attack-
ers concentrated on repelling attempts by a relief force, led by General Sir
Redvers Buller, to raise the siege. As the weeks passed, food supplies inside
the garrison reduced drastically, water supplies were limited to polluted

281
282 • LAGOS
sources, and disease spread rapidly, with typhoid killing nearly 400 of the
beleaguered residents. However, Buller, after a series of setbacks, managed
to defeat the Boers at Tugela Heights and open the road to Ladysmith on 27
February 1900, ending the 118-day siege the following afternoon. Although
Lieutenant-General Sir George White, who commanded the garrison, has
been much criticized for uninspired leadership and an unwillingness to con-
front the enemy, his refusal to surrender forced the Boer commanders to
commit some 21,000 men to a prolonged siege and thus prevented them from
making a rapid advance through Natal. As a result, British reinforcements
were able to arrive in southern Africa unimpeded then push the Afrikaners
back and, in 1902, end the war with a decisive victory.
See also KIMBERLEY, SIEGE OF (1899–1900); MAFEKING, SIEGE
OF.

LAGOS. After Akintoye became oba (or king) of Lagos, on the West
African coast, in 1841, he supported British efforts to end the slave traffic
between the continent and North America, but many of his subjects opposed
that cooperation. As a result, his reign was marked by considerable political
intrigue. In 1845, he was deposed by his nephew, Kosoko, but he regained
his throne in 1851 after enlisting the help of John Beecroft, the British consul
to the Bights of Biafra and Benin, who encouraged the Royal Navy to
bombard the shoreline for many hours in order to subdue opposition to Akin-
toye’s return. When the reinstated oba died suddenly (and possibly by poi-
soning) in 1853, he was succeeded by Docemo, his eldest son, who was less
keen than his father to curb the commerce in human lives, so on 6 August
1861, spurred by French interest in the region, Britain forced the new ruler to
cede his territory to Queen Victoria. The settlement flourished under colonial
rule, initially as a crown colony then as part of the British West African
Settlements (see BRITISH WEST AFRICA) from 19 February 1866 until 24
July 1874, when it was integrated with the Gold Coast. On 13 January 1886,
the area was made a separate colony once again, with its own governor
(Alfred Moloney, who did much to promote agriculture and rubber produc-
tion and was later to hold posts in British Honduras, Trinidad and Tobago,
and the Windward Islands). Britain’s zone of formal political influence
expanded with the declaration of a protectorate over an extensive area of the
colony’s hinterland on 18 October 1887, then on 16 February 1906 the whole
region was merged with the neighboring Southern Nigeria Protectorate to
form the Colony and Protectorate of Southern Nigeria. On 1 January 1914,
against the wishes of many in the Lagos community, affluent Southern Nige-
ria and the less wealthy Protectorate of Northern Nigeria were united as the
Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria, with Lagos as the administrative center,
 LEAGUE OF EMPIRE LOYALISTS • 283
a position it retained, after independence was granted in 1960, until govern-
ment offices moved to the more centrally located Federal Capital Territory at
Abuja in 1991.
See also FERNANDO PO; LUGARD, FREDERICK JOHN DEALTRY
(1858–1945).

LEAGUE OF EMPIRE LOYALISTS. On 13 April 1954, at Caxton Hall in

London, Arthur Chesterton, who had been prominent in the British fascist
movement between the two world wars, founded the League of Empire Loy-
alists (LEL) as a rallying ground for right-wing activists who opposed moves
to disassemble the British Empire. Chesterton, convinced that the agents of
capitalism and communism were part of a Jewish-led conspiracy to under-
mine imperial institutions, attracted only a small number of adherents, but
those committed supporters gained much publicity through a series of widely
reported stunts (for example, by hiding under the speakers’ platforms at
meetings organized by the Conservative Party, which formed the United
Kingdom government from 1951–1964, and then popping out to disrupt the
speeches). On occasion, the antics caused international political embarrass-
ment, as on 18 April 1956, when the prime minister met Nikolai Bulganin
and Nikita Khruschev, leaders of the Soviet Union, at Victoria railroad sta-
tion in London as they arrived for an official visit to the United Kingdom;
Leslie Green, an LEL activist, managed to gain access to the station an-
nouncing system and tell the assembled dignitaries that “Sir Anthony Eden
has shaken hands with murderers.” Embarrassed, the Conservative leadership
discouraged its supporters from joining the League, which also lost adherents
to more extreme right-wing groups, such as John Tyndall’s avowedly antise-
mitic and pro-Nazi White Defence League, formed in 1957. The combination
of mainstream Conservative Party disapproval and the attractions of the more
radical “patriotic” parties resulted in a drop in LEL membership from some
3,000 in 1958 to just 300 by the early 1960s, leaving Chesterton to fund the
organization largely from his own resources, with help from a few wealthy
benefactors. The financial constraints, coupled with the lack of support for
anti-immigration and pro-Empire candidates at the polls, encouraged him to
seek alliances with other groups in the hope that unity would build a strong
party of the far right in British politics. Negotiations led, on 7 February 1967,
to a merger with the British National Party and with disaffected members of
the Racial Preservation Society. The new group was initially known as the
National Front but renamed the National Democrats in 1995. It operated at
the fringe of electoral politics in the United Kingdom, never winning repre-
sentation in parliament, and was disbanded in 2011.
See also COMMONWEALTH IMMIGRATION TO THE UNITED
KINGDOM.
284 • LEAGUE OF NATIONS MANDATED TERRITORY
LEAGUE OF NATIONS MANDATED TERRITORY. Under Article 22
of its covenant, operative from 10 January 1920, the League of Nations
awarded the victorious World War I allies mandates to administer the coloni-
al possessions of defeated nations. Territories of the former Ottoman Empire
were allocated at a conference held in San Remo, Italy, from 19–26 April
1920 and arrangements were approved by the League on 24 July 1922. The
provisions, known as Class A mandates, covered areas that, the politicians
believed, could eventually be independent states, with Britain allotted
Mesopotamia and Palestine. The former became self-governing, as the King-
dom of Iraq, on 3 October 1932. With the League’s permission, Britain
detached Transjordan (now the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan) from Pales-
tine on 16 September 1922, placing it under the rule of Emir Abdullah ibn al-
Husayn but maintaining sole authority over defense, finance, and internation-
al relations. The mandate arrangements terminated on 22 March 1946, and
the League recognized Transjordan’s independence when it held its last
meeting on 18 April. On 15 May 1948, the United Kingdom unilaterally
surrendered its mandate over Palestine and withdrew its officials and troops,
divesting itself of an expensive colonial problem but condemning the Middle
East to decades of civil war.
Also, on 20 July 1922 the League issued Class B mandates covering
former German colonies in East and West Africa. These territories were
considered less ready for independence so the European powers were ex-
pected to adopt more “hands-on” systems of control than were appropriate
for the Class A regions. Britain was allocated British Cameroons (the west-
ern areas of Kamerun), British Togoland (the western section of the German
protectorate of Togoland), and Tanganyika. All became United Nations
Trust Territories in 1946. Other German possessions were given Class C
mandates on the understanding that they would be governed as integral parts
of the mandatory authority’s territory. On 17 December 1920, Nauru, for-
merly part of German New Guinea, was mandated to Great Britain on behalf
of Australia and New Zealand, with Australia taking responsibility for ad-
ministration. The remainder of German New Guinea was renamed the Terri-
tory of New Guinea and mandated to Great Britain and Australia, again with
Australia in control. Western Samoa (previously German Samoa) was also
nominally mandated to Britain, with New Zealand the governing authority.
New Guinea was united, administratively, with Papua in 1945–1946 (see
PAPUA NEW GUINEA), and Nauru and Western Samoa became United
Nations Trust Territories in 1947. Southwest Africa also became nominally
British, with the Union of South Africa administering the region (see WAL-
VIS BAY). In 1946, South Africa refused to approve United Nations trustee-
ship, regarding the area as part of its national territory, and maintained that
stance until 21 March 1990, when South-West Africa gained independence
as Namibia.
 LEEWARD ISLANDS • 285
The allocation of mandates caused much diplomatic argument, with
American officials, including U.S. Secretary of State Robert Lancing, claim-
ing that Britain and France had simply shared the spoils of victory for their
own benefit.
See also ASSOCIATED STATE; ATTLEE, CLEMENT RICHARD
(1883–1967); BRITISH DEPENDENT TERRITORY; BRITISH EAST AF-
RICA; BRITISH OVERSEAS TERRITORY; BRITISH WEST AFRICA;
CHARTER COLONY; COLONY; CROWN COLONY; CROWN DEPEN-
DENCY; DOMINION; GOLD COAST; PROPRIETARY COLONY; PRO-
TECTED STATE; PROTECTORATE; RESTORATION COLONY; ROY-
AL COLONY.

LEEWARD ISLANDS. The Leeward Islands, stretching from latitude 18°

25´ North and longitude 64° 37´ West to latitude 15° 25´ North and longitude
61° 23´ West, form the northern end of the Lesser Antilles archipelago at the
eastern edge of the Caribbean Sea, getting their name because they lie down-
wind (or leeward) of the Windward Islands. British possessions in the re-
gion were grouped under the authority of a single governor from 1671 until
16 October 1816, when the colony was dissolved, with Antigua, Barbuda,
and Montserrat forming one new administrative unit and Anguilla, Nevis,
Saint Kitts, and the Virgin Islands the other. The islands were reconstituted
as a unified British possession in 1833 and placed under the control of the
governor of Antigua until 1871, when, with Dominica added, it was renamed
the Federal Colony of the Leeward Islands and given its own gubernatorial
management. With the exception of the departure of Dominica in 1940, that
form of rule remained unchanged until 1 July 1957, when the colony was
dissolved under the terms of the Leewards Islands Act, passed by the British
parliament the previous year. The constituent islands were renamed the Ter-
ritory of the Leeward Islands and (with the exception of the Virgin Islands)
included in the West Indies Federation in 1958. The Territory was dis-
solved on 1 January 1960, and in 1967, five years after the Federation col-
lapsed, Antigua (with Barbuda), Dominica, and St. Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla
(which had been a single political unit since 1883) were designated associat-
ed states of the United Kingdom, an arrangement that gave them full con-
trol over domestic affairs but left the colonial power responsible for defense
and the conduct of foreign relations. Following civil disturbances on Anguil-
la, Britain resumed direct control from London in 1969 but St. Kitts-Nevis
achieved full independence in 1983, following Dominica (1978), and Anti-
gua and Barbuda (1981). Anguilla, Montserrat, and the Virgin Islands are
among the last remnants of Empire, formally designated British Overseas
Territories.
See also BRITISH WEST INDIES; DEMERARA-ESSEQUIBO;
GUADELOUPE; REDONDA; SABA; SAINT EUSTACE; SAINT JOHN.
286 • LENNOX-BOYD, ALAN TINDAL (1904–1983)
LENNOX-BOYD, ALAN TINDAL (1904–1983). As colonial secretary
(see COLONIAL OFFICE) from 1954–1959, Alan Lennox-Boyd exercised
great influence over the British government’s decolonization policies at a
critical period of imperial change and under three prime ministers—Winston
Churchill (who was never as successful in peacetime as he had been in war),
Anthony Eden (who resigned in the wake of the Suez Crisis), and Harold
Macmillan (who replaced him with Iain Macleod). The second of four
brothers in the family of barrister Alan Lennox-Boyd and his second wife,
Florence, he was born at Loddington, near Bournemouth, on 18 November
1904, studied history at Oxford University, then in 1931, a few weeks before
his 27th birthday, was elected to the House of Commons (the lower chamber
in the United Kingdom’s bicameral parliament) as the member for Mid-
Bedfordshire. Lennox-Boyd won a reputation as an independent mind on the
right wing of the Conservative Party. With Winston Churchill and other
Conservatives he opposed plans, ultimately made law by the Government of
India Act of 1935, to give India greater rights of self-government. By
contrast, in 1938, he infuriated Churchill by arguing that Britain should give
no guarantee that it would defend Czechslovakia if Germany attacked. De-
spite the contretemps, though, Churchill recognized the young politician’s
talents, giving him several junior posts in the World War II coalition admin-
istration, making him minister of state at the Colonial Office after the Con-
servatives won the third postwar general election in 1951, promoting him (in
October the following year) to minister of transport—a post in which Len-
nox-Boyd ruffled feathers by observing that road accidents were not a result
of drivers taking large risks but of drivers taking small risks a large number
of times—and then, on 28 July 1954, appointing him secretary of state for the
colonies .
Lennox-Boyd was an imperialist, believing that colonial rule had done far
more good than ill to the colonized, so he was in no hurry to further the cause
of the Empire’s nationalist movements. On the other hand, he was well aware
of the political consequences of opposing those movements so he tended to
accept the advice of colonial governors and negotiate when talks seemed
appropriate. He was happy, for instance, to facilitate the granting of indepen-
dence to the Federation of Malaya in August 1957 because he believed that
attempts to block self-government would simply push the territory into the
communist fold, as had happened in French Indo-China. The Gold Coast
was more of a problem because of concerns that internal ethnic differences
could lead to civil disorder after independence, but, nonetheless, he approved
a British withdrawal, also in 1957, because he considered that Kwame
Nkrumah and his Convention People’s Party offered the best hope of a pro-
British ally in West Africa and that delaying self-government would add to
support for militant nationalists in other colonies. Elsewhere, Lennox-Boyd
supervised the creation of the West Indies Federation (in 1958) and the
 LIVINGSTONE, DAVID (1813–1873) • 287
Federation of Arab Emirates of the South (in 1959), partly in an effort to
blend small colonies into larger, economically viable units but also in the
hope of establishing pro-British agglomerations in militarily and politically
strategic areas; neither union proved successful because internal tensions
were stronger than desires for cooperation. Cyprus posed other difficulties
because the Greek majority in the island’s population wanted union with
Greece, but the Turkish minority feared discrimination and preferred union
with Turkey. Also, the United Kingdom wanted to retain military bases in the
territory. Eventually, though, compromises were reached, with Britain exer-
cising sovereignty over military establishments at Akrotiri and Dhekélia,
public offices distributed in proportion to the size of Greek and Turkish
ethnic groups, and independence achieved in August 1960.
Less positively, efforts to integrate Malta within the United Kingdom
foundered as a result both of British and of Maltese objections (see MINT-
OFF, DOMINIC “DOM” (1916–2012)), and the Mau Mau rebellion in Ken-
ya proved difficult to suppress. Lennox-Boyd consistently denied that Mau
Mau prisoners were being tortured, but government papers opened to scruti-
ny in 2011 told a different story, indicating that the colonial secretary had
been informed of the abuses by Sir Evelyn Baring, the colony’s governor, in
June 1957 and had apparently accepted Baring’s advice that “violent shock”
was the only sure way of dealing with insurgency. In 1959, newspapers
reported that 11 rebel prisoners had been beaten to death at a detention center
at Hola, in the southeast of the colony, and Lennox-Boyd was widely held
accountable. He fought the general election in October of that year and
retained his seat in parliament, but Iain Macleod took his place as secretary
of state for the colonies in Harold Macmillan’s new government. Lennox-
Boyd was elevated to the House of Lords, as Viscount Boyd of Merton, the
following year and turned his attention from politics to business interests
with the Guinness brewing company and to support for a range of charitable
organizations. He died on 8 March 1983 after being hit by a car while
crossing a London street.

LIVINGSTONE, DAVID (1813–1873). An explorer and missionary who

did much to extend British influence in sub-Saharan Africa during the middle
years of the 19th century, Livingstone was born in Blantyre on 19 March
1813, the second of seven children (two of whom died in infancy) in the
family of tea salesman Neil Livingstone and his wife, Agnes. He started
work in a local cotton mill at the age of 10 and by 1836 had saved enough
money to enter Anderson’s College (now Strathclyde University) in Glasgow
and study medicine, with additional classes in divinity and Greek. In 1840,
he passed examinations that made him a licentiate of the Faculty of Physi-
cians and Surgeons of Glasgow and in 1841 traveled to Kuruman, north of
the Orange River in southern Africa, as a representative of the London
288 • LIVINGSTONE, DAVID (1813–1873)
Missionary Society (LMS). Livingstone quickly developed an empathy with
the native people and pushed into relatively unexplored territory in an effort
to spread the gospels of Christianity, commerce, and civilization that he
believed would improve the lives of the indigenous peoples and open Africa
to European influence. In 1851, in the company of William Cotton Oswell, a
wealthy hunter and explorer, he reached the lands of the Makalolo people on
the Chobe River and, on 4 August, arrived on the banks of the Zambezi.
There, he saw the impact of the Portuguese trade in slaves, writing that “The
strangest disease I have seen in this country seems really to be broken-
heartedness, and it attacks free men who have been captured and made
slave.” For much of the remainder of his life, he attempted to end the com-
merce by finding routes, from the interior to the coast, that would allow an
interchange of goods that was more profitable than buying and selling people
and would provide a market for British manufactures.
In November 1853, Livingstone set off northwestward from Linyanti, a
Makalolo settlement on the Chobe, to explore the upper reaches of the Zam-
bezi and, seven months later, arrived at Loanda, on the continent’s Atlantic
coast, but it was clear that the climate, the difficult terrain, hostile tribes, and
the dangers of tropical illnesses would make the route commercially unat-
tractive so he retraced his steps then, from November 1855, followed the
river to the east. After just 50 miles, he saw a great cataract that he named
Victoria Falls in honor of his queen but, for the rest of the trip, passed
through country where travel was easy, reaching the port of Quilimane and
the Indian Ocean the following May. From there, he returned to Britain and
found himself a hero with all but the LMS, which sent a letter reminding him
that he was expected to save souls, not fill in the blanks on the map of the
Dark Continent. In response, he resigned from the Society and, in 1858,
returned to Africa to lead an expedition, funded by the Foreign Office, that
was intended to further commercial activities that would supplant the trade in
slaves and to search the Zambezi for raw materials that could be utilized by
British industrial concerns. Livingstone had hoped to establish colonies of
British people manufacturing cotton, but he assumed, wrongly, that the river
would be navigable along its whole length and he underestimated the impact
of malaria and other diseases on settlement prospects. During the journey, he
explored the area around Lake Nyasa (now Lake Malawi) but, after six years,
with the expedition’s aims unrealized, was recalled to London.
The adulation on that visit was less evident than during his previous stay,
but, nevertheless, he was able to persuade the government, private subscrib-
ers, and the Royal Geographical Society to provide funds for further travels
in search of the sources of the Congo, Nile, and Zambezi Rivers. That trip,
which began in April 1866, took him from the mouth of the Rovuma River
past Lake Nyasa and well into uncharted territory, sapping his strength. Un-
able to communicate with friends in Europe, he appeared to have vanished
 LLOYD GEORGE, DAVID (1863–1945) • 289
and was believed dead until, on 10 November 1871 (or, according to Living-
stone, sometime from 24–28 October), Henry Morton Stanley of the New
York Herald found him at Ujiji on Lake Tanganyika, allegedly greeting him
with the words, “Dr. Livingstone, I presume.” Livingstone—seriously ill
after suffering from cholera, dysentery, pneumonia, and shortages of food—
declined to accompany Stanley to the coast, preferring to continue his search
for the headwaters of the Nile. That quest failed. He reached Chitambo (in
present-day Zambia) but died there on 30 April 1870.
Assessments of Livingstone’s life have been mixed. Several writers have
considered him an agent of colonial oppression, politically naive, selfish, and
tactless. Others, more positively, have stressed his influence on campaigns to
abolish slavery and his contribution to geographical knowledge (including
his reports of Lake Bangweulu, Lake Nyasa, Lake Tanganyika, Victoria
Falls, and several river courses, notably that of the upper Zambezi). Also,
some biographers have argued that, because he was esteemed by many
African tribal chiefs, he laid a foundation for the extension of British political
and missionary influence in southern Africa, and particularly in Nyasaland.
See also BECHUANALAND; BRUCE OF KINNAIRD, JAMES
(1730–1794); CAREY, WILLIAM (1761–1834); MOFFAT, ROBERT
(1795–1883); SLESSOR, MARY MITCHELL (1848–1915); THOMSON,
JOSEPH (1858–1895); UNIVERSITIES’ MISSION TO CENTRAL AFRI-
CA; ZANZIBAR.

LLOYD GEORGE, DAVID (1863–1945). Although Lloyd George is re-

membered primarily as a social reformer and wartime leader, he can also be
credited with making the political moves that led to independence for Ire-
land. The second child of school teacher William George and his wife,
Elizabeth, he was born in Manchester on 17 January 1863 but raised in
Wales, experiencing the limitations and effects of poverty as his mother
struggled to raise her children after her husband’s death in June 1864. Young
David was greatly influenced by Elizabeth’s brother, Richard Lloyd, a shoe-
maker and Baptist minister, who supported the family financially and en-
couraged the teenage boy both to pursue a legal career and to take an active
interest in politics. David added his uncle’s surname to his own and entered
parliament as the Liberal Party representative for Caernarvon Boroughs in
1890. An outspoken critic of the Second Boer War, which began in 1899, he
was attacked by a mob in Birmingham—the imperialist stronghold of Joseph
Chamberlain, secretary of state for the colonies (see COLONIAL OF-
FICE)—when, in December 1901, he made a speech criticizing the policy of
the government headed by Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, marquess of Salisbury,
but his star rose as support for the conflict dwindled, and on 10 December
1905 he was appointed to the office of president of the Board of Trade in
Prime Minister Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman’s administration. Herbert
290 • LONDON COMPANY
Henry Asquith, Campbell-Bannerman’s successor, made Lloyd George
chancellor of the exchequer on 12 April 1908 and then, after the outbreak of
World War I, minister of munitions (25 May 1915) and secretary of state for
war (6 June 1916). Asquith had been a popular leader in peacetime, but his
limitations as an organizer in times of war became increasingly obvious and
on 5 December 1916 he was forced out of office. Two days later, King
George V asked Lloyd George, who had the mass of public opinion behind
him, to take charge of the war effort—no easy task for a new prime minister
who did not see eye to eye with the senior military and naval figures direct-
ing operations in the field. Appointing a five-member war cabinet, he in-
trigued against the high command and dominated British diplomacy in a
near-presidential fashion, playing a significant role in the negotiations over
the peace settlement in 1919.
That year brought another crisis, however, because in January Irish rebels
declared a republic and formed a legislature (known as the Dáil Éireann) in
Dublin. Lloyd George’s government responded with reprisals against the
Irish Republican Army (IRA) and with a Government of Ireland Act that
received royal assent on 23 December 1920, creating a parliament in Belfast
for the six Protestant-dominated counties in the north of the island on the
assumption that both the north and the south would be self-governing but
remain part of the British state. The majority of Irish citizens in the south
were more interested in independence than in “home rule,” though. In Octo-
ber 1920, Lloyd George described the IRA as a “murder gang” but, neverthe-
less, initiated conversations with Sinn Féin, its political wing, and on 5
December 1921, forced a settlement by telling the Irish negotiators that he
would command the army to adopt more repressive measures unless agree-
ment was reached by 10 p.m. that day. Sinn Féin capitulated, and the Irish
Free State—the 26 counties of southern Ireland—became, in effect, a self-
governing territory within the British Empire. The violence continued into
the 21st century, but, arguably, Lloyd George had dealt with a problem that
such eminent predecessors as William Gladstone and Gascoyne-Cecil had
been unable to solve. Even so, the achievement was gained at considerable
cost because many erstwhile supporters interpreted the decision as surrender
to the demands of secessionists while others were shocked by the military
measures that had been adopted in an effort to curb IRA activities. In suc-
ceeding months, a series of crises led to the disintegration of the government,
and on 22 October 1922 the prime minister tendered his resignation to the
king. He remained a member of parliament but held no further office before
his death at Ty Newydd, his Welsh home, on 26 March 1945.

LONDON COMPANY. See VIRGINIA COMPANY.

 LONDON MISSIONARY SOCIETY • 291
LONDON, CONVENTION OF (1814). See ANGLO-DUTCH TREATY
(1814).

LONDON CONVENTION OF 1818. See ANGLO-AMERICAN CON-

VENTION OF 1818.

LONDON MISSIONARY SOCIETY. The London Missionary Society

(LMS) was built, like many similar groups (see CHURCH MISSIONARY
(OR MISSION) SOCIETY), on the foundation of late 18th-century enthu-
siasm for evangelical Protestantism in Britain. In a pamphlet published in
1792, William Carey (who later became a Baptist missionary in India)
advocated the formation of a multidenominational body that would coordi-
nate the activities of several churches and thus maximize resource use. His
plea fell on fertile soil; on 22 September 1795, a Missionary Society was
formed at a meeting in Spa Fields Chapel, a focus for evangelical Christians
in London, with the aim of spreading “the knowledge of Christ among heath-
en and other unenlightened nations.” The organization was renamed the Lon-
don Missionary Society in 1818 and, throughout its history, derived its
strongest support from the Congregational Church.
The LMS’s first representatives were sent to the islands of the southern
Pacific Ocean, initially (in 1796) to Tahiti but later to the Cook Islands, the
New Hebrides, Samoa, Tonga, and other locations. There, they learned the
local languages (John Williams translated the Bible into Rarotongan) then
trained local converts and dispatched them to neighboring communities in an
effort to enlarge the Christian fold and so provide support for the faithful.
Elsewhere, colleagues—up to 250 each year by the end of the 19th century—
preached their gospel throughout the British Empire and attempted both to
advance scientific knowledge of the areas in which they were based and to
improve the quality of life of indigenous peoples: William Ringeltaube
founded Scott Christian College (now a degree granting institution) in Tra-
vancore, India, in 1809; William Milne established printing presses in Mal-
acca and Penang in 1815–1816; for much of the period from 1816–1870,
Robert Moffat and his wife, Mary, traveled southern Africa (while having
10 children) and sent reports of their journeys to the Royal Geographical
Society; John Philip used his experience in Cape Colony in 1822–1823 to
persuade the British government to improve the rights of indigenous peoples
in the area; David Livingstone (who married the Moffats’ daughter, Mary)
contributed much to geographical knowledge of south-central Africa (despite
making few converts to Christianity) from 1841–1873; and John Wray taught
slaves to read on the sugar plantations of British Guiana from 1808 until
1837. Other LMS missionaries were sent beyond the Empire to such loca-
tions as China and Madagascar. For most, conditions were difficult and op-
292 • LORD HOWE ISLAND
position acute: Williams was eaten by cannibals on Erromango, for example,
and Wray had to contend with officials who believed that slaves should not
be educated because knowledge and articulacy would make them more prone
to rebel.
After the end of World War II, the political and social context of mission-
ary work changed. Former colonies won independence and their churches
gained greater autonomy; thus, for example, Congregational, Episcopal,
Methodist, and Presbyterian groups combined as the Church of South India
in 1947. Also, British society became more secularized, reducing interest in
missions and restricting the flow of funds to organizations still committed to
proselytizing. In an attempt to meet the new challenges, LMS merged with
the Commonwealth Missionary Society in 1966 to form the Congregational
Council for World Mission, which was renamed the Council for World Mis-
sion (CWM) in 1977. By the beginning of the 21st century, the CWM was
coordinating missionary efforts by 31 independent denominations, mainly in
former Empire territories in the Caribbean, eastern and southern Asia, the
Pacific Islands, and southern Africa.
See also ARUNDEL, JOHN THOMAS (1841–1919); BECHUANA-
LAND; DEMERARA-ESSEQUIBO; GRIQUALAND WEST; HONG
KONG; KHAMA, SERETSE (1921–1980); SAVAGE ISLAND; UNION
ISLANDS.

LORD HOWE ISLAND. The tiny, 22-square-mile, Lord Howe Island, ly-
ing 370 miles off the east coast of Australia at latitude 31° 33´ South and
longitude 159° 5´ East, was uninhabited when it was sighted, and claimed for
Britain, on 17 February 1788 by Lieutenant Henry Lidgbird Ball, command-
ing HMS Supply, a convict ship heading for Norfolk Island. The first set-
tlers, who arrived from New Zealand in 1833, survived by provisioning
whaling vessels and then, when that source of income declined, by exporting
kentia palm plants to decorate house interiors in Europe and the United
States. The island (which was named after Richard Howe, first lord of the
admiralty in Prime Minister Lord Frederick North’s government) was an-
nexed to the colony of New South Wales on 6 June 1856 and, with it, joined
the Commonwealth of Australia on 1 January 1901. In 1982, it was designat-
ed a World Heritage Site by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and
Cultural Organization (UNESCO) because of its unique fauna and flora. The
population of about 350 depends on the sale of palm seedlings and on tour-
ism for its livelihood.

LOWER CANADA. When Great Britain formally assumed control of

Quebec in 1763, the great majority of settlers in the area were of French
descent because France had held the territory for most of the previous 150
 LOWER CANADA • 293
years. However, after the American Revolutionary War ended in 1783
some 10,000 colonists loyal to King George III moved into the Province
seeking land and, once they had acquired that, demanding a say in the way
communities were governed. Parliament responded by passing a Constitu-
tional Act that, from 26 December 1791, partitioned Quebec into Lower
Canada (with a predominantly French population) and Upper Canada (with
a predominantly British population). Lower Canada stretched along down-
stream reaches of the St. Lawrence River, including Labrador (until 1809,
when that region was placed under the control of the governor of New-
foundland) and territory that, in the 21st century, forms the southern portion
of Canada’s Quebec Province. The legislation also replaced the authoritarian
system of administration—a governor and an advisory committee composed
entirely of his own appointees—that had operated in Quebec with a some-
what more democratic structure in which a lieutenant-governor represented
the crown and a bicameral parliament had an elected lower house (the Legis-
lative Assembly) and an appointed upper house (the Legislative Council). An
Executive Council, chosen from members of the Legislative Council, func-
tioned as the lieutenant-governor’s cabinet.
The new order was undoubtedly more representative than the old, but,
even so, it was not a success. Middle-class French Canadians, supported by a
small group of anglophones, quickly took control of the Assembly and called
for greater power—power that the Legislative Council (dominated by British
landowners and by merchants, who were collectively known as the Château
Clique and formed a distinct minority in the new colony’s population) was
unwilling to relinquish. In order to promote their interests, the radicals
formed a Parti Canadien (or Canada Party) in the early years of the 19th
century and reshaped it as the Parti Patriote (or Patriot Party) in 1826, while
attitudes hardened on both sides. The political tensions were worsened by
burgeoning numbers of British immigrants (who were perceived as a threat
to the francophone culture), by a difficult economic climate (caused by a
collapse in the export markets for wheat and a declining fur trade), and by the
Roman Catholic French Canadians’ high birthrate (which increased the pres-
sures on farming land). As Patriot Party members became more extreme,
many demanding a right to secede from the Empire and create an indepen-
dent homeland, British refusals to consider reforms led to organized protests
and then, in December 1837, to rebellion and the imposition of martial law in
Montreal. The revolt was quashed easily but was significant enough for the
government to appoint John Lambton, earl of Durham, to the post of govern-
or-in-chief of British North America and issue him with orders to deal with
the unrest. Durham stayed for little over five months and had very few
contacts with other than wealthy settlers but, nevertheless, presented a report
(which may have been written by his aides) recommending that Lower and
Upper Canada should be placed under a single administration as a first step
294 • LUGARD, FREDERICK JOHN DEALTRY (1858–1945)
toward union of all British colonies in the region. The reunification of the
two colonies, coupled with promotion of immigration from Great Britain and
the introduction of limited self-government, would, he argued, anglicize the
territory and therefore overcome the problems created by “two nations war-
ring in the bosom of a single state.” Parliament took note and, on 23 July
1840, approved legislation that, from 5 February the following year, united
Lower and Upper Canada as the Province of Canada.
See also ANGLO-AMERICAN WAR OF 1812 (1812–1815); PITT THE
YOUNGER, WILLIAM (1759–1806).

LUGARD, FREDERICK JOHN DEALTRY (1858–1945). Frederick Lu-

gard is often credited with developing the system of indirect rule that Brit-
ain employed to administer territories throughout its African and Asian Em-
pires. The son of army chaplain F. G. Lugard and his missionary wife, Mary
Ann, he was born at Fort George, Madras, on 22 January 1858 and educated
at Rossall School in northern England. In 1878, after a brief two months of
training at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, he was commissioned into
the East Norfolk Regiment and saw service in Afghanistan (1879–1880), the
Sudan (1884–1885), and Burma (1886–1887). Devasted by the effects of a
disastrous love affair with a philandering divorcee, he was placed on medical
leave and wandered across Africa, eventually joining the Imperial British
East Africa Company in 1889. From 1890–1892, he was the firm’s princi-
pal representative in Buganda (now part of Uganda), where he quelled con-
flict between religious factions and mapped large areas of the region. Learn-
ing that his employers intended to abandon the territory because they no
longer had funds to sustain their operations, he hastened to London and,
while defending himself against allegations of imposing control through un-
duly harsh and unjust means, persuaded Prime Minister William Gladstone
to declare the lands a protectorate and thus give the British government
influence over administration of the area.
In 1894, his reputation intact, Lugard accepted a position with the Royal
Niger Company. After a lengthy march through terrain previously unex-
plored by Europeans, he confounded French and German plans for expansion
by persuading local chiefs in Borgu, on the middle Niger, to accept the
Company’s rule, then in 1895, he trekked for 700 miles across the Kalahari
Desert to prospect for diamonds in Bechuanaland on behalf of the British
West Charterland Company. Exploits such as these endeared him to policy
makers in Britain, encouraging Joseph Chamberlain, the secretary of state
for the colonies (see COLONIAL OFFICE), to authorize him to raise a
native West African Frontier Force that would protect British interests in
Lagos Colony and the Niger Coast Protectorate (see SOUTHERN NIGE-
RIA) against French incursions from 1897. In 1900, when the government
terminated the Royal Niger Company’s charter and assumed responsibility
 LUGARD, FREDERICK JOHN DEALTRY (1858–1945) • 295
for administering the territories in which it had operated, Lugard was made
high commissioner for the Protectorate of Northern Nigeria—an area of
some 300,000 square miles that was still largely independent of European
control. As France and Germany also had designs on the territory, Lugard
was under pressure to impose British authority as quickly as possible. Within
three years, he had persuaded the local emirs to relinquish their sovereign-
ty—partly by force and partly through diplomacy—but he argued that
Africans would only be willing to accept authority imposed by people who
followed their customs and spoke their language so he allowed the native
chiefs to retain much of their traditional power, albeit under the close super-
vision of British officials, developing a system of indirect rule that was to be
widely adopted throughout the Empire.
In 1902, Lugard married Fiona Shaw, the formidable colonial editor of the
Times newspaper, but poor health prevented her from living in Nigeria, and
her husband’s frequent visits to be with her in England provoked admoni-
tions from Victor Bruce, Lord Elgin, who was appointed colonial secretary
(see COLONIAL OFFICE) by Prime Minister Henry Campbell-Bannerman
in 1905. Believing that Elgin was failing to honor an arrangement sanctioned
by Alfred Lyttleton, the previous secretary of state, Lugard resigned in Sep-
tember 1906 but, to the surprise of some observers, was made governor of
Hong Kong the following year. That tiny territory, with its well-established
British community and well-developed economy, was very different from
extensive and comparatively unexploited Northern Nigeria, but Lugard made
a considerable success of the post, founding the University of Hong Kong,
despite lack of support from government and business, because he felt that it
would provide a focus for the dissemination of British culture. He also sug-
gested that Britain should offer to surrender its lease of the Chinese port of
Weihaiwei in return for permanent possession of the New Territories area of
Hong Kong, but politicians rejected the proposal and some writers have
suggested that Hong Kong would still be in British hands if they had viewed
the plan more favorably.
Lugard returned to Nigeria in 1912 with orders to unite the north and south
under a single administration, despite the protests of commercial interests in
Lagos. That task, completed on 1 January 1914, he acted as governor-gener-
al of the new Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria until November 1918 but
found the job increasingly exasperating. Constantly at odds with his political
masters in the Colonial Office, which was frustrated by his unwillingness to
delegate and his tendency to act before consulting superiors, he missed his
wife, found the principles of indirect rule difficult to apply to the loosely
organized tribal groupings in the south, and, in 1918, faced an uprising in the
city of Abeokuta. He retired at the end of that year, returned to England, and
wrote dozens of books and articles, in which he argued that colonialism
should be of benefit to the colonized as well as to the colonizer. Lugard also
296 • LUGARD, FREDERICK JOHN DEALTRY (1858–1945)
used his considerable experience on numerous committees, including the
Permanent Mandates Commission of the League of Nations, and on the
boards of companies with African interests. He was knighted in 1901 and,
after being raised to the peerage as Baron Lugard of Abinger in 1928, spoke
regularly in colonial debates in the House of Lords.
After a military, administrative, and literary career spanning more than six
decades, Lugard died at Little Parkhurst, his home near Dorking, in southern
England, on 2 April 1945. Since then, some historians have criticized aspects
of his managerial style, including his sometimes unforgiving approach to
discipline and his unwillingness to tolerate fools gladly, but others have
drawn attention to his capacity for hard work and to his influence on strate-
gies for colonial development, claiming that his impact on Britain’s imperial
aspirations in Africa stands comparison with the contributions of such men
as Cecil Rhodes and David Livingstone.
See also GOLDIE, GEORGE DASHWOOD TAUBMAN (1846–1925).
 M
MACKENZIE, ALEXANDER (1764/1765–1820). In his attempts to open
up routes for British fur traders in North America, Mackenzie made the first
east–west crossing of the continent north of Mexico and added much to
geographical knowledge of subarctic territories that later became parts of
Canada (see NORTH-WEST (OR NORTH-WESTERN) TERRITORIES
(CANADA)). The son of Kenneth Mackenzie and his wife, Isabella (who
died while Alexander was still a child), he was born near Stornoway, Scot-
land, in 1764 or 1765 and taken to New York by his merchant father in 1774.
In 1779, he joined the fur trading firm of Finlay and Gregory, which was
restructured in 1783 as Gregory, Macleod, and Company. Four years later,
the business amalgamated with the North West Company, which planned to
expand its enterprise in the, then relatively uncharted, northwest of the conti-
nent and which was to become a major rival to the Hudson’s Bay Company.
In 1789, Mackenzie was in charge of North West’s base at Fort Chipewyan,
on the southern shore of Lake Athabasca, and from there, on 3 June, set off
by canoe to identify new areas in which his firm could barter for furs and to
plot new routeways to the Pacific Ocean for his traders. He was unsuccessful;
Europeans believed that the river that now bears his name flowed to the west,
but, in fact, it swings to the north and enters the Arctic Ocean, which Mack-
enzie reached on 14 July. Annoyed, because the waterway was of no com-
mercial value to his company, he planned a second expedition, leaving Fort
Chipewyan again on 10 October 1792 with the intention of following the
Peace River to its source, crossing the continental divide, and then finding a
river that would take him downslope to the Pacific Ocean. He overwintered
near the confluence of the Peace and Smoky Rivers at a location later known
as Fort Fork, then, on 9 May 1793 and in the company of his cousin (Alexan-
der MacKay), two native guides, six voyageurs (men who transported furs by
canoe), and a dog (known simply as “Our Dog”), he resumed his journey,
crossing the divide, following the Bella Coola River, and reaching North
Bentinck Arm, an inlet of the Pacific now in British Columbia, on 22 July.
However, he was disappointed again because the difficult terrain meant that
the route was unlikely to be attractive to traders. Mackenzie was knighted by

297
298 • MACKINNON, WILLIAM (1823–1893)
King George III in 1802, in recognition of his achievement, and sat in Lower
Canada’s House of Assembly from 1804 until 1808 without greatly enjoying
the experience. In 1812, he returned to Scotland where, at the age of 48, he
married 14-year-old Geddes Mackenzie, with whom he had a daughter and
two sons. He died, unexpectedly, at an inn near Dunkeld on 12 March 1820.
See also COLUMBIA DISTRICT; RED RIVER COLONY.

MACKINNON, WILLIAM (1823–1893). William Mackinnon developed a

shipping business that linked outposts of the British Empire across the Indian
Ocean and, through his political and business contacts, laid a foundation for
the development of the East Africa Protectorate, which evolved into the
core of Kenya Colony and then into present-day Kenya. The youngest of 12
children in the family of Duncan Mackinnon (the captain of a revenue cutter)
and his wife, Isabella, William was born in Campbeltown, Scotland, on 31
March 1823. He found his first job with a local grocer but soon moved to a
post with a Glasgow silk merchant then, in 1847, sailed for Calcutta, where
he opened a shipping agency in partnership with Robert Mackenzie, an old
school friend. The firm prospered, despite Mackenzie’s death in a shipwreck
in 1853, so Mackinnon, with capital of £35,000, was able to establish the
Calcutta and Burmah Steam Navigation Company on 29 September 1856,
with one vessel carrying mail from Calcutta to Rangoon. In 1862, the firm
was renamed the British India Steam Navigation Company (usually known
as BI), and within a few years it had developed an extensive route network
linking ports in Australia, Burma, the east coast of Africa, Great Britain,
the Persian Gulf, and Southeast Asia, with its craft built so that they could
transport troops if necessary (and so provide Mackinnon with an additional
source of income).
From about 1873, BI vessels carried letters and packages between the
commercial hub of Zanzibar and the British garrison at Aden, but Mackin-
non was keen, also, to open up trade with the African interior, over which
Sultan Barghash of Zanzibar claimed sovereignty. That sovereignty was
somewhat tenuous, but, even so, in 1878 Mackinnon took steps to befriend
the ruler and pursued negotiations designed to secure trading concessions
over some 600,000 square miles of the continental mainland, stretching from
the coastline to lands beyond Lakes Nyasa, Tanganyika, and Victoria. The
British government initially refused to approve the arrangement (which, had
it been sanctioned, would have given Great Britain commercial control over
much of what later became German East Africa), but geopolitical priorities
soon changed. In 1886, Great Britain and Germany divided East Africa into
separate spheres of interest, with Britain taking a portion of the sultan’s
territories (albeit a smaller portion than had been available a few years earli-
er). Prime Minister Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, Lord Salisbury, was unwilling
to commit his government to the expense of administering a region that was
 MACLEOD, IAIN NORMAN (1913–1970) • 299
not known to have substantial mineral resources and which lacked a commu-
nications infrastructure so he persuaded Mackinnon to establish a private
firm that would take on the task. Mackinnon, committed to the cause of
Empire, formed the British East Africa Association as a means of promot-
ing interest in the venture then, on 18 April 1888, created the Imperial
British East Africa Company to carry out the work. However, given the
size of its task, the business was always under-capitalized and never com-
mercially successful. On 1 July 1895, the government revoked the firm’s
royal charter, granted on 6 September 1888, and declared the area in which it
operated the East Africa Protectorate. Other ventures were more lasting. BI
merged with the P&O line in 1914, but its fleet continued sailing under its
own flag until 1971 and Mackinnon Mackenzie still operates in diverse
forms in the 21st century.
A committed member of the Free Church of Scotland, Mackinnon estab-
lished the East African Scottish Mission in 1892; the single place of worship
that opened in Kibwezi (now in Kenya) evolved into the Presbyterian Church
of East Africa. He was created a baronet by Queen Victoria in 1889 and died
in the Burlington Hotel in London on 22 June 1893. In its obituary, the
Glasgow Herald commented on the “shrewdness, foresight and business
ability” that had made him, according to colonial administrator Henry Bartle
Frere, the “little Scotsman” who was “the mainspring of British enterprise on
the Persian Gulf” for much of the second half of the 19th century.
See also KENYA PROTECTORATE; STANLEY, HENRY MORTON
(1841–1904); UGANDA.

MACLEOD, IAIN NORMAN (1913–1970). Iain Macleod held the post of

colonial secretary (see COLONIAL OFFICE) for just two years, but accord-
ing to some historians, his rapid dismantling of Britain’s African Empire
allowed the United Kingdom to avoid the conflicts that plagued France and
Portugal as they delayed imperial withdrawal from the continent. The son of
physician Norman Macleod and his wife, Annabella, he was born in Skipton
on 11 November 1913 and educated at Cambridge University, where he
spent much of his time making money at the bridge table while ostensibly
studying for a degree in modern history. Along with several others who were
to make an impact on British politics, he was elected to parliament at the
general election in February 1950, representing the Conservative Party, led
by Winston Churchill, and the London constituency of Enfield West. Two
years later, he rose to make an address in the House of Commons (the lower
chamber in Britain’s bicameral legislature) during a debate on health care,
speaking immediately after Labour Party’s Aneurin Bevan, an accomplished
orator and chief architect of the National Health Service that was created as
one plank of a raft of welfare state policies introduced by Prime Minister
Clement Attlee’s governments after World War II. Macleod’s opening sen-
300 • MACLEOD, IAIN NORMAN (1913–1970)
tence—”I want to deal closely and with relish with the vulgar, crude, and
intemperate speech to which the House of Commons has just listened”—
caught Churchill’s attention and resulted, six weeks later, in his appointment
as minister of health. He held that post from 7 May 1952 until 20 December
1955, when he was appointed minister of labour and national service in
Anthony Eden’s administration. Then, on 14 October 1959, Harold Mac-
millan made him secretary of state for the colonies (see COLONIAL OF-
FICE), succeeding Alan Lennox-Boyd.
In West Africa, the Gold Coast had won independence (as Ghana) in 1957
and arrangements for Nigeria’s transition to full self-government were al-
most complete. However, circumstances in Central and East Africa were
much less auspicious because colonies in those regions had minority white
populations that were bitterly opposed to black African majority rule. Never-
theless, Macleod took the view that “if you give independence to West Afri-
ca, you cannot deny it in East Africa just because there is a white settler
community there.” He very quickly grasped the nettle in Kenya, which had
some 68,000 whites but where 90,000 suspected Mau Mau rebels were held
in detention amid rumors of torture by their British guardians. Three-quarters
of the detainees were released by the end of 1959, in early January 1960
Macleod told a meeting of black and white leaders in London that “There
must be majority rule,” and in the summer of 1961 Jomo Kenyatta (a promi-
nent nationalist who had been held in captivity since 1952) was given his
freedom. Independence followed in December 1963. Discussions with Julius
Nyerere of Tanganyika (which had experienced less violence than other
colonies in the region) led to arrangements for independence in December
1961. In April 1960, Hastings Banda was released from prison in Nyasa-
land (despite opposition from Sir Robert Armitage, the protectorate’s
governor) and invited to London for a constitutional conference, which con-
cluded with an agreement that the colony would secede from the Federation
of Rhodesia and Nyasaland and that further negotiations would lead to self-
government, a status achieved with the creation of Malawi in July 1964.
Deliberations over Northern Rhodesia were, by Macleod’s own admission,
“incredibly devious and tortuous,” but it, too, eventually became indepen-
dent, as the Republic of Zambia and with Kenneth Kaunda as president, in
October 1964.
Macleod accepted that these countries were not fully prepared for self-
government, but, he argued, “we could not possibly have held by force to our
territories in Africa. . . . Of course, there were risks in moving quickly, but
the risks of moving more slowly were far greater.” His approach earned him
the admiration of the more liberal members of the Conservative Party but
infuriated the organization’s right wing, with Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, mar-
quess of Salisbury, condemning him as a man, “too clever by half,” who
sought to outwit white settlers by the kind of trickery he employed on the
 MACMILLAN, MAURICE HAROLD (1894–1986) • 301
bridge table rather than by negotiating in good faith. In an effort to end the
divisiveness, Macmillan moved Macleod, on 9 October 1961, to the posts of
chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster and chairman of the Conservative Party,
but precedents for future decolonization were set and were followed by Mac-
leod’s successor, Reginald Maudling. Macleod went with good grace and
later occupied other senior positions in government, including, briefly, that
of chancellor of the exchequer. He died, suddenly, on 20 July 1970 after
suffering an abdominal condition and a heart attack. Roy Welensky, prime
minister of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland from 1956–1963, and
a fierce political opponent, reflected that “For good or ill, he [Macleod] was
probably the most powerful holder of the office [of colonial secretary] since
Joseph Chamberlain. Without Macleod, we might have spent the 1960s in
the futile attempt to hold back the tide of African advance.”
See also BAROTSELAND.

MACMILLAN, MAURICE HAROLD (1894–1986). Under the supervi-

sion of Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, the pace of British decolonization
increased rapidly in the late 1950s and early 1960s, particularly in Africa.
The youngest of the three boys in the family of Maurice Macmillan and his
wife, Nellie, Harold was born into a distinguished publishing empire. He
studied at Oxford University, served with distinction as a captain in the
Grenadier Guards during World War I, and was elected to parliament in
1924, representing the Conservative Party as the member for the economical-
ly depressed constituency of Stockton-on-Tees. A consistent critic of the
policies of Prime Ministers Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain, he
was not offered any government office until Winston Churchill formed a
World War II coalition administration from 10 May 1940 and appointed him
to the post of parliamentary secretary to Herbert Morrison, the minister of
supply. On 4 May 1942, he was moved to the Colonial Office as under-
secretary of state (a transfer that Macmillan later described as “like leaving a
madhouse in order to enter a mausoleum”) and then, on 22 December, was
sent to Algiers as minister resident at the Allied Forces headquarters, where
he was in regular contact with General Dwight Eisenhower, the supreme
commander of the troops and later president of the United States. A brief
period as secretary of state for air followed from 25 May–26 July 1945, but
the Labour Party’s surprise general election victory temporarily ended his
government duties.
Macmillan returned to office in 1951, serving under Churchill as minister
of housing and local government (30 October 1951–19 October 1954) and
minister of defence (19 October 1954–7 April 1955), then under Anthony
Eden as foreign secretary (7 April 1955–20 December 1955) and chancellor
of the exchequer (20 December 1955–13 January 1957). In September 1956,
two months after Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the
302 • MACMILLAN, MAURICE HAROLD (1894–1986)
Suez Canal (see SUEZ CRISIS (1956–1957)), Eden dispatched him to the
United States to consult with Eisenhower, who was nearing the end of his
first term as president. Much controversy surrounds the conversation, but it
seems Macmillan believed that the Americans would give political support to
an invasion designed to oust Nasser. He relayed that view to London, and
Eden, buoyed by the news, approved British participation in a joint operation
with Israel and France. However, Eisenhower condemned the action and
threatened to end financial aid to the United Kingdom. Macmillan, initially
supportive of military intervention, quickly performed a volte-face and advo-
cated withdrawal, overdramatizing the economic consequences as he jus-
tified his change of view to Eden’s cabinet. Eden called for a ceasefire and
resigned on 9 January the following year, making no recommendation re-
garding a successor to the young Queen Elizabeth II, who, after sounding out
senior politicians, appointed Macmillan.
Much of the new prime minister’s attention was focused on economic
issues as he attempted to keep unemployment rates low, but he also took a
close interest in colonial and foreign policy, initiating moves to minimize the
consequences of the rift with the United States over Suez, providing military
assistance to quell a revolt in Oman (which had long been under British
influence, though not formally part of the Empire) in 1957, sending troops to
Jordan (see TRANSJORDAN) in 1958 to prevent a Syrian invasion, and
moving forces into Kuwait in 1961 in response to threats from Iraq. Howev-
er, he was attacked by political opponents and by the press over treatment of
Mau Mau prisoners in Kenya in 1959 and by a report of a commission of
inquiry, led by Lord Justice Devlin, that, later the same year, criticized the
illegal tactics adopted by British police and troops in Nyasaland. Macmillan
took the pragmatic view that if the cost of maintaining a territory of the
Empire outweighed the benefits that could be derived from the region, then
the colony should be politically reassigned, either by giving it independence
or by merging it with some other area. Moreover, he acknowledged in
speeches in Ghana and in South Africa in 1960 that “The wind of change is
blowing through this continent. Whether we like it or not, this growth of
national consciousness is a political fact.” Those speeches brought a barrage
of complaint from the right wing of the Conservative Party, which was
adamant that the Empire should not be dismantled, but Macmillan was un-
moved, aware that attempts to retain colonies by force could encourage na-
tionalist leaders to seek aid from the Soviet Union. The Federation of Ma-
laya and the Gold Coast had won independence in 1957, and the pace of
decolonization increased after the prime minister appointed Iain Macleod to
the post of colonial secretary in 1959. Nigeria became self-governing in
1960, Sierra Leone and Tanganyika in 1961, Uganda the following year,
and Kenya and Zanzibar in 1963. British Somaliland merged with Italian
Somaliland to form the Somali Republic in 1960, Northern Cameroons
 MACQUARIE ISLAND • 303
merged with Nigeria in 1961 and Southern Cameroons with Cameroon in the
same year (see BRITISH CAMEROONS). The Federation of Rhodesia and
Nyasaland, where Southern Rhodesia’s white minority government
staunchly opposed black rule, posed a more intractable problem but was
dissolved in December 1963, allowing Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland
to become independent in 1964. In Asia, British North Borneo (renamed
Sabah), Sarawak, and Singapore became part of a reconstituted Federation
of Malaya (renamed Malaysia) in 1963. Critics argued that, in many of those
cases, independence was conceded too soon, but Macmillan, in response,
quoted Lord Thomas Babington Macaulay, who wrote in 1851 that “Many
politicans of our time are in the habit of laying it down as a self-evident
proposition that no people ought to be free until they are fit to use their
freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story who resolved not
to go into the water till he had learned to swim. If men are to wait for liberty
until they become wise and good in slavery, they may indeed wait forever.”
Macmillan was diagnosed with inoperable prostate cancer in 1963 and
resigned on 18 October, but the diagnosis proved wrong. He survived until
29 December 1986, without returning to political office but proving critical
of certain of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s policies in the 1980s, de-
claring, in one speech, that “It breaks my heart to see . . . what is happening
in our country today.”
See also BANDA, HASTINGS KAMUZU (1898?–1997); COMMON-
WEALTH IMMIGRATION TO THE UNITED KINGDOM; LENNOX-
BOYD, ALAN TINDAL (1904–1983); UNITED KINGDOM IMMIGRA-
TION LEGISLATION.

MACQUARIE ISLAND. Macquarie Island, which lies at latitude 54° 61´

South and longitude 158° 85´ East, was uninhabited when Captain Frederick
Hasselborough of the brig Perseverance discovered it while searching for
sealing grounds midway between New Zealand and Antarctica on 11 July
1810. Hasselborough claimed the 50-square-mile territory for Britain, de-
clared it part of New South Wales, and named it after Lachlan Macquarie,
who had been appointed governor of that colony earlier in the year. The
island’s seals were exploited for fur and for oil, then, when their numbers
declined, attention turned to the population of penguins. By the early years of
the 20th century, however, the slaughter was provoking protest—estimates
suggest that New Zealander Joseph Hatch killed about 2,000,000 penguins
over three decades from 1890, extracting about a pint of oil from each of
them—so rights to cull were terminated in 1920. Authority over Macquarie
was transferred in 1905 from New South Wales to Tasmania, which made
the island a wildlife sanctuary in 1933. The United Nations Educational,
304 • MADRAS PRESIDENCY
Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) declared the area a World
Heritage Site in 1997 because it is the only place in the world where rocks
from the earth’s mantle are being exposed at the surface.

MADRAS PRESIDENCY. The presidency (or province) of Madras was

one of the major centers of commercial power and political influence in
colonial India, rivaled only by Bombay and Calcutta (see BENGAL PRESI-
DENCY). On 22 August 1639, Francis Day, an employee of the East India
Company (EIC), negotiated a grant of land on the southeastern coast of the
subcontinent from the local leader, Damarla Venkatappa Nayak. The three-
mile strip of territory included the village of Madraspatnam, which could be
used as a trading base (known, at the time, as a “factory” because it was
managed by a “factor”). Also, it had ready access to supplies of relatively
cheap cotton and could not easily be overrun by attackers, particularly after
the defenses were supplemented by the construction of Fort St. George, the
first English stronghold to be built in India. Initially, its managers were
subordinated (along with those at other factories in the area) to the EIC
officers at Bantam (in Java), but in 1641 it became the regional headquar-
ters for all of the trading posts located along the Coromandel coast of south-
eastern India then, in 1652, was raised to the status of presidency (officially
known as the Presidency of Fort St. George), independent of Bantam. That
distinction was lost in 1655, while local groups besieged the settlement and
their chiefs attempted to prevent traders from bringing goods to sell at the
site, thus limiting supplies and forcing prices upward. However, it was rein-
stated in 1684 (Elihu Yale, who later was a benefactor of the Collegiate
School of Connecticut, which evolved into Yale University, assumed the
role of acting president on 8 August) and, although occupied by the French
from 1746–1749, became the firm’s principal administrative center in south-
ern India and an important Royal Navy base.
On 13 August 1784, when the government took steps to exert greater
control over EIC activities, the Madras Presidency lost much of its indepen-
dence because its senior officials were made answerable to the governor-
general of India, but even so, it continued to extend its trading links as
harbor facilities improved, and it enlarged the territory under its control as a
series of successful military campaigns and political alliances brought Arcot,
Mysore, Tanjore, and other areas within its sphere of influence. The growing
community of educated and wealthy personnel was accompanied by the de-
velopment of public institutions (such as a school of surveying in 1834, a
medical college in 1835, and a chamber of commerce in 1836) and an ex-
panding industrial infrastructure (the first railroad track was completed in
1856, and a link to the west coast, at Beypore, opened six years later). Also,
however, articulate, literate Indians took opportunities to campaign for great-
er participation in presidency decision making. In 1852, Gazulu Lakshmina-
 MAFEKING, SIEGE OF • 305
rasu Chetty, a merchant in the textile trade, formed the Madras Native Asso-
ciation to provide a means by which Indians could protest against the injus-
tices of their EIC masters and the efforts by missionaries to spread the
Christian faith. That organization did not flourish but it laid a foundation for
other groups, including the Home Rule League, which was formed by Annie
Besant in 1916 and adapted Irish nationalist tactics to the Indian context.
Reforms introduced in 1920 expanded the legislative council that had first
been formed in 1861 and ensured that elected members (98 in number) could
outvote those (36) who were appointed or attended ex officio. However, the
campaign for self-rule mounted, even though indigenous interests often
failed to form a united front—in 1925, for example, Erode Venkata Ramasa-
my formed the Self-Respect Movement in an effort to win greater power for
lower-caste Indians—and on 15 August 1947 the presidency became part of
an independent India. In 1950, it was reorganized into Madras State, whose
boundaries were changed in 1953 (when some areas were detached to form
the new state of Andhara Pradesh) and in 1956 (when parts were reallocated
to Kerala and Mysore). In 1969, the territory that remained was renamed
Tamil Nadu, and since 1996 the city of Madras has been known as Chennai.
See also COCHIN; PELHAM-HOLLES, THOMAS, DUKE OF NEW-
CASTLE (1693–1768); PITT THE YOUNGER, WILLIAM (1759–1806).

MAFEKING, SIEGE OF. On 13 October 1899, just hours after the start of
the Second Boer War, Afrikaner forces laid siege to the British garrison at
Mafeking, which was located in Cape Colony some 870 miles northeast of
Cape Town, in southern Africa. For 217 days, the 1,500 soldiers and 5,500
African civilians withstood efforts to force them into submission, aided by
ingenious tactics adopted by the stronghold’s commander, Colonel Robert
Baden-Powell, to make the settlement’s defenses appear stronger than they
were. (He ordered his men to pretend that they were stepping over barbed
war while they moved between trenches, for example, and he laid fake land
mines in order to deter attackers.) Eventually, on 17 May 1900, when the
town was facing starvation, volunteer troops led by Colonel B. T. Mahon
came to its rescue, forcing the Boers to withdraw. The relief of Mafeking had
no great influence on the course of the war but sparked celebrations through-
out Britain, where the public was more used to hearing of Afrikaner success-
es than of its own armies’ triumphs. Baden-Powell became a national celeb-
rity and used his African experiences as the basis of the Boy Scout move-
ment, which he founded in 1907. In recent years, some historians have sug-
gested that, at Mafeking, he starved Africans in the settlement in order to
feed Europeans and that he exposed the native people to greater danger, but
other writers have rejected the claims.
See also KIMBERLEY, SIEGE OF (1899–1900); LADYSMITH, SIEGE
OF (1899–1900).
306 • MAINE, PROVINCE OF
MAINE, PROVINCE OF. The term “Province of Maine” was used with
reference to areas included in a series of “patents” (or land grants) that were
awarded by English monarchs to individuals and groups who had plans to
settle northeastern areas of North America in the 17th century. On 3 May
1620, the Plymouth Council for New England received a patent to colonize
territory, previously allocated to the Virginia Company, that stretched from
the 40th parallel of latitude (where modern Philadelphia stands) to the 48th
parallel (which passes through southern Newfoundland). On 10 August
1622, the Council, in turn, accorded its treasurer, Ferdinando Gorges, and his
partner, John Mason (a former governor of Newfoundland who had encour-
aged Sir William Alexander to support a colony in Nova Scotia), rights to
the region between the Merrimack and Kennebec Rivers. Wars with France
and with Spain prevented them from sponsoring any development until 1629,
when they subdivided the property, Mason taking the section between the
Merrimack and Piscataqua Rivers (and naming it Province of New Hamp-
shire because he lived in the city of Portsmouth, in Hampshire, England),
while Gorges retained the rest (which he named New Somersetshire after the
English county where he was born). Over the next few years, Gorges, who
never set eyes on his American estate, encouraged a small number of settlers
into the region and established a few fishing stations, but his efforts were
hampered by lack of funds, even after he won a new charter from King
Charles I in 1639. By the time he died, in 1647, the Massachusetts Bay
Colony was claiming territories north of the Merrimack on the grounds that
its charter, granted by King Charles I in 1629, gave it authority over a region
as far as three miles north of the Merrimack—a territory that the colonists
argued stretched for three miles north of the source of the north–south flow-
ing river, rather than for three miles north of its mouth.
In 1652, Massachusetts Bay annexed much of Gorges’s original grant,
naming it York County, and by 1658 it had acquired the rest. However,
Gorges’s grandson (also Ferdinando) was unwilling to relinquish control of
the area and a parliamentary committee supported his claim. In January 1664,
King Charles II issued an order requiring Massachusetts to return the lands to
the family. A group of royal commissioners was dispatched to establish a
form of government but it met with much resistance from residents, and by
1668 Massachusetts had reasserted authority. Gorges revived his claim to the
Province in 1676, but this time Massachusetts opted to purchase his title for
the sum of £1,250. In 1686, all of the territory, stretching to the St. Croix
River, in the northeast, was made part of the Dominion of New England,
then, in 1691, the lands from the Piscataqua to the St. Croix became part of
the Province of Massachusetts Bay. Contact with French and Indian groups
led to conflict in northern and northeastern regions during the first half of the
18th century, but the area remained under control of the Massachusetts au-
thorities and became one of that state’s three major administrative regions, as
 MAKARIOS III, ARCHBISHOP (1913–1977) • 307
the District of Maine, in 1780, following the American Revolution. The
District gained its independence on 15 March 1820, when Maine became the
23rd of the United States of America.

MAKARIOS III, ARCHBISHOP (1913–1977). Archbishop Makarios was

primate of the Cypriot Orthodox Church and political leader of the enosis
movement, which campaigned for the union of Cyprus and Greece after
World War II, at a time when the island was a British crown colony. Born on
13 August 1913 and named Mikhail Khristodolou Mouskos, he was the son
of a shepherd but was admitted to the wealthy Kykkos Monastery as a novice
monk at the age of 13 and proved to be an able pupil, studying law and
theology at Athens University and religion and sociology at Boston Univer-
sity, winning election as bishop of Kition in 1948, changing his name to
Makarios (a respected name of earlier Cypriot clerics), and becoming arch-
bishop in 1950. While Cyprus was part of the Ottoman Empire, the Orthodox
Church’s archbishop was the unoffical head (or ethnarch) of the Greek Cy-
priot Christian community, and that perception continued after Britain as-
sumed responsibility for administration on the island in 1878 so Makarios’s
new post was political as well as ecclesiastical. Aligning himself with sup-
porters of enosis and rejecting British proposals for an independent Cyprus,
he encouraged the Greek government to put pressure on the United Nations
to support plans for a referendum that would determine the island’s future
(and that would inevitably produce a majority in favor of union with Greece
because Greek Cypriots comprised over 70 percent of the electorate). In the
United Kingdom, newspapers claimed that the archbishop was working hand
in glove with EOKA—the militant Ethnikí Orgánosis Kipriakoú Agónos (or
National Organization of Cypriot Struggle) that mounted a campaign of vio-
lence against British businesses and personnel from 1955—but he steadfastly
denied any connection, arguing that progress would have to be achieved
through negotiation. Discussions with Sir John Harding, the British govern-
or, led to naught, however, and in March 1956 Makarios was banished to the
Seychelles, where he remained for a year before being allowed to return to
Athens.
Although Makarios continued to promote the enosis cause when his exile
ended, the increasingly hard-line attitudes of the minority Turkish Cypriot
community, who preferred either merger with Turkey or a geographical par-
tition of the island, gradually forced him to recognize that union with Greece
was an unrealizable ideal. At a meeting in London in 1959, he accepted
proposals for independence and on 13 December was elected Cyprus’s first
president. After the country achieved self-government on 16 August 1960,
the archbishop worked hard to integrate the ethnic groups, but Turkish inter-
ests refused to reciprocate. By 1974, he was also at odds with Greece’s
government, claiming that Greek army officers based in Cyprus were at-
308 • MALACCA
tempting to undermine the Cypriot government, and on 15 July he had to flee
to Malta when the Greeks backed a coup. Five days later, Turkey invaded
and the island was partitioned. Makarios returned at the end of the year but
died of a heart attack in Nicosia on 3 August 1977. By that time, British
attitudes had mellowed, the Times newspaper referring to him, in its obituary,
as “a statesman too big for his small island.”
See also GRIVAS, GEORGE (1898–1974).

MALACCA. Malacca, drained by the Melaka River and lying on the west of
the Malay Peninsula, fell under Dutch influence from 1641. When France
invaded the Netherlands in 1795, Britain occupied the territory in order to
prevent it from falling into French hands; it was returned to Holland in 1818
but formally ceded to Britain under the terms of the 1824 Anglo-Dutch
Treaty in exchange for Bencoolen. In 1826, Malacca was grouped with
Penang and Singapore in the Straits Settlements, administered by the East
India Company (and, from 1858, directly by the British government), but it
was always the Cinderella of the three, strategically important because it
commanded sea routes to Singapore from the northwest but commercially
restricted by the silting of its harbor and by Singapore’s rapid expansion.
Agricultural output was largely limited to rice, a traditional crop, and rubber
(which was first grown for profit by Chinese Malaccans in 1898). Japanese
occupation of Malacca from 1942 until 1945, during World War II, was
brutal but stoked demands for self-government in the region when the con-
flict ended. When the Straits Settlements was dissolved on 1 April 1946,
Malacca was made a crown colony and integrated into the Malayan Union,
which was replaced by the Federation of Malaya two years later. On 31
August 1957, the Federation won independence, with 642-square-mile Mal-
acca among the smaller of its 11 component states.
See also BRITISH MALAYA.

MALAYA. See ABDUL RAHMAN, TUNKU (1903–1990); BRITISH MA-

LAYA; FEDERATED MALAY STATES; JOHORE; KEDAH; KELAN-
TAN; MALACCA; MALAYA, FEDERATION OF; MALAYAN EMER-
GENCY; MALAYAN UNION; NEGERI SEMBILAN; PAHANG; PE-
NANG; PERAK; PERLIS; RAFFLES, THOMAS STAMFORD BINGLEY
(1781–1826); SELANGOR; SINGAPORE; STRAITS SETTLEMENTS;
TERENGGANU; UNFEDERATED MALAY STATES.

MALAYA, FEDERATION OF. Faced with widespread condemnation of

plans for the formation of a Malayan Union, in the summer of 1946 the
British government initiated discussions with local sultans and the United
Malays National Organization (a political party opposed to the Union but
 MALAYAN EMERGENCY • 309
otherwise supportive of Britain) in an effort to devise a political structure that
would provide a centralized administration for colonial possessions on the
Malay Peninsula. The outcome was a Federation of Malaya that was estab-
lished on 31 January 1948 and included the four Federated Malay States
(Negeri Sembilan, Pahang, Perak, and Selangor), the five Unfederated
Malay States (Johore, Kedah, Kelantan, Perlis, and Terengganu), and the
crown colonies of Malacca and Penang. Administration was based at Kuala
Lumpur, but—in contrast to the arrangements for the Union—local rulers
were given considerable autonomy and citizenship was granted only after 15
years’ residency. Many in the Chinese community felt betrayed by the citi-
zenship conditions, arguing that they were scant reward for loyalty to the
colonial power during World War II, which had ended just three years earli-
er. Several turned to violence (see MALAYAN EMERGENCY), but in the
mid-1950s moderate Chinese leaders were able to negotiate constitutional
agreements with Britain and the United Malays National Organization that
led to independence for the Federation on 31 August 1957, with Tunku
Abdul Rahman as prime minister. At the same time, the British government
was seeking ways in which to withdraw from British North Borneo, Saraw-
ak, and Singapore so it was amenable to a suggestion, made by Abdul
Rahman in 1961, that the three colonies could be added to the Federation as a
means of controlling the spread of communism in the region. The merger—
essentially a marriage of convenience—took place on 16 September 1963,
with the state renamed Malaysia, but Singapore was expelled on 9 August
1965, following racial unrest in the territory. Brunei, which had also been
invited to join in 1963, opted to remain a protectorate.
See also BRITISH MALAYA; LENNOX-BOYD, ALAN TINDAL
(1904–1983).

MALAYAN EMERGENCY. In 1945, at the end of World War II, the

Malayan economy was in disarray, with food scarce and unemployment rates
high. Moreover, many Chinese residents were disaffected by the plans for the
Federation of Malaya (which, they felt, discriminated against them, particu-
larly over rights to citizenship), and the Communist Party of Malaya—domi-
nated by the Chinese—objected to the continued British presence in the
region as well as to the retention of authority by local sultans. From 1946,
labor unrest led to strikes and then to violence, with the communists conduct-
ing guerilla warfare from bases in the jungles and in rural areas. The colonial
authorities declared a state of emergency on 18 June 1948 and, adopting a
strategy proposed by Sir Harold Briggs (the British Army’s director of opera-
tions in Malaya), forcibly moved some 500,000 people (the great majority of
them Chinese) into closely guarded “New Villages” in an effort to deprive
the insurgents of food and support. The initial reaction of the uprooted peas-
ants was understandably negative, but gradually criticisms mellowed in the
310 • MALAYAN UNION
face of evidence that living standards in the villages were higher than in the
countryside they had left behind. On 6 October 1951, the Malayan National
Liberation Army (MNLA) ambushed and killed Sir Henry Gurney, the Brit-
ish high commissioner, but the murder did much to turn moderate opinion
against the communists. Sir Gerald Templar, Gurney’s successor, took ad-
vantage of the mood to increase financial rewards for information about
members of the guerilla forces, to point out that the troubles were the princi-
pal factor postponing British withdrawal, and to seek solutions to the Chinese
community’s grievances. The introduction of elected councils at a local level
extended the franchise and, in 1955, the Federation of Malaya offered an
amnesty to the communists, increasingly isolating the dissidents. The Federa-
tion achieved independence on 31 August 1957, and on 31 July 1960 the
Malayan government announced that the emergency was at an end. Official
sources indicate that over the 12-year period of the fighting, some 6,700
rebels died, along with about 2,500 civilians, 1,350 Malayan soldiers, and
500 British and Commonwealth of Nations personnel.

MALAYAN UNION. As World War II drew to a close, the British govern-

ment prepared plans to merge the Federated Malay States, Malacca, Pe-
nang, and the Unfederated Malay States under a centralized authority that
would take steps toward self-government. On 3 September 1945, Prime Min-
ister Clement Attlee’s cabinet approved the proposals and dispatched Sir
Harold MacMichael (a senior civil servant who had been high commissioner
during the British mandate of Palestine) to persuade the local rulers to sup-
port the move. Several of the sultans voiced reservations, but by 21 Decem-
ber all had given their approval, realizing that, unless they agreed, they were
open to charges that they had collaborated with Japanese invaders while their
territories were occupied during the war. The union was scheduled for 1
April 1946 but was never properly implemented because the Malay people
(and many former British members of the Malayan Civil Service) mounted a
protest campaign, their objections relating primarily to the sultans’ loss of
power and to the arrangements for granting citizenship to non-Malays (espe-
cially Chinese immigrants and their descendants, whose economic power
was perceived as a threat to native Malays). Faced with the opposition, the
colonial government revised the constitutional arrangements and replaced the
Union with a Federation of Malaya on 31 January 1948.

MALDEN ISLAND. The corals that form Malden Island, some 12 square
miles in extent, lie in the Pacific Ocean 1,500 miles south of Hawaii at
latitude 4° 1´ South and longitude 154° 56´ West. The first European visitors,
on 30 July 1825, were the crew of the frigate HMS Blonde, commanded by
George Anson Byron, Baron Byron, who was returning to Britain after a
 MALDIVE ISLANDS • 311
voyage to Honolulu with the bodies of King Kamehameha of Hawaii and his
wife, Queen Kamāmalu, both of whom had succumbed to measles during a
state visit to London (see STARBUCK ISLAND). Byron named the territory
after his navigator, Charles Malden, who had first sighted the atoll and who,
following a brief landing, reported that the only evidence of settlement was
structures that had apparently been abandoned by the society that had built
them many years earlier. As news of the discovery spread, the island was
visited by several American whalers. Then, in 1859, three years after the
passage of the Guano Islands Act (which allowed Americans to take posses-
sion of any islands that contained guano deposits, provided that those islands
were uninhabited and unclaimed by other governments), the United States’
government authorized the U.S. Guano Company to exploit the guano re-
serves for phosphate. However, only very limited amounts were removed
before the firm ceased operations at the site so, on 15 October 1864, B. B.
Nicholson and Company, a Melbourne firm, claimed the territory for Britain
and obtained a license from the goverment to work the guano provided that it
paid a royalty of two shillings for every ton of material shipped. Extraction
continued until 1927, but by then the deposits were worked out so the labor
force departed, leaving the atoll undisturbed until 1956, when the United
Kingdom used it as a location to test three thermonuclear bombs (see
CHRISTMAS ISLAND (PACIFIC OCEAN)). Malden was incorporated
within the crown colony of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands on 1 January
1972 and became part of the Republic of Kiribati when the Gilberts won
independence on 12 July 1979. Two months later, on 20 September, the
United States surrendered its claims to the territory, which remains uninhab-
ited and was designated a wildlife sanctuary in 1975 in order to protect the
large population of breeding seabirds.

MALDIVE ISLANDS. The Maldives form a north–south chain of more

than 1,000 islands that stretch across some 500 miles of the Indian Ocean,
southwest of mainland India, between latitudes 1° North and 8° South and
longitudes 72°–74° East. From the mid-17th century, the area was claimed
by Holland and administered, in somewhat desultory fashion, from Ceylon
so when Britain drove the Dutch from that territory in 1796 it acquired the
Maldives as well. The new colonial officials followed their predecessors’
practice and ignored the islands until 1887, when a period of civil unrest
(caused by disputes between leading families and complaints about the Borah
merchants, who had arrived from Bombay in the 1860s and established a
near-monopoly over foreign trade) provoked intervention. On 16 December,
under duress, Sultan Mohamed Mueenuddin II agreed to accept British pro-
tection against foreign aggression in return for a commitment not to conduct
dealings with other states unless Britain consented to the negotiations. The
312 • MALTA
Europeans, however, had no power (at least formally) to interfere in domestic
matters, which were left to the sultans, who normally consulted advisors and
took decisions in accordance with Islamic law.
On the advice of Bernard H. Bourdill, the acting governor of Ceylon,
traditional government practices were codified in a written constitution in
1932, but the document proved contentious and was rewritten nine times
over the next 35 years. Relations with the United Kingdom became more
fractious, too. In 1956, when Ceylon (which had gained independence, as Sri
Lanka, in 1948) told Britain to close its military bases at Katunayake and
Trincomalee, the Maldivian prime minister, Ibrahim Ali Didi, approved
plans for the construction of alternative facilities at Gan (which Britain had
originally developed as a naval port at the southern tip of the island chain
during World War II) and for the location of a radio communications center
on Hitaddu. Understandably angered, 800 islanders who faced evacuation
pelted Ibrahim Ali Didi with coconut husks and surrounded his home, forc-
ing him to resign. Matters deteriorated even further from 3 January 1959,
when the people of Addu Atoll—joined soon afterward by residents of Hu-
vadhu and Fuvahmulah—declared themselves independent as the United Su-
vadive Republic. These communities, living on the most southerly islands in
the group, had long felt ignored by the Maldivian government and were
frustrated by fiscal, labor, and trading laws that they considered restrictive,
but it is also possible that they were unofficially encouraged by employees of
Costain, the United Kingdom firm contracted to construct the Gan base. The
British government refused to recognize the regime, however, and on 23
September 1963, faced with British insistence that local employees must be
citizens of the Sultanate of the Maldives, it collapsed. Two years later, on 26
July 1965, Britain surrendered its right to control the islands’ external affairs
and terminated the agreement to protect the territory. The military presence
at Gan ended on 29 March 1976 as Britain withdrew from nearly all defense
commitments “East of Suez.”

MALTA. Britain’s interest in the Maltese archipelago lay neither in the

territory’s economic resources (which were limited) nor in its size (about 115
square miles) but in its strategic location, straddling the Mediterranean Sea
routes between Gibraltar and the Suez Canal and thus commanding trading
links with colonial possessions in India. The islands were occupied by Napo-
leon Bonaparte’s French troops in 1798, but, on 5 September 1800, after a
two-year siege, the garrison surrendered to British forces. British sovereignty
was confirmed by the Treaty of Amiens, which temporarily ended the strug-
gle between the two European powers in 1802, and was reaffirmed by the
terms of the Treaty of Paris, which brought a more permanent peace in
1814. Britain made Malta the headquarters of the Royal Navy’s Mediterra-
nean Fleet so the islands became a target for German and Italian air attacks
 MANLEY, NORMAN WASHINGTON (1893–1969) • 313
during World War II, when residents were almost starved into submission
but resisted and, in 1942, were awarded the George Medal (the highest Brit-
ish award for civilian gallantry) in recognition of their heroism. The follow-
ing year, United States’ President Franklin D. Roosevelt referred to Malta as
“one tiny bright flame in the darkness” of wartime.
Constitutionally, Malta experienced a series of changes during the 19th
and early 20th centuries, with a partially elected legislature first appointed in
1849. Self-government was granted in 1921 but then withdrawn in 1933,
when the assembly was controlled by the Nationalist Party (Partit Nazzjona-
lista), whose leaders were openly sympathetic toward Benito Mussolini’s
Fascist government in Italy. It was reintroduced in 1947, revoked again in
1958 (see MINTOFF, DOMINIC “DOM” (1916–2012)), and restored once
more in 1962. On 14 February 1956, a referendum produced a 77 percent
vote in favor of full integration with the United Kingdom (the only time
such an arrangement has been proposed for a British colony), but the result
was considered unrepresentative of the views of the whole population be-
cause 40 percent of those eligible to take part boycotted the event at the
urging of Dr. George Borg Olivier’s Nationalist Party, which favored inde-
pendence with the dominion status already accorded to Australia, Canada,
and other states. Early in 1958, the Labour Party, led by Dom Mintoff, also
withdrew its support for integration after Britain announced a decision to
reduce the naval dockyard’s labor force by 40 workers. As a result, more
than three-quarters of those who voted at elections for the House of Repre-
sentatives in 1962 supported parties that advocated independence, which
followed on 21 September 1964. Initially, the new country was a constitu-
tional monarchy, with Queen Elizabeth II as its head of state and the nation-
alists in control of government. However, on 13 December 1974, three years
after Mintoff became prime minister for the first time, it revised its constitu-
tion, becoming a republic but remaining within the Commonwealth of Na-
tions.
See also BADEN-POWELL, ROBERT STEPHENSON SMYTH
(1857–1941); LENNOX-BOYD, ALAN TINDAL (1904–1983).

MANDATED TERRITORY. See LEAGUE OF NATIONS MANDATED

TERRITORY.

MANLEY, NORMAN WASHINGTON (1893–1969). Norman Manley

was one of the principal architects of Jamaica’s independence, steering it
from colony to statehood over a period of some 25 years. Born in Roxbo-
rough, a small town in Manchester Parish, on 4 July 1893 to agricultural
merchant Thomas Manley and his wife, Margaret, both of whom were of
mixed race, he was a gifted student, winning a Rhodes scholarship to Oxford
314 • MARATHA WARS (1775–1782, 1803–1805, AND 1817–1818)
University, where he studied law. In 1937, Manley founded the People’s
National Party (Jamaica’s first mass political organization) to campaign for
universal adult suffrage, an aim achieved in 1944. In 1955, when the party
won the national elections, he became chief minister then, three years later,
led the colony into the West Indies Federation—a grouping of 12 territo-
ries, established as a means of giving statehood to Britain’s Caribbean poss-
sessions. Manley was a strong supporter of the arrangement, but there were
many objectors, notably his cousin, Alexander Bustamante, the strongest
voice in the Jamaica Labour Party and a staunch proponent of the argument
that Jamaica’s finances would be drained because it would have to fund
economically weak members of the consortium. A national referendum, held
in 1961, showed that most voters shared Bustamante’s concerns so Manley
took Jamaica out of the Federation (which collapsed shortly afterward) and
negotiated full independence for his country alone. By 6 August 1962—the
day Britain ceded power to local politicians—the Labour Party had won
control of the House of Representatives (the elected lower house in the
bicameral parliament) so Bustamante became the new state’s first prime
minister, but Manley led the parliamentary opposition until illness forced
him to retire on 4 July 1969. He died on 2 September the same year, but
Michael, his second son, served twice as prime minister (from 1972–1980
and from 1989–1992).

MARATHA WARS (1775–1782, 1803–1805, AND 1817–1818). A series

of three conflicts between East India Company (EIC) armies and the forces
of the Maratha Empire ended, in 1818, with an EIC victory that confirmed
British dominance of the Indian subcontinent. Hostilities first broke out from
1775, when Warren Hastings, the governor-general (who supervised the
EIC officers), agreed to accept the island of Salsette and the fort at Bassein in
return for providing support to Raghunathrao, a claimant for the post of
Maratha peshwa (or chief minister). Early in 1779, a large British force was
surrounded at the village of Wadgaon by the factions that opposed Ragunath-
rao and, on 16 January, forced to surrender, but Hastings chose to continue
hostilities until, under the terms of the Treaty of Salbai, signed on 17 May
1782, Britain withdrew its support for the pretender’s cause. Most of the
territories that the EIC had occupied were returned to the Marathas, but
Salsette was retained and absorbed by the Presidency (or Province) of Bom-
bay.
The peace lasted until 1803, when, as military factions within the Maratha
Empire again vied for control, Peshwa Baji Rao (Raghunathrao’s son) ap-
pealed to the EIC for assistance. The help was granted but with conditions
that made the Maratha Empire a British client state; the Treaty of Bassein,
agreed by both sides on the last day of December 1802, provided for a British
contingent of 6,000 men to support the peshwa, but, in return, among other
 MARTINIQUE • 315
conditions, he had to agree to conduct foreign relations in consultation with
British advisors, exclude all other Europeans from his service, and renounce
his territorial claims to Baroda and Surat. Many of the Maratha leaders
opposed the loss of independence that the accord implied and took up arms,
but they experienced a series of defeats (notably at Delhi on 11 September
1803, at Assaye on 23 September, at Laswan on 1 November, and at Argaon
on 29 November) and so, from 17 December 1803–24 December 1805, nego-
tiated settlements that ceded further lands to the EIC.
The third conflict began in 1817, when Francis Rawdon-Hastings, mar-
quess of Hastings, assembled 120,000 soldiers and launched a campaign
designed to eliminate threats from the Pindari peoples, who were under Ma-
ratha protection but regularly plundered territory occupied by the EIC. Pesh-
wa Baji Rao seized the opportunity to rise against the British but was defeat-
ed on 5 November at the Battle of Khadki and on 1 January 1818 at the Battle
of Koregaon (where his 28,000-strong army retreated in the face of just 750
EIC infantry and cavalry). The peshwa surrendered on 3 June 1818 and was
given a pension, but his extensive territories were absorbed within the Presi-
dency of Bombay, making Britain the undisputed European master of India
south of the Sutlej River.

MARION ISLAND. See PRINCE EDWARD ISLANDS.

MARTINIQUE. For most of the period since 1653, the Caribbean island of
Martinique, lying at latitude 14° 40´ North and 61° 0´ West, has been ruled
by France, but for three interludes in the second half of the 18th century and
the first half of the 19th its administration was in British hands. When the
Seven Years’ War broke out in 1756, William Pitt the Elder (the govern-
ment minister responsible for the administration of Britain’s colonies) deter-
mined to weaken France by invading its profitable sugar-producing posses-
sions in the West Indies. In 1758, under pressure from King George II, he
ordered Major-General Peregrine Hopson (who had acted as governor of
Nova Scotia in 1752–1753) to lead an assault on the territory, but, faced with
a lack of landing places and unaware that the French garrison at Fort Royal
was short of supplies, Hopson departed for Guadeloupe after launching only
a brief bombardment of the island’s defenses. A second expedition, led by
Rear-Admiral George Rodney in 1762, was more successful, capturing the
fort on 3 February, but the British presence was short-lived. Although he was
well aware of Martinique’s commercial potential, Prime Minister John Stu-
art, earl of Bute, returned the area to French control through the Treaty of
Paris (which brought the war to an end on 10 February the following year)
because—having forced the French to cede most of its possessions on main-
316 • MARYLAND
land North America, along with other territories, to Britain—he feared hu-
miliating his defeated enemy by retaining all of the conquered lands and thus
provoking another conflict.
British troops returned three decades later. The French monarchy was
deposed in 1789 and the revolutionaries planned to follow their success with
the abolition of slavery in France’s colonies, but the plantation owners of
Martinique wanted to preserve their lifestyle so, in 1794, they welcomed a
British invasion, led by Lieutenant-General Sir Charles Grey, that overcame
all resistance in just six weeks and had the island under control by 24 March.
The new administrators required the population to take an oath of allegiance
to King George III but retained both slavery and the traditional court system
until, through the Treaty of Amiens, signed on 25 March 1802, Great
Britain recognized the government of the French Republic and restored the
island to French authorities. After just seven years, however, British troops
occupied Martinique again as they struggled against Napoleon’s armies. The
Royal Navy had blockaded French ports, preventing France’s warships from
leaving harbor, and then intercepted vessels carrying goods between the
French colonies. Those measures seriously affected Martinique’s commerce,
lowering morale and encouraging the British government to mount an offen-
sive with 10,000 soldiers under the command of Lieutenant-General George
Beckwith, who had distinguished himself as a regimental officer during the
American Revolutionary War and had acted as governor of Bermuda from
1798–1803 and of Saint Vincent from 1806–1808. The force landed on the
morning of 30 January 1809, one group going ashore at Sainte-Luce (on the
southern coast) and another, larger detachment at Le Robert (in the north),
forcing the French to withdraw to Fort Desaix, near the island’s administra-
tive center, Fort-de-France. Desaix’s surrender on 24 February gave control
to Britain once again, and the French placed the blame squarely on the
shoulders of their governor, Admiral Louis Thomas Villaret de Joyeuse, who
was deprived of his rank as a result. Britain retained sovereignty until the
European powers agreed to peace, through another Treaty of Paris, on 30
May 1814 (see PARIS, TREATY OF (1814)). The British garrison left on 8
October and, in the early years of the 21st century, Martinique remained an
integral part of France, with the economic advantages of membership of the
European Union.

MARYLAND. On 20 June 1632, King Charles I granted Cecil Calvert,

Baron Baltimore, a charter to settle the east coast of North America south-
ward from the 40th parallel of latitude to the southern bank of the Potomac
River and westward from the Atlantic coast to the line of longitude that
passed through the Potomac’s source. Some scholars believe that the mon-
arch acted out of sympathy for the Irish Catholic Baltimore family at a time
when antipapist feelings were running high in his realm (the monarch’s
 MARYLAND • 317
French wife—Henrietta Maria—was Roman Catholic, and he was believed
to sympathize with the Catholics’ plight), but there was undoubtedly a con-
siderable element of hardheaded politics in the decision because the Nether-
lands also had imperial aspirations in the region and Charles wanted to boost
England’s assertion of control by populating the territory with his country-
men. The first migrants to occupy the land (which was named the Province of
Maryland in honor of Henrietta) arrived on 25 March 1634, led by Calvert’s
younger brother, Leonard, and landed on the western shore of Chesapeake
Bay, where St. Mary’s City now stands. There, they bought land from the
Yaocomico Indians and established farms, many of them growing tobacco
using indentured workers (including former convicts) and, from about 1839,
African slaves as labor.
The colony proved successful, in large part because it adopted a policy of
freedom of worship, at least for trinitarian Christians, who believed in a God
who was a unity of a Father, his son (Jesus Christ), and the Holy Spirit. (The
principle was entrenched in the Act Concerning Religion, approved by the
colony’s General Assembly on 21 April 1649 and preceded in North Ameri-
ca, as a legal document guaranteeing religious tolerance, only by legislation
promulgated in Rhode Island from 1636.) By the last quarter of the century,
however, both the cultural climate and the economic climate had changed.
James II, England’s Roman Catholic king, fled into exile in 1688 and was
replaced on the throne by the Protestant William of Orange and his wife (and
cousin), Mary. In Maryland, the puritan community had grown to outnumber
other settler groups and objected to rule by Charles Calvert (Cecil’s son and
successor) and his Catholic advisors. Also, returns on tobacco—still the colo-
ny’s main crop—were declining and the lower incomes were causing consid-
erable financial distress for growers. In addition, political relations with
neighboring Pennsylvania were being soured by disputes over the location
of the boundary between the two colonies. The combination of frustrations
led, in 1689, to a Protestant coup, led by John Coode, a former Anglican
priest with a history of opposition to authority who, on 1 August, declared
himself “commander-in-chief”—in practice, “governor”—of Maryland.
King William appointed his own representative (Nehemiah Blakiston) to
administer the territory on 27 July 1691, but even though King George I
returned Maryland to Calvert proprietorship in 1715 (after Benedict, the
fourth Baron Baltimore, had renounced Catholicism), the religious tolerance
that had marked the area’s early years was over; the Church of England was
made the colony’s official church in 1702 and, in 1718, Catholics were
deprived of the right to vote.
In 1706, the colonial government built a harbor at Baltimore to facilitate
the export of tobacco. Over the next half century, farmers to the north and
west of the province increasingly concentrated on growing wheat while to-
bacco—and the plantation economy—dominated in the south and east, closer
318 • MASSACHUSETTS
to the port, which also became a storage base for sugar from Britain’s Carib-
bean possessions. However, by the 1760s, merchants in Glasgow, in the west
of Scotland, had taken control of much of the tobacco trade and were causing
great dissatisfaction by advancing loans to planters who wanted to buy Euro-
pean goods then driving hard deals over the purchase of the crops. From
April 1764, the British parliament added to those financial woes by introduc-
ing a series of measures designed to make the American colonies pay part of
the cost of fighting the Seven Years’ War that had ended the previous year
with French withdrawal from the continental mainland (see AMERICAN
REVOLUTION). Even so, when radicals in Maryland called for indepen-
dence from the colonial power, they were opposed by more moderate citi-
zens, many fearful of war with Great Britain, others wishing to retain politi-
cal links to the mother country. The divisions were often bitter, but on 23
June 1776, as the numbers favoring action grew, Governor Robert Eden (who
believed that many of the residents’ complaints were justified) was forced
out of the colony, leaving administration in the hands of a revolutionary
Assembly of Freemen that, on 26 July the previous year, had approved of
“the opposition by Arms to the British troops, employed to enforce obedi-
ence to the late acts and statutes of the British parliament” and that, 10 days
after his departure, resolved to prepare a constitution that would validate
government “of the people only.” On 1 March 1781, Maryland ratified the
Articles of Confederation (which established the United States of America as
a confederation of sovereign states) after holding out until New York and
Virginia dropped claims to uncolonized land northwest of the Ohio River.
See also AMERICAN REVOLUTIONARY WAR (1775–1783); DELA-
WARE; THE THIRTEEN COLONIES.

MASSACHUSETTS. The lands along the northeast coast of North America

may have been known to Viking seafarers by the end of the first millenium
AD, and extensive areas were certainly mapped by 1614. Several English
groups attempted to build settlements along the Atlantic shores between the
promontories now known as Cape Ann and Cape Cod during the early
decades of the 17th century, but just two, both characterized by strong relig-
ious commitment, thrived. One, usually known as the Pilgrims or the Pilgrim
Fathers, sought refuge both from persecution in England and from liberal
attitudes in Holland, landing on 21 December 1620 at a site it named Ply-
mouth after the port from which it had sailed. The other, a Puritan commu-
nity that wanted to reform the Church of England (and thus differed from the
Plymouth settlers, who sought to worship outside the Anglican fold), estab-
lished itself farther north, in Massachusetts Bay, from 1628. The Massachu-
setts Bay Colony was the more successful, numbering some 20,000 residents
(nearly seven times as many as at Plymouth) by the 1640s and expanding
westward to the productive soils in the Connecticut River Valley. The lead-
 MASSACHUSETTS • 319
ers’ intolerance of community members who questioned their beliefs and
principles also contributed to that changing settlement frontier; for example,
Roger Williams traveled south after being found guilty of heresy in 1635 and
created a more tolerant regime at Providence Plantation, which became the
core of the modern American state of Rhode Island, and John Wheelwright,
found guilty of sedition in 1637, went north and built anew in New Hamp-
shire and Maine. Thomas Hooker left of his own accord and, in 1636, with
100 supporters, founded a village that evolved into Hartford, capital of the
State of Connecticut.
For several decades, the Massachusetts Bay Colony functioned virtually
independently of English control, governed by conservative Puritan leaders
who resisted attempts by the London parliament to interfere, minting its own
currency (the Massachusetts pound) from 1652, and developing a diversified
economy based on farming, fishing, fur trading, logging, and shipbuilding,
with exports going to English possessions in the West Indies as well as to
Europe. However, King Charles II resented the settlers’ refusal to allow the
Church of England into their midst and his advisors insisted on enforcing the
Navigation Acts, which were introduced from 1651 in an effort to prevent
the American colonies from trading directly with England’s commercial and
political rivals. On 18 June 1684, the monarch annulled the colony’s charter
and created a Dominion of New England in America that placed Massachu-
setts, the Narragansett Country (now part of Rhode Island), the Provinces of
Maine and New Hampshire, and Plymouth Colony under a single governor.
That experiment was short-lived, however, partly because the governor (Sir
Edmund Andros) proved deeply unpopular and partly because communica-
tion difficulties prevented any individual from exercising firm authority over
such a large area in late 17th-century conditions. In the spring of 1689, the
colonists forced Andros and his agents out of office and resumed control
themselves. Then, on 7 October 1691, King William III and his queen, Mary
II, granted a new charter that, in effect, created a crown colony, known as
the Province of Massachusetts, that incorporated Massachusetts, Nova Sco-
tia, Plymouth Colony, and the islands of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket
in a single administrative unit.
The area’s borders changed over the years (Nova Scotia, for example, was
much contested by Britain and France, with France asserting sovereignty in
1697), and the 18th century was regularly punctuated by conflicts with the
French and by more localized struggles with Indian groups, but the province
flourished economically, with industries based in small towns scattered along
the coast and, by the 1760s, westward to the Berkshire Hills. Commercial
success and the experience of fighting with British soldiers against common
enemies did nothing to squash the sense of independence, though. Squabbles
between governors and community leaders were a regular feature of political
life, and British attempts to use taxes as a means of making American colo-
320 • MATABELE WARS (1893–1894 AND 1896–1897)
nies pay for the Seven Years’ War, which ended in 1763, were much resent-
ed. In 1773, those resentments increased when the British parliament took
measures that were intended to help the ailing East India Company but
which threatened the livelihood of Massachusetts’ tea merchants. On the
night of 16 December, a group of Bostonians broke into three ships anchored
in the city’s harbor and dumped their tea cargoes overboard. Parliament
responded with draconian legislation, closing the port and reducing the rights
of Massachusetts’ citizens to govern their territory’s affairs. Those measures
fueled resentment not just in the province but throughout the North American
colonies. On 9 February 1775, parliament declared that Massachusetts was in
a state of rebellion and dispatched troops to put an end to the troubles, but the
colonists resisted and, on 4 July 1776, gathered in Philadelphia to sign a
declaration of independence. Britain did not formally concede defeat and
recognize the United States of America until 1783, but long before then—on
15 June 1780—the people of Massachusetts had adopted a constitution that
created a Commonwealth, declared that “All men are born free and equal,”
and guaranteed freedom of worship.
See also AMERICAN REVOLUTION; AMERICAN REVOLUTION-
ARY WAR (1775–1783); NORTH, FREDERICK, LORD NORTH
(1732–1792); THE THIRTEEN COLONIES; VIRGINIA COMPANY.

MATABELE WARS (1893–1894 AND 1896–1897). In 1888, Charles

Rudd, an associate of industrialist and politician Cecil Rhodes, persuaded
Lobengula, king of Matabeleland in south-central Africa, to grant gold min-
ing rights in Mashonaland, a tributary state that recognized the monarch’s
authority. Rhodes then used the concession to persuade the British govern-
ment to give his British South Africa Company (BSAC) authority to ac-
quire land, make further treaties, and govern areas that it controlled. In effect,
the businessmen deceived both parties, telling Lobengula that no more than
10 white men would work at the mines but omitting that detail from the
written agreement then exaggerating the potential of the gold reserves in the
negotiations with British politicians. Rhodes had a grand vision of a chain of
British colonies stretching from Cape Town to Cairo, and BSAC was a
means of furthering that ambition. In 1890, he formed a “Pioneer Column” of
settlers and used the document signed by Lobengula to justify sending them
into Mashonaland, accompanied by members of the Company’s police force.
The king avoided conflict with the Europeans until October 1893, when his
warriors were fighting the Mashona (or Shona) people and BSAC forces
invaded Matabeleland, ostensibly in order to end the violence. Lobengula
confronted them, but despite some successes (notably on the plains of the
Shangani River on 3–4 December), his tribesmen’s spears were no match for
Maxim machine guns so he had little hope of success. Rhodes’s columns
reached Bulawayo (Lobengula’s headquarters) on 2 November, forcing the
 MAU MAU UPRISING • 321
monarch to flee north toward the Zambezi. By December, reports that the
king was ill were reaching British officials; by the end of January he was
dead, and, soon afterward, the uprising petered out. Later, members of parlia-
ment accused BSAC of deliberately provoking war, but George Robinson,
marquess of Ripon and colonial secretary (see COLONIAL OFFICE), ruled
that the charges were baseless.
Trouble flared again in 1896. After a long period of drought, exacerbated
by plagues of locusts and the spread of rinderpest (a viral disease that deci-
mated cattle herds), Mlimo—the spiritual leader of the Ndebele (or Mata-
bele)—persuaded his followers that the white immigrants, then some 4,000
strong, were responsible for the disasters. From 24 March, his adherents
ravaged the Europeans’ farms, killing the occupants, and laid siege to Bulaw-
ayo, where Rhodes was building a new settlement atop the ruins of Lobengu-
la’s base. British troops and BSAC forces combined to raise the blockade but
had to travel hundreds of miles over difficult terrain so did not arrive until
late May. Then, confronted by a growing number of trained soldiers, the
50,000 Ndebele retreated southward to the Matobo Hills, where, for several
months, they attacked the settler patrols that followed them. However, in
October 1897, Frederick Russell Burnham (an American acting as a scout for
the British Army) tracked Mlimo to his hideaway and shot him. Rhodes,
learning of the killing, strode unarmed into the midst of the tribesmen and
persuaded them to end the struggle. With the rebellion over, General Frede-
rick Carrington, who commanded the British force, was able to concentrate
his resources on a related uprising in Mashonaland and quell that, too.
The 1893–1894 conflict, in which some 100 Europeans and more than
10,000 Ndebele died, is usually known as the First Matabele War. About 400
Europeans, and an estimated 50,000 Ndebele and Shona, were killed in the
1896–1897 struggle, which is sometimes known as the Second Matabele
War, sometimes as the Matabeleland Rebellion, and sometimes as the First
Chimurenga (a Shona word for “revolutionary struggle”). Neither revolt had
any long-term effect on BSAC, which, on 3 May 1895, united Mashonaland
and Matabeleland with North Zambesia (the area north of the Zambezi River)
as a single administrative unit, known as Rhodesia in honor of Cecil Rhodes.
See also BADEN-POWELL, ROBERT STEPHENSON SMYTH
(1857–1941); NKOMO, JOSHUA MQABUKO NYONGOLO (1917–1999).

MAU MAU UPRISING. The Mau Mau Uprising (or Kenya Emergency)
was the most serious of the violent challenges to imperial power during the
last years of Britain’s presence in East Africa. After World War II, the Kenya
African Union, led by Jomo Kenyatta, orchestrated opposition to British
rule in Kenya Colony, but the pace of change was too slow for many black
citizens and particularly so for segments of the Kikuyu people, who had lost
much of their land to immigrant white farmers and been forced to work for
322 • MAU MAU UPRISING
low wages on the tea and coffee plantations that these incomers had created.
By the early 1950s, colonial authorities were aware of a society, known as
Mau Mau, whose members had taken an oath to kill British officials, as well
as those who supported them, and by 20 October 1952 the group’s activ-
ities—including arson and murder—were causing such concern that the terri-
tory’s governor, Sir Evelyn Baring, declared a state of emergency. Histo-
rians still disagree about many aspects of the causes and consequences of the
Mau Mau rebellion, but all accept that both sides behaved brutally, with
some estimates of the death toll exceeding 25,000. The rebels (mainly Ki-
kuyu but with significant representation from Emba and Meru ethnic groups)
never received widespread support from other Africans, regularly forcing
their black countrymen to promise, at knifepoint, to attack people of all
ethnic origins who represented the regime; on 26 March 1953, for example,
Mau Mau guerillas fell on the loyalist village of Lari, killing at least 74
people, most of them women and their children, by forcing them into huts
and then setting fire to the structures. Britain used the Royal Air Force to
bomb rebel strongholds in the forests of the Aberdare Mountains and around
Mount Kenya. Also, the colonial authorities held tens of thousands of sus-
pects (most of them Kikuyu men) in “screening camps,” where torture was
commonplace, water supplies were often contaminated, and disease was rife.
(Colonel W. G. S. Foster, Kenya’s director of medical services, wrote in
1954 that the number of cases of pulmonary tuberculosis was causing “em-
barrassment” and, in the same year, Police Commissioner Arthur Young
described the conditions in the camps as “deplorable.”) More than 1,000,000
other Kikuyu were forced to move to “protected villages” as the colonial
authorities tried to interrupt Mau Mau supply lines.
The rebellion petered out after Dedan Kimathi, who had coordinated the
activities of the forest-based guerillas, was captured and, on 18 February
1957, hanged at Kamiti Prison. Six years later, on 12 December 1963, Kenya
became independent, with Jomo Kenyatta as prime minister. Some scholars
believe that the uprising had very limited impact on the British decision to
leave the region because the imperial power had adopted a policy of with-
drawal from colonies worldwide. Other writers claim that the insurgency had
a considerable influence because the United Kingdom government realized
that, if it remained, the cost of keeping the peace would be high and that the
British public would not tolerate further use of the kind of force that had been
employed in an effort to quell the revolt. After Kenyatta (who was jailed as a
Mau Mau sympathizer but who consistently denied links to the organization)
was appointed president in 1964 he consistently refused to recognize the
group as a significant actor in the nationalization process, and that stance was
maintained by his successors. More recently, however, Kenyan politicians
have praised the actions of the insurgents, proclaiming 20 October (the anni-
versary of the declaration of a state of emergency) “Heroes Day” and erect-
 MAURITIUS • 323
ing a statue of “freedom fighter” Kimathi in Nairobi city center. Also, in
2012, during a London court case in which three survivors of the Mau Mau
purge sought an apology and damages, the British government admitted that
detainees had suffered sexual abuse and torture, including castration by a pair
of pliers.
See also LENNOX-BOYD, ALAN TINDAL (1904–1983); MACLEOD,
IAIN NORMAN (1913–1970); MACMILLAN, MAURICE HAROLD
(1894–1986).

MAURITIUS. The islands of Mauritius cover about 780 square miles, lying
in the Indian Ocean at latitude 20° 2´ South and longitude 57° 5´ East, some
500 miles east of the island of Madagascar and 1,200 miles east of Mozam-
bique, on the African mainland. Uninhabited when sighted by Portuguese
sailors in 1507, they were colonized by the Netherlands from 1638 but
claimed by France in 1715, five years after the Dutch had abandoned their
settlements. Then, on 3 December 1810, they were occupied by Great Brit-
ain because the French were using the territory as a base from which to
harass shipping at a time, during the Napoleonic Wars, when imperial invest-
ments on the Indian subcontinent made the Indian Ocean commercially and
strategically important to the British government. The Treaty of Paris,
which formally ended hostilities on 30 May 1814, confirmed British sove-
reignty, but, unusually, the French institutions (including the legal system)
were retained by the new regime. The first governor—Robert Townsend
Farquhar, who had initiated a series of public works while acting as lieuten-
ant-governor of Prince of Wales Island (later renamed Penang) in
1804–1805—promoted the development of sugarcane plantations but also
pursued policies that would end the slavery on which those plantations de-
pended for workers. When the practice was eventually abolished on 1 Febru-
ary 1835 (see SLAVERY ABOLITION ACT (1833)), planters turned to
indentured labor, drawn mainly from northern India, and, by the 1850s, were
dominating the island’s economy, producing more than 7 percent of the
world’s sugar supply. However, an outbreak of malaria in 1866–1868 killed
50,000 people and dissuaded ships’ captains from calling at the colony.
Then, the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 changed maritime transport
routes, and, from 1868 until the outbreak of World War I in 1914, sugar
prices plummeted as France, Germany, and other European countries in-
creased their output of the commodity from beet, affecting such West Indian
colonies as Antigua, Jamaica, and Saint Lucia as well as Mauritius. As
estates went bankrupt, many were purchased by Indian entrepreneurs, subdi-
vided, and leased or sold to former indentured workers, who took advantage
of loans or of cash advances that they could repay through profits from future
sugar sales.
324 • MAURITIUS
In the period from 1849 until 1923, some 450,000 indentured Indian labor-
ers (known as “coolies”) arrived at the Aapravasi Ghat processing depot in
Port Louis, on the northeastern coast of the main island, in a “great experi-
ment” that was later to be much copied throughout the Empire as business-
men and government officials struggled to find a viable alternative workforce
to that previously provided by the slaves. Those plantation hands were fol-
lowed by higher-caste groups (many of the real estate investments were made
by immigrants from Gujurat, for example) so by the beginning of the 20th
century Indians constituted an important power group in the colony, along
with creoles (of African or Malagasy descent) and Franco-Mauritians (most
of whom were plantation owners whose ancestors had arrived while the
island was ruled by France). All of these ethnic groups prospered when sugar
prices rose during World War I, but world economic depression caused much
hardship in the 1930s as returns fell and unemployment soared. Community
leaders attempted to limit the suffering by creating organizations that would
promote their interests, including the Labour Party, which was formed in
1936 under the leadership of Maurice Curé, a creole who, 15 years earlier,
had campaigned unsuccessfully for the return of Mauritius to French control.
In 1937, the dissatisfaction manifested itself in riots as workers demanded
higher wages. A strike by dockworkers followed in 1938 and further riots on
the estates in 1943, but by then World War II was foremost in the minds of
administrators so change was delayed until after peace returned to Europe in
1945.
In 1831, Sir Charles Colville, the island’s governor, created a council of
nine appointed advisors (largely because he wanted to win support from the
Franco-Mauritian elite, which was keen to acquire formal influence over
government decisions), and in 1886 Sir John Pope Hennessy (who was later
suspended from office, accused of favoritism toward the creoles and the
Indians) added 10 elected members (chosen by an electorate of wealthy
property owners who constituted about 2 percent of the resident population).
Then, in 1947, a new Legislative Council was formed, with the franchise
extended to all adults able to write their names in creole, English, French, or
any of the Indian languages spoken on the island (though many Indians
opposed extension of the vote to women on the ground that the majority of
Indian females was illiterate). The new Council consisted of three officials,
12 (conservative) members appointed by the governor, and 19 elected repre-
sentatives, the majority of whom supported the Labour Party. As Indians
exercised growing control over Labour in the aftermath of the elections, new
parties formed and political debate was dominated by ethnic (rather than
class or ideological) groups. Further constitutional changes in 1959 resulted
in the formation of a coalition government led by Labour’s Seewoosagur
Ramgoolam, who had trained as a doctor in the United Kingdom (U.K.) and
been strongly influenced by socialist ideals during his years in London. At
 MCKEAN ISLAND • 325
the time, Britain was dismembering its Empire, but Ramgoolam’s party
argued for independence with some reluctance, believing that continued co-
lonial links would allow job-seeking Mauritians to move to Europe and
would also safeguard markets for sugar (particularly if U.K. plans to join the
European Economic Community [EEC] were fulfilled). However, Great Brit-
ain had no wish to attract immigrants, was considering a reduction in defense
commitments in the Indian Ocean, and was keen to reduce the cost of admin-
istering colonies so from 1961 a series of conferences prepared plans for the
islands’ future as an independent state. On 22 August 1967, Mauritian legis-
lators approved a motion supporting self-government. Independence fol-
lowed on 12 March the following year, with Ramgoolam as prime minister
and Queen Elizabeth II as head of state, then in 1992, on the 24th anniversary
of that independence, the country became a republic, ending the tie with the
crown.
See also BOURBON; BRITISH INDIAN OCEAN TERRITORY; RO-
DRIGUES; SEYCHELLES.

McDONALD ISLANDS. See HEARD ISLAND AND THE McDONALD

ISLANDS.

McKEAN ISLAND. McKean is the most northwesterly of the Phoenix

Islands, lying in the central Pacific Ocean some 215 miles south of the
equator at latitude 3° 36´ South and longitude 174° 7´ West. Composed of
only about 0.15 square miles of low-lying sand and shingle, it was first
sighted by Europeans on 28 May 1794, when Captain Henry Barber’s mer-
chant ship, Arthur, passed by on a voyage between Botany Bay, in New
South Wales, and North America. The United States claimed the territory
under the terms of the Guano Islands Act, which was approved by Congress
in 1856 and allowed Americans to take possession of any islands that con-
tained guano deposits, provided that those islands were uninhabited and un-
claimed by other governments. For 11 years, from 1859, C. A. Williams and
Company (later the Phoenix Guano Company) exported the phosphate-rich
resources for use in the manufacture of fertilizer—so much so that, in a
lecture to the Geographical Society of the Pacific in San Francisco on 3
March 1885, John T. Arundel (who exploited the guano on Canton, Ender-
bury, and Sydney Islands) reported that McKean Island looked like an emp-
ty plate because so much material had been removed from its center. By
1870, the reserves were exhausted and the workers had left. After their de-
parture, the island received little attention until August 1936, when it was
claimed by the United Kingdom. On 18 March 1937, it was incorporated
(with other islands in the Phoenix group) within the crown colony of the
Gilbert and Ellice Islands then, on 12 July 1979, it became part of the
326 • MESOPOTAMIA
Republic of Kiribati when the Gilberts won independence. The United
States’ claim to the territory, long dormant, was surrendered through the
Treaty of Tarawa, signed by representatives of Kiribati and the U.S. on 20
September 1979. Still uninhabited, McKean forms part of the Phoenix Is-
lands Protected Area, which was designated a World Heritage Site by the
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
(UNESCO) in 2010 because of its rich marine biota.

MESOPOTAMIA. See IRAQ.

MINORCA. By 1708, seven years after the outbreak of the War of the
Spanish Succession, British military commanders were well aware of the
need for a Royal Navy base that would serve vessels operating in the western
Mediterranean Sea. The most attractive site was Port Mahon, at the eastern
end of the Spanish-held island of Minorca, so some 2,000 troops laid siege to
Fort St. Philip, which guarded the settlement, and forced it to capitulate on 18
September after General James Stanhope, who led the invasion, had threat-
ened to annihilate the whole garrison. Britain’s control of the island was
recognized by the Treaty of Utrecht, the series of agreements that formally
ended the war in the spring of 1713, and brought a period of prosperity while
fortifications were constructed, roads built, and new breeds of cattle (notably
the Friesian) introduced, the last of these innovations stimulating a cheese-
making industry that still plays an important role in the Minorcan economy.
However, during the turbulent second half of the 18th century, the island’s
strategic location, and the considerable British naval presence, made the
territory a significant target as European powers struggled for political domi-
nance. On 28 May 1756, during the Seven Years’ War, it fell to the French
but on 10 February 1763 reverted to Britain as part of the extensive exchange
of territories that brought the conflict to an end with the signing of the
Treaty of Paris. It was lost again, this time to a combined French and
Spanish force, on 5 February 1782, after a four-month siege forced Fort St.
Philip into surrender—a success that was particularly important to the victo-
rious governments because it gave them access to a deep-water harbor and
ended British harassment of vessels believed to be trading with Spain’s ene-
mies. Britain recognized Spanish sovereignty through the Treaty of Ver-
sailles (see PARIS, TREATY OF (1783)) signed on 3 September 1783, but
seized control again on 15 February 1798 (while Spain allied with France
during the French Revolutionary Wars), used the naval base for four years,
then (despite bitter opposition from Horatio Nelson and other senior naval
officers) returned it to Spain under the terms of the Treaty of Amiens on 25
 MINTOFF, DOMINIC “DOM” (1916–2012) • 327
March 1802. The peace that followed that treaty was short-lived, but Britain
made no attempt to retake the island, preferring to concentrate its resources at
other sites.
See also PITT THE ELDER, WILLIAM, EARL OF CHATHAM.

MINTOFF, DOMINIC “DOM” (1916–2012). After World War II, Dom

Mintoff urged the British government to integrate Malta into the United
Kingdom (U.K.) then, when the plans collapsed, changed tack dramatically
and campaigned for full independence. That goal achieved, he attempted to
make the new country a politically nonaligned power in the Mediterranean
Sea and to cast off all the trappings of colonial authority. The son of Royal
Navy cook Laurence Mintoff and his wife, Ċetta, he was born on the island,
in the harbor town of Cospicua, on 6 August 1916 and trained as a civil
engineer at the University of Malta and at Oxford University. He worked in
Britain from 1941–1943 then returned to Malta, where, after British consul-
tants had left, he was made responsible for postwar building reconstruction
(and, according to critics, replaced distinguished structures with much inferi-
or edifices). In addition to pursuing those professional commitments, Mintoff
helped to reestablish Malta’s Labour Party, becoming party leader in 1949
after disagreements with Prime Minister Paul Boffa had led to a series of
internal crises and, ultimately, to Boffa’s resignation from the organization
(though not from the prime ministerial post). Mintoff led the party to victory
at the general election held in February 1955 and, with other Maltese politi-
cians, entered negotiations with Colonial Secretary Alan Lennox-Boyd in an
effort to determine the colony’s constitutional future. As Malta occupied a
strategic military location and housed a large British miltary base, the U.K.
government was unwilling to grant full independence so favored Mintoff’s
proposal of territorial integration, offering the islanders an arrangement that
would transfer responsibility for Maltese affairs from the Colonial Office to
the Home Office (the British government department that dealt with such
domestic matters as the fire services, immigration, and law and order), give
Malta’s legislative assembly rights to send three representatives to the House
of Commons (the lower chamber in the U.K.’s bicameral parliament), and
guarantee Maltese control over all areas of public life except defense, foreign
policy, and taxation.
In a referendum held on the island on 11–12 February the following year
(at Mintoff’s insistence and in the face of official British opposition), 77
percent of those who cast a vote approved of the deal, but opposition by the
Nationalist Party (which favored complete independence) and the powerful
Roman Catholic Church (which fulminated against a plan that would tie
Malta to a country where the Church of England was the dominant religious
force) led to a turnout of just over 59 percent of registered voters and thus,
arguably, to an inconclusive result. Also, many British members of parlia-
328 • MINTOFF, DOMINIC “DOM” (1916–2012)
ment expressed concerns about the domestic political implications (for exam-
ple, if the agreement with Malta led to similar deals with other—more popu-
lous—colonies the colonial representatives could, in some circumstances,
combine to shape British policy making over security issues), and defense
analysts advised that Malta’s strategic importance would decline as nuclear
weapons became the focus of military power. With the future of the dockyard
under threat, Mintoff, on 30 December 1957, persuaded the members of the
Maltese Legislative Assembly to approve a resolution declaring that they
were “no longer bound by agreements and obligations toward the British
government.” Further talks, in which Mintoff insisted that, after integration,
Britain should ensure that the people of Malta received the same standard of
social services as the people of the United Kingdom, ended with no agree-
ment so, on 26 April 1958, Mintoff resigned as prime minister and called for
a national day of protest. When Giorgio Borġ Olivier, the leader of the
Nationalist Party, also refused to form a government, Britain imposed direct
rule from London and maintained administrative control until 1962. During
that time, Mintoff led a campaign for complete self-government, arguing that
an independent Malta should not be aligned with any of the world’s power
blocs. British officials interpreted that as an intention to step back from the
post–World War II Western coalition led by the United States and so were
relieved when Olivier’s Nationalist Party emerged as victors at the general
election in February 1962.
Olivier negotiated an independence deal that included £51,000,000 of fi-
nancial aid from the U.K. as well as agreements that British military facilities
would remain for at least 10 years and that the North Atlantic Treaty Organ-
ization (NATO) would be allowed to retain its Mediterranean headquarters
near Valletta, the island’s capital. However, when Mintoff returned to power
on 27 June 1971 he allowed the British forces to remain only in return for
£14,000,000 a year in aid, closed the NATO base, made Malta a republic,
and told the Soviet Union and the United States that their navies were not
welcome. When British forces eventually left the island in 1979, he was able
to declare that “We had an English governor-general, an English queen,
English currency, a Bank of England man as the head of our central bank.
The biggest commercial bank was English entirely; Barclays. Our dry docks
were run by a British firm; Swan Hunter. Our development corporation was
run by a chairman who was English. We had a police force, which was run
by a commissioner who stated openly that his loyalty was to the British
crown. . . . We had an army which was run as an appendage of the British
army. . . . Now Malta is a republic. Everything has changed. Nothing is
British any more.” Mintoff was able to attract aid from states as politically
disparate as China, Italy, and Libya and took much of his country’s economy
into state control while expanding the public sector and the welfare state, but
for periods of his tenure in office Malta was in a state of economic crisis,
 MISSIONARIES • 329
with water and electricity in short supply. He resigned on 22 December 1984
in a speech claiming that he had rescued the island from spiritual and materi-
al slavery and created a healthy independent nation, and died, aged 96, on 20
August 2012.

MIQUELON. See SAINT-PIERRE AND MIQUELON.

MISSIONARIES. Although territorial expansion was determined primarily

by commerce and by political priorities, Britain’s growing Empire provided
opportunities for numerous religious groups to take the Christian message to
a world they considered uncivilized. As early as the mid-17th century, John
Eliot was attempting to convert Native Americans in Massachusetts to his
Puritan faith, but efforts to coordinate the activities of evangelists were very
limited prior to the formation of the Society for the Propagation of the
Gospel in Foreign Parts on 16 June 1701. Initially, that organization, repre-
senting the Church of England and its sister bodies, concentrated on Britain’s
American colonies and on the West Indies, working with “heathens and
infidels” as well as with white settlers and spreading the Church of England
version of the Protestant gospel. In 1751, however, it also established a base
in West Africa, and by 1800 it had representatives in Australia and New
Zealand.
The nonconformist sects had little involvement in missionary activity until
1792, when shoemaker William Carey published his Enquiry into the Obli-
gations of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens. At
the time, Britain was experiencing a surge of religious enthusiasm so the
pleas had a receptive audience. Within months, the Particular Baptist Society
for the Propagation of the Gospel among the Heathen (soon known as the
Baptist Missionary Society) was formed (and sent Carey to India in 1793).
The London Missionary Society (LMS), multidenominational but sup-
ported primarily by the Congregational Church, followed in 1795 and oth-
ers—such as the Glasgow Society for Foreign Missions (established in 1796)
and the Society for Missions to Africa and the East (founded in 1799 and
later known as the Church Missionary Society)—in the last years of the
18th century and the early years of the 19th.
The obstacles faced by missionaries dispatched by the new societies were
daunting. In addition to problems posed by the vagaries of climate and by the
unfamiliar landscapes, there was a constant threat of disease in several areas.
(Tropical diseases, in particular, claimed many lives, including that of
Charles Mackenzie, who led the first Universities’ Mission to Central Afri-
ca in 1861 but died of malaria the following year.) Sometimes, the dangers
came from the people the preachers were trying to help; James Harris and
John Williams, both of the LMS, were eaten by cannibals on the Pacific
330 • MISSIONARIES
island of Erromango, in the New Hebrides, in 1839, and Thomas Baker,
from the same organization, met a similar fate on Fiji in 1867. The multiplic-
ity of native languages spoken in some areas made communication between
the missionaries and their prospective converts halting until the white incom-
ers had learned the local tongues (though some of the Europeans became so
fluent that they were able to prepare translations of the Bible for their new
adherents; Carey, for instance, converted the whole text into six Indian ver-
naculars and parts of it into a further 29). Access to supplies was often
intermittent, and white officials and landowners frequently opposed efforts to
expound the Christian message. (For example, the East India Company
banned missionaries from the subcontinent until 1813 because it feared that
interference with traditional practices would affect commerce, and, in Brit-
ish Guiana, the LMS’s John Wray had to contend with government repre-
sentatives and sugar plantation owners who believed that slaves who learned
to read the Bible would also read subversive literature and rebel.)
Despite the hazards of climate and the political problems, missionary soci-
eties had little difficulty finding recruits to travel abroad during the first half
of the 19th century. From 1850, however, enthusiasm waned as the public’s
attention turned increasingly to domestic concerns (including the needs of the
poor in rapidly industrializing Britain) and as events such as the Indian
Mutiny of 1857 provoked concerns that the missionaries’ “civilizing” influ-
ences were not as great as had been believed. With the number of male
volunteers declining, organizations encouraged single women to apply for
posts (previously the only women in the mission fields had been wives of
missionaries) and relied increasingly heavily on local converts to bear much
of the workload, with some estimates suggesting that in the early 20th centu-
ry only about one in five of the missionary personnel was British. Also, the
emphasis gradually changed from preaching to practical help for local com-
munities through the provision of clean water, clinics, schools, and similar
facilities. In the period of decolonization that followed World War II, respon-
sibility for many of the evangelical and pastoral tasks was assumed by
churches in the newly independent states, often in partnership with groups
based in the United Kingdom. In addition, the secularization of British
society accentuated the decline of interest in missionary work, restricting the
flow of funds and causing many societies to amalgamate in order to max-
imize their resources.
Some critics of the missionaries have condemned them for complicity in
the expansion of the British Empire by anglicizing the communities in which
they lived, destroying cultures and replacing traditional practices (such as
marriage arrangements) with Western institutions. Others have pointed out
that missionary bodies were formed for religious reasons but often adopted
political agendas (as in the early 1870s, when the Wesleyan Methodist Mis-
sionary Society put pressure on the British government to annex Fiji and
 MOFFAT, ROBERT (1795–1883) • 331
prevent exploitation of the islanders by white settlers) and that their represen-
tatives frequently carried infectious diseases to which native populations had
no natural resistance, with devastating effect. (In the Cook Islands, for in-
stance, dysentery, introduced unintentionally by preachers, killed nearly
1,000 residents in 1830.) Supporters, however, have pointed out that many of
the missionaries showed great bravery in resisting the brutalities of slave
traders and that the journeys of such individuals as David Livingstone added
greatly to scholarly knowledge. Also, they claim, the medical centers estab-
lished by the evangelists significantly enhanced the quality of life of colonial
populations and frequently evolved into large health-care providers, as with
Bangladesh’s Christian Hospital Chandraghona, which was founded by the
Baptist Missionary Society as a small clinic in 1905 (when Bangladesh was
part of India) and by the early 21st century was a 125-bed facility with
modern surgical equipment. Similarly, the school opened by the Church
Missionary Society at Fourah Bay in 1827 developed into one of the colleges
of the University of Sierra Leone.
See also ARUNDEL, JOHN THOMAS (1841–1919); BANDA, HAS-
TINGS KAMUZU (1898?–1997); BECHUANALAND; BURMA; CAPE
COLONY; DEMERARA-ESSEQUIBO; FERNANDO PO; HONG KONG;
IMPERIAL BRITISH EAST AFRICA COMPANY; KAUNDA, KENNETH
DAVID; KENYA COLONY; KENYATTA, JOMO (c1891–1978); KHA-
MA, SERETSE (1921–1980); KINGSLEY, MARY HENRIETTA
(1862–1900); MACKINNON, WILLIAM (1823–1893); MOFFAT, ROB-
ERT (1795–1883); NATAL; NYASALAND; SAMOA; SAVAGE ISLAND;
SLESSOR, MARY MITCHELL (1848–1915); TONGA; UGANDA; UN-
ION ISLANDS.

MOFFAT, ROBERT (1795–1883). Although commerce and politics were

the driving forces of imperial expansion, Christian missionaries opened up
many areas to diplomats and traders, and several became became well-
known figures as their experiences were relayed to the British public. In
southern Africa, Robert Moffat—a proponent of Empire as well as of Chris-
tian principles—was the most significant of those evangelists in the first half
of the 19th century. Born at Ormiston, near Edinburgh, on 21 December
1795, the son of customs offical Robert Moffat and his wife, Ann, he had
jobs on a coastal shipping vessel and as a gardener before applying for a post
with the London Missionary Society (LMS), which, in the early years of the
19th century, accepted relatively uneducated recruits for training. On 13
January 1817, he arrived at Cape Town, in Cape Colony, which had been
formally ceded to Britain little more than two years earlier (through the
Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1814) and where officials had little love of mission-
aries because they insisted on defending the rights of black Africans. In
1819, Moffat married Mary Smith, the daughter of a former employer, who
332 • MOFFAT, ROBERT (1795–1883)
had sailed to Africa to join him, and the following year, although areas
beyond the coast were little known, they moved inland to Griquatown, where
their first child, Mary—later the wife of fellow-missionary David Living-
stone—was born. Then, in May 1821, they settled at Dithakong, on the
Moshaweng River among the Tlhaping people of Bechuanaland, at a time
when the region was suffering both from drought and from conflict between
ethnic groups. In 1823, Moffat recorded, he had to seek help from armed
Griqua horsemen to fight off invaders who threatened the mission (though
some historians have suggested that the battle was actually a slave raid
organized by the missionaries). The following year, he and Mary moved their
base 40 miles southwest to New Dithakong (now known as Kuruman), which
became a focus for missionary activity and for imperial influence in the
region. Despite continued outbreaks of fighting, the Moffats built a church,
designed an irrigation system, and laid out gardens. Mary made long dresses
for the native women, using cloth brought from Manchester, and taught
sewing, while Robert prepared a spelling book in Setswana, the lingua fran-
ca, then translated the Gospel of St. Luke into the language and had copies
printed in London.
When the Moffats returned to Britain in 1839, they were treated as celeb-
rities. Robert delivered lectures in churches and halls around the country,
extolling the values of mission and Empire, and published an account of his
experiences—Missionary Labours and Scenes in Southern Africa—that be-
came a Victorian bestseller. Before he returned to Bechuanaland toward the
end of 1843, he completed a translation of the New Testament into Setswana,
and that was followed in 1857 by a translation of the complete Bible. Politi-
cally, the couple was under considerable pressure because many black
Africans saw missionaries merely as agents of a British government that was
tacitly approving white settlement on African land by Afrikaner groups, and
the Afrikaners themselves opposed LMS activities because the missionaries
objected to their treatment of the Africans. Over time, the rigors of the
physical and political environments took their toll both on Robert and on
Mary Moffat, but, even so, they retired reluctantly and, in 1870, returned to a
Britain that had changed radically even since their last visit 30 years earlier.
Mary, in particular, was in poor health and passed away in London on 9
January 1871, but Moffat soldiered on, living an itinerant lifestyle for two
years while he encouraged others to undertake missionary work, preached,
and raised funds for the “Moffat Institute,” a boys’ school and seminary that
he had founded in Kuruman. In 1879, some months after giving up public
speaking, he made his home at Leigh, near Tunbridge Wells, in southern
England, where he died on 8 August 1883.
See also BRUCE OF KINNAIRD, JAMES (1730–1794); CAREY,
WILLIAM (1761–1834); THOMSON, JOSEPH (1858–1895).
 MONTSERRAT • 333
MOLUCCAS. The Moluccas—once widely known as the “Spice Islands”—
lie at latitude 3° 15´ South and longitude 128° 38´ East, forming part of the
Malay archipelago between the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Portuguese sea-
men were the first Europeans to visit the group, focusing on Ternate (which
was a source of cloves, much in demand as a flavoring) and on the more
southerly Banda Islands (which produced nutmeg, also used for flavoring as
well as for treating ailments as disparate as halitosis, plague, and scarlet
fever). In 1602, the East India Company attempted to force its way into the
lucrative market by building trading posts on Ai and Run (two of the more
remote Banda Islands), and in December 1616 Captain Nathaniel Courthope
persuaded community leaders on Run to pledge allegiance to King James I,
an event that, according to some writers, made the area England’s first colo-
ny. However, the Dutch, who had ousted the Portuguese by 1605 and were
unwilling to tolerate commercial competition from other nations, forced the
English to leave in 1620. Run changed hands several times over the next five
decades, but in 1667, under the terms of the Treaty of Breda (which ended a
two-year war between England and Holland over control of maritime trade
routes), the English agreed to surrender the miniscule island, which has an
area of about one square mile. From then, for well over a century, Holland
monopolized the sale of the spices, which were not grown in any other part of
the world, but Britain returned to the Moluccas in the early months of 1796,
taking control at a time when the Netherlands was a client state of the post-
revolutionary French republic. The islands were returned to Holland under
the provisions of the Treaty of Amiens (signed on 25 March 1802), reoccu-
pied in 1810 (during the Napoleonic Wars), and returned once more follow-
ing the signing of the Treaty of Paris, which ended the Wars on 30 May
1814. By that time, though, Britain had taken the secret of clove and nutmeg
cultivation to many of its other colonial possessions, including Ceylon, Gre-
nada, India, and Zanzibar.

MONTSERRAT. The 40-square-mile British Overseas Territory of Mont-

serrat forms part of the Lesser Antilles archipelago, lying at latitude 16° 45´
North and longitude 62° 12´ West, toward the eastern edge of the Caribbean
Sea. The first European settlers were Irish Catholics, who arrived in 1632,
seeking refuge from religious persecution on nearby Nevis. Later, the popu-
lation was supplemented by other Roman Catholics looking for a safe haven
and, from 1651, by African slaves who worked on cotton and sugar planta-
tions. On several occasions during the late 17th and the 18th centuries, the
island was occupied by the French, but it was ceded to Britain under the
provisions of the Treaty of Paris, one of a series of agreements that formally
ended the American Revolutionary War in 1783. For most of the 19th and
early 20th centuries, Montserrat was administered as part of the Leeward
Islands, but it became a separate unit when that colony was disbanded in
334 • MOSQUITO COAST
1957. The following year, it joined the West Indies Federation and in 1962,
when that group was dissolved, opted to retain its links with the United
Kingdom rather than become self-governing. In the 1970s and 1980s, the
United National Front and the larger People’s Liberation Movement led cam-
paigns for independence, but Hurricane Hugo, which devastated the island on
17 September 1989, damaging nine of every 10 buildings and decimating the
tourist trade, abruptly changed political priorities. Then in July 1995, with
much rebuilding work completed, the Soufriere Hills volcano (which had
been thought dormant) erupted, destroying communications links, engulfing
much of Plymouth (the island’s capital), and forcing more than half of the
12,000 population to flee. The volcanic activity continued into the 21st cen-
tury, severely restricting economic recovery and forcing the remaining resi-
dents to depend on Britain for aid.
See also BREDA, TREATY OF (1667); BRITISH WEST INDIES; RE-
DONDA; SAINT KITTS.

MOSQUITO COAST. The Mosquito Coast—named after the local Miskito

Indians rather than the malaria-carrying insects—lies along the swampy
western shores of the Caribbean Sea from southern Honduras through Nica-
ragua, stretching inland for some 40 miles. In 1629, a group of English
Puritans established a colony on Providence Island, 120 miles off the Nica-
raguan mainland, but it quickly became a base for pirates and, in 1641, was
overrun by Spanish troops determined to oust both the privateers (who ha-
rassed Spanish vessels) and the English settlers (who, if they became estab-
lished, could spread into the interior of Central America and threaten Spanish
control). However, the loss of a settlement was not accompanied by loss of
interest in the area. After the restoration of the English monarchy in 1660, the
London businessmen who had sponsored the Providence Island project made
arrangements for Oldman, leader of the Miskito people, to travel to Europe
and meet “his brother king,” Charles II. Then, in 1740, Edward Trelawny,
governor of Jamaica, appointed Robert Hodgson to the post of superinten-
dent of the Mosquito Shore in the hope of encouraging the Moskito to con-
duct raids against Spanish communities. Hodgson took matters a step further,
telling the Indian people that he had arrived “to take possession of their
country in his Majesty’s [King George II’s] name.” He asked them if they
approved and, when he received a reply in the affirmative, invited their
monarch, Edward I, to sign a treaty of friendship on March 16. That agree-
ment—the surrender of sovereignty in return for military protection—is ac-
cepted by some writers as the establishment of a British protectorate over
the area, but the most significant consequence was commercial rather than
administrative because, from 1742, Edward and his successors allowed Brit-
ish citizens to create plantations (using slave labor) and to develop the forest
resources of the region (particularly the export of mahogany). However, after
 MUGABE, ROBERT GABRIEL • 335
the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War in 1775, Spain took
advantage of British preoccupations in North America to attack the Mosquito
Coast settlements. The Treaty of Paris, which ended the war on 3 Septem-
ber 1783, included an agreement that Britain would withdraw from the
“Spanish continent” in the Americas, but the settlers on the Coast refused to
budge, arguing that Spain had never controlled the area. As a result, the two
governments approved a Convention of London, signed on 14 July 1786,
that—much against the planters’ wishes—provided for the evacuation of the
British community in return for enhanced rights to extract hardwoods from
the Yucatán Peninsula (then in New Spain and now in Mexico).
More than 2,000 people were moved, most of them to the territory that
later became British Honduras, but also to the Cayman Islands and Jamai-
ca. Their departure did not end British involvement in the region, though. In
the middle years of the 19th century, the advantages of a canal link between
the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans were evident to economists and to military
strategists so, in April 1844, the government reestablished its protectorate
with the Miskito kingdom. The diplomatic initiative annoyed the Americans,
who had similar construction plans, and led, on 19 April 1850, to the signing
of the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, by which both countries agreed not to “occu-
py, or fortify, or colonize, or assume or exercise any dominion over Nicara-
gua, Costa Rica, the Mosquito Coast or any part of Central America.” On 28
January 1860, Britain signed a further treaty with Nicaragua (which had
become an independent republic in 1838). That agreement, in effect, aban-
doned the country’s longtime Miskito allies, recognizing Nicaraguan sove-
reignty over the Mosquito Coast, albeit with a provision that the Miskito
people would exercise self-government within the confines of a defined re-
serve. The reserve was incorporated within Nicaragua in 1894, but tensions
remain, even in the 21st century, with a radical group attempting to declare
independence, as the Community Nation of Moskitia, in 2009.
See also BAY ISLANDS.

MUGABE, ROBERT GABRIEL. Robert Mugabe, one of the leaders of the

nationalist faction in Southern Rhodesia, became prime minister, then presi-
dent, after the crown colony won independence as the Republic of Zimbab-
we in 1980. The third son of carpenter Gabriel Mugabe and his wife, Bona,
he was born in the village of Matibiri, some 50 miles northeast of Salisbury
(now Harare) on 21 February 1924 and educated at nearby Kutama College.
At Kutama, he was much influenced by the principal, Father Jerome O’Hea,
an Irish priest who rejected concepts of racial superiority and believed that
all children should receive an education commensurate with their intellectual
abilities. Imbued with those values, Mugabe went on to study at Fort Hare
University, a South African institution for black students that attracted many
young men—such as Herbert Chitepo of the Zimbabwe African National
336 • MUGABE, ROBERT GABRIEL
Union (ZANU) and Seretse Khama of Bechuanaland—who were later to
become prominent in freedom movements throughout sub-Saharan Africa. In
1951, he graduated with a bachelor of arts degree. (Later, he added two
bachelors’ degrees from the University of South Africa as well as two bach-
elors’ and two masters’ degrees from the University of London.) Also, he
was introduced to a range of radical political philosophies and was greatly
attracted to the works of Karl Marx. From 1955–1958, Mugabe taught at
Chalimbana Teacher Training College in Northern Rhodesia, where black
Africans had resisted the creation of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nya-
saland in 1953, and from 1958–1960 he worked at schools in Ghana, where
Prime Minister Kwame Nkrumah was developing his country’s economy
on socialist lines. As a result, by the time he returned to his homeland in
1960, Mugabe was a committed communist and an equally committed na-
tionalist.
Involving himself in the struggle to end white rule, Mugabe took the post
of publicity secretary with Joshua Nkomo’s National Democratic Party
then, when that organization was banned in 1961, moved, as general secre-
tary, to the Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU), which also had
Nkomo at its head. By 1963, however, he had become disenchanted with the
lack of progress achieved through Nkomo’s attempts to persuade world
governments to coerce Southern Rhodesia’s white leadership into making
concessions so, with other dissidents, he broke away to form the more mili-
tant ZANU, becoming secretary general of the organization. In 1964, Mu-
gabe was arrested for “subversive speech” and detained in prison for 10
years, failing even to get permission to attend the funeral of his three-year-
old son Nhamodzenyika, who died of malaria in 1966. Released in 1974 as a
result of pressure from Prime Minister B. J. Vorster of the Union of South
Africa, he fled to Mozambique from where, supported by Chinese funds and
weaponry, he led the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army in a
guerrilla war. Ultimately, the cost of that war, combined with increasing
political isolation, forced Ian Smith, Southern Rhodesia’s prime minister, to
concede the nationalists’ demands. The colony won independence, as the
Republic of Zimbabwe, on 18 April 1980, with Mugabe as prime minister,
but its troubles were far from over. Former colleagues (such as Nkomo), foes
(such as Smith), and white liberals (such as Garfield Todd) all fell foul of
the new administration, which turned the country into a one-party state in
1987. Since then, Mugabe has been denounced by many commentators for
adopting racist policies that abuse human rights and for introducing econom-
ic measures, including land reform, that have led to hyperinflation and a
significantly weakened economy. In 2009, Parade magazine described him
as the world’s worst dictator, but Mugabe dismisses all of his critics as “born
again colonialists.”
 MYSORE WARS (1767–1769, 1780–1784, 1790–1792, AND 1799) • 337
MYSORE WARS (1767–1769, 1780–1784, 1790–1792, AND 1799). Four
wars, fought between 1767 and 1799, brought the sultanate of Mysore, in
southern India, under the control of the East India Company (EIC),
which—as a result of France’s defeat in the Carnatic Wars—was the domi-
nant European power on the subcontinent in the second half of the 18th
century. In about 1761, Hyder Ali, a successful military commander, became
ruler of Mysore and adopted a policy of territorial expansion that precipitated
conflict with other Indian princes. As the rajahs maneuvered and machinated,
Asaf Jah II, the nizam of Hyderabad, ceded the territory of the Northern
Circars (or Sarkars) to the EIC in 1766 in return for military support—an
arrangement that gave the Company access to overland routes between its
bases in Madras (now Chennai) and Bengal. The First Mysore War broke
out the following January, when Madhavrao I, ruler of the Maratha Empire,
invaded northern Mysore. Accompanied by two battalions of EIC soldiers,
commanded by Colonel Joseph Smith, Asaf Jah followed in March, but
Hyder Ali paid the Marathas to withdraw and bribed the nizam to form an
alliance. The sultan and Asaf Jah never fully trusted each other, though, so
the nizam retreated to Hyderabad in 1768, leaving the Mysoreans and the
British (the latter assisted by the Marathas, who reentered the war) to fight
on. In November 1768, the Mysorean armies won control of the southern
Carnatic then marched on Madras, forcing Britain to negotiate and, through
the Treaty of Madras, signed on 3 April 1769, to accept a mutual restoration
of captured territories and agree that the EIC and Mysore would defend each
other if attacked.
Treaty considerations notwithstanding, relations between the two powers
were never cordial so when Hyder Ali went to war against the Marathas in
1770 then requested British help, as the Marathas reacted by invading his
sultanate, the EIC refused to assist, souring relations further. That perceived
slight may have contributed to the outbreak of the Second Mysore War in
1780. Hyder Ali was an ally of France, which had entered the American
Revolutionary War on the side of the rebels. In 1779, EIC troops occupied
the French-held port of Mahé, in southwestern India, through which Hyder
Ali received military supplies, so, in July 1780, the sultan invaded the Brit-
ish-held Carnatic region with an army of some 80,000 men, who laid waste
to the countryside, defeated EIC forces at Pollilur on 10 September, and took
the fort at Arcot on 3 November. Warren Hastings, governor-general of
Bengal, dispatched Lieutenant-General Sir Eyre Coote, with additional sol-
diers, to reinforce the British garrisons, but although Coote won a series of
victories at Porto Novo (1 July 1781), Polilular (27 August), and Sholinghur
(27 September) those successes failed to deter Hyder Ali, whose troops con-
tinued to make significant advances under his son, Tipu Sultan, even after his
death in December 1782. As the fighting dragged on, neither side could gain
a permanent advantage so, as costs rose and disruption increased, East India
338 • MYSORE WARS (1767–1769, 1780–1784, 1790–1792, AND 1799)
Company directors in London ordered their representatives in India to end
the stalemate and seek an agreement with Tipu, who had succeeded his father
as ruler of Mysore. On 11 March 1784, under the terms of the Treaty of
Mangalore, both sides returned the territories taken during the four-year
struggle, but the peace was interpreted by Indians as a victory for the Myso-
reans, who were able to dictate terms to EIC officials under pressure to end
the conflict.
The consequences for the Company were profound because the value of its
stock fell on the British markets, threatening the domestic economy and
encouraging Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger to extend govern-
ment supervision of the business through the provisions of the India Act,
approved by parliament in 1784. Moreover, Tipu quickly made clear—by
refusing to release prisoners, for example—that he had no intention either of
cooperating with the British or of maintaining the peace. Hostilities resumed
after the Mysoreans attacked Travancore (which had been listed, in the Man-
galore treaty, as a British ally) on 29 December 1789. In May the following
year, EIC forces under General William Medows went to the assistance of
the Travancoreans, supported by armies from Hyderabad and Maratha, but
they failed to assert control so General Charles Cornwallis, Earl Cornwallis,
whom Pitt had appointed commander-in-chief of British India and governor
of the Presidency of Fort William (see BENGAL PRESIDENCY) in 1786,
took charge of the military strategy himself in January 1791. After capturing
the fortress at Bangalore on 21 March, he marched on Seringapatam, the
capital of Mysore, and, although initially forced to retreat as Tipu cut off his
supply routes, laid siege to the city in February 1792, compelling the Myso-
reans to sue for peace. This time, British officers dictated the terms of the
surrender, requiring Tipu—through the Treaty of Seringapatam, signed on 19
March—to cede nearly half of his dominions to the EIC and its allies, with
the Company winning control of Anantapur, Bellary, Malabar, and Salem,
which were added to the Madras Presidency.
In the aftermath of this Third Mysore War, Tipu, humiliated by his defeat,
strengthened contacts with France, Britain’s longtime imperial adversary, so
when Napoleon Bonaparte invaded Egypt in July 1798, threatening an ad-
vance on India, Richard Wellesley, earl of Mornington (who had been ap-
pointed governor-general of India in May of the same year), took action to
ensure that the Mysoreans would be unable to assist their European allies.
Troops from Madras, commanded by Major-General George Harris, ad-
vanced on Mysore in February 1799, defeating Tipu’s armies at Sedaseer on
5 March and at Malvelly on 27 March. Tipu retreated to Seringapatam,
where he was killed on 4 May while attempting to repel attackers. His death
ended Mysore’s resistance to the extension of EIC influence on the subconti-
nent and paved the way for further British territorial gains through the Mara-
tha Wars of 1775–1818 and the Sikh Wars of 1845–1849.
 N
NATAL. In 1838, Boer settlers founded the Republic of Natalia in southeast-
ern Africa, but Britain, unwilling to countenance an independent state in a
region over which it wished to maintain sovereignty, annexed the territory on
4 May 1843. Initially administered from Cape Colony, Natal was given a
separate government, led by a lieutenant-governor, in 1845 then on 15 July
1856 was accorded crown colony status by a royal charter that accorded
voting rights to all men, aged 21 and over, who owned immovable property
valued at £50 or more or paid at least £10 in annual rent. Theophilus Shep-
stone, Natal’s diplomatic agent to the native peoples, suppressed the slightest
sign of rebellion by black groups but also annoyed white settlers by estab-
lishing areas solely for occupation by Africans and allowing their own chiefs
to govern them according to traditional customs, including polygamy, in a
forerunner of the system of indirect rule later more widely adopted within
Great Britain’s African Empire. The indigenous peoples (and particularly
the Zulu) were unwilling to work on the sugar plantations established in
coastal areas by migrants from Britain so in the 50 years from 1860 some
150,000 indentured laborers were imported from India. Like the black com-
munities, these Indians—who would later gravitate to jobs in coal mines and
railroad construction—found their prospects limited by racial discrimination.
In 1888, John Kumalo and other Africans who had been educated in Chris-
tian mission schools formed the Funamalungelo (or “Demand Civil Rights”)
Society as a means of promoting their interests, and six years later, under the
guidance of Mohandas “Mahatma” Gandhi, the Indians founded the Natal
Indian Congress with similar aims, but both groups had to wait many decades
before achieving their ends. Natal was granted internal self-government in
1893, with a bicameral parliament consisting of a nominated Legislative
Council and an elected Assembly. In 1898, it opted to join a customs union
with other British colonies and Boer republics in southern African but had
little opportunity to benefit before it was invaded by Afrikaner forces on the
outbreak of the Second Boer War in 1899. With the defeat of the Boers in
1902, the Orange River Colony and the Transvaal were united with Cape
Colony and Natal under the British flag, and on 31 May 1910 all four colo-

339
340 • NAURU
nies were merged to form the Union of South Africa, whose parliament
quickly endorsed a series of legislative measures limiting the rights of black
and colored residents.
See also LADYSMITH, SIEGE OF (1899–1900); ZULULAND; ZULU
WAR (1879).

NAURU. The coral island of Nauru lies in the southwestern Pacific Ocean at
latitude 0° 32´ South and longitude 166° 56´ East, some 200 miles west of
Kiribati and 800 miles northeast of the Solomon Islands. It was annexed by
Germany in 1887, but from 1907 its rich phosphate reserves were exploited
by the Pacific Phosphate Company (see ARUNDEL, JOHN THOMAS
(1841–1919)) and from 1919 by the British Phosphate Commission. In 1914,
at the start of World War I, the territory was occupied by Australian forces
and included within the jurisdiction of the high commissioner of the British
Western Pacific Territories. Then, on 17 December 1920, after Germany
had been defeated, it was made a League of Nations Mandated Territory,
with Australia (which assumed administrative responsibilities), Great Brit-
ain, and New Zealand as cotrustees. Japanese troops occupied Nauru in
1942, moving 1,200 of the population to labor camps on other islands, but the
Australians returned in September 1945, and on 1 November 1947 the area
became a United Nations Trust Territory, with Australia, New Zealand,
and Britain again responsible for its government. During the 1960s, as colo-
nies around the world divested themselves of colonial rulers, Hammer De-
Roburt, an Australian-educated teacher who had survived forced labor under
the Japanese, led successful efforts to acquire ownership of the still-rich
phosphate industry for the Nauruan people and, with that achieved, negotiat-
ed full independence for the tiny, eight-square-mile island on 31 January
1968.
See also HULL ISLAND.

NAVIGATION ACTS. From 1381, England passed a series of laws, collec-

tively known as the Navigation Acts, that were designed to restrict English
maritime trade to English ships, initially in an attempt to stimulate shipbuild-
ing (and thus make vessels available in times of war) but later to control
commerce. Measures affecting the colonies date from 9 October 1651, when
parliament approved legislation—intended primarily as a blow against the
Dutch economy, which relied heavily on ship-borne international com-
merce—that banned all imports to England or its territorial possessions un-
less the goods were carried on English vessels or on vessels of the country
that produced them. A further act, passed on 13 September 1660, added a list
of “enumerated” products (such as cotton and tobacco) that could not be
produced in England; these could be shipped from a colonial possession only
 NEGERI SEMBILAN • 341
to the mother country or to another colony. Then, on 27 July 1663, parlia-
ment approved the Encouragement of Trade Act, requiring that all European
commodities destined for the colonies be carried on English vessels, or on
vessels from the colonies, and be shipped first through England (where taxes
would be payable).
Measures enacted in 1673 and 1696 added yet more restrictions. In the
wake of the legislation, the tonnage carried on English vessels increased,
adding to activity in English ports, but critics claim that the freight charges of
raw materials from the colonies also rose and thus forced up the cost of
manufactured products in England, making them less competitive. Moreover,
the Molasses Act, which received royal assent on 17 May 1733, caused much
discontent in the American colonies because it levied taxes on imports of
molasses (which was used for making rum) from non-British colonies. Mer-
chants in British possessions along America’s Atlantic coast had built up a
thriving trade in the commodity by purchasing relatively low-cost supplies
from the Dutch, French, and Spanish West Indies. The Act, introduced be-
cause producers in the British West Indies wanted trade in molasses from
the colonies of other European countries to be banned altogether, threatened
the Americans with ruin so they resorted to smuggling rather than pay the
levies. The Sugar Act, which King George III signed on 5 April 1764, halved
the tax but increased enforcement measures, raising further opposition and,
along with other legislation, contributing to the unrest that led to the success-
ful American Revolution a decade later. The loss of the American territories
forced parliament into modifications of the Navigation Acts, so much so that
the number of exceptions eventually made the system unworkable and the
legislation was repealed by stages in 1814, 1823, 1846, 1849, and 1854.
See also FIRST BRITISH EMPIRE.

NEGERI SEMBILAN. In 1873, when Negeri Sembilan was a very loose

confederation of nine states on the west of the Malay Peninsula, Dato’ Kela-
no Sendeng, one of the rulers of the important tin mining region of Sungai
Ulong, sought British help against leadership rivals, and Sir Andrew Clarke,
the governor of the Straits Settlements colony, seized the opportunity to
extend his country’s influence in the area. On 21 April 1874, Clarke finalized
an arrangement (similar to that signed in Perak earlier in the year) that
recognized Dato’ Kelano as the legitimate leader of the community but in-
sisted that he could govern only on the advice, and with the consent, of an
official known as the British resident. Similar arrangements with the other
states in the confederation were completed by 1895, and in 1896 the group
was incorporated, as Negeri Sembilan, within the Federated Malay States.
The territory was occupied by Japan from 1942–1945, during World War II,
342 • NEHRU, JAWAHARLAL “PANDIT” (1889–1964)
but reverted to British control when the conflict ended. In 1946, it became
part of the Malayan Union, which was restructured as the Federation of
Malaya in 1948 and achieved independence in 1957.
See also BRITISH MALAYA.

NEHRU, JAWAHARLAL “PANDIT” (1889–1964). Nehru, a leader of

the Indian independence movement who became his country’s first prime
minister, was born at Allahabad on 14 November 1889 to Motilal Nehru (a
successful lawyer and a supporter of “Mahatma” Gandhi) and his wife,
Swaroop Rani. As befitted the scion of a wealthy Brahman family, he was
educated in Britain, initially at Harrow School (on the outskirts of London),
then at Cambridge University (where he took a science degree), and finally at
Inner Temple, London, where he qualified as a barrister in 1912, completing
his studies, according to his own assessment, “with neither glory nor igno-
miny.” Always more interested in politics than in law, Nehru fell under
Gandhi’s influence from 1916 and was serving as president of the Congress
Party when, in 1929, that body first formally advocated independence for
India. By that time, he had become a committed Marxist, influenced by his
experience of poverty at home and by a visit to the Soviet Union in 1926–27.
A total of nine years’ imprisonment in the period from 1921 to 1945 pro-
vided ample time for the reading and contemplation that would hone his
political views, and by the mid-1930s he was widely regarded both as an
intellectual pivot of the independence movement and as Gandhi’s political
heir.
Despite that growing stature, Nehru did make misjudgements, as in 1937
when the British approved the formation of provincial governments on the
subcontinent and the Congress Party, much influenced by his arguments,
refused to form coalition administrations with the Moslem League; as a
result, relations between Hindus and Moslems became so strained that when
the subcontinent gained independence in 1947 it was divided, with much
bloodshed, into a Hindu-dominated India and a Moslem-dominated Paki-
stan. In 1942, Britain offered India dominion status (in effect, self-govern-
ment) in return for unqualified support for World War II against German
fascism, but the Congress Party refused, maintaining that the price of alle-
giance was complete independence. Nehru was jailed (along with Gandhi
and other dissidents) and remained in prison until the war drew to a close in
1945, by which time it was clear that Britain intended to divest itself of its
colonial commitments as it rebuilt its economy. Nehru was a principal partic-
ipant in the discussions that led to independence, reluctantly agreeing to the
partition of India and Pakistan (see PARTITION OF INDIA) and apparently
conducting an affair with Edwina Mountbatten, the wife of Lord Louis
Mountbatten, the last viceroy, while orchestrating the negotiations. Despite
his unwillingness to delegate and his eventual departure from a policy of
 NEPAL • 343
nonalignment in the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United
States (he supported the Russian invasion of Hungary in 1956), Jawaharlal
Nehru was a popular first prime minister of independent India, introducing
Western values (such as the importance of scientific progress), adapting them
to conditions on the subcontinent, and promoting schemes to improve the
conditions of the poorest citizens and the rights of women. He died in New
Delhi on 27 May 1964 after suffering a series of strokes. The nickname
“Pandit” is derived from a Sanskrit word meaning “teacher,” “scholar,” or
“expert.”
See also PLASSEY, BATTLE OF (23 JUNE 1757).

NEPAL. As the East India Company extended its control of the Indian
subcontinent during the late 18th and early 19th centuries, it came into con-
flict with the Kingdom of Nepal, which was expanding its influence in the
Himalyan Mountains and their foothills (see SIKKIM). In 1814, the friction
led Britain to declare a war that its vast superiority in arms ensured it would
win (see GURKHA (OR NEPALESE) WAR (1814–1816)). As a result, on 4
March 1816, with much of their country under British occupation, the Nepa-
lese rulers were forced to ratify the Treaty of Sugauli, which ceded territory
to the East India Company and permitted Britain both to locate a permanent
representative in Kathmandu and to arbitrate in any disputes between Nepal
and neighboring Sikkim—an arrangement that undoubtedly limited Nepal’s
sovereignty and, according to some writers, made the territory a de facto
British protectorate even though the treaty contained no provisions for de-
fense. The ties between the states tightened from 1847, when Jung Buhadur
Rana established a line of hereditary prime ministers after emerging victori-
ous from a domestic power struggle. Jung Buhadur visited London in 1850,
was treated as an esteemed guest, and adopted the pragmatic policy of coop-
erating with the colonial power in order to maintain Nepal’s independence.
In 1857, and despite much domestic opposition, he led some 12,000 Nepa-
lese troops in support of the East India Company’s army, which was attempt-
ing to quell the Indian Mutiny. As a reward, the British government restored
much of the land ceded in 1816.
For the remaining decades of the 19th century, the Rana dynasty continued
to pursue the policy of military and political alignment with British India, a
strategy that suited the imperial government because it facilitated the import
of timber from Nepal to India and the export of manufactured goods through
Nepal to Tibet, where Britain hoped to expand its influence at the expense of
Russia (see THE GREAT GAME). Moreover, the British official in Kath-
mandu was able to exert considerable influence over Nepal’s foreign policy,
encouraging the rebuffal of politically dangerous overtures from Afghani-
stan, Germany, and Japan. The British Army also benefited greatly from the
links, recruiting Ghurka soldiers to its ranks in large numbers. (The Ghurka
344 • NEPALESE WAR (1814–1816)
name is derived from that of the hill settlement at Gorkha, ancestral home of
Nepal’s rulers.) Some 200,000 Nepalese fought during World War I, winning
nearly 2,000 awards for gallantry, and in 1919 they won honors in Afghani-
stan as they helped to repulse an attack by Amanullah Khan (the Afghan
ruler) on British India. In recognition of that military contribution, on 21
December 1923 Britain signed a treaty of friendship with Nepal and ac-
knowledged its independence.
See also INDIA OFFICE.

NEPALESE WAR (1814–1816). See GURKHA (OR NEPALESE) WAR

(1814–1816).

NEVIS. The first permanent European residents of Nevis—a 36-square-mile

island lying at latitude 17° 9´ North and longitude 62° 35´ West toward the
northern end of the Lesser Antilles archipelago at the eastern edge of the
Caribbean Sea—were English settlers who made the two-mile crossing from
St. Christopher (now usually known as Saint Kitts) in 1628. By the end of
the century, the territory had become the major base for the Leeward Is-
lands’ slave trade, with many of the captives put to work on lucrative sugar
plantations. The wealth generated by both forms of commerce inevitably
attracted the attention of other European powers and particularly the French,
who attacked on several occasions, most notably in 1706, when Pierre
D’Iberville led an invasion that was forced back after 18 days but captured
many of the slaves, some of whom became the first people of African de-
scent to live in Louisiana.
The devastation wrought by the French, coupled with the depletion of soil
fertility that was a concomitant of monoculture, led to a decline in sugar
production, and the abolition of slavery in 1834 (see SLAVERY ABOLI-
TION ACT (1833)) added to the industry’s problems. Many plantation own-
ers left the island, leaving their African laborers to subdivide the land into a
multitude of small enterprises, but the families who remained retained an
element of self-government until 1883, when Nevis was united with Anguil-
la and St. Kitts as a single “presidency” within the Federal Colony of the
Leeward Islands. The territory’s administration was based at Basseterre, the
principal settlement on St. Kitts, so the political marriage was always frac-
tious, with the Nevisians (and the Anguillans) believing that the major island
in the group had little interest in the affairs of its smaller neighbors. Despite
the friction, the union survived unscathed until 1967, when the partnership
assumed control over domestic affairs as an associated state of the United
Kingdom. At that stage, resentment on Anguilla flamed into rebellion be-
cause residents believed that they would suffer further discrimination so in
1971 Britain resumed direct control of that island once again. Similarly, the
 NEW BRUNSWICK • 345
Nevis Reformation Party, formed in 1970 because many Nevisians felt that
they were being starved of government investment, campaigned for seces-
sion. In August 1977, it organized a referendum that demonstrated wide-
spread support for its cause, but, in 1980, formed a governing coalition with
the People’s Action Movement on St. Kitts and negotiated independence for
the Federation of St. Kitts and Nevis (the smallest sovereign state in the
Americas) within the Commonwealth of Nations on 19 September 1983.
See also BRITISH WEST INDIES; COMMONWEALTH REALM;
MONTSERRAT; WEST INDIES FEDERATION.

NEW ALBION. See NOVA ALBION (OR NEW ALBION); PAPUA NEW
GUINEA.

NEW BRUNSWICK. From the early 17th century, the lands north of the
Bay of Fundy, on the northeastern seaboard of North America, attracted
French immigrants, many of them traders, who established bases along the
coasts and bought furs from the Mi’kmaq, Passamaquoddy, and other native
American groups. The French included the area in the colony known as
Acadie (anglicized as “Acadia”), but their claim to the territory was disputed
by Britain, which gradually extended its influence and, in 1755, expelled
Acadians from the regions under its control because many refused to take an
oath of loyalty to the crown. When France withdrew from North America
under the terms of the Treaty of Paris, which was signed on 10 February
1763 and ended the global Seven Years’ War that had involved all of the
major European powers, Britain attached much of the region to its colony of
Nova Scotia, where administration was based in Halifax. English and Scot-
tish settlers drifted in, along with some of the previously expelled Acadians,
but numbers remained small until the outbreak of the American Revolution-
ary War in 1775 brought some 14,000 refugees unwilling to support the
rebel cause. Many of these newcomers doubted Halifax’s loyalty to the mon-
arch and, as their communities grew, argued that they should have a govern-
ment that reflected their own political leanings. British officials, feeling that
Halifax was too far away to provide proper management, were sympathetic
to the proposal so on 16 August 1784 the area was made a colony in its own
right, named New Brunswick (because King George III’s roots lay in the
German House of Brunswick), and allocated a governor (Thomas Carleton)
with offices in Fredericton (an appellation changed from the French “Ponte
Sainte Anne” to honor George’s second son, Frederick, Duke of York).
New Brunswick continued to attract migrants from the Old World, initially
Protestants from the west of England and Scotland then, from 1845, Roman
Catholics forced from their Irish homeland by the failure of the potato crops.
Many eked out a living through subsistence farming, but others were able to
346 • NEW COMMONWEALTH
earn a cash income from fisheries, logging, and shipbuilding. The religious
divide created social tensions that sometimes manifested themselves in vio-
lence (as in St. John on 12 July 1849, when 12 people died in riots), and
those insecurities were heightened by political uncertainties. The border with
the United States was not clearly defined until representatives of the British
and U.S. governments signed the Webster-Ashburton Treaty on 9 August
1842. Democratic control of the executive branch of government was won
only on 20 May 1848, when Sir Edmund Walker Head, the lieutenant-
governor, made appointed members of his Executive Council answerable to
the elected Legislative Assembly. Then, economic conditions changed from
6 June 1854 with the approval of a reciprocity treaty, which guaranteed free
trade in raw materials between British North America and the U.S. but
angered Americans who favored protectionism; later, it also became a target
for those offended by British support for the confederate states during the
1861–1865 Civil War. Despite the pressures, many colonists were opposed to
any form of union with neighboring colonies, believing that centralization of
government would result in loss of control over their own affairs and the
imposition of higher taxes to fund canal and railroad construction projects
elsewhere. However, the threat of raids by the Fenian Brotherhood, an Irish
Republican organization based in the United States, helped to concentrate
minds on the advantages of joint defense arrangements, and on 1 July 1867
New Brunswick joined Nova Scotia and the Province of Canada (Ontario
and Quebec) in the Dominion of Canada.

NEW COMMONWEALTH. The member states of the Commonwealth of

Nations that have won independence since the end of World War II are
sometimes collectively known as the New Commmonwealth. Unlike the Old
Commonwealth countries that became almost fully self-governing prior to
that war, they had relatively small (though economically and politically im-
portant) proportions of their population born in the United Kingdom or
descended from British immigrants.

NEW ENGLAND IN AMERICA, DOMINION OF. In the 1670s and

1680s, King Charles I and his advisers discussed means of cutting the cost of
governing the North American colonies and of regulating trade in the region.
The monarch died before the plans could be implemented, but his brother and
successor, King James II, pursued the same policy, creating, on 8 October
1685, a Council of New England to manage an area encompassing Massa-
chusetts Bay Colony, Plymouth Colony, the Narraganset Country (now part
of Rhode Island), the Province of New Hampshire, and the Province of
Maine. On 3 June the following year, Sir Edmund Andros was appointed
governor of the territory, which was formally named the Dominion of New
 NEW HAMPSHIRE • 347
England in America. The Colonies of Connecticut and Rhode Island were
added to the Dominion on 9 September 1686 and the Provinces of New
York, East Jersey, and West Jersey (see NEW JERSEY) on 7 May 1688.
Andros was an experienced administrator, but his authoritarian approach
made enemies of many settlers. Attempts to promote the Church of England
caused much resentment in nonconformist communities, efforts to enforce
tax laws led to protests, and restrictions on the frequency of town hall meet-
ings (a measure designed to limit the protests) caused further friction. Lead-
ers in Connecticut hid their charter (granted by King Charles in 1662) rather
than surrender it, and many landowners refused to comply with changes to
ownership registration practices. Moreover, the size of the territory and the
challenging travel conditions made enforcement of regulations difficult.
However, in late December 1688, King James was deposed. When the news
reached Boston the following April, Andros was imprisoned, the authorities
in the colonies reasserted control, and the Dominion collapsed.

NEW GUINEA. See PAPUA NEW GUINEA.

NEW HAMPSHIRE. In 1622, the Plymouth Council for New England (see
VIRGINIA COMPANY) gave Ferdinando Gorges and John Mason rights to
settle land between the Merrimack and Kennebec Rivers, on the northeastern
coast of North America. Seven years later, the grantees agreed to divide the
territory, with Mason taking the land south of the Pascataqua River and
naming it Province of New Hampshire after the county of Hampshire, in
England, where he had his home. Settlers exploited the land as their own
after he died in 1635, but they faced competition from the leaders of the
expanding Massachusetts Bay Colony. The charter granted by King Charles
I to the Massachusetts Bay Company on 4 March 1629 allowed it to colonize
the land from the Charles River to a point three miles north of the Merri-
mack. However, the scribes who drew up the document believed that the
Merrimack flowed from west to east, whereas for much of its length it flows
from north to south, and the Massachusetts colonists exploited that miscon-
ception by claiming authority over all of the land as far as three miles north
of the river’s source in Lake Winnipesaukee. In 1641, the residents of the
New Hampshire settlements agreed to submit to the Bay Colony’s authority,
largely because of the protection that the more populous neighbor could
provide against raids by the French (who held land to the north of the Prov-
ince) and by Native American groups, but each town continued to manage its
own affairs and Massachusetts’ rule was always tenuous, principally because
communities where the Church of England dominated were never comfort-
able with a Puritan government and because Mason’s heirs continued to
claim that the land was theirs.
348 • NEW HEBRIDES
In 1660, when Puritan rule in England ended and King Charles II returned
from exile to claim his throne, Robert Tufton Mason (the original proprie-
tor’s grandson) took advantage of the changed political climate to promote
his case to a monarch who had little in common with the Bay Colony’s
leaders or their beliefs, and eventually, on 18 September 1679, succeeded in
persuading Charles to detach New Hampshire from Massachusetts and place
government of the Province in the hands of a president (merchant John Cutt)
and an advisory council appointed by the sovereign along with an assembly
chosen by the colonists. Both colonies were included in the Dominion of
New England in America when it was formed in 1686, but that administra-
tive unit fell apart after only three years, and on 7 October 1691 New Hamp-
shire was formally constituted as a royal colony, receiving a charter from
King William III and his wife, Queen Mary II, on 14 May the following year.
From 1699 until 1741, the Province’s governor also served as governor of
Massachusetts Bay, but from then until 1776, when it established an indepen-
dent government as the State of New Hampshire, the two areas were man-
aged separately.
The Province’s population grew slowly, partly because potential immi-
grants were deterred by uncertainties engendered by the Mason dynasty’s
land claims and by boundary disputes with Massachusetts Bay and with New
York but also because the territory’s location at the frontier of British and
French influence in North America meant that communities were often em-
broiled in military conflict. By 1770, residents numbered only some 80,000,
most involved in fishing and in the timber trade (many of the trees were used
to provide masts for Royal Navy vessels, others for shipbuilding) but with
Scotch-Irish settlers (who had arrived from 1719) building on skills honed in
the Old World by growing flax and manufacturing linen goods. In 1775, the
Province joined other North American colonies in revolt against British im-
position of taxes (see AMERICAN REVOLUTION) and on 5 January 1776
established an independent government (with a constitution that stated that
the people had never sought to throw off their dependence on Great Brit-
ain). Then, on 21 June 1788, New Hampshire became the ninth state to join
the fledgling United States of America.
See MAINE, PROVINCE OF; NEW JERSEY; THE THIRTEEN COLO-
NIES.

NEW HEBRIDES. Unusually, the New Hebrides was administered by

France and Britain simultaneously. The islands, which lie in the western
Pacific Ocean, some 1,100 miles east of the Australian coast and 500 miles
west of Fiji at latitude 17° 45´ South and longitude 168° 18´ East, were
visited by mariners of both nations in the second half of the 18th century but
not settled by Europeans until the mid-19th century. The first immigrants
were British—traders seeking sandalwood from 1843, missionaries attempt-
 NEW JERSEY • 349
ing to convert indigenous people to the Presbyterian cause from 1848, and
planters hoping for riches from cotton from the late 1860s—but French influ-
ence increased considerably during the 1880s and by 1900 was dominating
commerce. The confusion caused by two nations attempting to administer the
same territory led to several appeals for one or the other to take control, but
on 20 October 1906 the metropolitan governments agreed on a condominium
arrangement. Each country was represented by a resident commissioner, had
exactly the same number of officials, was responsible for its own nationals,
and maintained its own judicial system, but a joint administration supervised
matters of common interest (such as infrastructural developments). Opposi-
tion to colonial control flared during the 1940s, focusing on a mythical
messianic figure named John Frum, who is often depicted as an American
serviceman and who promised wealth for all New Hebrideans willing to
reject European values and return to traditional ways. Later, in the 1960s,
attempts by foreigners to increase the proportion of land devoted to coconut
plantations caused further resentment. Britain, by then, had divested itself of
much of its Empire, and although France resisted proposals to give the New
Hebrides independence, believing that other of its colonies might attempt to
follow suit, the claims for a right to self-government proved irresistible.
Political parties formed to promote the movement early in the 1970s, in 1974
the agriculturally rich island of Tanna attempted to secede, a constitution was
drawn up in 1979, and on 30 July 1980 (despite efforts by the island of
Espiritu Santo to break away and a second attempt by Tanna, along with four
other islands, to secede) the New Hebrides became the Republic of Vanuatu.
See also BLACKBIRDING; BRITISH WESTERN PACIFIC TERRITO-
RIES; COOK, JAMES (1728–1779); LONDON MISSIONARY SOCIETY.

NEW JERSEY. In the early 17th century, the area along the mid-Atlantic
coast of North America, from the Delmarva Peninsula in the south to Cape
Cod in the north, was part of Holland’s empire so most of the settlers were of
Dutch origin. However, in 1664, King Charles II of England wanted to create
a chain of English colonies from Maine to Virginia so on 12 March, ignor-
ing the Netherlands’ declarations of sovereignty, he granted proprietorship of
the area between the Connecticut and Delaware Rivers to his younger
brother, James, duke of York (and later King James II of England and VII of
Scotland). York immediately took steps to oust the Dutch, dispatching army
officer and courtier Richard Nicolls with 300 soldiers, four ships, and orders
to assert authority over the area—a task completed on 27 August, when Fort
Amsterdam, at the southern tip of Manhattan Island, surrendered.
On 24 June, the duke had anticipated the outcome of the expedition by
giving the region between the Delaware and Hudson Rivers jointly to his
confidant, John, Baron Berkeley, and to Sir George Carteret, who had at-
tempted to defend the island of Jersey, in the English Channel (see CHAN-
350 • NEW JERSEY
NEL ISLANDS), for the royalist cause during the civil wars that divided
England from 1642–1651. The co-grantees attempted to attract colonists by
guaranteeing immigrants freedom to worship as they pleased (a privilege not
then available in England, where anti-Catholic sentiments were strong) and
establishing a form of government that included representatives chosen by
each settlement. Coupled with fertile soils and a relatively benign climate,
those arrangements—liberal by the authoritarian standards of the time—led
to the development of towns such as Elizabeth (which the first governor,
Philip Carteret, Sir George’s cousin, made his center of administration from
1665), Newark (founded by Puritans from Connecticut in 1666), Perth Am-
boy (whose first residents were Scottish Calvinists and Quakers who arrived
in 1683), and Piscataway (established in 1666 by migrants from Massachu-
setts, followed soon afterward by families from New Hampshire, all at-
tempting to escape Puritan rule). The Dutch regained control of the region
during another period of conflict in August 1673, but it returned to English
rule with the signing of the Treaty of Westminster on 19 February the
following year, and on 1 July 1676 the province was divided, George Carte-
ret retaining the land east of a line from Little Egg harbor to the point at
which line of latitude 41° 40´ North crosses the Delaware River. The area to
the west went to Quaker groups, who had purchased it from Berkeley on 18
March 1673. From then until 1702, East Jersey and West Jersey were admin-
istered as separate units, each with its own constitution and its own governor,
but they were beset by bickering between religious groups, by boundary
disputes, and by quarrels with the indigenous Native American inhabitants.
Moreover, in 1680, Sir Edmund Andros, governor of New York, unsuccess-
fully attempted to claim East Jersey as a dependency of his domain, and from
7 May 1688 until its dissolution in 1689 the Dominion of New England in
America incorporated both areas.
When he died in 1680, Sir George bequeathed East Jersey to eight trustees,
who, two years later, sold the territory, at a public auction, to William Penn
(founder of Pennsylvania) and 11 colleagues (10 of them Quakers) for the
sum of £3,400. They, in turn, traded one-half of the shares, creating a group
of 24 proprietors, who, on 15 April 1702, along with the proprietors of West
Jersey, surrendered their rights of government (but not their land rights) to
Queen Anne, who merged the provinces into a single royal colony, with a
24-member elected House of Representatives and a governor and council
appointed by the crown. The legislature met alternately at Burlington (in the
west) and Perth Amboy (in the east) until 1790, when Trenton became the
capital of the State of New Jersey.
At the beginning of the 18th century, the two provinces had some 14,000
residents, most of them working small farms but some (notably Scots in East
Jersey) managing large estates, while others made a living blowing glass,
forging iron, or tanning leather. By the 1770s, agriculture still dominated the
 NEW SOUTH WALES • 351
economy, but the population had risen to about 120,000. Given New Jersey’s
ethnic and religious diversity, and its location on a coastal plain where travel-
ers journeyed between New York and Philadelphia, carrying a variety of
opinions among their baggage, differences over loyalty to Britain were com-
monplace. William Franklin (an illegitimate son of Benjamin Franklin, one
of the United States’ founding fathers) strove to build support for the crown
from the time of his appointment as governor in 1763, but the imposition, by
the British parliament, of taxes intended to defray costs incurred during the
Seven Years’ War, fought from 1756–1763, annoyed many colonists (see
AMERICAN REVOLUTION). Enthusiasm for the American Revolution-
ary War, which broke out in 1775, was by no means universal—many
residents still felt emotional attachments to Britain, the Quaker community
opposed violence, and slaves proved willing to support the crown in return
for promises of freedom—but dissident sentiments prevailed. The lack of a
clear majority view, and Franklin’s influence, delayed New Jersey’s commit-
ment to the rebel cause, but Franklin was imprisoned in January 1776 (then
held captive for two years and refused permission to visit his terminally ill
wife). On 2 July, the legislature adopted a new constitution and on 4 July its
five representatives joined those of 12 other North American colonies in
ratifying a declaration of independence from Britain (see THE THIRTEEN
COLONIES). The area became a major battleground, with some 300 engage-
ments between British and American troops over the next four years and
British sympathizers engaging in much guerilla action, but after the struggle
ended successfully in 1783 its negotiators played a significant role in shaping
the structure of the national government and on 18 December 1787 it became
the third state to join the embryo United States of America.
See also BREDA, TREATY OF (1667); PROPRIETARY COLONY;
RESTORATION COLONY.

NEW SOUTH WALES. New South Wales was Britain’s first Australian
colony. On 22 August 1770, Captain James Cook claimed all of the territory
from the Cape York Peninsula (in the north) to Van Diemen’s Land (in the
south) for King George III, and 18 years later, on 18–20 January 1788,
Captain Arthur Philip sailed into Botany Bay with 11 ships and some 1,350
passengers, the majority of them convicts, to establish a settlement. For more
than five decades, judges in British courts condemned lawbreakers (many of
them petty thieves or political dissidents) to periods of servitude half a world
away, with most of the prisoners assigned to private landowners as a labor
force. However, as increasing numbers of free settlers arrived, many of them
escaping from the unhealthy, overcrowded slums of early industrial England,
and as the felons completed their sentences, the economic and social contexts
of the colony changed. New South Wales developed a pastoral agricultural
system (with sheep particularly important as a source of wool for British
352 • NEW YORK
textile mills) then, in the early 1850s, experienced a sudden growth in mining
activity as thousands of migrants sought to exploit deposits of gold. The
growing population required land, so the European influence spread outward
from the early coastal settlements and came into conflict with the indigenous
aboriginal groups, often violently, as at Myall Creek in June 1838, when
nearly 30 native people—most of them children and women—were mur-
dered. That expansion led, in turn, to boundary changes when administrators
carved out Van Diemen’s Land (see TASMANIA) as a separate colony in
1825, South Australia in 1836, Victoria in 1851, and Queensland in 1859,
leaving New South Wales as a territory much reduced in size and located in
the southeast of the continent.
The changing composition of the settler community also hastened political
developments. In the early days, the emphasis on prison life resulted in a
very authoritarian form of government, but the settlers who arrived voluntari-
ly expected some say in the colony’s development so an unelected legislative
council was formed in 1823, a more representative body in 1842, and a
legislature responsible for internal self-government in 1856. That legislature
strongly supported policies of free trade, an approach that contrasted with the
protectionist stance adopted by politicans in Victoria and, initially, led New
South Wales to resist moves favoring the formation of an Australian federa-
tion. However, by the last decade of the 19th century, moods were changing.
France, Germany, and Japan were all becoming significant powers in the
southwestern Pacific, raising concerns about the defense of British interests
in the region. Moreover, the colonies were suffering the effects of economic
depression, with banks and other financial institutions closing, drought af-
fecting agriculture, and industry forced to lay off workers. Also, many resi-
dents feared an influx of immigrants from China and argued for a “White
Australia” policy toward immigration. Although many leaders of the com-
mercial community continued to resist political change, the advocates of
integration eventually had their way, after much bargaining over the powers
of a new senate, and on 1 January 1901, New South Wales became part of a
Commonwealth of Australia, whose first prime minister (Edmund Barton)
and leader of the opposition (George Reid—known as “Yes-No Reid” as a
result of his ability to sit on political fences) were both citizens of the former
colony.
See also BANKS, JOSEPH (1743–1820); BRITISH SOLOMON IS-
LANDS; GLADSTONE, WILLIAM EWART (1809–1898); LORD HOWE
ISLAND; MACQUARIE ISLAND; NEW ZEALAND; NORFOLK IS-
LAND.

NEW YORK. On 12 March 1664, King Charles II granted the territory

between the Connecticut and Delaware Rivers, on the Atlantic coast of
North America, to his brother, James, duke of York (later King James II of
 NEW YORK • 353
England and VII of Scotland). At the time, that land was part of the Dutch
Empire, but its acquisition would allow England to create a chain of colonies
from Virginia to Maine so James speedily asserted his claim, sending four
frigates under Colonel Richard Nicolls to capture New Amsterdam, the
Dutch administrative headquarters at the southern tip of Manhattan Island.
The poorly defended settlement capitulated on 27 August; from then until the
1770s (apart from a few months when the Dutch returned in 1673–1674) the
area was controlled by England (and, from 1707, Great Britain), the sove-
reignty confirmed by the Treaty of Breda, signed on 31 July 1667. In 1665,
York gave the area between the Delaware and Hudson Rivers to John, Baron
Berkeley, and Sir George Carteret, creating the Province of New Jersey.
Then, in 1667, the region between the Byram River and the Connecticut
River was absorbed by Connecticut. The duke took little interest in the es-
tates that remained under his own jurisdiction, leaving administration to a
succession of governors, the first of whom—the Richard Nicolls who had
led the occupation—devised a series of regulations (known as the “Duke’s
Laws”) that incorporated provisions guaranteeing freedom of worship and
allowing residents of each town to elect a board of overseers. The much more
autocratic style of leadership adopted by Edmund Andros, appointed in 1674,
was less welcome to settlers, drawing complaints from the Dutch (who re-
sented foreign overlordship) as well as from the English traders (who resisted
the imposition of import duties and were aggrieved by the influence exerted
by wealthy Dutch residents). York refused Andros’s requests to defuse some
of the resistance by establishing a colony-wide representative Assembly
then, in 1681, recalled him to England to answer charges of dishonesty. The
governor was exonerated, but New York’s citizens took advantage of his
absence to heighten their calls for change and in 1683 James relented, replac-
ing Andros with Thomas Dongan and giving him orders to create the much-
desired Assembly.
On 7 May 1688, New York was included within the Dominion of New
England in America, which James (who succeeded his brother as king in
1685) had created in an effort to establish a single government for England’s
North American possessions. As the Dominion’s administration dissolved in
chaos the following year, Jacob Leisler (a merchant of German descent) took
control of New York City and southern areas of the province, holding a
convention that formed a committee responsible for maintaining order. The
wealthy landlord and merchant elite opposed the takeover because Leisler
espoused democratic forms of rule that theatened their privileged position in
the colony. In 1691, they succeeded in having him hanged, but his interven-
tion had long-lasting administrative repercussions because his convention
survived as a permanent elected body, with the older council as an upper
house, giving New York a bicameral Assembly. By the 18th century, New
York City, at the mouth of the Hudson River, was the established commer-
354 • NEW YORK
cial center of the province, exporting furs and timber, housing a wealthy
mercantile class, importing manufactured goods from Britain and sugar from
colonies in the West Indies, and providing a market for the produce of the
interior. Even so, some 80 percent of the population was dependent on agri-
culture, with large manors in the upstate region worked either by tenant
farmers or by African slaves. That land tenure system undoubtedly deterred
European immigrants, who could easily acquire freehold properties of their
own in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, or other British possessions in the region,
and it also conferred great power on the estate owners.
One of those wealthy landlord families—the Livingstons, a Scottish dy-
nasty that maintained some 160,000 acres along the Hudson River and whose
descendants include U.S. Presidents George H. W. Bush and George W.
Bush—led a group opposed to the taxes that were imposed by Britain in an
effort to defray the costs of the Seven Years’ War, fought from 1756–1763.
The Sugar Act of 1764 halved the tax on molasses but provided for rigorous
enforcement of revenue collection and weighed heavily on New York mer-
chants suffering from postwar economic depression, and, the following year,
the Stamp Act fueled more dissent by imposing a tax on legal documents and
thus annoying lawyers. The Tea Act, passed by parliament in 1773, added to
the complaints because it gave the East India Company the right to sell the
commodity through its own agents rather than through independent traders.
In January 1774, the colony’s Assembly began to correspond with repre-
sentatives of other British North American possessions regarding the grie-
vances. Loyalty to the mother country remained strong among the 182,000
population, partly because of links through church affiliations and family but
also because of fears of attacks by Native American groups and of the eco-
nomic and social instability that would result if policies advocated by the
radicals were pursued. As a result, New Yorkers largely ignored the boycott
of British goods instituted by the other territories on 1 December that year,
but when news reached New York City of the battles between British troops
and colonial forces at Concord and Lexington on 19 April 1775 armed mili-
tias assumed control. On 19 October William Tryon, the crown-appointed
governor, had to seek refuge on a British ship in the harbor, and on April 17
the following year he dissolved the Assembly—an act that, in effect, ended
any semblance of British authority. On 9 July 1776, New York was the last
of the thirteen colonies to sign a Declaration of Independence that made it
an independent state, and on 26 July 1788 it was the 11th state to ratify the
articles of confederation that became the first constitution of the United
States of America.
See also AMERICAN REVOLUTION; AMERICAN REVOLUTION-
ARY WAR (1775–1783); MARYLAND; NEW HAMPSHIRE; TANGIER;
WESTMINSTER, TREATY OF (1674).
 NEW ZEALAND • 355
NEW ZEALAND. When, in December 1642, explorer Abel Tasman sighted
territory in the southwestern Pacific Ocean that was previously unknown to
Europeans, and which he thought was part of South America, he named it
Staten Landt in honor of the States General of the Netherlands. Dutch cartog-
raphers changed that to Nova Zeelandia (after the island of Zeeland) and
Captain James Cook anglicized the term, as New Zealand, during his visit in
1769–70. From 1788, Britain considered most of the islands part of New
South Wales, but the government of that colony ignored the area, which
attracted traders seeking flax, sealskins, and timber as well as whaling ves-
sels that required provisions. With no effective system of policing, early
settlements gained a reputation for lawlessness that, along with plans by the
French and by the New Zealand Company—a private concern—to promote
settlement, provoked action from the British government. Local Maori chiefs
were induced to cede sovereignty in return for protection and recognition of
land ownership (see WAITANGI, TREATY OF (1840)), and New Zealand
was detached from New South Wales, becoming a separate British colony on
3 May 1841. A Constitution Act passed by the British parliament in 1852
created a bicameral parliament responsible for legislating over domestic af-
fairs, with an elected General Assembly and an Executive Council appointed
by the governor. The settled constitutional position stimulated immigration
and that placed pressure on the Maori communities to sell land but they did
so with reluctance, and the tensions led, during the 1860s, to New Zealand
land wars that culminated in confiscation of much tribal property by the
colonial power. In North Island, the troubles seriously restricted the develop-
ment of the economy, but South Island, with its smaller indigenous popula-
tion, was less affected, its prosperity heightened by agricultural develop-
ments and by the discovery of gold, particularly after alluvial deposits were
found at Gabriel’s Gully, Otago, in 1861. Prospects brightened even further
in the 1880s, when technological developments in refrigeration allowed
farmers to produce butter, cheese, and meat that could be sent to markets as
far away as Europe.
The last years of the 19th century were marked by social change, bringing
the emergence of national political parties, first steps toward welfare policies,
the growth of trade unions, and (in 1893) the introduction of universal adult
female suffrage—a radical move unmatched anywhere else in the world at
the time. In 1901, New Zealand opted not to join the Commonwealth of
Australia, and in 1907 the British government converted it from a colony to
a dominion, equal in status with Australia, Canada, and Newfoundland and
with a right to be consulted over decisions relating to the Empire’s foreign
affairs. By that time, however, domestic politicians were demanding greater
influence over their own foreign policy, which was shaped by Great Britain
(as in 1914, when the British decision to go to war against Germany was, in
effect, a declaration of war on behalf of New Zealanders as well). Ultimately,
356 • NEW ZEALAND LAND WARS
the control they wanted was gained through the Balfour Declaration of 15
November 1926, which placed the dominions on an equal footing with Brit-
ain, effectively making them independent states, though a significant minor-
ity of New Zealand’s citizens argue that their country will not be fully inde-
pendent until it severs its links with the British sovereign, who is also New
Zealand’s monarch (see COMMONWEALTH REALM), and becomes a re-
public.
See also AUCKLAND ISLANDS; BOUNTY ISLANDS; CAMPBELL
ISLAND; CHATHAM ISLANDS; COMMONWEALTH IMMIGRATION
TO THE UNITED KINGDOM; COOK ISLANDS; LEAGUE OF NA-
TIONS MANDATED TERRITORY; LORD HOWE ISLAND; NAURU;
OCEAN ISLAND; OLD COMMONWEALTH; OVERSEAS SETTLE-
MENT SCHEME; PITCAIRN ISLANDS; ROSS DEPENDENCY; SA-
MOA; SAVAGE ISLAND; TODD, REGINALD STEPHEN GARFIELD
(1908–2002); UNITED NATIONS TRUST TERRITORY; WESTMIN-
STER, STATUTE OF (1931).

NEW ZEALAND LAND WARS. From 1843 until 1872, the Maori peoples
of New Zealand conducted an armed struggle against British colonial au-
thorities and European settlers. The causes were numerous, stemming partly
from disagreements over government and over the transfer of the capital
from Kororareka (now known as Russell) to Auckland, but were principally
related to disputes over land following the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi
on 6 February 1840. That treaty had promised British protection for Maori
property and provided that all sales of Maori land would be handled by
representatives of the British crown in order to ensure that the indigenous
tribes were not exploited. However, the British negotiators did not fully
understand the Maori principles of communal ownership and, under pressure
from settlers to sell land quickly, made numerous mistakes (including, for
example, buying land from people who did not own it). Maori dissatisfaction
with the process flared into violence as tensions increased, with the first
outbreak occurring at Wairau, near Nelson, on 17 June 1843, when four
Maori and 22 British settlers were killed (13 of the settlers after surrender-
ing). Other struggles broke out at Kororareka (1845–1846), the Hutt Valley
(1846), Wanganui (1847–1848), Taranaki (1860–1861 and 1863–1869),
Waikato (1863–1864), Tauranga (1864), and along North Island’s east coast
(1868–1872). In retaliation, the New Zealand parliament (which had no Mao-
ri representatives) passed legislation that, from 1865, allowed the govern-
ment to confiscate some 3,000,000 acres of Maori land, much of which was
mountain and swamp that was clearly unsuitable for settlement by colonists
so was reclaimed by the indigenous groups as government turned a blind eye.
In recent decades, a tribunal appointed by the New Zealand government to
 NEWFOUNDLAND • 357
investigate Maori land claims has ruled, on several occasions, that the confis-
cations were unlawful, thus paving the way for compensation to the tribes
that suffered.

NEWFOUNDLAND. Newfoundland’s location off the North American

coast at the mouth of the St. Lawrence River was known to Europeans from
at least 1000 CE, when Norse mariners established a village at L’Anse-aux-
Meadows, the most northerly point of the island. Sir Humphrey Gilbert
claimed the territory for England on 5 August 1583, but several nations
contested sovereignty because the seas around the island were rich in cod,
which could be salted, dried, and then sold to markets as far away as Medi-
terranean Europe and the West Indies. British control was not recognized
internationally until 1713, when a series of treaties, collectively known as the
Treaty of Utrecht, ended the War of the Spanish Succession that had occu-
pied the armies of several powers since 1701. The first English settlement
was founded by the London and Bristol Company in 1610 at Cuper’s Cove
on the Avalon Peninsula but survived for only 18 years, partly because
fishery interests based in England, fearing competition, resorted to destruc-
tion of property and physical violence in an effort to force the colonists out.
Until well into the 18th century, immigration was tolerated rather than pro-
moted by British governments that considered the island more a fishing
outpost than a colony. Most of the early settlers made their homes in the
Conception Bay and St. John’s areas, with later arrivals—including many
from the west of England and southeastern Ireland—spreading along the
coast but rarely venturing into the interior. From the 1790s, exploitation of
the seal population provided some of those migrants with a source of income
as Britain’s industrial revolution created a demand for seal oil, both for
lighting and for use in the leather industry. Railroad construction offered
alternative employment from 1881, iron ore was mined from 1894, and paper
was manufactured from 1910, using the extensive forest resources, but the
fisheries dominated Newfoundland’s economy until well into the 20th centu-
ry.
Local administration during the 17th and early 18th centuries was orga-
nized by the fishermen themselves, and even though a governor—Captain
Henry Osborn of the Royal Navy—was appointed in 1729 he was in resi-
dence only during the fishing season, as were all his successors until 1817.
Demands for a more permanent, representative form of government grew
only after the Napoleonic Wars ended in 1815 and the Newfoundland econo-
my, which had boomed during the conflict, became depressed as European
fishing fleets returned, competing with local boats for the catch. As a series
of hard winters, and several seasons of poor fishing, added to the miseries,
William Carson (a Scots-born doctor) and Patrick Morris (an Irish merchant
and shipowner) led the campaign for “a resident governor and legislature,”
358 • NEWFOUNDLAND
arguing that the existing system of shared naval and civilian authority hin-
dered economic progress. The island was eventually made a crown colony
on 17 June 1824 and, in 1832, became the last British colony in North
America to be granted representative government, in the form of a bicameral
legislature with an upper house (the Legislative Council) appointed by the
governor and a lower house (the Assembly) elected by males holding British
citizenship and aged 21 or over. Friction developed very quickly as the
Council (consisting mainly of merchants and military men, most of them
adherents of the Church of England) resisted efforts by the Assembly (which
had a wider range of occupational backgrounds and religious convictions) to
increase its powers. However, despite the tensions, Britain granted the colo-
ny responsible government (that is, an arrangement by which the executive
authorities are answerable to the elected representatives of residents) on 5
May 1855.
Newfoundland opted not to join the Dominion of Canada, formed in
1867, and on 26 September 1907 was made a dominion in its own right,
giving it self-government virtually independent of British interference. How-
ever, by the early 1930s the colony faced serious financial difficulties due to
the cost of servicing debts incurred during World War I, and of providing
social and transport infrastructure, combined with a reduction in demand for
exports (a result of economic recession in major markets). With defaults on
the debt payments a real possibility, Britain suspended the Newfoundland
administration on 18 December 1933 and appointed a commission of govern-
ment responsible to the secretary of state for dominion affairs (see COLONI-
AL OFFICE) in London. The island’s economy boomed again during World
War II as construction work at military bases provided jobs, but the quest for
a stable form of political control was resumed in 1945, when peace returned.
In June 1948, a referendum offered citizens the choice of a continuation of
the commission of government (the preference of 22,311 voters), union with
Canada (popular with 64,066 voters), or a return to responsible government
(the ideal solution for 69,400 people). A second poll, held the following
month, omitted the commission option and produced a majority of 7,489 in
favor of union (with many voters influenced by their neighbor’s more gener-
ous social welfare system) so Newfoundland became part of the Dominion of
Canada on 31 March 1949, with Canada assuming responsibility for the
outstanding debt.
See also ALL RED LINE; ANGLO-AMERICAN CONVENTION OF
1818; BALFOUR DECLARATION (1926); BRITISH NORTH AMERICA;
CABOT, JOHN (c. 1451–1498?); COOK, JAMES (1728–1779); LOWER
CANADA; PARIS, TREATY OF (1783); WESTMINSTER, STATUTE OF
(1931).
 NIGERIA • 359
NICOBAR ISLANDS. The 19 islands in the Nicobar archipelago lie in the
Indian Ocean some 800 miles east of Sri Lanka and 95 miles north of Suma-
tra, stretching from northwest to southeast between latitudes 9° 17´ and 6°
45´ North and between longitudes 92° 75´ and 93° 49´ East. They were
colonized by the Danish East India Company from 1755 and initially admin-
istered from that firm’s base in Tranquebar with the intention of developing
an agricultural economy based on such crops as cinnamon, coffee, cotton,
pepper, and sugarcane. However, although the natural harbor at Nancowry,
in the central region of the group, had long been used by seafarers, settlers
frequently fell victim to tropical diseases, particularly malaria, so the territo-
ry was often abandoned then reoccupied. In 1866, during one of those peri-
ods of abandonment, the islanders boarded the British brig Futteh Islam,
sailing from Penang to Rangoon, and murdered all but three of the crew. In
order “to impress upon the natives that we are fully prepared to punish
them,” British officials sent HMS Wasp (under Captain Norman B. Beding-
field), accompanied by HMS Satellite (with Captain Joseph Edye), to investi-
gate. Finding extensive evidence of piracy, killing of male passengers, and
kidnapping of female travelers, the commanders ordered the destruction of
villages and war canoes as retribution.
The following year, Sir Charles Wycke, the British ambassador in Copen-
hagen, the Danish capital, asked the Danes to take action to end the illegal
activities, but Denmark—which had sold its colonies in India to Great Brit-
ain in 1845 (see SERAMPORE; TRANQUEBAR) and, in 1847, had offered
to add the Nicobar Islands for the sum of £50,000—decided that the cost of
dealing with the islanders would outweigh the likely returns so abandoned its
claim to the area, transferring all rights to Britain, without requesting a fee,
on 16 October 1868. Britain integrated the territory into British India,
curbed the pirates’ activities, established a penal settlement at Nancowry in
1869, and, in 1884, made a short-lived effort to promote Chinese immigra-
tion. In 1872, the Nicobar Islands were united, administratively, with their
more northerly neighbors, the Andaman Islands, and governed by a chief
commissioner who resided in Port Blair, the Andamans’ principal settlement.
In 1947, the group became a province within independent India but in 1956
was given Union Territory status—an arrangement that involves government
by an appointee of the Indian president rather than by an elected assembly.

NIGER COAST PROTECTORATE. See SOUTHERN NIGERIA.

NIGERIA. Britain’s interest in West Africa developed from the early 19th
century and its colonial possessions grew in somewhat piecemeal fashion, so
Sir Frederick Lugard placed a very disparate collection of ethnic, linguistic,
and religious groups under a single administration when, on 1 January 1914,
360 • NIGERIA
he acted on the instructions of Colonial Secretary Lewis Harcourt and
merged the Colony and Protectorate of Southern Nigeria with the Protec-
torate of Northern Nigeria to form the Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria.
While Lugard was high commissioner for predominantly Islamic Northern
Nigeria from 1900–1906, he had introduced a system of indirect rule, which
permitted local emirs to retain much of their traditional authority, albeit
under the close supervision of white officials. In the more anglicized and
Christian south, however, he found that deference to native leaders was less
strong so indirect rule was less easily imposed. As a result, officials in
different regions of the territory evolved rather different management prac-
tices. Lugard initiated infrastructural improvements—such as railroad con-
struction—that furthered the growth of an economy based largely on the
export of cash crops (notably cocoa and groundnuts) and also encouraged
migration to areas (such as the port city of Lagos) where employment was
most easily acquired. In 1922, his successor, Sir Hugh Clifford (one of very
few Roman Catholics to achieve high rank in Britain’s colonial administra-
tions), took the first steps toward representative government by introducing a
limited number of elected members to the legislative council that exercised
authority in the more educated southern regions of Nigeria—a move that
reflected increasingly frequent assertions, across the African continent, that
non-Europeans had a right to involvement in imperial decision-making pro-
cesses. Newspaper proprietor Herbert Macaulay formed the first Nigerian
political party—the National Democratic Party—in 1923, calling for
Africanization of the civil service, and from 1934 the Nigerian Youth Move-
ment campaigned for improvements in the education system and for Nigeria
to be granted the dominion status that would give it political equality with
Australia and Canada within the Empire.
In the years after World War II, as demands for greater political represen-
tation were increasingly replaced by demands for political independence,
Britain responded with a series of constitutional changes that culminated, in
1954, with the introduction of a federal system that created a 185-seat House
of Representatives, with provincial assemblies in the Eastern, Northern, and
Western Regions of the territory as well as in the Federal Territory of Lagos
(the 27-square-mile center of colonial administration) and in the trust territo-
ry of Southern Cameroons, which Britain had administered as part of Nigeria
(see BRITISH CAMEROONS). In 1957, Eastern Region and Western Re-
gion gained internal self-government, with the federal authority retaining
control of banking, defense, and foreign relations. Northern Region, which
deferred rights to self-government until 1959, initially resisted calls for Brit-
ish withdrawal because it feared that it would be the poor relation in a new
state, but in that year, on the basis of its population size, it was awarded 174
seats in the new 312-seat federal House of Representatives, and on 1 October
1960 the Federation of Nigeria became an independent state with a parlia-
 NKOMO, JOSHUA MQABUKO NYONGOLO (1917–1999) • 361
mentary style of government. However, ethnic tensions worsened after the
British officials withdrew, and by 1966 the new country was under military
rule.
See also BIGHT OF BENIN; BIGHT OF BIAFRA; BRITISH WEST
AFRICA; GOLDIE, GEORGE DASHWOOD TAUBMAN (1846–1925);
KINGSLEY, MARY HENRIETTA (1862–1900); ROYAL NIGER COM-
PANY; SLESSOR, MARY MITCHELL (1848–1915); WILSON, JAMES
HAROLD (1916–1995).

NIUE. See SAVAGE ISLAND.

NKOMO, JOSHUA MQABUKO NYONGOLO (1917–1999). Nkomo

was one of the principal leaders of the nationalist movement that, in 1980,
ended white minority rule in Southern Rhodesia. The third of eight children
in the family of cattle farmer Thomas Nkomo and his wife, Mlingo, Joshua
was born at the Tshimale mission station in Matabeleland on 17 June 1917.
After elementary school, he worked as a carpenter and truck driver, saving
enough money to further his education in South Africa, where he mixed
with Nelson Mandela and other young advocates of the black African cause.
Later, he studied through correspondence courses and eventually graduated
with a degree in economics and social science from the University of South
Africa in 1951.
In 1947, Nkomo took a job as a social welfare worker on the Rhodesian
railroads (becoming the first black man to hold such a post) and got involved
in labor union work with the Rhodesian Railways African Employees’ Asso-
ciation, building it into a significant advocacy group with more than 2,500
members. His employers regarded him as an influential figure and a political
moderate so, in 1952, he was invited to join Prime Minister Godfrey Huggins
and other delegates at a London conference held to discuss the formation of a
Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. Nkomo’s experiences at those
meetings changed the course of his life because all of his arguments against
white rule were rejected. He returned to Southern Rhodesia, determined to
advance the black African cause, and, within a year, had been elected presi-
dent of the African National Congress (ANC). After that party was banned in
1959, he toured the world in an effort to persuade governments to apply
pressure for change on the Federation, the Southern Rhodesia authorities, and
the United Kingdom (which, as the colonial power, had legal authority to
intervene). In 1960, Nkomo formed a National Democratic Party to succeed
the ANC, but that, too, was banned so, in 1962, he founded the Zimbabwe
African People’s Union (ZAPU) then when that was proscribed as well,
appointed a government-in-exile, based in Tanzania. However, black African
nationalists continued to be frustrated by the lack of progress toward emanci-
362 • NKRUMAH, KWAME (1909–1972)
pation, and that led to disagreements over strategy within the ZAPU leader-
ship as well as to concerns that Nkomo preferred the comfort of international
diplomacy to the hardships of day-to-day struggle at home. Those dissatis-
factions encouraged some members (including Robert Mugabe) to break
away in 1963 and form a rival Zimbabwe African National Union
(ZANU).
On 16 April 1964, Nkomo was arrested, along with other high-profile
nationalists, and detained until 15 December 1974, when he was released
following negotiations initiated by Prime Minister B. J. Vorster of the Union
of South Africa. Resuming his attempts at negotiation, he held meetings with
other African leaders (including Hastings Banda in Malawi, Kenneth
Kaunda in Zambia, and Julius Nyerere in Tanzania), but his attempts to
find a compromise with Ian Smith, Southern Rhodesia’s conservative prime
minister, greatly damaged his reputation in the nationalist camp, which had
become much more militant during his incarceration. Partly as a result, and
partly because of the ethnic composition of the population, when elections
were held to appoint a government for the embryo Republic of Zimbabwe
early in 1980, Mugabe’s ZANU party won comfortably. For two years, Nko-
mo held the post of minister for home affairs, but his relationship with
Mugabe was always uncomfortable and in 1982 he was accused of planning
a coup d’état. His passport was seized, but he managed to escape to Britain,
thoroughly annoying Mugabe, who sent his troops into Nkomo’s Matabele-
land stronghold, killing some 20,000 members of the Ndebele tribe in an
attempt to destroy ZAPU. Five years later, Nkomo agreed to merge the two
parties in order, he later claimed, to end the slaughter but accepting that his
decision made Zimbabwe a one-party state. He held the post of vice-presi-
dent from 1987 but played no major role in national affairs from then until
his death from prostate cancer in Harare on 1 July 1999.
See also TODD, REGINALD STEPHEN GARFIELD (1908–2002).

NKRUMAH, KWAME (1909–1972). In 1957, Kwame Nkrumah led the

Gold Coast to independence following what many observers of the time
considered a model process for peaceful decolonization in Africa. He was
born in the village of Nkroful (now in Ghana’s Western Region), on or about
21 September 1909, to Kofi Ngonloma (a goldsmith) and Elizabeth Nyani-
bah, performed well at school, and in 1935 (after failing to win entry to the
University of London) left Africa to study in the United States. There, he
earned undergraduate degrees in arts and in sacred theology at Lincoln Uni-
versity, Pennsylvania, and master’s degrees in education and in philosophy
at the University of Pennsylvania. More importantly, given the direction of
his later career, he became active in black student organizations and be-
friended several Marxist and Trotskyist intellectuals, including Trinidadian
writer C. L. R. James.
 NKRUMAH, KWAME (1909–1972) • 363
In May 1945, Nkrumah moved to the United Kingdom, intending to
pursue legal studies at the London School of Economics. However, James
had arranged for George Padmore, a fellow-Trinidadian and boyhood friend,
to help the new immigrant get his bearings in the unfamiliar British environ-
ment and Padmore involved Nkrumah in planning the logistics of a Pan-
African Congress that was to be held in Manchester in October. Enthused by
contacts with such passionate critics of colonialism as Kenya Colony’s
Jomo Kenyatta and Nyasaland’s Hastings Banda, by the end of the year
Nkrumah had founded the anti-imperialist West African Secretariat with the
aim of uniting Africa’s nationalist campaigners under a single banner. At the
same time, J. B. Danquah, the first black African to receive a law doctorate
from the University of London, was forming the United Gold Coast Conven-
tion (UGCC) to advocate an end to British rule. One of Danquah’s col-
leagues, Ebenezer Ako-Adjei, had studied with Nkrumah at Lincoln and
recommended that the exile should be asked to return to his homeland and
use his oratorical and organizational skills as general secretary of the new
political party. Nkrumah accepted the invitation, arrived in December 1947,
and set about the task of converting the small association into a mass move-
ment. He was jailed for a month on 12 March the following year when the
police believed (wrongly) that the UGCC had encouraged war veterans to
protest publicly over unpaid pensions then, on his release, traveled the colo-
ny, arguing for “self-government now” and deliberately drawing disaffected
groups (including cocoa farmers, members of labor unions, and women) to
his cause. His radical message led to tensions with those UGCC leaders who
favored a more conciliatory pathway to independence so, unwilling to com-
promise, he formed his own Convention People’s Party (CPP) in 1949 and
encouraged his members to take “positive action” in support of their cause by
joining nonviolent protest gatherings and by refusing to cooperate with colo-
nial officials. On 1 January 1950, the day the campaign of civil disobedience
started, police arrested Nkrumah again. This time, he was given a three-year
prison sentence for sedition.
The British government, facing increasing international pressure to allow
its foreign possessions a greater degree of self-government, held a general
election in the Gold Coast on 5–10 February 1951, basing it, for the first
time, on universal adult suffrage. The CPP won 34 of the 38 seats so, acting
on his own initiative, Sir Charles Noble Arden-Clarke, the governor of the
territory, released Nkrumah from jail on 12 February and asked him to form a
government responsible for internal matters. At first, the two men were
understandably suspicious of each other, but over the next six years they
worked well together as Nkrumah initiated programs of economic and social
development while attempting to bind disparate ethnic groups together and
pressing the case for full independence. On 12 November 1956, European
364 • NOOTKA SOUND CONVENTIONS
and African politicans agreed on a new constitution for the region and on 6
March 1957 the Gold Coast won independence as Ghana, with Nkrumah the
new state’s prime minister.
Almost immediately, the new administration approved an expensive series
of infrastructural improvements affecting agriculture, communications,
health care, and industry while projecting Ghana as the beacon of socialism
in Africa and encouraging other colonial territories on the continent to follow
in its footsteps. However, in the 1960s, as cocoa prices tumbled and the
country’s foreign debt mounted, Nkrumah’s support base shrank, and he
responded by taking more and more responsibility for government on his
own shoulders, banning opposition parties in 1964 and declaring himself
president for life. As the economic deterioration continued, dissatisfaction
mounted, particularly in the armed forces and the police, who staged a coup
on 24 February 1966, while Nkrumah was on a visit to China. He never
returned, taking refuge in Guinea and dying of skin cancer in Bucharest,
Romania, on 27 April 1972. His reputation is mixed. Detractors condemn
him for crippling the country he inherited, but, in 1999, listeners to the
British Broadcasting Corporation’s World Service in Africa voted him their
“Man of the Millenium.”
See also LENNOX-BOYD, ALAN TINDAL (1904–1983); MUGABE,
ROBERT GABRIEL; NYERERE, JULIUS KAMBARAGE (1922–1999).

NOOTKA SOUND CONVENTIONS. In the late 18th century, Great Brit-

ain and Spain both claimed territory on the northeastern coast of the Pacific
Ocean. The dispute came to a head in the summer of 1789, when Manuel
Antonio Flores, the viceroy of New Spain (which included Spanish territory
in North America), ordered Esteban José Martínez, an explorer and naviga-
tor, to build a settlement on the Vancouver Island shore of Nootka Sound
and thus emphasize Spanish sovereignty. Martínez arrived on 5 May and
attempted to prevent vessels of other nationalities from dropping anchor.
Some of those efforts were successful, but three British ships, all owned by
Associated Merchants Trading to the Northwest Coast of America, were
detained and their crews arrested. John Meares, a Royal Navy lieuten-
ant–turned-fur-trader and one of the leading partners in the group, convinced
the British government that he had established a trading base in Nootka
Sound the year before Martínez appeared and, partly by exaggerating the
financial implications of the ships’ seizure, succeeded in having the matter
discussed in parliament. As a result, on 5 July 1790, Francis Osborne, duke
of Leeds and foreign secretary, sent King Charles IV, the Spanish monarch,
an ultimatum, demanding that Spain acknowledge that it had acted illegally.
At the time, Spain and France were allies, but the French, involved in the
early stages of a revolution that would eventually replace the monarchy with
a republic, were unwilling to go to war so Spain, with naval resources con-
 NORFOLK ISLAND • 365
siderably inferior to those of Britain, decided to negotiate and, under the
terms of a Nootka Convention, signed on 28 October, agreed to return the
captured ships as well as pay an indemnity. Also, the coast was opened to
traders of both nations, and Spain contracted to return Meares’s land to
British control. Captain George Vancouver of the Royal Navy and Ship
Captain Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra (the Spanish commander in
the region) were charged with implementing the agreement in the summer of
1792, but although the two men became very friendly they were unable to
resolve differences over boundaries and decided to refer the matter back to
their governments. On 12 February 1793, Britain and Spain signed a second
convention, which made specific provision for the Spanish to compensate
Meares and his partners for their losses. By then, however, the Nootka inci-
dents were four years in the past, the French revolution had gathered pace,
and both Spain and Great Britain were aligning themselves with a coalition
of states prepared to invade France and restore the monarchy so the political
climate favored accord rather than continued acrimony. On 11 January 1794,
a third agreement sanctioned the use of Nootka Sound by both parties, allow-
ing them to construct “temporary buildings” but prohibiting them from
claiming “any right of sovereignty or territorial dominion.” In the decades
that followed, Britain became the major power in the northeastern Pacific,
but when the United States acquired Spanish interests in North America in
1819 it contested the British right to territory in the area known as Columbia
District and Oregon Country. Britain cited the Nootka Conventions in de-
fense of its position, but the arguments continued until 15 June 1846, when
the Oregon Treaty divided the area and established a boundary that now
forms the border between Canada and the U.S.
See also PITT THE YOUNGER, WILLIAM (1759–1806).

NORFOLK ISLAND. Norfolk, the tip of a 1,000-mile-long submerged

mountain range, lies in the Pacific Ocean some 1,050 miles northeast of
Sydney, Australia, at latitude 29° 2´ South and longitude 167° 57´ East.
Uninhabited when Captain James Cook first sighted it on 11 October 1774,
it was settled as a British penal colony on 6 March 1788, abandoned in 1814,
resettled (again as a prison camp) in 1825, and abandoned for a second time
(because of the high cost of maintenance and complaints about the condi-
tions) in 1855. By that time, the residents of the Pitcairn Islands, 3,700
miles to the east, were outgrowing the resources available to support them so
the British government decided to move all 193 occupants to 13-square-mile
Norfolk, allow them to govern themselves, and study the community as it
developed. The experiment was not a success. Some Pitcairners were unhap-
py in the new location so groups returned to the home island in 1858 and in
1863. Also, those who stayed welcomed newcomers, annoying colonial ad-
ministrators who felt that the arrivals (who included potential marriage part-
366 • NORTH, FREDERICK, LORD NORTH (1732–1792)
ners) would corrupt local morals. As a result, and despite the islanders’
protests, Britain revoked Norfolk’s rights to self-government in 1897 and
handed executive authority to the governor of New South Wales. Then, on
1 July 1914, responsibility for administration was transferred to the Com-
monwealth of Australia. The residents became Australian (rather than British
citizens) in 1948, but the constitutional situation is still controversial because
some islanders maintain that the Pitcairn families were assured of political
independence when they made the move to Norfolk in 1856.

NORTH, FREDERICK, LORD NORTH (1732–1792). Lord North is re-

membered, somewhat unjustly, as the prime minister who lost much of Brit-
ain’s Empire in North America. Born in London on 13 April 1732 to Francis
North, earl of Guilford, and his wife, Lucy, who died when her son was just
two years old, Frederick was elected to parliament (as the representative for
the market town of Banbury) in 1754 and, in June 1959, was appointed to his
first government post, as a junior lord of the Treasury, in the uneasy coalition
administration led by Thomas Pelham-Holles, duke of Newcastle, and
William Pitt the Elder. He retained that office under the prime minister-
ships of John Stuart, earl of Bute, and George Grenville, earning a reputa-
tion as a skillful speaker with a growing understanding of the country’s
finances, but resigned when Charles Watson-Wentworth, marquess of
Rockingham, succeeded Grenville in July 1765. The exile from government
did not last long, though, because, just 12 months later, he returned as joint
paymaster-general of the forces under Pitt then, on 10 September the follow-
ing year, accepted the post of chancellor of the exchequer after declining it
on two occasions because it brought more work and a lower salary. When
Pitt’s successor, Augustus FitzRoy, duke of Grafton, resigned on 28 January
1770, King George III invited North to replace him.
The new prime minister was quickly embroiled in colonial matters be-
cause, in June of the same year, a 1,400-strong Spanish force occupied the
small British settlement at Port Egmont, in the Falkland Islands. The action
was intended as a precursor to a Franco-Spanish invasion of Great Britain,
but King Louis XV, the French monarch, had no desire for conflict so Spain
withdrew and North was able to claim that he had avoided war. (However,
some writers have argued that the incident convinced North that France
would not interfere in Great Britain’s colonial affairs and thus influenced his
policies toward the thirteen colonies in North America.) Through the Regu-
lating Act, which received royal assent on 21 June 1773, North provided for
direct government intervention in the affairs of the East India Company and
thus took the first steps toward full government control of India, attempting,
with limited success, to improve the business’s management (for example, by
establishing a supreme court, staffed by English judges, in Calcutta and by
prohibiting employees from accepting bribes) in return for a £1,400,000 loan
 NORTH, FREDERICK, LORD NORTH (1732–1792) • 367
(approved by separate parliamentary legislation) that the firm had requested
in order to stabilize its finances. Also, through the Quebec Act (to which
King George III gave assent on 22 June 1774), he allowed French law to be
used to settle civil disputes in the territory, extended the Province’s boundar-
ies, and guaranteed freedom of worship for Roman Catholics. A proponent of
the union of Great Britain and Ireland, in 1780 Lord North tried to limit the
effects of economic depression, and of protest against British rule, in Ireland
by allowing merchants on the island to trade directly with the colonies rather
than send goods through traders based in Britain.
However, despite all of those concerns, America dominated the imperial
agenda. North had long supported the right of parliament to tax colonists and
opposed the conciliatory gestures made by Rockingham and others after the
settlers protested that the British legislature, in which they were not repre-
sented, had no authority to impose such levies. On 10 May 1773, King
George III gave royal assent to a Tea Act, promoted by the prime minister,
that allowed the East India Company to transport cargoes of tea directly to
the American colonies rather than carry them first to London and then across
the Atlantic. Even with an import tax, the retail price would still be lower
than that for the poorer quality tea smuggled into North America from Dutch
sources so the product would prove popular with purchasers, and the sales,
North reasoned, would indicate acceptance of parliament’s fiscal policies.
However, many colonists continued to oppose the tax on principle, the smug-
glers who had earned a living from selling the Dutch tea objected because
they foresaw a steep drop in their income, and traders who had acted as
middlemen in transactions with London merchants under the existing ar-
rangement complained because they envisaged a loss of business. When, on
16 December 1773, a group of Boston’s citizens vented their wrath by dump-
ing the cargoes of three East India Company vessels into the harbor, North
responded with a series of measures known in Britain as the Coercive Acts
and in America as the Intolerable Acts, allowing the governor of Massachu-
setts to move the trials of royal officials to another colony (or to Great
Britain) if he believed they could not get a fair trial in the province, authoriz-
ing colonial governors to make arrangements for housing British troops,
closing the port of Boston until the Massachusetts Bay Colony compensated
the East India Company for its loss, and placing the Province’s administra-
tion under direct British control. Those measures added fuel to the fire. As
the dissent mounted, North adopted a more conciliatory stance but underesti-
mated the depth of feeling in the thirteen colonies. With neither side willing
to back down, protests became increasingly violent and, in the spring of
1775, flared into war (see AMERICAN REVOLUTION; AMERICAN REV-
OLUTIONARY WAR (1775–1783)). The prime minister left the conduct of
the conflict to his secretary of state for America, George Germain, Viscount
Sackville, both men believing that they would be facing a struggle similar to
368 • NORTH BORNEO
those faced in European affrays and that the colonists would be no match for
British infantrymen, but wrong on both counts. Depressed by military set-
backs, the prime minister was convinced, by 1777, that there was no prospect
of victory, but his view was shared neither by King George nor by public
opinion so he remained in his post until 20 March 1782 when, no longer able
to command a majority in the House of Commons (the lower chamber in
Britain’s bicameral legislature), he insisted on resigning (a gesture that the
monarch considered akin to desertion). North returned to government for
eight months as secretary of state for the Home Department the following
year and remained in parliament, opposing the administration of William
Pitt the Younger, until his eyesight failed in 1790. He died in London on 5
August 1792. Once universally pilloried by writers who blamed him for the
loss of the American colonies, Lord North is now regarded by many histo-
rians as a capable administrator who showed considerable financial skill in
raising funds to support a war that, according to modern strategists, was
always likely to end with a British defeat.

NORTH BORNEO. See BRITISH NORTH BORNEO.

NORTH CAROLINA. The royal colony of North Carolina, on the east

coast of North America, was created on 5 August 1729 after King George II
had purchased the shares owned by seven of the eight proprietors of the
Province of Carolina. (The land from latitude 35° 34´ North to longitude 36°
30´ North, adjoining the Virginia boundary, was given to Baron John Carte-
ret, who refused to sell, and was incorporated within North Carolina in 1777,
during the American Revolutionary War.) The first permanent settlers had
arrived from Virginia in the 1650s, seeking land to farm, but population
numbers grew very slowly because immigrants were deterred by the combi-
nation of a coastline with shifting sandbanks dangerous to shipping, friction
between proprietors and settlers, political tussles with Virginia (over boun-
daries, for example), poor transport (there were few navigable rivers to pro-
vide access to the interior and much of the shoreline was swampland), ten-
sions between religious sects (particularly between Quakers and adherents of
the Church of England), and wars with Native American groups. As a result,
towns were few (Bath, the oldest settlement, was not incorporated until 1705
and, even then, had only about a dozen houses and 50 citizens) and when the
royal colony was created it had only 30,000–35,000 residents, most of them
in the Cape Fear region and along the coastal plain from the Virginia frontier
to the Neuse River valley.
The transfer to royal rule brought increased stability (through stricter en-
forcement of law and order, for instance), and that, in turn, made the area
more attractive to migrants, providing a foundation for the development of
 NORTH CAROLINA • 369
commerce. Tobacco and rice growers brought African slaves and indentured
laborers to work the fields, some 20,000 Scots moved to Cape Fear after
Bonnie Prince Charlie’s efforts to seize the British throne ended with defeat
at the battle of Culloden in 1746, and an estimated 20,000 Germans and
65,000 Scotch-Irish colonists arrived from Pennsylvania, many penetrating
into the Blue Ridge Mountains (where the latter used their Old World skills
to distill whiskey). However, the population trends led to pronounced region-
al variations in economic and social geography. The interests of the commu-
nities in the west, where families eked out a living on small farms cleared
from the forests, were very different from those in the east, where commerce
was dominated by planters and by merchants in the port of Wilmington and
where political life centered on New Bern, the colonial capital. Complaints
from the western counties about corrupt, tyrannical officials who lined their
own pockets with taxes collected unjustly, often by extortion, led, in 1765, to
a series of violent clashes, known as the Regulator Uprising, that were ended
in 1771 by Governor William Tryon (later governor of New York), who
hanged the rebel leaders then raised taxes further in order to pay the militia-
men who had fought the insurgents.
The geographical divisions were also reflected in attitudes toward Great
Britain after the Seven Years’ War ended in 1763 as the London parliament
approved fiscal measures designed to make the American colonies bear more
of the cost of their own defense (see AMERICAN REVOLUTION). Many
settlers opposed the taxes—partly on the grounds that they were levied by a
legislature in which they had no representation—but, as the complaints
mounted, calls for independence were heard more frequently in the west than
in the east, where connections with the mother country were closer. In the
end, the radicals prevailed. On 12 April 1776, delegates to a “provincial
congress” in Halifax declared that “the King and Parliament of Great Britain
have usurped a Power over the Persons and Properties of the People unlimit-
ed and uncontrouled; and . . . have made divers Legislative Acts, denouncing
War Famine and every Species of Calamity against the Continent in Gener-
al.” The assembly authorized three of its number to attend a “continental
congress” with representatives of other British possessions and to vote for a
severance of ties, a task completed on 4 July, when North Carolina and 12
other North American colonies declared themselves sovereign entities, inde-
pendent of the British Empire (see THE THIRTEEN COLONIES). On 12
November, political leaders met, again in Halifax, to draft a constitution for
the new state, and on 21 November 1789 the territory became the 12th to join
the United States of America.
See also RALEIGH, WALTER (c. 1554–1618).
370 • NORTH WEST COMPANY
NORTH WEST COMPANY. North West was the Hudson’s Bay Compa-
ny’s principal commercial rival in the fur trading economy of northern North
America during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It was formed in 1779,
principally by emigrants from the Scottish Highlands who had settled as
traders in Montreal and decided that their businesses would be more success-
ful if they worked as a group rather than competed against each other as well
as against the might of the Hudson’s Bay firm. A series of management
changes and restructurings culminated, in 1787, in a merger with Gregory,
McLeod, and Company that brought new business opportunities and new,
entrepreneurial partners, including Alexander Mackenzie, who was later to
make the first known east–west crossing of the American continent north of
Mexico as he searched for trade routes on behalf of the enterprise. Initially,
the firm concentrated its activities in the Lake Superior area and along the
valleys of the Assiniboine, Red, and Saskatchewan Rivers, but as its contacts
grew it expanded, partly through the leadership of Mackenzie (who worked
from a base at Fort Chipewyan on Lake Athabasca) but also through the
explorations of representatives such as Simon Fraser (who established settle-
ments in the region of the west that he named New Caledonia and which later
became British Columbia) and David Thompson (who defected to North
West from the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1797 and pioneered access to the
Columbia District over the Rocky Mountains). However, the Hudson’s Bay
merchants held a monopoly over trade in the 1,500,000 square miles drained
by the rivers flowing into the Bay and the British government consistently
rejected North West’s pleas for access to the area. Resentment increased as
the fur supply diminished (a consequence of overhunting, particularly of
beaver), and skirmishes between representatives of the two businesses be-
came more and more frequent. The troubles reached a peak in 1816, when
Hudson’s Bay Company employees destroyed the North West Company’s
Fort Gibraltar, an important supply site at the junction of the Assiniboine and
Red Rivers. Then, in the same year, a group of the indigenous Métis people,
who worked for North West, killed 21 Hudson’s Bay Company employees at
nearby Seven Oaks, and Hudson’s Bay Company forces occupied the North
West Company post at Fort William (at the mouth of the Kaministiquia River
on western Lake Superior). The escalating conflict took a financial toll on
both companies and particularly on North West, which proved amenable to
suggestions from Henry Bathurst, secretary of state for war and the colonies
(see COLONIAL OFFICE), that amalgamation would be of benefit to all
parties. The Hudson’s Bay management agreed so the merger was confirmed
on 26 March 1821, with the new business operating 173 trading posts under
the Hudson’s Bay Company name.
See also RED RIVER COLONY.
 NORTHERN RHODESIA • 371
NORTHERN NIGERIA. When the British government relieved the Royal
Niger Company of responsibility for administering territories along the Ni-
ger River, in West Africa, on 1 January 1900, it divided the region into the
protectorates of Northern and Southern Nigeria and appointed Frederick
Lugard high commissioner to the more northerly unit. The 1885 Treaty of
Berlin (see SCRAMBLE FOR AFRICA) had recognized that the land lay
within Britain’s African sphere of interest, but the Company’s grip on the
area had been very loose, making British control largely nominal, and boun-
daries were not clearly defined. With European colonial rivals, particularly
France and Germany, poised to move in, confirmation of strong British rule
was a political necessity so, through a mixture of coercion and diplomacy,
within two years Lugard had persuaded the formerly independent emirates of
Adamawa, Bauchi, Borno, Kontagore, Nupe, and Yola to surrender sove-
reignty to the British crown. In 1903, despite knowing full well that policy
makers in London opposed outright war, he led troops against the leaders of
Kano, Katsina, and Sokoto, strongholds of the Fulani people, and forced
them into submission, too. Lugard believed that King Edward VII’s African
subjects were much more likely to accept the edicts of an African administra-
tor than to obey a European so he replaced existing emirs with more compli-
ant leaders and gave them considerable managerial authority even though
they were subject to close supervision by white officials and barred from
trading in slaves—a structure, known as indirect rule, that became widely
adopted in African and Asian colonies. Relations with the indigenous peo-
ples were not always straightforward, and Lugard ruthlessly suppressed signs
of rebellion, as when he razed the village of Satiri in March 1906 after a
group of British soldiers was killed. He resigned in September of the same
year after clashing with the secretary of state for the colonies, Victor Bruce,
earl of Elgin, who objected to his frequent sojourns in Britain, but he re-
turned in 1912, with instructions to merge Northern Nigeria with the more
wealthy Colony and Protectorate of Southern Nigeria, whose coffers benefit-
ed from dues levied on the commodities that passed through its ports. The
arrangements were completed by 1 January 1914, when the two territories
were united as the Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria, which was renamed
the Federation of Nigeria on 1 October 1954 and won independence on 1
October 1960.
See also KINGSLEY, MARY HENRIETTA (1862–1900); LAGOS.

NORTHERN RHODESIA. In 1911, Cecil Rhodes’s British South Africa

Company (BSAC) amalgamated the territories it controlled in northeastern
and northwestern Rhodesia (see BAROTSELAND) to form a single adminis-
trative unit known as Northern Rhodesia. On 26 April 1924, however, the
British government assumed responsibility for the area, making it a protec-
torate and managing it through the Colonial Office, initially from a base in
372 • NORTHERN RHODESIA
Livingstone and then, from 1935, from Lusaka. For Britain, the move was
one element of a wider policy designed to increase the country’s influence in
southern Africa, and particularly in the lands from South Africa to Kenya,
but efforts to attract white farmers met with only limited success so the
economic potential of the region remained firmly rooted in the mining indus-
try, and particularly in the extraction of copper ores by North American and
South African companies that were owned by whites but heavily dependent
on black African labor. The Africans benefited little from the arrangement,
with more than half the adult male population having to find work away from
home by the 1930s and receiving very limited remuneration in return. More-
over, Britain was making little investment in social infrastructure so, for
example, only a handful of native children was receiving a high school
education.
The situation improved from 1945, when the Labour Party won the first
post–World War II general election in the United Kingdom and formed a
government led by Prime Minister Clement Attlee. In particular, the new
regime encouraged the African miners to form labor unions and gave the
organizations rights similar to those of the bodies representing white work-
ers. At the same time, other interests were forming regional councils and
welfare groups that, in combination, became a significant political force and,
in 1948, won the right to elect two members to the legislative council that
governed the protectorate. However, the growing African voice encouraged
the white residents (who, by 1951, numbered only 37,221 in a total popula-
tion of over 1,730,000) to seek closer ties with Southern Rhodesia, where
the Europeans formed a larger (though still minority) proportion of the citi-
zens. Black groups wholly opposed any such link, but the Labour govern-
ment was keen to consider the proposals because it feared that Southern
Rhodesia would increasingly be influenced by Daniel Malan’s Reunited
National Party and its ally, the Afrikaner Party, that had taken control of the
Union of South Africa’s parliament in 1948 and favored apartheid policies of
racial segregation. Labour’s Conservative Party successors, elected in 1951,
were more persuaded by the white pleas than the black protests and, on 1
August 1953, united Northern Rhodesia with Nyasaland and Southern Rho-
desia (all three of which had initially been colonized by Cecil Rhodes) in a
Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, also known as the Central African
Federation, that the British government hoped would eventually become a
multiracial state. Those hopes were not to be realized. A sharp decline in
world copper prices from 1956 forced the mining companies to fire many of
their employees, and black politicians used the resultant dissatisfaction to
raise support for an end to colonial ties. British leaders accepted that black
Africans would have to be given more authority than the white-dominated
Federation government seemed willing to allow and entered negotiations
 NORTHWEST PASSAGE • 373
with Kenneth Kaunda’s United National Independence Party that led to
Northern Rhodesia winning independence as the Republic of Zambia on 24
October 1964, with Kaunda as president.
See also GROUNDNUT SCHEME; MACLEOD, IAIN NORMAN
(1913–1970); MACMILLAN, MAURICE HAROLD (1894–1986); UNI-
VERSITIES’ MISSION TO CENTRAL AFRICA; WELENSKY, RA-
PHAEL “ROY” (1907–1991); ZIMBABWE AFRICAN PEOPLE’S UN-
ION.

NORTHERN TERRITORY (AUSTRALIA). Australia’s northern coast

was known to Europeans from the travels of 17th-century Dutch explorers
and traders, but the forbidding tropical environment and the limited commer-
cial potential of the area deterred settlers for more than 200 years. By the
early 19th century, however, Britain had established a colony in New South
Wales and was keen to establish sovereignty over the whole of the continent
so the government authorized construction of military garrisons at Fort Dun-
das (1824), Fort Wellington (1827), and Victoria (1838). Never threatened
by competing Old World powers and lacking the maritime trading links that
would have allowed businesses to evolve, all were abandoned by 1850, but in
1863 the territory was annexed to South Australia, which built a small
township at Palmerston (now Darwin) six years later. Then, in 1870, con-
struction began on an overland telegraph line that, within two years, would
provide a link to Adelaide, some 2,000 miles away on the south coast. The
telegraph reduced remoteness and stimulated development. Parties of work-
men erecting poles for the line discovered alluvial gold at Yam Creek, south
of Palmerston, and the news attracted men willing to tolerate the difficult
conditions in the hope of making a fortune. Sheep farmers had begun to graze
animals from about 1866, but drought and hot, humid conditions proved too
much for their flocks so within a few years cattle ranching had become the
dominant agricultural activity, though it was seriously affected by the eco-
nomic recession of the 1890s. Also, the aboriginal people’s resentment at the
incursions was reflected in the killing of stock, but even so, pastoralism and
mining remained the principal sources of income at the end of the century.
Northern Territory joined the Commonwealth of Australia, as part of South
Australia, in 1901. It was placed under Commonwealth government control
in 1911 but was not permitted to form its own legislative assembly until
1978.
See also ASHMORE ISLANDS AND CARTIER ISLAND.

NORTHWEST PASSAGE. English (and later, British) attempts to find a

sea route between the northwestern Atlantic Ocean and the northeastern Pa-
cific Ocean along the northern coast of North America served as a basis for
374 • NORTHWEST PASSAGE
claims of sovereignty over lands in the region and provided much geographi-
cal information about the Arctic and subarctic. After the Ottoman Empire’s
conquests in the eastern Mediterranean closed overland routes to the spices
of the East Indies toward the end of the 15th century, English merchants were
willing to invest in ventures that promised to find a secure maritime route
round the northern American landmass because any ships that they sent to
Indian or Pacific Ocean destinations through the southern Atlantic could be
attacked by Portuguese or Spanish vessels. Martin Frobisher led expedi-
tions in 1576, 1577, and 1578, landing, on each occasion, in what is now
northeastern Canada and claiming Baffin Island, Resolution Island, and oth-
er territories for the English crown. Then, in 1585, 1586, and 1587, John
Davis made three voyages funded by London traders and, on the last of those
journeys, found the entrance to Lancaster Sound. Expectations of success
rose for a while after 1610, when Henry Hudson sailed into the inland sea
now named after him, but the adventurers who followed failed to find the
fabled routeway, though the Hudson’s Bay Company, granted a royal char-
ter by King Charles II in 1670, did much to further exploration, and British
influence, in mainland areas of subarctic America. In 1745, parliament at-
tempted to renew interest by offering a reward of £20,000 to the owners of
the first ship to make the passage, and in the second half of the century the
government itself funded expeditions by James Cook and George Vancou-
ver in an effort to find an entrance from the northwest of the American
continent, where Great Britain vied for supremacy with Russia and Spain
(see NOOTKA SOUND CONVENTIONS).
Interest in the eastern approaches revived from 1817, when John Barrow,
the second secretary to the Admiralty and a firm believer in the existence of
the Passage, convinced political leaders that Russian exploration in northern
latitudes posed a commercial and military threat to British North America
and that it was Britain’s destiny to discover the northerly sea route to Asia.
Nevertheless, by 1845 that route still remained elusive even though John
Ross had undertaken both a government-funded expedition in 1819 and a
venture financed by gin distiller Felix Booth in 1829–1833, William Edward
Parry had made a series of voyages from 1818–1825, and John Franklin
(1819–1822 and 1825–1827), George Back (1833–1835), and Peter Dease
and Thomas Simpson (1837–1839) had mapped sections of the coast. In a
last effort to force a breakthrough, Barrow offered Franklin the command of
an expedition to the remaining section of unexplored territory. That, too,
failed; Franklin sailed from Greenhithe, on the River Thames near London,
on 19 May 1845 and disappeared in the Arctic wastes. More than 20 rescue
operations attempted to find the missing crewmen in searches that were
unavailing but added much to knowledge of the waterways and revealed
several possible Northwest Passages. All of those possibilities, however,
were closed for most of the year by ice, and none proved navigable until
 NORTH-WEST (OR NORTH-WESTERN) TERRITORIES (CANADA) • 375
Roald Amundsen, the Norwegian explorer, successfully made a journey from
west to east in 1903–1906. The Canadian government now asserts that some
areas of the waters are internal to Canada and that it has a right to prohibit
vessels from using them, but that claim is disputed by many countries, in-
cluding the United States and the members of the European Union.
See also ARCTIC ARCHIPELAGO; BANKS, JOSEPH (1743–1820);
NOVA ALBION (OR NEW ALBION); ROSS, JAMES CLARK
(1800–1862).

NORTH-WEST (OR NORTH-WESTERN) TERRITORIES (CANA-

DA). The North-West Territories—which got their name because they lay
northwest of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s core fur trading operations in
North America—included areas that now form parts of northern Alberta,
northern British Columbia, the northwestern regions of mainland Nunavut,
northwestern Saskatchewan, mainland Northwest Territories, and Yukon, in
Canada. In 1576, Martin Frobisher explored the northern coastline of the
Territories, searching for a sea route to the Pacific Ocean, but the ice and the
rigors of the climate forced him, and numerous successors, to retreat. The
first known European exploration of the mainland was undertaken in
1770–1772 by Samuel Hearne, a Hudson’s Bay Company employee, who
(guided by Matonabbee, of the Chipewyan people) tracked the caribou on
their migration routes from Churchill (on the west shore of Hudson Bay) to
the mouth of the Coppermine River. He was followed in 1789 by Alexander
Mackenzie of the North West Company, the Hudson’s Bay Company’s
principal competitor in the area; Mackenzie worked his way down the river
that now bears his name and was disappointed to find that it flowed into the
Arctic Ocean rather than into the Pacific.
Although many of the early travelers were Englishmen or Scots, Great
Britain acquired the area by default rather than by any declaration of sove-
reignty because it was the only power with any significant presence after
France (through the provisions of the Treaty of Utrecht, which ended the
War of the Spanish Succession in 1713) withdrew its claims to Hudson Bay.
Most of the early settlements (such as Fort Chipewyan, at the western end of
Lake Athabasca, and Fort Simpson, on the Mackenzie River) were estab-
lished as fur trading posts, particularly by the Hudson’s Bay Company,
which merged with the North West Company in 1821 and was given a
trading monopoly in the area by the British government. However, after the
monopoly ended in 1859 the firm’s priorities turned to the buying and selling
of real estate, and to investment in economic development projects. In 1867,
while that business reorientation was taking place, British colonies in the east
of the American continent united as the Dominion of Canada and the United
States purchased Alaska from Russia. Canadian politicians, concerned that
much of the West—which they considered a frontier for settlement—could
376 • NOVA ALBION (OR NEW ALBION)
be lost to the Americans, quickly opened negotiations aimed at adding the
Hudson’s Bay Company’s territories to the new confederation. The British
parliament approved the necessary legislation in 1868, and the transfer, in-
cluding North-West Territories, was made on 15 July 1870.
See also BRITISH NORTH AMERICA; STIKINE (OR STICKEEN)
TERRITORY.

NOVA ALBION (OR NEW ALBION). In the early summer of 1759,

Francis Drake—his ship loaded with treasure plundered from Spanish com-
munities on the west coast of the Americas and Spanish vessels on the high
seas—sailed along the northwestern coast of North America in an attempt to
find a Northwest Passage that would link the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans
along the northern coast of the continent and so get him back to England. The
severe cold forced him to retreat until, according to notes left by Francis
Fletcher (the ship’s chaplain), he “fell in with a convenient and fit harbor,
and June 17 came to anchor there, where we continued till the 23 day of July
following.” Spain had asserted its right to the whole Pacific coast of the
American continent in 1493, but England did not recognize that claim so
Drake declared Queen Elizabeth I and her successors sovereign over the
lands north of Spanish settlements in the Americas and, according to Fletch-
er, named the colony “Albion” for two reasons: “the one in respect of the
white banks and cliffs, which lie toward the sea [and, presumably, were
reminiscent of the white cliffs of Dover, in southeastern England]; the other,
that it might have some affinity, even in name also, with our own country,
which was sometime so called.” However, after Drake returned to England
Elizabeth confiscated all of his charts and logs (perhaps because she wanted
her courtiers to concentrate on domestic matters, perhaps because she wanted
to prevent news of her new acquisition from reaching from Spain and so
avoid provoking a war) and all of them were lost when Whitehall Palace,
then the principal royal residence in London, was destroyed by fire in 1698.
Nova Albion was never settled (although 17th-century royal charters regu-
larly awarded colonizers grants of land “from sea to sea” in North America
and Captain James Cook’s orders during his third voyage to the Pacific in
1776–1779, when he was told to search for a Northwest Passage, included an
instruction to proceed “in as direct a course as you can to the coast of New
Albion, endeavouring to fall in with it in the latitude of 45° 0’ North”).
Moreover, although Fletcher noted that landfall had been made at latitude
38° 30ʹ North, Francis Drake’s cousin, John Drake (who was present on the
voyage), reported that the ship may have anchored at latitudes 44°, 46°, or
48° North, and scholars (as well as amateur detectives) have suggested alter-
native locations as far apart as Alaska and southern California. Officially, the
United States government considers that Drake went ashore at Drake’s Cove
in Drake’s Bay, north of San Francisco, at latitude 38° 2’ North and longi-
 NOVA SCOTIA • 377
tude 122° 56’ West, a site that it declared a National Historic Landmark on
17 October 2012. With Elizabeth Island, which Drake had claimed for
Queen Elizabeth earlier on the voyage, Nova Albion was one of the earliest
English assertions of sovereignty over territory in the Americas. However,
when Queen Elizabeth II visited California in 1983 she assured Americans
that she had no intention of pressing that claim.
John Hayes, a naval officer, also attempted to found a settlement named
New Albion when he landed at Dorey Bay (now known as Manokwari) on
the northwestern coast of New Guinea (see PAPUA NEW GUINEA) in
1793. However, the East India Company refused to support the project,
partly because it felt that the nutmeg in the area was of poorer quality than
that found on the Banda Islands, in the Moluccas, and the site was aban-
doned in June 1795.

NOVA SCOTIA. In 1621, King James VI (of Scotland) and I (of England)
granted Sir William Alexander permission to establish settlements on a vast
tract of land stretching along the northeast seaboard of North America from
New England to the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Sir William—a Scot—named the
area Nova Scotia (Latin for “New Scotland”) then spent a fortune trying to
drum up enthusiasm for the project among potential settlers and funding two
abortive attempts to dispatch migrants. Finally, in 1629, he was able to build
a small fort at the mouth of the Annapolis River, but it survived for only
three years because France also claimed the territory. In 1625, King Charles
I, James’s son and successor, married Henrietta Maria, the daughter of Henry
IV of France, but by the end of the decade the dowry was still unpaid, and the
bride’s father was unwilling to honor his commitments until Charles recog-
nized French sovereignty over Nova Scotia and Quebec, so, in 1632, under
the terms of the Treaty of St. Germain-en-Laye, Alexander had to leave. For
more than 80 years, the two countries continued to dispute control of the
region, but eventually, as one of the provisions of the Treaty of Utrecht,
which ended the War of the Spanish Succession in 1713, France ceded the
area to Great Britain.
Britain made no serious attempts to develop Nova Scotia until 1749, when
it founded Halifax as an administrative center and garrison town, intending it
to act as a counterbalance to the French fortress at Louisbourg on Cape
Breton Island. Then, from 1755, it expelled the territory’s French population,
whose loyalty to the crown was considered dubious. The colony’s boundar-
ies expanded with the addition of Cape Breton Island, New Brunswick,
and Prince Edward Island following the signing, on 10 February 1763, of
the Treaty of Paris, which ended the Seven Years’ War that had engulfed
the major European powers. The association was brief, however, because
Prince Edward Island was detached again in 1769, after a determined cam-
paign by its settlers (who wanted to control their own community’s affairs),
378 • NYASALAND
and in 1784 Cape Breton and New Brunswick also became independent
colonies following a rapid increase in residents as some 35,000 refugees fled
north after the American Revolutionary War began in 1775.
Nova Scotia’s population continued to rise through the last years of the
18th century and the first half of the 19th century, supplemented first by
Scots ousted from their tenanted farms as landlords in the Scottish Highlands
sought to maximize returns from sheep rearing then, after 1845, by Irish
families who faced starvation because of the failure of the potato crop and
saw prospects of a more secure existence in the Americas. Other migrants
were attracted by jobs in fishery, shipbuilding, and timber industries, all of
which expanded rapidly, partly as a result of increased military spending
during the Napoleonic Wars from 1803–1815 and the Anglo-American War
of 1812 with the United States. As the number of residents rose and the
economy improved, journalist and politician Joseph Howe led demands for
responsible government in which members of the executive were answerable
to an elected legislative assembly (rather than to a governor appointed by the
crown), a goal achieved early in 1848 when Nova Scotia became the first
colony in the British Empire to become self-governing. Howe went on to
oppose proposals for a federal relationship with Cape Breton Island, New
Brunswick, and the Province of Canada (consisting of modern Ontario and
Quebec) because he believed that the Province of Canada’s interests would
dominate those of his own region. However, Great Britain, fearing another
conflict with the United States, was anxious to leave the defense of Nova
Scotia to Queen Victoria’s subjects in North America so it approved the
formation of the Dominion of Canada, with Nova Scotia an integral part, on
1 July 1867.
See also BRITISH NORTH AMERICA; SAINT-PIERRE AND MIQUE-
LON; SIERRA LEONE; UNITED EMPIRE LOYALIST.

NYASALAND. In August 1859, after an eventful journey up the Zambezi

River, David Livingstone, the Scottish explorer and missionary, reached
Lake Nyasa (now Lake Malawi) in east-central Africa. His reports of a wide-
spread culture of slavery among African peoples in the area encouraged
Christian organizations to send representatives who would attempt to end the
practice, with the Universities’ Mission to Central Africa establishing a
short-lived base in the Shire Highlands in 1861, the Free Church of Scotland
founding a more long-lasting community on the southern shore of the lake in
1875, and the Church of Scotland following the universities to the Shire
Highlands in 1876. Merchants (many of them also Scottish) followed the
religious pioneers and, from 1883, government officials followed the entre-
preneurs, building up a small British population in the region. However, the
Portuguese were also showing interest in the area, intending to develop a
chain of colonies across Africa from Angola (in the west) to Mozambique (in
 NYASALAND • 379
the east), and that would have ended Great Britain’s aspirations for unbrok-
en north-south control of a series of imperial possessions from Cairo to the
Cape of Good Hope, so on 21 September 1889 John Buchanan, the acting
consul, declared the Shire Highlands area a British protectorate. On 15 May
1891, the territory was extended, both to the north and to the south, and
renamed the Nyasaland Districts Protectorate, then on 23 February 1893 it
was redesignated the British Central Africa Protectorate.
In 1891, Prime Minister Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, marquess of Salisbury,
appointed Sir Henry Hamilton Johnston commissioner and consul-general in
the protectorate, with Cecil Rhodes’s British South Africa Company
(BSAC) contributing to the management costs. Using troops imported from
India (and marching with them, always in the shade of a white umbrella),
Johnston devised an administrative system, ended the slave trade, and
granted land to mining interests and coffee growers in order to raise govern-
ment revenue. His approach to ruling black Africans was essentially paterna-
listic—he believed in providing educational facilities while disturbing tradi-
tional societies as little as possible—but his approach to economic develop-
ment inevitably resulted in the most fertile areas falling into white hands and,
as elsewhere, BSAC was often criticized for its treatment of African employ-
ees. Partly as a result of the churches’ protests about the injustices, the
Colonial Office assumed full responsibility for administration in 1904, re-
naming the protectorate Nyasaland on 6 July 1907.
Lacking mineral resources and thus dependent on agricultural products—
initially coffee, then tea (from southern regions) and tobacco (from southern
and central areas)—for export earnings, the landlocked territory was always
one of the Empire’s poor relations despite improvements to transport facil-
ities during the 1920s and 1930s. On several occasions, official bodies con-
sidered proposals to merge Nyasaland with other British possessions, but no
action was taken until 1 August 1953, when it was included with Northern
Rhodesia and Southern Rhodesia within the Federation of Rhodesia and
Nyasaland, primarily because the United Kingdom government felt that it
would not be viable as an independent state but against the wishes of the
great majority of the area’s black Africans, who feared domination by the
right-wing white settlers in Southern Rhodesia and saw the union as a British
attempt to delay giving colonies their freedom.
African communities had always resented subjugation by Europeans, but
(apart from an easily subdued rebellion led by the Reverend John Chilembwe
in 1915) unrest in Nyasaland was limited until the late 1950s, when Hastings
Banda toured the protectorate, drumming up support for the Nyasaland
African Congress. Early in 1959, Roy Welensky, the Federation’s prime
minister, claimed to have evidence that the Congress was planning to over-
throw the government and murder white officials along with black Africans
who cooperated with them. On 21 February, he dispatched military reinforce-
380 • NYERERE, JULIUS KAMBARAGE (1922–1999)
ments to the area, and on 3 March Sir Robert Armitage, Nyasaland’s govern-
or, declared a state of emergency, banning nationalist organizations and
arresting their leaders (Banda among them). Riots broke out as the news
spread, troops were ordered to end the lawlessness, and some 50 Africans
were killed. In Britain, the actions of the colonial authorities provoked wide-
spread protest that Prime Minister Harold Macmillan attempted to quell by
establishing a commission of inquiry led by Sir Patrick Devlin, a respected
lawyer and High Court of Justice judge. Devlin’s report, published in July,
condemned the use of “illegal” force, doubted the existence of any assassina-
tion plot (while accepting that the nationalists had adopted a policy of using
violent means of achieving their ends), and described conditions in Nyasa-
land as those of “a police state.” Macmillan’s Conservative Party administra-
tion responded by rejecting most of those findings but, anxious to rid itself of
a colonial headache, released Banda on 1 April 1960 then—because there
was no other figure approaching his political stature in the protectorate—
flew him to London for talks. The negotiations resulted in the framing of a
constitution for Nyasaland, the territory’s withdrawal from the Federation on
9 May 1963, and independence, as the Commonwealth of Malawi with Ban-
da as prime minister, on 6 July 1964. Exactly two years later, the country
declared itself a republic.
See also MACLEOD, IAIN NORMAN (1913–1970).

NYERERE, JULIUS KAMBARAGE (1922–1999). Nyerere coordinated

opposition to colonial rule in Tanganyika, leading the territory to indepen-
dence in 1961. Born at Butiama, close to Lake Victoria, on 13 April 1922, he
was one of 26 children fathered by Nyerere Burita, a chief of the Zanaki
people. From local schools, he went to Makarere University College in
Uganda then taught for three years before becoming the first Tanganyikan to
complete a degree program in the United Kingdom, graduating from Edin-
burgh University in 1952. On his return to Africa, Nyerere resumed his
pedagogical career, taking a post at St. Francis’ College, near Dar es Salaam,
but Edinburgh had introduced him to concepts of democratic socialism so he
was soon deeply involved in domestic politics, criticizing colonial rule as a
denial of equality to Africans but advocating change through reform rather
than revolution. He joined the Tanganyika African Association and, within a
year of becoming president in 1954, transformed that society of civil servants
into the Tanganyika African National Union (TANU), a national political
party with a membership of some 250,000. Anxious to avoid the violence
that accompanied the independence movement in neighboring Kenya Colo-
ny, TANU promoted a vision of a multiethnic country, with no discrimina-
tion on grounds of race, and Nyerere argued that case before the United
Nations (UN) in 1955 and 1956. The Colonial Office was in no hurry to
hand over power in Tanganyika and treated Nyerere as a troublemaker—in
 NYERERE, JULIUS KAMBARAGE (1922–1999) • 381
1955, it persuaded the U.S. State Department to restrict him to an eight-block
area of New York during his visit to the UN and to limit his stay to 24
hours—but the demand for change in the territory proved impossible to re-
sist. In 1956, Sir Edward Twining, the governor, altered the constitution of
his legislative council to allow equal representation of the major ethnic
groups, but as the 27,000 Europeans, 120,000 Asians, and more than
7,000,000 Africans would each send the same number of representatives to
the debating chamber many of TANU’s leaders advocated a boycott of the
elections, scheduled for September 1958 and February 1959. Nyerere con-
vinced them to participate, with the result that the party garnered 75 percent
of the vote and won 28 of the 30 seats allocated to elected representatives on
the 64-member assembly. Nyerere’s reaction was that “independence will
follow as surely as the tick birds will follow the rhino,” and he was right.
Sir Richard Turnbull (who, as Kenya’s minister of internal security and
defense, had played a major role in the campaign against the Mau Mau)
replaced Twining in 1958 and reportedly greeted Nyerere with the comment
that “You and I have important work to do.” The two men developed a
friendship that smoothed the path of change. At another election in August
1960, TANU won 70 of the 71 seats and Nyerere was appointed chief minis-
ter, then, when Tanganyika became a sovereign state on 9 December 1961,
he became prime minister. On 22 January the following year, Nyerere re-
signed in order to devote time to writing, but he returned to active politics in
December as president of the newly declared republic, retaining the post until
1985. Much of his energy was devoted to implementing socialist economic
policies that would make his country economically self-sufficient (rather
than dependent on foreign aid)—a goal that he never achieved despite invest-
ment that led to one of the highest literacy rates in Africa. A committed
Roman Catholic and a skilled linguist (he translated William Shakespeare’s
Julius Caesar and The Merchant of Venice into Swahili), he negotiated the
union of his country with Zanzibar (as Tanzania) in 1964, pursued a policy
of nonalignment during the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the
West, and supported independence movements throughout Africa, but (de-
spite being the head of a one-party state) he also opposed dictatorship and
approved the invasion of Uganda by Tanzanian troops in 1979 in order to
oust President Idi Amin. He died, of leukemia, in London on 14 October
1999. In an assessment of his achievements, the Guardian newspaper sug-
gested that “Julius Nyerere belonged to a generation of African postindepen-
dence leaders, like Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah and Zambia’s Kenneth
Kaunda, who had an unshakeable belief in their mission to lead their coun-
tries to a better world through their chosen political ideologies, but who were
unable to recognise their personal failings.” Even so, the obituarist con-
382 • NYERERE, JULIUS KAMBARAGE (1922–1999)
cluded, he would be remembered “for having provided a moral leadership
to . . . Africa when the continent was taking its first shaky steps after inde-
pendence.”
See also MACLEOD, IAIN NORMAN (1913–1970).
 O
OCEAN ISLAND. Ocean Island (now Banaba) is a 2.25-square-mile coral
atoll lying in the west-central Pacific Ocean 185 miles east of Nauru and 250
miles west of the Gilbert Islands at latitude 0° 51´ South and longitude 169°
32´ East. The first sighting reported to Europe and the United States was
made on 3 January 1801 by Captain Jared Gardner of the American-regis-
tered Diana, a sealer on passage from New Bedford (Massachusetts) to
Sydney (Australia), but economic development did not follow until 1900,
when Albert Ellis, a mining engineer with the Pacific Islands Company Ltd.
(see ARUNDEL, JOHN THOMAS (1841–1919)), confirmed that much of
the territory was rich in phosphate. On 3 May, mistakingly believing that he
was negotiating with local leaders who had authority to make commitments
on behalf of the indigenous community, Ellis arranged to extract the reserves
on a 999-year lease in return for a payment of £50.00 each year. Mining
began on 28 August, and, on 28 September the following year, Britain sent
Captain Reginald Tupper on the corvette HMS Pylades to annex the atoll,
thus preventing any competing power from gaining control. Ocean Island
was added to the crown colony of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands on 27
January 1916 (at the same time as Fanning Island and Washington Island)
and in 1919, at the end of World War I, the rights to phosphate extraction
were purchased, for £43,500,000, by the British Phosphate Commission,
whose board had representatives from the Australian and New Zealand
governments as well as from Great Britain and which also gained the phos-
phate rights on Christmas Island (Indian Ocean) and Nauru. On 26 August
1942, during World War II, the Japanese invaded and deported most of the
islanders, retaining only 150 young men as laborers: three years later, on or
about 20 August 1945, after Emperor Hirohito had accepted the surrender
terms demanded by the Allies but before the formal document ending the war
was signed, the captors marched the young men to a clifftop, blindfolded
them, and shot them, with only one individual surviving by feigning death.
The conflict over, British administrators collected 703 Ocean Islanders
from Japanese internment camps and transferred them to Rabi, a volcanic
island in the Fiji group, on 15 December 1945. (Later groups of Ocean Island

383
384 • OIL RIVERS PROTECTORATE
descent arrived in Rabi from 1975–1977 and from 1981–83.) The official
rationale for the action was that the homes on Ocean Island had been de-
stroyed by the Japanese, but more cynical observers claimed that the inten-
tion was simply to keep people out of the way while the phosphate mining
continued. In the early 1970s, annual production was exceeding 500,000
tons, but by 1980 the workable deposits were exhausted and extraction
ceased. By then, the islanders were seeking compensation, through the High
Court in London, for their eviction and for the devastation wrought on their
homeland. Proceedings began on 8 April 1976 and continued for 221 days
before Mr. Justice McGarry concluded that the plaintiffs had been let down
many times by the government but had no case in law. Nevertheless, British
press and television supported their cause and the public responded, so, on 27
May 1977, Dr. David Owen, the foreign secretary, appeared before parlia-
ment to announce that the governments of the United Kingdom, Australia,
and New Zealand were prepared “to make available, on an ex gratia basis
and without admitting any liability, a sum of 10,000,000 Australian dollars”
that would be used to establish a fund for the whole community. When the
Gilbert Islands won independence on 12 July 1979, Ocean Island became
part of the Republic of Kiribati, but there are regular calls for it to secede and
join Fiji. In 2005, the islanders living on Rabi were granted Fiji citizenship,
but they retain their Kiribati passports and are represented both in the Fijian
House of Representatives and in the Kiribati House of Assembly.
See also UNION ISLANDS.

OIL RIVERS PROTECTORATE. See BIGHT OF BENIN; BIGHT OF

BIAFRA; SOUTHERN NIGERIA.

OLD COMMONWEALTH. The United Kingdom (U.K.) and the former

dominions that are members of the Commonwealth of Nations—Austra-
lia, Canada, New Zealand, and South Africa—are sometimes collectively
known as the Old Commonwealth. Each of those dominions had a large
proportion of its population born in the U.K. or descended from British
immigrants and, following the Balfour Declaration in 1926, was considered
equal in political status with, rather than subservient to, the United Kingdom
even though it retained the British monarch as its head of state (see COM-
MONWEALTH REALM).
See also NEW COMMONWEALTH.

OMDURMAN, BATTLE OF (2 SEPTEMBER 1898). The public outcry

following the death of General Charles Gordon at Khartoum, in the Su-
dan, in 1885 was accompanied by calls for a punitive expedition against the
Mahdist religious leaders held responsible for the killing, but the British
 OPIUM WARS (1839–1832 AND 1856–1860) • 385
government shunned immediate military reprisals. In 1895, however, Sir
Evelyn Baring (the British consul-general in Egypt), convinced the Conser-
vative Party administration led by Prime Minister Robert Gascoyne-Cecil,
marquess of Salisbury, that there would be strategic advantages in creating a
chain of colonies from Cairo (the Egyptian capital) to Cape Town (at the
southern tip of Africa), not least because it would prevent France from ex-
tending its influence on the continent. The first step would be conquest of the
Sudan, and that could only be achieved by forcing the Mahdists into submis-
sion. An army consisting largely of Egyptian and Sudanese troops, under the
command of Major-General Sir Horatio Herbert Kitchener, made its way
along the River Nile to the Mahdist headquarters at Omdurman, where, on 2
September 1898, they faced 52,000 supporters of Abdullah al-Taashi, who
had led the Mahdist movement for 13 years. Kitchener, with only 26,000
men, was vastly outnumbered, but his soldiers, equipped with modern artil-
lery and machine guns, faced just spears and elderly firearms so—although
senior officers later criticized his leadership—he lost only 47 men and killed
nearly 10,000. Winston Churchill, Britain’s prime minister during World
War II, took part in the action and wrote later of “Men bleeding from terrible
wounds, fish-hook spears stuck right through them, arms and faces cut to
pieces, bowels protruding, men gasping, crying, collapsing, expiring.” Also,
he condemned Kitchener’s barbarity, recounting how many wounded Mah-
dists were killed after the battle ended and describing the desecration of the
tomb of Muhammad Ahmad, the founder of the Mahdist cause. The victory
at Omdurman ended the Mahdist insurrection in the Sudan and confirmed
British control of the region. Kitchener marched on to Khartoum, where he
held a memorial service for General Gordon, and then was sent to Fashoda
to deal with French threats to dam the River Nile and cut off water supplies
to Egypt.

OPIUM WARS (1839–1832 AND 1856–1860). In the early years of the

19th century, China placed severe restrictions on foreign commerce, allow-
ing trade only through the port of Canton (now Guangzhou). Then, in 1839, it
banned the import of opium, which was providing a handsome source of
income for poppy growers in British India, as well as for owners of the
British ships that transported the cargo, but which was also causing problems
of addiction and (because payments for the commodity were made in silver)
affecting the Chinese economy. As tensions mounted, Chinese officials de-
stroyed stocks of the drug and attempted to make British merchants sign
assurances that they would not deal in it. Also, Chinese sailors boarded
British vessels, while they were still in international waters, and searched the
holds for opium. Eventually, the British government took action, sending
gunboats and a well-equipped army that, in 1842, forced China to sue for
peace. With little negotiating power, the Chinese, through the Treaty of
386 • ORANGE RIVER COLONY
Nanjing, were required to cede Hong Kong to Britain, give Great Britain
commercial “favored nation” status, increase the number of ports open to
foreign trade, and pay for the opium they had destroyed. Trouble flared again
in 1856, when Chinese officials boarded the Arrow, a Hong Kong–based
merchant ship that they believed was involved in piracy and smuggling.
Britain—keen to extract further trading concessions from China—used the
incident as an excuse to renew hostilities. In a joint operation with France
(which was upset by the murder of one of its citizens who had been working
as a missionary in China), it launched a task force that occupied Canton and
captured fortifications near Tientsin (now Tianjan). Then, in concert with
Russia and the United States, the European powers forced China to allow
foreign envoys to take up residence in Peking, to legalize the importation of
opium, to open 11 more ports to foreign traders, and to permit foreign mis-
sionaries to travel throughout the country. When the Chinese delayed imple-
mentation of the agreement, Britain and France took action again, capturing
and looting Peking in 1860. Once more, China was forced to make conces-
sions, this time making payments to Britain and France and giving inden-
tured Chinese laborers permission to work in North America.
As a result of the wars, Britain gained Hong Kong (which became an
important financial center), the transcontinental railroads in Canada and the
United States were built with a cheap source of labor, the Manchu dynasty
collapsed, traditional Chinese culture was subjected to significant Western
influence through the missionaries’ activities, and European government and
traders continued to benefit from the opium trade while, according to some
estimates, about one-third of China’s 369,000,000 population became drug
addicts by 1881. The opium wars still affect Anglo-Chinese relations. When
Prime Minister David Cameron visited Beijing in November 2011, Chinese
authorities asked him to remove the remembrance poppy he was wearing in
his lapel as a tribute to British personnel who died in the two world wars and
other conflicts. The explanation given was that the poppy was a reminder, to
the Chinese, of the humiliation of the opium wars, but Cameron refused to
discard it.
See also GORDON, CHARLES GEORGE (1833–1885).

ORANGE RIVER COLONY. During the Second Boer War, British forces
invaded the Orange Free State, occupying the Boer capital, Bloemfontein, on
13 March 1900 and, on 6 October, annexing the entire area as the Orange
River Colony. Sovereignty was formally recognized by the Treaty of Veree-
niging, which ended the war on 31 May 1902. Prime Minister Henry Camp-
bell-Bannerman’s Liberal Party government, elected in December 1905, ar-
ranged a return to self-government on 27 November 1907 (despite the objec-
tions of the colony’s governor, William Waldegrave Palmer, earl of Sel-
 OVERSEAS SETTLEMENT SCHEME • 387
borne, who thought the decision rather rash), and on 31 May 1910 the territo-
ry merged with Cape Colony, Natal, and the Transvaal in the Union of
South Africa.
See also ORANGE RIVER SOVEREIGNTY.

ORANGE RIVER SOVEREIGNTY. On 3 February 1848, Sir Harry Smith

(governor of Cape Colony) annexed the territory between the Orange and
Vaal Rivers in southern Africa, naming it the Orange River Sovereignty.
However, Britain did not have the resources necessary to enforce its rule so
on 30 January 1854 (against the wishes of the majority of the 15,000 Euro-
pean settlers in the region) Queen Victoria signed a proclamation “renounc-
ing all dominion”—an action that allowed the Boer farmers in the territory to
form a government and declare that the land would become an independent
republic known as the Orange Free State.
See also ORANGE RIVER COLONY.

OREGON COUNTRY. See COLUMBIA DISTRICT.

OVERSEAS SETTLEMENT SCHEME. On 7 April 1919, partly in an

effort to shore up faltering relationships with the dominions, the British
government introduced plans to help military personnel and their families
build new lives in Empire territories after they returned from the battlefields
of World War I. Over the next three years, some 86,000 migrants took
advantage of the free passage offered by the Overseas Settlement Office
(which was supervised by the Colonial Office), with 34,750 going to Aus-
tralia, 26,560 to Canada, 12,890 to New Zealand (which had lost 17,000
men during the war, leaving the country with a serious shortage of farm
laborers), and 5,890 to South Africa. In 1922, the Scheme was expanded by
the Empire Settlement Act to include all of those “suitable persons” who
were interested in emigrating.
 P
P&O. The Peninsular and Orient Steam Navigation Company—familiarly
known as P&O—carried civil servants, mail, and missionaries throughout
the Empire for much of the 19th and early 20th centuries. In 1822, Brodie
McGhie Wilcox and Arthur Anderson (both London-based but originally
from the Shetland Isles, which has a long maritime tradition) chartered ships
from the Dublin and London Steam Packet Company to trade between Great
Britain and the Iberian Peninsula. In 1835, they joined forces with Dublin
shipowner Richard Bourne to form the Peninsular Steam Navigation Compa-
ny, which, in 1837, won a government contract to carry mail to Portugal and
Spain. Then, in 1840, a merger with the Transatlantic Steamship Company,
which operated from Dublin, led to a change in commercial focus and to a
new name—Peninsular and Orient Steam Navigation Company—that re-
flected that change. On 31 December that year, the firm acquired a royal
charter and was incorporated as a limited company with a capital of
£1,000,000 composed of 20,000 £50 shares. It invested heavily in coaling
stations, infrastructure, and steam-powered ships that could compete with the
East India Company’s aging sailing vessels so by 1842 it was plying routes
to Aden and India and by 1845 was servicing ports in Ceylon, Hong Kong,
Penang, and Singapore. Shanghai was added to the itineraries in 1849 (in
order to take advantage of the lucrative trade in opium) and New South
Wales in 1852, the latter journey taking 84 days from Britain via the Cape of
Good Hope. A need for troopships, as Great Britain defended its Empire,
added to the income, as did domestic demand for tea ; in 1859, P&O was the
first company to carry a cargo of tea by steamer from China to Great Britain.
In 1869, the opening of the Suez Canal posed a financial threat, attracting
new competitors to the Asian routes at a time when mail contracts were being
reassigned, and the firm, because of its contractual commitments, had to
carry official passengers (such as civil servants) at reduced rates. The direc-
tors’ response was investment in vessels that would make long sea journeys
more comfortable for passengers and would increase cargo loads. By the first
years of the 20th century, the passage time to India had been halved, to two
weeks, and in 1914 an amalgamation with the British India Steam Navigation

389
390 • PACIFIC ISLANDS COMPANY LIMITED
Company (see MACKINNON, WILLIAM (1823–1893)) was the first of a
series of acquisitions and mergers that, by 1925, made P&O the world’s
largest shipping company. However, economic depression in the 1920s and
1930s had a serious impact both on cargoes and on passenger numbers, then,
during World War II, the entire passenger fleet was requisitioned for service
as armed merchant ships, cargo vessels, and troop carriers. By the end of the
conflict, 182 ships had been sunk, reducing the fleet to around half its prewar
size, and many of the vessels that remained required refitting and refurbish-
ing. Moreover, the postwar market was very different from the one P&O had
served in its heyday. India and Pakistan won independence in 1947 and
other colonies soon followed, ending the demand for cargo and passenger
services to the corners of the Empire. From 1945 until 1968, the liners
carried British immigrants to Australia, but by then air transport was prov-
ing more attractive than were leisurely sea journeys for long-distance travel.
P&O reorientated its business again, abandoning the liners that had operated
scheduled services around the globe and concentrating on container ships,
leisure cruises, roll-on/roll-off ferries, and tankers (though several vessels
were requisitioned by the government during the Falklands War in 1982).
In 2006, the business was purchased by Dubai Ports World, but it still oper-
ates under the P&O name and is the largest of Britain’s ferry companies.
See also UNION-CASTLE LINE.

PACIFIC ISLANDS COMPANY LIMITED. See ARUNDEL, JOHN

THOMAS (1841–1919); BIRNIE ISLAND; OCEAN ISLAND.

PACIFIC PHOSPHATE COMPANY LIMITED. See ARUNDEL, JOHN

THOMAS (1841–1919); HULL ISLAND; JARVIS ISLAND; NAURU.

PAHANG. For much of the 19th century, Britain resisted pressures to inter-
vene on the Malay Peninsula, but in the 1880s the government became con-
cerned at efforts being made by Pahang’s Sultan Ahmad Muadzam Shah to
increase his income by offering land concessions to all those who sought
them and could pay the asking price. If some of those concessions went to
competing colonial powers, such as France or Germany, British commercial
interests could be affected, particularly as Pahang was rumored to be rich in
natural resources. In 1887, therefore, Hugh Clifford (a colonial administrator
based in neighboring Perak) and his ally, Sultan Abu Bakar of Johore,
persuaded Ahmad Shah to sign an agreement that Clifford would represent
British interests in Pahang, with consular status. The following year, howev-
er, a British citizen was murdered outside the sultan’s residence and that
provided an excuse for Cecil Clementi Smith, governor of the Straits Settle-
ments, to place additional pressure on the ruler, who, in a letter dated 24
 PAKISTAN • 391
August, accepted responsibility for the death and asked Britain to send offi-
cers to assist him “in matters relating to the Government of Pahang.” John
Pickersgill Rodger—the first of those officers (formally known as British
residents)—built roads and railroads, established courts of law, and set up a
state council, but not all of the developments were welcome and, from
1891–1895, led to rebellions that received the sultan’s tacit support. The
failure of those revolts convinced Ahmad Shah that he would not be able to
oust the British, but, in 1896, he supported the union of Pahang with Negeri
Sembilan, Perak, and Selangor as the Federated Malay States—a nominal-
ly independent protectorate—because he believed (wrongly) that member-
ship of the larger grouping would help him to maintain power. Pahang was
occupied by the Japanese from 1942–1945, during World War II, but re-
turned to British control when the conflict ended and, in 1946, was merged
with other Malay possessions in the Malayan Union. In 1948, the Union was
recast as the Federation of Malaya, which gained independence in 1957,
with Pahang as the largest of the constituent regions.
See also BRITISH MALAYA.

PAKISTAN. As the British left India in 1947, they divided their former
colony into two independent states—India and Pakistan—because political
leaders on the subcontinent could not agree on a formula that would accom-
modate majority Hindu and minority Moslem interests in a single govern-
ment (see PARTITION OF INDIA). In 1885, advocates of greater Indian
involvement in colonial decision making formed the Indian National Con-
gress (often known as the Congress Party) in an effort to give their individual
voices greater strength. Although membership was open to people of all
cultures, the group was dominated by Hindus so in 1906 followers of Islam
created an All-India Moslem League to advance their own interests, and by
the 1930s many members of that organization were arguing that they should
have their own country if—or, as they anticipated, when—Britain withdrew.
Although senior figures on both sides attempted to draw the parties closer
together, it was clear that major differences persisted (for example, the Mus-
lim League, led by Muhammad Ali Jinnah, was more supportive of Britain
during World War II than were “Mahatma” Gandhi and the Congress Par-
ty), and these differences often flared into violence. As a result, in 1947, after
the postwar Labour Party government had decided to divest itself of its
colonial responsibilities, Lord Louis Mountbatten, the last viceroy of India,
decided that plans to preserve the territory as a single unit were untenable
and the subcontinent was divided into the separate states of India and Paki-
stan at midnight on 14–15 August (see PARTITION OF INDIA), with tragic
consequences. Pakistan was created from East Bengal, Northwest Frontier
Province, Sindh, West Punjab, and several former Indian princely states,
but the international boundaries were hastily drawn so the new Moslem
392 • PALESTINE
country inherited a sizable population of Hindus and many Moslems were
left in areas now part of an independent India. Scholars estimate that at least
12,000,000 people from the minority groups attempted to move to territories
where they believed they would be safe, but as many as 2,000,000 may have
died on the journey, some killed by religious fanatics, others falling victim to
disease or starvation.
The geopolitical structure of Pakistan also posed problems because, un-
usually, the country consisted of two units—East Pakistan (formerly the
eastern area of Bengal province) and West Pakistan (composed of provinces
in the northwest of the subcontinent)—that were separated by 1,000 miles of
India. Moreover, boundary problems led to political (and often military)
conflict between the neighbors (in Kashmir, for instance), the headwaters of
the major rivers that flowed through the country were under Indian control,
the lands given to Pakistan were economically backward, and attempts to
forge a single Pakistani nation from the populations of the two sections of the
country often led to disputes (as in 1948 when Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who
had been appointed governor-general, announced that Urdu would be the
national language even though the majority of people in East Pakistan spoke
Bengali). The internal troubles led to further fragmentation in 1971, when
(with Indian military support) East Pakistan became independent, as Bangla-
desh, and today friction between India and former West Pakistan (now the
Islamic Republic of Pakistan) continues.
See also AFGHANISTAN; ATTLEE, CLEMENT RICHARD
(1883–1967); BALUCHISTAN; BRITISH RAJ; COMMONWEALTH IM-
MIGRATION TO THE UNITED KINGDOM; DOMINION; NEHRU,
JAWAHARLAL “PANDIT” (1889–1964); UNITED KINGDOM IMMI-
GRATION LEGISLATION.

PALESTINE. In the early years of the 20th century, Palestine was part of
the Ottoman Empire, which entered World War I in 1915, supporting the
German cause. That decision threatened Britain’s communications with its
Indian Empire because Palestine lay on the land route between the Mediterra-
nean Sea and the Persian Gulf so British forces occupied the area in
1917–1918 and retained control after the war ended. Britain’s administration
of the region was sanctioned by a League of Nations mandate, granted on
24 July 1922, and continued until 15 May 1948 but was always plagued by a
conflict of interests. In a series of letters, written in 1915–1916, Sir Henry
McMahon (the British high commissioner in Egypt) promised Sayid Husse-
in ibn Ali, emir of Mecca, that the British government would support the
creation of an independent Arab state in the Middle East in return for Arab
assistance during the war. However, on 2 November 1917, Arthur Balfour
(the secretary of state for foreign affairs) wrote to Lionel, Baron Rothschild
(a leader of Britain’s Jewish community), promising that, in return for Jewish
 PAPUA NEW GUINEA • 393
help, Britain would “support the establishment in Palestine of a national
home for the Jewish people.” The promises were politically expedient given
the demands of war, but they were also undoubtedly contradictory and their
legacy was turmoil.
Through the early years of Britain’s Palestinian mandate, Jewish interests
consistently promoted Zionist immigration and acquisition of land while
Arab interests attempted to limit the number of Jews in the territory, tried to
prevent the newcomers from purchasing property, and campaigned for the
creation of the state that they believed McMahon had promised. However,
with the growth of Nazism in 1930s Germany, the Zionist influx increased
rapidly so by 1936 Jews numbered about one-third of the 1,200,000 popula-
tion and had incomes more than twice those of their Arab neighbors. Arab
resentment, coupled with awareness of nationalist movements in Egypt and
Syria, the economic impact of a poor citrus harvest, and tensions caused by
high rates of unemployment, led to a rebellion that began with sporadic acts
of violence and a campaign of civil disobedience (including a general strike
and nonpayment of taxes) but escalated into bombings, murder of officials,
and widespread arson. Britain responded by augmenting its military pres-
ence, but despite harsh—and often brutal—repressive measures (including
detention without trial and torture) the revolt was not quelled until September
1939, with the loss of 262 British, about 300 Jewish, and some 5,000 Arab
lives. During World War II, Britain made efforts to limit Zionist immigration
to Palestine, despite evidence of German maltreatment of Jews in Europe.
That policy led to criticism from many governments, creating a political
climate eminently hostile to continuation of the mandate when the war
ended. At home, too, public opinion favored withdrawal, largely because of
the cost of keeping a large army in the area when funds were needed for
rebuilding cities and industries in the United Kingdom. On 18 February
1947, the British government announced its intention to surrender the man-
date and asked the United Nations (UN) to determine the future of Palestine.
On 29 November, the UN recommended partition into Arab and Jewish
regions, and on 15 May the following year Britain pulled out, leaving the
region to civil war.
See also ATTLEE, CLEMENT RICHARD (1883–1967); TRANSJOR-
DAN; UGANDA PROGRAMME.

PAPUA NEW GUINEA. The island of New Guinea, in the southwest Pacif-
ic Ocean, was known to Europeans from the early 16th century, but attempts
at colonization did not begin until September 1793, when John Hayes, a
British naval lieutenant, established a small settlement at Dore Bay (now
Manokwari), on the island’s northwestern coast, with the intention of devel-
oping commerce in nutmeg and other spices. On 25 October, Hayes formally
took possession of the territory “on behalf of the King and Nation of Great
394 • PAPUA NEW GUINEA
Britain,” naming it New Albion, but the East India Company (EIC) refused
to support the settlement, unconvinced that the nutmeg on New Guinea was
of the same species as the highly favored products growing on the Banda
Islands, in the Moluccas, and believing that the firm was precluded from
developing new bases in the area as a consequence of decisions made after
being forced to abandon its trading post at Balambangan Island, off the
northern coast of Borneo, following attacks by Suluk pirates in 1775. The
EIC’s lack of interest persuaded the settlers, many of whom were weakened
by illness, to abandon their village in June 1795. After that—although Cap-
tain John Moresby surveyed areas of the coastline from 1872–1874 and
merchants located themselves on New Britain and New Ireland, which lay
east of the main island—no further assertions of control were made on behalf
of Great Britain until 4 April 1883, when Sir Thomas McIlwraith, the
governor of Queensland, claimed much of the southeast coast of New Guin-
ea in an attempt to forestall a German takeover of the area. The secretary of
state for the colonies (see COLONIAL OFFICE), Edward Henry Stanley,
earl of Derby, refused to sanction the move, pointing out that a British
colonial governor had no authority to annex territory, but he offered to relax
that stance if Queensland and the other Australian colonies agreed to provide
the financial support that was needed to acquire and administer the region.
The proposal (a political move designed to nudge the colonies into federa-
tion) proved acceptable so a protectorate—known as British New Guinea—
was established on 6 November the following year. On 4 September 1888,
Britain claimed full sovereignty over the area, converting the protectorate
into a crown colony, and on 1 September 1906 responsibility for manage-
ment was handed over to the Commonwealth of Australia, which changed
the area’s name to Territory of Papua (the Malay name for the island).
In 1914, shortly after the outbreak of World War I, Australia occupied
German-held northeastern New Guinea, forcing a surrender on 21 Septem-
ber, and on 17 December 1920, after the conflict had ended, was given a
mandate by the League of Nations to administer that sector of the island (see
LEAGUE OF NATIONS MANDATED TERRITORY). Papua (still formal-
ly a British colony) and the former German protectorate were governed sep-
arately by Australia until 1 July 1949, when they were formally consolidated
as the Territory of Papua and New Guinea. A legislative council was formed
in 1951, internal self-government was instituted on 1 December 1973, and
independence followed on 16 September 1975 despite attempts by the island
of Bougainville and parts of Papua to secede. Under the various forms of
colonial rule, the country—and particularly Papua—was one of the poorest
and least explored in the world (as late as the 1930s, some 1,000,000 people,
previously unknown to the administrators, were discovered in the densely
forested New Guinea Highlands). Gold was mined from the 1920s, but, even
so, the economy was based largely on subsistence agriculture, with coffee
 PARIS, TREATY OF (1783) • 395
and cacao the most commercialized forms of production. By the early 21st
century, the country was known to be rich in minerals and other natural
resources, but development was limited, inhibited by the difficult terrain and
a long-term lack of investment in economic and social infrastructure, so
foreign aid was a major contributor to government coffers, with Australia the
major donor.
See also COMMONWEALTH REALM; GOVERNOR-GENERAL;
UNITED NATIONS TRUST TERRITORY.

PARIS, TREATY OF (1763). The Seven Years’ War, which began in 1754
with the French and Indian War in North America but is dated from the
outbreak of hostilities in Europe in 1756, ended with victory for Great
Britain and its allies over a coalition of powers that included France and
Spain. The peace agreement, signed in Paris on 10 February 1763, added
large territories to the British Empire, including all of the previously French-
held lands in North America east of the Mississippi River, with the exception
of New Orleans. France also surrendered the Caribbean islands of Dominica,
Grenada, the Grenadines, and Saint Vincent to Britain, and Spain ceded
East Florida and West Florida. British negotiators agreed to withdraw ar-
mies from several areas that they had occupied during the conflict, including
the West Indian islands of Guadeloupe, Martinique, and Saint Lucia and
the West African island of Gorée (all of which reverted to French control),
and to leave the islands of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon (which lie off the
southern coast of Newfoundland and had flown the French flag before
France surrendered them to Britain in 1713). Havana (in Cuba) and Manila
(in the Philippines) were returned to Spain. Many members of parliament
opposed the diplomatic decision to return lands that had been hard-won and
(like sugar-producing Guadeloupe) had considerable commercial potential,
but Prime Minister John Stuart, earl of Bute, was anxious to avoid another
war and so preferred not to demand over-heavy retribution from the defeated
states.
See also CANADA; CAPE BRETON ISLAND; MINORCA; NEW
BRUNSWICK; NOVA SCOTIA; PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND; QUEBEC;
SENEGAMBIA.

PARIS, TREATY OF (1783). A collection of documents rather than a sin-

gle treaty, the accords signed in Paris and at Versailles in September 1783 by
France, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Spain, and the United States (U.S.)
formally ended the American Revolutionary War and are sometimes
known as the Peace of Paris. Under the terms of the agreement with the U.S.,
concluded on 3 September, Britain recognized America’s independence, thus
surrendering sovereignty over all of the thirteen colonies, and ceded large
396 • PARIS, TREATY OF (1814)
areas of southern Quebec to the new country but refused to surrender control
of the whole of that province despite the negotiating skills of Benjamin
Franklin, who believed that the continued presence of British colonies on the
United States’ northern border would lead inevitably to military tensions. In
additional treaties, signed on the same day, Britain ceded East Florida and
West Florida to Spain so the many thousands of colonists, loyal to the
crown, who had sought refuge in East Florida had to uproot themselves
again. Minorca (a British possession that had fallen to a combined French
and Spanish force in February 1782) passed to Spain and Senegambia and
Tobago to France, which had occupied them in 1779 and 1781, respectively.
The Bahamas (invaded by Spain in 1782), Grenada (occupied by the
French in 1779), and Montserrat (taken by the French in 1782) were re-
turned to Britain. The arrangements—particularly concessions of fishing
rights off Newfoundland to Americans, the loss of large areas of territory
south and west of the Great Lakes in North America, and the United States’
refusal to guarantee the return of confiscated estates to supporters of the
monarchy—caused much anger in Britain, where parliament approved mo-
tions condemning the treaties.
See also ANGLO-AMERICAN CONVENTION OF 1818; DOMINICA;
THE GAMBIA; MOSQUITO COAST; SAINT-PIERRE AND MIQUE-
LON; UNITED EMPIRE LOYALIST.

PARIS, TREATY OF (1814). The Treaty of Paris, signed on 30 May 1814,

brought a temporary end to war between France and a coalition of European
powers that included Austria, several German states, Portugal, Prussia, Rus-
sia, Spain, and Sweden, as well as Great Britain. Napoleon Bonaparte, the
French emperor, had been forced to abdicate the previous month, when his
senior army officers mutinied, and was sent into exile on the island of Elba,
off the coast of Italy, by the victorious powers. Peace negotiations began on 9
May and led to agreements that allowed France to resume sovereignty over
several of its former colonies that Britain had invaded during the hostilities,
including Gorée (occupied in 1804), Martinique (1809), and the Moluccas
(1810). However, Britain retained the Caribbean islands of Saint Lucia
(where the French garrison had surrendered to Commodore Samuel Hood
and Lieutenant-General William Grinfield on 22 June 1803) and Tobago
(which had capitulated to the same officers nine days later) as well as the
Indian Ocean territories of Île de France (occupied in December 1810 and
now known as Mauritius) and the Seychelles (which had been taken in May
of the same year). The peace that followed the treaty negotiations did not last
for long because Napoleon escaped from exile in February 1815 and
launched another offensive that culminated in his defeat at the battle of
Waterloo on 18 June.
See also GUADELOUPE; MALTA.
 PARK, MUNGO (1771–1806) • 397
PARK, MUNGO (1771–1806). Mungo Park was one of the first Europeans
to venture into the interior of central Africa, his explorations adding to Euro-
pean understanding of the geography of the region and shaping British atti-
tudes toward African peoples at a time when very little was known about
ethnic groups on the continent or about variations in their economies and
lifestyles. The seventh of 13 children in the family of Mungo Park and his
wife, Elspeth, he was born on 11 September 1771 at Foulshiels, near Selkirk,
where his father was a prosperous tenant farmer on estates owned by Henry
Scott, duke of Buccleuch. In 1792, after studying botany and medicine at
Edinburgh University, he traveled to London to visit his sister, Margaret, and
her seedsman husband, John Dickson, who had a considerable reputation as a
botanist and mycologist. Through Dickson, Park met Joseph Banks, who
had sailed with Captain James Cook on a voyage to the southern Pacific
Ocean in 1768–1771 and was King George III’s advisor on matters relating
to agriculture and science. As result of Banks’s recommendation, Park ob-
tained a post as surgeon’s mate on the Worcester, which, from February
1793, undertook a 14-month voyage to Bencoolen, in the East Indies. During
the trip, he collected eight new fish species (which he described in a paper to
the Linnean Society in 1794) and more than 100 new plant specimens, which
he presented to Banks. On the basis of that experience, and at Banks’s sug-
gestion, he was asked by the African Association to “ascertain the course,
and if possible, the rise and termination” of the River Niger in Africa.
Taking his European clothes and a beaver hat (in which he kept his jour-
nal), Park left Britain on 22 May 1795 and traveled 200 miles up the Gambia
River to Pisania, a British trading station now known as Karantaba. After
five months learning the language of the Mandinka people and recovering
from a bout of malaria, he crossed the basin of the upper Senegal River on
horseback, was held prisoner by Moors at Ludumar for three months, then
struggled across the savanna (avoiding villages in case he was detained
again) to reach the Niger at Ségou on 21 July 1796. Denied entry to the
settlement, he followed the river downstream for 80 miles to Silla, but then,
“worn down by sickness, exhausted by hunger and fatigue, half naked” and
with nothing he could use to trade, he turned back. Taking a more southerly
route than on the outward journey—and despite passing through mountain
country, traveling during the seasonal rains, and suffering from a fever that
kept him in Kamalia for seven months while he recovered—Park reached
Pisania (where he found that his acquaintances believed he had perished) on
10 June 1797. A post as surgeon on a slave ship took him to Antigua and
from there back to Britain, arriving on 22 December. Travels in the Interior
of Africa—his account of the journey, published in 1799—made him a celeb-
rity. Toward the African people, he apparently held no grudges, despite his
frequent mistreatment, noting that “whatever difference there is between the
398 • PARTITION OF INDIA
negro and European, in the conformation of the nose, and the colour of the
skin, there is none in the genuine sympathies and characteristic feelings of
our common nature.”
In 1804, Park received an invitation from the War and Colonial Office to
return to the continent, recruit soldiers from the British garrison at Gorée
(which had been captured from the French), and follow the Niger “to the
utmost possible distance to which it can be traced.” He left Britain in late
January the following year and set out from Gorée on 6 April, with 44
volunteer companions, on the first expedition of exploration in West Africa
to be funded by the British government. With a guide, recruited at the Gam-
bia River, the group marched off into the interior, but by the time they
reached the Niger town of Bamako (now capital of Mali), in mid-August, 31
members of the party had died, victims of dysentery and other diseases. Park
struggled on, reaching Bussa (now in Nigeria and, though the survivors did
not know it, only some 500 miles from the river’s mouth). There, sometime
early in 1806, they were attacked by natives and drowned. Since 1930, the
Royal Scottish Geographical Society has commemorated Park through the
annual award of a Mungo Park medal to an individual who has made out-
standing contributions to geographical knowledge through exploration or re-
search. Recipients have included Freya Stark (who, in 1931, made several
treks into western Iran, which no European had previously visited) and Thor
Heyerdahl (who, by sailing across the Pacific Ocean in a hand-built raft in
1947, attempted to demonstrate that people from South America could have
settled Polynesian islands in pre-Columban times).
See also BRUCE OF KINNAIRD, JAMES (1730–1794); THOMSON,
JOSEPH (1858–1895).

PARTITION OF INDIA. Britain emerged from World War II with a seri-

ously damaged economy and little political will to retain colonies that had all
the characteristics of liabilities rather than assets. In British India, calls for
self-government had been coordinated for many decades by such well-edu-
cated, popular figures as “Mahatma” Gandhi, Muhammad Ali Jinnah,
and “Pandit” Nehru, and the success of boycotts of British goods and insti-
tutions demonstrated that there was widespread support for their arguments.
However, India also had a long history of tension between religious commu-
nities and particularly between Moslems (who had controlled much of the
territory during the period of the Mughal Empire, prior to the introduction of
extensive European influence) and Hindus (who were persecuted during peri-
ods of Moslem expansion). The Indian National Congress was founded in
1885 in an effort to provide a single body representing all the indigenous
peoples, but it was dominated by Hindu interests so, from the early 1930s,
advocates of the establishment of an independent Moslem state became in-
creasingly vociferous. Britain’s Labour Party government, elected in 1945
 PELHAM-HOLLES, THOMAS, DUKE OF NEWCASTLE (1693–1768) • 399
and more concerned about using resources to rebuild at home than about
maintaining a large Empire, was keen to divest itself of colonial responsibil-
ities on the subcontinent but preferred the creation of a single state to divi-
sion into two independent entities. However, talks designed to shape a con-
federation of provinces broke down, and widespread violence between relig-
ious communities persuaded the viceroy—Lord Louis Mountbatten—that a
speedy division of the area into a Moslem Pakistan and a secular India was
essential. On 18 July 1947, parliament passed the Indian Independence Act,
which provided legislative authority for the partition, lawyer Cyril Radcliffe
was dispatched to delineate national boundaries, and on midnight of 14–15
August the two new countries were born, their infancy marked by murder
and mass migration. Radcliffe’s work had been necessarily hurried, but it is
unlikely that even lengthy, meticulous boundary delineation would have pre-
vented social disruption. An estimated 12,000,000 people attempted to cross
from one country to the other in an effort to find homes in areas where they
would be part of the religious majority and as many as 2,000,000 may have
died, some from disease or starvation, others at the hands of religious oppo-
nents. Pakistan, originally a nation with two territorial units (one in the
northwest of former British India focusing on the Punjab and Sind, the other
in the northeast focusing on East Bengal), fractured again in 1971, when the
eastern region gained independence as Bangladesh, and political tensions
still affect relations between all states in the region.

PAX BRITANNICA. The period of relative calm between the end of the
Napoleonic Wars in 1815 and the outbreak of World War I in 1914 is some-
times known as the Pax Britannica (or “British Peace”). Some writers have
claimed that the lack of conflict during those decades was a reflection of the
British Empire’s control of sea routes and thus of international trade. Howev-
er, several scholars have pointed out the century was punctuated by the
Crimean, Franco-Prussian, Russo-Japanese, and Spanish-American Wars so
was not, in fact, trouble free. Others argue that the peace was a result of
factors other than Britain’s naval power because the Royal Navy’s strength
had little influence on European politics.
The term is also sometimes used solely with reference to the peace en-
forced by military might and statecraft within the Empire.

PELHAM-HOLLES, THOMAS, DUKE OF NEWCASTLE

(1693–1768). Newcastle was prime minister of Great Britain from
1754–1756 and from 1757–1762, his policies on the first occasion precipitat-
ing the country into a Seven Years’ War with France that, although it was not
his intention, greatly expanded imperial influence (see PITT THE ELDER,
WILLIAM, EARL OF CHATHAM). The eldest son of Thomas Pelham,
400 • PELHAM-HOLLES, THOMAS, DUKE OF NEWCASTLE (1693–1768)
Baron Pelham, and his second wife, Grace, he was born on 21 July 1693 and,
as a young man, inherited two fortunes: one, in 1711, from his maternal
uncle, John Holles, duke of Newcastle (who insisted that his nephew add
“Holles” to his surname as a condition of the inheritance), and the other, the
next year, from his father, to whose title he succeeded. A feisty supporter of
the Hanoverian succession to the throne when Queen Anne—the last of the
Stuart monarchs—died childless in 1714, he was rewarded by King George I
with appointment to the post of lord chamberlain in 1717. Seven years later,
Prime Minister Robert Walpole made him secretary of state for the Southern
Department (see COLONIAL OFFICE), a role that gave him joint respon-
sibility—with Charles Townshend, Viscount Townshend, in the Northern
Department—for the shaping of British foreign policy. In 1725, the ministers
differed over the source of Britain’s most serious military threat, Townshend
believing that it was Austria (which was developing interests in the East
Indies) and Pelham-Holles believing that it was Spain (which had a growing
empire and a large navy). Walpole tended to side with Newcastle and became
even more supportive from 1727, when Spain laid siege to Gibraltar; out-
maneuvered, Townshend resigned his post in 1730 and Pelham-Holles took
sole control of foreign affairs.
For most of the next 30 years, Newcastle was a determining influence on
the nature of British involvement in continental Europe and the Americas. In
1745, while Britain aided Austria in its struggle with France and Prussia, he
sanctioned a successful attack on the French fortress at Louisbourg, on Île
Royale (see CAPE BRETON ISLAND), briefly strengthening the British
presence in northeastern North America but suffering savage criticism from
political opponents when, at the end of the conflict in 1748, he approved a
withdrawal of the occupying forces in return for French agreement to remove
troops from Madras (which they had occupied in 1746) and from Holland.
No warmonger, Pelham-Holles attempted to prevent further conflict by form-
ing a network of European alliances that would isolate France, but those
efforts met with derision from William Pitt the Elder and his supporters, who
were convinced that future troubles were more likely to break out in North
America, where France was competing for dominance with Great Britain.
Events proved Pitt right. When Prime Minister Henry Pelham, Newcastle’s
brother, died on 6 March 1754, the duke was the obvious candidate to suc-
ceed him and was soon facing the problem of growing tensions between
Britain and France west of the Appalachians in the upper Ohio River valley,
a region where political factions in both countries sought to promote coloni-
zation. In 1755, Major-General Edward Braddock was dispatched to attack
the French-held Fort Duquesne (on the site of present-day Pittsburgh), the
military strategy devised by the influential Prince William Augustus, duke of
Cumberland and son of King George II, and vigorously championed in the
House of Commons (the lower of the two chambers in Britain’s bicameral
 PELHAM-HOLLES, THOMAS, DUKE OF NEWCASTLE (1693–1768) • 401
parliament) by Henry Fox, the secretary for the Southern Department. New-
castle had doubts, and those doubts were justified when, on 9 July, Braddock
was mortally wounded (and some 500 of his 1,300 troops killed) in battle at
Monongahela, some 10 miles east of the fort. Vice-Admiral Edward Boscaw-
en, ordered to harass French shipping off Newfoundland and the mouth of
the St. Lawrence River, was also unsuccessful, capturing three vessels but
then having to return to Britain when 2,000 of the men under his command
succumbed to disease.
Despite those engagements, neither side had formally declared war so
Newcastle continued his policy of alliance-building, hoping to deter France
from sending troops to North America by pinning them down in Europe
while they faced encirclement by potential enemies. Unsurprisingly, given
the complexities of mid-18th-century geopolitics, the efforts failed. In Janu-
ary 1756, Britain signed an alliance with Prussia that annoyed the Austrians
and the Russians, so Austria allied with France, and the Russians soon fol-
lowed. On 18 May (as the North American troubles worsened), Great Britain
declared war on France; on 28 May, the British defenses on the island of
Minorca fell to a French invasion, and, in August, Prussia invaded Saxony,
Austria’s ally. Europe tumbled into war, and Pelham-Holles, widely blamed
for the troubles, resigned on 16 November, but, even so, he retained consid-
erable support in parliament while his opponents, led by Pitt the Elder, were
much more popular with the public. With the government rudderless, the
king invited Newcastle to return as prime minister on 2 July 1757 in an
unlikely, but temporarily successful, alliance with Pitt, who determined tac-
tics for the war. However, on 25 October 1760, the monarch, who had been
on the throne for 33 years, died. His grandson and successor, King George
III, disliked both Newcastle and Pitt, considering the former a “Knave” and
the latter a “snake in the grass.” Faced with the king’s displeasure and dis-
agreement with other members of the goverment, Pitt resigned in October
1761 and Pelham-Holles on 26 May the following year. Newcastle briefly
held office as lord privy seal in the government of Prime Minister Charles
Watson-Wentworth, marquess of Rockingham, in 1765–1766 but suffered a
stroke in December 1767 and died on 17 November the following year. By
then, the Seven Years’ War had been over for four years and, through the
provisions of the Treaty of Paris, which ended the conflict on 10 February
1763, Britain had gained control of all of French-held North America with
the exception of New Orleans. Much ridiculed in his day and considered
incompetent by many modern historians, Pelham-Holles has, nevertheless,
been praised by writers impressed by his grasp of detail and his ability to
survive at the heart of British politics for nearly 40 years.
402 • PENANG
PENANG. On 11 August 1786, Captain Francis Light took possession of an
island off the northwest coast of the Malay Peninsula and named it Prince of
Wales Island in honor of Prince George, the heir to the British throne (and,
later, King George IV). Light acquired the land—which was intended as a
base for the East India Company and as a harbor for Royal Navy ships that
would help to counter French influence in the area—by promising the Sultan
of Kedah protection from the Burmese and Siamese forces that were threat-
ening the sultanate. However, the captain failed to inform his employers of
the commitment so, in 1790, when the military assistance failed to appear,
the sultan tried to retrieve the island then, after the attempt failed, ceded it to
the Company in return for an annual payment of 6,000 Spanish dollars. The
adjacent mainland (known then as Province Wellesley and now as Seberang
Perai) was added to the territory in 1798 at a yearly cost of 4,000 dollars.
Prince of Wales Island’s status as a free port attracted commerce that,
previously, had passed through Dutch possessions. In the early 19th century
it was a focus of the opium trade, and, from 1869, when the opening of the
Suez Canal cut travel times to Europe, it became an important market for
dealings in rubber and tin, which were much in demand in rapidly industrial-
izing societies. The economic opportunities, in turn, attracted labor from
throughout India and the Far East, producing a cosmopolitan society famed
as much for its brothels and its gambling dens as for its business potential.
On 14 August 1826, the East India Company united the area, administrative-
ly, with Malacca and Singapore as the Straits Settlements then, when the
Settlements became a crown colony in 1867, the island’s name was changed
to Penang (a word derived from the Malay for “island of the areca nut
palm”). During World War II, the European population fled, leaving local
people to the mercies of the Japanese army, which administered the region
until British forces recaptured the island in September 1945. The feeling of
abandonment caused by the hasty departure of colonial officials helped fuel
demands for independence once the war ended. When the Straits Settlements
colony was dissolved in 1946, Penang became part of the Malayan Union,
which, two years later, was replaced by the Federation of Malaya. On 31
August 1957 the Federation achieved independence, with Penang as one of
its 11 component states.
See also BENGAL PRESIDENCY; BRITISH MALAYA; FEDERATED
MALAY STATES; RAFFLES, THOMAS STAMFORD BINGLEY
(1781–1826).

PENGUIN ISLANDS. The uninhabited chain of Penguin Islands, which

sport such imaginative names as Black Sophie Rock and Little Roastbeef
Islets, stretches for some 220 miles along the southwestern coast of Africa
from latitude 24° 38´ South to latitude 27° 42´ South and between longitudes
14° 31´ East and 15° 32´ East. Together, they have a tiny land area of less
 PENNSYLVANIA • 403
than one square mile, but, even so, in the middle and later years of the 19th
century they were an important source of guano (which contained phosphate
that was much in demand by manufacturers of fertilizers) and of sealskins.
Most had been claimed by Portugal as early as 1486 but had never been
permanently settled so on 21 June 1861, responding to pleas by representa-
tives of De Pass, Spence, & Company—the Cape Town–based firm that was
the principal exploiter of the guano reserves—the British government or-
dered Captain Oliver J. Jones of HMS Furious to take possession of Ichaboe
Island (the major focus of economic activity) in the name of Queen Victoria.
Five years later, on 5 May 1866, Captain C. C. Forsyth of HMS Valourous
annexed a further 11 of the group, and on 16 July Sir Philip Wodehouse,
governor of Cape Colony, declared all 12 annexed to his territory. Howev-
er, British government advisors raised doubts about the legality of the
governor’s proclamation so on 27 February 1867 the Colonial Office author-
ized Wodehouse to administer the islands and gave him authority to annex
them provided he acted after receiving formal requests from his house of
assembly and his legislative council. Despite further procedural misunder-
standings, the territories were eventually acquired for the crown by Sir Henry
Barkly, Sir Philip’s successor, on 8 July 1874. The Penguin Islands, which
all lie within six miles of the continental mainland, remained under British
sovereignty when Germany colonized South-West Africa in 1884 (although
much negotiation took place over details relating to the exploitation and
transport of resources) and became part of the Union of South Africa in
1910. On 1 March 1994, four years after South-West Africa had won inde-
pendence, as Namibia, South Africa transferred control to the new state,
simplifying maritime boundaries between the two countries.

PENINSULAR AND ORIENT STEAM NAVIGATION COMPANY.

See P&O.

PENNSYLVANIA. In 1680, William Penn petitioned King Charles II for a

grant of land that would allow him to form a colony in North America for
fellow Quakers, who were suffering from economic and social discrimina-
tion under laws designed to bolster the position of the Church of England. On
4 March the following year, the monarch consented, giving the territory in
lieu of the £16,000 of unpaid wages that was owed to the family of the late
Admiral William Penn, the petitioner’s father. Penn was proprietor of the
new province (which included all of the area lying between the 40th and 43rd
parallels of latitude and stretching to five degrees of longitude west of the
Delaware River as well as territory to the south that had been surrendered by
the Dutch) but, from 1682, introduced a series of “frames of government” (or
constitutions) that, by 1701, had created an elected Assembly wielding great-
404 • PENNSYLVANIA
er power than any legislature in England’s other American territories. A
“Great Law,” adopted on 7 December 1682, guaranteed religious freedoms,
land dealings with Native American groups were conducted fairly, and Phila-
delphia—planned as the locus of government and as a port—was laid out so
that homes and businesses were separated and space made available for
gardens and orchards.
That relatively liberal political and social environment attracted settlers,
with so many Welsh Quakers moving into the area north of Philadelphia and
west of the Schuylkill River that they accounted for about one-third of the
colony’s 20,000 population by the beginning of the 18th century. English
migrants dominated in the southeast of the territory, but there were also many
Germans, who brought farming skills and became known as the Pennsylva-
nia Dutch (“Dutch” being a corruption of “Deutsch,” which means “Ger-
man”). Scotch-Irish immigrants tended to settle in the upland areas of the
west and southwest (in the Cumberland Valley, for example) from about
1728, and other families moved in from neighboring colonies, including
Maryland and Virginia. The growing population facilitated the develop-
ment of agriculture and the growth of iron, shipbuilding, textile, and timber
industries, with Philadelphia evolving into a major commercial center, trad-
ing with England and the West Indies as well as with settlements along North
America’s Atlantic coast and developing a considerable range of port activ-
ities—such as rum distilling and tobacco warehousing—that were based on
commodities exported and imported through the docks. Victory over the
French and their Native American allies in the French and Indian War,
fought from 1754–1763, opened up the Ohio River valley to further potential
for merchants, but British attempts to forbid settlers from moving across the
Appalachian Mountains, coupled, from 1763, with fiscal measures designed
by the London parliament to make the colonies meet more of the cost of their
own defense, brought many complaints (see AMERICAN REVOLUTION).
As the protests mounted, they were accompanied, increasingly, by argu-
ments for cutting political ties with the mother country. Not all of the colo-
nists favored such a break: the Quaker community opposed violence and
many worshippers in the Church of England retained strong ties to Britain,
but the Scotch-Irish farmers in the west were much more independence-
minded. Moderates favored negotiation, arguing that rebellion would wreak
havoc in the territory’s economy, but the radicals (many of them young men
from middle-class families) were prepared to face the consequences of politi-
cal change. On 1 May 1776, the former held a majority in the Assembly, but
they were soon outmaneuvered. Delegates to a Continental Congress—a con-
vention, held in Philadelphia, of representatives from British colonies in
North America—decided on 15 May, by six votes to four, that legislatures
deriving their authority from the British crown should be “totally sup-
pressed.” Pennsylvania’s militants took that resolution as a mandate and
 PERAK • 405
organized a series of meetings, throughout the province, that demonstrated
support for the action. On 14 June, the Assembly withdrew its opposition to
outright rebellion, telling delegates to the Congress that they were no longer
bound to oppose attempts to unite Britain’s American possessions in an
effort to throw off the imperial yoke. The Declaration of Independence,
signed by the thirteen colonies on 4 July, made Pennsylvania a sovereign
state, a status confirmed by the Treaty of Paris, which formally ended the
American Revolutionary War on 3 September 1783. On 12 December
1787, the former colony became the second signatory to the constitution of
the United States of America.
See also BREDA, TREATY OF (1667); DELAWARE; FRENCH AND
INDIAN WAR (1754–1763); NORTH CAROLINA; PROPRIETARY COL-
ONY; RESTORATION COLONY; SOUTH CAROLINA.

PERAK. The East India Company signed a trade treaty with the sultanate
of Perak, on the Malay Peninsula, in 1818. Eight years later, the firm ac-
quired Pangkor Island and part of the adjacent coastal mainland as bases
from which to control piracy, but, even so, Britain was unwilling to extend its
colonial influence there (or in other areas of the Peninsula) until the last
decades of the 19th century. By then, tin deposits had been discovered in
Perak and had attracted Chinese labor, which brought feuding triads with it.
Also, the sultanate suffered a series of civil wars as a result of succession
disputes from 1861–1872. Rajah Muda Abdullah wrote to Sir Andrew
Clarke, governor of the Straits Settlements, seeking help to solve the prob-
lems. Clarke, seeing economic advantages in extending Britain’s control of
the tin markets, negotiated an agreement (known as the Pangkor Treaty and
signed on 20 January 1874) that confirmed Abdullah as sultan, replacing
Sultan Ismail (who was offered a compensatory pension and an honorific
title), but also included a provision that the ruler would govern only on the
advice, and with the consent, of an official to be known as the British resi-
dent—an arrangement that made Perak a British protectorate and was cop-
ied in later British possessions in Malaya (see NEGERI SEMBILAN; SE-
LANGOR). The changes did not please everybody. On 2 November 1875,
James W. W. Birch, the first resident, who attempted to outlaw slavery and,
allegedly, had little respect for local customs, was murdered by dissidents.
However, the culprits were executed, Sultan Abdullah was exiled to the
Seychelles, and, in 1896, Perak was merged with Negeri Sembilan, Pahang,
and Selangor in the Federated Malay States. The protectorate was occupied
by Japanese forces from 1941–1945, during World War II, but returned to
British control when the conflict ended and, in 1946, became part of the
Malayan Union. In 1948, the Union was restructured as the Federation of
Malaya, which achieved independence nine years later.
See also BRITISH MALAYA.
406 • PERIM ISLAND
PERIM ISLAND. The volcanic island of Perim, some five square miles in
area, lies in the Strait of Mandeb, guarding the southern approaches to the
Red Sea at latitude 12° 66´ North and longitude 43° 42´ East. On 3 May
1799, Lieutenant-Colonel John Murray was dispatched to the territory, in
command of some 350 troops and accompanied by 700 family members and
other civilians, to assume control on behalf of the East India Company and
so prevent Napoleon Bonaparte’s French army from getting a foothold,
blocking the passage of ships through the strait, and then, perhaps, advancing
on India. However, Murray found that Perim had no sources of fresh water
and that there were no sites from which his gun batteries could ensure com-
plete control of maritime routes so from early June he began to evacuate
nonessential personnel, sending them to Bombay. On 7 September, with
only 45 days of water left, he withdrew most of his soldiers to Aden, and by
June of the following year the whole group had gone.
A second—and more enduring—occupation began on 11 January 1857,
ostensibly in order to build a much-needed lighthouse but also with the aim
of forestalling a French takeover at a time when construction of the Suez
Canal was getting under way. The territory was attached, administratively, to
Aden (then a province of British India) and the military presence was small,
with a few British officers commanding a detachment of about 50 Indian
infantrymen, but numbers increased from 1881, when Hinton Spalding, a
Liverpool entrepreneur, was given permission by the British government to
establish a coaling station that would serve Royal Navy vessels as well as
merchant steamships passing between the Indian Ocean and the Mediterra-
nean Sea through the Suez Canal. Spalding formed the Perim Coal Company
then, from 1883, competed for business with similar firms based in Aden.
For several years, growing trade was reflected in an expanding infrastructure
of homes, medical facilities, offices, a school, and warehouses but, in the
early 20th century, economic recession, the harbor’s inability to accept large
vessels, and the increasing use of oil-burning ships combined to limit com-
merce so in 1936 the Company was forced to close. By the mid-1960s, the
population numbered only about 400, most dependent on fishing for their
livelihood. In June 1967, as the British government prepared to withdraw
from South Arabia, William Rodgers (the under-secretary of state for foreign
affairs) told parliament that Perim was “administratively and economically”
reliant on Aden and that it had “no viability as a separate unit” but that the
residents would be consulted before the territory’s future was determined.
Those consultations confirmed that the island’s inhabitants wanted to retain
their attachment to the crown colony so on 30 November, after British
officials and troops left Aden, somewhat ignominiously, both territories be-
came part of the new People’s Republic of South Yemen.
 PERSIAN GULF • 407
PERLIS. Perlis borders Kedah and Thailand on the west of the Malay
Peninsula. Subject to control by Siam for most of the 19th century, it fell into
Britain’s sphere of influence in southeastern Asia following the signing of
the Anglo-Siamese Treaty on 10 March 1909. Rajah Syed Alwi, the head of
the territory’s royal family, was not party to the agreement and objected to
the British domination of his territory so he did not reach a formal pact with
the colonial power until 1930. That accord confirmed the formation of a
legislative council consisting of the rajah, four Malay members, and a British
advisor, but, in practice, the advisor was the power behind the throne, direct-
ing all policies except those relating primarily to religious matters. In 1941,
during World War II, Perlis was occupied by Japan, which returned sove-
reignty to its Siamese allies, but Britain regained control when the conflict
ended in 1945. Rajah Syed Putra objected to proposals to merge the area with
other British possessions in the Malayan Union on the grounds that the
plans contravened the 1930 pact by removing powers from the legislative
council, but Britain, intent on rebuilding its domestic economy, was in no
mood to listen. The Union was formed in 1946 and reshaped as the Federa-
tion of Malaya in 1948. Nine years later, the Federation achieved indepen-
dence, with 315-square-mile Perlis the smallest of its component states.
See also BRITISH MALAYA; UNFEDERATED MALAY STATES.

PERSIAN GULF. By the mid-19th century, Britain was the dominant mili-
tary power in the Persian Gulf, its role developing from a need to protect
interests in India. With the East India Company’s ships regularly under
attack from pirates, the government ordered the Royal Navy to undertake
retaliatory operations from 1805 and in 1820 was able to persuade many of
the local rulers (including those in Abu Dhabi, Bahrain, Dubai, and Sharjah)
to sign a General Treaty of Peace that, in effect, made Britain the Gulf’s
maritime police officer. Further treaties in 1838, 1839, and 1847 limited
trade in slaves, then in 1853 a Perpetual Maritime Truce ended feuding
between the sheikhs at sea, with Britain responsible for maintaining the
peace—a situation that considerably reduced the Arab leaders’ sovereignty
and increased British power over them. By the end of World War I, Britain
had strengthened its hold further, signing a series of agreements (for exam-
ple, with the Trucial States in 1892, Kuwait in 1899, and Qatar in 1916)
that gave it control of the sheikhdoms’ foreign relations in return for prom-
ises to defend the territories from aggressors.
British political interest in the region was almost entirely strategic; the
authority accorded by the treaties may have helped to deter other European
colonial powers from moving into the Persian Gulf and thus improved secur-
ity along India’s west coast, but there was little commercial potential in the
Gulf states, with only pearl fishing providing any sizable source of income.
However, that situation changed from the 1930s as oil production added
408 • PHILIPPINES
greatly to the sheikhs’ wealth and gave them greater negotiating power,
fueling demands for independence. Post–World War II British governments
proved willing to listen, particularly after 1947, when the grant of full self-
government to India and Pakistan greatly reduced the United Kingdom’s
strategic interest in its Gulf protectorates. Kuwait negotiated an end to the
imperial presence in 1961, and the British government’s decision, in 1968, to
withdraw its troops from “East of Suez” in order to cut military expenditure
forced the leaders of other Gulf communities to take decisions about their
own destinies. After considering the options, Bahrain and Qatar declared
themselves independent in the summer of 1971, and the other sheikhdoms
merged as the United Arab Emirates toward the end of the same year.
See also ADEN; ARAB EMIRATES OF THE SOUTH, FEDERATION
OF; INDIA OFFICE; MACKINNON, WILLIAM (1823–1893).

PHILIPPINES. In 1762, Spain’s decision to abandon neutrality and enter

the Seven Years’ War as an ally of France provided Britain with a strategic
rationale for attacking Spanish colonies, notably in Cuba and, in the Philip-
pines, at Manila, which was the center of Spanish administration in the East
Indies. The attack on Manila was proposed by Lieutenant-Colonel William
Draper, who had raised the 79th Regiment of Foot for service in India, and
was enthusiastically promoted by First Lord of the Admiralty George Anson,
Baron Anson, who secured the support of the East India Company (EIC)
and of the government. Draper, promoted to the post of Brigadier-General in
the East Indies Only, was placed in command of the operation along with
Vice-Admiral Samuel Cornish. A force of some 6,800 sailed to the settle-
ment from Madras, arriving on 24 September, landing in a tropical storm,
and taking the town with comparative ease on 6 October, partly because the
defenders were led by their archbishop, Manuel Rojo del Rio y Vieyra, who
was acting as a temporary governor until a military administrator arrived.
The terms of the Spanish surrender gave Britain nominal control of the whole
of the Philippines, but, in practice, although the army ransacked Manila,
resistance in the hinterland prevented it from extending its influence beyond
the town and the port of Cavite, 18 miles to the south. Dawsonne Drake, an
employee of the EIC, was appointed governor, but his term of office was
characterized by squabbles with Cornish, Draper, and other military officers
and led to accusations of bribery, misappropriation of funds, and other
charges that brought demotion after his return to India in 1764. Because mid-
18th-century long-distance communications were slow, the signatories to the
Treaty of Paris, which ended the Seven Years’ War on 10 February 1763,
were unaware that Manila had been taken by Britain so the territory is not
mentioned by name in the document, but it was returned to Spain in 1764
under a provision that all areas, other than those listed, would be handed
back. Many of the EIC’s sepoys took the opportunity to defect during the
 PHOENIX ISLANDS • 409
campaign and remained after the British withdrawal, settling particularly in
Cainta, where they added to the ethnic mix by marrying local women and left
a continuing legacy in the highly spiced foods sold in the municipality.

PHOENIX ISLAND. Phoenix Island lies in the central Pacific Ocean, some
220 miles south of the equator at latitude 3° 43´ South and longitude 170° 43´
West, with a coral and sand land area of about 0.2 square miles and a shallow
central lagoon. It was known to the crews of whaling vessels by the early
19th century and claimed for the United States under the terms of the Guano
Islands Act of 1856, which allowed American citizens to take possession of
uninhabited islands that had guano deposits and were not subject to control
by any other government. From 1859, C. A. Williams and Company (later
the Phoenix Guano Company) employed Hawaiian laborers to dig out the
phosphate-rich material (as they did on Enderbury and McKean Islands)
and export it for use in the manufacture of fertilizer, but by 1871 the re-
sources were exhausted and the workings abandoned. Great Britain de-
clared the territory a protectorate on 29 June 1889, believing that it could be
of use during the construction of a trans-Pacific telegraph cable (see ALL
RED LINE), and incorporated it within the crown colony of the Gilbert and
Ellice Islands on 18 March 1937. On 12 July 1979, it became part of the new
state of Kiribati when the Gilberts won independence, then on 20 September
of the same year, through the Treaty of Tarawa, the United States formally
surrendered its long dormant claim to the territory. Phoenix Island, now often
known as Rawaki, remains devoid of population and is part of the Phoenix
Islands Protected Area, providing a sanctuary for marine wildlife.

PHOENIX ISLANDS. The Phoenix Islands lie in the central Pacific Ocean,
east of the Gilbert Islands and some 1,650 miles southwest of Hawaii, be-
tween latitudes 2° 50´ and 4° 40´ South and longitudes 170° 43´and 174° 31´
West. Britain annexed five of the atolls (Birnie Island, Hull Island, Gard-
ner Island, Phoenix Island, and Sydney Island) in 1889–92, believing that
they could be useful bases during the construction of a trans-Pacific telegraph
cable (see ALL RED LINE), and added Canton, Enderbury, and McKean
Islands in 1936 but never administered the group as a single unit. All were
added to the crown colony of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands on 18 March
1937, but the United States contested the United Kingdom’s jurisdiction
over Canton and Enderbury, intending to use them as refueling stations for
long-distance flights between North America and Australasia, so from 3
March 1938 those two territories were managed as a British-American con-
dominium. All eight islands became part of the Republic of Kiribati when the
410 • PITCAIRN ISLANDS
Gilberts won independence from the United Kingdom on 12 July 1979. Since
2008, they have been included within the Phoenix Islands Protected Area, a
large sanctuary for marine wildlife.

PITCAIRN ISLANDS. The Pitcairns—a group of four islands of volcanic

origin—are Britain’s last imperial outpost in the Pacific Ocean. Located
about 1,300 miles southeast of Tahiti and 4,100 miles southwest of Panama
at latitude 25° 4´ South and longitude 130° 6´ West, Pitcairn (the largest, and
only populated, land area) was first sighted in 1767 but not settled until 1790,
when mutineers from HMS Bounty, accompanied by their Tahitian female
companions (some of whom may have been abducted), established a home-
stead. Their presence remained unnoticed until 1808, when an American
whaler dropped anchor and sent men ashore. After that, ships sailing between
the United States and Australia called regularly, and the community grew to
such an extent that it feared it would outstrip resources. In 1856, following an
appeal to Queen Victoria, the entire population—193 men, women, and chil-
dren—migrated to Norfolk Island, off the east coast of Australia, but not all
found the conditions congenial so small groups returned to their old home in
1858 and 1863.
Britain declared Pitcairn a protectorate on 29 November 1838 (the year in
which it became only the second self-governing administrative unit in the
world to give voting rights to women) then, on 3 May 1898, placed it under
the jurisdiction of the high commissioner for the British Western Pacific
Territories. The other islands (Ducie, Henderson, and Oeno) were annexed
in 1902 (on 19 December, 1 July, and 10 July, respectively) and merged as a
single administrative unit with Pitcairn in 1938. Administrative responsibil-
ities transferred to the governor of Fiji in 1952 and then, in 1970, to the high
commissioner to New Zealand. Now a British Overseas Territory, the
Pitcairns, 18 square miles in area, have a population of some 50 people who
eke out a living from subsistence farming and by the sale of handicrafts to
tourists and postage stamps to collectors. In 2004, six of the male residents
were found guilty of charges of sexually abusing underage girls after a trial
that bitterly divided the island population. The United Nations Educational,
Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) designated Henderson Is-
land a World Heritage Site in 1988 in an effort to protect its distinctive bird
and plant life.
See also CAROLINE ISLAND.

PITT THE ELDER, WILLIAM, EARL OF CHATHAM. Pitt—born on

15 November 1708 to Robert Pitt, a member of parliament, and his wife
Harriet—dominated British politics in the middle years of the 18th century
and was instrumental in transforming his country into an imperial world
 PITT THE ELDER, WILLIAM, EARL OF CHATHAM • 411
power. Thomas Pitt, his grandfather, had been the East India Company’s
principal representative at the Madras Presidency from 1698–1709 and had
sold a diamond to Philippe, duke of Orléans, for £134,000, cementing the
family fortunes, so William grew up in privileged circumstances. He entered
parliament in 1735, representing Old Sarum, and was quickly recognized
both as an orator and as a critic of Prime Minister Horace Walpole’s adminis-
tration, annoying the Hanoverian King George II by opposing proposals to
give Hanover and Austria the financial aid needed to enlarge their armies and
so defend themselves against an anticipated French invasion. As a result, the
monarch resisted efforts to include Pitt in government until, on 22 February
1746, albeit with great reluctance, he was persuaded to approve an appoint-
ment as joint vice-treasurer for Ireland under Prime Minister Henry Pelham.
Less than three months later, on 6 May, Pelham moved Pitt to the post of
paymaster-general of the forces, a position that provided considerable oppor-
tunity for personal gain but in which Pitt earned a reputation for honesty that
won him much popular support.
When Pelham died in 1754, his brother, Thomas Pelham-Holles, duke of
Newcastle, succeeded him as prime minister. Pitt retained his office until 20
November 1755 but then was dismissed as punishment for criticizing aspects
of Newcastle’s foreign policy. Undeterred, he continued his attacks, com-
plaining, early in 1756, that Newcastle was deliberately leaving Minorca
poorly defended against French aggression. The surrender of that island’s
defenders in June angered a public already made despondent by poor
progress in the struggle against the French in North America (see FRENCH
AND INDIAN WAR (1754–1763)). In the months that followed, Newcastle
was widely vilified and, in November, was forced into resignation. Nominal-
ly, his replacement was William Cavendish, duke of Devonshire, but, in
practice, policy was determined by Pitt, who was made secretary of state for
the Southern Department (in effect, political head of colonial administration
(see COLONIAL OFFICE) and leader of the House of Commons (the lower
chamber in Britain’s bicameral legislature). Together, they increased funding
for the war with France and enhanced the army assigned to defend British
territories in North America, but policy conflicts with colleagues—for exam-
ple, Pitt opposed the execution of Admiral John Byng, who was held respon-
sible for the loss of Minorca—and King George’s continuing resentment led
to his dismissal, once again, on 6 April 1757.
Politically, the situation was complicated for the monarch, who was re-
sponsible for forming a government, because while Pitt retained much popu-
lar support Newcastle led a significant group of Whig parliamentarians. For
three months, government was, in effect, in abeyance, but on 2 July a new
administration was formed, with Newcastle at its head and with Pitt again
secretary of state, responsible for the conduct of the war. By subsidizing the
forces of Frederick the Great of Prussia, a British ally, he was able to keep
412 • PITT THE YOUNGER, WILLIAM (1759–1806)
French troops engaged in Europe, allowing him to use Great Britain’s naval
supremacy to support engagements elsewhere. In 1758, in North America,
the capture of the fortresses at Duquesne, Frontenac, Louisbourg, and Oswe-
go reduced the sphere of French influence, and, in West Africa, Gambia,
Gorée, and the fort of Saint-Louis on the Senegal River (see SENEGAM-
BIA) were taken. The following year brought further successes in the Ameri-
cas at Fort Niagara and Fort Ticonderoga, at Guadeloupe, and in Quebec,
while naval victories emphasized British maritime supremacy. The capture
of Montreal in 1760 effectively ended French colonial interest in northern
North America, the occupation of Dominica in 1761 added to British strong-
holds in the Caribbean, and the successful siege of Pondicherry in the same
year strengthened the East India Company’s hold on the subcontinent. Then,
in 1762, Grenada, Martinique, Saint Lucia, and Saint Vincent all fell to
British attacks. Under the terms of the Treaty of Paris, which ended the
conflict on 10 February 1763, Britain gained new colonies in Africa and the
West Indies, regained Minorca, and won unchallenged control of India and
most of European-occupied North America. However, by the time the agree-
ment was signed, Pitt had left the government, resigning on 5 October 1761
after failing to persuade his colleagues to launch a preemptive strike against
Spain, which he believed was about to enter the war in support of France.
In 1766, Pitt was created earl of Chatham and agreed, at the invitation of
King George III (who had succeeded to the throne in 1760), to form a
government, but, suffering from gout and mentally unstable, he was ineffec-
tive. The growing dissent in the North American colonies was a regular
feature on political agendas, but although Pitt had earlier spoken out against
British attempts to tax the territories, believing that local assemblies should
be responsible for fiscal matters, his illnesses prevented him from participat-
ing in debates, and, in 1767, parliament approved levies on a series of goods
imported to the thirteen colonies from Great Britain (see AMERICAN
REVOLUTION). He resigned in 1768 but, in occasional speeches from the
House of Lords (the upper chamber in the legislature), railed against parlia-
ment’s treatment of the American colonists while steadfastly opposing inde-
pendence, partly because he feared that the former colonies would succumb
to French attacks and partly because he viewed the Empire as a source of
wealth through trade. He died on 11 May 1778 and, though arrogant and
often unwilling to listen to the views of others, is regarded by many histo-
rians as the greatest of Britain’s 18th-century statesmen.
See also GRENVILLE, GEORGE (1712–1770); PITT THE YOUNGER,
WILLIAM (1759–1806).

PITT THE YOUNGER, WILLIAM (1759–1806). Pitt, the youngest man

ever to be prime minister of Great Britain, was a facilitator, creating an
environment in which ministerial colleagues could run their departments. As
 PITT THE YOUNGER, WILLIAM (1759–1806) • 413
a result, he became enormously powerful and built foundations for the mod-
ern prime minister’s role as chairperson of a cabinet, supervising the activ-
ities of others. The son of William Pitt the Elder and his wife, Hester, he
was born on 28 May 1759, entered parliament (representing Appleby) in
1781, was appointed chancellor of the exchequer on 4 July the following year
(in an administration led by William Petty-Fitzmaurice, earl of Shelburne),
and on 19 December 1783, at the age of 24, was asked by King George III to
form a government. Critics claimed that his youthfulness went hand in hand
with immaturity and that he would be out of office before the Christmas
festivities were over, but he proved them wrong, remaining in post for more
than 17 years. For much of that time, Pitt was concerned with domestic
issues (not the least of which was the need to eliminate the £250,000,000
debt Britain had incurred while fighting the rebel colonies in the American
Revolutionary War) and with the troubles on the European mainland that
followed the French Revolution in 1792. However, he was also much in-
volved with the management of the Empire. In 1784, he won parliamentary
approval for an India Act that gave the governor-general of India, who was
based in Bengal, authority over the governors of the presidencies of Bom-
bay and Madras and thus made Calcutta, Bengal’s capital, the headquarters
of British administration on the subcontinent. Also, the legislation created a
Board of Control, consisting of six senior political figures nominated by the
monarch, to “superintend, direct, and control” the administration of civil and
military matters in India.
From 1790–1794, Pitt’s representatives negotiated a series of diplomatic
agreements that both avoided military conflict with Spain over territorial
disputes in the Nootka Sound and ended Spanish claims to monopoly trading
rights on North America’s northwestern seaboard (see NOOTKA SOUND
CONVENTIONS). In 1791, through the Constitutional Act, he arranged for
the Province of Quebec to be subdivided into a predominantly English-
speaking Upper Canada and a predominantly francophone Lower Canada.
However, attempts to deal with Ireland’s opposition to British rule were less
successful. A rebellion in 1798 was suppressed, but Pitt was convinced that
further disturbances would follow unless the territory became an integral part
of Great Britain so legislation in 1800 prepared the way for the creation of a
single realm on 1 January the following year. On the other hand, the prime
minister found that his plans to reduce economic and political discrimination
against Roman Catholics in Ireland met with opposition from ministerial
colleagues and from King George III, who argued that if he approved the
measures he would be in violation of the oath, taken at his coronation, to
protect the interests of the Church of England. Pitt, unable to honor his
promises to the Irish people, resigned on 14 March 1801 but was recalled to
office on 10 May 1804, after his successor, Henry Addington, found parlia-
mentary support withering away. This second ministry was less enduring,
414 • PLASSEY, BATTLE OF (23 JUNE 1757)
and less successful, than the first, partly because of Pitt’s increasingly poor
health and partly because of the failure of the coalition of European powers,
of which Great Britain was part, to defeat the armies of Emperor Napoleon
Bonaparte of France. Pitt made his last public speech on 9 November 1805
and died, still prime minister, on 23 January 1806.
See also MYSORE WARS (1767–1769, 1780–1784, 1790–1792, AND
1799); SAINT DOMINGUE.

PLASSEY, BATTLE OF (23 JUNE 1757). Robert Clive’s victory at the

Battle of Plassey confirmed the East India Company’s control of Bengal
and laid foundations for the expansion of the British Empire throughout the
Indian subcontinent. In 1756, Siraj-ud-Daula, the nawab of Bengal, overran
the small British garrison at Calcutta (see BLACK HOLE OF CALCUTTA),
so although Clive negotiated a peace treaty with him after retaking the fort,
the Bengali leader was not trusted by the Europeans. Under threat of invasion
by Afghan forces and the subject of much intrigue at his court, Siraj-ud-
Daula made an alliance with the French, but Clive took advantage of the
internal dissent to bribe Mir Jafar, one of the nawab’s generals, into support-
ing the Company in return for a promise that the nawab would be unseated
and that the general would be installed in his stead. The agreement con-
firmed, Clive’s army of some 3,000 confronted the Bengali force of about
50,000 (including a small contingent of French soldiers) at the village of
Plassey (or Palashi) on 23 June 1757. Mir Jafar commanded 16,000 men on
the left wing of the nawab’s force but did nothing to commit them to battle.
Artillery on both sides engaged, but monsoon rains drenched the Indian
powder supplies and the nawab fled the scene, followed by his supporters. In
the aftermath, Siraj-ud-Daula was murdered by Mir Jafar’s son and the com-
pliant Mir Jafar was made nawab (only to himself be deposed by Clive two
years later). The East India Company assumed control of Bengal’s wealth
and used the riches to expand its army, drive French and Dutch troops out of
the region, and provide a firm base for British expansion into other areas of
the Indian subcontinent. Two centuries later, Jawaharlal Nehru (a leader of
the nationalist movement and the country’s first prime minister) commented
that Clive had won his victory “by promoting treason” so British rule in India
had had “an unsavoury beginning” and “something of that bitter taste has
clung to it ever since.”

PLYMOUTH COMPANY. See VIRGINIA COMPANY.

PLYMOUTH COUNCIL FOR NEW ENGLAND. See MAINE, PROV-

INCE OF; NEW HAMPSHIRE; VIRGINIA; VIRGINIA COMPANY.
 PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND • 415
PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND. France claimed the land now known as
Prince Edward Island, in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, in 1603, named it Île
Saint-Jean, and included it within the colony of Acadia, but began the pro-
cess of settlement only in 1720. The population increased from 1755 as
Britain expelled Acadians from Nova Scotia and many of the refugees
sought safety in French-held lands, so numbers had risen to some 5,000 by
1758, when British troops, led by Andrew Rollo, Lord Rollo, captured the
territory during the Seven Years’ War. By the end of 1759, however, only
about 150 individuals of French descent remained, their neighbors forced out
because, under orders from General Jeffrey Amherst, Rollo continued the
deportation policy, transporting most of the residents back to Europe, de-
stroying their crops, and killing their animals. Great Britain’s sovereignty
over the island was confirmed by the Treaty of Paris, which ended the War
on 10 February 1763. Its name anglicized to St. John’s Island, the territory
was incorporated within the colony of Nova Scotia and, in 1767, divided into
67 townships, known as “lots,” ownership of which was granted by ballot to
approximately 100 applicants by the Lords Commissioners of Trade and
Plantations, a body originally created by King William III in 1696. The
successful petitioners—powerful, wealthy men—used their influence at the
royal court and in government circles to get the island detached, administra-
tively, from Nova Scotia on 28 June 1769 and made a separate colony, thus
adding the privileges of political control to those of ownership. The great
majority of these proprietors were absentee landlords who made little effort
to meet their obligation to promote settlement so the population by 1800 was
little higher than it had been when the lots were allocated more than three
decades earlier. The first years of the 19th century brought rapid change,
though, as migrants arrived from the Scottish Highlands, where landowners
were converting their properties to sheep farms, which required little labor.
Then, from 1845, communities were augmented by families from Ireland,
where the failure of the potato crop had reduced rural villages to near starva-
tion. Many of these incomers simply continued to practice the subsistence
farming they had known in their homelands, but others became part of a
growing wage economy in the fishery, forestry, and shipbuilding industries.
One of the positive outcomes of the grant of colony status to St. John’s
Island was the formation, in 1773, of an elected legislative assembly. On 1
February 1799, that legislature changed the territory’s name to Prince Ed-
ward Island in honor of King George III’s fourth son, Edward, duke of Kent,
who was commanding troops at Halifax, Nova Scotia, and over the five
decades that followed demands that the body should be given greater powers
grew increasingly vociferous. Eventually, in 1851, the colony was granted
responsible government (that is, the executive branch was made responsible
to the legislative assembly, which also controlled revenues), and in 1853
George Coles, the first premier, introduced legislation that allowed the
416 • PRINCE EDWARD ISLANDS
government to buy estates of over 1,000 acres then sell the land to tenants
and squatters. Some large landowners—such as shipowner Samuel Cunard,
who owned more than 15 percent of the island—refused to sell, and, in 1857,
the imperial government in London prevented the assembly from raising
funds to purchase the properties, but the land reform movement was gather-
ing pace. Initially, the colonists resisted pressure to join New Brunswick,
Nova Scotia, and the Province of Canada in forming the Dominion of
Canada in 1867, but financial pressures stemming from the island govern-
ment’s investment in railroad construction forced a change of heart. The
legislative assembly relented and Prince Edward Island became part of the
federal union on 1 July 1873, but the terms of its membership included
provision for the compulsory government acquisition of the large estates so
by 1900 the great majority of landholdings were owned by their occupants
rather than tenanted.
See also BRITISH NORTH AMERICA; UTRECHT, TREATY OF
(1713).

PRINCE EDWARD ISLANDS. The Prince Edward Islands lie in the sub-
antarctic Indian Ocean at latitude 46° 46´ South and longitude 37° 51´ East,
some 1,200 miles southeast of the South African mainland. Marion Island
covers some 118 square miles and its neighbor, Prince Edward Island, which
lies 12 miles to the northeast, 18 square miles. Both have volcanic origins.
The first Europeans to sight them were probably mariners on the Dutch
vessel Maerseveen as it headed for the East Indies in March 1663, but the
navigators appear to have noted the location incorrectly. More than a century
later, in January 1772, Marc-Joseph Marion du Fresne, a French explorer,
rediscovered both landmasses and thought, at first, that he had found the
great continent that was believed to lie at the South Pole. (Just six months
later, he and 26 of his crew were eaten by Maoris in New Zealand.)
In 1776, Jules Crozet, who had served under Marion du Fresne, met Cap-
tain James Cook, who was in Cape Town having his ships recaulked during
his third voyage of discovery, and told him where the islands could be found.
As soon as the repairs were completed, Cook set off in search of the territory,
arriving on 13 December and naming the island group after Prince Edward
(the fourth son of King George III). Steep cliffs made landing difficult, but
sealing and whaling vessels visited intermittently throughout the 19th centu-
ry. Then, on 1 February 1908, the British government assumed ownership
and, on 1 February, granted Dr. William Newton exclusive rights to exploit
guano reserves for a period of 21 years. In 1926, Newton, having made no
use of that concession, sold his privileges to the Cape Town–based Kergue-
len Sealing and Whaling Company, which, on 9 October, was given addition-
al rights to the mineral, seal, and whale resources. Over the next four years
the firm made several voyages to the area, but the decline in seal numbers
 PROTECTED STATE • 417
quickly made the trips commercially unremunerative so on 21 March 1934
the lease was terminated at the company’s own request. On 29 December
1947, with British approval and in great secrecy, Marion Island was annexed
to South Africa, with Prince Edward Island added six days later. Those
actions were taken for strategic reasons, eliminating fears that the territory
would fall into hostile hands, but the South Africans also installed a meteor-
ological station on Marion Island and developed it into an important scientif-
ic research base emphasizing work on seabirds and seals. Five cats, intro-
duced to Marion Island in 1949 to control mice, multiplied so successfully
that by 1977 they had about 3,400 feral descendants that were consuming
over 500,000 birds each year, necessitating a major eradication program that
was not completed until 1991. Both islands were designated nature reserves
by the South African government in 1995.

PROPRIETARY COLONY. Throughout the 17th century, British mon-

archs rewarded their supporters with vast grants of land in the Americas.
These “lords proprietors” remained the king’s subjects but were authorized to
administer the territories they received by, for example, appointing govern-
ors, levying taxes, and making decrees circumscribing behavior. Also, they
were entitled to rents from settlers moving into the territory. Thus, in 1621
King James VI (of Scotland) and I (of England) gave Nova Scotia (which
then included much of present-day Maine) to Sir William Alexander and in
1627 his son and successor, King Charles I, granted several Caribbean is-
lands to Sir James Hay (see SAINT VINCENT; VIRGIN ISLANDS). Later,
King Charles II conferred stretches of the east coast of the present-day Unit-
ed States—including the Carolinas, Delaware, New Jersey, New York, and
Pennsylvania—on his favorites. However, as proprietary colonies demon-
strated economic viability and political stability, they were gradually con-
verted to royal (or crown) colonies, a status that limited their independence
but guaranteed parliament greater control over their development.
See also ASSOCIATED STATE; BRITISH DEPENDENT TERRITORY;
BRITISH OVERSEAS TERRITORY; CHARTER COLONY; CROWN DE-
PENDENCY; DOMINION; LEAGUE OF NATIONS MANDATED TER-
RITORY; PROTECTED STATE; PROTECTORATE; RESTORATION
COLONY; UNITED NATIONS TRUST TERRITORY.

PROTECTED STATE. Some scholars differentiate between protected

states and protectorates, including, within the former category, territories
for which Britain was responsible for defense and for the conduct of foreign
affairs but which were free to manage domestic matters without formal Brit-
ish intervention.
418 • PROTECTORATE
See also ASSOCIATED STATE; BRITISH DEPENDENT TERRITORY;
BRITISH OVERSEAS TERRITORY; CHARTER COLONY; COLONY;
CROWN DEPENDENCY; DOMINION; LEAGUE OF NATIONS MAN-
DATED TERRITORY; PROPRIETARY COLONY; RESTORATION
COLONY; ROYAL COLONY; UNITED NATIONS TRUST TERRITORY.

PROTECTORATE. In some parts of the world, Britain did not formally

annex territory but, even so, imposed a form of administration, provided
defense, and took charge of the area’s foreign relations. On occasion, internal
government was organized by private interests (as in British North Borneo,
which was made a protectorate in 1888 and where the British North Borneo
Chartered Company developed the economic and social infrastructure). Else-
where, administrators were chosen by British government authorities (as in
Bechuanaland, where they were appointed by the high commissioner for
Southern Africa from 1891) or local rulers were allowed to exercise authority
under the watchful eye of a British official (as in Perak from 1874 and Perlis
from 1930). Like protected states, but unlike crown colonies, protectorates
were not considered to be formal possessions of the crown.
See also ASSOCIATED STATE; BRITISH DEPENDENT TERRITORY;
BRITISH OVERSEAS TERRITORY; CHARTER COLONY; COLONY;
CROWN DEPENDENCY; DOMINION; LEAGUE OF NATIONS MAN-
DATED TERRITORY; PROPRIETARY COLONY; RESIDENT; RESTO-
RATION COLONY; ROYAL COLONY; UNITED NATIONS TRUST
TERRITORY.

PROVIDENCE ISLAND. On 4 December 1630, King Charles I granted a

“patent” (or charter) giving William Fiennes (Viscount Saye and Sele), Rob-
ert Greville (Baron Brooke), Robert Rich (earl of Warwick), and other
wealthy, well-connected Puritan sympathizers rights to establish a colony on
Providence Island, which lies some 120 miles off Nicaragua’s Mosquito
Coast at latitude 13° 21´ North and longitude 81° 22´ West. For many of the
group, the primary motivation was a desire to promote England’s internation-
al role as leader of the world’s Protestant powers, but they also recognized
the possibility of profit from production of cotton and tobacco. The first
settlers arrived, a year before the formal patent was confirmed, on 24 Decem-
ber 1629, led by Philip Bell, governor of Bermuda, where land for tobacco
growing was in very limited supply. Others soon followed so, over the next
six years, the population rose to over 600, but despite the healthy numbers,
the colony was never successful. Men were discouraged, until 1635, from
bringing their families, gambling and swearing were prohibited, and idleness
was frowned upon. Moreover, the immigrants were tenants so there was little
incentive to improve production because profits went to the Company’s
 PULO CONDOR ISLAND • 419
shareholders, and the absentee investors insisted on taking all administrative
decisions, dictating, for example, that the colonists plant a range of crops
although experience elsewhere had indicated that selecting one product, and
then perfecting husbandry techniques for that crop alone, was more likely to
lead to a viable farming economy. Also, the settlement site was very vulner-
able to attack by the Spanish, who were expanding their own empire in the
Americas and first attempted to oust the community in July 1635. After that
onslaught, King Charles authorized retaliatory raids and changed the social
context of the island as a result because Providence quickly became a base
for privateering—so much so that clergyman Thomas Gage, who spent many
years in Central America, wrote that Spaniards referred to the place as “a den
of thieves and pirates.” In 1640, a second Spanish effort to destroy the
community failed when the troops were forced to withdraw as strong winds
threatened their ships, but an invasion the following year was more success-
ful, with a 2,000-strong force compelling the island’s garrison to surrender
on 25 May. Britain, however, maintained an interest in other areas of the
Mosquito Coast until the late 19th century.

PULO CONDOR ISLAND. On 18 June 1702, Allan Catchpole, a represen-

tative of the East India Company, established a trading station on Pulo
Condor Island, located in the South China Sea at latitude 8° 41´ North and
longitude 106° 36´ East, some 60 miles southeast of the Cà Mau pensinsula,
at the southern tip of Vietnam. The base was intended to develop commerce
in the spices and other products of the region and was protected by a band of
mercenaries hired in Makassar, but on 2 March 1705 it was destroyed, and
most of the Europeans murdered, when the guards rebelled after learning that
the Company intended to renege on an agreement to ferry them home at the
end of their contracts.
 Q
QATAR. In 1913, the Ottoman Empire renounced its sovereignty over Qa-
tar, a 4,450-square-mile peninsula that juts into the Persian Gulf from the
Arabian mainland. Three years later, on 3 November 1916, Sheikh Abdullah
ibn Jassim Al Thani, the hereditary ruler of the territory, signed an agreement
that made the area a British protectorate. The provisions of that treaty—
which was very similar to those that had been forged with Bahrain in 1861
and the Trucial States in 1892—required the sheikh to surrender all author-
ity over foreign affairs in return for a promise of protection “from all aggres-
sion by sea.” Throughout the 1920s, Sheikh Abdullah made several requests
to Britain for funds and military assistance that would help him to shore up
his somewhat precarious position in the face of attempts by Bahrain to con-
test ownership of his lands, the collapse of the pearl trade (which was Qatar’s
major source of income), intrigues by family members, and refusals by some
groups to pay the tribute he demanded. British officials remained aloof until
1931, when confirmation of commercially viable oil reserves in Bahrain led
production firms to seek access to other areas around the Persian Gulf. Even-
tually, in 1935, promises of greater military support secured exploration
concessions for the Anglo-Persian Oil Company and led to the discovery of
petroleum in 1939 (though none was exported until 1949 because the wells
were capped during World War II). The potential of vastly increased wealth
from oil revenues encouraged several members of Sheikh Abdullah’s family
to demand increased allowances and precipitated a succession crisis, forcing
the 69-year-old ruler to abdicate in 1949 and approve a permanent British
presence in Qatar in return for an agreement that he would be succeeded by
his eldest son, Ali ibn Abd Allah Al Thani. British pressure led to greater
investment in economic infrastructure (such as an airstrip) and public ser-
vices (including the police force) as well as to the development of govern-
ment departments structured on European lines, but that influence ended with
the United Kingdom’s decision, made on financial grounds in 1968, to
withdraw armed forces from “East of Suez.” The Qataris’ initial response

421
422 • QUEBEC
was to seek federation with Bahrain and the Trucial States, but those propo-
sals foundered on the rocks of Bahraini efforts to dominate the group so on 3
September 1971 Qatar became an independent Islamic state.

QUEBEC. In 1608, Frenchman Samuel de Champlain—the first European

to explore the Great Lakes area of North America—founded a community at
Quebec, on the north bank of the St. Lawrence River. Initially little more
than a base for fur traders, the settlement developed into an important admin-
istrative center for French colonial possessions in North America and, be-
cause of its political and strategic significance, became a target for British
attacks during the Seven Years’ War, which involved the major powers in a
global conflict from 1756 (see FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR
(1754–1763)). On the night of 12 September 1759, after a three-month siege,
troops commanded by General James Wolfe scaled the cliffs to the southwest
of the town, took the French commanders by surprise, defeated Louis-Joseph
de Montcalm’s army in a brief battle the following morning, and forced the
defending garrison to surrender on 18 September. France withdrew from
North America at the end of the War, ceding most of its territories east of the
Mississippi River, including Quebec, to Britain through the Treaty of Paris,
signed on 10 February 1763. In a proclamation on 7 October the same year,
King George III emphasized British sovereignty by designating the town,
along with its rural hinterland along the St. Lawrence shoreline, the Province
of Quebec and appointing Thomas Gates as governor. However, the great
majority of the Europeans living in the newly acquired areas were of French
descent so their loyalty to King George was considered suspect—a suspicion
that assumed greater political importance as unrest increased in territories to
the south. Fearing that the French settlers would support a rebellion in the
thirteen colonies, parliament passed the Quebec Act, which received royal
assent (and thus became law) on 22 June 1774. The legislation extended the
Province’s boundaries westward and southward (to include much of the Ohio
and Mississippi River valleys and the Great Lakes) and northward (to en-
compass territory adjacent to the Hudson Bay Company’s territory), but it
also contained provisions that permitted Roman Catholics to hold public
office (a practice then unlawful in the mother country) and provided for the
application of French law to civil matters while retaining English law for
criminal cases. That attempt to woo the French seemed to work, because
although it annoyed already disaffected citizens of the thirteen colonies
(staunch Protestants denounced it for promoting “Papism,” for example)
most of the French population of Quebec remained neutral when General
Benedict Arnold launched an unsuccessful invasion after the outbreak of the
American Revolutionary War in 1775.
 QUEEN CHARLOTTE ISLANDS • 423
Great Britain ceded the southern areas of Quebec to the United States of
America under the terms of another Treaty of Paris (see PARIS, TREATY
OF (1783)) which formally ended the Revolutionary War on 3 September
1783, but some 10,000 American colonists, still loyal to the crown, left their
homes and fled north to the areas that remained within the boundaries of the
Province. Those new immigrants sought land to farm but, unwilling to leave
political decision making in the hands of the governor and the advisory
council that he appointed, also wanted some representation in the corridors of
power. With the merchants in the towns clamoring for representation as well,
parliament approved a Constitutional Act, which took effect on 26 December
1791, dividing the Province into two colonies, the French-dominated eastern
area becoming Lower Canada and retaining French institutions (such as
land tenure customs) while the west became Upper Canada and wholly
subject to English law. The changes meant that Quebec lost its administrative
identity, but the name was resurrected 76 years later when it was attached to
one of the founder provinces of the Dominion of Canada in 1867.
See also AMERICAN REVOLUTION; BRITISH NORTH AMERICA;
NORTH, FREDERICK, LORD NORTH (1732–1792); NOVA SCOTIA;
PITT THE ELDER, WILLIAM, EARL OF CHATHAM; PITT THE
YOUNGER, WILLIAM (1759–1806); UNITED EMPIRE LOYALIST.

QUEEN ADELAIDE PROVINCE. See BRITISH KAFFRARIA.

QUEEN CHARLOTTE ISLANDS. The Queen Charlotte Islands, some

1,800 in number and now collectively known as Haida Gwaii, form a 155-
mile long, scimitar-shaped archipelago separated from the mainland of Brit-
ish Columbia, on the Pacific coast of North America, by the Hecate Strait.
They were visited in 1778 by Captain James Cook during his third (and
final) voyage of exploration then in 1787 by Captain George Dixon, an
explorer and fur trader, who named them after his ship, the Queen Charlotte
(itself named after the wife of King George III), and confirmed that they
were not part of the main landmass of the American continent. In 1850, one
of the Haida people, who lived on the islands, found a gold nugget and took it
to the Hudson’s Bay Company base at Fort Victoria, on Vancouver Island,
to trade. On 29 January 1852, as news of the discovery spread, James Doug-
las, the governor of Vancouver Island, which lay to the south, across the
Queen Charlotte Sound, wrote to Secretary of State for War and the Colonies
Henry Grey, Earl Grey, expressing concern that “large bodies of American
adventurers” intended to travel to the islands “and establish an independent
government until by force or fraud they became annexed to the United
States.”
424 • QUEENSLAND
After some dithering, Sir John Pakington, Grey’s successor, replied on 27
September, appointing Douglas lieutenant-governor of the Queen Charlotte
Islands but stressing that the decision to create the post was taken “solely for
the protection of British rights” and that the government had “no intention of
colonizing the Country, or placing any establishment on it.” Douglas (who
was also head of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s operations in the region)
accepted the commission with “a feeling of diffidence,” expressing concern
about his ability to perform the additional duties satisfactorily without assis-
tance and “while every function of Government, whether Military Judicial
Executive or Clerical must be performed by me alone”; the War and Coloni-
al Office responded by sending him “a few books of authority on Govern-
ment & some legal works,” assuming, presumably, that he had the leisure to
read them. In fact, by the time Douglas was given his additional role, the
Queen Charlottes’ gold rush was almost over (partly because the Haida made
life difficult for the immigrants, destroying equipment and taking ships’
crews captive, and partly because prospectors found little of the precious
metal) so Douglas needed to do little more than proclaim that “all gold in its
natural place of deposit” was British and require miners to buy licenses. On
29 July 1863, the British parliament passed legislation delimiting boundaries
that included the islands (and most of Stikine Territory) within the colony
of British Columbia, which had been created five years earlier (with the long-
suffering Douglas as governor).

QUEENSLAND. In 1823, while the territory now known as Queensland was

part of the colony of New South Wales, surveyor John Oxley recommended
a location near the mouth of the Brisbane River as a suitable site for a penal
institution. The British government accepted that recommendation, sending
the first convicts the following year but discouraging other potential migrants
because the prisoners (many of whom were reoffenders) were considered
dangerous. The aboriginal peoples tried to starve out the incomers by de-
stroying their crops, but after the unit closed in 1840 other settlers arrived,
initially from the more populated areas of New South Wales, which lay to the
south, and appropriated the land. Most of those newcomers were farmers,
who cleared timber to graze sheep and plant crops, killing indigenous groups
who attempted to prevent the takeover. The discovery of gold at Canoona in
1858 attracted a further influx of Europeans and late the following year the
territory was able to secede from New South Wales, becoming a crown
colony with its own governor on 10 December 1859 and naming itself
Queensland in honor of Queen Victoria.
The 1860s brought the establishment of cotton and sugar plantations and
the use of cheap—often forced—labor from the Pacific Ocean islands (see
BLACKBIRDING). The grazing industry, too, expanded so by 1880, when
the first cargo of refrigerated meat was exported to Britain, Queensland was
 QUEENSLAND • 425
raising some 3,000,000 sheep and 7,000,000 cattle. Then, from 1882, the
discovery of extensive reserves of copper, gold, and silver at Mount Morgan,
in the Dee Range of mountains on the colony’s east coast, stimulated further
immigration so by 1890 the territory’s population numbered about 390,000,
15 times greater than it had been when the colony was created just three
decades earlier. However, the years from 1890 were marked by drought and
a growing economic depression that encouraged employees to form labor
unions and political parties that would promote their interests. At the same
time, political activists were arguing for the federation of all of Britain’s
Australian colonies under a single parliament that would legislate over com-
mon interests, such as defense and immigration policy. Overall, Queensland-
ers were more reluctant than residents of other areas of the continent to
accept the proposals, fearing that their industries would suffer, but manual
workers, such as miners and sheep shearers, were enthusiastic so, following a
referendum that (with only 55 percent in favor) barely endorsed the plans,
Queensland joined the Commonwealth of Australia on January 1, 1901.
See also BRITISH SOLOMON ISLANDS; PAPUA NEW GUINEA;
WESTERN AUSTRALIA.
 R
RAFFLES, THOMAS STAMFORD BINGLEY (1781–1826). Sir Stam-
ford Raffles is best known as the founding father of Singapore, but he also
did much to extend British influence in other areas of the Far East. The son
of sea captain Benjamin Raffles and his wife, Ann, he was born on board a
ship off the coast of Jamaica on 6 July 1781 and started work as a clerk with
the East India Company (EIC) at the age of 14. In 1805, he was appointed
assistant secretary to the governor of Penang, a Company outpost in the
Dutch East Indies, and used the experience to acquire a knowledge of Malay
culture and languages that brought him to the attention of Gilbert Elliot-
Murray-Kynynmound, Baron Minto and head of the EIC’s operations in
India. Minto gave Raffles the task of preparing an invasion of Dutch-held
Java, which the French navy was using as a base to attack British shipping.
The successful campaign began on 6 August 1811 and earned Raffles—then
just 30 years old—lieutenant-governorship of the territory and its 5,000,000
inhabitants. Almost immediately, he set about introducing reforms that
would benefit the local people by allowing a measure of self-government,
ending slavery, limiting commerce in opium, and reorganizing land tenure.
Raffles returned to London when Java was reclaimed by its previous colo-
nial overlord under the terms of the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1814. A grateful
government recommended him for a knighthood in 1816, but his Company
managers were less happy with his performance because Java, during his
time in charge, had not produced the profits they expected. As a result, his
next posting—to the fever-ridden, pepper-exporting, Sumatran swampland of
Bencoolen—was much less prestigious. The setting was inauspicious, but
Raffles was determined to challenge Dutch influence in Southeast Asia. Ear-
ly in 1819, despite protests from the Netherlands but with the backing of
Francis Rawdon-Hastings, marquess of Hastings and governor-general of
India, he acquired land at Singapore (an island at the southern tip of the
Malay Peninsula), abolished slavery, banned the carrying of arms, declared
the harbor a free port, established a judicial structure, and promoted educa-
tion, laying foundations that would turn the colony into one of the principal
trading centers of the Empire during the late 19th century. In addition to his

427
428 • RAJ
administrative activities and his interest in local history and language, Raf-
fles developed an enthusiasm for natural history, building an extensive col-
lection of animals, birds, fish, and plants. However, the bulk of his collection
was destroyed (along with all of his drawings, manuscripts, and scientific
papers) on 2 February 1824, when the ship on which he was returning to
Britain caught fire. Worse was to follow; in declining health and suffering
increasingly severe headaches, he was denied a pension by the East India
Company and told to refund more than £22,000 of alleged overpayments.
Raffles died of apoplexy, in London, on 5 July 1826 (the day before his
45th birthday). His name is remembered in the plant genus Rafflesia, which
has the largest flowers of any botanical genus, and in the names of several
other bird, plant, and insect species, as well as in numerous educational
institutions, street names, and landmarks in Australia, Singapore, and other
parts of the world.
See also BANGKA ISLAND; JOHORE.

RAJ. See BRITISH RAJ.

RALEIGH, WALTER (c. 1554–1618). Raleigh’s attempts to establish a

colonial settlement in North America failed, but his experience provided a
foundation on which later, more successful, entrepreneurs could build (see
CAROLINA). The second son of landowner Walter Raleigh of Fardell, in
southwestern England, and his third wife, Katherine (whose children by her
first marriage included Humphrey Gilbert, who claimed Newfoundland for
the English crown in 1583), he was probably born c. 1552–54, but little is
known of his early life, although he certainly fought with Huguenot armies in
France in 1569–1570 and with English troops attempting to subdue rebellion
in Ireland in 1580–1581. The Irish experience proved controversial because,
after ending a siege at Smerwick on 10 November 1580, the leader of the
English army—Arthur Grey, Baron Grey de Wilton—ordered the massacre
of 400–500 Italian and Spanish soldiers sent by Pope Gregory XIII to aid the
uprising, with many of the murders carried out by men under the command
of Walter Raleigh, who later claimed that he was following the orders of a
superior officer.
It is unclear why Raleigh became a favorite of Queen Elizabeth I; a story
that he spread his cloak over a puddle so that she could walk across with dry
feet is probably apocryphal, but some writers suggest that there was a mutual
physical attraction. Whatever the reason, by 1583 he was sufficiently well
established in court to have acquired large estates and privileges (including a
right to dues from every vintner in the country) that gave him a substantial
income. On 25 March 1584, Elizabeth granted Raleigh a charter to found a
colony in North America, with both parties understanding that it would pro-
 RALEIGH, WALTER (C. 1554–1618) • 429
vide a base for privateering operations against Spanish vessels. A reconnais-
sance expedition that year returned with positive results so on 9 April 1585
Raleigh dispatched four ships and two pinnaces, under the command of Sir
Richard Grenville, to establish a settlement at Roanoke Island. Grenville
landed 108 men at the site on 17 August then departed for his own privateer-
ing venture, promising to return with more settlers and more provisions in
April the following year. That month passed, with no sign of new arrivals,
so—with food supplies dwindling and relations with indigenous groups sour-
ing—the group readily accepted Francis Drake’s offer of passage home
when he arrived on 19 June, toward the end of a series of attacks on Spanish
ships in the Caribbean. Grenville dropped anchor soon afterward and, finding
the embryo colony deserted, left 15 men in order to maintain Raleigh’s
claims to the area. In 1587, Raleigh (who had been knighted two years
earlier) made a second attempt to establish a settlement, this time sending
118 people to develop an agricultural community, with farmers getting a
minimum of 500 acres to work. When they reached the island on 22 July,
they found no survivors from Grenville’s small group and many of the native
people still hostile so John White, the settlers’ leader, returned to London to
seek help. Unfortunately, war with Spain prevented him from sending relief
until August 1590, and by then his companions, too, had vanished.
Despite the failure of the venture, Raleigh remained a confidant of the
monarch until, in 1591, he married Bess Throckmorton (one of her ladies-in-
waiting) without asking Elizabeth’s permission. Banished from court, and
imprisoned for a few weeks in 1592, his thoughts turned to the possibilities
of finding the city of gold that was rumored to exist at the head of the Caroni
River (now in Venezuela) and to establishing an English colony in that
region of South America. With four ships, he sailed from Plymouth on 6
February 1595 and made his way up the Orinoco River, bolstered by tales of
riches in the interior of the continent, but discovered no great source of
wealth and returned to England, none the richer, in September. Despite that
failure, he was restored to royal favor after participating in a successful
invasion of the Spanish city of Cadiz in the summer of 1596, but, in 1603, he
was implicated in a plot to kill Elizabeth’s successor, King James I. Spared
the death penalty by royal decree, he was held captive in the Tower of
London for 13 years then, after his release on 19 March 1616, made one
more attempt to find the riches that he believed lay amid the forests of South
America, winning James’s permission to sail from Plymouth on 12 June the
following year with a promise that he would preserve the fragile peace with
Spain and refrain from attacking Spanish interests. However, one group of
his men made their way along the Orinoco and, ignoring his orders, sacked
the Spanish outpost at Santo Tomé. Also, once again, the gold proved elu-
sive. When Raleigh returned to England, the outraged Spanish ambassador—
Don Diego Sarmiento de Acuña, Count of Gondomar—demanded that the
430 • RED RIVER COLONY
death sentence, passed in 1603, be reinstated so on 29 October 1618 Sir
Walter was beheaded after touching the blade of the executioner’s axe and
describing it as “a physician for all diseases and miseries.” In 1792, the
capital of the State of North Carolina, in the United States, was named
Raleigh in honor of his commitment to Roanoke. Also, some writers believe
that the colonists who returned in 1586 told stories of the Native Americans’
liking for copper ornaments so the migrants who founded James Town in
1607 (see VIRGINIA COMPANY) took supplies of copper with them when
they sailed from England and were able to trade those goods for food, thus
avoiding starvation and allowing their community to survive its difficult
early years.
See also VIRGINIA.

RED RIVER COLONY. In 1811, the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC)

gave Thomas Douglas, earl of Selkirk, a grant of some 120,000 square miles
of territory (known as the Selkirk Concession) so that he could develop
settlements for Scots families that had been impoverished by radical changes
to agricultural systems in their homeland. Selkirk had earlier promoted
schemes in Prince Edward Island (1803) and Upper Canada (1804) but,
because the HBC held fur trading concessions in the region, was rebuffed by
the British government when he petitioned for rights to develop the Red
River Valley. Undaunted, he allied with Alexander Mackenzie (who, in
1792–1793, had made the first east–west crossing of America north of Mexi-
co) to buy enough shares in the Company to win control of the business and
thus advance his project, receiving the land grant in return for promises that
he would allow the firm to set up trading posts in the colony and provide 200
employees every year, ban colonists from participating in the fur trade, and
set aside land for Company staff who wanted to remain in the area after
retiring.
The first settlers arrived in 1812, establishing, on 29 August, a base (which
Selkirk named Assiniboinia) on a site, close to the junction of the Assini-
boine and Red Rivers, now occupied by downtown Winnipeg. However, the
territory also had a population of mixed Indian and French blood, known as
Métis, who supplied pemmican, made with buffalo meat, to the North West
Company (NWC), the Hudson’s Bay business’s principal commercial rival.
When, in 1814, Miles MacDonell, Assiniboinia’s governor, issued a procla-
mation forbidding the export of pemmican for 12 months (ostensibly to en-
sure that the little settlement had an adequate food supply), the NWC and the
Métis, fearing the commercial impact, both responded with attacks that twice
led to the abandonment of the colony. Also, a treaty between the govern-
ments of Great Britain and the United States, signed on 20 October 1818
(the first of two successive years in which locusts devoured the community’s
crops), established a boundary between British North America and the U.S.
 REDONDA • 431
along the 49th parallel of latitude so the southern portion of Selkirk’s lands,
in which he had established a secondary settlement at Pembina (now in North
Dakota), was ceded to the Americans. (see ANGLO-AMERICAN CON-
VENTION OF 1818).
Despite the difficulties, and the limited success of agricultural enterprises,
the population increased steadily, augmented by French-speaking Métis im-
migrants and by fur traders seeking free land, many of the latter arriving in
the years immediately after 1821, when the Hudson’s Bay Company radical-
ly reduced its workforce following amalgamation with the North West Com-
pany. On 4 May 1836, 16 years after Selkirk’s death, the HBC assumed
responsibility for managing the colony but failed in its efforts to control the
income-generating activities of the local population, who sold furs to whoev-
er offered the best price and not just to HBC agents. By the third quarter of
the 19th century, however, the Company’s business was more clearly fo-
cused on real estate than on fur trading so it had little interest in the Red
River region and, in 1869, entered negotiations to sell much of its land to the
government of the Dominion of Canada, which had been formed two years
earlier. The Métis, who dominated the Red River settlement at the time,
feared that the transfer would result in disintegration of their culture and
erosion of their land rights so, with attorney Louis Riel as their principal
spokesman, they mounted an opposition to the plans, negotiating an arrange-
ment that led to the colony joining the Canadian confederation as the Prov-
ince of Manitoba when the sale was completed on 15 July 1870.

REDONDA. Redonda—a volcanic rock some one-third of a square mile in

extent—lies in the Caribbean Sea at latitude 16° 56´ North and longitude 62°
20´ West, some 15 miles northwest of Montserrat and 35 miles southwest of
Antigua, in the Leeward Islands. Britain claimed the territory in 1869 (pri-
marily to prevent the United States from acquiring it) and incorporated it
within the colony of Antigua, as the Parish of St. John’s, on 26 March 1872.
The American-owned Redonda Phosphate Company, which was licensed to
exploit the guano resources, recruited Montserratians to mine the phosphate-
rich material and ship it—mainly to Germany and the U.S.—for use as a
fertilizer. However, the growing availability of manufactured fertilizers in-
creasingly made guano mining uneconomic so when World War I broke out
in 1914 the loss of the European market dealt a terminal blow to the ailing
industry. A few employees remained on the island, principally to maintain
equipment, until 1929, when a hurricane destroyed many of the installations.
Since then, Redonda has been uninhabited. It was made a dependency (rather
than a parish) of Antigua on 27 February 1967 and retained that status when
the colony became independent, as Antigua and Barbuda, in 1981.
432 • REGULATING ACT (1773)
As a Commonwealth realm, Antigua and Barbuda has the same monarch
as the United Kingdom, but there are others who claim to be rulers of
Redonda. In 1929, Matthew Phipps Shiell, an author of adventure and fanta-
sy tales who wrote as M. P. Shiel, announced—just before the reissue of four
of his novels—that his Montserratian father, also named Matthew, had real-
ized nobody asserted sovereignty over the island so annexed it for himself on
21 July 1865, when his son was born (and four years before it was claimed
by Great Britain). Moreover, Shiell the younger insisted that he had been
crowned king of Redonda on his 15th birthday by a bishop from Antigua.
When he died in 1947, the title was inherited by the bibulous John Gaws-
worthy, his literary executor, who seems to have passed it on to several other
people when short of funds. The most commonly accepted modern claimant
is the Spanish novelist Javier Marías, who has conferred peerages on numer-
ous fellow scribes, including William Boyd (duke of Brazzaville), A. S.
Byatt (duchess of Morpho Eugenia), and Arturo Pérez-Reverte (duke of Cor-
so). In 2001, he created an annual literary prize, to be judged by the holders
of the titles, with the winner receiving a cash award and a duchy.

REGULATING ACT (1773). The Regulating Act, which received royal

assent from King George III on 21 June 1773, was the first step in a govern-
ment takeover of the East India Company (EIC) that was completed in
1858. The EIC, founded in 1600, was required to make an annual payment of
£400,000 in return for the right to a monopoly over British trade in India but
had been unable to meet its obligations since 1768, partly because of poor
management and partly because sales of tea to the American colonies had
collapsed as merchants preferred to buy cheaper, illegally imported supplies
from Dutch traders (see AMERICAN REVOLUTION). With several politi-
cally influential people holding shares in the business, Prime Minister Frede-
rick North, Lord North, decided to overhaul the firm’s management so he
introduced the Regulating Act to parliament on 18 May 1773. The provisions
included the creation of a post of governor-general, who would be based in
Bengal and who would exercise supervisory powers over the presidencies of
Bombay and Madras, which would lose their independence. The governor-
general would be supported by a council of four members and would have a
casting vote, but no veto, at meetings. In addition, the 24-member Court of
Directors was replaced by a committee to which six individuals were elected
each year to serve a four-year term. Dividends paid to shareholders were
limited to 6 percent until a £1,400,000 loan was repaid, EIC employees were
prohibited from taking bribes or indulging in private trade, and a Supreme
Court with four English judges was established at Calcutta (in Bengal Presi-
dency). The legislation was well intentioned but caused many problems—the
Supreme Court’s powers were not clearly defined, for example, and the
 RESTORATION COLONY • 433
governor-general’s lack of a veto led to numerous arguments at meetings of
the council (see HASTINGS, WARREN (1732–1818))—so it was amended
by the India Act in 1784.

RESIDENT. In protectorates, and in other territories—such as the Indian

princely states—where colonial authorities did not exercise full sovereignty
or adopted a policy of indirect rule, the British official who provided advice
to local leaders was often known as the resident. In some cases, these indi-
viduals became important power brokers, but many were little more than
observers, with their influence depending on local attitudes toward colonial
control and on the development of personal relationships with indigenous
decision makers.
See also GOVERNOR; GOVERNOR-GENERAL; HIGH COMMIS-
SIONER; RESIDENT COMMISSIONER.

RESIDENT COMMISSIONER. On occasion, a single individual (usually

termed the “high commissioner”) was allocated administrative responsibil-
ity for several colonial possessions. Because he could be in only one place at
one time, resident commissioners were sometimes appointed to head local
offices in territories considered economically or politically less important
than the one in which the high commissioner resided. Thus, for example,
after the formation of the Union of South Africa in 1910, the high commis-
sioner for Southern Africa also acted as governor-general of South Africa
and was based in that country, with resident commissioners, subordinate to
him, coordinating British interests in Basutoland, Bechuanaland, and Swa-
ziland, which were collectively known as the high commission territories.
See also GOVERNOR; RESIDENT.

RESTORATION COLONY. In 1649, disputes between the English parlia-

ment and King Charles I culminated in the monarch’s execution. For more
than a decade afterward, the parliamentarians ruled England as a republic,
but in 1660 Charles’s eldest son was able to return from exile as King
Charles II and use grants of North American lands—collectively known as
the “restoration colonies” because they followed the restoration of the mon-
archy—to reward supporters of the royalist cause or repay financial and
political debts.
On 24 March 1663, Charles gave the first of the “patents” (or charters), for
the Province of Carolina, to a group of eight courtiers, including Anthony
Ashley Cooper (earl of Shaftesbury and chancellor of the exchequer), Ed-
ward Hyde (earl of Clarendon and high chancellor of England), and George
Monck (duke of Albemarle and master of the king’s horse). In 1665, the
territory they controlled was extended so that it stretched from latitude 36°
434 • REUNION
30´ North (the location of the border between the present-day U.S. States of
North Carolina and Virginia) to latitude 29° 0´ North (south of the city of
St. Augustine, in northeastern Florida). The second patent covered the terri-
tory between the Connecticut and Delaware Rivers, on the Atlantic coast of
North America. When Charles made that grant to his brother, James, duke of
York (later King James II of England and VII of Scotland), on 12 March
1664, the area was part of the Dutch empire, but its acquisition would allow
England to create a chain of colonies from Virginia to Maine so James
wasted no time before sending four frigates, under the command of Colonel
Richard Nicolls, to capture New Amsterdam, the Dutch administrative head-
quarters at the southern tip of Manhattan Island. That poorly defended settle-
ment capitulated on 27 August and the remainder of Holland’s imperial
possessions in North America followed soon afterward. However, on 24
June, even before the surrender, York had leased the area between the Dela-
ware and Hudson Rivers to John Berkeley, Baron Stratton, and Sir George
Carteret, declaring that the tract would be named New Jersey after Carteret’s
ancestral home in the Channel Islands. The annual rent was “twenty nobles
of lawful money of England, if the same shall be lawfully demanded at or in
the Inner Temple Hall, London, at the Feast of St. Michael the Arch Angel.”
On 4 March 1681, Charles signed a third charter, enabling William Penn
to establish a North American colony for Quakers, who were excluded from
public office in England, and prevented from worshipping together, by laws
favoring adherents to the Church of England. The monarch, who preferred
his colonists to be Anglicans rather than noncomformists, granted the patent
in lieu of the £16,000 of wages owed to the late Admiral William Penn, the
petitioner’s father. Initially, the territory, known as the Province of Pennsyl-
vania, included all of the area lying between the 40th and 43rd parallels of
latitude and stretching to five degrees of longitude westward from the Dela-
ware River as well as territory to the south that had been surrendered by the
Dutch. Lands held by the duke of York were specifically excluded, but on 24
August 1682 Penn leased the western side of Delaware Bay from their royal
proprietor so that the province could have access to the sea.
The restoration colonies became more ethnically and socially diverse than
other British possessions in the region because their proprietors had to attract
colonists through settlement schemes and guarantees of religious freedom.
Also, boundaries altered over time as political circumstances changed. By the
outbreak of the American Revolutionary War in 1775, all except Pennsyl-
vania (and Delaware, which had its own legislative assembly but the same
governor as Pennsylvania) had become royal colonies, with governors ap-
pointed by the crown.

REUNION. See BOURBON.

 RHODE ISLAND AND PROVIDENCE PLANTATIONS • 435
RHODE ISLAND AND PROVIDENCE PLANTATIONS. In January
1636, Roger Williams, a London-born theologian and preacher, was ban-
ished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for advocating the separation of
church and state and for arguing that individuals had a right to religious
freedom—views that the colony’s courts considered heretical and seditious.
With a small band of supporters, he moved southward and, in June, settled at
a site, on the west side of Narragansett Bay, that he named Providence
because it gave him “a sense of God’s merciful providence” at a difficult
time. In the spring of 1638, other refugees from the hard-line doctrines of the
Bay Colony’s leaders settled (with Williams’s help) at Portsmouth, on
Aquidneck Island (later renamed Rhode Island), the largest of the islands in
Narragansett Bay. In 1639, dissidents from Portsmouth founded a new vil-
lage at Newport then, in 1644, representatives of all three communities (fear-
ing that the Bay Colony could attempt to absorb them) sent Williams to
England to obtain a parliamentary charter that would recognize them as a
separate unit. The document was issued on 14 March 1644, but internal
squabbles prevented administrative union until 1654. A second charter, con-
firming the independent identity of the Rhode Island and Providence Planta-
tions was signed on 8 July 1663 by King Charles II, to whom—as a Roman
Catholic sympathizer in a predominantly Protestant realm—the territory’s
promises of religious tolerance struck a chord.
In the years that followed, the agricultural and fishing economy on which
the first communities depended became more diversified, with increasing
emphasis on maritime trade, much of it conducted by Jews (many from
Portugal) and Quakers, who had been attracted to the area by the promise of
freedom to worship without fear of persecution but who maintained commer-
cial ties with family and friends elsewhere. Newport became one of the major
harbors on the eastern seaboard of North America, gaining a reputation as a
haven for pirates, a market for slaves, and a producer of rum (which was
exported to Africa and bartered for slaves, who were taken to the Caribbean
colonies to produce sugar, which was carried to Newport to make more rum).
However, much of Rhode Island’s commerce circumvented regulations that
were intended to control the business activities of merchants in the American
colonies so the Sugar Act—to which King George III gave royal assent on 5
April 1764, with the intention of enforcing the collection of taxes on molas-
ses imported from non-British islands in the West Indies—threatened to
undermine an economy that relied heavily on smuggling refined sugarcane
onshore under cover of darkness while bribed revenue officers turned a blind
eye to the illegal activities. Protests against the legislation were violent (for
example, on 10 June 1772 citizens destroyed HMS Gaspée, which had run
aground in the northwest of Narragansett Bay while chasing a vessel sus-
pected of participation in the illegal trade) and fueled demands for an end to
colonial ties. On 4 May 1776, the territory became the first of Britain’s
436 • RHODES, CECIL JOHN (1852–1902)
American colonies to declare itself independent and from 1780, during the
American Revolutionary War, it became the base for French forces fight-
ing against British interests. On 29 May 1790, Rhode Island ratified the
constitution of the newly formed United States of America—but with reluc-
tance and only after the U.S. had warned that failure to do so could result in
its being regarded as a foreign country, a threat which, if fulfilled, could have
led to the imposition of import taxes on goods that its merchants sold to
American buyers.
See also AMERICAN REVOLUTION; BREDA, TREATY OF (1667);
CHARTER COLONY; NEW ENGLAND IN AMERICA, DOMINION OF;
THE THIRTEEN COLONIES.

RHODES, CECIL JOHN (1852–1902). A statesman and entrepreneur who

wanted to see Britain’s colonies in Africa stretch from the Cape of Good
Hope to Cairo, Rhodes was born at Bishop’s Stortford, some 30 miles north
of central London, on 5 January 1853. The fifth son of F. W. Rhodes (a local
vicar) and his wife, Louisa, Cecil proved to be a weakly child so at the age of
16 he was sent to join his older brother, Herbert, a cotton grower in Natal, in
the hope that the warm climate would improve his health. When the cotton
growing venture proved unsuccessful, the two men moved to the recently
discovered diamond fields at Kimberley, but by 1873 Cecil was back in
England and studying at Oxford University. For the next eight years, Rhodes
divided his time between Kimberley and Oxford. His first undergraduate
experience lasted for only a single term because doctors told him that he had
just a few months to live, but he seemed to recover during a sojourn in
southern Africa and graduated in 1881. Those student years proved formative
because he became convinced that people of northwestern European stock
were the ultimate achievement of God’s plan for human evolution and that he
had a personal responsibility to further the spread of British influence in
Africa. To that end, he formed a partnership with C. D. Rudd and, with
financier Alfred Beit, began to purchase claims to potential diamond sites so
by 1891 he had the entire industry under his control in De Beers Consolidat-
ed Mines Ltd.
In 1888, through Rudd, Rhodes negotiated with Lobengula, king of the
Matabele (or Ndebele) people for gold prospecting rights in Mashonaland.
The following year, his British South Africa Company (BSAC) was creat-
ed to carry out the work and was given a royal charter, effectively making the
firm the government’s official representative in the region. By 1893, the
Company had extended its control over the whole of the area that, two years
later, was formally named Rhodesia in his honor. Also, in 1891, he arranged
for Nyasaland to become a British protectorate, pledging that his company
 RHODES, CECIL JOHN (1852–1902) • 437
would donate £10,000 annually for the territory’s upkeep and that he would
donate a similar sum privately. As part of the bargain, BSAC was authorized
to administer the area north from the Zambezi River to Lake Tanganyika.
While those business interests were expanding, the energetic Rhodes was
becoming increasingly active politically. He became a member of the Cape
Colony parliament in 1881, representing the rural area of Barkly West, and
used his influence to extend British control in southern Africa. (In 1885, for
instance, he persuaded the government to make northern Bechuanaland a
protectorate and southern Bechuanaland a crown colony in order to prevent
Germany from linking its Namaqualand-Damaraland protectorate with the
Transvaal and thus blocking British expansion northward.) However, de-
spite his enthusiasm for acquiring territory for Britain, Rhodes was no sup-
porter of government involvement in the administration of the lands he con-
trolled, preferring that the settlers he attracted should make the decisions that
would determine Africa’s future. Also, he was much more tolerant of Boer
opinions than were many of his countrymen, so much so that the Afrikaners
backed his successful campaign to become prime minister of Cape Colony in
1890, in part because he talked of uniting British and Dutch interests against
Germany, a common enemy. The domestic policies he pursued after his
election reflected standard British principles of colonization (for example, he
introduced the Franchise and Ballot Act in 1892 in order to guarantee that
only black Africans who were literate and could earn a laborer’s wage would
have voting rights), but Rhodes also dreamed of a federation of southern
African states within the British Empire. President Paulus Kruger of the
Transvaal, a Boer-dominated republic under the nominal sovereignty of the
British crown, resisted pressures to join the group, and eventually, in 1895,
Rhodes lost patience when Kruger made a speech that included friendly
overtures toward the Germans. He authorized an attempt by an armed force
from BSAC, led by his friend Leander Jameson, to overthrow the Transvaal
government, but the episode was a disaster (see JAMESON RAID
(1895–1896)). On 2 January 1896, Jameson surrendered, and 10 days later
Rhodes resigned his prime ministerial post.
The embarrassment did not end Rhodes’s career—he remained active both
politically (see KIMBERLEY, SIEGE OF (1899–1900)) and commercially
(he invested in experimental fruit farms in Cape Colony, for example)—but
his health was deteriorating again. He died at Muizenberg (now in South
Africa) on 26 March 1902, aged just 48, and was buried in the Matobo Hills,
south of Bulawayo (now in Zimbabwe). Never married (some historians have
suggested that he was homosexual), Rhodes left a large portion of his fortune
to provide funds for students from the colonies, Germany, and the United
States to study at Oxford University. Those Rhodes Scholarships have be-
come prestigious awards, administered by trustees who are required to ensure
that, in keeping with his wishes, recipients are of a high moral character as
438 • RHODESIA
well as academically able. Rhodes was largely responsible for incorporating
nearly 1,000,000 square miles of southern Africa within Britain’s 19th-centu-
ry Empire, but many of his methods were less than scrupulous, even by the
standards of the time. As a result, historians’ assessments of the man have
varied, some stressing his commitment to British interests, his entrepreneuri-
al skills, and his political vision, others arguing that he was an avaricious,
manipulative, megalomaniac racist whose wealth was built on a scaffolding
of deceit and forced labor.
See also ALL-RED ROUTE; BAROTSELAND; CAPE TO CAIRO
RAILWAY; KIPLING, JOSEPH RUDYARD (1865–1936); THOMSON,
JOSEPH (1858–1895).

RHODESIA. When the British South Africa Company (BSAC) acquired

rights to exploit mineral resources and develop trade in south-central Africa
from 1889, it referred to the area in which it operated as Zambezia, after the
Zambezi River, which bisected the territory. However, white settlers in the
region called it Rhodesia because Cecil Rhodes, the founder of BSAC, was
the driving force behind the firm’s expansion so the company formally
adopted the name, as a means of honoring Rhodes, on 3 May 1895. On 17
August 1911, the district was subdivided, for administrative purposes, into
Northern Rhodesia (north of the Zambezi) and Southern Rhodesia (south
of the river). Northern Rhodesia was made a British protectorate on 26
April 1924, incorporated within the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland
on 1 August 1953, and granted independence, as the Republic of Zambia, on
24 October 1964. Southern Rhodesia became a crown colony on 21 Septem-
ber 1923 and joined its northern neighbor in the Federation but reverted to
colony status when that body was dissolved at the end of 1963.
On 11 November 1965, after rejecting British proposals for black majority
rule, Southern Rhodesia’s white-dominated legislature unilaterally declared
the area independent and named it Rhodesia, omitting “Southern,” but Brit-
ain (and most members of the United Nations) refused to accept the change
of status and continued to apply the colonial appellation to the territory. The
“Rhodesian” parliament, led by Prime Minister Ian Smith of the Rhodesian
Front party, recognized Queen Elizabeth II as its head of state until 2 March
1970, when, exasperated by continued British refusals to consider arrange-
ments for permanent white control, it broke the link with the crown and
declared the “country” a republic. However, political and economic pressures
(including the cost of combating guerilla warfare by African nationalist
groups operating from Mozambique and Zambia) forced the Front into nego-
tiating an “internal settlement” in 1979, when Bishop Abel Muzorewa, the
politically moderate black African leader of the United African National
Council, succeeded Smith as prime minister and the area was renamed Zim-
babwe Rhodesia. The move proved only temporary, though, because the
 RHODESIA AND NYASALAND, FEDERATION OF • 439
major African political groups continued their campaigns of violence, refus-
ing to accept a “settlement” that left the white community in control of the
army, civil service, judiciary, and police. As more and more white farmers
were murdered, the financial and human costs of continued opposition to
black rule mounted, compelling Muzorewa’s government to join representa-
tives of the nationalist movements in talks with British officials in London in
September 1979. On 21 December, Southern Rhodesia reverted to colony
status and on 18 April 1980 it became independent, as the Republic of Zim-
babwe.

RHODESIA AND NYASALAND, FEDERATION OF. From the 1920s,

members of the minority white populations in the crown colony of Southern
Rhodesia and the protectorates of Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland
argued for some form of territorial amalgamation as a means of protecting
their interests, but the British government, sensitive to African opposition to
the proposals, consistently refused to consider changes to the status quo.
However, after World War II, demand for Northern Rhodesia’s extensive
copper resources spiraled upward as European and North American manu-
facturing industries returned to a peacetime footing. Also, white immigration
to Southern Rhodesia increased rapidly and, from 1948, British politicians
watched the development of South Africa’s apartheid policies with growing
concern. Intent on withdrawing from Empire, hoping that an ethnic partner-
ship would provide a politically palatable administrative alternative to segre-
gationist South Africa, and seeing the economic potential of a union that
would allow immigrant farmers and industrialists to draw on a wider labor
market, the British government eventually approved the creation of the Fed-
eration of Rhodesia and Nyasaland (sometimes known as the Central African
Federation) on 1 August 1953, anticipating that it would evolve into an
independent state.
Africans in all three areas vociferously opposed the plans, expecting con-
tinued domination by Europeans, and many of the white community in
Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland feared (rightly, as events confirmed) that
Southern Rhodesia would control the institutions established to manage the
territory. To some extent, the Federation government calmed those fears by
investing heavily in infrastructural developments (notably in the Kariba
hydroelectric project on the Zambezi River) and appointing black Africans to
junior ministerial posts, but those moves did little to dilute white majority
rule and by the late 1950s it was clear that the federal benefits were accruing
largely to whites living in Southern Rhodesia. In Britain, politicians and
press criticized the slow progress toward African emancipation, and national-
ist leaders, such as Hastings Banda in Nyasaland and Kenneth Kaunda in
Northern Rhodesia, fomented campaigns of civil disobedience. In February
1959, riots broke out in Nyasaland, the poorest of the Federation partners,
440 • ROANOKE
and more than 1,800 Africans (including Banda) were detained without trial.
Britain, increasingly convinced that there was no realistic alternative to black
majority rule in its African possessions, negotiated arrangements for Nyasa-
land, and then Northern Rhodesia, to secede from the Federation, which was
dissolved on 31 December 1963. Assets were distributed to the three territo-
ries, with Southern Rhodesia receiving the lion’s share. Northern Rhodesia
and Nyasaland won independence (as the Republic of Zambia and the Re-
public of Malawi, respectively) in 1964, but Southern Rhodesia continued to
be a thorn in the side of the British government until 1980.
See also MACLEOD, IAIN NORMAN (1913–1970); NKOMO, JOSHUA
MQABUKO NYONGOLO (1917–1999); SMITH, IAN DOUGLAS
(1919–2007); TODD, REGINALD STEPHEN GARFIELD (1908–2002);
WELENSKY, RAPHAEL “ROY” (1907–1991).

ROANOKE. See CAROLINA; RALEIGH, WALTER (c. 1554–1618).

RODRIGUES. During the Napoleonic Wars, in the first decade of the 19th
century, French frigates in the southwestern Indian Ocean used Île de France
(now Mauritius) and Île Bonaparte (later Bourbon and now Réunion) as
bases from which to attack British merchant ships sailing between home
ports and India round the Cape of Good Hope. In the spring of 1809, the
Royal Navy launched a series of attacks on the French strongholds, achieving
an early success on 4 August, when a force of 200 soldiers and 200 Indian
sepoys led by Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Keating captured the 42-square-
mile island of Rodrigues, which lies some 400 miles east of Mauritius at
latitude 19° 43´ South and longitude 63° 25´ East. From there, Keating and
Commodore Josias Rowley were able to carry out raids on the other territo-
ries, both of which eventually capitulated, Île Bonaparte on 9 July 1810 and
Île de France five months later, on 3 December. Through the Treaty of Paris,
which brought a formal end to the warring on 30 May 1814, France ceded
both Rodrigues and Mauritius to Great Britain, which made the former a
dependency of the latter but, after that, virtually ignored the territory, invest-
ing very little in economic and social infrastructure (so, for example, even by
the early 1960s vessels arriving at Port Mathurin, the main settlement, had to
anchor in the bay and unload their cargoes into small boats, which would
ferry goods and passengers ashore). Community incomes were derived from
farming and fishing, but those activities were frequently disrupted by
cyclones and drought. As a result, although the population increased slowly,
the numbers were always constrained by an outflow of labor seeking jobs in
more cosmopolitan, sugar-producing Mauritius. When, in 1961, 1965, and
1967, the British government held talks with Mauritian leaders regarding
constitutional change, the Rodriguans were excluded, ostensibly because
 RORKE’S DRIFT, BATTLE (OR DEFENSE) OF (22–23 JANUARY 1880) • 441
they had no organized political parties to represent them. In practice, the
exclusion suited British negotiators, who were keen to divest themselves of
colonial responsibilities, because residents of Rodrigues were strongly op-
posed to independence, not because they wanted to remain under British rule
but because they believed that their needs were very different from those of
the larger island. Despite their protests, the colony became a sovereign state
on 12 March 1968, with Rodrigues allocated two seats in the 62-member
Legislative Assembly.

RORKE’S DRIFT, BATTLE (OR DEFENSE) OF (22–23 JANUARY

1880). In January 1879, during the early days of the Zulu War, a column of
British soldiers moved out of Natal, crossed the Buffalo River, and camped
at Rorke’s Drift (a former mission station and trading post operated by
Irishman James Rorke), which was to be used as a supply base and as a
treatment center for men wounded in battle. On 22 January, Lieutenant John
Chard, the commanding officer, learned of the heavy defeat suffered by
colleagues at Isandlwana, just six miles to the east, and—believing that any
attempt to withdraw would leave his party exposed—opted to stay and mount
a defense against the seemingly inevitable onslaught by Zulu warriors. Aban-
doned by most of his native African troops, Chard had a garrison of only
about 155 people (including several who were receiving medical care in the
hospital) to confront the 6,000–7,000 tribesmen who attacked shortly after 4
p.m. Fighting continued for 12 hours, often hand-to-hand, but, although am-
munition ran low, the British rifles eventually prevailed against the Zulu
spears and shortly after 8 a.m. the following day relief forces arrived. Seven-
teen of the defenders died in the battle or shortly afterward, along with 351
Zulus. In addition, at least 500 wounded or captured Zulus were butchered by
British soldiers in the hours after the struggle ended. (Trooper William James
Clark, of the Natal Mounted Police, recorded that “we buried 375 Zulus and
some wounded men were thrown into the grave.”) In an attempt to divert
attention from the ignominious defeat at Isandlwana, the British government
made much of the gallantry of the defenders at Rorke’s Drift, awarding 11
Victoria Crosses (Britain’s highest award for bravery in action). In 1964,
director Cy Endfield portrayed the events of the battle, albeit with numerous
inaccuracies, in the film Zulu; Stanley Baker played the part of Lieutenant
Chard and later bought his Victoria Cross. More recently, some historians
have questioned the traditional description of events, quoting a contemporary
opinion that Chard was a “useless officer fit for nothing” and suggesting that
the medals went to the wrong men.
442 • ROSS, JAMES CLARK (1800–1862)
ROSS, JAMES CLARK (1800–1862). Ross made a significant contribution
to the spread of British influence in the polar regions during the first half of
the 19th century. Born on 15 April 1800 to businessman George Ross and his
wife, Christian, he joined the Royal Navy at the age of 11 and accompanied
his uncle, Sir John Ross, in a search for the Northwest Passage—the sea
route along the northern coast of North America from the Atlantic Ocean to
the Pacific—in 1818. Then, under William Parry, he made further journeys
to the Arctic in 1819–1820, 1821–1823, 1824–1825, and 1827, reporting
several important natural history observations, including a description of
Ross’s gull, a small seabird that is named after him. In 1829, he returned to
the Arctic with his uncle on an expedition financed, in part, by gin magnate
Felix Booth, for whom Sir John named Boothia Felix, the northernmost point
on the Canadian mainland, now known as the Boothia Peninsula. During the
first winter, James Clark Ross made a series of sledge journeys that proved
Boothia was not an island and, on 1 June 1831, discovered the location of the
north magnetic pole, raising the British flag at the site on the west coast of
the peninsula.
From 1835 until 1838, Ross undertook a magnetic survey of Great Brit-
ain on behalf of the Admiralty, the government body responsible for the
Royal Navy, which then appointed him to the command of an expedition that
would locate the south magnetic pole and add to geographical knowledge of
Antarctica. With two ships—HMS Erebus and HMS Terror—he sailed first
to Van Diemen’s Land (now Tasmania) then, on New Year’s Day 1841,
crossed the Antarctic Circle and, on 12 January, planted a flag on newly
discovered Possession Island, naming the region Victoria Land in honor of
Queen Victoria and offering a toast to the monarch and her husband, Prince
Albert. Weather and dense pack ice thwarted efforts to reach the south mag-
netic pole, but Ross and his companions added much to maps of the conti-
nent, including McMurdo Sound (named for Lieutenant Archibald McMur-
do, an officer on the Terror), two volcanoes (the active Mount Erebus and
the extinct Mount Terror, named after the expedition ships), the Ross Ice
Shelf (which Ross discovered on 28 January 1841 and designated the Victor-
ia Barrier, commenting that “There’s no more chance of sailing through that
than through the cliffs of Dover”), and the Ross Sea (which was later named
after him).
On 18 October 1843, six weeks after his return to England, Ross married
Ann Coulman of Yorkshire, apparently after giving her his word that he
would never again travel to the poles (and keeping that promise apart from a
single occasion, when he was released from the vow in order to lead an
ultimately unsuccessful search, in 1848–1849, for Sir John Franklin, who
had vanished while attempting to find the Northwest Passage). Ross was
 ROYAL AFRICAN COMPANY • 443
promoted to the rank of rear-admiral in 1856 but never recovered from the
death of his wife the following year and passed away at his home in Aston
Abbotts, northwest of London, on 3 April 1862.
See also BRITISH ANTARCTIC TERRITORY; ROSS DEPENDENCY;
SCOTT, ROBERT FALCON (1868–1912); SHACKLETON, ERNEST
HENRY (1874–1922).

ROSS DEPENDENCY. The Ross Dependency is bounded by lines of lati-

tude 160° East and 150° West from their meeting point at the South Pole to
latitude 60° South. On 23 July 1923, the area was annexed, and given its
name, by the United Kingdom, which justified its assertions of sovereignty
on the basis of territorial claims and discoveries made by James Clark Ross
in 1841–1843 and by Robert Falcon Scott and Ernest Shackleton in
1902–1904, by Shackleton in 1908–1909, and by Scott in 1911–1912. One
week after the annexation, responsibility for administration was transferred
to New Zealand, which has maintained Scott Base, a scientific research
facility, on Ross Island since 1957. The United States also has a base on the
island, at McMurdo Station, and Italy has a facility on the mainland, at Terra
Nova Bay. Under the terms of the Antarctic Treaty, which came into force on
23 June 1961, New Zealand has agreed not to pursue political claims to the
area.
See also BRITISH ANTARCTIC TERRITORY.

ROYAL AFRICAN COMPANY. In 1660, King Charles II granted a char-

ter to the Company of Royal Adventurers of England Trading with Africa,
giving it a monopoly over the slave trade so that plantations in the Caribbean
and in English colonies on the North American mainland could be assured of
a steady supply of labor. The business stuttered, partly because of poor
management and partly as a consequence of England’s war with Holland
from 1665–1667, but the firm was restructured in 1672 as the Royal African
Company and authorized to build forts, develop commerce in gold and
slaves, and enforce the law along 5,000 miles of coastline from Cape Sallee
(in present-day Morocco) to the Cape of Good Hope (on the southern tip of
the continent). With headquarters at Cape Coast, on the Gold Coast, it was
transporting 5,000 slaves across the Atlantic each year by the early 1680s and
also providing gold for the English Mint, but the profits accrued principally
to merchants in London, to the annoyance of entrepreneurs in Bristol, Liver-
pool, and other ports. In 1698, parliament bowed to pressure from outside the
capital and repealed the monopoly rights. Within a few years, the number of
slaves carried on English ships had increased fourfold and England was the
leading nation involved in the commerce. However, the Royal African Com-
pany was unable to cope with the competition and had virtually ceased to
444 • ROYAL COLONY
trade by the 1720s, although it conducted some dealings in gold dust and
ivory, and administered British possessions on the West African coast, until
23 June 1751, when when it became a partner in the Company of Mer-
chants Trading to Africa.
See also THE GAMBIA; GORÉE.

ROYAL COLONY. In the 17th and 18th centuries, colonies administered

by officials who were appointed by, and directly responsible to, the sove-
reign were known as royal colonies. Initially, most of Britain’s possessions
in eastern North America were either charter colonies (developed by trading
companies operating under the terms of a royal charter) or proprietary colo-
nies (under the control of men who had received grants of land from the
monarch). However, from 1624, when King James I revoked the Virginia
Company’s charter, more and more of those territories fell directly under the
authority of the crown (and then, as monarchs increasingly lost power, under
the authority of parliament acting in the name of the crown). These areas
were often described as royal colonies, but by the mid-19th century the term
had been superseded by “crown colony,” which was used as a descriptor for
possessions managed by a resident British bureaucracy, with governors
nominally appointed by the monarch but, in practice, selected by the prime
minister or the secretary of state for the colonies (see COLONIAL OFFICE).
See also ASSOCIATED STATE; BRITISH DEPENDENT TERRITORY;
BRITISH OVERSEAS TERRITORY; CAROLINA; CROWN DEPEN-
DENCY; DOMINION; LEAGUE OF NATIONS MANDATED TERRITO-
RY; NEW HAMPSHIRE; NEW JERSEY; PROTECTED STATE; PRO-
TECTORATE; RESTORATION COLONY; UNITED NATIONS TRUST
TERRITORY; VIRGINIA.

ROYAL GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY. For much of the 19th century, the

Royal Geographical Society (RGS) provided infrastructural support for the
expansion of the British Empire. On 24 May 1830, members of the Raleigh
Club (a group of travelers who met regularly to dine on exotic foods and
exchange tales of their experiences) agreed to form a Geographical Society
of London that would promote “that most important and entertaining branch
of knowledge, GEOGRAPHY.” King William IV consented to become a
patron of the organization and asked that the name be changed to Royal
Geographical Society.
Unlike most of the learned societies that were flourishing at the time, the
RGS made concerted efforts to involve laymen in its activities by celebrating
explorers’ achievements; in 1834, for example, it marked one adventurer’s
return from a four-year Arctic expedition by staging an event at which “a
gigantic Image of Captain [John] Ross” would appear, “rising from amidst
 ROYAL NIGER COMPANY • 445
the Icebergs.” Also, it funded its own explorations, supporting such journeys
as Richard Burton’s search, in 1857–1860, for the sea that, according to
Arab traders, lay in the interior of Africa. The publicity fed public fascination
with discoveries in foreign lands and thus bolstered support for extension of
British influence abroad, but much of the RGS’s contribution to imperial
progress was less glamorous. There was a widespread belief, in the early
1800s, that acquisition of knowledge about areas overseas was critical to
successful extension of imperial interests so the maps and reports acquired
by the RGS became an important repository of information for merchants
and political decision makers as well as for expedition organizers. Also, the
organization’s governing council was composed of men with strong links to
the armed services and to parliament so it was in a strong position to sway
government ministers. (Thus, for instance, in 1857, after the London Mis-
sionary Society ended its support for David Livingstone, Sir Roderick Mur-
chison, the Society’s president, was able to persuade Foreign Secretary
George Villiers, earl of Clarendon, to give the explorer a post as consul for
the east coast of Africa.) The links were not one-way, however, because in its
Hints to Travellers the RGS urged the personnel it supported to find markets
for British goods and identify “resources . . . that may be turned to industrial
or commercial account.”
In the 20th century, the Society continued to sponsor expeditions, particu-
larly in Africa, central Asia, and the polar regions but, with most of the
blanks on the world map filled in, focused increasingly on small, clearly
targeted studies by university-based specialists. In 1995, it merged with the
Institute of British Geographers (the professional body for scholars in the
discipline), but some of the 10,000 members have felt that, since then, the
body has become too academic. In 2009, John Blashford-Snell, who led the
first descent of the Blue Nile in 1968, combined with others in an attempt to
force a return to adventuring, but his proposals failed to garner the support
needed in order to change policies.
See also AFRICAN ASSOCIATION; BAKER, SAMUEL WHITE
(1821–1893); GOLDIE, GEORGE DASHWOOD TAUBMAN
(1846–1925); SCOTT, ROBERT FALCON (1868–1912); SPEKE, JOHN
HANNING (1827–1864); STANLEY, HENRY MORTON (1841–1904);
THOMSON, JOSEPH (1858–1895).

ROYAL NIGER COMPANY. George Goldie’s Royal Niger Company,

founded in 1882 as the National African Company (NAC), was responsible
for the initial British economic and political development of the West
African territory that became the Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria. The
somewhat unconventional Goldie, who had scandalized his friends and rela-
tives when, at the age of 24, he eloped with Mathilda Elliot, the family
governess, traveled extensively in North Africa as a young man and gained
446 • ROYAL NIGER COMPANY
business experience from 1875, when he assumed control of the financially
troubled Holland Jacques firm, which was trading along the River Niger.
Goldie renamed the business the Central African Trading Company and, over
the next four years, absorbed three competitors, eventually creating the Unit-
ed African Company (UAC) in 1879.
Goldie used his commercial clout to reduce payments to the Africans who
sold ivory, palm oil, and other commodities, but those low prices attracted
other European merchants, particularly from France, who also wanted to
increase their profits. Aware that a monopoly arrangement would bring more
certain financial benefits, he formed the National African Company (NAC)
in 1881, arranged for it to purchase UAC’s assets, and sought powers to rule
the territory in which it operated. Ever since 1858, when it had ended the
East India Company’s authority to rule India, the British government had
been wary of granting such management rights to private concerns, but it
wanted to enhance both political influence and prospects for trade in West
Africa and was aware that France and Germany had similar aims. Unwilling
to commit the funds necessary to carry out the task itself, it had little option
but to turn to entrepreneurs willing to invest their own resources. As Goldie
bought out French concerns and negotiated more than 400 treaties with local
chiefs, the NAC exercised more and more control over lands along the Benue
and Niger Rivers so when, on 10 July 1866, the prime minister, Robert
Gascoyne-Cecil, marquis of Salisbury, eventually approved the grant of a
royal charter he was merely recognizing the reality of the firm’s grip on the
area.
The NAC renamed itself the Royal Niger Company (RNC) and built up a
profitable business but annoyed the French and the Germans by excluding
them from the commerce. Also, high tariffs and restrictions on trade pro-
voked protest from Africans and particularly from the Nembe (or Brass)
people of the Niger delta, who attacked the RNC base at Akassa in January
1895 and looted the stores. In Britain, too, attitudes changed as the govern-
ment, persuaded by Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain, favored great-
er involvement in Africa and became aware that RNC claims to control areas
such as the Moslem Nupe emirate, located between the Kaduna and Niger
Rivers, were greatly exaggerated. As tensions mounted, Chamberlain in-
sisted on a takeover so on 1 January 1900, in return for a payment of
£865,000, the British government assumed responsibility for the territory,
forming the protectorates of Northern Nigeria and Southern Nigeria, in-
cluding the small Niger Coast Protectorate within the latter. The tiny Lagos
Colony was incorporated within Southern Nigeria in 1906 and Northern and
Southern Nigeria were united as the Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria in
1914. In 1920, the Royal Niger Company was bought by Lever Brothers, and
in 1929 it was merged with the African & Eastern Trade Corporation to form
the United Africa Company, the largest trading business in the region.
 RUPERT’S LAND • 447
See also LUGARD, FREDERICK JOHN DEALTRY (1858–1945);
THOMSON, JOSEPH (1858–1895).

RUPERT’S LAND. See HUDSON’S BAY COMPANY.

 S
SABA. Saba lies in the eastern Caribbean Sea, covering some five square
miles at latitude 17° 38´ North and longitude 63° 15´ West. Over more than
170 years, England (and later Great Britain), France, and Holland asserted
control as they battled for military and political supremacy in Europe. The
Netherlands claimed the volcanic island as a colony in April 1640, but when
the English occupied it in August 1665, during the Second Anglo-Dutch
War, they deported the Dutch settlers to the neighboring island of Saint
Martin. Although Holland recaptured the territory later in the year, the Eng-
lish returned on 4 July 1672, in the early months of the Third Anglo-Dutch
War, after Sir William Stapleton, governor of the Leeward Islands, had
commissioned William Burt (of Jamaica and Nevis) to raise a force of 100
men and attack the territory. Sovereignty reverted to the Netherlands, once
again, through the terms of the Treaty of Westminster, signed on 19 Febru-
ary 1674, but the island remained under English jurisdiction for a further five
years, partly because the Dutch did not want it to fall into the hands of the
French (with whom they remained at war until 1678) and partly because the
English were happy to hold on to a strategically important location.
From 1679, for more than a century, Saba was administered by the Dutch
West Indian Company, but it surrendered to British forces on 3 February
1781, during the American Revolutionary War and the Fourth Anglo-
Dutch War. The French (then allies of Holland) retook it on 26 November
1781, but from 16 April 1801 (during war with France after the French had
reduced the Netherlands to a vassal state) it flew the British flag again after
capitulating to an attack led by Captain John Perkins (the Royal Navy’s first
black commissioned officer) and Colonel Richard Blunt. In 1803, under the
terms of the Treaty of Amiens (signed on 25 March the previous year), it
reverted to the Dutch authorities, but on 22 February 1810 it was under
British rule once more, falling to a fleet, commanded by Vice-Admiral Alex-
ander Cochrane, that also occupied Guadeloupe, Sint Eustatius (see SAINT
EUSTACE), and St. Martin. The Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 13 August 1814
recognized Dutch sovereignty, however, and British administrators handed
over their keys on 22 February 1816. Since then, Saba has been under Dutch

449
450 • SAINT BARTHOLOMEW’S ISLAND
control (and is now a special municipality of the Netherlands), but the British
legacy from five occupations remains because English is the first language of
most of the islanders and accepted in official communications with govern-
ment.

SAINT BARTHOLOMEW’S ISLAND. See ELIZABETH ISLAND.

SAINT CHRISTOPHER. See SAINT KITTS.

SAINT CROIX. St. Croix, located at latitude 17° 44´ North and longitude
64° 44´ West and now the largest of the U.S. Virgin Islands, was the site of
one of the earliest English settlements in the Americas. A group of colonists,
led by John White, stayed for a few days while on their way way to Roanoke
(see CAROLINA; RALEIGH, WALTER (c. 1554–1618)) in 1587, and a
permanent settlement had been established at a location near present-day
Frederiksburg by 1625. However the Dutch (accompanied by a group of
French Protestants from Saint Kitts) had also founded a colony, and squab-
bles were frequent. The reasons for the tensions are unclear, but matters
came to a head in 1645, when the Dutch and English governors were both
victims of violence and the Dutch and French communities moved away, the
former to Sint Eustatius (see SAINT EUSTACE) and Saint Martin, the
latter to Guadeloupe. Five years later, however, a surprise attack by a 1,200-
strong Spanish force from Puerto Rico ousted the English settlers, many of
whom found new homes in Bermuda.
Great Britain made no further effort to establish a presence on the island
until 1801, by which time it was under Danish sovereignty and Britain was at
war with France. Denmark, although neutral in the conflict, had formed an
alliance with Russia and Sweden in an effort to prevent the Royal Navy from
intercepting Danish vessels trading with the French and confiscating their
cargoes, and St. Croix was providing a base from which privateers could
attack British ships—circumstances that British politicians believed justified
an invasion. The Danish possessions were poorly defended so when Rear-
Admiral John Thomas Duckworth and General Thomas Trigge arrived off
nearby Saint Thomas on 28 March (four days after taking St. Martin), with a
fleet of nearly 30 warships and 4,000 men, the Danish garrison (and the
defenders on neighboring Saint John) quickly capitulated. Three days later,
Governor-general W. A. Lindemann surrendered St. Croix to the same force.
The British troops withdrew from the island on 16 February the following
year (and from St. John and St. Thomas on 19 February) under the terms of a
convention signed by representatives of King George III and Emperor Alex-
ander I of Russia in St. Petersburg on 17 June 1801 and confirmed by the
Danes on 23 October. However, they returned six years later after Denmark
 SAINT DOMINGUE • 451
had formed an alliance with France during the Napoleonic Wars. That alli-
ance permitted France to use harbors on the Danish islands to shelter and
supply French vessels operating against British ships in the West Indies, but
attacks by a 7,000-strong force led by Admiral Alexander Cochrane, on the
74-gun HMS Belleisle, and General Henry Bowyer forced the still poorly
defended St. Thomas and St. John to surrender on 21 December 1807 and St.
Croix on Christmas Day. Eighty-eight vesssels were taken as prizes of war.
The occupation lasted until 20 November 1815, when Britain returned the
territories to Denmark in accordance with the provisions of the Treaty of
Kiel, signed on 14 January the previous year (see HELIGOLAND). From
then, the islands remained under Danish control until 17 January 1917, when
they were sold to the United States for $25,000,000, paid in gold.

SAINT DOMINGUE. St. Domingue occupied the western third of the Car-
ibbean island of Hispaniola at latitude 18° 32´ North and longitude 72° 20´
West. In the mid-17th century, it was colonized by France, which exploited
its agricultural resources so that, by the 1780s, it had become one of the
jewels in that country’s empire, producing about 60 percent of the coffee and
40 percent of the sugar consumed on the European market. However, in the
wake of the French Revolution, which replaced the monarchy with a repub-
lic, the slaves who provided the labor on which the wealth depended pressed
for improved rights then, having failed to get them, rose in revolt themselves
in August 1791, killing more than 400 settlers and destroying hundreds of
plantations. The planters decided that they could best protect their interests
by inviting the British government to declare sovereignty over the territory,
and in 1793, after France had declared war on Great Britain, Prime Minister
William Pitt the Younger—who favored the abolition of slavery but, none-
theless, was keen, for commercial and strategic reasons, to add the riches of
St. Domingue to the Empire’s assets—accepted their offer. Some 15,000
troops were dispatched to take control of the territory in a series of attacks
coordinated with Spanish allies.
Several historians have argued that Spain (which already controlled the
eastern two-thirds of Hispaniola) and Britain intended to divide the colony,
with Britain taking the south, but by the time Port-au-Prince (the territory’s
capital) fell, on 14 June 1794, the political climate had changed. Five months
earlier, on 4 February, the French National Convention had voted to end
slavery, and on May 6 Toussaint Bréda (also known as Toussaint Louver-
ture), one of the leaders of the rebellion, had committed his men to fight
against the invaders alongside the French, believing that if the British and
Spanish armies were victorious his people would return to permanent bond-
age. A peace treaty on 22 July 1795 ended war between France and Spain in
Europe and resulted in the cession of the Spanish-held eastern two-thirds of
Hispaniola to the French, placing additional pressure on a British garrison
452 • SAINT EUSTACE
already weakened as thousands of men fell victim to yellow fever. Growing
criticism of the rising cost of the war, harassment by guerilla fighters, and the
ever-present tropical diseases combined to reduce morale, but, even so, the
troops held most of the coastal area from St. Nicholas (in the northwest) to
Jeremie (in the southwest) until 1798, when Toussaint launched an offensive.
General Thomas Maitland, the British governor (and later, governor of Mal-
ta from 1813–1824), realized that resistance was futile but negotiated ar-
rangements for withdrawal that included an understanding that the Royal
Navy would support Toussaint if he decided to declare independence from
France. Maitland left the island on 2 October 1798 and the colony became a
sovereign state (the Republic of Haiti) on 1 January 1804, assisted by the
British navy’s blockade of the French-held ports of Cap-Français and St.
Nicholas from June–December 1803.
See also TORTUGA.

SAINT EUSTACE. From the third decade of the 17th century until the
second decade of the 19th century, the Caribbean island of St. Eustace was a
frequent battleground for the armies of competing European powers, includ-
ing Great Britain. Covering just eight square miles but much prized for its
wealth as well as for its strategic location, it lies toward the north of the
Leeward Islands at latitude 17° 29´ North and longitude 62° 59´ West. The
first attempts at colonization were made in 1625 by French and English
settlers, but both groups found the lack of fresh water an insuperable obsta-
cle. The Dutch arrived in 1636, named the island Sint Eustatius (later angli-
cized by English occupants as St. Eustace), and grew cotton, sugarcane, and
tobacco. However, the English returned on 23 July 1665, determined to
fulfill King Charles II’s wish to “root the Dutch out of all places in the West
Indies.” That stay, too, was brief, though, because a small Franco-Dutch
force laid siege to the island in October and when reinforcements arrived to
bolster its numbers on 15 November the 200-strong garrison surrendered.
The Treaty of Breda, signed on 31 July 1667, confirmed Holland’s sove-
reignty, but by 1672 England and the Netherlands were at war again, and Sir
William Stapleton, governor of the Leeward Islands, led an assault that
captured the territory in late June. Technically, the colony reverted to Dutch
control on 19 February 1674, when the Treaty of Westminster ended the
conflict, but the Dutch (who were still at war with the French) preferred that
it remain in English hands because they would not have to pay the cost of
defense, and the English were happy to oblige because Sint Eustatius lay
close to other of England’s Caribbean possessions, including Anguilla and,
particularly, Saint Kitts.
Dutch officials resumed responsibility for administration in 1679 but were
ousted in 1689 by the French who, in turn, were removed by the English,
under Major-General Sir Timothy Thornhill, in 1690. After sovereignty was
 SAINT HELENA • 453
handed back to Holland (then an English ally) in 1696, on the orders of King
William III, Sint Eustatius was administered by the Dutch West India Com-
pany, which turned it into a transit center for slaves and then into a rich
mercantile center with wealth based on trade in sugar. However, it became a
thorn in Great Britain’s side after the outbreak of the American Revolution-
ary War in 1775 because, as the Royal Navy blockaded North America’s
Atlantic ports, it supplied arms and other goods to the rebels. In 1781, the
year after the Dutch Republic entered the war on the American side, an army
of 3,000 men, commanded by Admiral George Rodney and General John
Vaughan, was dispatched from Saint Lucia with orders to occupy Sint Eus-
tasius, which surrendered on 3 February. The occupation lasted for just 10
months because French forces launched a successful surprise attack on 26
November then, three years later, returned it to the Netherlands. When the
war ended with an American victory, the need for arms declined and most of
the merchants moved to more profitable sites so the island’s economy de-
clined, but its strategic importance remained so on 21 April 1801, with Great
Britain again at war with France and Holland, Sint Eustatius, along with
neighboring Saba and Saint Martin, capitulated to a detachment of soldiers
commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Richard Blunt, who arrived on board
Captain John Perkins’s 20-gun sloop, HMS Arab. Dutch officials returned
following the signing of the Treaty of Amiens on 25 March 1802, but the
islands were occupied again in 1810 (Sint Eustatius on 21 February and Saba
the next day) and held until 1816, when they reverted once more to Holland
in accordance with the provisions of the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 13 August
1814. Since then, Sint Eustatius has remained under Dutch control (and, in
2010, was made a special municipality of the Netherlands). The British influ-
ence remains, however, because English is spoken widely, partly as a conse-
quence of the occupations but also because of contacts with British posses-
sions, and former possessions, in the Caribbean.
See also SAINT CROIX.

SAINT GEORGE’S ISLAND. See ELIZABETH ISLAND.

SAINT HELENA. A 47-square-mile island of volcanic ash and igneous

rock, St. Helena lies in the southern Atlantic Ocean some 1,200 miles west of
Namibia at latitude 15° 57´ South and longitude 5° 43´ West. According to
most accounts, João de Nova, a Galician mariner, was the first European to
sight the territory, naming it after St. Helena of Constantinople because the
discovery was made on 21 May 1502, her feast day. From 1633–1651, it was
claimed by the Dutch but never settled so in 1657 Oliver Cromwell (who,
having deposed King Charles I, was ruling England) granted the East India
Company (EIC) authority to govern and conduct commerce there. The EIC
454 • SAINT JOHN
took possession of the uninhabited territory “with trumpet and drum” on 5
May 1659 and immediately set about building a town that was initially
named Chapel Valley but which, after the restoration of the monarchy in
1660, was renamed Jamestown after James, duke of York (and later King
James II). In a charter issued on 3 April 1661, King Charles II confirmed the
EIC’s rights to colonize and garrison the island “in such legal and reasonable
manner” as the company thought appropriate, and in October 1815, because
of its remoteness, the British government turned the area into a prison for
Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte of France, who remained until his death on 5
May 1821.
For many years, St. Helena was an important refueling base for ships
sailing from Europe to the East Indies, but trading patterns changed with the
increasing use of steam power and with the opening of the Suez Canal in
1869 so the number of visiting vessels fell from around 1,100 to fewer than
300 between the middle and end of the 19th century, and that, in turn, spurred
emigration as islanders left in search of work. By the early 21st century, St.
Helena had about 4,250 residents, earning an income from agriculture, fish-
ing, and the sale of postage stamps to collectors but depending heavily on
subsidies from the United Kingdom. Britain made St. Helena a crown colo-
ny on 22 April 1834 and attached Ascension Island and the Tristan da
Cunha archipelago as dependencies on 12 September 1922 and 12 January
1938, respectively, but a new constitution, approved by Queen Elizabeth II
on 8 July 2009, gave all three equal status in the British Overseas Territory
of St. Helena, Ascension, and Tristan da Cunha. Local government is the
responsibility of the governor (who represents the monarch), a nine-member
Executive Council (which includes the governor), and a 15-member Legisla-
tive Council, 12 of whom are elected and five of whom also sit on the
Executive Council. The United Kingdom is responsible for defense and rela-
tions with foreign states.

SAINT JOHN. In 1672, England annexed the islands at the northeastern tip
of the Greater Antilles archipelago, in the eastern Caribbean Sea, believing
that 20-square-mile St. John, lying at latitude 18° 20´ North and longitude
64° 44´ West, was part of the acquisition. As a result, in March 1718, when
Walter Hamilton, governor of the Leeward Islands colony, reported to
London that Erik Bredal, his counterpart on the Danish territory of Saint
Thomas, was planning to send a group of settlers to the island, the British
government responded with gunboat diplomacy, dispatching Captain Francis
Hume and HMS Scarborough to tell the migrants that Frederick IV, king of
Denmark, had no title to the lands and that they should leave. However, the
Danes proved unwilling to pack up, and Britain, which had never made any
 SAINT KITTS • 455
effort to promote settlement, was unwilling to move them forcibly so the
migrants remained, imported slaves, and turned St. John into a significant
source of sugar for European markets.
British forces did return in 1801, while at war with France. The Danish
possessions in the Caribbean were providing havens for privateers that at-
tacked British ships, and Denmark had signed an alliance with Russia and
Sweden in an attempt to prevent Britain from boarding its merchant ships
and confiscating cargoes bound for French markets. In retaliation, the British
government placed 4,000 men under the command of Rear-Admiral John
Thomas Duckworth and General Thomas Trigge, with orders to oust Danish
administrators from the poorly defended territories. Casimir Wilhelm von
Scholten, the Danish governor of St. Thomas and St. John, saw no advantage
in struggling against overwhelming odds and surrendered on 29 March, but
the British troops remained only until 19 February 1802, when they relin-
quished control under the terms of a convention signed by representatives of
King George III and Emperor Alexander I of Russia in St. Petersburg on 17
June the previous year and confirmed by the Danes on 23 October. However,
in 1807, Denmark entered the Napoleonic Wars on the French side, and that
alliance allowed French vessels to operate from ports in Denmark’s West
Indian colonies so, once again, the London government took action, sending
Admiral Alexander Cochrane and General Henry Bowyer, with 7,000 men,
to attack Saint Croix, St. John, and St. Thomas, which still lacked strong
defenses. On 21 December, von Scholten capitulated again. British author-
ities, under Lieutenant-Governor Major-General F. I. G. Maclean, adminis-
tered St. John and St. Thomas until 20 November 1815, when they reverted
to Danish sovereignty in accordance with the provisions of the Treaty of
Kiel, signed on 14 January 1814 (see HELIGOLAND). They remained Dan-
ish colonies until 17 January 1917, when they were sold, along with St.
Croix, to the United States for $25,000,000, paid in gold.

SAINT JOHN’S ISLAND. See PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND.

SAINT KITTS. St. Kitts (or more formally, St. Christopher) was the first
successful English colony in the West Indies. Located at the eastern edge of
the Caribbean Sea at latitude 17° 15´ North and longitude 62° 40´ West,
toward the northern end of the Lesser Antilles archipelago, it was settled by
explorer and mariner Thomas Warner from 28 January 1624 but much con-
tested by the French until British ownership was confirmed by the Treaty of
Versailles, one of several pacts that brought a formal end to the American
Revolutionary War on 3 September 1783 (see PARIS, TREATY OF
(1783)). The island became a base for the colonization of neighboring territo-
ries (including Anguilla, Antigua, Montserrat, and Nevis) and developed a
456 • SAINT LUCIA
productive plantation agriculture, initially concentrating on tobacco then,
from 1640, turning to sugarcane and using African slaves as labor. However,
the abolition of slavery in 1834 (see SLAVERY ABOLITION ACT (1833))
led to increasing competition from foreign estates as labor costs rose. Then,
in the 1920s, worldwide economic depression further reduced the profitabil-
ity of the industry and, in 1932, encouraged labor leaders to form a St. Kitts
Workers’ League to protect their interests. Under Robert Bradshaw, the La-
bour Party—an offshoot of that organization—became the dominant political
organization on the island from the mid-1940s until the late 1970s.
Anguilla was linked to St. Kitts administratively in 1825 and Nevis fol-
lowed in 1883, but residents on both of those islands increasingly argued,
with justification, that they were being starved of investment by their larger
neighbor so the relationship was always uneasy. When the territory assumed
full responsibility for internal self-government on 27 February 1967, the
Anguillans feared even further discrimination under Bradshaw, who led the
new administration. Anticipating a prolonged breakdown of law and order,
Britain resumed direct control of Anguilla in 1971 and severed that colony’s
link with St. Kitts in 1980. Nevisian politicians united with the People’s
Action Movement, which had led the opposition to Labour on St. Kitts, and,
two years after Bradshaw’s death in 1978, formed a coalition that won con-
trol of the colony’s government then negotiated complete independence, as
St. Kitts and Nevis, on 19 September 1983.
See also ASSOCIATED STATE; BARBUDA; BREDA, TREATY OF
(1667); BRITISH WEST INDIES; COMMONWEALTH REALM; LEE-
WARD ISLANDS; SAINT CROIX; SAINT EUSTACE; UTRECHT,
TREATY OF (1713); WEST INDIES FEDERATION.

SAINT LUCIA. The natural deep-water harbors on St. Lucia—an island in

the Lesser Antilles archipelago on the eastern edge of the Caribbean Sea at
latitude 14° 1´ North and longitude 60° 59´ West—combined with a militari-
ly strategic location and productive sugarcane plantations to make the territo-
ry attractive to Europe’s imperial powers. As a result, even though rampant
disease and resistance from the local Carib people deterred settlers, it
changed hands between Britain and France more than a dozen times in the
17th, 18th, and early 19th centuries before the French formally conceded
control to British authorities through the Treaty of Paris, which temporarily
ended the Napoleonic Wars on 30 May 1814. Under colonial rule, St. Lucia’s
economy was heavily dependent on agriculture. For most of the period, sugar
was the main crop, grown on plantations worked until the 1830s by slave
labor of African descent and later by indentured workers imported from
India. By the 1950s, however, the island’s cane sugar was facing competi-
tion from sugar derived from beet grown in large fields in other parts of the
world, and returns were declining so many farmers turned to bananas, which
 SAINT MARTIN • 457
were less labor intensive and could be raised on small plots. The “green
gold” derived from the new crop markedly raised living standards, bringing
profits that were used to improve housing, roads, and other aspects of eco-
nomic and social infrastructures.
Although Britain initially administered St. Lucia directly, the territory was
attached to the Windward Islands colony in 1838. The whole colony en-
tered the West Indies Federation in 1958 and the post of governor of the
Windward Islands was abolished the following year so when the Federation
dissolved in 1962 St. Lucia emerged as an independent unit once again. With
five of Britain’s other Caribbean possessions, it was granted associated
statehood in 1967, an arrangement that gave local politicians full control of
domestic affairs but left the United Kingdom government responsible for
defense and foreign relations. Full independence followed on 22 February
1979.
See also BRITISH WEST INDIES; COMMONWEALTH REALM;
MAURITIUS; PARIS, TREATY OF (1763); PITT THE ELDER,
WILLIAM, EARL OF CHATHAM; TOBAGO.

SAINT MARTIN. The 37-square-mile Caribbean island of St. Martin, lying

at latitude 18° 3´ North and longitude 63° 3´ West, has shared the fate of its
neighbors in the Lesser Antilles archipelago, falling under the flags of sever-
al European overlords since it was first claimed for Spain by Christopher
Columbus in 1493. For much of the 18th century, it was ruled by the Dutch
(who named it Sint Maarten) and the French (who know it as Saint-Martin),
but on 3 February 1781, while both those nations were supporting the rebels
in the American Revolutionary War, it was captured, along with Saba and
Sint Eustatius (see SAINT EUSTACE), by British troops under the com-
mand of Admiral George Rodney and General John Vaughan. The occupa-
tion lasted only until 26 November, when the French regained control, but
the British forces returned on 24 March 1801 and remained until 1 December
1802 (though the formal transfer of sovereignty occurred through the Treaty
of Amiens, signed on 25 March 1802). Then, on 15 February 1810, during
the Napoleonic Wars, the island succumbed to an attack by a fleet, com-
manded by Vice-Admiral Alexander Cochrane, that also forced the commu-
nities on Saba and Sint Eustatius to surrender. British administrators gov-
erned St. Martin until 25 July 1816, leaving in accordance with an agreement
signed on 20 November the previous year, following Napoleon’s defeat.
Since then, the territory has been divided into Dutch and French sectors, with
the French region now designated an “overseas collectivity” of France and
the Dutch area a “constituent country” within the Kingdom of the Nether-
lands.
458 • SAINT PETER’S
SAINT PETER’S. See SAINT-PIERRE AND MIQUELON.

SAINT-PIERRE AND MIQUELON. The location of the eight islands that

comprise Miquelon and Saint-Pierre, some 15 miles off Newfoundland’s
southern coast at latitude 46° 47´ North and longitude 56° 12´ West, guaran-
teed that they would become bases for ships catching cod in the rich fishing
grounds of the northwestern Atlantic. The first permanent settlers were
French, with numbers rising to nearly 200 in the last decades of the 17th
century, but raids by British vessels while the European powers clashed from
1702–1713, during Queen Anne’s War (the American theater of the War of
the Spanish Succession), encouraged most of the residents to seek safer
homes elsewhere. Under the terms of the Treaty of Utrecht, which brought
an end to the conflict on 11 April 1713, France ceded the islands to Great
Britain, which placed them under the authority of the governor of Nova
Scotia. British officials anglicized Saint-Pierre as “Saint Peter’s” then, in
1722, sold Miquelon to Captain Diamond Sarjeant of Massachusetts. Sar-
jeant, in turn, sold two-thirds of the 42-square-mile territory to Samuel Cutt
of New Hampshire in 1756 and the remainder to Robert Trail, also of New
Hampshire, two years later. The Utrecht agreement included provisions al-
lowing French fisherman to exploit the resources of the seas in the region and
to have land bases where they could shelter from storms so during the negoti-
ations over the contents of the Treaty of Paris, which ended the Seven
Years’ War on 10 February 1763, France, although defeated, argued that
these commercially and strategically important arrangements should be hon-
ored. As a result, Britain took control of all of France’s colonial possessions
in mainland North America east of the Mississippi River (with the exception
of New Orleans) but agreed to surrender control of St. Peter’s and Miquelon
to the French (then did its best to prevent British subjects from having any
communication with the islands and rejected appeals for compensation from
Cutt and Trail on the grounds that they could not provide proof that they
owned the estates they claimed they had bought).
With the resumption of French sovereignty, Miquelon and Saint-Pierre
once again attracted French settlers, including many from Nova Scotia,
where the British colony’s boundaries had been expanded to incorporate
what remained of the former French territory of Acadia. As the population
grew, a limited trade developed with New England and then with Newfound-
land, but the British returned on 14 September 1778 and deported most of the
residents as punishment for their support of the rebels during the American
Revolutionary War. The islands reverted to France under the terms of an-
other Treaty of Paris (see PARIS, TREATY OF (1783)) which terminated
hostilities in 1783, but British forces invaded again on 14 May 1793, after
revolutionary France had declared war on Great Britain, and again evicted
the French settlers. On 4 September 1796, however, the British, in turn, were
 SAINT THOMAS • 459
ousted as Admiral Joseph de Richery sank more than 80 fishing vessels
anchored off Saint-Pierre. The Treaty of Amiens, which brought a tempo-
rary end to the fighting on 25 March 1802, was supposed to result in yet
another transfer of sovereignty to France, but relations between the European
powers remained strained so the exchange never occurred and the islands
remained unoccupied until an agreement of 20 November 1815 ended the
Napoleonic Wars and returned them to France, which has retained control of
this last remnant of its North American empire ever since.

SAINT THOMAS. In the late 17th and early 18th centuries, England (then,
from 1707, Great Britain) claimed sovereignty over St. Thomas, which lies
in the Caribbean Sea at latitude 18° 20´ North and longitude 64° 55´ West,
forming part of the Lesser Antilles archipelago. However, Denmark con-
tested that claim in 1717, pointing out that the Treaty of Copenhagen, signed
in 1670 by King Charles II of England and of Scots and by King Christian V
of Denmark and Norway, had authorized the Danes to recolonize the territory
unmolested by the privateers who had forced their predecessors to leave in
1668. Moreover, when the first group of Danish settlers had arrived on 25
May 1672, they had found the land deserted. Unable to establish a strong
case through permanent occupation and unwilling to back its claim with
force, Britain conceded defeat. However, it adopted a more aggressive stance
in 1801, while at war with France. The Danes remained neutral but formed
an alliance with Russia and Sweden in an attempt to prevent British warships
from confiscating the cargoes of merchant vessels that were sailing under its
flag and trading with the French. Also, privateers operating from Denmark’s
colonies were harrying British craft in the Caribbean so Great Britain used
the commercial and the political circumstances as excuses to attack St.
Thomas, where defenses were weak. When Rear-Admiral Admiral John
Thomas Duckworth and General Thomas Trigge arrived on 28 March with
4,000 troops, three ships of the line, six frigates, and 20 armed vessels and
transports the Danes surrendered, without resistance, the following day.
The British troops remained for 11 months, withdrawing on 19 February
1802 under the terms of a convention signed by representatives of King
George III and Emperor Alexander I of Russia in St. Petersburg on 17 June
the previous year and confirmed by the Danes on 23 October, but they
returned in 1807 after Denmark formed an alliance with France during the
Napoleonic Wars. That alliance allowed the French navy to use ports in
Danish colonies as bases from which to attack Great Britain’s vessels so the
British government dispatched 7,000 troops, commanded by Admiral Alex-
ander Cochrane and General Henry Bowyer, to prevent damage to its mili-
tary resources by capturing St. Thomas and the nearby islands of Saint Croix
and Saint John. None of the territories was well defended so Casimir Wil-
helm von Scholten, governor of St. John and St. Thomas, capitulated without
460 • SAINT VINCENT
a struggle on 21 December (and Hans Christian Lillienskjøld, on St. Croix,
followed suit four days later). British officials remained until 20 November
1815, when the territory returned to Denmark in accordance with the provi-
sions of the Treaty of Kiel, signed on 14 January the previous year (see
HELIGOLAND). St. Thomas then remained under Danish control until 17
January 1917, when it was sold, along with the other Danish possessions in
the area, to the United States at a price of $25,000,000, paid in gold.

SAINT VINCENT. St. Vincent lies at latitude 13° 15´ North and longitude
61° 12´ West, forming part of the Lesser Antilles archipelago at the eastern
edge of the Caribbean Sea. England first laid claim to the island in 1627,
when King Charles I granted the territory (and several of its Caribbean
neighbors) to James Hay, earl of Carlisle, but the local Carib people resisted
all attempts at European colonization until the French gained a permanent
foothold in the early 18th century and raised coffee, indigo, sugar, and other
crops on plantations worked by slaves imported from Africa. Britain eventu-
ally acquired the territory in 1763, through the provisions of the Treaty of
Paris, which (on 10 February) formally ended the Seven Years’ War that had
involved all of the major European powers, but the “Black Caribs” (with
mixed African and Carib blood) remained resistant until 1797, when many
were exiled to the Bay Islands, off the coast of Honduras. The plantation
economy introduced by the French continued through the 19th century even
though emancipation of slaves in the 1830s caused a labor shortage that was
solved only by an influx of workers from as far afield as India and Portugal.
However, the damage wrought by a hurricane in 1898 and the eruption of La
Soufrière volcano in 1902 killed off a sugar industry already seriously trou-
bled by falls in world prices; in the aftermath, farmers turned initially to
arrowroot and Sea Island cotton and then, in the 1950s, to bananas.
Early attempts to link St. Vincent administratively to other islands were
unsuccessful so it gained its own assembly in 1776. In 1791 the most norther-
ly of the Grenadine islands were attached to the territory, and on 1 April
1833 the government made the whole group part of the Windward Islands
colony. The political reins lay firmly in the hands of British adminstrators
and their appointees until 1925, when advocates of greater democracy—most
of them from the black merchant class—won concessions in the form of a
legislative assembly that included elected representatives of the resident pop-
ulation, albeit with the electorate limited by educational and property qualifi-
cations that prevented most descendants of slaves from participating. Full
adult suffrage followed in 1951 after calls for continued expansion of voting
rights grew more widespread under the influence of such leaders as George
McIntosh. St. Vincent joined the short-lived West Indies Federation in
1958 and on 27 October 1969 was made an associated state of the United
 SAMOA • 461
Kingdom, an arrangement that gave local people authority over internal
affairs but left Britain responsible for defense and foreign relations. The
country achieved full independence exactly 10 years later.
See also BRITISH HONDURAS; BRITISH WEST INDIES; COMMON-
WEALTH REALM; PITT THE ELDER, WILLIAM, EARL OF CHAT-
HAM.

SAMOA. The islands of Samoa lie in the Pacific Ocean at latitude 13° 50´
South and longitude 171° 45´ West, covering a land area of some 1,100
square miles roughly midway between Hawaii and New Zealand. The first
European sighting was made in 1722 by Jacob Rogeveen, a Dutch explorer
who was searching for Terra Australis, the great continent that scientists
believed was located in the southern hemisphere, balancing the landmasses
north of the equator. Early contacts with British travelers were largely
through such missionaries as the Wesleyan Peter Turner (who first jour-
neyed from Tonga in 1828) and John Williams, a London Missionary Soci-
ety representative who traveled from the Cook Islands with a small group of
converts in 1830. By mid-century, however, Americans and Germans were
also arriving, many as traders, and competing for influence as cacao, coco-
nut, and rubber plantations were established.
The colonial powers laid claim to different areas of the territory as Samoan
groups appealed to extraterritoriality in them for support in their factionalist
struggles for dominance on the islands, drawing Germany and the United
States, in particular, into the troubles. In 1889, while Samoa was engulfed in
civil war, those two countries were involved in a tense naval battle of wills in
the harbor at Apia, with a British vessel keeping a watchful eye. The standoff
ended only when a cyclone disabled most of the warships, so the following
year, in order to prevent conflict, Count Herbert von Bismarck, the German
foreign minister, convened a conference in Berlin that, on 14 June, resulted
in an agreement that Germany, Great Britain, and the United States would
jointly guarantee Samoa’s independence under Malietoa (or “Great Warri-
or”) Laupepa, who, in 1883 and 1884, had petitioned Queen Victoria for
protection against German interference in his realm but had been deposed in
1887 as a result of German intervention. In addition, the three powers agreed
to appoint a chief justice who would strengthen the authority of the judiciary.
The arrangement lasted for just 10 years while the three colonial authorities
jostled for supremacy. Aware that military clashes were likely, diplomats met
in a tripartite convention in Washington, D.C., on 2 December 1899 and,
without considering the wishes of the Samoan people, partitioned the islands
between Germany (which took the western sector) and the United States
(which took the east). Britain (in accordance with an agreement reached with
the Germans in London on 14 November) confirmed that it would withdraw
all claims to Samoa in return for the acquisition of German rights in Tonga
462 • SANDWICH ISLANDS
(in particular, the right to build a naval base), German withdrawal of all
claims to Zanzibar, a redrawing of boundaries between German and British
possessions in the Solomon Islands (giving Britain all of the German territo-
ries east of the island of Bougainville [see BRITISH SOLOMON IS-
LANDS]), and other concessions.
The U.S. retained sovereignty over American Samoa until into the 21st
century, but German rule ended on 29 August 1914, shortly after the out-
break of World War I, when New Zealand troops occupied the colony with-
out encountering resistance. In 1919, the defeated Germans relinquished
claims to the region, and the following year, the League of Nations made it a
mandated territory, known as Western Samoa, with Great Britain nominally
in control but with day-to-day authority in the hands of the New Zealanders
(see LEAGUE OF NATIONS MANDATED TERRITORY). Inadvertently,
however, the imperial administrators fueled the independence movement in
Samoa. On 7 November 1918, when the S.S. Talune docked at Apia harbor,
port authorities allowed the crew and passengers to disembark, unaware that
many were suffering from influenza. The Samoans had no natural immunity
with which to combat the illness and New Zealand officials made no attempt
to control the spread of the disease so within a few weeks some 7,500
people—about one-fifth of the resident population—had died. The event
provided added support for the widely held perception that the colonial offi-
cials were incompetent and encouraged many residents to lend their support
to the Mau (or “Opinion”) Movement that was agitating for self-government.
A campaign of civil disobedience led, in 1928, to over 400 arrests, but
attempts by Colonel Stephen Allen, the chief administrator, to stem the tide
had little effect; for example, after the arrests, so many people voluntarily
admitted breaking the law and turned themselves in that there were not
enough jail cells to house everybody and the prisoners had to be released.
The situation deteriorated further on 28 December 1929, when policemen
fired on demonstrators, killing 11 people and wounding 50. However, New
Zealanders themselves became concerned at the way the Samoans were be-
ing treated so, from the mid-1930s, the residents of the islands were given
increasingly greater say in the management of their domestic affairs. An
elected 17-member legislative assembly, with a Samoan majority, was
formed in 1948, and on 1 January 1962, as Western Samoa, the territory
became the first small island in the Pacific to win independence from a
colonial power.
See also CHAMBERLAIN, JOSEPH (1836–1914).

SANDWICH ISLANDS. On 18 January 1778, during his third voyage to

the Pacific Ocean, Captain James Cook sighted the Hawaiian Islands and
named them after John Montagu, earl of Sandwich, who was one of his
sponsors (see BANKS, JOSEPH (1743–1820); SOUTH SANDWICH IS-
 SARAWAK • 463
LANDS). The following year, Cook was killed by islanders during an argu-
ment over a boat, but on 25 February 1794, at a time of much strife between
local leaders, George Vancouver, who was mapping the coastline, per-
suaded Kamehameha (one of the chiefs and later King Kamehameha I) to
cede his territory to Britain on the understanding that a garrison would be
stationed on the islands to ensure peace. Although the British government did
not pursue Vancouver’s initiative, nearly 40 years later, on 10 February
1843, Lord George Paulet sailed into Honolulu harbor on HMS Carysfort,
responding to allegations that British subjects in the area were being denied
their legal rights, and on 18 February demanded that King Kamehameha III
should submit to British sovereignty. The king did as requested on 25 Febru-
ary, but the incident provoked a series of diplomatic consultations in the
United States as well as in Britain so Rear-Admiral George Thomas, Paulet’s
commanding officer, sailed to the islands to investigate the situation for
himself and, on 31 July, announced that Hawaiian independence would be
respected. The last day of July is still a national holiday on the islands.
See also BONIN ISLANDS.

SARAWAK. Sarawak, in the northwest of Borneo, boasts one of the British

Empire’s more unusual histories. In 1835, James Brooke, who had served as
an ensign with the East India Company’s army, inherited £30,000 on his
father’s death. Using the funds to buy the Royalist, a 142-ton armed schoo-
ner, he sailed for Southeast Asia, determined to play his part in furthering
British interests in the region. When he arrived in Sarawak, he found the
people in rebellion against Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddin II of Brunei, who
asserted suzerainty over the territory and had sent his uncle, Rajah Muda
Hassim, to restore the peace. Muda Hassim promised Brooke the governor-
ship of Sarawak if he would help to suppress the revolt, and once the troubles
were over Brooke claimed the title, which was confirmed by the sultan, who
installed Brooke as the first of a line of “White Rajahs” on 18 August 1842.
Brooke and his descendants constructed transport links and extended their
fiefdom into the interior of Borneo, acquiring land previously held by the
sultans of Brunei. Also, they attempted to respect local religious practices
(despite encouraging the establishment of an Anglican mission) while mak-
ing efforts to abolish head-hunting, piracy, and slavery and to contain ex-
ploitation of the native peoples (a policy that undoubtedly restricted econom-
ic development). Britain eventually recognized Sarawak as an independent
state in 1864, but Brooke wanted more, knowing that his country was too
weak to defend itself against a strong enemy. He offered the territory as a
colony to the United States and to the strongest European powers, but none
responded until, on 14 June 1888, Britain extended protectorate status in
464 • SAVAGE ISLAND
order to prevent other colonial powers from stepping in. Neighboring British
North Borneo had been subject to similar action just a few weeks earlier and
Brunei was to follow in September.
Japan captured Sarawak in 1941, during World War II, and held it until
1945. On 1 July the following year, Charles Vyner Brooke—the last of the
white rajahs—ceded sovereignty to Britain, apparently convinced by govern-
ment officials that the task of postwar reconstruction would be beyond his
means. The British authorities made the area a crown colony but met with
much resistance from local people (and Brooke’s son, Anthony), who had
expected the family to maintain Sarawak’s independence. On 3 December
1949, activists murdered Sir Duncan Stewart, the colony’s governor, an ac-
tion that led to aggressive action against the dissidents by British authorities
but also horrified those local residents who opposed violence and, as a result,
reduced support for the rebels. British authorities retained control until Sa-
rawak was merged with British North Borneo (renamed Sabah), the Federa-
tion of Malaya, and Singapore as the independent state of Malaysia on 16
Sepember 1963.
See also ABDUL RAHMAN, TUNKU (1903–1990); MACMILLAN,
MAURICE HAROLD (1894–1986).

SAVAGE ISLAND. Savage Island (now known as Niue) lies in the south
Pacific Ocean some 250 miles east of Tonga and 1,350 miles northeast of
New Zealand at latitude 19° 3´ South and longitude 169° 55´ West, getting
its name because the indigenous groups resisted attempts by Captain James
Cook to land in 1774. From the 1840s, the London Missionary Society
made concerted efforts to introduce Christianity, initiating a period of British
influence that led King Fataaiki to write to Queen Victoria in 1887 with an
invitation to “stretch out towards us your mighty hand that Niue may hide
herself in it and be safe.” The invitation, sent because the islanders believed
that some other colonial power might claim their land, was declined, but a
second letter resulted in the establishment of a British protectorate on 20
April 1900. At that time, however, New Zealand saw commercial advantages
in developing its own empire and negotiated with Britain for a transfer of
administration. On 11 June the following year, Britain—grateful for New
Zealanders’ support in the Second Boer War in southern Africa but much to
the Niueans’ annoyance—acquiesced. Initially, the territory was attached to
the Cook Islands, but the two populations had no cultural or economic
affinities so were separated again in 1903. Moves toward self-government
began with the formation of a legislative council in 1960 and culminated
with independence, in “free association” with New Zealand, on 19 October
1974. The arrangement gives the Niuean people full control over their affairs
but leaves doubts about their right to establish an independent foreign policy.
 SCOTT, ROBERT FALCON (1868–1912) • 465
See also ARUNDEL, JOHN THOMAS (1841–1919); BLACKBIRDING;
BRITISH WESTERN PACIFIC TERRITORIES; HOWLAND ISLAND.

SCOTT, ROBERT FALCON (1868–1912). Scott led two Antarctic expedi-

tions in the early 20th century but died in his declared attempt “to reach the
South Pole, and to secure for the British Empire the honour of this achieve-
ment.” The third of six children in the family of brewer John Edward Scott
and his wife, Hannah, he was born at Stoke Damerel, in southwestern Eng-
land, on 6 June 1868, joined the Royal Navy as a cadet in 1881, and by 1898
(following the death of his father and younger brother) was responsible for
the financial support of his mother and two unmarried sisters. Despite, by his
own admission, having “no predilection for Polar exploration,” he successfu-
ly applied for command of a British National Antarctic Expedition funded
jointly by the government, the Royal Geographical Society, and the Royal
Society (a learned body of distinguished scientists) with the multiple aims of
investigating the eastern edge of the ice barrier that was discovered by James
Clark Ross in 1841 (and is now known as the Ross Ice Shelf), establishing
whether the land that Ross believed lay to the east of that barrier actually
existed, exploring Victoria Land (which Ross had named in honor of Queen
Victoria), and collecting meteorological and other scientific data. He sailed
on 6 August 1901 with five scientists, 11 officers (all of whom except one—
Ernest Shackleton, who later led his own Antarctic expeditions—were serv-
ing members of the Royal Navy), and a 36-man crew aboard the Discovery, a
specialist research vessel, built in Dundee and one of the last three-masted
wooden sailing ships constructed in a British yard. The party reached Antarc-
tica on 9 January the following year and, three weeks later, confirmed Ross’s
belief that there was land to the east of the ice barrier, naming the territory
King Edward VII Land (now known as King Edward VII Peninsula). The
scientists pursued their inquiries while the Discovery overwintered in
McMurdo Sound, then, on 2 November, Scott left with Shackleton and Ed-
ward Wilson (a doctor and zoologist) in the hope of journeying farther south
than any of their predecessors in the Antarctic. They succeeded, reaching
latitude 82° 16ʹ 33ʺ South, but illness and weak sled dogs prevented them
from getting any closer to the South Pole. After a second winter, the expedi-
tion carried out further explorations of the ice sheet then returned to Britain,
docking at Portsmouth on 10 September 1904.
Scott, greeted as a hero by the British public, returned to service with the
Navy and was promoted to captain, but by 1906 he was seeking sources of
funding for a second expedition that would have the Pole as its primary
objective, with scientific inquiry a secondary consideration. Aided by gifts of
provisions from supportive businesses, and by finance raised through a
government grant and public subscriptions, he set out from Cardiff on the
Terra Nova (originally a whaling ship) on 16 June 1910 with 12 scientists, a
466 • SCRAMBLE FOR AFRICA
shore party of six, and a crew of 47 (all volunteers). The group spent the
winter at a site close to the base of the previous expedition, then, on 1
November 1911, Scott set off for the South Pole, arriving (with four compan-
ions) on 17 January the following year to find that Roald Amundsen, a
Norwegian explorer, had preceded them by just 34 days. Dejected, ex-
hausted, and short of supplies, the entire polar party perished on the return
journey, Scott ending his diary on about 29 March with the plea “For God’s
sake, look after our people.” For many years after his death, Scott was ac-
corded heroic status, but since 1979, when biographer Roland Huntford ac-
cused him of incompetence, assessments have been more critical, although
early 21st-century writers have tended to reject many of Huntford’s allega-
tions and reinstate the explorer’s reputation while recognizing his personality
weaknesses.
See also BRITISH ANTARCTIC TERRITORY; ROSS DEPENDENCY.

SCRAMBLE FOR AFRICA. In 1880, European influence in Africa was

confined largely to coastal areas, stretching inland only for short distances
along major rivers. By the end of the 19th century, however, most of the
continent had succumbed to foreign colonists, with Abyssinia (now Ethiopia)
and Liberia alone retaining their independence. Several factors led to the
scramble for territory over the two decades. France, Germany, and Great
Britain were jockeying for political dominance, and none was willing to
stand by and watch the others build up empires that would add to their power
and prestige. Moreover, in a rapidly industrializing age, commercial interests
sought new sources of raw materials and new markets for manufactured
products. Also, Christian organizations felt a responsibility to carry their
message to “heathen lands” through missionary work, and learned bodies,
such as the Royal Geographical Society, were keen to fill the blank spaces
on their maps by supporting explorations of the “dark continent.” For Britain,
the political priority was to secure control of routes to India, and, initially,
that meant the government had to impress its authority on northeast Africa
(which offered the possibility of overland travel between the Red Sea and the
Mediterranean Sea as well as a maritime route through the Suez Canal) and
southern Africa (where the Cape of Good Hope commanded sea transport
between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans). Also, some diplomats (such as Sir
Evelyn Baring, consul-general in Egypt) and industrialists (notably Cecil
Rhodes, who founded the De Beers Mining Company) argued that there
would be considerable commercial and strategic advantage in acquiring a
chain of colonies through East Africa and linking them by building a railroad
from Cairo in the north to Cape Town in the south (see CAPE TO CAIRO
RAILWAY).
 SECOND AFGHAN WAR (1878–1880) • 467
A 14-nation conference in Berlin in 1884–1885 carved out “spheres of
interest” for the major powers in Africa, negotiating straight line boundaries
that disregarded cultural and social distributions, such as language groups.
(For example, Britain and France agreed that the British would be free to
operate south of a line drawn from the settlement of Say, on the River Niger,
to Baroua, on the northeastern shores of Lake Chad.) British troops had
occupied Egypt in 1882 and went on to take control of the Sudan and its
southern neighbors, Kenya and Uganda, in the 1890s. In the south, Cape
Colony, occupied permanently from 1814, was used as a base from which to
subdue other territory, notably the Transvaal, which had been in the hands
of Dutch-speaking Boer settlers. Acquisitions in the west of the continent
were less extensive, but British sovereignty tightened in the Gambia (which
was separated from Sierra Leone in 1888), the Gold Coast (which had
become a colony in 1874), and the protectorates in the basin of the River
Niger that merged as the colony and protectorate of Nigeria in 1914.
See also BASUTOLAND; BOER WARS (1880–1881 AND 1899–1902);
NORTHERN NIGERIA; THOMSON, JOSEPH (1858–1895).

SECOND AFGHAN WAR (1878–1880). When Robert Bulwer-Lytton, earl

of Lytton, succeeded Thomas Baring, earl of Northbrook, as governor-gen-
eral of India in 1876, he was instructed by Prime Minister Benjamin Dis-
raeli either to use diplomacy to counter growing Russian influence in Af-
ghanistan (which lay on British India’s northern border) or to secure India’s
frontier with that buffer state by military means. Under pressure from both
European imperial powers and attempting to remain neutral, Sher Ali Khan,
the emir of Afghanistan, unsuccessfully tried to prevent a Russian mission
from visiting Kabul (the Afghan capital) in July 1878 but did turn back a
British delegation, led by General Sir Neville Bowles Chamberlain, as it
reached the Khyber Pass, through the Himalaya, in September. Infuriated,
Lytton demanded an apology then, when he did not get it, declared war on 21
November, sending a 40,000-strong army, in three columns, into a territory
that he described as “an earthen pipkin between two metal pots.” Sher Ali
fled to Mazar-i-Sharif, in the north of the country, where he died on 21
February 1879, leaving his son and heir, Mohammed Yaqub Khan, to nego-
tiate with the invaders, who had occupied much of the south of the emirate.
Unable to offer significant resistance, the new ruler had little option but to
sign the Treaty of Gandamak on 26 May 1879, agreeing to conduct Afghani-
stan’s foreign relations in accordance with the “wishes and advice” of the
British government, allowing Great Britain to establish a permanent mis-
sion in Kabul, and surrendering jurisdiction over the Khyber, along with
other southern areas of his territory, to British administrators.
468 • SECOND BRITISH EMPIRE
However, many of Yakub Khan’s countrymen were unwilling to accept
such a humiliating submission to a foreign overlord. On 3 September, a mob
murdered Sir Louis Cavagnari, the senior British representative in the capital,
along with his staff, provoking another invasion. Under the experienced com-
mand of Major-General Sir Frederick Roberts, one of Britain’s most accom-
plished 19th-century military leaders, 7,500 troops defeated an Afghan force
at Char Asiab on 6 October, entered Kabul two days later, forced Yakub to
abdicate, and held the city throughout the winter. Then, in August 1880,
Roberts marched his men to Kandahar—a distance of 320 miles—over diffi-
cult terrain and in the heat of summer to relieve a siege of the British garrison
in the settlement and rout its Afghan attackers. While Roberts was planning
his journey to Kandahar, General Donald Stewart, who had assumed com-
mand in Kabul, installed Abdur Rahman Khan (Yakub’s cousin) as ruler.
Abdur Rahman was willing to assure Great Britain that he would not estab-
lish diplomatic relations with any other foreign state, and British negotiators,
agreeing not to meddle in Afghanistan’s internal affairs, withdrew represen-
tation from Kabul, ending the conflict. Nevertheless, Great Britain retained
control of Afghanistan’s foreign affairs until 1919 and, during that period,
delineated the country’s boundaries in consultation with Russia, using river
valleys and mountain ridges but dividing cultural groups and thus building a
foundation for future ethnic conflict.
See also FIRST AFGHAN WAR (1839–1842); GLADSTONE,
WILLIAM EWART (1809–1898); THIRD AFGHAN WAR (1919).

SECOND BRITISH EMPIRE. Many historians divide the evolution of the

British Empire into two phases, with the second Empire emerging in the
decades after the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783). The first
British Empire had been characterized by a colonization process that was
led by chartered companies and individuals, who sought profits from their
investments and preferred lands in North America and the islands of the
Caribbean Sea (see CHARTER COLONY; PROPRIETARY COLONY). In
the second Empire, however, although Canada and the Caribbean remained
important the focus moved to Africa, Asia, Australasia, the Far East, and the
islands of the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Also, while administrators hoped
that territorial acquisitions would be financially self-sufficient, political con-
siderations weighed heavily (because imperial expansion was a means of
acquiring power and status, with implications for military strategy) so
government was much more deeply involved than it had been with the first
Empire. New colonies were claimed, and protectorates imposed or negotiat-
ed, throughout the 19th century (see SCRAMBLE FOR AFRICA) and were
often accompanied by missionary activity, reflecting Victorian ambitions to
improve the living standards, and save the souls, of the monarch’s new
subjects. However, the 20th century brought a change of political climate. In
 SECOND BURMESE WAR (1852) • 469
the years immediately following World War I, the British Empire included
about one-quarter of the world’s total landmass and one-fifth of its popula-
tion, but nationalist movements were gaining ground. In the aftermath of
World War II, as the United Kingdom faced a huge program of economic
reconstruction, the cost of administering an Empire was daunting, and public
support for imperialism waned as troops were committed for lengthy periods
to civil disturbances—such as the Malayan Emergency and, in Kenya, the
Mau Mau Uprising—that reflected the desire of subjugated peoples to
throw off the colonial yoke. India and Pakistan won full self-government in
1947, and other colonies followed so by the early 21st century only a handful
of areas, known as British Overseas Territories, remained under British
sovereignty.

SECOND BURMESE WAR (1852). The First Burmese War, in 1824–26,

ended with an emphatic British victory, but, even so, friction between Bur-
ma’s authorities and the East India Company (EIC), which administered
India on behalf of the British government, continued through the second
quarter of the 19th century. For EIC managers, one of the principal problems
was the stream of complaints from British merchants and residents about
maltreatment by Burmese officials in Pegu province and particularly at the
port of Rangoon. Matters came to a head in 1851, when Maung Ok, Pegu’s
governor, arrested the masters of two British vessels on trumped-up charges
of murder, assuming that the men would pay handsomely in order to secure
their freedom. James Broun-Ramsay, marquess of Dalhousie and governor-
general of India (see SECOND SIKH WAR (1848–1849)), dispatched Com-
modore George Lambert to effect Maung Ok’s removal from office and
claim compensation, but although the Burmese replaced the governor they
refused to listen to requests for reparation because Lambert, no diplomat and
later described by Dalhousie as “combustible,” had seized the ship used by
their monarch, King Pagan Min. Lambert, insulted, reacted by blockading
Rangoon harbor so Pagan wrote a letter of protest to the governor-general,
who responded by increasing the reparation demand one hundredfold and
then, when no money was forthcoming, declaring war. The ports of Martaban
and Rangoon were occupied on 5 and 12 April 1852, respectively, and Bass-
ein on 19 May, before the monsoons began. Then, on 20 December, with
little resistance from Burmese forces, Dalhousie annexed Pegu (the Irrawad-
dy River delta region and neighboring coastal regions that, together with
Arakan and Tenasserim—which had been won in the First Burmese War—
became known as Lower Burma). Although periodic rebellions against impe-
rial rule broke out over the next three years, the acquisition strengthened the
British presence in the region and further weakened the influence of Burma’s
leaders, preparing the way for yet more British conquests (see THIRD BUR-
MESE WAR (1885)) and, ultimately, for control of the whole of Burma.
470 • SECOND SIKH WAR (1848–1849)
SECOND SIKH WAR (1848–1849). In 1845–1846, a series of battles be-
tween Sikh armies and the forces of the East India Company (EIC) ended
with the cession of much of the Sikh kingdom’s territory to the British crown
and with the appointment of a resident British official to “advise” the nomi-
nally independent Sikh government at Lahore (see FIRST SIKH WAR
(1845–1846)). A second conflict, just two years later, led to complete subju-
gation of the Sikhs and the incorporation of the remainder of their lands,
drained by the River Indus and its tributaries, within British India.
Although the EIC had been able to overcome Sikh might in the first war, it
had neither the funds nor the manpower to impose itself fully on the van-
quished peoples. In particular, non-British officials were employed as admin-
istrators, and units of the Sikh army, known as the Khalsa, avoided disband-
ment because they were needed to police Moslem areas of the Sikh empire.
Early in 1848, Dewan Mulraj, the governor of the city of Multan, in Punjab,
was in arrears over payment of taxes that the British considered due to them.
Sir Frederick Currie, the senior EIC representative at Lahore, decided to
replace him so he dispatched a substitute, Khan Singh Man, escorted by
Patrick Vans Agnew (a political agent with the Bengal Civil Service) and
Lieutenant William Anderson (of the 1st Bombay Fusiliers). On 20 April,
soon after arriving at the settlement, both Britons were killed by a crowd of
angry militia and residents. As the news spread, dissident Sikhs, ready to join
a rebellion against their European overlords, moved into Multan, and on 14
September a substantial contingent of the Khalsa joined their cause.
In November, the hot months and the monsoon season both over, the EIC
mobilized its armies under Sir Hugh Gough and faced the insurgents in
indecisive battles at Ramnagar (on 22 November) and at Chilianwala (on 13
January 1849). Gough’s generalship at both was criticized so severely that he
was relieved of his command, but on 21 February, before a replacement
could arrive, he led his troops to a convincing victory at Gujrat, destroying
the enemy artillery with his heavy guns then using his cavalry to cut down
the retreating infantrymen. On 12 March, the Sikhs surrendered, and on 29
March James Broun-Ramsay, earl of Dalhousie and governor-general of
India (see SECOND BURMESE WAR (1852)), annexed Punjab without
waiting for the approval of the London government and against the advice of
the British resident in Lahore, Sir Henry Lawrence, whom he considered
“plus Sikh que les Sikhs” (more Sikh than the Sikhs). Dalhousie was created
a marquess by a grateful government but noted in his diary that although he
was “gratified” by the honor he preferred being “a Scottish earl of 1633 to
being an English marquess of 1849.” Under the British Raj, Lahore became
an important center of learning, and Punjab—one of the last areas of the
Indian subcontinent to fall to Europeans—assumed considerable political
significance, partly because of its location on the frontier with Afghanistan
 SELANGOR • 471
and its command of routes through the Himalaya but also because of its
increasing role as “the granary of India,” producing rice, wheat, and other
agricultural products.

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR COMMONWEALTH RELATIONS.

Refer to appendix A. See COLONIAL OFFICE.

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR DOMINION AFFAIRS. Refer to appen-

dix A. See COLONIAL OFFICE.

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR INDIA. Refer to appendix A. See INDIA

OFFICE.

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE COLONIES. Refer to appendix A.

See COLONIAL OFFICE.

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR WAR AND THE COLONIES. Refer to

appendix A. See COLONIAL OFFICE.

SELANGOR. In the 1860s and early 1870s, Selangor, on the Malay Penin-
sula, was an important tin producing region, but it was racked by civil strife
involving local rajahs and immigrant Chinese labor. The resulting disruption
affected trade so, following an act of piracy against a British vessel in No-
vember 1873, Sir Andrew Clarke, governor of the Straits Settlements, vis-
ited Selangor’s Sultan Abdul Samad and, in February 1874, secured an
agreement that the ruler would govern only on the advice, and with the
consent, of an official to be known as the British resident—an arrangement,
similar to that concluded with Rajah Abdullah of Perak the previous month,
that, in effect, made Selangor a British protectorate. The residents, installed
on a permanent basis from October, initiated a series of developments that
included the construction of a rail and road network to transport the growing
output of rubber and tin, the establishment of Kuala Lumpur as the principal
center of administration in the territory, and the founding of English lan-
guage schools. On 1 July 1896, Selangor was merged with Negeri Sembi-
lan, Pahang, and Perak in a protectorate known as the Federated Malay
States, with Kuala Lumpur as the principal government base. The sultanate
was occupied by Japanese troops from 1942 until 1945, during World War II,
but returned to British control when the conflict ended. Then, in 1946, the
Federated States were included within the Malayan Union, which was re-
structured as the Federation of Malaya two years later. When the Federation
achieved independence in 1957, Kuala Lumpur was retained as the capital of
the new state.
472 • SELKIRK CONCESSION
See also BRITISH MALAYA.

SELKIRK CONCESSION. See RED RIVER COLONY.

SENEGAMBIA. From the late 17th century, Britain and France competed
for dominance over the east–west trade along the Gambia and Senegal Riv-
ers in West Africa, with much of the commerce involving gum arabic, which
was in great demand by the silk industry and for which the region was the
only source. In 1758, when the two nations found themselves on opposite
sides in a Seven Years’ War that involved all of the major European powers,
the British government, persuaded by the arguments of merchant Thomas
Cumming, sent a naval squadron to occupy the poorly defended French fort
at Saint-Louis, near the mouth of the Senegal River. The defenders surren-
dered on 1 May, and the victors carried away such plunder that Secretary of
State William Pitt the Elder authorized a second expedition, which captured
the slave-trading settlement on the island of Gorée on 29 December. During
the negotiations over the terms of the Treaty of Paris, which ended the
Seven Years’ War in 1763, Britain agreed to return Gorée to France but
insisted on retaining Saint-Louis and locations along the Senegal River at
Podor and Saint-Joseph. British officials referred to the area under their
jurisdiction as “Senegambia,” administering it as a crown colony, but it
survived only until 3 September 1783, when the Senegal valley returned to
France under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, one of the agreements
reached as part of the Peace of Paris (see PARIS, TREATY OF (1783)) at the
end of the American Revolutionary War. The same treaty guaranteed Brit-
ish sovereignty over the Gambia River area, which was placed under the
control of the Company of Merchants Trading to Africa. In 1809, during
the Napoleonic Wars, Britain wrested control of the Senegal River from
France for a second time, but French sovereignty was reconfirmed by yet
another Treaty of Paris, signed on 30 May 1814, after the armies of French
emperor Napoleon Bonaparte had been defeated by a coalition of powers that
included Great Britain.

SERAMPORE. Serampore, on the west bank of the Hugli (or Hooghly)

River in northeastern India, was developed by the Danish East India Compa-
ny as a trading station from 1755, dealing primarily in textiles. From 1800,
three English Baptist missionaries—William Carey, Joshua Marshman, and
William Ward—made the settlement their base, preferring the Danish colony
because the British East India Company was opposed to their proselytizing,
believing that the spread of Christian beliefs would change indigenous prac-
tices and thus affect commerce. Carey and his colleagues established a print-
ing press that, over the next three decades, produced 212,000 copies of books
 SEYCHELLES • 473
(including dictionaries, grammars, and translations of the Bible) in more than
40 languages and dialects. They also (in 1818) founded Serampore College
to teach arts and sciences, as well as train Christian ministers, and organized
more than 100 “monitorial schools” that provided a more basic education.
However, while the missionaries were thriving, Serampore’s trade was in
decline, decimated by the aggressive tactics of British merchants in Calcutta
(now Kolkata), located just 15 miles downriver, and by the growing output of
cotton cloth from mills in England. Moreover, Denmark’s domestic economy
was slow to recover after the military defeats of the Napoleonic Wars and its
Asian colonies had become more of a financial drain than a treasure chest so
on 11 October 1845 Serampore was sold to the East India Company for
1,200,000 rupees and integrated into British India. The British converted the
colony from a trading center into an industrial town, building a railroad and
opening jute factories that attracted labor from surrounding rural areas (and
housing that labor force in overcrowded, unhygienic slums). The early years
of the 20th century brought increased investment from local—rather than
foreign—sources and growing demands for Indian independence, particular-
ly among middle-class families. When that goal was achieved, in 1947, Se-
rampore was included within the state of West Bengal. Since then, it has
been absorbed by Kolkata’s expanding metropolitan area.

SEYCHELLES. In 1756, in the early stages of what became known as the

Seven Years’ War, France declared sovereignty over the Seychelles, an ar-
chipelago of more than 100 islands located in the southwestern Indian Ocean
some 600 miles northeast of Madagascar and 900 miles east of the African
coast at latitude 5° 58´ South and longitude 53° 3´ East. In 1790, following
revolution in France, the settlers on the islands decided to take charge of their
own affairs and, on 16 May 1794, declined to provide the water and supplies
requested by Captain Henry Newcome of the 32-gun frigate HMS Orpheus
for French sailors he had taken prisoner in a naval dogfight off Île de France
(now Mauritius). Newcome, faced with the refusal and needing the provi-
sions, simply sent his marines ashore and encouraged the authorities to coop-
erate—an action that convinced Jean-Baptiste Queau de Quincy, the civil
commandant, and his colleagues that, without a strong garrison to defend
them, pragmatism was preferable to patriotism. As a result, they adopted a
policy of neutrality, suppling all vessels that visited, whatever their flag. The
French, however, continued to maintain that the islands were part of their
Indes-Orientales colony, which also included Île Bonaparte (later Bourbon
and now Réunion) and Île de France, so when those islands fell into British
hands in 1810 Britain claimed the Seychelles as well—an assertion con-
firmed by the Treaty of Paris, which temporarily ended the Napoleonic
Wars on 30 May 1814.
474 • SEYCHELLES
The abolition of slavery in 1834 (see SLAVERY ABOLITION ACT
(1833)) caused major economic and social change in the islands. A census in
1827 had shown that the population consisted of 6,638 slaves and only 685
others, but, when slavery was outlawed, many wealthy landowners left the
territory, taking their slaves with them. Deprived of the cheap labor needed
to grow cotton and sugarcane, those who remained turned to other crops,
initially coconuts (which produced an oil used in margarine, soap, and phar-
maceutical manufacture) and, later, vanilla. However, as Royal Navy ships
intercepted Arab vessels that still carried human cargoes, the captives were
released and many were landed on the Seychelles, one estimate suggesting
that nearly 2,500 arrived in the period from 1861–1874 alone. Also, workers
were brought from India (though not on the scale of those taken to Mauriti-
us) and Chinese immigrants opened stores and trading centers, producing a
cosmopolitan population as ethnic groups intermarried.
For most of the 19th century, the colonial authorities governed the islands
from Mauritius, as the French had done, but in 1888 constitutional changes
paved the way for the appointment of a local administrator, who (assisted by
an executive council and a legislative council) was responsible for managing
the territory. In 1897, the administrator was given all the duties of a govern-
or (but not the title), then, on 31 August 1903, the tie to Mauritius was
severed and the Seychelles were made a crown colony, primarily in an effort
to improve the economy and make the territory less financially dependent on
Britain. Ernest Bickham Sweet-Escott—the islands’ first governor—was
concerned that commerce was dominated by coconut and vanilla production
(and thus dependent on the vagaries of the market and threatened by techno-
logical advances that would produce synthetic alternatives) so, despite the
opposition of many planters, he promoted agricultural diversification, with
the result that, by mid-century, such crops as bananas, breadfruit, and sweet
potatoes were being cultivated for local consumption and cinnamon, copra,
and patchouli for export.
In the years between the two world wars, prosperous landholders cam-
paigned for greater influence over government decision making, forming the
Planters and Taxpayers Association in 1939, but no other political parties
were established until 1964, when France-Albert René (a London-educated
lawyer) created the Seychelles People’s United Party (SPUP), with a plat-
form of moderate socialist policies, and James Mancham (another London-
educated lawyer) created the Seychelles Democratic Party (SDP) as a pro-
business group. Initially, the SPUP advocated independence for the Sey-
chelles and the SDP argued for closer ties with Britain, but, as the campaign
for full sovereignty gained ground and the United Kingdom government
appeared uninterested in a close relationship with the islands, Mancham
changed tack. In 1970, the Seychellois won the right to administer most of
their internal affairs (though the civil service, official media, and internal
 SHACKLETON, ERNEST HENRY (1874–1922) • 475
security remained in the hands of U.K. administrators), but, in 1974, elec-
tions to the legislature, although held on the basis of universal suffrage (first
introduced in 1967), were controversial. The SDP won 13 of the 15 seats
with only 52.4 percent of the vote, leading to allegations that constituency
boundaries had been deliberately drawn in its favor. Despite the bitterness,
René agreed to form a coalition with Mancham in negotiations for indepen-
dence, which was achieved on 29 June 1976, when Britain returned the
islands of Aldabra, Des Roches, and Farquhar, which had been transferred to
the British Indian Ocean Territory on its formation on 8 November 1965.
The political unity did not last for long, however. Mancham became presi-
dent of the new republic, but, on 5 June 1977, René deposed him in a coup
d’état.
See also ASHANTI WARS; CYPRUS; UGANDA; ZANZIBAR WAR
(1896).

SHACKLETON, ERNEST HENRY (1874–1922). Shackleton led three

expeditions to Antarctica and played a major role in the establishment of a
British presence on the continent (see BRITISH ANTARCTIC TERRITO-
RY; ROSS DEPENDENCY). The second of 10 children in the family of
Henry Shackleton (an Anglo-Irish landowner who gave up estate manage-
ment in order to train as a doctor) and his wife, Henrietta, Ernest was born in
County Kildare, Ireland, on 15 February 1874 but raised in London. He
joined the merchant navy in April 1890, qualified as a master mariner in
1898, and, on 17 February 1901, was appointed to the post of third officer on
an expedition to the then largely unexplored Antarctic continent under the
leadership of Robert Falcon Scott and the sponsorship of the Royal Society
(one of the world’s leading scientific organizations) and the Royal Geo-
graphical Society. Although junior in rank, Shackleton proved to be the
most popular officer on board the Discovery—the expedition vessel, which
left London on 31 July 1901 and reached the Antarctic coast on 8 January
1902—but this first visit to the polar regions was not encouraging. Scott
chose him as one of two companions (the other was Edward Wilson, an
artist, doctor, and zoologist) on an attempt to get closer to the South Pole
than any predecessor had done, but although they achieved that aim, at 82°
16ʹ 33ʺ South, Shackleton coughed up blood on the return journey, was
unable to do any heavy work, and was invalided home from the base camp at
McMurdo Sound in January 1903.
Chagrined, and determined to prove himself, he set about raising funds for
his own British Antarctic Expedition, winning financial support from Glas-
gow engineer and shipbuilder William Beardmore but crossing swords with
Scott, who had his own plans for a return to Antarctica and persuaded Shack-
leton not to establish winter quarters in the area of McMurdo Sound (an
agreement that Shackleton broke because he felt that ice conditions at other
476 • SHACKLETON, ERNEST HENRY (1874–1922)
possible sites made a camp too dangerous). The party arrived in Antarctica
on 21 January 1908 aboard the Nimrod, a veteran sealing ship, and with the
declared aim of reaching the South Pole and the South Magnetic Pole. The
second of those objectives was achieved on 16 January 1909 by Edgeworth
David, Alistair Mackay, and Douglas Mawson, who took possession of the
area (which included the territory named Victoria Land by James Clark
Ross in 1841) for Great Britain. The first, however, proved beyond the
abilities of Shackleton, who—with Jameson Adams, Eric Marshall, and
Frank Wild—reached an estimated 88° 23ʹ South (just 112 miles short of
their destination) on 9 January 1909 but, left with just one biscuit each day
for food and with clothing that gave little protection from the bitter winds,
had to hasten back to their ship, which waited beyond its prescribed depar-
ture date in order to pick them up. (In 2010, a team from the New Zealand
Antarctic Heritage Trust discovered five crates of Mackinlay’s whisky that
had been left behind. Richard Paterson, master blender with White & Mack-
ay, which owns the brand, re-created the blend, which was bottled and mar-
keted with the aid of trust funds.)
Shackleton was knighted by King Edward VII for his achievement and
treated as a hero by the British public, but the expedition had always been
under-financed so expedition debts of some £20,000 had to be paid by the
government. Undaunted by the formidable task of fund-raising—and even
though, in 1910, he wrote to his wife, Emily (whom he had married in 1904),
that he would “never again [go] South”—plans for another venture were soon
under consideration. After news of Roald Amundsen’s successful trek to the
South Pole late in 1911 reached Britain, Shackleton began work on a scheme
for an Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition that would attempt the first cross-
ing of Antarctica. Backed principally by private donations, the main party
left Britain on 8 August 1914 on board the Aurora and the Endurance.
Shackleton (who was detained by business commitments and had offered the
team’s resources to the government at the outbreak of World War I but had
been told by Winston Churchill, first lord of the Admiralty, to proceed with
his endeavor) joined the group at Buenos Aires in October, but by 19 January
1915 the Endurance was locked fast in the ice of the Weddell Sea and, on 21
November, it sank. The Aurora was in McMurdo Sound, laying supply de-
pots on the opposite side of continent, so, for more than four months, the men
camped on ice floes. Then, when their floe broke up, they evacuated in three
small lifeboats to snow-covered and uninhabited Elephant Island (in the
South Shetland Islands), reaching it on 15 April after a 345-mile, six-day
journey in temperatures of –20° Fahrenheit. Well aware that they were far
from established shipping routes and that discovery was unlikely, Shackleton
took the 22-feet-long James Caird, the sturdiest of the boats, chose five other
men to accompany him, and on 24 April 1916 set off on an 800-mile voyage
to South Georgia, reaching Cave Cove, in the south of the island, on 10
 SIERRA LEONE • 477
May. Then, with Tom Crean (the second officer) and Frank Worsley (captain
of the Endurance), he crossed the Allardyce Range of mountains, which rises
to some 9600 feet, and walked into the Norwegian whaling station at Strom-
ness on 20 May. The men on Elephant Island (all still alive) were eventually
rescued on 30 August and the crew of the Aurora, which had lost three
personnel, on 10 January 1917.
Shackleton made one further journey to the southern polar lands, and it
was to be his last. Aboard the Quest, a former sealing ship, he left London on
17 September 1921 but died suddenly on 5 January the following year, after
suffering a heart attack, at Grytviken, in South Georgia. For much of the 20th
century his reputation was outshone by that of Scott, though Apsley Cherry-
Garrard, who had been a member of Scott’s team on the 1910–1912 expedi-
tion, considered that, “For a joint scientific and geographical piece of organ-
isation, give me Scott; . . . if I am in the devil of a hole and want to get out of
it, give me Shackleton every time.” In more recent decades his popularity has
increased, with several writers presenting him as a model for leaders and
managers.

SHIRE HIGHLANDS PROTECTORATE. See NYASALAND; UNI-

VERSITIES’ MISSION TO CENTRAL AFRICA.

SIERRA LEONE. In 1787, the Committee for the Relief of the Black Poor
(a charitable organization supported by members of the aristocracy and by
influential bankers, clergymen, and politicians) attempted to relocate some
400 indigent citizens from London’s black community to land in West Africa
granted by King Tom, a subchief of the Temne people. Financial donations
to the cause had been sizable because so many people of African descent had
joined the British side in the American Revolutionary War, but the settle-
ment survived for only two years before being destroyed by King Jimmy,
Tom’s successor. Undaunted, opponents of the slave trade formed the Sierra
Leone Company in 1791 and shipped 1,200 “Black Loyalists”—escaped or
freed slaves who had fought alongside British troops in the North American
campaign and then been resettled in Nova Scotia—to the same area of the
African continent. The group arrived in March 1792, rebuilt the township,
named it Freetown, and welcomed other former slaves to their midst pro-
vided that the newcomers agreed to become British citizens, carried letters of
recommendation from a clergyman, cleared one-third of their land for agri-
culture within two years, and lived according to the tenets of English law.
On 1 January 1808, following the passage of the Abolition of the Slave
Trade Act the previous year, the British government declared the region,
renamed Sierra Leone on 5 July 1799, a crown colony and made it the base
of operations for the Royal Navy’s West Africa Squadron, which inter-
478 • SIERRA LEONE
cepted vessels carrying African captives to plantations in the Americas.
Many of the slaves removed from the ships were landed at Freetown and
opted to remain, knowing that they would be safer there than in their former
homelands, but they had little in common, espousing very different religious
beliefs and speaking a great variety of tribal languages. From that melting
pot, pursuing a policy initiated by Charles MacCarthy, governor of the terri-
tory for much of the period from 1814 until his death at the hands of the
Ashanti in 1824 (see ASHANTI WARS), British officials attempted to
create a homogeneous society by encouraging the work of the Church Mis-
sionary Society and other Christian organizations that provided educational
and health facilities as well as places of worship. Also, by a mixture of
coercion and negotiation, they concluded, with local chiefs, treaties that were
designed to maintain peace and thus facilitate trade. Gradually, colonial in-
fluence spread across the 20-mile-long peninsula on which Freetown stands,
but it made only very limited progress inland until the last decade of the 19th
century. By the 1890s, as France aggressively expanded its African empire,
British politicians had become increasingly concerned that Freetown would
be surrounded by land dominated by another European power, threatening
the security of the naval base, so they made strenuous efforts to sign treaties
of friendship with leaders of groups living distant from the coast. Then, on 28
January 1895, diplomats agreed on the line of a frontier between Sierra
Leone and French Guinea, using geographical features (such as watersheds)
as the basis of the divide and paying no attention to the antagonisms and
links between the peoples living in the area. On 31 August the following
year, the government declared a “protectorate” over the colony’s hinterland,
again without consulting local rulers (most of whom had not asked to be
protected) and also without assigning any revenue to pay the cost of adminis-
tering the region. When Sir Frederick Cardew, the governor of Sierra Leone,
tried to raise the necessary revenue by imposing a hut tax, the Mende and
Temne societies rose in a revolt that was quelled only after hundreds of
deaths.
The early years of the 20th century brought increasingly widespread calls
for change as the Creoles (the descendants of the freed slaves) demanded
greater participation in government decision-making processes. From 1924,
three were elected (and two, along with three protectorate chiefs, nominated)
to the 22-seat Legislative Council, but no other significant steps toward
increased African involvement were taken until Britain adopted decoloniza-
tion policies after World War II. Creole aspirations received setbacks when,
in 1947, Britain insisted that the protectorate population was entitled to seats
on a newly constituted Legislative Council (rather than have one body for the
colony and another for the protectorate) and then again, in 1951, when Mil-
ton Margai, leader of the Sierra Leone People’s Party, won control of the
assembly with protectorate support. Over the next six years, government
 SIKKIM • 479
institutions were adapted to the British parliamentary model, and on 27 April
1961 the small colony of Sierra Leone and the larger protectorate became a
single independent state. However, the internal tensions, exacerbated by
widespread political corruption that led to the collapse of the economy, re-
sulted in unrest that culminated in a civil war that lasted from 1991 until
2002, leaving 50,000 people dead and 2,500,000 displaced.
See also BRITISH WEST AFRICA; MACMILLAN, MAURICE HAR-
OLD (1894–1986).

SIKH WARS. See FIRST SIKH WAR (1845–1846); SECOND SIKH WAR
(1848–1849).

SIKKIM. When the East India Company (EIC) went to war with Nepal in
1814 (see GURKHA (OR NEPALESE) WAR (1814–1816)), it found an ally
in the Himalayan mountain realm of Sikkim, much of which had been occu-
pied by the Nepalese from 1780. As a reward for that support, the terms of
the Treaty of Sugauli, which ended the conflict on 4 March 1816, contained a
provision that an EIC representative would act as arbiter in any future dis-
putes between the two Himalayan kingdoms. The document also incorporat-
ed an agreement that much territory under Nepalese control would be trans-
ferred to the EIC, but on 10 February the following year, under the terms of
the Treaty of Titaliya, the Company ceded extensive tracts of that land to
Sikkim, which acquired “all of the hilly or mountainous country situated to
the eastward of the Mechi river and to the westward of the Teesta river,
formerly possessed by the Rajah of Nepaul” in return for understandings that
the Sikkimese would give British troops “every aid and facility,” protect EIC
merchants and refrain from levying duties “beyond the established custom”
on those merchants, refer any disputes with neighboring states to the arbitra-
tion of the British government, and allow Americans and non-British Euro-
peans to reside in Sikkim only if British authorities approved. For Sikkim,
those two treaties initiated an erosion of sovereignty that was to continue
throughout the 19th century.
On 1 February 1835, the East India Company persuaded the initially
reluctant chogyal of Sikkim, Tsudpud Namgyal, to cede it the Darjeeling
area for use as a sanatorium in return for an annual payment that, from 1846,
amounted to 6,000 rupees. However, from 1841 the development of tea
plantations in the region attracted labor from Sikkim, causing diplomatic
friction as the Sikkimese used force to make the migrants return. In 1849,
when Dr. Arthur Campbell (the superintendent of the sanatorium) and Dr.
Joseph Hooker (a distinguished botanist) were imprisoned by the Sikkimese
after ignoring an instruction not to cross the country’s border from Tibet on a
plant-collecting foray, the East India Company responded by annexing 640
480 • SINGAPORE
square miles of the Terai area, which contained the kingdom’s most fertile
land. Sikkim reacted to the reprisals (which even some British observers
thought excessive) by mounting raids on India. Increasing tensions led to
military action that culminated, on 28 March 1861, with the Treaty of Tum-
long, which required the Sikkimese to agree that they would neither place
restrictions on trade with British India nor lease any land to foreign states
without the British government’s permission. With more than 20 clauses, the
treaty effectively stamped British authority on the kingdom, particularly in
the period from 1889–1908 as John Claude White, Great Britain’s political
officer at Tumlong (then the Sikkimese capital), allowed local rulers to exer-
cise very limited administrative freedom while he encouraged immigration
from Nepal and revolutionized systems of landholding and taxation. When
Britain’s colonies on the Indian subcontinent won independence in 1947,
Sikkim retained its separate identity, but India assumed responsibility for
defense and relations with foreign states. However, following antiroyal dis-
turbances in 1973, the Indian government—fearing that China would use the
instability as an excuse for intervening—appointed an administrator to run
the country. In a referendum in April 1975, more than 97 percent of the
Sikkimese electorate voted for union with India; they became Indian citizens
on 16 May the same year.
See also INDIA OFFICE.

SINGAPORE. Britain took little interest in Singapore, a group of islands

lying off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, until Sir Thomas Stam-
ford Raffles arrived in 1819, searching for a base that could be used by East
India Company ships plying between China and India. At the time, the
territory was under the suzerainty of the sultan of Johore, Tengku (or Prince)
Abdul Rahman, who was allied to the Dutch. Disobeying orders not to annoy
representatives of the Netherlands, Raffles deposed him then, on 6 February,
installed Tengku Hussein, Abdul Rahman’s older brother, in his stead, prom-
ising the new leader Company support and an annual payment in return for
the right to buy land. The Anglo-Dutch Treaty, signed on 17 March 1824,
confirmed British control and, two years later, on 14 August 1826, Singapore
was grouped, administratively, with Penang and Malacca as the Straits
Settlements, which came under the control of the governor-general of India
in 1851 and was declared a crown colony on 1 April 1867. Despite competi-
tion from Hong Kong, Singapore developed into one of the world’s major
ports, helped by the British government’s decision to end the East India
Company’s monopoly of trade with China in 1834, by the development of
steam-powered ships (which had greater speed and more storage capacity
than vessels powered by sail), by free port status, by the growing trade in
 SINT MAARTEN • 481
Malayan rubber and tin, by the opening of the Suez Canal (which cut journey
times between Europe and the Far East from 1869), and by the harbor’s
strategic function provisioning Royal Navy and merchant shipping.
From 1923, Britain greatly extended the naval base, hoping to dampen
Japanese expansionist aspirations in the Pacific, but never had the resources
to station a fleet of any size on the islands, which were invaded in February
1942, during World War II, and remained in Japan’s hands until September
1945. That British failure to defend the colony did much to reduce the colo-
nial authorities’ stature in the area and fueled demands for independence
after the conflict ended. When the Straits Settlements colony was dissolved
on 1 April 1946, Singapore became a separate crown colony, with respon-
sibility for civil administration in the hands of executive and legislative
councils, headed by the governor. Most members were appointed, and Brit-
ish subjects alone were eligible to vote for the others, but in 1953 a British
commission, led by Sir George Rendel, recommended a less restrictive ar-
rangement so from 1955 a widened franchise and an elected majority of
representatives gave local political leaders control of domestic government,
with British authorities retaining responsibility for defense and foreign policy
and (until 1959) exercising veto rights over legislation.
Britain had reservations about granting full independence because it feared
communist influence in the region but eventually agreed to the creation, on
16 September 1963, of the state of Malaysia, consisting of the Federation of
Malaya, British North Borneo (renamed Sabah), Sarawak, and Singapore
(which had declared itself independent on 31 August). The marriage was
never happy, however, because dominantly Chinese Singapore was regularly
at odds with its Malay partners so on 9 August 1965, after a series of race
riots, the Malaysian parliament took action, expelling Singapore, which be-
came a sovereign state. The last British troops withdrew in October 1971 in
accordance with the British government’s policy of closing garrisons based
“East of Suez.”
See also ABDUL RAHMAN, TUNKU (1903–1990); BENCOOLEN (OR
BENKULEN); BENGAL PRESIDENCY; BRITISH MALAYA; BRUNEI;
CHRISTMAS ISLAND (INDIAN OCEAN); COCOS (OR KEELING) IS-
LANDS; COMMONWEALTH IMMIGRATION TO THE UNITED KING-
DOM; LABUAN; MACMILLAN, MAURICE HAROLD (1894–1986).

SINT EUSTATIUS. See SAINT EUSTACE.

SINT MAARTEN. See SAINT MARTIN.

482 • SLAVE TRADE
SLAVE TRADE. The use of slave labor was common in many areas of the
British Empire but particularly in the Caribbean and, to a lesser extent, in
southern North America, where Britain was in the forefront of the commerce
for much of the 17th, 18th, and early 19th centuries. The business began in
1562, when sea captain John Hawkins sold 400 Africans in Hispaniola, and
flourished because the poorly populated Caribbean islands were ideal for the
production of cane sugar, which was in demand in Europe as a food preserva-
tive and sweetener and was most profitable when grown under labor inten-
sive plantation systems. In 1660, the Company of Royal Adventurers of
England Trading with Africa (see ROYAL AFRICAN COMPANY) was
established to promote the slave trade, with James, duke of York (brother of
King Charles II), at its head, and by the middle of the 18th century Britain
was the principal European state dealing in the commerce. A triangular mar-
ket developed, focusing on Bristol, Glasgow, Liverpool, London, and other
major ports. Manufactured goods, including guns and textiles, were carried
to the west coast of Africa and bartered for slaves, who were taken to the
Americas for sale. The proceeds derived from that traffic were used to buy
sugar and raw cotton, which were transported for processing in Britain.
Estimates of the number of people carried across the Atlantic vary, but
several scholars provide figures in excess of 3,000,000. The unfortunate
captives were treated as property, bought and sold just like any other com-
modity, and subjected to conditions considered inhumane by the standards of
modern industrial societies. At the time, however, resistance to change was
considerable because the business benefited people of all social classes, in-
cluding dockworkers (who loaded Britain’s exports and imports), factory
owners (who were guaranteed a supply of cheap raw materials), financiers
(who funded the trade through their banks), plantation proprietors (who ben-
efited from a cheap source of labor), and ship owners (whose vessels carried
the cargoes). Organized opposition began in the 1770s, much of it led by
nonconformist churchgoers (many of them Quakers) and by women (who
had no vote but were able to involve themselves in politics through protest
movements). Although the case for abolition was built primarily on humani-
tarian foundations, the objectors were undoubtedly helped by America’s suc-
cessful struggle for independence, which, from 1776, allowed the new Unit-
ed States to trade with countries other than Great Britain and its imperial
possessions and thus deprived the Caribbean colonies of an assured market.
Also, Britain’s growing manufacturing output reduced the importance of
colonial agriculture to the national economy, and rebellions by slaves (as in
Barbados in 1816 and in Jamaica in 1831–1832) disrupted the equilibirum
of the plantation system.
The Abolition of the Slave Trade Act of 1807 made the sale of slaves
illegal throughout the British Empire and the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833
outlawed the keeping of slaves, though those aged six and over were redesig-
 SLAVERY ABOLITION ACT (1833) • 483
nated “apprentices” and had to serve their masters for a further four years
before they were released. Until the third quarter of the 19th century, the
Royal Navy’s West Africa Squadron patrolled the African coast, intercept-
ing vessels carrying slaves, and as late as 1890 Britain gave the North Sea
island of Heligoland to Germany in exchange for Zanzibar, partly in an
effort to reduce the slave trade in East Africa.
See also ANGUILLA; ANTIGUA; ASCENSION ISLAND; THE BAHA-
MAS; BARBUDA; BAY ISLANDS; BERBICE; BIGHT OF BENIN;
BLACKBIRDING; BRITISH CAMEROONS; BRITISH HONDURAS;
CAPE COLONY; COCOS (OR KEELING) ISLANDS; COMMON-
WEALTH IMMIGRATION TO THE UNITED KINGDOM; COMPANY
OF MERCHANTS TRADING TO AFRICA; CONNECTICUT; CUBA;
DELAWARE; DEMERARA-ESSEQUIBO; DOMINICA; EAST AFRICA
PROTECTORATE; EAST FLORIDA; FERNANDO PO; GEORGIA;
GOLD COAST; GORDON, CHARLES GEORGE (1833–1885); GORÉE;
GRENADA; GUADELOUPE; IMPERIAL BRITISH EAST AFRICA
COMPANY; JAVA; LAGOS; LIVINGSTONE, DAVID (1813–1873);
LONDON MISSIONARY SOCIETY; MARTINIQUE; MARYLAND;
MAURITIUS; MONTSERRAT; MOSQUITO COAST; NEVIS; NEW JER-
SEY; NEW YORK; NORTH CAROLINA; NORTHERN NIGERIA; NYA-
SALAND; PERSIAN GULF; RAFFLES, THOMAS STAMFORD BIN-
GLEY (1781–1826); RHODE ISLAND AND PROVIDENCE PLANTA-
TIONS; SAINT DOMINGUE; SAINT KITTS; SAINT LUCIA; SAINT
VINCENT; SARAWAK; SEYCHELLES; SIERRA LEONE; SOCIETY
FOR THE PROPAGATION OF THE GOSPEL IN FOREIGN PARTS;
SOMERS ISLES COMPANY; SOUTH CAROLINA; SOUTHERN NIGE-
RIA; STANLEY, HENRY MORTON (1841–1904); SURINAM; TRINI-
DAD; TURKS AND CAICOS ISLANDS; UNIVERSITIES’ MISSION TO
CENTRAL AFRICA; VIRGIN ISLANDS.

SLAVERY ABOLITION ACT (1833). Opponents of slavery believed that

they had achieved their aim with the passage, in 1807, of an Abolition of the
Slave Trade Act that prohibited commerce in slaves throughout the British
Empire. However, the legislation did not prevent plantation owners from
keeping (or from breeding) slaves and, in parliament, the “West India Lob-
by” worked hard to prevent the reformers from passing further measures that
would outlaw the practice completely. In the end, economic and social
change favored the abolitionist cause. The industrial revolution introduced
new sources of wealth that reduced the value of colonial sugar and tobacco
plantations to the domestic economy. Slave revolts (such as the “Christmas
Rebellion” in Jamaica in late 1831 and early 1832) damaged property and
terrorized white families. The condemnations of slaveowners from the pul-
pits of nonconformist churches and from the evangelical wing of the Church
484 • SLESSOR, MARY MITCHELL (1848–1915)
of England were heard by increasingly receptive congregations. Finally, in
1832, changes in the way members of parliament were appointed swept
many of the wealthy advocates of slavery from power and provided their
opponents with an opportunity to pass a Slavery Abolition Act that received
royal assent on 28 August 1833 and came into effect on 1 August 1834
throughout most of the Empire, on 1 December 1834 in Cape Colony, and
on 1 February 1835 in Mauritius. (The territories controlled by the East
India Company were exempted from the legislation, as were Ceylon and
Saint Helena.) Children under the age of six were freed on the specified
dates; older slaves were redesignated “apprentices” and told that they would
no longer be owned by a master after 1 August 1838 if they worked in the
house and 1 August 1840 if they worked in the fields. (The latter date was
later brought forward by two years as a result of public protest and because
the government feared trouble if one group of slaves was liberated while
another remained tethered to their masters.) Slaveowners (who included men
such as Henry Philpotts, bishop of Exeter) were compensated with payments
totalling £20,000,000 (a sum equivalent to about two-fifths of the British
government’s annual expenditure at the time).
See also ANTIGUA; THE BAHAMAS; BLACKBIRDING; DEMERA-
RA-ESSEQUIBO; NEVIS; SAINT KITTS; SEYCHELLES; TRINIDAD.

SLESSOR, MARY MITCHELL (1848–1915). Mary Slessor furthered

British influence in Nigeria, partly through her missionary activities and
partly because she successfully encouraged native peoples to give up many
customary practices and accept European cultural norms. The daughter of
shoemaker Robert Slessor and his weaver wife, Mary, she was born in Gil-
comston, now a suburb of Aberdeen, on 2 December 1848. Robert, an alco-
holic, was unable to earn enough to keep his growing family so in 1859 he
moved it to Dundee, where 11-year-old Mary found a job with Baxter Broth-
ers, then the world’s largest linen manufacturer. As she entered her teens she
became increasingly active in her local United Presbyterian Church, involved
herself in mission work in the city, and took a growing interest in efforts to
spread Christian beliefs outside Scotland. Caught up in the missionary fervor
that followed the death of David Livingstone in 1873, she applied to work
with the United Presbyterian Church’s foreign mission, was accepted, and in
September 1876 was sent to Calabar, at the mouth of the Cross River in West
Africa. Gradually, she moved inland, learning the language of the Efik peo-
ple, among whom she worked, and abandoning aspects of the colonial life-
style (such as the use of mosquito nets) as she traveled (so visitors comment-
ed on her sunburned face and lack of concern for her appearance as she
adopted simple cotton clothing rather than wear the dresses and petticoats
common among European women of the period). In August 1888, she
reached Okoyong, where several missionaries had been killed but where she
 SMITH, IAN DOUGLAS (1919–2007) • 485
survived for 15 years, attempting to end such practices as those of human
sacrifice and of abandoning twin babies in the jungle because of a traditional
belief that one of them had been fathered by an evil spirit.
In 1892, Sir Claude MacDonald, consul of the Niger Coast Protectorate
(see SOUTHERN NIGERIA), made Mary his representative in the region—a
post that allowed her to dispense justice in a manner that placed considerable
emphasis on the rights of women. She was also much concerned with educa-
tion, badgering the United Presbyterian Church into establishing a technical
training insitutute that, from 1895, taught carpentry, horticulture, printing,
and other skills. The college still survives (now as a high school) and num-
bers among its almuni Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe (Nigeria’s first president) and
Dr. Eni Njoku (first vice-chancellor of the University of Lagos). Mary
Kingsley recorded that by the time they met in 1895, Slessor had discarded
most of her missionary ideas, was bullying the native chiefs in their own
tongue, and was regarded by other missionaries as “mad and dangerous,” but
in Britain she was known as “the white queen of Okoyong,” heralded be-
cause she adopted abandoned and unwanted children, encouraged commerce,
introduced Africans to formal British education systems, and promoted Brit-
ish values, making her, according to Edward Lugard (brother of Frederick
Lugard) “a great political factor of much value to the [colonial] Administra-
tion.” Early in her career, Slessor contracted malaria and, by 1907, she was
suffering from rheumatoid arthritis, but she refused to return to Britain per-
manently and died at Use Ikot Oku, in Calabar, on 13 January 1915.

SMITH, IAN DOUGLAS (1919–2007). For 15 years, from 1964 until 1979,
Ian Smith orchestrated opposition to British plans for black majority rule in
Southern Rhodesia. He was born at Selukwe (now Shurugwi) on 8 April
1919, the youngest of three children in the family of Jock Smith (a Scot who
had moved to the territory in the hope of making a fortune from gold but had
turned to butchery work and farming to make a living) and his English-born
wife, Agnes. Ian registered for an undergraduate degree course at Rhodes
University in South Africa, but his studies were interrupted when he joined
the Royal Air Force in 1941, beginning an eventful World War II career; he
was badly injured when his plane crashed on takeoff in 1943, leaving the left
side of his face paralyzed, and after being shot down over the Po Valley in
Italy the following year he spent three months with resistance fighters behind
enemy lines before hiking across the Alps to American-occupied France. He
returned to Rhodes University in 1946, completed a final year of study, and
bought a farm near his hometown but soon afterward embarked on the politi-
cal career that was to consume most of his working life.
In 1948, Smith was persuaded (despite his doubts that he was too young
for the task) to seek election to Southern Rhodesia’s legislative assembly as
a representative of the Liberal Party, which, despite its name, leaned very
486 • SMITH, IAN DOUGLAS (1919–2007)
strongly toward the political right, advocating the continued dominance of
the colony’s government by the minority white community. After the forma-
tion of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland in 1953, he transferred
his allegiance to the United Rhodesia (later United Federal) Party and sat in
the federal assembly, but he became increasingly disillusioned with the or-
ganization’s policies—and particularly with proposals to designate 15 of the
65 seats in the legislature for elected black representatives—so in 1961 he
resigned and, with Winston Field and Douglas Lilford, formed the Rhodesian
Front Party, which proved attractive to supporters of white supremacy.
To the surprise of many observers, the Front won a majority of seats at a
general election in 1962 so Field became Southern Rhodesia’s prime minister
but was widely perceived as ineffectual and was replaced by Smith on 13
April 1964. Smith’s first act in office was to arrest the leaders of the national-
ist movement, including Joshua Nkomo of the Zimbabwe African People’s
Union (ZAPU) and Robert Mugabe of the Zimbabwe African National
Union (ZANU). (Ostensibly, the men were detained because of their crimi-
nal behavior, not because of their political activities, but the move led to
widespread rioting in Salisbury, the colony’s capital.) Then, on 11 November
1965, after talks with British officials broke down as a result of the imperial
power’s insistence that it would only withdraw from Southern Rhodesia
when arrangements for black majority rule were agreed, he issued a unilater-
al declaration of independence. Smith undoubtedly believed that most mem-
bers of the United Nations would recognize his government’s legitimacy, but
when that body responded by imposing economic sanctions and the national-
ists turned to guerrilla warfare in an effort to achieve their aims he was
forced back to the negotiating table. Britain offered increasingly attractive
terms for a return to the colonial fold, the cost of suppressing the guerillas
(who operated largely in rural areas, killing white farmers) mounted steadily,
many settlers moved away from the territory, and political change in Mozam-
bique and South Africa eliminated two pillars of support for the white re-
gime. Ultimately, in 1976, Smith persuaded his colleagues to accept a deal,
brokered by U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, that would ensure
African control of the legislature within two years. However, he then pro-
crastinated, holding further talks in an effort to shore up the white position
after independence and rejecting African demands for further concessions, so
the agreement was never implemented and the violence increased.
In 1979, an “internal settlement”with Bishop Abel Muzorewa‘s United
African National Council and Ndabaningi Sithole’s Zimbabwe African Na-
tional Union-Ndonga (ZANU-Ndonga) Party led to Muzorewa replacing
Smith as prime minister, but the arrangement retained the whites’ privileged
position (they remained in control of the armed forces, the civil service, the
judiciary, and the police, for example) so it did nothing to alter international
opinion or end the warfare. With nowhere to turn for support, the Rhodesians
 SOCIETY FOR THE PROPAGATION OF THE GOSPEL IN FOREIGN
PARTS • 487
agreed to participate in all-party talks in London and on 21 December ac-
cepted a reversion to colonial status. On 18 April the following year, the
territory became independent as the Republic of Zimbabwe, with Mugabe as
prime minister. Smith remained in the legislature until the arrangement for
white-only seats was ended in 1987, then retired to his farm at Shurugwi. He
moved to South Africa for medical treatment in 2005 and died at St. James,
near Cape Town, on 20 November 2007. Most assessments of the man and
his influence on African affairs are negative (Lord Peter Carrington, who
chaired the London talks in 1979, considered him “bigoted” and “stupid”),
but some writers suggest that his warnings of Zimbabwe’s decline under
Mugabe (whom he described as “mentally deranged”) have been justified by
events, and workers on his farm reported that he had provided free education
and health care for their families.
See also TODD, REGINALD STEPHEN GARFIELD (1908–2002); WE-
LENSKY, RAPHAEL “ROY” (1907–1991).

SOCIETY FOR THE PROPAGATION OF THE GOSPEL IN

FOREIGN PARTS. At the instigation of the Reverend Thomas Bray, who
had attempted to increase the resources available to Church of England work-
ers in Maryland, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign
Parts (SPG) was founded by royal charter on 16 June 1701 with the aim of
supporting Anglican clergy working in the American colonies. The organiza-
tion’s first representative—the Reverend George Keith (a former surveyor-
general of New Jersey who abandoned his Quaker upbringing and became a
deacon in the Church of England)—was dispatched to Boston, in the Massa-
chusetts Bay Colony, the following year and the first missionaries to the
West Indies reached the islands in 1703. By 1710, SPG leaders were giving
work with “heathens and infidels” priority over other responsibilities, and
thereafter the Society became the principal agent of Church of England mis-
sionary activities throughout the British Empire. By 1785, when American
independence ended its role in the region, it had sent more than 300 ordained
priests (including John Wesley, cofounder of the Methodist Church) to the
area and distributed thousands of Bibles.
Using texts from the book of Genesis to justify its actions, the SPG kept
more than 400 slaves on a plantation on Barbados from 1710 until 1833, but
it also founded health clinics and educational institutions; Codrington Col-
lege in St. John, Barbados, opened as a high school in 1745, for example. In
1751, the Rev. Thomas Thompson began mission work at James Fort, on the
Gambia River in West Africa—Philip Quaque, whom Thompson sent to
London to be educated, became, in 1766, the first African to be ordained as a
priest by the Church of England—and by the end of the century the organiza-
tion was also well established in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. In
the 1820s, SPG representatives took their faith to India and southern Africa,
488 • SOLOMON ISLANDS
the first female missionary (Sarah Coombes) landed in North Borneo in
1856, and by 1873 other workers had gone beyond the boundaries of the
British Empire into China and Japan. As the group’s commitments expanded,
church leaders trained local converts to work as missionaries and, particular-
ly from 1895, recruited women who would both spread the Christian mes-
sage and teach girls in the mission fields. However, in the years after World
War II, the increasing secularization of British society resulted in a decline of
interest in missionary activity. Also, as decolonization gathered pace,
churches in former British possessions developed their own identities (which
were often more conservative than the parent church in the United King-
dom), and SPG began to work more in concert with these and other bodies
that had similar interests. In 1965, it merged with the Universities’ Mission
to Central Africa to form the United Society for the Propagation of the
Gospel, which, by the early 21st century, had representatives in more than 50
countries around the world, focusing on health work and leadership develop-
ment as well as on religious activities.
See also BARBUDA.

SOLOMON ISLANDS. See BRITISH SOLOMON ISLANDS.

SOMALILAND PROTECTORATE. See BRITISH SOMALILAND.

SOMERS ISLES COMPANY. The Somers Isles Company was formed in

1615 to exploit the resources of the Bermudan archipelago, which lies in the
Atlantic Ocean at latitude 32° 18´ North and longitude 64° 47´ West, some
650 miles east of Cape Hatteras, on the North American mainland. In 1505,
or perhaps a few years earlier, Juan de Bermúdez, a Spanish navigator, had
chanced upon the islands, which appear as Bermudas or La Bermuda on
mariners’ charts produced shortly afterward. However, neither Bermúdez nor
any of his countrymen made any attempt to settle the territory so it remained
uninhabited until 25 July 1609, when Admiral Sir George Somers deliberate-
ly steered his Virginia Company ships on to rocks during a storm in order to
prevent the vessels from being sunk. The 150 passengers and crew (and one
dog), all of whom survived the traumatic landing, remained for 10 months,
building a village, claiming the area for the English crown, and constructing
two boats that would carry most of them to James Town, Virginia, in 1610.
Also, because of the admiral’s exploits, Bermuda became known as the
Somers Isles in England.
On 22 March 1612, the royal charter under which the Virginia Company
operated was altered to include the islands within the business’s remit, but
two years later, on 23 November 1614, the firm returned them to King James
I, believing that they were a poor investment. Several of the shareholders saw
 SOUTH AFRICA, UNION OF • 489
potential, though, because, on 29 June 1615, they formed a new organiza-
tion—the Somers Isles Company—and, for a fee of £2,000, received permis-
sion from the monarch to exploit the colony’s agricultural potential. The new
owners divided their acquisition into lots, with individuals allocated areas of
land proportionate to their investment. The emphasis was on tobacco grow-
ing, using indentured labor and, to a lesser extent, Negro and North
American Indian slaves, but the crop was of consistently poor quality so it
commanded a low price on English markets. Moreover, because the islands
have a land area of little more than 20 square miles, the acreage available for
any form of cultivation was very limited, and soils became depleted as they
were overutilized. As a result, settlers turned to other activities, particularly
shipbuilding, in order to earn a living, but the rules under which the Compa-
ny operated prevented it from raising income from industries other than
farming so it did its best to restrict participation in such ventures (by licens-
ing the shipbuilders, for instance). Although the firm established an elected
assembly (which first met on 1 August 1620) to assist the governor in the
administration of the islands, invested in the construction of fortifications as
defenses against French or Spanish invaders, and sanctioned the founding of
schools, dissatisfaction over the restraints on economic development led to
mounting protests about its management of the territory and ultimately, on 27
November 1684, to a decision by the London courts to dissolve the Compa-
ny. Very quickly, the Bermudans abandoned agriculture and embraced a
commerce based on seafaring and on exploitation of the salt reserves on the
Turks Islands (see TURKS AND CAICOS ISLANDS).

SOUTH AFRICA, UNION OF. The Union of South Africa was created on
31 May 1910 through the merger of Cape Colony, Natal, Orange River
Colony, and the Transvaal. Also, in 1920, the League of Nations gave South
Africa a mandate to administer German South-West Africa, which its troops
had occupied during World War I, and from then until 1990 (when the area
won independence as Namibia) the South Africans treated that territory as
part of their state (see LEAGUE OF NATIONS MANDATED TERRITO-
RY).
Proposals for a federation of colonies and republics in southern Africa had
been voiced as early as 1858 by Sir George Grey, Cape Colony’s governor,
but had always been rejected either by the Colonial Office or as a result of
friction between Britain and the Boer governments of the Orange Free State
and the South African Republic. However, British victory in the Second
Boer War, fought from 1899–1902, united most of the region under a single
flag and paved the way for political reconstruction. That reconstruction was
shaped at meetings in Durban and Cape Town in 1908–1909, when 30 dele-
gates from the four colonies agreed to form a unitary state (rather than a
federation) with a bicameral parliament elected on the basis of white adult
490 • SOUTH AFRICA, UNION OF
male suffrage. The new country had dominion status, with executive author-
ity vested in a governor-general who represented the British monarch but
with the real power in the hands of a prime minister who acted as head of the
Union’s government. The native African peoples were not consulted about
the constitutional changes. While the territories were being administered as
colonies, British officials and politicians made some effort to protect the
interests of indigenous groups, but many of the white settlers who assumed
control in 1910—and particularly those from the former Boer republics—
considered themselves superior to members of the black, colored, and Indian
communities who, they believed, acted as barriers to economic and social
progress. As a result, racial issues dominated much of the politics of the new
administration, which introduced a series of measures intended to protect the
position of the Union’s white population (by, for example, limiting the right
of “natives” to own land, by restricting certain jobs to white applicants, and
by segregating residential areas).
In 1931, the Statute of Westminster removed the last vestiges of British
control over southern Africa by giving the Union responsibility for conduct-
ing its own defense and foreign affairs and by removing the United King-
dom’s right to pass legislation relating to South Africa. Three years later, the
Union legislature confirmed the country’s new status by passing a Status of
the Union Act, which declared South Africa a “sovereign independent state.”
The South African parliament voted by a majority of only 13 votes to support
Britain and its allies in World War II because many Boer politicians sympa-
thized with Adolf Hitler’s racial policies, but the conflict brought much
economic benefit to the Union. However, although manufacturing industry
expanded rapidly because imports were much reduced, the wealth that was
generated went largely to the white population while most of the black work-
ers, who flooded into growing towns and cities in search of work, were
confined to squatter settlements at the edge of the urban areas. Moreover, the
migration caused many of the whites great concern because farmers feared
the loss of cheap labor and city dwellers feared competition for jobs. Daniel
Malan’s Reunited National Party and its ally, the Afrikaner Party, played on
those concerns, won 79 of the 153 seats available at the 1948 general elec-
tion, and, with a parliamentary majority, furthered racial segregation (or
“apartheid”) through a series of laws that, for instance, ensured that children
of different races could not be educated in the same schools, prohibited
marriages between people of different races, and required blacks to carry
pass books. Malan also favored severing the links with the monarch and
making South Africa a republic. At a referendum on 5 October 1960, 53.7
percent of the all-white electorate indicated their support so on 31 May 1961
Queen Elizabeth II ceased to be the country’s head of state, a change that
many South Africans interpreted as a symbolic end to colonial status.
 SOUTH ARABIA, FEDERATION OF • 491
See also BALFOUR DECLARATION (1926); BANDA, HASTINGS
KAMUZU (1898?–1997); BASUTOLAND; BECHUANALAND; COLO-
NIAL CONFERENCE; COMMONWEALTH IMMIGRATION TO THE
UNITED KINGDOM; COMMONWEALTH OF NATIONS; HIGH COM-
MISSION TERRITORIES; KHAMA, SERETSE (1921–1980); MACMIL-
LAN, MAURICE HAROLD (1894–1986); NORTHERN RHODESIA; OLD
COMMONWEALTH; OVERSEAS SETTLEMENT SCHEME; PENGUIN
ISLANDS; PRINCE EDWARD ISLANDS; RHODESIA AND NYASA-
LAND, FEDERATION OF; SOUTHERN RHODESIA; SWAZILAND;
UNITED NATIONS TRUST TERRITORY; WALVIS BAY.

SOUTH ARABIA, FEDERATION OF. On 4 April 1962, the United

Kingdom dissolved the 15-member Federation of Arab Emirates of the
South, which it had formed in 1959, and reconstituted it as the Federation of
South Arabia in preparation for the addition of the crown colony of Aden to
the group on 18 January the following year. In June 1964, the Sultanate of
Upper Aulaqi also joined, and on 7 July Duncan Sandys (the secretary of
state for Commonwealth relations and for the colonies [see COLONIAL
OFFICE]) informed the House of Commons (the lower chamber in Britain’s
bicameral parliament) of plans to grant the Federation independence “not
later than 1968,” with the United Kingdom retaining its military presence in
Aden “for the defence of the Federation and the fulfilment of her worldwide
responsibilities.” However, the path to self-government was less than
smooth. Many residents of Aden had mixed feelings about the Federation,
favoring the loosening of colonial reins but fearing control by conservatives
from the sheikhdoms. In addition, rival nationalist groups—notably the Front
for the Liberation of Occupied South Yemen (FLOSY) and the National
Liberation Front (NLF)—competed violently with each other for military and
political supremacy and initiated campaigns against British interests in order
to demonstrate that political freedom was being won rather than granted (see
ADEN EMERGENCY (1963–1967)).
According to some observers, the situation was inflamed by British reac-
tion to a grenade attack on the high commissioner, Sir Kennedy Trevaskis,
on 10 December 1963 because the declaration of a state of emergency fol-
lowing the incident, and the increased number of soldiers on the streets,
offended many of the well-educated and younger Adenis. Also, Egypt’s
President, Gamal Abdel Nasser, provided support for FLOSY as part of his
pan-Arabist policies. On 1 September 1965, as the troubles escalated, Sir
Arthur Charles, the speaker of the National Council, was killed by rebels and
Abdul Qawi Makkawi, the Council’s president, refused to condemn the mur-
der so, on 25 September, Britain suspended the Federation’s constitution and
imposed direct rule. Then, the following February, faced with the spiraling
cost of attempting to maintain control and having declared its intention to
492 • SOUTH ARABIA, PROTECTORATE OF
downscale defense commitments “East of Suez,” Prime Minister Harold
Wilson’s Labour Party government decided to withdraw troops from the
Federation by 1968. In the event, the departure was completed by 29 Novem-
ber 1967. With no formal arrangements made for a transfer of power to local
politicians, the Federation crumbled, and on 30 November the Marxist-
oriented NLF—which had achieved dominance in the region after Egypt
(defeated in the Six-Day War with Israel from 5–10 June 1967) withdrew
support from FLOSY—deposed the sheikhs and formed the People’s Repub-
lic of South Yemen, which united with North Yemen in 1990 to form the
Republic of Yemen.
See also SOUTH ARABIA, PROTECTORATE OF.

SOUTH ARABIA, PROTECTORATE OF. From the late 19th century,

Britain sought to protect Aden by signing protectorate agreements with the
rulers of sheikdoms and other territories in the hinterland of the crown colo-
ny. With the exception of the sultanate of Upper Yafa, the most westerly of
those areas were persuaded to merge as the Federation of South Arabia on
4 April 1962. Then, on 18 January the following year, Aden was added to the
organization and the more easterly sultanates (Kathiri, Mahra, Qu’aiti, and
Wahidi Bir Ali) were grouped with the exclave of Upper Yafa as the Protec-
torate of South Arabia. However, from February 1966, as imperial policies
changed, Britain withdrew from most of its defense commitments “East of
Suez” and left Aden on 29 November 1967. The National Liberation Front, a
Marxist body, took control the next day, declared that the areas of the former
Federation and Protectorate would be united as the People’s Republic of
South Yemen, and deposed the sultans.

SOUTH AUSTRALIA. South Australia—part of the land that Captain

James Cook claimed for Britain in 1770 and named New South Wales—lay
well to the west of the first areas on the continent to be occupied by Euro-
peans and was settled largely through the efforts of Edward Gibbon Wake-
field, a wealthy diplomat. In 1827, Wakefield was sent to Newgate Prison,
London, for three years, convicted of abducting Ellen Turner, a 15-year-old
heiress. While serving his sentence, he learned of the problems facing Brit-
ain’s poor then, from 1829, advocated selling crown land on the Australian
continent at a modest price and using the income to fund the transport of
immigrants (particularly young, married immigrants), whose departure from
Britain would relieve social pressures in the cities. His supporters eventually
persuaded King William IV’s government of the attractions of the scheme so
on 15 August 1834 the monarch gave royal assent to the South Australia
Colonisation Act, which created a 309,850-square-mile colony that—unlike
New South Wales and Victoria—would be peopled by free citizens rather
 SOUTH CAROLINA • 493
than by convicts. Attracted as much by the promise of political and religious
freedoms as by the possibility of building a new life, the first shiploads of
636 passengers reached Kangaroo Island, some eight miles from the Austra-
lian mainland, on 27 July 1836. Sheep, imported from Van Diemen’s Land
(now Tasmania), formed the initial basis of the economy, but wheat became
an increasingly popular crop as towns and villages spread inland from the
coast, vineyards were planted in McLaren Vale in 1838, and copper was
mined from 1842.
From its inception, South Australia had a more democratic form of
government than that of most other British imperial possessions. In 1851, the
Legislative Council was the first law-making body in the Empire to discon-
tinue state aid to religious organizations, and from 1856 the territory had a
constitution that provided for a bicameral parliament elected through univer-
sal adult male suffrage on a one-man, one-vote basis at secret ballots, with no
property-owning qualifications required by members of the House of Assem-
bly (the lower house), and only very low qualifications required by members
of the Legislative Council (the upper house). South Australia was the first of
Britain’s colonial possessions to legalize labor unions (in 1876) and (in
1894) the first self-governing administration anywhere in the world to give
women the right to sit in its parliament. However, by the time the last of
those constitutional innovations had been implemented, the colony—and the
rest of Australia—was suffering from economic depression. A series of poor
harvests, caused largely by drought, eroded rural incomes and employment in
manufacturing activity was limited so many families abandoned their farms
and moved to Adelaide, the major city, or to Western Australia. Also, the
political climate was changing as administrators throughout the continent
increasingly favored cooperation, through some form of federal arrangement,
over such matters as defense and immigration. Although several colonists in
South Australia feared that the moves would result in a loss of autonomy, a
referendum in June 1899 produced an overwhelming vote in favor of the
plans so on 1 January 1901 South Australia joined five other British posses-
sions to form the Commonwealth of Australia.
See also NORTHERN TERRITORY (AUSTRALIA).

SOUTH CAROLINA. On 24 March 1663, King Charles II gave Edward

Hyde, earl of Clarendon, and seven other courtiers a “patent” (or charter) that
granted them rights to settle the land on the east coast of North America
between latitudes 31° North and 36° North. Two years later, the territory—
known as the Province of Carolina—was extended northward to 36° 30´
North and southward to 29° 0´ North. Charles Towne (now Charleston), the
first permanent settlement in the south of the province, was founded on the
west bank of the Ashley River at Albemarle Point in 1670, but population
numbers grew slowly, in large part because of long-running squabbles be-
494 • SOUTH CAROLINA
tween immigrants and proprietors over the collection of quitrents, constitu-
tional issues, investment, lack of assistance to stave off attacks by indigenous
groups, and religious freedoms. The proprietors appointed separate govern-
ors for the northern and southern regions of the colony in 1712, but in
November 1719 their efforts to exert even firmer control provoked a rebel-
lion by South Carolinian settlers, who ousted Governor Robert Johnson,
replaced him with James Moore (who had played a major role in struggles
against the native peoples), and petitioned King George I to appoint an
administrator himself. On 29 May 1721, the monarch acquiesced, primarily
because the territory was strategically located on the frontier of the Empire,
at a point close to competing French and Spanish interests, and because it had
contributed to Britain’s commercial might through the marketing of products
such as deerskins and timber as well as through the export of Indian slaves
and the import of African slaves.
The proprietors’ rights were not formally extinguished until King George
II purchased their shares on 25 July 1729, but, even so, crown rule provided
an administrative stability that led to increased production of indigo (which
was used as a dye in the textile industry) and of rice along the Atlantic
coastal plain (an area known as the “lowcountry”). Charleston developed into
a major port, and settlement schemes, combined with the colony’s growing
wealth, attracted residents from mainland Europe as well as from Britain and
from other British colonies in the Americas. From the 1730s, many German,
Scotch-Irish, and Swiss immigrants made their way into the interior (or “up-
country”) in search of cheap land. Scotch-Irish numbers, in particular, in-
creased from 1761 as families arrived from Pennsylvania and Virginia after
the Cherokee Indians, who had initiated a series of attacks on white settlers
the previous year, were forced to sue for peace, but the influx caused political
tensions because the farmers working small plots of land in the hills had little
in common, economically or socially, either with the wealthy slave-owners
on plantations nearer to the coast or with the merchants in urban Charleston.
As in other of Britain’s North American possessions, many colonists took
exception to the London parliament’s attempts to introduce taxes (designed
to pay for the defense of the provinces) after the Seven Years’ War ended in
1763 (see AMERICAN REVOLUTION), but calls for a severing of ties with
the mother country found less than unanimous support. Divisions over grow-
ing demands for independence were bitter because many upcountry residents
felt that rule by a European legislature was preferable to rule by the commer-
cial elite that influenced government decisions in Charleston, an opinion that
the governor, Lord William Campbell, did his utmost to encourage. Howev-
er, on 15 September 1775, as violence between the rival groups escalated,
Campbell fled to Britain for safety, leaving administration in the hands of the
radicals (or “patriots”) who supported change. On 26 March 1776, delegates
to a provincial congress established a “general assembly” to govern the terri-
 SOUTH GEORGIA • 495
tory and approved a constitution. Then, on 4 July, after initially opposing the
proposals, South Carolina joined 12 other colonies in signing a declaration of
independence (see THE THIRTEEN COLONIES). By then, British troops
and American forces had been fighting for more than a year (see
AMERICAN REVOLUTIONARY WAR (1775–1783)), with much of the
struggle in South Carolina taking the form of a civil war between supporters
of the crown and advocates of independence. Britain formally acknowledged
defeat through the Treaty of Paris, signed on 3 September 1783, and on 23
May 1788 South Carolina ratified the constitution of the United States of
America.
See also EAST FLORIDA; GEORGIA.

SOUTH GEORGIA. The islands of South Georgia lie in the southern Atlan-
tic Ocean, some 860 miles southeast of the Falkland Islands, at latitudes
54°–55° South and longitudes 36°–38° West. They were discovered in 1675
by Anthony de la Roché, an English merchant whose ship was blown off
course while rounding Cape Horn en route to Brazil, and claimed for Britain
by Captain James Cook, who landed on the uninhabited main island in 17
January 1775 and named it in honor of King George III. The territory was an
important base for international sealing fleets throughout the 19th century
then, from 1904, became a focus of the whaling industry, but, after 1965,
when those activities ended, the small resident population was replaced by
transient groups of scientists and tourists. On 21 July 1908, Britain re-
sponded to Norwegian inquiries about the diplomatic status of the area by
grouping its south Atlantic possessions into a single territory—the Falkland
Islands Dependencies—with Grytviken (the principal settlement on South
Georgia) as its administrative base. Argentina made an assertion of sove-
reignty over South Georgia in 1927 but, on several occasions, rejected Brit-
ish proposals to submit the opposing claims to the International Court of
Justice, or to an independent tribunal, for abitration. On 19 March 1982,
during the Falklands War, Argentinian forces landed on South Georgia in an
attempt to assert control but surrendered to United Kingdom troops on 25
April (see FALKLANDS WAR (1982)). Three years later, on 3 October
1985, the British government made South Georgia and the South Sandwich
Islands a British Dependent Territory, changing the nomenclature to Brit-
ish Overseas Territory in 2002. In 2001, six years after Argentina an-
nounced that it would not pursue its sovereignty claims by force, the small
British garrison withdrew.
See also SHACKLETON, ERNEST HENRY (1874–1922).
496 • SOUTH ORKNEY ISLANDS
SOUTH ORKNEY ISLANDS. The South Orkneys—discovered by Na-
thaniel Palmer (an American sealer) and George Powell (his British compan-
ion) in 1821 and named after their northern latitude counterparts by James
Weddell, who mapped the group (albeit not very accurately) in 1823—are
located at latitude 60° 35´ South and longitude 45° 30´ West, approximately
400 miles northeast of the Antarctic Peninsula. In 1903–1904, the Scottish
National Antarctic Expedition, led by William Speirs Bruce, overwintered on
Laurie Island, collecting meteorological and other scientific data after being
trapped by ice. On leaving, Bruce offered the weather station, as a permanent
site, to the British government but was spurned so sold it to the Argentinian
authorities instead. Despite the initial lack of interest, Britain annexed the
South Orkneys, along with neighboring polar lands, on 21 July 1908 and
administered them as part of the Falkland Islands Dependencies until 3
March 1962, when they were included within the boundaries of the newly
created British Antarctic Territory. Argentina has claimed sovereignty
over the islands since 1925, basing its assertion, in part, on its occupation of
Laurie Island observatory, which is the oldest continuously staffed scientific
base in the Antarctic, but neither that country nor the United Kingdom
attempted to pursue the dispute politically after 1961, when the Antarctic
Treaty opened all territory south of 60° latitude to scientists of any nation.

SOUTH SANDWICH ISLANDS. The volcanic South Sandwich Islands

form an arc in the southern Atlantic Ocean at latitudes 56°–59° South and
longitudes 26°–28° West, some 300 miles southeast of South Georgia and
800 miles from the Antarctic mainland. The more southerly outcrops were
discovered by Captain James Cook in 1775 and named in honor of James
Montagu, earl of Sandwich and first lord of the Admiralty (see BANKS,
JOSEPH (1743–1820); SANDWICH ISLANDS), but the existence of the
northerly extension was not known until Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen
led a Russian expedition to the south polar regions in 1819. Snow-covered
for most of the year, and uninhabited, all were annexed by Britain on 21 July
1908 and included with other southern marine possessions in the Falkland
Islands Dependencies, which were adminstered from Grytviken, on South
Georgia. In 1938, Argentina made a formal claim to sovereignty over the
islands, arguing that one of its whaling companies had conducted operations
there in 1908, but several British requests to submit the contested rights to
arbitration by the International Court of Justice or an independent tribunal
were rejected. In 1982, after the Falklands War, the Argentinians were
forced to abandon a naval base that they had established on Thule Island in
1976 and that remained undiscovered by Britain for two years. On 3 October
1985, the South Sandwich Islands were united with South Georgia as a
British Dependent Territory, a nomenclature that was changed to British
 SOUTH SHETLAND ISLANDS • 497
Overseas Territory in 2002. Administrative responsibilities are exercised
by a commissioner who also holds the post of governor of the Falkland
Islands.

SOUTH SHETLAND ISLANDS. The ice-covered South Shetlands, vol-

canic in origin and lying some 70 miles north of the Antarctic Peninsula at
latitude 62° 0´ South and longitude 58° 0´ West, were first sighted by Euro-
peans in 1819. William Smith, in command of the Williams, a brig carrying
goods from Buenos Aires to Valparaiso, diverted his ship farther south than
usual as he searched for favorable winds and, on 19 February, sighted the
land now known as Livingstone Island. Later in the year, he returned, disem-
barked on several of the islands (all of which were uninhabited), and, on 16
October, claimed the largest of the group for Britain, naming it King George
Land in honor of King George III. In March, Smith had reported his sighting
to Captain William Shireff, the Royal Navy officer responsible for protecting
British interests on the west coast of South America. Shireff was disinclined
to accept the tale but changed his mind when Smith returned with details of
the second visit, chartered the Williams, and dispatched Lieutenant Edward
Bransfield to investigate, with Smith as pilot. The two men made several
landings, claiming the islands for the British crown, and on 30 January
glimpsed a range of mountains that they named Trinity Land; those moun-
tains lay on the Antarctic Peninsula, and Bransfield and Smith were unaware
that, just three days earlier, Thaddeus von Bellinghausen, a Russian explorer,
had made what was probably the first sighting of the Antarctic continent by a
traveler from the northern hemisphere.
News of Smith’s discovery of the South Shetland Islands, and of the rafts
of seals along their shores, spread quickly. The first sealing ship to reach the
area was the Espirito Santo, which had been chartered by British merchants
in Buenos Aires and which carried a British crew, who reached Rugged
Island on Christmas Day in 1819 and proclaimed British sovereignty. By the
end of the following year, more than 50 ships were culling the seals, whose
numbers were quickly reduced. The industry continued into the early 20th
century, but since the end of World War II visiting ships have more usually
carried scientists (who work from more than a dozen research stations) or,
with increasing frequency, tourists. The islands, which are named after their
northern latitude counterparts, were annexed by Britain on 21 July 1908 and
initially included for administrative purposes among the Falkland Islands
Dependencies but later incorporated within the boundaries of the British
Antarctic Territory, created on 3 March 1962. They are also claimed by
Chile (since 1940) and by Argentina (since 1943), but the competing asser-
tions of sovereignty have not been tested since 1961, when the Antarctic
Treaty confirmed the rights of all states to conduct scientific research on the
continent south of the 60th parallel of latitude.
498 • SOUTHERN DEPARTMENT
See also SHACKLETON, ERNEST HENRY (1874–1922).

SOUTHERN DEPARTMENT. See COLONIAL OFFICE.

SOUTHERN NIGERIA. By the 18th century, British vessels dominated the

Atlantic slave trade, taking manufactured goods (such as copper bracelets)
from home ports to West Africa and trading them for human cargoes, which
they carried to the Caribbean and the North American mainland. The cap-
tives were bartered for molasses, rum, sugar, and other products that could be
sold in European markets, but although the commerce generated consider-
able wealth few Europeans were tempted to settle on the African coast,
where malaria and yellow fever were so rife and treatments so ineffective
(because medical authorities believed that the illnesses were caused by “bad
air” rather than by insect bites) that the district became known as “The White
Man’s Grave.” However, after the buying and selling of slaves was banned in
all territories of the Empire by the British parliament in 1807 (see ABOLI-
TION OF THE SLAVE TRADE ACT (1807)), the Royal Navy patrolled
trading routes, intercepting ships, whatever their country of origin, and re-
leasing captives (see WEST AFRICA SQUADRON). Also, officers con-
cluded treaties with African tribal rulers, offering goods in return for prom-
ises to abandon traffic in slaves and granting rights to levy dues on shipping
in return for promises to facilitate trade in other commodities. As a result,
merchants were forced to seek new products and turned to palm oil, which
was derived from the pulp of the oval fruits of the oil palm (Elaeis guineen-
sis) and used both in the production of soap and as a lubricant for the grow-
ing number of machines in the factories of rapidly industrializing Britain.
Great Britain was not alone in promoting national economic and political
influences in West Africa because France and Germany competed for com-
mercial and strategic footholds in the region, particularly from the early
1880s. In 1884, Germany announced sovereignty over Kamerun (see BRIT-
ISH CAMEROONS), and a year later, on 5 June 1885, Britain responded
with a declaration that the Oil Rivers area, covering much of the River Niger
delta and the coastal lands between Rio del Rey in the east and Lagos in the
west, had protectorate status. The designation gave Great Britain control of
shipping traffic along the river, but, even so, the government took no steps to
establish an administration for the complex territory of interlinking water-
ways until 1891, when a consul-general took up residence at Old Calabar, in
the east of the territory, with vice-consuls at the river ports. As trade with the
hinterland expanded, the protectorate was extended northward along the Ni-
ger River on 13 May 1893 and renamed the Niger Coast Protectorate. Seven
years later, on 1 January 1900, the British state assumed responsibility for
managing the territories that had been administered by the Royal Niger
 SOUTHERN RHODESIA • 499
Company and merged the lands south of Lokoja, on the Niger, with the
coastal regions to form the Southern Nigeria Protectorate. The addition of
Lagos to the territory on 16 February 1906 was accompanied by another
alteration to nomenclature as the land became known as the Colony and
Protectorate of Southern Nigeria. Then, on 1 January 1914, for budgetary
reasons and against the wishes of many leaders of the Lagos community,
relatively affluent Southern Nigeria (which collected customs dues from the
import and export of goods through its ports) was merged with the less
wealthy Northern Nigeria Protectorate (whose products passed through the
southern ports but which received none of the customs dues) to form the
Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria.
See also BIGHT OF BENIN; BIGHT OF BIAFRA; SLESSOR, MARY
MITCHELL (1848–1915).

SOUTHERN RHODESIA. In 1889, the British South Africa Company

(BSAC) received a royal charter granting it authority to exploit mineral re-
sources and promote trade in south-central Africa. Initially, the area that it
controlled was known as Zambezia (after the Zambezi River, which flowed
through the region), but in 1895 the territory was renamed Rhodesia in honor
of Cecil Rhodes, the firm’s founder. The term “Southern Rhodesia” was
regularly applied to the area south of the river from 1901 and was commonly
used from 1911, when BSAC merged its territories north of the Zambezi into
a single administrative unit, known as Northern Rhodesia.
As the number of white settlers in Southern Rhodesia increased, the Brit-
ish government was faced with growing demands for an end to BSAC rule
and the introduction of arrangements for “responsible self-government.” The
authorities in London favored integrating Southern Rhodesia with the Union
of South Africa, but Winston Churchill, then secretary of state for the colo-
nies (see COLONIAL OFFICE), encouraged the local legislature to hold a
referendum and 60 percent of those who voted rejected the proposal so on 21
September 1923 the territory was made a British colony. On 1 October, it
was given powers to legislate over domestic issues, with Britain holding the
right to veto laws relating to the African population and retaining control of
external affairs.
Over the next three decades, the economy relied heavily on primary prod-
ucts (such as copper, corn, gold, and tobacco) and so was vulnerable to
swings in world demand for those commodities, but in the years after World
War II Southern Rhodesia’s exports generated much wealth as industries in
Europe and North America readjusted to peacetime conditions. That boom
attracted white immigrants, but, at the same time, African nationalist move-
ments were becoming better organized and world political opinion was turn-
ing against colonialism. Britain, attempting to widen markets and create a
multiracial state that would avoid the inequities evident in the apartheid
500 • SOUTHERN RHODESIA
policies being pursued by the South African government, united the colony
with Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland in the Federation of Rhodesia and
Nyasaland on 1 August 1953. Economically, the project was a success but
politically it was never secure because African citizens wanted more power
than the white community was willing to concede. The Federation was dis-
solved at midnight on 31 December 1963, and soon afterward Northern
Rhodesia and Nyasaland both became sovereign states (known as Zambia
and Malawi, respectively). However, Southern Rhodesia’s legislature
changed the colony’s name to Rhodesia and opposed all British efforts to
negotiate arrangements for black majority rule, eventually making a unilater-
al declaration of independence on 11 November 1965, with Ian Smith, lead-
er of the conservative Rhodesia Front Party, as prime minister.
Britain and the United Nations responded by imposing economic sanc-
tions, but those measures had limited effect, in large part because Portugal
(which controlled neighboring Mozambique) and white-dominated South Af-
rica continued to trade with the colony. On 20 June 1969, a referendum
provided overwhelming support for a complete break with the British crown
so on 2 March the following year Southern Rhodesia declared itself a repub-
lic. However, the vast majority of countries declined to recognize the legiti-
macy of the regime, and Smith and his colleagues found themselves under
increasing pressure to change their ways. In 1974, B. J. Vorster, prime minis-
ter of South Africa, initiated a policy of détente with black Africa and, the
following year, Mozambique gained independence from Portugal, depriving
the Rhodesians of two powerful political allies. Also, black nationalist organ-
izations—particularly the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) and
the Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU)—turned to violence as a
means of achieving their aims, concentrating primarily on rural areas and on
killing white farmers. With the cost of counterinsurgency measures mount-
ing, Smith forged an agreement with Bishop Abel Muzorewa’s United
African National Council (UANC), and Ndabaningi Sithole’s Zimbabwe
African National Union-Ndonga Party then held multiracial elections on 21
April 1979. The UANC won 51 of the 100 seats, Muzorewa became prime
minister, and on 1 June the territory was named Zimbabwe Rhodesia by the
new government, but the new arrangements achieved little. ZANU and
ZAPU refused to recognize the validity of the elections because the whites
continued to occupy a privileged position in the territory, retaining control of
the army, civil service, judiciary, and police, and several United Nations
Security Council resolutions supported that nationalist position so Smith and
Muzorewa had no choice but to negotiate. Meetings in London, involving all
parties and lasting from September until Christmas, returned the colony to
British control on 21 December 1979. Another election, in February 1980,
produced a victory for ZANU and led to independence for the colony, as the
Republic of Zimbabwe, on 18 April, with Robert Mugabe, the ZANU lead-
 SPEKE, JOHN HANNING (1827–1864) • 501
er, as prime minister. Since then, the settlers’ worst fears have been realized
as a radical policy of Africanization has eliminated most aspects of white
rule, including land tenure arrangements, the legal system, and place-names.
See also NKOMO, JOSHUA MQABUKO NYONGOLO (1917–1999);
TODD, REGINALD STEPHEN GARFIELD (1908–2002); WELENSKY,
RAPHAEL “ROY” (1907–1991); WILSON, JAMES HAROLD
(1916–1995).

SOUTH-WEST AFRICA. See WALVIS BAY.

SPEKE, JOHN HANNING (1827–1864). The source of the River Nile was
a geographical mystery that fascinated 19th-century Europeans, attracting
numerous exploratory expeditions and acquiring particular importance for
Great Britain as the country extended its commercial and political influence
in East Africa. The origins of the eastern branch of the waterway (the Blue
Nile) had been known from the early 17th century and visited by Scottish
explorer James Bruce in 1770, but the course of the western branch (the
White Nile) remained a matter of debate until 1858, when John Hanning
Speke correctly claimed that the waterway flowed from Lake Victoria. The
second son of army officer and estate owner William Speke and his wife,
Georgina, John was born at Orleigh Court, in Devonshire, on 4 May 1827,
joined the army in 1844, and served with the Bengal Infantry during the
First and Second Sikh Wars in 1845–1846 and 1848–1849. In 1854, he
joined Richard Francis Burton on an expedition, supported by the Bombay
Presidency of the East India Company and by the Royal Geographical
Society (RGS), that was expected to travel into East Africa but got no farther
than Berbera, in British Somaliland, where the convoy was attacked by the
Har Owel people. Both men were seriously wounded but managed to escape
and, three years later, joined forces again on another RGS venture, this time
with the aim of finding a large sea that was rumored to exist in the African
interior and was believed to be the source of the Nile. Logistical support was
provided, in part, by the British government, which was taking an increasing-
ly strong interest in the region because East African politics could affect
trade routes in the western regions of the Indian Ocean and thus disrupt
supplies of cotton and other raw materials sent from British India to facto-
ries in Europe.
The pair set out from Zanzibar on 27 June 1857, leading a lengthy cara-
van of more than 100 Africans who carried supplies that, it was anticipated,
would support the party for up to two years. However, Burton and Speke
both fell victim to tropical diseases and, moreover, Speke suffered a recur-
rence of opthalmic problems that had plagued him since childhood so he
could barely see Lake Tanganyika when, on 13 February 1858, they became
502 • SPORTS AND GAMES
the first Europeans to reach it. Then, while Speke crossed the water in a
canoe, a beetle crawled into his ear and he went deaf for a time after using a
knife to dig it out. On the return journey, Burton decided to rest at Tabora, a
center of the Arab slave trade and now in Tanzania, but Speke felt well
enough to investigate stories of another large lake lying to the north. Leaving
Burton behind, he found its southern shores on 30 July 1858, named it Lake
Victoria after Britain’s monarch, and decided that it must be the source of the
River Nile.
As soon as he returned to Britain on 8 May 1859, Speke contacted Sir
Roderick Murchison, president of the RGS, and announced his discovery.
Burton, who got back some two weeks later, felt betrayed, refused to accept
the claim, and argued that Lake Tanganyika was just as likely to be the
source. That rift was never healed. Murchison decided that the “discovery”
should be confirmed “for the glory of England” so Speke returned to Zanzi-
bar, this time in the company of James Augustus Grant (a fellow explorer
who had also fought in the Second Sikh War), on a journey funded partly by
the government and partly by public subscription. However, Grant fell ill so
Speke was on his own on 28 July 1862 when he reached the point (which he
named Ripon Falls after George Robinson, earl de Grey and Ripon, the
under-secretary of state for war) at which the Nile leaves the lake. Also,
Speke deviated from the course of the river as he made his way downstream
so although he sent the Foreign Office a telegram from Khartoum, announc-
ing that “The Nile is settled,” Burton and others continued to demur. In order
to stir the controversy, the RGS arranged for the Geographical Section of the
British Association (a learned society of scientists) to hold a debate on the
issue at a meeting in Bath, with both men attending, but on 15 September
1864, the day before the confrontation was due to take place, Speke died in a
shooting accident, his gun firing accidentally while he was climbing a wall
during a partridge shoot. It was several years before geographers accepted
that his claims were accurate and that Lake Victoria and the rivers that feed it
are the source of the White Nile.
See also BAKER, SAMUEL WHITE (1821–1893); UGANDA.

SPORTS AND GAMES. The impact of imperial expansion on the world

distribution of sporting activities has only recently begun to receive serious
attention from scholars. It is evident, however, that administrators and mili-
tary personnel took cultural baggage with them as they traveled to the colo-
nies and thus helped to spread knowledge of the leisure pursuits they had
learned, often at school, in Britain. Some of those pursuits, such as golf and
soccer, have become world sports, but others remain most popular in former
territories of the Empire. Cricket, for example, was being played in England
by the early 16th century and, by the 19th century, was well established in
Australia, the Caribbean islands, the Indian subcontinent, New Zealand,
 STANLEY, HENRY MORTON (1841–1904) • 503
and southern Africa. The sport is governed by the International Cricket
Council, which has 10 full members, all of whom are members—or, in the
case of Zimbabwe (previously Southern Rhodesia), a former member—of
the Commonwealth of Nations. Rugby evolved in mid-19th-century Eng-
land from earlier forms of football and became established in Australia by
1864, New Zealand by 1870, and Cape Colony by 1875. The game is recog-
nized as the national sport in Fiji, New Zealand, Samoa, and Tonga and, in
its seven-a-side form (which was first played in Scotland in the 1880s), has
been accepted as an Olympic Games sport. Field hockey was popularized
after the formation of a Hockey Association in England in 1885, developing
particularly strong followings in Australia, British India, and southern Afri-
ca, and the membership of World Bowls, the international governing body
for lawn bowls, is dominated by former British colonies.
Indoor leisure pursuits that have a strong representation in former British
possessions include netball, which developed from basketball in 1890s Lon-
don and had reached Australia by 1900, New Zealand by 1906, and Jamaica
by 1909. A sport played mostly by women, it has attracted increasing num-
bers of players in Africa, Malaysia, Singapore, and several Pacific islands
(particularly, the Cook Islands, Fiji, and Samoa) since the 1970s. Badminton
and snooker were invented by army officers in mid-19th-century India, the
former as a development of the traditional English game of battledore and
shuttlecock and the latter as a variation on billiards.
Few sports have been carried from the colonies to the mother country,
although ice hockey and lacrosse (both of which evolved in Canada) and
polo (an Indian sport) all have small numbers of participants.

STANLEY, HENRY MORTON (1841–1904). H. M. Stanley is best re-

membered for his successful quest for missionary David Livingstone in
central Africa, but he also made a contribution to knowledge of the continent
through other, controversial, explorations. Born illegitimately, on 28 January
1841 in Denbigh, to Elizabeth Parry, he was baptized “John Rowlands,” his
farmer father’s name, and raised first by his maternal grandfather, Moses
Parry, then in a workhouse. At the age of 17, he took a job on a vessel bound
for America, jumped ship at New Orleans, and found work with cotton trader
Henry Hope Stanley, whose first and last names he made his own. (“Morton”
was added later, following some experimentation.) After an argument with
his employer, he took a series of jobs—including service as a soldier with the
Confederate army during the American Civil War—before persuading the
Missouri Democrat to add him to its payroll as a special correspondent in
June 1865. That proved to be a very lucky break because his reports on
General Winfield Scott Hancock’s mission to negotiate with the Cheyenne
and Sioux peoples in Kansas and Nebraska convinced New York Herald
owner James Gordon Bennett to offer him a post as overseas correspondent
504 • STANLEY, HENRY MORTON (1841–1904)
in 1867 then, two years later, to commission him to find Livingstone, who
had set off in search of the source of the River Nile in April 1866 but had not
been heard of for many months. Stanley left Bagamoyo (an Indian Ocean
trading port now in Tanzania) on 21 March 1871, heading for Lake Tangan-
yika, where Livingstone was rumored to be located, and found him at Ujiji,
toward the northern end of the lake, on either 24–28 October (if Living-
stone’s journal is accurate) or on 10 November (if Stanley is to be believed).
Supposedly, his first words to Livingstone (the only white man for miles
around) were “Dr. Livingstone, I presume,” but some writers suggest that
that greeting was a later invention.
Whatever the truth of the matter, Stanley found, when he reached London
on 1 August 1872, that the words were being treated as a joke and that—
partly because an American had succeeded where Britons had failed, partly
because of his limited education, and partly because of his lowly birth—he
was being derided, rather than treated as a hero, by the establishment. Even
so, his account of his travels (dismissed as “sensational stories” by Francis
Galton, a distinguished scientist) was hugely successful when published in
book form as How I Found Livingstone, and he was one of the pallbearers at
Livingstone’s funeral in Westminster Abbey on 18 April 1874. That same
year, he mounted an expedition, funded by the Daily Telegraph and the New
York Herald newspapers, that would explore Lakes Albert, Tanganyika, and
Victoria, follow the course of the Lualaba River, and thus add detail to
knowledge of the headwaters of the River Nile. Again, it turned out to be a
source of much contention. With a caravan of 224 people, he left Bagamoyo,
on the east coast of Africa, on 12 November and reached Boma, near the
mouth of the Congo River on the west coast, 1001 days later, on 9 August
1877. He had circumnavigated Lake Victoria, demonstrated that Lake Tan-
ganyika was not a source of the Nile, and shown that the Lualaba flowed into
the Congo. Also, a visit to King Mutesa I of Buganda, in 1875, resulted in the
admission of Christian missionaries to the area. However, the party was
reduced to virtually half its initial size by the time the crossing was com-
pleted, the numbers diminished by desertion, disease, starvation, and conflict
with local inhabitants. Moreover, Stanley boasted that he had dealt firmly
with groups that had impeded his progress—he reported, for example, that he
had killed 10 people on the island of Bumbiri, in Lake Victoria, as a form of
“chastisement” because some expedition property had been stolen—but he
was heavily criticized for his actions by the British press, the Pall Mall
Gazette condemning them with a claim that “Exploration under these condi-
tions is, in fact, exploration plus buccaneering, and though the map may be
improved and enlarged by the process, the cause of civilisation is not a gainer
thereby, but a loser.” However, scientists lauded him, welcoming his discov-
 STANLEY, HENRY MORTON (1841–1904) • 505
eries, and at a meeting of the Royal Geographical Society in 1878 he de-
fended his actions, rejecting the “soft, sentimental, sugar-and-honey, milk-
and-water kind of talk” of those who vilified him.
In the same year, his relationship with the Herald ended and he accepted
an invitation from King Leopold II of the Belgians to develop the commer-
cial potential of the Congo region. Leopold presented his scheme in a human-
itarian context, but his real aim was to create a personal colony in Africa.
From August 1879 until June 1884, Stanley directed road building along the
Congo River, earning (and delighting in) the nickname “Bula Mutari”
(breaker of rocks) and, literally as well as metaphorically, paving the way for
the creation, in 1885, of the Congo Free State (later the Belgian Congo and
now the Democratic Republic of Congo). Soon after he returned to Britain,
he was commissioned by businessman William Mackinnon to organize an
expedition that would assist Emin Pasha, the governor of the Egyptian prov-
ince of Equatoria, which had been created by Samuel White Baker in 1870
but had been cut off from the rest of Egypt by the fall of Khartoum to the
Islamic Mahdist movement on 26 January 1885. He reached Banana, a port
at the mouth of the Congo, in mid-March 1887, at the head of a company of
nearly 1,000 armed men and porters, then followed the river to Yambuya,
where Stanley drove off the villagers, who had refused him permission to
camp. There, he divided his force into a rearguard, which was to await
further supplies, and an advance unit, some 400 strong, which would push on
to find Emin Pasha. That task was eventally achieved on the shores of Lake
Albert on 29 April 1888, but only about 160 of the force survived, the others
victims of disease, hunger, and attacks by indigenous groups.
When Emin resisted evacuation, Stanley decided to go in search of his rear
column and found it in disarray, decimated by desertion, conflict, and illness.
He led the remnants of the group to Lake Albert, eventually persuaded Emin
and his followers to leave, and guided the whole party of about 1,500 east-
ward across the continent, arriving at Bagamoyo on 4 December 1889. Dur-
ing the 3000-mile coast-to-coast journey, Stanley and his white colleagues
became the first Europeans to see the Rwenzori mountain range, now be-
lieved to be the “mountains of the moon” to which Ptolemy, the Greek
geographer, had referred in 150 CE. Also, the expedition had shown that the
Semliki River flowed northward from Lake Edward to Lake Arthur.
Again, Stanley was accorded a reception by members of the Royal Geo-
graphical Society after his return to London, but other individuals and organ-
izations claimed that he had used slaves as porters, criticized his leadership,
and denounced his treatment of the African people. Sir William Vernon
Harcourt, an anti-imperialist chancellor of the exchequer in the governments
of William Ewart Gladstone, fulminated that an armed expedition like
Stanley’s “exercises the power of life and death and outrage upon all whom
they meet, powers which are exercised without remorse.” The explorer’s
506 • STARBUCK ISLAND
aloof and overbearing personality did little to help his cause, but his attitude
toward non-Europeans was typical of many other adventurers of the period;
for example, James Sligo Jameson, of the Irish whiskey distilling family,
remained with the rearguard during the Emin Pasha expedition and pur-
chased an 11-year-old slave girl, whom he gave to some cannibals so that he
could record how she was eaten. Stanley never returned to Africa. He served
as a member of parliament from 1895–1900, was knighted by Queen Victoria
in 1899, and died in London on 10 May 1904.
See also BAKER, SAMUEL WHITE (1821–1893).

STARBUCK ISLAND. Starbuck, a coral atoll with a land area of eight

square miles, lies in the central Pacific Ocean, some 2,000 miles south of
Hawaii, at latitude 5° 38´ South and longitude 155° 52´ West. The first
sighting by a visitor from the northern hemisphere, in 1823, is often credited
to Valentine Starbuck, the Nantucket-born master of the British whaler
L’Aigle. (Later that year, Starbuck carried King Kamehameha of Hawaii and
his wife, Queen Kamāmalu, on a state visit to Great Britain, but the journey
was to end unhappily because both monarchs died in London, victims of
measles, to which they had no immunity, and Starbuck was sued by his
employers for failing to return with the expected amount and quality of
sperm whale oil.) In fact, it seems likely that Valentine’s cousin, Obed Star-
buck (also a whaler), had seen the atoll earlier the same year, on 5 Septem-
ber, and some sources indicate that the first report of land at that latitude and
longitude was made by James Henderson, captain of the merchant ship Her-
cules, who sailed by in 1819 en route from Valparaiso to Calcutta. The
United States claimed the territory under the provisions of the Guano Islands
Act of 1856, which allowed Americans to take possession of uninhabited
islands that had guano deposits (a source of phosphate) but were not adminis-
tered by any other government. However, the reserves were not exploited so
on 23 December 1866 Commander William Swinburne of the corvette Mu-
tine claimed the land for Great Britain, which, in 1870, authorized Houlder
Brothers (a London shipping company) to establish a mining operation (see
ARUNDEL, JOHN THOMAS (1841–1919)). By 1920, extraction had be-
come uneconomic and attempts to grow coconut palms had failed so Star-
buck was abandoned. The island was incorporated within the crown colony
of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands on 1 January 1972 and became part of the
Republic of Kiribati when the Gilberts won independence on 12 July 1979. A
few weeks later, on 20 September, the United States withdrew its claim to the
territory under the terms of the Treaty of Tarawa. Designated a wildlife
sanctuary in 1975, Starbuck is a nesting area for several seabird species,
including a large colony of sooty terns.
 STRAITS SETTLEMENTS • 507
STIKINE (OR STICKEEN) TERRITORY. In the early summer of 1861,
Alexander “Buck” Choquette found gold near Telegraph Creek, a tributary of
the Stikine River, which rises in the Spatsizi Plateau, in northwestern North
America, and flows into the Pacific Ocean some 25 miles north of Wrangell,
near the southern end of the Alaska Panhandle. As news of the discovery
spread, spurred by reports in Vancouver Island’s British Colonist news-
paper on 12 September, hordes of prospectors (most of them American citi-
zens) arrived, many ferried upriver by steamship captain William Moore,
who allegedly made a profit of $20,000 in less than a year. At the time, the
land was located within the North-West Territories, part of the Hudson’s
Bay Company’s trading zone, but James Douglas, the governor of the
crown colonies of British Columbia (which lay to the south) and Vancouver
Island persuaded the British government to take direct responsibility for the
region from 19 July 1862. That move gave Douglas (who was appointed
administrator) authority to collect taxes, impose English law, and require
miners to purchase licenses, but the arrangement lasted for a just a single
year because on 29 July 1863 parliament passed legislation delimiting boun-
daries that placed most of the Stikine Territory (and Queen Charlotte Is-
lands) within British Columbia, with the area north of the 60th parallel of
latitide returning to North-West Territories. Few of the miners found gold,
and most had left by the middle of the decade.

STRAITS SETTLEMENTS. The Straits Settlements, formed as an admin-

istrative unit of the East India Company (EIC) in 1826, initially consisted
of three territories on the west and south coasts of the Malay Peninsula—
Malacca, Penang, and Singapore—that had no common boundaries. All
three fell under British influence because of their strategic locations and their
potential for developing the spice trade, with Penang founded in 1786, Mal-
acca captured from the Dutch in 1795, and Singapore developed by Sir
Thomas Stamford Raffles from 1819 (despite Dutch protests). However,
the EIC’s commercial interest declined after 1833 as the firm lost its monop-
oly of the lucrative trade with China and concentrated more on using the
Settlements as sites for penal colonies. Then, in 1858, the British government
took direct control when (following the Indian Mutiny a year earlier) parlia-
ment transferred the Company’s powers and properties to the crown. The
Settlements were declared a crown colony on 1 April 1867, expanded on 1
February 1886 when the colony’s government (based in Singapore) was
made responsible for the management of the Cocos Islands, and extended
again on 1 September 1900, when Christmas Island (in the Indian Ocean)
became a dependency of Singapore, and on 1 January 1907, when Labuan
was added to the group. Christmas Island, Labuan, Malacca, Penang, and
Singapore were all occupied by Japan during World War II, and although
British officials returned from 1945, as the conflict ended, financial and
508 • THE SUDAN
political considerations favored imperial withdrawal. The colony was dis-
solved on 1 April 1946, with Malacca and Penang joining the Malayan
Union (which was replaced by the Federation of Malaya two years later
and evolved into an independent Malaysia in 1963) and Singapore becoming
a separate crown colony (and, from 1965, an independent state). Christmas
Island, the Cocos Islands, and Labuan were initially annexed to Singapore,
but Labuan was attached to British North Borneo in July of 1946 (both
eventually becoming part of Malaysia), and the Cocos Islands and Christmas
Island were transferred to Australian administration in 1955 and 1958, re-
spectively.
See also BRITISH MALAYA; MALAYA; NEGERI SEMBILAN; PA-
HANG; PERAK; SELANGOR.

THE SUDAN. In 1882, British troops defeated rebels who were threatening
Muhammed Tawfiq Pasha, Egypt’s ruling khedive, and, in effect, made the
area a protectorate (though that status was not formally confirmed until
1914). However, administrators made no attempt to interfere with the
government of neighboring Sudan, over which Egypt claimed sovereignty,
until 1895, when Sir Evelyn Baring (the British consul-general in Egypt)
convinced the Conservative Party government, led by Prime Minister Robert
Gascoyne-Cecil, marquess of Salisbury, that there would be strategic advan-
tages in creating a chain of colonies from Cairo (the Egyptian capital, located
only 100 miles from the Mediterranean Sea) to Cape Town (in southern
Africa). The Sudan was a crucial link in that chain, partly because the eco-
nomic development of Egypt’s arid lands could be achieved only by means
of an uninterrupted supply of water from the River Nile, and by 1897 that
supply was being threatened by French plans to build a dam near the headwa-
ters at Fashoda, located in the south of that region. Moreover, the circum-
stances of General Charles Gordon’s death at Khartoum, some 400 miles
north of Fashoda, in 1885 still rankled with many politically influential mem-
bers of the British public, who craved revenge. With some reluctance, be-
cause of the costs and the possibility of criticism from other European pow-
ers, Salisbury decided to send an army, composed largely of Egyptian sol-
diers and funded from Egyptian coffers, that would assert control over the
area—an aim that was achieved early in 1899 after the local Mahdist peoples
had been defeated at the Battle of Omdurman on 2 September 1898 and
after France had been forced into a diplomatic retreat from Fashoda the
following March.
Technically, the newly acquired lands were ruled as an Anglo-Egyptian
condominium from 19 January 1899, but, in practice, the reins of authority
were held by British army officers and civil servants, who built communica-
tion links, railroads, and schools, and encouraged cotton growing, with the
crop (which was still a significant element of the Sudanese economy in the
 SUEZ CRISIS (1956–1957) • 509
early 21st century) providing raw material for the textile mills in northwest-
ern England. However, policy making was complicated by the Egyptian
claims to full sovereignty over the area and, from the 1920s, by the activities
of organizations formed by educated Sudanese nationalists. From 1924, the
authorities governed the predominantly Muslim north Sudan and the predom-
inantly Christian south as separate entities, but in 1946 they united the two
areas in preparation for self-government, leaving the people in the south
feeling betrayed and disenfranchised because they gained only a handful of
positions in the new civil service. In 1952, a revolution in Egypt brought a
new government to power and, with it, a change of political direction. On 12
February the following year, Britain and Egypt signed a joint declaration
guaranteeing Sudanese independence with a democratically elected parlia-
ment. Elections later in 1953 resulted in a victory for the pro-Egyptian Na-
tional Unionist Party, led by Ismāʿīl al-Azharī, who led the country to full
self-government on 1 January 1956 but with internal frictions that soon led to
civil war.
See also BAKER, SAMUEL WHITE (1821–1893); BRUCE OF KIN-
NAIRD, JAMES (1730–1794); KITCHENER, HORATIO HERBERT
(1850–1916).

SUEZ CRISIS (1956–1957). On 16 May 1956, Gamal Abdel Nasser, presi-

dent of Egypt, recognized the communist-controlled People’s Republic of
China as an independent state. In retaliation, the United States and Britain
withdrew promises to provide financial support for Egypt’s Aswan Dam
project, which was designed to prevent flooding in the valley of the River
Nile and to facilitate the provision of hydroelectric power. Nasser, in turn,
nationalized the Suez Canal Company, which had been controlled by British
and French interests, and announced that tolls from passing ships would be
collected by Egyptian officials then used to finance the dam’s construction.
At the same time, he closed the waterway to Israeli vessels. For Britain,
Nasser’s action created economic and strategic, as well as political, prob-
lems. The canal, which linked the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea, was a
critical channel for ships carrying oil to the United Kingdom and for mer-
chant and naval vessels traveling to ports in the Far East. Moreover, failure to
act decisively could be construed as weakness, and in the 1950s Britain still
considered itself a world power. With diplomatic discussions failing to re-
solve the issues, the United Kingdom, France, and Israel prepared plans for
military action and on 29 October Israel invaded, easily defeating Egyptian
forces and advancing steadily toward the canal. In accordance with the prear-
ranged strategy, Britain and France called on both Egypt and Israel to with-
draw their armies from Suez then announced that they would send peace-
keeping troops to enforce a ceasefire.
510 • SURAT
On 5 and 6 November, the British and French contingents landed at Port
Fuad and Port Said and moved into the canal zone, but although the action
was a military success it drew much criticism both from the British public
and from international sources, with Iceland and Portugal seeking the expul-
sion of France and the United Kingdom from the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO), the Soviet Union threatening to intervene, the United
Nations adopting a series of resolutions calling for an end to hostilities, the
United States claiming it would take financial action that would affect Brit-
ain’s post–World War II economic recovery plans, and several other coun-
tries imposing an oil embargo. Faced with the mounting pressure, Sir Antho-
ny Eden, the prime minister, announced a ceasefire (without consulting ei-
ther the French or the Israelis) on 7 November. British and French troops
withdrew before Christmas, but Israel’s soldiers remained until March the
following year. The consequences for Britain were considerable. Eden re-
signed on 9 January 1957, and not until Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher
launched the Falklands War in 1982 did the United Kingdom again under-
take military action without the support of the United States (though U.S.
President Dwight Eisenhower later admitted that failure to support Eden was
his biggest foreign policy mistake because it weakened two important Cold
War allies and allowed Nasser to dominate Arab politics for more than a
decade). Also, the defeat resulted in considerable loss of British influence in
the Middle East and, according to some commentators, hastened the coun-
try’s withdrawal from Empire by encouraging subsequent governments to
indulge in overhasty decisions that resulted in independence for African
colonies but created a series of military dictatorships on the continent and led
to many civil wars.
See also MACMILLAN, MAURICE HAROLD (1894–1986).

SURAT. The port of Surat, on the eastern shores of the Gulf of Khambat, on
India’s west coast, was the principal base of the East India Company’s
(EIC) early commercial ventures on the Indian subcontinent. The first ship
arrived on 24 August 1608, bearing Captain William Hawkins, who carried
20,000 gold coins; a letter from King James I to Jahangir, the Mughal emper-
or; and high hopes of acquiring trading privileges in the region, where the
Portuguese were the dominant European power. The hopes proved unful-
filled, but on 29–30 November 1612, some 12 miles north of Surat (then the
Mughal Empire’s principal harbor), an English squadron of four galleons,
commanded by Captain Thomas Best, outmaneuvered an equally small
group of Portuguese vessels in an encounter that was more of a skirmish than
a battle. The event was militarily insignificant, but even so, Best’s success
was sufficient to persuade the emperor to allow him to open a trading post
(known as a “factory” because it was managed by a factor), with rights to
conduct commerce as far into the interior as Agra, Ahmedabad, and Burhan-
 SURINAM • 511
pur. A further naval victory on 20 January 1615, when four ships under the
command of Nicholas Downton forced a Portuguese armada of 60 frigates
and eight galleons to withdraw, gave England command of the seas in the
region, allowing the Company to initiate trade with Persia and, in particular,
to purchase silks, which complemented the existing trade in other textiles.
By 1620, the Surat base was exercising authority over all EIC factories in
India and the Persian Gulf, and commerce improved further after January
1635, when William Methold, the firm’s senior official at Surat, traveled to
Goa to negotiate a truce with the Portuguese. In 1642, through the Conven-
tion of Goa, that truce became a lasting peace, which boosted maritime trade
along India’s west coast yet again, but political alliances in Europe were to
have a considerable impact on the port’s fortunes because in 1662 King
Charles II married Catherine of Braganza, daughter of King John IV of
Portugal, and the bride’s dowry included the territory of Bombay, which lay
some 175 miles south of Surat. Six years later, the monarch transferred
authority over his new acquisition to the East India Company, which imme-
diately took advantage of the site’s commercial and physical advantages,
relocating its headquarters from Surat in 1687.
As Bombay’s mercantile and political stars waxed, those of Surat waned,
and as the power of the Mughal Empire declined local leaders competed for
control of the city. At first, EIC officials acted simply as mediators, but in
1759 traders asked the firm to impose more settled government so, on 4
March, an army of some 2,300, commanded by Captain Richard Maitland,
took possession of the fortifications after bombarding the settlement with
cannon for 20 hours. Scholars still debate the extent to which the victors
exercised administrative authority following the takeover because, nominal-
ly, authority remained in the hands of the nawabs (the local governors) until
1800, when Nawab Nasiruddin ceded his powers to the EIC in return for a
pension and retention of his hereditary titles and his properties. In the first
half of the 19th century, the city suffered a series of fires and floods that,
along with the insolvency of many of the Arab traders in the port, seriously
affected the economy, but prosperity returned from the 1860s, boosted by the
development of the railroad system and the introduction of modern textile
mills. By the time India achieved independence in 1947, Surat was an impor-
tant manufacturing center. Now one of the largest cities in the State of Guju-
rat, it has developed an important diamond cutting and polishing industry and
has retained its traditional focus on textiles, with considerable employment in
the production of synthetic fibers.
See also MARATHA WARS (1775–1782, 1803–1805, AND 1817–1818).

SURINAM. In 1630, a group of some 60 English colonists, led by a Captain

Marshall, built a settlement on the Surinam River, in South America, and
tried to grow tobacco. The venture failed, but 20 years later, in 1650, Francis
512 • SWAZILAND
Willoughby, Baron Willoughby, the exiled King Charles II’s governor of
Barbados, attempted to capitalize on European demand for sugar by sending
Sergeant-Major Anthony Rowse and some 100 settlers, with their slaves, to
establish Willoughbyland at the site on which Paramaribo, the modern-day
capital of Suriname, now stands. Attracted by promises of religious freedom,
the white population grew to more than 1,000 over the next decade, with
about 50 small plantations, spread over 45 square miles, worked by 3,000
imported African slaves and members of indigenous Indian groups. Howev-
er, the Dutch also coveted the area, sending a force, commanded by Abraham
Crijnssen, that compelled the community to surrender on 27 February 1667,
while England and Holland struggled for control of maritime trade routes. A
few months later, on 31 July, the Treaty of Breda ended the conflict, with
England winning control of much of Dutch-held North America but conced-
ing sovereignty over Willoughbyland. The English did recapture the area on
7 October the same year but were ousted, again by Crijnssen, the following
April.
The Dutch then occupied the territory until 20 August 1799, when it sur-
rendered to a naval force under Vice-Admiral Lord Hugh Seymour, while
Great Britain was again at war with Holland, at the time a vassal state of
France. It was returned on 4 December 1802 (under the terms of the Treaty
of Amiens, which had ended the hostilities earlier in the year, on 25 March)
but was retaken on 5 May 1804, during the Napoleonic Wars, by a joint army
and Royal Navy operation led by Commodore Sir Charles Hood and Major-
General Sir Charles Green. The area reverted to the Netherlands once again
on 27 February 1816, following the signing of the Anglo-Dutch Treaty on
13 May 1814, and, this time, remained in Dutch hands (as Dutch Guiana)
until it won independence, as the Republic of Suriname, in 1975. However,
the 1814 agreement failed to detail the precise line of the boundary between
Dutch Guiana and its western neighbor, Berbice, which remained under
British jurisdiction, setting the scene for disputes that have continued into the
21st century.

SWAZILAND. The Swazi people formed a coherent political entity in

southern Africa from about 1770 and, under the leadership of King Sobhuza I
and his son, King Mswati II, had become one of the most militarily powerful
groups in the region by the mid-19th century, but they were unable to pre-
serve their independence in the face of European encroachment on their
lands. The first formal contacts with Britain were initiated by Mswati, who,
in late 1849 or early 1850, sought help to fend off Zulu incursions from the
south and prevent the Boer settlers in the north from supporting efforts by
Somcuba, his half brother, to unseat him. The pressures on the Swazi leaders
increased as prospectors flocked into the area following the discovery of
diamonds at Hopetown, in northern Cape Colony, in 1867 and gold at Pil-
 SWAZILAND • 513
grim’s Rest, in the east of the South African Republic (see THE TRANS-
VAAL), in 1871. Mbandzeni, who succeeded Mswati as king in 1875,
granted the immigrants concessions for mineral exploitation as well as for
cattle grazing, timber felling, and a host of other activities, intending that
these would be leases for specified periods but finding that he had opened up
his kingdom to permanent white settlement. At the same time, the Swazi
were caught in geopolitical pincers as the Boers sought permission to build a
railroad from the landlocked South African Republic across the territory to a
seaport at the mouth of the Kosi River and Britain strove to prevent them
from winning that access to the oceans.
In 1881, the British and the Boer governments reached an agreement to
preserve Swaziland’s independence, but that did little to stem the tide of
European influence. In 1888, Mbandzeni attempted to exert some control by
allowing the white settlers a measure of self-government, subject to the Swa-
zi monarch’s veto, but the king’s death the following year complicated mat-
ters further, leading to differences over the succession. Moreover, drunken-
ness was rife in the kingdom, and European settlers, sensing insecurity, were
adding to their stores of armaments. Great Britain and the South African
Republic responded, in 1890, with an arrangement for tripartite administra-
tion of the territory by a government that included their own representatives
and a delegate representing the Swazi people. Then, four years later, a further
agreement between the two powers gave the Republic’s government rights to
administer the region provided that they did not absorb it within their territo-
ry. The Swazi, who were not party to the discussions, objected and sent a
deputation to make protests to Queen Victoria, but she refused to see them.
When Britain annexed the South African Republic in 1902, after the Sec-
ond Boer War, it inherited the Boers’ jurisdictional responsibilities for Swa-
ziland. The South Africa Act, which created the Union of South Africa in
1909, included a provision that Swaziland could be integrated with its much
larger neighbor, but the British authorities rejected several requests from the
South Africans to transfer powers because there was no evidence that the
Swazi people would approve. When the introduction of racially discriminato-
ry apartheid policies, after D. F. Malan’s Reunited National Party took con-
trol of the Union’s government in 1948, ended all possibility of changes to
the status quo, the United Kingdom—which had largely ignored Swaziland
for decades—took steps to improve the area’s economy through investment
in farming systems, afforestation, and infrastructural projects (such as irriga-
tion schemes). The formation of political parties in the late 1950s and early
1960s led to limited self-government in 1964 and to independence on 6
September 1968.
See also HIGH COMMISSION TERRITORIES; RESIDENT COMMIS-
SIONER.
514 • SYDNEY ISLAND
SYDNEY ISLAND. Sydney is the most southeasterly of the eight atolls in
the Phoenix Islands, lying in the central Pacific Ocean some 270 miles south
of the equator at latitude 4° 27´ South and longitude 171° 16´ West, with a
land area of about 1.7 square miles and a central salty lagoon. The island has
evidence of prehistoric Micronesian and Polynesian settlement, but reports of
the earliest sighting by Europeans conflict, though it is likely that the first
records were made by a Captain Emmett, Emment, or Emmert of the Sydney
or Sydney Packet in 1823 (see BIRNIE ISLAND). The United States claimed
the territory under the terms of the Guano Islands Act of 1856, which al-
lowed Americans to take possession of uninhabited islands that had guano
deposits but were not administered by any other government. However, ex-
ploitation did not begin until 1884, when John T. Arundel and Company,
based in Sydney, Australia, began work on the reserves, which produced
phosphate used in the manufacture of fertilizers. (In the year the work
started, Arundel’s wife, Lillie, gave birth to their second daughter on the
island and named her after it.) As the guano resources depleted in the early
20th century, the Samoan Shipping and Trading Company, and then Burns
Philp & Company, grew coconuts, which produced copra for livestock feed.
Britain declared the island a protectorate on 26 June 1889, believing that it
could be useful during the construction of a trans-Pacific telegraph cable (see
ALL RED LINE), and added it (along with other of the Phoenix Islands) to
the crown colony of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands on 18 March 1937. Soon
afterward, administrators attempted to develop permanent settlements on
Sydney Island (and on Gardner and Hull Islands), primarily as a means of
solving problems of overpopulation in other areas of the colony but also in
an effort to counteract growing American influence in the region. The pro-
gram, always bedeviled by drought, lack of fresh water supplies, limited
markets for copra (the only source of income), and remoteness, survived until
1958, when the remaining inhabitants were evacuated to the British Solo-
mon Islands. On 12 July 1979, the Gilberts won independence and Sydney
Island became part of the new state of Kiribati, then, on 20 September,
through the Treaty of Tarawa, the United States formally withdrew its long
dormant claim to the territory. Now often known as Manra, the atoll is a
marine wildlife sanctuary, forming part of the Phoenix Islands Protected
Area.
 T
TANGANYIKA. After World War I, the League of Nations gave the victori-
ous allies mandates to govern the colonial possessions of the defeated Ger-
man and Ottoman powers (see LEAGUE OF NATIONS MANDATED TER-
RITORY). On 20 July 1922, as part of the package, Great Britain was
awarded much of German East Africa, which it had occupied during the
conflict despite a lengthy, and very effective, guerilla campaign orchestrated
by General Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck. Sir Donald Cameron, governor from
1925 until 1931, developed a policy of administering the area (renamed
Tanganyika Territory in 1920) through local chiefs (see INDIRECT RULE)
while retaining responsibility for major policy decisions himself. Also, he
improved health-care facilities (in order to combat malaria, schistosomiasis,
and trypanosomiasis), promoted education through government and mission-
ary schools, and (in 1928) extended the railroad from the administrative and
trading center of Tabora northward to Mwanza, on the shores of Lake Victor-
ia (thus providing a transport link that stimulated commercial cotton produc-
tion in the region).
However, a worldwide economic recession that reduced returns for the
main export crops (coffee, cotton, and sisal) in the early 1930s, a lackluster
governorship from 1934–1938 by Sir Harold MacMichael (who was much
more interested in the Arab world than in East Africa and had spent most of
the previous 30 years in the Sudan), and the outbreak of World War II in
1939 all affected the Tanganyikan economy. International markets for cash
crops dwindled at the start of the war but, as the struggle continued, demand
for sisal (a fiber used in rope making) soared until the territory was produc-
ing half the total world output. In 1943, efforts to grow wheat that would
supplement rationed supplies in the United Kingdom met with mixed suc-
cess (crops in the Kilimanjaro and Ngorongoro areas were encouraging, but
output from the arid Ardai Plains, in the north of the region, was much lower
than anticipated), and a postwar experiment in peanut farming (see
GROUNDNUT SCHEME) proved to be an expensive disaster.

515
516 • TANGANYIKA GROUNDNUT SCHEME
The rapid wartime agricultural change had political consequences. The
imperial government became more interventionist, conscripting some 50,000
Africans to work on the sisal plantations, and indigenous leaders adopted a
more authoritarian approach as they attempted to cope with the requirements
of European administrators. The disruption led to discontent, and that mal-
aise was compounded by the experiences of the 86,000 men who served with
military units and learned of the experiences of Africans in other colonial
possessions. In an effort to appease black demands for greater representation
in the corridors of power, in December 1945 two Africans were admitted to
membership of the Legislative Council that Donald Cameron had established
in 1926, then on 11 December 1946 Tanganyika became a United Nations
Trust Territory—a status that required Britain to prepare the region for
independence. Progress toward that goal was slow until 1954, when Julius
Nyerere formed the Tanganyika African National Union, with the aim of
creating a sovereign state built on socialist principles. Nyerere was greatly
helped by Sir Richard Turnbull, who was appointed governor in July 1958
and who reportedly welcomed the African with an assertion that “You and I
have important work to do.” The accord between the two men smoothed the
path to self-government, with Tanganyika achieving independence on 9 De-
cember 1961. The country became a republic the following year and forged a
union with Zanzibar in 1964, initially (on 26 April) as the United Republic
of Tanganyika and Zanzibar and then (from 11 December) as the United
Republic of Tanzania.
See also BRITISH EAST AFRICA; HELIGOLAND-ZANZIBAR TREA-
TY (1890); MACMILLAN, MAURICE HAROLD (1894–1986); UNIVER-
SITIES’ MISSION TO CENTRAL AFRICA.

TANGANYIKA GROUNDNUT SCHEME. See GROUNDNUT

SCHEME.

TANGIER. When Catherine of Braganza, daughter of King John IV of

Portugal, married King Charles II on 21 May 1662, she carried rights to
Tangier (and Bombay) within her dowry. The port was the major commer-
cial center in northwestern Africa and, moreover, was strategically important
because it commanded the entrance to the Mediterranean Sea through the
Strait of Gibraltar so it was perceived as a significant territorial acquisition
by the English court, but it lacked secure anchorages and was constantly
threatened by Berber attacks. Attempts to assert sovereignty were plagued by
problems. Henry Mordaunt, earl of Peterborough and first governor, raised a
troop of soldiers—the Earl of Peterborough’s Regiment of Foot (often known
as the Tangier Regiment)—specifically in order to garrison the newly ac-
quired lands and was given three additional regiments to augment his defen-
 TANGIER • 517
sive force but, even so, struggled to maintain control (his efforts not helped,
he claimed, by disloyal subordinates) and was recalled to London in Decem-
ber 1662. His successor—Andrew Rutherford, earl of Teviot—strengthened
the fortifications but was killed in an ambush (along with more than 400
soldiers) on 4 May 1664.
In June 1663, while Rutherford was still in office, work began on the
building of harbor improvements under the direction of engineer Hugh
Cholmley, but the process was much delayed by bad weather, Berber incur-
sions, and disagreements over construction techniques. Those port projects,
coupled with the maintenance of a garrison of some 3,000 men, made consid-
erable demands on the English treasury, but the king was determined to hold
on to Tangier, leading some courtiers and parliamentarians to suggest that he
was attempting to provide a base for an army that would be used to ensure
that the next English monarch would be his younger brother, James, duke of
York, who was a Roman Catholic. Matters came to a head in 1680, when the
Berbers laid siege to the settlement, stopping all work in the harbor. On 29
December, the staunchly Protestant House of Commons (the lower chamber
in England’s bicameral parliament) told the monarch that he would get no
more funds for the defense of Tangier unless he acquiesced to a bill that
removed James from the line of succession to the throne. Charles rejected the
demand, sealing the colony’s fate. In 1683, he ordered George Legge, Lord
Dartmouth and Admiral of the Fleet, to arrange the destruction of the town
and the demolition of the harbor works, a task completed when the last
members of the garrison (some of whom were given land grants in the
Province of New York) left on 5 February the following year.
The town was immediately occupied by Sultan Moulay Ismail Ibn Sharif’s
Moroccan army, but that did not end British interest in the region. Tangier
became the site of the sultan’s court, and for more than 40 years, from 1845
until 1886, John Drummond Hay represented Great Britain there, becoming
a trusted advisor who enhanced British commercial and political influence in
the region by mediating between Morocco and European nations and, on 9
December 1856, negotiating a free trade agreement between Britain and
Morocco. Then, when France made Morocco a protectorate in 1912, Sir
Edward Grey, the British foreign secretary, insisted that Tangier should be
governed by a body that included representatives of European powers with
interests in the city “on account of the presence of the diplomatic corps and
the municipal and sanitary institutions.” Although discussions about the
composition of that body were undertaken, no arrangements were put into
effect before the outbreak of World War I in 1914, but on 18 December
1923, after the hostilities had ended and Europe had returned to a peacetime
footing, Great Britain, France, and Spain agreed that Tangier should become
a neutral demilitarized zone under their administration. Other powers were
518 • TASMANIA
later added to the group, but (apart from the years from 1940–1945, during
World War II, when Spain exercised control) the international status sur-
vived until Tangier became part of an independent Morocco in 1956.

TASMANIA. British interest in Tasmania was spurred by politics rather

than by commerce. Dutch explorer Abel Tasman landed in 1642, claiming
the territory for his homeland and naming it in honor of Anthony van Die-
men, governor of the Dutch East Indies, but Holland did nothing to establish
a permanent presence in the area. In 1770, when Captain James Cook as-
serted British sovereignty over Australia’s east coast he believed that Van
Diemen’s Land was part of the Australian mainland so it was only in
1798–1799, when George Bass and Matthew Flinders completed a circum-
navigation, that colonial administrators learned that the territory they thought
was attached to New South Wales was, in fact, an island. Fearful of French
counterclaims to the land, Philip Gidley King, New South Wales’s governor,
authorized John Bowen, a naval lieutenant, to establish a convict settlement
at Risdon Cove, at the mouth of the Derwent River. Bowen’s party, which
arrived on 7 September 1803, was followed by others. Survival was precari-
ous as the native aboriginal peoples attempted to force the Europeans out and
as groups of escaped convicts challenged the rudimentary systems of main-
taining law and order. Ultimately, the 200-member remnant of the indige-
nous groups, decimated by disease and violence, was moved to a camp on
Flinders Island, off the northeast coast, in 1833; they returned 14 years later,
but the last native-born Tasmanian died in 1876.
In spite of the social turbulence, land grants attracted immigrants, Hobart
(founded in 1804, downriver from Bowen’s settlement) became a provision-
ing center for the whaling industry, and sheep farmers moved into grazing
lands in the east of the island. However, in 1851 the discovery of gold in
Victoria (the closest mainland colony to Van Diemen’s Land) led to an
exodus of fortune seekers and thus to a shortage of labor. Simultaneously,
whaling was in decline and Victoria’s protectionist trade policies were limit-
ing the island’s export markets, provoking a lengthy period of economic
recession that ended only in the 1870s, with the discovery of tin at Mount
Bischoff (1871) and Mount Heemskirk (1879), both on the west coast. The
exploitation of Mount Lyell’s copper resource provided a further boost from
1893, adding to a widening range of employment as forest hardwoods were
harvested, fruit growing expanded in the south, and small-scale farmers in-
creasingly utilized the fertile red soils of the northwest.
Van Diemen’s Land was separated from New South Wales on 3 December
1825, when it became a separate colony administered by a legislative council
whose members were nominated by the governor (who was also governor of
New South Wales). The first elected representatives (chosen by a property-
owning and rent-paying electorate) took their seats in 1852, following a
 TEA TRADE • 519
campaign by settlers seeking greater influence over government decisions.
On 1 January 1856, with the approval of Queen Victoria, the colony formally
became Tasmania (a name that had been in informal use for nearly five
decades), and on 2 December the same year a new, elected bicameral parlia-
ment (with authority to pass legislation relating to domestic affairs) held its
first meeting. Universal male suffrage was not introduced until 1900 and
universal female suffrage not until 1902, the year that Tasmania joined the
Commonwealth of Australia.
See also FRANKLIN, JOHN (1786–1847); MACQUARIE ISLAND;
SOUTH AUSTRALIA.

TEA TRADE. Britain’s tea drinking habits changed the landscape of large
areas of the Empire and provided a foundation for the growth of such multi-
national concerns as Brooke Bond, Tetley, Thomas Lipton, and Twining’s.
Catherine of Braganza—the Portuguese bride of King Charles II—made tea
fashionable in Britain in the second half of the 17th century. Initially, most
came from China, shipped by the East India Company, which had a monop-
oly on importation of the leaves. In 1834, however, that monopoly ended
when (amid accusations that prices were being kept artificially high in order
to boost profits) parliament abolished the firm’s trading functions and con-
verted the Company into an agent of government, responsible for administer-
ing British India. In the free market that opened up, traders experimented
with plantations in India, initially using Chinese plants but later, and more
successfully, with indigenous species. The first of the Indian plantations were
established in Assam in 1839, but by the 1850s tea was also being picked—
much of it by imported Chinese and Malayan laborers working virtually as
slaves—in Darjeeling (in the Himalaya foothills) and in the Nilgiri Hills of
the southwest. From there, it spread to other areas of the subcontinent and to
other parts of the Empire, with shipments from Ceylon reaching London
regularly from 1873 and from Kenya (where plantations were established on
the slopes of the African Rift Valley using Indian seedlings) from the early
20th century. The crop is also grown in several other former colonies, includ-
ing Bangladesh (see PAKISTAN), Malawi (see NYASALAND), and Ugan-
da. In India, the largest modern producer after China, the industry employs
about 2,000,000 people, and in Kenya (the next largest) it provides nearly
one-fifth of the country’s export earnings. British consumption in the early
21st century was over 4 pounds per person per year, about 10 times that in
the United States.
See also AMERICAN REVOLUTION; BHUTAN; INDIA ACT (1784);
MASSACHUSETTS; MAU MAU UPRISING; NEW YORK; NORTH,
FREDERICK, LORD NORTH (1732–1792); NYASALAND; P&O; REGU-
LATING ACT (1773); SIKKIM.
520 • TERENGGANU
TERENGGANU. Terengganu, on the eastern Malay Peninsula, was a client
state of Siam throughout the 19th century but became a British protectorate
under the terms of the Anglo-Siamese Treaty, which was signed on 10
March 1909. In 1919, Sultan Muhammad Shah II, the territory’s hereditary
ruler, was induced to accept a British advisor, whose advice had to be acted
upon “in all matters affecting the general administration of the country other
than those touching the Muhammadan religion.” The recommendations were
not always welcomed, however, with dissatisfaction over limitations on for-
est clearance leading, in 1928, to a peasant rebellion that was short-lived but
nevertheless cost 11 lives. From 1941, during World War II, the sultanate
was occupied by Japanese forces, who returned it to the control of their
Siamese allies, but British administrators reoccupied their offices when the
conflict ended in 1945. Terengganu merged with other British possessions on
the Peninsula to form the Malayan Union in 1946 then, two years later,
became part of the Federation of Malaya, which achieved independence in
1957.
See also UNFEDERATED MALAY STATES.

THIRD AFGHAN WAR (1919). The Second Afghan War ended in 1880
with Great Britain withdrawing its mission from Kabul, the capital of Af-
ghanistan, but retaining control of the territory’s foreign relations. For near-
ly four decades, Afghan rulers accepted that situation, partly because they
welcomed the financial subsidies paid to them by British authorities. Howev-
er, in February 1919, the assassination of Habibullah Khan, the emir, led to a
power struggle between two of his sons, Amanullah and Nasrullah, destabi-
lizing the country. Amanullah gained the upper hand and promised a series of
government and social reforms but, in order to win the support of his conser-
vative subjects, also declared his attention of casting off the imperial yoke
and making the emirate fully independent. On 3 May, his armies crossed into
British India and occupied the strategically important settlement at Bagh
(now in Pakistan). Britain responded with a declaration of war on 6 May and
used Royal Air Force bombers to support ground troops that forced the
invading force back over the border.
The next month brought a series of skirmishes between Afghan units,
many of which were ill equipped and poorly trained, and British army regi-
ments whose fighting men were exhausted by the demands of combat during
World War I. Amanullah condemned British hypocrisy, noting that “It is a
matter of great regret that the throwing of bombs by Zeppelins on London
was denounced as a most savage act and the bombardment of places of
worship and sacred spots was considered a most abominable operation, while
now we see with our own eyes that such operations were a habit which is
prevalent amongst all civilized people of the West,” but, on 31 May, he
sought an armistice and on 8 August both sides signed the Treaty of Rawalpi-
 THIRD BURMESE WAR (1885) • 521
nidi, bringing an end to the conflict. In one sense, the result was a tactical
victory for the British and Indian armies, who suffered about 1,700 casual-
ties, the majority from cholera and other diseases. However, after the peace,
Britain stopped paying subsidies to the Afghan leaders, who regained control
over their foreign relations, as Amanullah had wanted (and who, even before
the signing of the peace agreement, had negotiated a treaty of friendship with
Russia).
See also FIRST AFGHAN WAR (1839–1842).

THIRD BURMESE WAR (1885). In February 1853, two months after

Great Britain had ended the Second Burmese War by annexing Pegu prov-
ince (which later became an important source of rice and teak exports),
Pagan Min, the Burmese monarch, abdicated in favor of his younger half
brother, Mindon Min, who had opposed the conflict. Mindon was a catalyst
for change in what remained of independent Burma, building factories, con-
structing a telegraph system, importing European industrial machinery, mint-
ing his country’s first coinage, reforming the tax system, and reorganizing
his army. For most of his reign, he managed to maintain cordial, if not
exactly warm, diplomatic relations with British representatives, who were
keen to improve trade with the Burmese and interested in using Burma as a
channel for commerce with western China. However, the political climate
deteriorated during the 1870s, as Mindon attempted to court France, antici-
pating that it would provide a political counterbalance to British influence.
Also, disputes arose over Mindon’s monopoly of markets in oil, rubies, and
timber (and the extent of his control over the price of other export commod-
ities, including cotton and ivory) as well as over sovereignty in the Western
Karenni hills. Moreover, British officials objected to a requirement to re-
move their shoes and sit on the floor throughout audiences with the king.
Matters worsened even further after Thibaw succeeded his father as mon-
arch in 1878. Influenced by his wife, Supayalat, he killed many of his rela-
tives, having been persuaded that they were planning to unseat him. Those
murders created such a sense of insecurity in the capital, Mandalay, that
British leaders considered declaring war, but they were dissuaded because,
with many soldiers committed to Afghanistan and the Zulu War, military
resources were limited. Nevertheless, official delegations were withdrawn in
1879 while Thibaw continued to cultivate relations with France, whom Brit-
ain considered an imperial competitor and whose conquests in Indochina had
extended its influence to Burma’s eastern boundaries. Then, in 1885, and
possibly justifiably, Thibaw accused the Bombay Burmah Trading Corpora-
tion, which had been founded by six Edinburgh brothers in 1863, of bribing
officials, failing to pay employees, and under-reporting the amount of teak it
had cut from the forests. When the Burmese courts imposed fines on the
firm, the British government claimed that the judges were corrupt and de-
522 • THE THIRTEEN COLONIES
manded that the dispute be settled by a British-appointed arbitrator. Thibaw
refused, but the growing tensions left Lord Randolph Churchill, who had
been appointed secretary of state for India (see INDIA OFFICE) in June, in
no mood to compromise. On 22 October, officials sent the Burmese king an
ultimatum threatening action if he did not cede control of his country’s
foreign affairs to Great Britain, provide facilities for trade with China, and
suspend the fines. Acceptance of the terms would have ended Burma’s inde-
pendence, but Thibaw exacerbated matters with a reply that not only con-
firmed rejection but also insisted that Burma would continue to pursue
friendly relations with France and with other states.
The response made invasion inevitable. Major-General Harry Prendergast,
leading his last field command, assembled 3,000 British troops and 6,000
Indian sepoys at Thayetmyo, on the Irrawaddy River, then, from 14 Novem-
ber, advanced along the waterway on a flotilla of some 55 barges and other
small craft. The Burmese, surprised by the speed of the move (and possibly,
also, because some of Thibaw’s advisors opposed war), offered little resis-
tance, allowing Prendergast’s army to occupy Mandalay on 28 November
and leaving the king little option but to surrender. Burma was formally
annexed on 1 January the following year, and Thibaw was sent into exile at
Ratnagiri, on India’s west coast.
See also FIRST BURMESE WAR (1824–1826).

THE THIRTEEN COLONIES. In 1775, several British colonies on the

east coast of North America united in a rebellion that evolved into a world
war and ended with the creation of an independent United States of America
(see AMERICAN REVOLUTION; AMERICAN REVOLUTIONARY
WAR (1775–1783)). The territories that took up arms—Connecticut, Dela-
ware, Georgia, Maryland, Massachusetts Bay, New Hampshire, New
Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and
Providence Plantations, South Carolina, and Virginia—are often known
as the thirteen colonies, although, technically, Delaware never achieved full
colonial status even though it had its own governing assembly. Other colo-
nies on the North American mainland (Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and the
Province of Quebec to the north of the group and East Florida and West
Florida to the south) remained loyal to the crown, as did Britain’s island
possessions in the West Indies.
See also CANADA; GRENVILLE, GEORGE (1712–1770); NORTH,
FREDERICK, LORD NORTH (1732–1792); PARIS, TREATY OF (1783);
UNITED EMPIRE LOYALIST; WATSON-WENTWORTH, CHARLES,
MARQUESS OF ROCKINGHAM (1730–1782).
 THOMSON, JOSEPH (1858–1895) • 523
THOMSON, JOSEPH (1858–1895). Thomson’s explorations in Africa,
from 1878 until 1891, opened up much of the eastern and southern continent
to British influence at a time when several European states were competing
for territory (see SCRAMBLE FOR AFRICA). The youngest of five boys in
the family of stonemason William Thomson and his wife, Agnes, he was
born in the village of Penpont, in southwestern Scotland, on 14 February
1858 and at the age of 11, having devoured a book describing the travels of
such explorers as James Bruce, David Livingstone, Robert Moffat, and
Mungo Park, decided to follow in their footsteps. As a teenager, he devel-
oped an interest in geology. Fortuitously, on one of his excursions into the
hills near his home, he met Archibald Geikie, who taught the discipline at
Edinburgh University and persuaded the young man to leave the family
business and register as a student. When he graduated in 1878, Thomson won
an appointment as geologist and naturalist on a Royal Geographical Society
(RGS) expedition, led by fellow Scot Alexander Keith Johnston the Younger
(whose father had cofounded the Edinburgh cartography firm of W. & A. K.
Johnston), that hoped to open up a route from Dar es Salaam, on the Indian
Ocean coast of Africa, to Lake Nyasa and Lake Tanganyika, in the interior.
The caravan, some 130 strong, set off on 19 May the following year, but, on
28 June, less than six weeks into the journey, Johnston died, a victim of
dysentery and malaria. Thomson assumed control of the project, pressed on
to Lake Nyasa, explored the plateau separating that lake from Lake Tangan-
yika, discovered that the Lukuga River drained Lake Tanganyika, visited
Ujiji (where Richard Francis Burton and John Hanning Speke had
reached the lake in 1858 and where Henry Morton Stanley had found David
Livingstone 13 years later), became the first European to see Lake Rukwa,
and returned to the Indian Ocean at Bagamoyo on 10 July 1880.
Three years later, he led another RGS-sponsored mission. This time, the
scientific goal was exploration of the mountain ranges in eastern equatorial
Africa. However, Thomson was also asked to find a route from Zanzibar to
the northern shores of Lake Victoria (and thus to the headwaters of the River
Nile) that would be safe from attack by the warrior Masai people and provide
opportunities for British traders to compete with the German merchants who
were establishing themselves in the area. Thomson’s belief that “he who goes
gently goes safely” produced a very different approach to relationships with
indigenous groups from that of more confrontational adventurers, such as H.
M. Stanley. He left Mombasa (later the colonial headquarters of the East
Africa Protectorate and now in Kenya) on 15 March 1883, convinced the
feared Masai that he had magical powers (by stirring up a concoction of
effervescent fruit salts and by taking his false teeth out of his mouth then
putting them back in), traversed the lands of the Kikuyu groups umolested,
climbed into the Great Rift Valley, ascended the volcanic Mount Longonot
and Mount Eburru, passed Lake Elmenteita (a region where white settlement
524 • THOMSON, JOSEPH (1858–1895)
and commercial agriculture were pioneered by Hugh Cholmondeley, Baron
Delamere, in the early 20th century), and, on 10 December, reached Lake
Victoria at a point close to the present-day Kenya/Uganda border. On the
return march, he was gored by a wounded buffalo and, ill with dysentery and
malaria, had to be carried for much of the journey to the coast, which he
reached safely in early June 1884, with evidence that travel across Masai
country was possible, much information about the geography of East Africa,
and several specimens of plant species new to botanists. Through Masai
Land—his account of the trip, published in January the following year—was
a bestseller, making an impression on author H. Rider Haggard, whose novel,
King Solomon’s Mines, appeared eight months later, is set in Africa, and
(much to Thomson’s annoyance) has a character who removes his false teeth
in order to demonstrate that he is a magician.
In 1885, Thomson was employed by the National African Company (see
ROYAL NIGER COMPANY) to negotiate trading concessions from the
sardauna of Sokoto (who ruled much of what later became Northern Nige-
ria) and the emir of Gwandu, thus forestalling German competitors, then—in
1890 and “tired and disgusted with life in England”—he was asked by Cecil
Rhodes to act on behalf of the British South Africa Company (BSAC),
which was intent on expanding British colonial interests (and fulfilling its
own commercial ambitions) in the region of south-central Africa later known
as Rhodesia. In the company of James Grant (son of James Augustus Grant,
who had accompanied John Hanning Speke to the headwaters of the River
Nile in 1860–1863), he traveled from Quelimane, in the Portuguese colony
of Mozambique, inland to the area that now forms central and eastern Zam-
bia, but the journey had only limited success. Thomson concluded 13 agree-
ments that appeared to give BSAC mining, political, and trading rights, but
these were of dubious legality because he had not ensured that the African
leaders with whom he negotiated had authority to sign treaties, and an out-
break of smallpox killed many of his porters.
Shunned by local communities (who feared contact with the disease), un-
able to find men who would carry his goods, and suffering from cystitis, he
aborted the journey and made his way back to Scotland. It was to be his last
experience of Africa. Repeated exposure to harsh conditions had taken their
toll and he died in London on 2 August 1895, aged just 37. Thomson’s
gazelle is named after him, as are two species of snail and a bivalve, and he
accumulated much geographical information about southern Africa during
15,000 miles of travel that covered large tracts of territory previously unex-
plored by Europeans, but he was always keen to move on and cover more
ground so many of his records are impressionistic rather than detailed stud-
ies.
 TOBAGO • 525
TIBET. In 1903–1904, Lord George Curzon, the viceroy of India, ordered
his troops to invade Tibet in a preemptive action that was intended to prevent
Russia from acquiring the territory and using it as a base from which to
launch assaults on imperial possessions in British India (see THE GREAT
GAME). Some 3,000 soldiers, commanded by Brigadier-General James
Macdonald, made their way through the difficult terrain of the Himalayan
Mountains, accompanied by 7,000 porters and camp followers, to the Guru
Pass. There, on 31 March 1904, they met an assembly of about 3,000 Tibe-
tans, most of them peasants armed with ancient muskets and wearing amulets
that they believed would protect them from injury. For reasons that are still
not clear, Macdonald’s soldiers opened fire with Maxim machine guns and
killed some 700 of their ill-prepared opponents then advanced to Lhasa, the
Tibetan capital, arriving on 3 August. On 7 September, Colonel Frances
Younghusband, who had assumed command of the expedition, forced Tibe-
tan officials to sign an agreement that gave Britain trading privileges in the
area and surrendered all authority to negotiate with foreign governments (a
provision that, in effect, made Tibet a British protectorate).
However, the war was deeply unpopular in Britain, the Tibetans had no
intention of observing rules that were imposed under duress, and China also
claimed control of the region. With the political balance heavily weighed
against attempts to impose its authority, on 27 April 1906 the British govern-
ment reached an agreement with China, promising “not to annex Tibetan
territory or to interfere in the administration of Tibet” in return for a Chinese
commitment “not to permit any other foreign State to interfere with the
territory or internal administration of Tibet”—an arrangement that satisfied
British administrators because it ensured that the Russians would not ad-
vance to India’s borders.
See also INDIA OFFICE; NEPAL.

TOBAGO. Tobago lies in the eastern Caribbean Sea, 20 miles northeast of

Trinidad at latitude 10° 39´ North and longitude 61° 28´ West. It was
sighted by Christopher Columbus in 1498, during his third voyage to the
Americas, and settled by the Spanish in the 16th century but tossed between
Great Britain, France, Holland, and Spain on more than 30 occasions before
the Treaty of Paris confirmed British sovereignty on 30 May 1814. On 1
April 1833, the island joined Barbados, Grenada, the Grenadines, and
Saint Vincent in the newly formed federation of the Windward Islands, but
the arrangement did little to help an economy that relied heavily on the cane
sugar industry. In 1884, A. M. Gillespie and Company, which owned some
80 percent of the sugar plantations, went bankrupt, causing great financial
hardship to a population that had very limited capital available for invest-
ment in other enterprises and little alternative employment. The British
government responded by proposing that Tobago should be grouped admin-
526 • TODD, REGINALD STEPHEN GARFIELD (1908–2002)
istratively with Grenada, Saint Lucia, and St. Vincent, but the plans proved
unpopular so on 6 April 1889 the island was linked to Trinidad even though
many Trinidadians felt that it would prove to be a monetary millstone. On 1
January 1899, still in dire financial straits, it was made a ward (or local
government district) within the crown colony of Trinidad and Tobago, los-
ing its independent political identity and becoming closely integrated, eco-
nomically, with its partner.
See also BRITISH WEST INDIES; PARIS, TREATY OF (1783); WEST-
MINSTER, TREATY OF (1674).

TODD, REGINALD STEPHEN GARFIELD (1908–2002). Garfield

Todd, prime minister of Southern Rhodesia from 1953 until 1958, was
forced into resignation because his white colleagues believed that his propo-
sals for improving the lot of the colony’s African community were much too
far-reaching. The son of bricklayer Thomas Todd and his wife, Edith, he was
born in Invercargill, New Zealand, on 13 July 1908 and arrived in Southern
Rhodesia as a Protestant missionary in 1934. Posted to Dadaya, in an asbes-
tos mining area some 80 miles east of Bulawayo, he ran the mission school
(Robert Mugabe, later a leader of the nationalist movement in the colony,
was one of the teachers) and established a clinic where, with very limited
midwifery training, he and his wife, Grace, delivered several hundred babies.
Todd’s route into politics was unusual. In 1942, he went to hear Sir Godfrey
Huggins, Southern Rhodesia’s prime minister, speak at a public meeting and
shouted at him when he made critical references to New Zealand. Huggins,
impressed by his articulate adversary, took the young man under his wing
and groomed him for election to the colonial legislature as a representative of
the United Party (UP) in 1946. The UP was the least conservative of the
major political organizations in the territory, but, even so, Todd was no
liberal and his electoral success reflected, in part, his image as an authority
figure. (For example, he had caned the rumps of a group of girls who had
misbehaved at his school and had made clear that he favored continued white
minority rule.) However, as immigrants from Britain flowed into the colony
in increasing numbers in the years after World War II, his attitude changed as
he saw ill-educated Europeans granted the right to vote while the well-edu-
cated black Africans with whom he worked remained disenfranchised.
In 1953, Huggins was appointed prime minister of the new Federation of
Rhodesia and Nyasaland and Todd succeeded him as prime minister of
Southern Rhodesia. Initially, he gave the impression that he would assert
traditional white right-wing values, calling in the army to break a strike by
miners at the Wankie (now Hwange) Colliery, but he soon adopted a more
reformist stance, introducing (in 1955) schemes to provide elementary edu-
cation for all black children and (in 1957) plans for the formation of multira-
cial trade unions. Also, he held talks with nationalist leaders, such as Joshua
 TONGA • 527
Nkomo, and framed legislation that would give voting rights to some
6,000–10,000 affluent Africans. None of the measures threatened the white
majority in the legislature, but, even so, they were perceived by many Euro-
peans as a risk to the status quo. In January 1958, his cabinet deserted him en
bloc, and on 17 February he was forced to resign the prime ministership,
saying, as he went, that his opponents were “in danger of becoming a race of
fear-ridden neurotics.”
Out of office, Todd became more and more outspoken, telling world lead-
ers that international intervention would be needed if the majority black
population was ever to win power in Southern Rhodesia. However, as his
reputation outside the colony grew, Prime Minister Ian Smith and other
local politicians considered him a danger to internal political stability, plac-
ing him under house arrest in 1965–1966 and from 1972–1976; during the
latter period, he was banned from using the telephone and from receiving or
writing letters. Eventually, in 1980, economic considerations forced the
white community to concede black rule, and for a while Todd’s fortunes
changed. Mugabe, now prime minister, appointed him to the Senate, the
upper chamber in the new Zimbabwean parliament, and in 1985 he was
awarded a knighthood. However, he soon became appalled by the corruption
in the new regime and opposed a raft of policies that, he believed, contrib-
uted to social disintegration. He was stripped of his Zimbabwean nationality
in February 2002 (along with others whose parents were foreign nationals),
suffered a stroke later in the year, and died in Bulawayo on 13 October. He
had claimed that his approach to life was based on a biblical philosophy.
“Keep throwing your bread upon the waters,” he said. “If you are lucky, it
will come back as ham sandwiches.”

TOKELAU. See UNION ISLANDS.

TONGA. The Tongan archipelago consists of some 170 coral and volcanic
islands strung across 500 miles of the southern Pacific Ocean between lati-
tudes 15° and 23° South and longitudes 173° and 177° West. Their existence
became known to Europeans through the journeys of 17th-century Dutch
explorers, but British interest was limited until Captain James Cook visited
in 1773, 1774, and 1777. (Cook named the territory the Friendly Isles be-
cause the indigenous groups welcomed him and his crew, but some writers
believe that the local chiefs had invited them onshore in order to make a meal
of them then could not agree on who was to do the killing.) Missionaries
followed soon afterward, with Methodists, in particular, becoming very in-
fluential from the 1820s. In 1831, Taufa’ahau, one of the local chiefs, con-
verted to Christianity and changed his name to George, in honor of King
George III of Britain. Over the next 20 years, he united the whole of Tonga
528 • TORTOLA
under his rule then, guided by Wesleyan advisers, revised the legal code,
changed the system of land tenure, and, in 1875, made the territory a consti-
tutional monarchy. That monarchy was retained in 1900, when a “treaty of
friendship,” signed on 18 May 1900, made the islands a protected state
(primarily to stave off German interest in the islands), with Britain assuming
responsibility for external defense and for all foreign relations. The terms of
the treaty gave British administrators no rights to interfere in Tonga’s inter-
nal affairs, but on 18 January 1905 a further accord, signed under duress by
King George Tupou II but enforced by the British because of concerns about
the monarch’s competency as head of government, resulted in the appoint-
ment of a European “Agent and Consul” who was “to be consulted [about all
executive decisions] and his advice taken.” Initially, relations between Ton-
gans and colonial managers were sometimes fraught, but, after the accession
of Queen Salote Toupu III in 1918, dealings were less tense, permitting
revisions to the laws that, in particular, improved the conditions of the least
affluent in the community and enhanced the rights of women. In her last
years, Queen Salote supervised arrangements for Britain to surrender its
authority in the territory, allowing Tonga to regain full control over its own
affairs, as the only monarchy in the Pacific region, on 4 June 1970.
See also BRITISH WESTERN PACIFIC TERRITORIES; CHAMBER-
LAIN, JOSEPH (1836–1914); SAMOA.

TORTOLA. See VIRGIN ISLANDS.

TORTUGA. The rocky, 70-square-mile island of Tortuga, lying in the Car-

ibbean Sea off the northwestern coast of Hispaniola at latitude 22° 2´ North
and longitude 72° 47´ West, became a favorite haunt of pirates during the
17th century. Such control as existed was exercised at various periods by
Dutch, English, French, and Spanish groups, who sometimes cooperated but
regularly attempted to oust each other. The English arrived in 1625 and, with
the French, attacked passing Spanish ships. Spain retaliated on several occa-
sions, forcing the settlers out for short periods but never leaving a sufficiently
strong garrison to prevent them from returning. By 1640, Tortuga and Port
Royal on Jamaica had become the major pirate strongholds in the region,
with vessels often operating under the authority of letters of marque—in
effect, licenses, issued by European governments, that allowed captains to
attack enemy shipping. On 9 February 1654, while England and Spain were
at war, a 700-strong Spanish force invaded the island, overcame the English
and French defenders, captured Fort de la Roche (the principal stronghold),
and occupied the territory for 18 months but then had to withdraw in order to
help raise the English siege of Spain’s colony at Santo Domingo, on Hispani-
ola.
 TRANQUEBAR • 529
Toward the end of 1655, realizing that Tortuga was unoccupied, General
William Brayne, the newly appointed governor of Jamaica, gave Elias
Watts, an English merchant based on the island, a commission to reclaim the
territory and develop a trading post. Watts built a community of some 150
settlers, but in 1659 Frenchman Jérémie Deschamps, one of the inhabitants,
traveled to Europe and persuaded English officials to appoint him governor
of the territory. Rather than resist, Watts left for New England, and De-
schamps, aware that the French population outnumbered migrants from Eng-
land, declared French sovereignty then resisted English efforts to regain con-
trol. It remained a French possession (and, until 1676, the administrative
center of the French colony of Saint Domingue) until 1804, when it became
part of Haiti after a revolt by the slaves who worked the coffee, indigo, and
sugar plantations.

TRANQUEBAR. In 1620, the Danish East India Company established a

trading base at Tranquebar, on a distributary of the Kaveri River in southeast-
ern India. Merchants dealt in spices and textiles and the settlement—al-
though never a major hub of business—became both the center from which
several other small Danish colonies on the subcontinent, most notably Se-
rampore, were governed and (because Britain’s East India Company pro-
hibited representatives of Christian organizations from attempting to convert
indigenous groups on the grounds that a changed culture could affect com-
merce) a focus of missionary activity (see CAREY, WILLIAM
(1761–1834)). However, in 1801, while Great Britain was at war with
France, Denmark formed an alliance with Russia and Sweden in order to
prevent British warships from boarding Danish vessels trading to French
ports. The British government, considering that a hostile act, occupied Dan-
ish colonies, including—on 12 May—Tranquebar. The territory was returned
to the Danes on 17 August the following year, under the terms of a conven-
tion signed by representatives of King George III and Emperor Alexander I
of Russia on 17 June 1801, but was reoccupied on 13 February 1808, during
the Napoleonic Wars, then held until 20 September 1815, when it reverted to
Danish control in accordance with the provisions of the Treaty of Kiel, which
had ended hostilities between Britain and Denmark on 14 January the previ-
ous year. The Danish economy recovered very slowly from the lengthy peri-
od of conflict and the country’s Indian possessions had become a consider-
able financial burden so in 1845 the Danes sold their territories on the Indian
mainland to the British East India Company for 1,200,000 rupees, with Brit-
ish officials assuming control of Tranquebar on 7 November. Although Brit-
ain provided new administrative services, including, in 1860, a court and a
post office, the construction of a railroad to the port of Nagapattinam, just 18
miles to the south, initiated a steady decline in Tranquebar’s dock trade from
530 • TRANSJORDAN
1861. After India won independence in 1947, the settlement (now known as
Tharangambadi) became part of Madras State, which (after a series of boun-
dary changes) was renamed Tamil Nadu in 1969.
See also NICOBAR ISLANDS.

TRANSJORDAN. Transjordan occupied part of the northern Arabian Pe-

ninsula, separated from the Mediterranean Sea by Palestine. It was absorbed
by the Ottoman Empire in the 16th century, but the population rallied to the
British and French cause during World War I, and when the possessions of
the defeated Turks were divided between the victorious powers at a confer-
ence in San Remo, Italy, in April 1920, Britain was authorized to govern
Palestine, which included Transjordan. In March the following year, Winston
Churchill, the colonial secretary (see COLONIAL OFFICE), separated
Transjordan from the rest of Palestine and placed administration in the hands
of Emir Abdullah ibn al-Husayn. The League of Nations confirmed the Brit-
ish mandate in July 1922 (see LEAGUE OF NATIONS MANDATED TER-
RITORY), and, two months later, Britain closed the area to Jewish emigra-
tion (thus ending speculation that it could become a homeland for the Jews,
who, as a result, concentrated on acquiring land in Palestine).
On 15 May 1923, the British government recognized the Emirate of Trans-
jordan as an embryo state under Abdullah but retained responsibility for
finance, foreign affairs, and military matters. Over the next two decades,
Britain gradually released its control as the emir attempted to create unity by
creating an Arab Legion to assist in the defense of the territory, by encourag-
ing the disparate Bedouin groups to cooperate, and by establishing an elected
legislative council. On 22 March 1946, discussions in London led to an
agreement that the United Kingdom would surrender its mandate but would
retain the right to establish military bases on Transjordanian soil and would
continue to subsidize the Arab Legion, Transjordan’s army. At its last meet-
ing, on 18 April, the League of Nations recognized Transjordan as an inde-
pendent country. Then, on 25 May, the Transjordanian parliament declared
Abdullah king and changed the country’s name to the Hashemite Kingdom
of Jordan. However, the U.S. refused to recognize the new state’s sovereign-
ty, and, in 1947, the Soviet Union vetoed its application for membership of
the United Nations (UN), claiming that it was still a British vassal. An
Anglo-Jordanian treaty, signed the following year, helped to overcome some
of the objections and eased the path toward recognition by the U.S. on 31
January 1949, but UN membership was not acquired until 14 December
1955.
 THE TRANSVAAL • 531
THE TRANSVAAL. The Transvaal lay in the area between the Limpopo
and Vaal Rivers in southern Africa. Originally occupied by Bantu peoples, it
was settled from the 1830s by Boer (also known as Afrikaner) farmers, who
named it the South African Republic in 1856. On 12 April 1877, Britain
annexed the near-bankrupt territory, partly because discoveries of diamond
deposits just across the border in Cape Colony and gold reserves along the
Tati River were considered by government to be potential sources of wealth
but also because the colonial secretary, H. H. M. Herbert, earl of Caernar-
von, was keen to merge all of the region’s political units in a single, British-
controlled, federation. Theophilus Shepstone, the administrator of the new
colony, had acquired considerable experience of management in Cape Colo-
ny and, more especially, in Natal, but in the Transvaal his influence proved
to be disastrous. As colleagues complained of his limited grasp of financial
matters, his political misjusdgments resulted in a series of conflicts with
native rulers, and his autocratic treatment of the European immigrants pro-
voked the Boers into declaring independence in 1880—an action that led to
the outbreak of the First Boer War on 16 December.
The conflict ended on 23 March 1881 and the Pretoria Convention, signed
on 3 August, restored the Republic’s right to govern its own affairs, initially
under British suzerainty but, from 1884, with no restrictions except the need
to get Great Britain’s permission to enter into treaty arrangements with any
country other than the Boer-ruled Orange Free State. That condition contin-
ued to cause tensions between the Afrikaner and British communities, and
these heightened from 1886, when the discovery of gold in the Witwater-
srand area brought an influx of European fortune seekers, who were refused
voting privileges. In 1895, an abortive attempt by industrialist Cecil Rhodes
to push those discontented immigrants into rebellion (see JAMESON RAID
(1895–1896)) hardened attitudes further as influential politicians (including
Joseph Chamberlain, the colonial secretary) called for annexation of the
Boer states in order to improve the rights of the gold miners, who formed the
majority of the Republic’s population by the last years of the 19th century.
On 9 October 1899, as Britain increased the strength of its army in the area of
Cape Colony close to its boundary with the South African Republic, the
Boers warned that they would go to war if the soldiers did not withdraw. Two
days later, Afrikaner troops attacked Cape Colony and Natal, but after initial
setbacks and the arrival of reinforcements, British forces were able to ad-
vance into the Republic and by June the following year had occupied its
capital, Pretoria. Britain annexed the whole territory on 1 September 1900
and had its sovereignty confirmed by the Treaty of Vereeniging, which was
signed on 31 May 1902 after the Boers had conceded defeat. Renamed the
Transvaal, the region regained self-government on 6 December 1906 and on
31 May 1910 merged with Cape Colony, Natal, and the Orange River Colo-
ny as the Union of South Africa.
532 • TREATY OF 1818
TREATY OF 1818. See ANGLO-AMERICAN CONVENTION OF 1818.

TRINIDAD. Britain seized the Caribbean island of Trinidad from Spain on

18 February 1797, when the governor—José María Chacón y Sanchez—
surrendered to a naval fleet led by Sir Ralph Abercrombie, commander-in-
chief of King George III’s forces in the West Indies. Five years later, on 25
March 1802, the Treaty of Amiens confirmed the transfer of sovereignty.
Initially, British administrators encouraged development of the sugarcane
plantations established during Spanish rule. However, the abolition of slav-
ery in the 1830s (see SLAVERY ABOLITION ACT (1833)) caused a chron-
ic shortage of cheap labor that encouraged some property owners to import
indentured workers from India but also led to increased interest in cacao,
which could be grown on small plots and became so popular that it dominat-
ed the economy from the 1860s until the 1920s, when low prices forced some
farmers to return their land to sugarcane. By then, however, incomes from
agriculture were being supplemented by the proceeds of oil extraction, which
had begun in the mid-19th century and (with natural gas) was still a major
contributor to the country’s export earnings in the early 21st century.
On 6 April 1889, Trinidad amalgamated administratively with neighboring
Tobago, which was in dire financial straits as a result of the collapse of its
sugar industry. From 1925, after much local activism, the colonial authorities
approved the inclusion of seven elected representatives on the joint colony’s
25-member legislative council then in 1946, following further calls for
change and protests about economic conditions on the islands (notably in
1937, when Tubal Uriah “Buzz” Butler led a series of labor disputes and riots
that began in the oilfields and spread to urban areas), made constitutional
amendments that introduced elections based on universal adult suffrage. In
1956, Eric Williams’s People’s National Movement won control of the legis-
lature and, in 1958, took the islands into the West Indies Federation but
followed Jamaica out of it after only four years and (despite allegations of
election rigging) led the colony to independence on 31 August 1962.
See also ABOLITION OF THE SLAVE TRADE ACT (1807); BRITISH
WEST INDIES; VIRGINIA.

TRIPOLITANIA. In 1911, during war with Turkey, Italy occupied the city
of Tripoli, on the southern shores of the Mediterranean Sea. The following
year, it expanded control over the hinterland, known as Tripolitania, then, in
1934, it merged the whole territory with Cyrenaica and Fezzan to form
Libya. The area was the scene of fierce fighting during World War II but was
captured by Allied forces in 1942 and placed under a British military admin-
istration led, for most of the next decade, by Brigadier Travers Blackley
(who, allegedly, told raw recruits at the University of Virginia’s School of
 TRISTAN DA CUNHA • 533
Military Government that when the perpetrator of some atrocity in an occu-
pied area could not be convincingly identified his policy was to shoot the
ugliest of the suspects). In 1947, after the war had ended, Italy (which had
hoped to retain Tripolitania) was forced by the victorious powers to relin-
quish all claims to its former possessions in northern Africa. However, those
powers could not agree on what to do with the territories. The Soviet Union
suggested separate trusteeships, with France administering Fezzan, Russia
administering Tripolitania, and the United Kingdom administering Cyrenai-
ca. The United States, on the other hand, wanted a single United Nations
trusteeship for all three and an understanding that the trustees would prepare
the region for self-government. As discussions dragged on, Britain proposed
merging the units immediately and making Libya autonomous. Then, on 1
March 1949, Idris as-Senussi, a Moslem nationalist leader whose supporters
had fought on the Allied side during the war, declared Cyrenaica an indepen-
dent emirate, with British support and with himself as head of state. Un-
moved, on 21 November the same year, the United Nations General Assem-
bly passed a resolution declaring that Libya should be united and indepen-
dent by the beginning of 1952. The negotiations that followed led to a forma-
tion of a federal monarchy, with Cyrenaica, Fezzan, and Tripolitania each
having its own parliament. On 24 December 1951, a week before the United
Nations’s deadline, Idris as-Senussi, now King Idris I, declared the country
self-governing, as the United Kingdom of Libya, with Great Britain granted
rights to maintain military bases in the new state.

TRISTAN DA CUNHA. The Tristan archipelago consists of five small

islands, volcanic in origin, that lie in the southern Atlantic Ocean about 1,750
miles west of South Africa and 2,100 miles east of Argentina at latitude 37°
7´ South and longitude 12° 17´ West. The first European sighting, in 1506,
was by Tristão da Cunha, a Portuguese mariner, who named the territory
after himself, but it was annexed on 14 August 1816 by Great Britain,
which had imprisoned Napoleon Bonaparte on Saint Helena (1,300 miles to
the south) and wanted to prevent the French from using the territory as a base
from which to launch a rescue. When the small garrison left in 1817, a few of
its members opted to remain and, over the years, were joined by occasional
settlers from Europe, shipwrecked sailors, and women willing to marry the
surfeit of bachelors. On 19 October 1961, all of the islanders were evacuated
following a volcanic eruption. Initially, they were resettled in Britain, but,
unaccustomed to an urban lifestyle and to the winter cold, the great majority
opted to return two years later (although 35 went back to the United King-
dom again in 1966, unable to readjust to island life). Electricity and water
supplies were reconnected, the harbor was rebuilt, and new roads were laid,
but the economy still suffers from the islands’ remoteness, centering on
crawfish processing, farming, and the sale of postage stamps.
534 • TRUCIAL STATES
On 12 January 1938, Tristan was designated a dependency of St. Helena,
but on 8 July 2009 the islands were made equal partners in the British
Overseas Territory of St. Helena, Ascension, and Tristan da Cunha. The
governor of the territory has a residence in St. Helena and is represented in
the Tristan group by an administrator, who is the local head of government
and is assisted by an Island Council with a majority of elected members. The
population numbers about 275, all of whom live on the 38 square miles of the
main island. In 1995, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organization (UNESCO) designated Inaccessible Island, with Gough Island
(some 200 miles to the southeast and a dependency of Tristan da Cunha), a
World Heritage Site because of its distinctive oceanic wildlife.

TRUCIAL STATES. On 4 May 1853, agents of the East India Company

(EIC) signed a Perpetual Maritime Truce with a group of feuding sheikh-
doms located on the western shores of the Persian Gulf. Under the terms of
the agreement the local leaders agreed to put an end to wars at sea and a
naval squadron, under EIC command, would enforce the peace. Soon, the
area became known as the Trucial Coast and the territories—Abu Dhabi,
Ajman, Dubai, Ras al-Khaimah, Sharjah, and Umm al-Qaiwain—as the Tru-
cial States or Trucial Oman. The States’s composition and boundaries
changed frequently (for example, Fujairah joined the group in 1902 and
Kalba separated from Sharjah in 1903 then, in 1951, was reabsorbed), but
that was of little concern to the colonial power, whose primary interest was
the protection of sea routes to its commercially and politically more impor-
tant possessions in India. Those strategic imperatives led, on 8 March 1892,
to a further treaty when, in order to forestall moves into the area by France
and Russia, Britain and the Trucial States’s leaders concluded a pact that
guaranteed British support against aggressors in return for a promise that the
States would not enter into any negotiations with foreign governments unless
Britain approved. (That concordat, which made the area a British protecto-
rate, was undoubtedly framed by Britain for its own benefit but may have
ensured the survival of the sheikhdoms because the rulers of Saudi Arabia
made no attempt to incorporate them into the unified Arab state that the
House of Saud created on the Arabian Peninsula when the Ottoman empire
collapsed at the end of World War I.)
Britain did little to interfere with the local leaders’ administration of what
were economically unappealing desert regions until 1931, when the discov-
ery of oil reserves in Bahrain led to exploration for hydrocarbons in other
areas of the Gulf, with the first concessions in the Trucial States granted by
Dubai and Sharjah in 1937. Faced with the possibility of great wealth, the
sheikhs vied to expand the areas under their control, precipitating a series of
boundary disputes that British officials had to resolve and, in 1951, resulting
in the formation of a Trucial States Council that would encourage coopera-
 TURKS AND CAICOS ISLANDS • 535
tion and establish priorities for infrastructural development projects. The oil
also added to the rulers’ prestige, encouraging them to call for greater free-
dom to administer their own affairs. Britain’s decision, in 1968, to end its
military presence “East of Suez” led to proposals for a federal union be-
tween the Trucial States, Bahrain, and Qatar, but the sheikhs could not agree
on terms so on 2 December 1971 Abu Dhabi, Ajman, Dubai, Fujairah, Shar-
jah, and Umm al-Qaiwain merged to form the United Arab Emirates. Ras al-
Khaimah joined the group the following year.

TURKS AND CAICOS ISLANDS. The corals and limestones of the Brit-
ish Overseas Territory of the Turks and Caicos Islands lie in the western
Atlantic Ocean 30 miles southeast of the Bahamas (to which they are geo-
logical kin) and 620 miles southeast of Miami (on the North American main-
land) at latitude 21° 45´ North and 71° 35´ West. The Turks Islands were
colonized from 1678 by English salt collectors from Bermuda and the Cai-
cos Islands a century later by loyalists who opposed the United States’s
revolution against British rule and established cotton plantations using
African slaves. The Bahamas annexed both island groups in 1799, levying a
tax on the salt in order to raise funds needed to deal with the demands of a
growing population, but on 25 December 1848, aggrieved at the impact of
the fiscal measure on trade, the residents successfully appealed to the British
government for recognition as a separate colony and, for the next 25 years,
exercised control of their own affairs under the jurisdiction of the governor
of Jamaica. By 1873, however, the salt trade had declined, seriously affect-
ing the local economy, so on 4 April that year the Turks and Caicos Islands
became a Jamaican dependency, an administrative arrangement that was
maintained until 1959, when they were integrated into the West Indies Fed-
eration. Three years later, the Federation collapsed, Jamaica opted for inde-
pendent statehood, and, on 6 August 1962, the Turks and Caicos Islands were
accorded crown colony status. In 1983 (along with the other crown colonies)
they were designated a British Dependent Territory and then, in 2002,
were made a British Overseas Territory.
In the late 1970s, the People’s Independence Movement, which controlled
the government of the islands, initiated discussions intended to lead to the
end of British rule, but the party was ousted at elections in 1980 and the
incoming Progressive National Party (PNP) administration preferred to
maintain the colonial links. Over the next two decades, prosperity increased
rapidly as the tourist trade expanded and firms specializing in the provision
of offshore financial services were attracted by the absence of corporation
and income taxes, but government has been marred by corruption. In 1985,
courts in the United States sentenced Norman Saunders (the chief minister
and PNP leader) to eight years’ imprisonment for drug smuggling, and the
following year his successor, Nathaniel Francis, was forced to resign (along
536 • TURKS AND CAICOS ISLANDS
with two colleagues) after a commission of inquiry found him guilty of
“unconstitutional behavior, political discrimination, and administrative mal-
practice.” In 2009, Britain reinstituted direct rule by the islands’ governor
after an investigation unearthed evidence of widespread dishonesty among
elected officials and an American woman accused Michael Misick, the leader
of the government, of sexual assault.
Since 1917, there have been regular suggestions that the Turks and Caicos
Islands should be linked to Canada (partly because of long-term economic
contacts), but the proposals face political obstacles, including the need to
amend the Canadian constitution if the territory is to be incorporated as a
separate province.
See also BRITISH WEST INDIES; GRENVILLE, GEORGE
(1712–1770).
 U
UGANDA. In 1862, John Hanning Speke made contact with the Ganda
people, in the East African Kingdom of Buganda, as he sought to confirm
that Lake Victoria was the source of the River Nile. Speke was followed by
fellow adventurers (including, in 1875, Henry Morton Stanley) then, from
1877, by representatives of the Church Missionary Society and other Chris-
tian organizations. Traders seeking commercial opportunities increased in
number after 1 July 1890, when Great Britain and Germany used the Heli-
goland-Zanzibar Treaty to define separate spheres of interest in the region,
with Britain asserting its right to the land north of latitude 1° South and
handing responsibility for administration of the territory to William Mackin-
non’s Imperial British East Africa Company (IBEAC), which, since 1888,
had exercised control over areas to the east that later formed the East Africa
Protectorate. Although Frederick Lugard (later high commissioner in
Northern Nigeria) was able to negotiate a treaty with Mwanga, the kabaka
(or king) of Buganda, that placed the territory under IBEAC’s protection and
so allowed the firm to intervene in the kingdom’s internal affairs, Company
representatives faced economic and political difficulties. In 1891, rinderpest
(a viral disease) devastated cattle herds and soon afterward the human popu-
lation fell victim to epidemics of trypanosomiasis (transmitted by the tsetse
fly and previously unknown in Buganda) and smallpox (which killed half of
the inhabitants in some areas). Also, friction between Protestant and Roman
Catholic communities led to fighting early in 1892.
Hamstrung by limited funds and seeing little possibility of profit in the
region, IBEAC ordered Lugard to terminate the firm’s presence, but, instead,
he headed for London, where he attempted to persuade Prime Minister
William Gladstone that withdrawal would be a disaster for societies that had
suffered so much and were so divided. When Gladstone refused to take
action, Lugard joined antislavery and missionary groups to exert pressure
that would force the British government to assume direct responsibility for
administering the territory, a campaign that led to the decision to make the
area a protectorate from 11 April 1894, with a name—Uganda—taken from
the Kingdom of Buganda. Extensions in 1896 added Ankole, Bunyoro, Buso-

537
538 • UGANDA
ga, and Tooro, creating a colonial possession that became the basis of the
modern state of Uganda. Initially, the new regime faced the same problems
as IBEAC. Kabarega, who ruled Bunyoro (Buganda’s neighbor), resisted
British intrusions into his kingdom for five years before being captured and
exiled to the Seychelles in 1899. Mwanga led an unsuccessful rebellion in
1897, and in the same year Sudanese troops (who formed the bulk of the
colonial army in the area) mutinied in protest against incompetent leadership,
low pay, and poor food. However, in 1900, Sir Harry Johnston (the commis-
sioner—and thus head of British administration—in the protectorate) nego-
tiated an agreement that gave the lukiko (the kabaka’s advisory council)
statutory responsibilities, granted land in freehold to the leading chiefs, im-
posed a hut tax on all homes, and recognized the kabaka as ruler of Buganda
for as long as he continued to “co-operate loyally with Her Majesty’s
Government.” Arrangements reached with the kingdoms of Toro (in 1900)
and Ankole (in 1901), although more restrictive, nevertheless left some pow-
er in the hands of local leaders, but as imperial influence advanced to other
areas, where authority was less centralized, British officials retained more
control in their own hands.
The completion, in 1901, of a rail link from Lake Victoria to the port of
Mombasa (in Kenya Protectorate) led to pressure on colonial authorities to
encourage the planting of cash crops that could be carried along the line for
export, but even after Uganda was declared a crown colony on 1 April 1905
it was never attractive to European settlers. Cotton, introduced in 1904, was
planted by Africans on African land (in contrast to Kenya Colony, where it
could be grown only by white farmers, who employed Africans as plantation
workers). With increasing output commanding high prices, Uganda became
economically self-sufficient by the outbreak of World War I and invested
much of its income in schools that produced young people who had clerical
skills and a good command of English. As these graduates found jobs in the
offices of the imperial overlords, they often turned against traditional chiefs,
whom they regarded as old-fashioned, but there was little indigenous support
for self-government until well into the 1950s.
In 1952, Sir Andrew Cohen took up the post of governor of the colony
and immediately began to lay the groundwork for independence. His
schemes were opposed by Kabaka Mutesa II, who argued that Buganda
should be allowed to secede from Uganda. Cohen hoped to solve the problem
by deporting the local ruler to London in 1953, but that simply made the exile
a martyr so the British authorities had little choice but to repatriate him in
1955, enhancing his powers in return for an assurance that he would accept
Buganda’s inclusion in an independent Uganda. Mutesa’s reappearance ener-
gized other groups, however. Roman Catholics among the Ganda people
formed the Democratic Party (DP), led by Benedicto Kiwanuka, because
they wanted a country that would not be influenced by traditions associated
 UGANDA PROGRAMME • 539
with a Protestant kabaka. Also, other ethnic groups, fearing Ganda domi-
nance, created the Uganda People’s Congress (UPC), with Milton Obote at
its head. In March 1961, Mutesa’s supporters, many of whom still favored
Buganda’s secession from Uganda, boycotted an election that was intended
to produce a “responsible government” in preparation for self-rule, but they
had to think again when the DP won a majority of seats in the new National
Assembly, allowing Kiwanuka to become prime minister. Changing their
stance, they backed proposals for a federal state in which Buganda would
retain considerable autonomy. Then, they allied with the UPC and ousted
Kiwanuka at a further election in April 1962. On 9 October the same year,
Uganda became independent, with Obote as prime minister. Mutesa was
appointed head of state, in a largely ceremonial role, exactly 12 months later.
However, as in so many other newly created countries, the initial forms of
government did not last. Following tensions between the kabaka and the
prime minister, and power struggles within the UPC, Obote suspended the
constitution in February 1966, deposed Matesa, and declared himself presi-
dent, precipitating decades of civil unrest.
See also BAKER, SAMUEL WHITE (1821–1893); BRITISH EAST AF-
RICA; SCRAMBLE FOR AFRICA; TEA TRADE; UGANDA PRO-
GRAMME.

UGANDA PROGRAMME. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Jews
living in Eastern Europe and Russia suffered from discrimination (often in
the form of violent attacks on individuals and property, as in Kiev in 1881).
At the same time, Britain wanted to attract settlers to its possessions in East
Africa so in 1903 Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain offered 5,000
square miles of the Mau Plateau (which straddled the East Africa Protecto-
rate and the Uganda Protectorate and is now part of Kenya) as a base for
refugees. Journalist Theodore Herzl, often considered the father of modern
Zionism, reported the offer to the Zionist Congress in Basle on 23 August,
sparking a heated debate in which some delegates argued that acceptance
would doom the campaign for a return to the traditional homeland in Pales-
tine to failure, but others pointed out that the victims of bigotry in Eastern
Europe urgently needed a place where they would be safe from attack. In the
end, the meeting voted, by a margin of 295 votes to 177, to send a commis-
sion to visit the territory and present a report when the Congress reconvened
in 1905. That report was not encouraging—the plateau was not considered to
have the resources necessary for large-scale settlement and harbored danger-
ous animals (particularly lions) as well as Masai tribesmen who would not
welcome intruders—so Chamberlain’s offer was declined, with thanks. How-
ever, two British Jews—Lucien Wolfe and Israel Zangwill—were so in-
censed by the decision that they formed the Jewish Territorialist Organiza-
tion, which conducted a search for “a large tract of territory (preferably
540 • UNFEDERATED MALAY STATES
within the British Empire) wherein to found a Jewish Home of Refuge”; the
group considered sites in Africa, Australia, and North America but lost
much of its influence after Zangwill’s death in 1926 and was defunct by the
end of World War II.

UNFEDERATED MALAY STATES. Johore, Kedah, Kelantan, Perlis,

and Terengganu—all on the Malay Peninsula—were known, collectively, as
the Unfederated Malay States. Unlike the Federated Malay States, which
had a centralized administration, each exercised some autonomy over its own
internal affairs (under the watchful eye of a British advisor) until 1946, when
they were grouped with the Federated States and with Malacca and Penang
(formerly of the Straits Settlements colony) in the Malayan Union.
See also BRITISH MALAYA; MALAYA, FEDERATION OF.

UNION ISLANDS. In 1765, while undertaking a circumnavigation of the

world, during which he claimed the Falkland Islands for Britain and became
the first European to visit the Gilbert Islands, John Byron chanced upon
Atafu, one of three small coral atolls (the others are Fakaofo, formerly
known as Bowditch Island, and Nukunono) that lie about 300 miles north of
Samoa between latitudes 8° and 10° South and longitudes 171° and 173°
West. The islands were visited by whaling ships from the 1820s, surveyed by
the United States Navy in 1841, subjected to the Christianizing activities of
Samoan-trained Roman Catholic missionaries from 1845 and representa-
tives of the London Missionary Society from 1858, raided by Peruvian
slave traders in 1863, then claimed by Britain on 13 August 1877 and in-
cluded, as the Union Islands, within the British Western Pacific Territo-
ries. A formal protectorate was established in 21 June 1889, when the
colonial power felt that the land could provide a base for the laying of a
transpacific telegraph cable (see ALL RED LINE). On 29 February 1916,
responsibility for administering the atolls was transferred to the crown colo-
ny of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands, an administrative move that encour-
aged many of the male residents to seek work in Ocean Island’s phosphate
industry. Nine years later, on 4 November 1925, the archipelago was reas-
signed to New Zealand, which, from February the following year, managed
it from Western Samoa. On 1 January 1949, New Zealand assumed full
sovereignty over the area, renaming it Tokelau Islands and giving the island-
ers New Zealand citizenship. The name changed again—to Tokelau—in
1976. Tokelau became internally self-governing in 1994, but referenda in
2006 and 2007 failed to produce the majorities required for full indepen-
dence, in large part because the territory’s economy depends heavily on aid
from the New Zealand government. In 1980, the United States relinquished
 UNION-CASTLE LINE • 541
its long-held claims to the islands but retained Swains Island, one of the other
atolls in the chain. However, under the draft constitution that accompanied
the 2006 referendum, the Tokelauans also assert sovereignty over Swains.

UNION OF SOUTH AFRICA. See SOUTH AFRICA, UNION OF.

UNION-CASTLE LINE. The Union-Castle shipping line, formed through a

merger of the Castle Mail Packet Company and the Union Steam Ship Com-
pany, carried cargo and passengers between Britain and southern Africa from
1900 until 1977. The Union line had been established, in 1853, as the South-
ampton Steam Shipping Company but, after only a few weeks, was renamed
the Union Steam Collier Company. Its owners sought profits in the transport
of coal from South Wales to the port at Southampton, in southern England,
but, by 1857, were having trouble keeping their ships busy so they restruc-
tured the business as the Union Steam Ship Company Limited and made an
unsuccessful attempt to alter their commercial fortunes by plying routes to
South America. Then, on 3 December, the British government awarded them
a monopoly contract to carry mail to Cape Colony and Natal, with stops (on
some voyages) at Ascension Island and Saint Helena added later. Much of
the competition for other trade came from the Castle line, which was founded
by Scotsman Donald Currie in 1862 and focused, initially, on services be-
tween Liverpool and Calcutta round the Cape of Good Hope. However, the
opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 attracted the interest of entrepreneurs with
larger vessels so Currie changed focus and concentrated on South African
services, which were less lucrative but provide more opportunities for a
relatively small firm. He also cultivated the company of influential men—
such as Sir John Molteno, first prime minister of the Cape, whose son (Percy)
later married Currie’s daughter (Elizabeth) and became a partner in the busi-
ness—because they could provide him with contacts and thus influence the
course of commerce.
Molteno, however, refused to put all his eggs in one basket. On 5 October
1876 (three years after the Cape had won internal self-government), he ended
the mail monopoly and awarded a new contract jointly to the Union line and
to the Castle line, with a proviso that they must not amalgamate. The new
arrangement worked well, leading to faster passage times, but it also fostered
cooperation between the businesses (in 1893, for example, they started a
joint cargo service from South Africa to New York) so, in 1899, when the
Cape government again changed its policy and announced that a new
contract would be given to the firm offering the best terms, Currie’s company
(which had been reorganized as the Castle Packet Company in 1877 and then
as the Castle Mail Packet Company in 1881) and the Union Steam Ship
Company decided to amalgamate, forming the Union-Castle Mail Steamship
542 • UNITED EMPIRE LOYALIST
Company Limited, with a fleet of some 40 vessels, on 8 March 1900. The
firm was bought by the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company in 1911 but
became independent again in 1936 and expanded through acquisitions and
mergers after World War II, eventually becoming part of British and Com-
monwealth Shipping when it merged with Clan Line in 1956. Soon after-
ward, though, liner passenger numbers declined in the face of competition
from improved intercontinental air travel, and cargo revenues fell as more
goods traveled on container ships (see P&O). The last liner from South
Africa reached London on 24 October 1977, and in June 1990 British and
Commonwealth was liquidated after attempting to diversify into financial
services but foundering as a result of purchasing Atlantic Computers plc,
which collapsed amid allegations of creative accounting and flawed business
strategies.

UNITED EMPIRE LOYALIST. In the years between the start of the

American Revolutionary War in 1775 and the signing of the Treaty of
Paris, which ended the conflict on 3 September 1783, some 70,000 settlers
who retained their loyalty to King George III fled their homes in the thirteen
colonies, approximately 50,000 of them to build new lives in Nova Scotia
and Quebec. On 9 November 1789, Guy Carleton, Baron Dorchester,
governor-general of British North America and governor of Quebec, an-
nounced that he wanted to “put the mark of Honour upon the Families who
had adhered to the Unity of the Empire,” and, soon afterward, the letters
“UE” began to appear on militia rolls in the area under his jurisdiction as a
means of identifying “Those loyalists who have adhered to the Unity of
Empire, and joined the Royal Standard before the Treaty of Separation in the
year 1783, and all their Children and their Descendants by either sex.”
The large-scale immigration had a significant effect on the development of
modern Canada (leading, for example, to the establishment of the colony of
New Brunswick in 1784), and although the designation is rarely seen nowa-
days the history and myth of the loyalist experience have had important
influences on Canadians’ self-perception. In 1997, Ontario’s legislative as-
sembly decided that 19 June would be celebrated as “United Empire Loyalist
Day.” The previous year, the United States Congress had approved legisla-
tion that allowed court and immigration officials to take action against
foreign individuals who “traffic” in, or on, property in Cuba that was confis-
cated from Americans after Fidel Castro led the revolution that seized control
of that island’s government in 1959. Somewhat mischievously, John Godfrey
and Peter Milliken responded in the Canadian parliament by sponsoring a bill
that, if it had been successful, would have allowed descendants of United
Empire Loyalists “to establish a claim to the property they or their ancestors
 UNITED KINGDOM • 543
owned in the United States that was confiscated without compensation, and
claim compensation for it in the Canadian courts, and to exclude from Cana-
da any foreign person trafficking in such property.”

UNITED KINGDOM. Commerce was the driving force behind British

interest in the development of Empire, particularly in the initial stages of
territorial acquisition. Many of the early explorers and investors, such as
Martin Frobisher (who sought a Northwest Passage between the Atlantic
and Pacific Oceans along the northern coast of North America in the last
quarter of the 16th century) and the aristocrats and merchants who petitioned
monarchs for grants of land in the Americas during the 17th century, hoped
to discover locations of gold or other precious metals (see VIRGINIA COM-
PANY). However, although Cecil Rhodes did make his fortune through the
exploitation of diamond deposits in 19th-century southern Africa, agriculture
and trade proved to be more important than mining as sources of wealth for
most entrepreneurs. Ports on Great Britain’s west coast were heavily in-
volved in the slave trade, with ships sailing from Bristol accounting for the
transport of some 500,000 captives from 1697–1807, and Glasgow dominat-
ed the tobacco market by the 1770s, its legacy evident in the names of such
thoroughfares as Jamaica Street and Virginia Street as well as in the build-
ings that the “tobacco lords” constructed. (For example, the city’s Gallery of
Modern Art is housed in a neoclassical town house erected by William Cun-
ninghame, who imported large supplies of the commodity in the 1770s, pre-
dicting that Britain would not be able to retain its North American colonies if
they rebelled, then sold it at high prices when supplies dropped during the
American Revolutionary War.) Other demands were generated by 19th-
century industrialization, with, for example, Dundee treating jute (brought by
the East India Company from Bengal) with oil (supplied by its whaling
firms) to make sacking and twine, Manchester importing cotton (also from
the Indian subcontinent), and the Birmingham-based Dunlop tire manufac-
turing business acquiring such extensive rubber plantations in Ceylon and
the Malay Peninsula that, by 1926, it was the largest landowner in the British
Empire. Similarly, Greenock, by the middle of the century, was Britain’s
largest depot for raw sugar, producing 250,000 tons of the refined product
each year by the 1870s, and in the early years of the 20th century firms such
as Cadbury and Fry were importing cocoa from the Gold Coast in order to
satisfy growing demands for chocolate.
The commerce was furthered by such legislation as the Navigation Acts,
which required that imports to Great Britain and its colonies be carried on
British vessels, thus providing jobs for dock laborers, rope makers, sailors,
shipbuilders, shipowners, warehousemen, and a host of other trades. In addi-
tion, the mills and factories that processed the imported raw materials were
sources of employment for families that were being forced out of rural areas
544 • UNITED KINGDOM
by rapid change in agricultural practices. At the same time, scientists (such as
Joseph Banks) and learned bodies (such as the Royal Geographical Soci-
ety) were using imperial expansion as a means of adding to knowledge by
building up collections of exotic fauna and flora and by adding detail to maps
of the world, while, from the early years of the 18th century, committed
Christians formed organizations that would allow their beliefs to be dissemi-
nated among peoples they considered heathen and thus denied their God’s
mercy (see CHURCH MISSIONARY (OR MISSION) SOCIETY; LON-
DON MISSIONARY SOCIETY; SOCIETY FOR THE PROPAGATION
OF THE GOSPEL IN FOREIGN PARTS).
However, domestic enthusiasm for Empire waxed and waned and the con-
sequences of growth often brought complaints. From the 1770s, religious
groups and humanitarian organizations (many led by women) campaigned
for the introduction of legislation that would end the slave trade. Initially
thwarted by vested interests in parliament, they eventually succeeded in get-
ting an Abolition of the Slave Trade Act passed in 1807, partly because
most of the 100 Irish representatives who entered the House of Commons
(the lower chamber in the bicameral assembly) in 1800 following the union
of Great Britain and Ireland (itself a hugely controversial measure) were
pro-abolitionist. Further regulations criminalized slave-owning throughout
the Empire in 1833 (see SLAVERY ABOLITION ACT (1833)). Defeat by
Zulu warriors at the Battle of Isandlwana in 1879, General Charles Gor-
don’s death in 1885 (following the Siege of Khartoum), and similar events
tended to promote outbursts of popular pro-imperial patriotism, but Prime
Minister William Gladstone’s advocacy of “home rule” for Ireland and
General Horatio Herbert Kitchener’s scorched earth tactics during the sec-
ond Boer War caused bitter divisions.
Those divisions increased as strategic considerations became increasingly
important rationales for territorial acquisition. Some colonies (including
Aden, Mauritius, and Singapore) were annexed to provide bases for the
Royal Navy and others (the Cook Islands and New Guinea, for instance; see
PAPUA NEW GUINEA) in order to keep other European powers out, but
most possessions acquired for noncommercial purposes drained the country’s
financial coffers. Moreover, by the beginning of the 20th century community
leaders in several territories were voicing demands for greater influence over
their areas’ government and—as in the case of Mahatma Gandhi, who
organized boycotts of British goods and institutions in India—taking action
to achieve their ends, adding to the cost of the colonial supervision. In 1926,
through the Balfour Declaration, the British government conceded full self-
government to the six dominions (Australia, Canada, the Irish Free State
[see IRELAND], New Zealand, Newfoundland, and South Africa), but
World War II proved to be a political as well as a military watershed, forcing
Britain’s leaders into more vigorous action. The Empire had provided many
 UNITED KINGDOM • 545
of the troops who had fought in the Allies’ cause—2,000,000 coming from
India alone—and their homelands expected administrative concessions in
return. Moreover, member states of the United Nations, formed in 1945,
clearly favored rights for subjugated peoples to control their own affairs
rather than remain subject to imperial control, and, in any case, the United
Kingdom (U.K.)—with many areas of major cities such as Coventry, Glas-
gow, and London in ruins as a result of German bombing and requiring funds
for postwar economic reconstruction—was in no condition to finance the
defense and management of a global empire.
Prime Minister Clement Attlee’s Labour Party government, which took
office in July 1945, following the first general election after the war ended,
made India and Pakistan independent in 1947, initiating a process of decolo-
nization that continued into the 1970s, by which time most territories had
won their freedom and Britain had turned its back on global commitments,
withdrawing its troops from “East of Suez,” and seeking closer contacts with
European neighbors through membership of the European Economic Com-
munity (later the European Union). The domestic implications of Empire
continued, however, as immigrants from former colonies—many recruited
by health authorities and transport operators—arrived in the U.K. seeking
work, with numbers rising more than fortyfold in less than a decade, from
some 3,000 in 1953 to 136,000 in 1961 (see COMMONWEALTH IMMI-
GRATION TO THE UNITED KINGDOM). The newcomers concentrated in
distinct areas; in London, for instance, Brixton developed a large Jamaican
community, with Indians in Slough, migrants from East Pakistan (later Ban-
gladesh) in Spitalfields’s textile industry, and Nigerians in Peckham. Inevita-
bly, the sudden influx raised concerns among local people, who complained
that families from the former Empire were taking jobs that could have gone
to British people and were placing pressure on housing and welfare provi-
sion. Successive governments responded, from 1962, with increasingly strict
controls on immigration (see UNITED KINGDOM IMMIGRATION LEG-
ISLATION), but tensions remained, leading, in some cases, to outbreaks of
rioting, as at Brixton in 1981 and 1985. By the early 21st century, most
immigrants to Britain were arriving from member countries of the European
Union rather than from the Commonwealth of Nations, but second and later
generations of migrants from the former Empire retained aspects of their
parents’ culture so Brick Lane, in Spitalfields, had become well known for its
Indian restaurants and Brixton for its bustling Caribbean market. Some 40
percent of children in London schools spoke English as a second language,
with Bengali, Gujurati, Panjabi, Tamil, and Urdu (all from the Indian sub-
continent) and Yoruba (from Nigeria) common tongues of students whose
ancestors hailed from former colonies. Native British citizens appear apathet-
ic, or perhaps embarrassed, about imperial history. A British Empire and
Commonwealth Museum opened in Bristol in 2002 but closed after just six
546 • UNITED KINGDOM IMMIGRATION LEGISLATION
years, a victim of poor attendances. Sir Neil Cossons, the chairman of the
Board of Trustees, blamed the demise on “post-imperial angst,” adding that
“more healing of time” was needed before the “proper” story of the Empire
could be told.
See also CHAMBERLAIN, JOSEPH (1836–1914); DISRAELI, BENJA-
MIN, EARL OF BEACONSFIELD (1804–1881); EDEN, ROBERT AN-
THONY (1897–1977); GASCOYNE-CECIL, ROBERT ARTHUR TAL-
BOT, MARQUESS OF SALISBURY (1830–1903); GRENVILLE,
GEORGE (1712–1770); LENNOX-BOYD, ALAN TINDAL (1904–1983);
LLOYD GEORGE, DAVID (1863–1945); MACLEOD, IAIN NORMAN
(1913–1970); MACMILLAN, MAURICE HAROLD (1894–1986);
NORTH, FREDERICK, LORD NORTH (1732–1792); PELHAM-HOLLES,
THOMAS, DUKE OF NEWCASTLE (1693–1768); PITT THE ELDER,
WILLIAM, EARL OF CHATHAM; PITT THE YOUNGER, WILLIAM
(1759–1806); WILSON, JAMES HAROLD (1916–1995).

UNITED KINGDOM IMMIGRATION LEGISLATION. Until the mid-

dle of the 20th century, the terms “citizen of the British Empire” and “British
citizen” were essentially synonymous, with no legislation passed by the
United Kingdom parliament to control entry to the country by residents of
colonial territories. However, in 1947, the governments of members of the
Commonwealth of Nations agreed that each state should be free to define
“citizenship” in its own terms. The following year, Prime Minister Clement
Attlee’s Labour Party government won parliamentary approval for a British
Nationality Act, which received royal assent on 30 July 1948 and created a
status of “citizen of the United Kingdom and colonies” for people born, or
naturalized, in Britain or its imperial possessions. In effect, the measure
allowed any of the estimated 800,000,000 people in the territories of the
Empire to make a home, and earn a living, in the United Kingdom without
any need to obtain a visa or other form of permit. At the time, Britain’s
economy was recovering from the effects of World War II so men and
women were recruited from India, Pakistan, the West Indies, and other
areas to meet the demand for semiskilled and unskilled workers but their
appearance provoked apprehension about housing shortages and social im-
pacts on local communities (see COMMONWEALTH IMMIGRATION TO
THE UNITED KINGDOM). In June 1950, just two years after the passage of
the legislation, concern about the implications of a possible large-scale influx
of new residents forced Attlee to appoint a cabinet committee to consider
“ways which might be adopted to check the immigration into this country of
coloured people from British colonial territories.” The members of that group
found no reason to end the “open door” policy, but clashes between indige-
nous white groups and the migrants became increasingly common as the
number of arrivals rose from 3,000 in 1953 to 136,000 in 1961. In 1962, in an
 UNITED KINGDOM IMMIGRATION LEGISLATION • 547
attempt to solve the problems, the Conservative Party government, led by
Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, sought parliamentary approval for a
Commonwealth Immigrants Act, which received royal assent on 18 April
and limited immigration only to people who had been issued with “work
vouchers,” which were graded according to the individual’s employment
prospects. The Labour Party opposed the measure vigorously (its leader,
Hugh Gaitskell, denounced it as “cruel and brutal anti-colour legislation”),
but it received widespread public support, and in 1965, a year after ousting
the Conservatives at a general election, the new Labour administration
changed tack and limited the number of vouchers available.
Not all residents of Commonwealth countries were subject to the voucher
controls. Many Asians in Kenya had opted to retain their British citizenship
(granted by the 1948 Act) when the colony won independence in 1963 but
were subjected to employment discrimination and, from 1967, began to ar-
rive in the United Kingdom in considerable numbers. Press and television
reports of a possible influx of 200,000 refugees fueled demands for further
changes to the law, and the Labour government responded with the Com-
monwealth Immigrants Act, which was rushed through parliament in just
three days and given royal assent on 1 March 1968 despite opposition from
Secretary of State for Commonwealth Affairs George Thomson, who de-
scribed it as “wrong in principle, clearly discrimination on the grounds of
colour, and contrary to everything we [the Labour Party] stand for.” The Act
restricted the immigration rights of Commonwealth citizens to people who
had been born in the United Kingdom or who had at least one parent or
grandparent born there, but it did little to alleviate the concerns of many
white Britons. On 20 April 1968, just seven weeks after the passage of the
bill, Enoch Powell, a Conservative Party member of parliament, made a
speech in which he claimed that “We must be mad, literally mad, as a nation,
to be permitting the annual inflow of some 50,000 dependants, who are for
the most part the material of the future growth of the immigrant-descended
population. It is like watching a nation busily engaged in heaping up its own
funeral pyre,” adding that “As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding. Like
the Roman, I seem to see ‘the River Tiber foaming with much blood.’ ” The
Times newspaper denounced the speech as “evil” and Powell’s language was
condemned by many in his own party, but the address resonated with those
British residents who feared that their way of life was under threat by large
numbers of colored immigrants.
In 1971, a year after returning to power, the Conservative Party, led by
Prime Minister Edward Heath, further restricted immigration through an Im-
migration Act, which received royal assent on 28 October. The Act replaced
the employment vouchers with work permits that had to be renewed every
year and made provision for dependants to accompany the permit holder.
Also, it ended the distinction between Commonwealth and other applicants
548 • UNITED NATIONS TRUST TERRITORY
for entry to Britain by giving a “right of abode” only to people born or
naturalized in the U.K., or who had a parent or grandparent born or natural-
ized there, and to those who had “at any time been settled in the United
Kingdom . . . and . . . been ordinarily resident there for the last five years or
more.” Implicitly, that regulation favored white Commonwealth citizens
(most of whom would qualify at the time the law was introduced, wherever
they were born) and discriminated against black and colored Commonwealth
citizens (most of whom would not qualify). The 1971 legislation remains the
basis of British immigration law although the details were amended by the
provisions of the British Nationality Act of 1981 (which defined citizenship)
and by regulations designed to deal with special cases (such as the British
Nationality [Hong Kong] Act of 1990, which gave full citizenship to 50,000
residents of Hong Kong, and their families, when the territory transferred to
Chinese administration in 1997). Also, specific arrangements are made for
groups such as asylum seekers and students. By the beginning of the second
decade of the 21st century, 15 non-European countries had more than
100,000 residents in the U.K. and 12 of those states were members of the
Commonwealth, but, by then, British immigration concerns related more to
the number of people arriving from European Union nations, whose citizens
have unrestricted rights to employment and residence.
See also CROWN DEPENDENCY.

UNITED NATIONS TRUST TERRITORY. When the League of Nations

dissolved on 20 April 1946, responsibility for ensuring appropriate govern-
ance of the areas that it had allocated to the victorious World War I allies (see
LEAGUE OF NATIONS MANDATED TERRITORY) passed to the United
Nations (UN) Trusteeship Council. At its final meeting, the League had
recognized Transjordan, one of the British mandates, as an independent
state, and on 15 May 1948 the United Kingdom withdrew from Palestine
after asking the UN to determine the region’s future. British Togoland had
been governed from bases in the neighboring Gold Coast, but in 1954 Great
Britain informed the United Nations that it would not be able to continue in
its role as trustee if, as anticipated, that colony became independent. With
UN backing, it held a referendum in the territory on 9 May 1956, offering
residents the choice of full self-government or integration with the Gold
Coast. The majority of voters chose the latter so the territories merged on 13
December and independence (as Ghana) followed on 6 March the following
year. Then, on 14 December 1960, the UN General Assembly approved a
resolution recognizing that the populations of the trust territories had a right
to choose a form of government for themselves, but the United Kingdom
maintained that British Cameroons did not have the resources necessary for
survival as a self-governing state. After a great deal of diplomatic maneuver-
ing, the UN held a referendum in the region on 11 February 1961, offering
 UNIVERSITIES’ MISSION TO CENTRAL AFRICA • 549
voters a choice of “independence by joining” either (formerly British) Nige-
ria or the (formerly French) Republic of Cameroon. The dominantly Moslem
northern sector of the territory opted for Nigeria and merged on 31 May
1961. The more Christian south chose Cameroon and (despite that country’s
objections) was attached to it, in a reconstituted Federal Republic of Came-
roon, on 1 October. Tanganyika, the remaining African trust territory under
British rule, achieved independence on 9 December the same year.
In the Pacific Ocean, Western Samoa (placed under United Kingdom rule
by the League of Nations but, in practice, controlled by New Zealand)
became self-governing on 1 January 1962 and the tiny island of Nauru (also
nominally British, with New Zealand an interested party and with Australia
principally responsible for government) on 31 January 1968. New Guinea
united, administratively, with Papua in 1949 (see PAPUA NEW GUINEA)
and was governed by Australia, but the territory became independent on 16
September 1975. South-West Africa had also been a British mandate, but
government was in the hands of the Union of South Africa, which ruled the
trust territory as an integral part of the state, refusing to grant independence
until 21 March 1990.
See also ASSOCIATED STATE; BRITISH DEPENDENT TERRITORY;
BRITISH OVERSEAS TERRITORY; CHARTER COLONY; COLONY;
CROWN COLONY; CROWN DEPENDENCY; DOMINION; PROPRIE-
TARY COLONY; PROTECTED STATE; PROTECTORATE; RESTORA-
TION COLONY; ROYAL COLONY.

UNIVERSITIES’ MISSION TO CENTRAL AFRICA. In 1857, explorer

and missionary David Livingstone challenged faculty and students at Cam-
bridge and Oxford Universities to follow his example by taking the Christian
gospel to Africa and ending the slave trade. Committees formed by Church
of England communicants at those institutions and at Dublin and Durham
Universities appointed Charles Mackenzie, archdeacon in Natal, to lead their
first missionary expedition, consecrating him bishop of central Africa in St.
George’s Cathedral, Cape Town, on 1 January 1861. Mackenzie traveled up
the Zambezi River, established a base in the Shire Highlands area of Nyasa-
land, and—despite the predations of Yao groups, who captured members of
other tribes and sold them to Arab traders at sites along the Indian Ocean
coast—built up a small community of freed slaves at Magomero. However,
the settlement’s existence was always precarious (not least because it was
regularly under attack and because the white men were sometimes believed
to be slavers themselves) so after Mackenzie died of malaria early the fol-
lowing year his successor, Bishop William Tozer, relocated to Mkunazini,
Zanzibar, despite Livingstone’s objections, and established the first Chris-
tian church on the island.
550 • UPPER CANADA
When Sultan Barghash ibn Sa’id closed Zanzibar’s slave market in June
1873, the Universities’ Mission to Central Africa (UMCA) bought the land
and built Christ Church Cathedral, erecting the high altar on the site where
slaves had been whipped as punishment for misbehavior. Under Edward
Steere, who followed Tozer as bishop in 1874 despite lacking the high-level
contacts and personal wealth of most of the Mission’s senior figures, the
UMCA returned to the African mainland, eventually working from locations
in Northern Rhodesia, Nyasaland, and Tanganyika, as well as Zanzibar.
Through the first decades of the 20th century, it expanded efforts to limit the
spread of disease (particularly leprosy) and provide education as well as win
converts to Christianity and in 1965 merged with the older Society for the
Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts to form the United Society for
the Propagation of the Gospel. As with similar missionary organizations,
critics have condemned the UMCA’s paternalistic philosophies—and partic-
ularly the determination to Europeanize Africans—while other writers have
praised the commitment of people who risked at best deprivation, at worst
death, in the cause of their faith.

UPPER CANADA. In 1763, France withdrew from North America, ceding

most of its territories east of the Mississippi River, including Quebec, to
Great Britain. At the time, the majority of European settlers in Quebec were
of French descent, but after the American Revolutionary War ended in
1783 many thousands of new colonists, loyal to King George III, moved into
the Province from former British possessions that had become part of the
United States of America. Those immigrants brought cultures and institu-
tions that differed radically from those of the French residents. Also, they
sought land on which they could make a living and a voice in the government
of the territory. The British parliament responded to the situation by approv-
ing legislation, known as the Constitutional Act, that divided Quebec, from
26 December 1791, into two colonies—Lower Canada (where most of the
European population was of French origin) and Upper Canada (located on
the upper reaches of the St. Lawrence River and along the northern shore of
the Great Lakes, where families of British descent had made their homes).
The administration of Upper Canada was placed in the hands of a lieuten-
ant-governor (who represented the crown), an Executive Council (consisting
of appointees, who acted as the lieutenant-governor’s cabinet), and a bicam-
eral parliament that had an appointed upper house (the Legislative Council)
and an elected lower house (the Legislative Assembly). From 1815, control
of the two appointed bodies lay in the hands of a wealthy, conservative group
that became known as the Family Compact because so many members had
social connections; several, for example, had been taught by Scotsman John
Strachan, a schoolmaster and priest who was a member both of the Executive
Council and of the Legislative Council and who, in 1839, became the first
 UTRECHT, TREATY OF (1713) • 551
Anglican bishop of Toronto. The Compact favored rapid economic growth,
promoting such projects as the construction of the Welland Ship Canal,
which allowed vessels to bypass Niagara Falls and travel far into the
American interior. However, protests mounted as costs rose, and the number
of dissidents increased as a result of the ruling elite’s insistence that the
Church of England should have privileges not granted to other Christian
sects and that a hierarchical social structure was essential to the maintenance
of a well-ordered society.
In December 1837, as the pressure built and the reformists failed to get the
concessions they wanted, journalist and politician William Lyon Mackenzie
took advantage of heightened passions following a poor harvest to mount an
armed rebellion with the intention of founding a Republic of Upper Canada.
The revolt was poorly organized and easily crushed but was sufficient, in
conjunction with a contemporaneous outbreak of violence in Lower Canada,
to force the British government into action. John Lambton, earl of Durham,
was appointed governor-in-chief of British North America and told to make
recommendations for dealing with the unrest. His report, presented to the
War and Colonial Office on 4 February 1839, condemned the Family Com-
pact as “a petty, corrupt, insolent . . . clique” and recommended that Lower
and Upper Canada should be reunited under a single administration as a first
step toward union of all British colonies in the region. Parliament accepted
the proposal, passing an Act of Union that merged the two territories as the
Province of Canada from 5 February 1841.
See also ANGLO-AMERICAN WAR OF 1812 (1812–1815); PITT THE
YOUNGER, WILLIAM (1759–1806).

UTRECHT, TREATY OF (1713). The Treaty of Utrecht—a series of

agreements rather than a single document—was signed by Austria, Britain,
the Dutch Republic, France, Hanover, and other European powers fighting
the War of the Spanish Succession. Negotiations began in October 1712 and
the agreements were finalized from 11 April–7 September the following
year. On 11 April, France surrendered, to Great Britain, its claims to the
Caribbean island of Saint Kitts, to territories in which the Hudson’s Bay
Company operated, and to Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and Saint-Pierre
and Miquelon but retained the other North American territories it had held
prior to the outbreak of hostilities in 1701, including Île Royale (now Cape
Breton Island) and Île Saint Jean (now Prince Edward Island). On 13 July,
Spain recognized British sovereignty over Gibraltar and Minorca. Despite
the territorial gains, supporters of the Whig faction in parliament believed
that Britain had not extracted enough from the deals—John Wilkes com-
plained that the agreements were like the peace of God because they “passeth
552 • UTRECHT, TREATY OF (1713)
all understanding”—but the Tory majority was keen to see an end to conflict
and so was unwilling to press for additional concessions from the defeated
belligerents.
See also CANADA; NORTH-WEST (OR NORTH-WESTERN) TERRI-
TORIES (CANADA).
 V
VAN DIEMEN’S LAND. See TASMANIA.

VANCOUVER, GEORGE (1757–1798). The maps of the American coast-

line that George Vancouver prepared in the last decade of the 18th century
provided guides to mariners for over 100 years. The son of customs officer
John Jasper Vancouver and his wife, Bridget, George was born at King’s
Lynn on 22 June 1757, joined the Royal Navy at the age of 14, accompanied
Captain James Cook on his voyages to the Pacific Ocean in 1772–1775 and
1776–1780, and served on warships in the West Indies for most of the period
from 1780–1789. As Vancouver’s service in the Caribbean was nearing an
end, the British government was becoming increasingly interested in the
northwest coast of North America, partly because of the potential wealth of
the fur trade and partly because any northern sea link between the Pacific and
Atlantic Oceans would have considerable commercial ramifications. Cook’s
earlier explorations had demonstrated that no viable Northwest Passage
existed at latitudes higher than 55° North, but if Alaska was an island then
some route could exist at a more southerly latitude.
Vancouver set sail from Falmouth, in southwest England, on 1 April 1791,
charged with exploring America’s Pacific coast between latitudes 30° North
and 60° North. Traveling by way of Australia, where he surveyed the south-
west coastline, he arrived at a point about 110 miles north of San Francisco
on 17 April the following year then made his way northward. The shores of
Oregon and Washington posed little problem to the surveyors, but the deeply
indented inlets farther north, with difficult conditions of wind and tide,
proved more difficult, forcing the team to work from small boats in order to
ensure that they got accurate measurements. By 1794, they had completed
charts for the territory as far north as Cook Inlet in Alaska, measuring lati-
tude very accurately and longitude (then much more difficult to calculate)
within 1°. Vancouver demonstrated convincingly that there was no northern
passage between the oceans and his maps shaped travel in the region for
many decades even though—despite his meticulous approach—he missed
the Columbia and Fraser Rivers. However, his achievements were not recog-

553
554 • VANCOUVER ISLAND
nized during his lifetime, principally because he was accused of being a
harsh commander (and he was certainly guilty of displays of temper). He
died at his home in Petersham on 10 May 1798, just 40 years of age, but is
remembered in the British Columbian city, and numerous other locations in
Australia, Canada, and the United States, that bear his name.
See also BANKS, JOSEPH (1743–1820); CAROLINE ISLAND; CHAT-
HAM ISLANDS; COLUMBIA DISTRICT; NOOTKA SOUND CONVEN-
TIONS; SANDWICH ISLANDS; VANCOUVER ISLAND.

VANCOUVER ISLAND. The 12,400-square-mile Vancouver Island—the

largest landmass in the eastern Pacific Ocean—lies off the northwest coast of
North America, separated from the mainland by the Georgia, Johnstone, Juan
de Fuca, and Queen Charlotte Straits. Captain James Cook was the first
British visitor, arriving in March 1778 then spending a month at anchor in
Nootka Sound before sailing off on a fruitless search for a sea route to
Europe along the northern shores of the American continent (see NORTH-
WEST PASSAGE). He was followed a decade later by John Meares, a Royal
Navy–lieutenant-turned-fur-merchant, and then by George Vancouver, who
circumnavigated the island (which now carries his name) and prepared a
hydrographic survey of the coastal waters in 1792–1794. However, Spain
also had interests in the region, claiming possession of the island and, in
1789, seizing three of Meares’s vessels that sailed into Nootka Sound. Brit-
ain demanded compensation, which Spain at first refused but then paid in
order to avoid war, conceding, at the same time, that neither country would
have outright sovereignty and that ships from both could trade along the
coast (see NOOTKA SOUND CONVENTIONS). In the years that followed,
Spanish power declined and Great Britain became the dominant European
mercantile power in the Pacific region so when Britain and the United States
resolved boundary disputes in the American West in 1846 Vancouver Island
became British territory. Three years later, on 16 July 1849, it was declared a
crown colony.
In 1842, in an effort to boost British claims to the area, the Hudson’s Bay
Company sent James Douglas to establish a base at Camosack, on the is-
land’s southern tip, where gently sloping land provided potential for agricul-
ture. The settlement—renamed Fort Victoria, in honor of Britain’s queen, the
following year—remained small, with only a few hundred residents, until
1858, when the discovery of gold along the Fraser River, on the adjacent
mainland, brought 30,000 fortune seekers flooding through, many of them
from California, where the placer deposits were rapidly being depleted and
capital-intensive hydraulic mining by collaborative groups was ousting indi-
vidual prospectors. The town very quickly became a supply base for the
aspirant gold diggers, several of whom, unsuccessful in their search for pre-
cious metals, stayed on to farm in the Courtenay River and Cowichan River
 VICTORIA • 555
valleys or turned to jobs in the logging and sawmilling industries (as at Port
Alberni). Other settlers found employment digging coal, first exploited in
1849 by the Hudson’s Bay Company, which brought miners from Scotland
and Wales to work thin seams at Fort Rupert, on the northeast coast, but then
turned to more promising deposits farther south at Nanaimo.
Douglas was appointed governor of the colony in 1851 and approached
his new responsibilities with little enthusiasm, perhaps not surprisingly given
the problems of balancing his Company role and his public role and of
building educational facilities, transport links, and other infrastructure using
a revenue derived solely from liquor licenses. An arrogant man, by his own
admission “utterly averse to universal suffrage,” he believed that the lower
levels of the social hierarchy wanted their betters to make decisions on their
behalf but was forced to create a Legislative Assembly in 1856 after Coloni-
al Secretary Henry Labouchchère received protests about the manner in
which the Hudson’s Bay Company was exercising its authority on the island.
Douglas, nevertheless, continued to dominate administration by setting the
property qualifications so high that few people were entitled to vote and by
creating a Legislative Council whose members he appointed and which acted
as a form of parliamentary upper chamber. The Assembly, which became a
forum for criticism of Douglas, retained control of the budget but struggled
with growing debts as the colony undertook projects needed in order to cope
with the sudden influx of population during the gold rush. British Colum-
bia, on the continental mainland adjacent to Vancouver Island, faced similar
problems so on 19 November 1866 Britain merged the two colonies as Brit-
ish Columbia, with an administrative capital at Victoria.
See also BRITISH NORTH AMERICA.

VICTORIA. Britain established a penal colony at Sullivan Bay, on the

southern tip of New South Wales, in 1803, but the institution was short-lived
so the first permanent European settlers in the area were farmers who
traveled from Van Diemen’s Land (now Tasmania) in the 1830s, seeking
grazing for their sheep. These pastoralists negotiated access to the land with
the aboriginal communities, but the British government did not recognize the
hunter-gatherer groups’ rights of ownership so conflict was inevitable as
more and more migrants arrived. The indigenous peoples were unable to
stem the flow and within three decades, their numbers decimated by violence
and by a lack of resistance to European diseases, they were being herded into
reservations. As immigrant numbers rose, demands for more effective politi-
cal representation increased, culminating on 1 July 1851 with secession from
New South Wales and the creation of the crown colony of Victoria, which
had its own executive council (appointed by Britain) and a partially elected
legislative council (dominated by influential landowners).
556 • VIRGIN ISLANDS
That same year, the discovery of gold heralded a sevenfold increase in
population, to well over 500,000, within a decade. The growing citizenry was
accompanied by geographical expansion and by agricultural change as much
land was converted to crops even though the propertied interests on the
legislative council opposed reforms to tenure arrangements. By the late
1880s, wheat and wool had become Victoria’s main exports, but a collapse in
prices of both commodities contributed to financial havoc in 1891, with
banks closing, unemployment rising, and industrial unrest affecting all sec-
tors of commerce. Some politicians and economists argued for free trade
between colonies as a means of alleviating the problems, but, at the same
time, all of Britain’s Australian possessions were viewing, with growing
concern, the possibility of large numbers of immigrants arriving from Asia
and the need to establish a coherent defense policy. A federal council had
been created in 1885 but had no executive authority. In 1899, however, a
referendum demonstrated overwhelming support for proposals to develop
stronger links, and on 1 January 1901 Victoria enthusiastically joined the
newly created Commonwealth of Australia.

VIRGIN ISLANDS. The Virgin Islands, 15 of which are inhabited, lie at the
eastern edge of the Caribbean Sea, occupying the northeastern tip of the
Greater Antilles archipelago at latitude 18° 25´ North and 64° 37´ West. In
the early years of the 17th century, King James I of England and his son,
King Charles I, gave James Hay, earl of Carlisle, permission to establish
settlements, but he never took advantage of the grant. After Carlisle’s death
in 1636, the privileges passed to his son, Edward, who, in 1641, leased the
territories to Montague Bertie, earl of Lindsey, but he, too, failed to take any
action so the first permanent European migrants were Dutch families, who,
according to Spanish sources, had built homes at the western end of Tortola
by 1615. However, on 18 July 1665, John Wentworth—an English priva-
teer—attacked the Dutch village and captured 67 slaves, whom he dispatched
to Bermuda. The following day, he raised the English flag, justifying his
actions by claiming that he had heard news of “an open and national war
betwixt his Majesty [King Charles II] and the United States of Holland.”
Nevertheless, the process by which England eventually acquired sovereignty
over the islands depended more on diplomatic indolence than on brute force.
In April 1672, King Charles II committed his country to an alliance with
France in a war against Denmark and the Dutch Republic. Shortly afterward,
according to some authorities, Dutchman Willem Hunthum, the owner of
Tortola, placed his lands under the protection of Sir William Stapleton, the
English governor-general of the Leeward Islands (though Stapleton later
claimed that he had annexed them). By the time the war was over, Hunthum
had died so the Dutch asked that, under the terms of the Treaty of Westmin-
ster, Tortola be returned to his widow, a request to which the English
 VIRGIN ISLANDS • 557
government eventually acquiesced in 1686, ordering Sir Nathaniel Johnson,
Stapleton’s successor in the Leewards, to make the necessary arrangements.
By that time, though, most of the Dutch settlers had left and Johnson could
not identify anyone to whom he could transfer authority so he did nothing.
As a result, Tortola and its neighbors (Anegada and Virgin Gorda, both
annexed in 1680, and other, smaller islands) have remained under English
(then, from 1707, British) control ever since.
Like so many colonial possessions in the region, the Virgin Islands were
planted with cotton and sugarcane (originally introduced by the Dutch) that
were harvested by African slaves. The plantation owners were authorized to
form a legislative assembly to control domestic affairs from 27 January 1774,
but the islands were sparsely populated and a haven for pirates so even by the
early 19th century there was little semblance of stability, with Governor
George Eliot describing the conditions in 1810 as a “state . . . almost of
anarchy.” Disorder continued after the abolition of slavery in 1834 (on 1
August 1853 most of Road Town, the capital, was set on fire by protestors
complaining about a new tax on cattle), and poverty increased as the planta-
tions’ income declined because of the loss of the cheap slave labor, the
collapse of the trading infrastructure, the development of cotton growing in
the southern United States, European production of sugar from beet, hurri-
canes, outbreaks of infectious disease, and tax changes introduced by the
British government in 1846. The legislative assembly failed to solve either
the economic problems or the social tensions that these problems produced
throughout the second half of the 19th century so, in 1902, the colonial
authorities dissolved it and vested administrative responsibility solely in the
governor of the Leeward Islands colony, with which the Virgins had been
merged in 1833.
Those managerial changes brought little benefit to a population that failed
to see significant improvements either in prosperity or in the provision of
services. However, in 1950, following protests about conditions on the is-
lands, the legislative council was reestablished and almost immediately intro-
duced programs of investment in agriculture, hotels, and transport. Declining
to join the West Indies Federation (not least because the council had no
desire to surrender any of its recently acquired authority), political leaders
negotiated crown colony status for the islands on 1 January 1960 and, by the
early 21st century, had transformed living standards through promotion of
tourism (notably for yachting enthusiasts) and the introduction of a fiscal
regime that encouraged the incorporation of businesses dealing in offshore
finance. Since 2002, the islands have been a British Overseas Territory,
with a governor who exercises executive duties on behalf of the monarch. In
2007, a revised constitution introduced a greater degree of internal self-
government with a unicameral House of Assembly that had a majority of
elected members. Formally, the islands are the “Virgin Islands,” but the
558 • VIRGINIA
adjective “British” is often added in order to distinguish them from U.S.
Virgin Islands, which were acquired by the United States from Denmark in
1917.
See also BRITISH WEST INDIES.

VIRGINIA. In 1584, Philip Amadas and Arthur Barlowe, explorers spon-

sored by Sir Walter Raleigh, visited the mid-Atlantic coast of North Ameri-
ca and returned to London with tales of an indigenous leader named Wingi-
na, who ruled a territory named Wingandacoa. Allegedly, Raleigh’s mon-
arch—Queen Elizabeth I—converted “Wingandacoa” into “Virginia” as an
allusion to her status as the “virgin queen.” Then, on 10 April 1606, her
successor, King James I, granted the Virginia Company a charter to settle
the land from the 34th parallel of latitude (which passes close to Cape Fear,
in the south of present-day North Carolina) to the 45th parallel (approxi-
mately, the point on the Atlantic coast at the modern boundary between
Canada and the United States). Several settler groups attempted to establish
themselves on Company territory, with varying degrees of success, but the
hoped-for discoveries of gold and silver never materialized and by 1624 the
business was nearly bankrupt. James revoked the charter and assumed direct
control of the colony, appointing a governor to administer the area on his
behalf, so by the middle of the 17th century much of the land had been
reapportioned; for example, the most northerly sections were given to the
Plymouth Council for New England in 1620, other northerly areas were
granted by King Charles I to Cecil Calvert, Baron Baltimore, in 1632 (see
MARYLAND), and Charles II created the Province of Carolina from south-
erly tracts in 1632.
The rump that was left, and which remained largely intact until the colony
cut its ties with Britain in 1776, had first been settled by English immigrants
in 1607, when—on 26 April—a group of 104 men, women, and children
arrived at Cape Henry aboard three vessels. Seeking a safe location for a
village, they sailed for 40 miles up the James River then, on 14 May, stopped
at a site they named James Town in honor of their monarch. The early years
were difficult because many of the pioneers were from a social class unused
to manual work, the Powhatan Indians turned hostile when the Europeans
planted crops on their land and raided their food stores, and the swampy
terrain was infested by mosquitoes and difficult to cultivate. However, by
1614 the community was exporting the Nicotiana tobacum species of tobac-
co that John Rolfe had found in Trinidad and which was sweeter than the
Nicotiana rustica that grew wild in Virginia. Plantations were established
along the river, the population increased, and on 30 July 1619 the House of
Burgesses—the first elected assembly of English colonists in North Ameri-
ca—met “to establish one equal and uniform government over all Virginia.”
 VIRGINIA • 559
The House agreed to found an ironworks but did little else because its
deliberations were truncated by an outbreak of malaria. However, it survived
both an Indian attack (on 22 March 1622) that left nearly one-third of the
1,200 residents dead and the conversion from charter colony to royal colo-
ny with the dissolution of the Virginia Company. Under a succession of
governors, the “headright” system (by which colonists were given grants of
land every time they paid for the passage of a new migrant from England)
was used in an effort to increase the supply of indentured labor to the grow-
ing number of tobacco plantations, a new system of local government (with
eight shires, later renamed counties) was created (in 1634), and the settle-
ment frontier expanded (as, for example, in 1630, when Chiskiack and York
were founded on the south bank of the York River).
By 1675, despite attempts to make settlers diversify into such commodities
as silk, tobacco dominated the economy and Virginia made a greater contri-
bution to the crown’s coffers than did any other English colony in the Ameri-
cas. However, the growing population reduced the amount of land available,
adding to the number of tenant farmers and enhancing the political power of
property owners. (In 1670, for instance, the right to vote in elections for
members of the House of Burgesses was restricted to those who owned land,
disenfranchising those who rented.) In 1676, the resulting social tensions,
coupled with economic woes and repeated Indian attacks on the more remote
homes, provoked Nathaniel Bacon into leading an uprising that petered out
when he died of dysentry but which won Governor William Berkeley’s recall
to London, along with tax reductions and a more assertive approach toward
Native Americans. Political life stabilized after the rebellion as the leading
families in the colony consolidated their positions atop a social hierarchy that
also included the small planters (who were much more numerous but wielded
significantly less economic power) and, at the bottom, indentured servants
and slaves. However, that stability was undermined in 1759, when King
George III’s Privy Council vetoed the Burgesses’ legislation that provided
for clergy salaries to be paid in money rather than in tobacco.
The ire of the colonists, who believed that the mother country was interfer-
ing in their right to run domestic affairs, was further heightened when Britain
attempted to levy taxes that would raise the funds needed to repay debts
incurred during the Seven Years’ War, fought from 1756–1763 (see
FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR (1754–1763)). Virginians, including Patrick
Henry (who, at a meeting in Richmond in 1775, declared “Give me liberty or
give me death”), Thomas Jefferson (the principal author of the American
Declaration of Independence in 1776), and George Washington (who led the
rebel armies during the American Revolutionary War and later became the
first president of the United States of America) were among the leading
advocates of the principle of “no taxation without representation” in the
British parliament. The governor—John Murray, earl of Dunmore—dis-
560 • VIRGINIA COMPANY
solved the House of Burgesses in 1774, but the members continued to meet
and, at a convention in Richmond on 15 May 1776, declared the colony
independent. On 29 June, they approved a constitution defining the powers
of government, and on 25 June 1788, five years after the American Revolu-
tionary War ended, Virginia became the 10th state to join the infant United
States of America.
See also SOUTH CAROLINA; THE THIRTEEN COLONIES.

VIRGINIA COMPANY. In the late 16th and early 17th centuries, many
wealthy entrepreneurs formed joint stock companies (that is, companies
owned by shareholders) that were granted royal charters giving them monop-
oly rights to trade in specified areas of the world (see CHARTER COLO-
NY). The Virginia Company, which received its charter from King James I
on 10 April 1606, had two branches—the Virginia Company of London (also
known as the London Company) and the Virginia Company of Plymouth (or
the Plymouth Company)—that traded under identical conditions but, for the
most part, in different territories on the east coast of North America.
The Plymouth Company operated between the 38th parallel of latitude
(which crosses the northern end of Chesapeake Bay) and the 45th parallel at
Passamaquoddy Bay on the present-day border between the United States
and Canada. On 13 August 1607, it founded Popham Colony, near the
mouth of the Kennebec River, but community members bickered over lead-
ership, lost stores to fire, and suffered from a hard winter so the project was
abandoned after just one year. Following that experience, the Company made
no further attempts at settlement, but on 3 November 1620 several of the
shareholders aligned with other interests to acquire another charter and form
the Plymouth Council for New England, winning rights from the monarch to
develop the land between the 40th parallel and the 48th parallel (an area
stretching approximately from modern Philadelphia, in the south, to St.
John’s, Newfoundland, in the north). The Council owned the land occupied
by the Plymouth Colony (see MASSACHUSETTS) that year, although it did
not organize the settlement process, and one of its members, Captain Christo-
pher Levett, hoping to profit from the fishing industry, made an unsuccessful
attempt to establish a village at Casco Bay in 1623, but later, large sections of
the original grant were transferred to other companies (including the Massa-
chusetts Bay Company, which founded the Massachusetts Bay Colony in
1628), and in 1635 the stockholders surrendered their charter as public opin-
ion questioned the right of a small group of 40 men to hold extensive monop-
oly economic rights over such a large swathe of land.
Initially, the London Company had sole rights from the 34th parallel
(which passes through the modern city of Columbia, South Carolina) to the
38th parallel and shared the area from the 38th to the 41st parallel with the
Plymouth Company, though neither was permitted to locate a settlement
 VOSTOK ISLAND • 561
within 100 miles of a village founded by the other. By 1609, however, the
Plymouth business was moribund so London’s charter was revised to give it
sole rights northward to the 40th parallel. Then, in 1612, Bermuda was
added. Responsibility for those islands was transferred, in 1615, to a new
organization—the Somers Isles Company—which traded until 1684, when
(after protests from residents that the Company was preventing them from
diversifying from agriculture into boat building and other forms of com-
merce) the charter was revoked and the crown took direct control of the
territory, appointing governors as representatives of the monarch.
By then, the London Company had been defunct for 60 years. On 26 April
1607, it had formed a base near the south of Chesapeake Bay, but it very
quickly moved to a new site 40 miles inland on the James River, founding
James Town (later Jamestown) on 14 May. The location was easily defended
and accessible to ships bringing supplies, but it was also swampy, infested by
malaria-bearing mosquitoes, and offered little potential for agriculture.
Moreover, many of the initial settlers were gentlemen, unused to hard labor.
As a result, the early years were difficult, with several of the first colonists
failing to survive the combination of disease and hunger. The Company’s
investors were disappointed by the failure to discover the sources of precious
metals that, they had hoped, would augment their riches, but from 1614 the
local economy improved through the cultivation of tobacco from seeds
brought from the Caribbean and on 30 July 1619 the first representative
assembly of English immigrants gathered “to establish one equal and uni-
form government over all Virginia” and to create “just laws for the happy
guiding and governing of the people.” At first, relations with the local Pow-
hatan Indians had been good, but the relationship soured as the newcomers
raided the indigenous peoples’ food stores and encroached on their lands. On
22 March 1622, more than 300 settlers died in an attack on the James Town
community, adding to the woes of a business already plagued by debt and
unable to attract new income from subscribers. On 24 May 1624, as the
situation deteriorated, King James revoked the London Company’s charter
and the made the territory a royal colony, administered by a governor re-
sponsible to the crown.
See also MAINE, PROVINCE OF; MASSACHUSETTS; NEW HAMP-
SHIRE.

VOSTOK ISLAND. Vostock—which lies among the southern Line Islands

in the central Pacific Ocean, 400 miles northwest of Tahiti at latitude 10° 6´
South and longitude 152° 23´ West—has a land area of just 0.1 square miles.
The first European sighting of the tiny atoll, on 3 August 1820, was made by
Fabian Gottlieb Thaddeus von Bellingshausen, who was leading a Russian
expedition that, according to some historians, had, earlier in the year, also
made the first sighting of the Antarctic continent by a European. Vostok
562 • VOSTOK ISLAND
(which Bellinghausen named after his ship) was claimed by the United States
under the terms of the 1856 Guano Islands Act, which authorized Americans
to acquire uninhabited islands not already under the jurisdiction of other
governments. However, the guano reserves (a source of phosphate) were not
exploited either by the U.S. or by Great Britain, which annexed the land in
1873. An attempt, in 1922, to plant coconut palms and export copra (which
was used as a fertilizer and in soap making processes) proved unsuccessful
so the island’s limited resources were never developed economically and no
permanent settlement was established. Vostok was integrated within the
crown colony of the Gilbert and Ellice Isands on 1 January 1972 and
became part of the Republic of Kiribati when the Gilberts won independence
on 12 July 1979. The United States withdrew its claims to the area under the
terms of the Treaty of Tarawa, signed by representatives of Kiribati and the
U.S. on 20 September 1979.
 W
WAITANGI, TREATY OF (1840). On 6 February 1840, at Waitangi, on
New Zealand’s North Island, British representatives and Maori chiefs signed
a treaty that, according to British interpretations, recognized Great Britain’s
sovereignty over Maori territories, gave the British crown sole rights to the
purchase of those lands, provided for British protection of Maori property,
and gave Maoris the same rights as British subjects. Three months later, on
21 May 1840, William Hobson, the lieutenant-governor, used the treaty to
justify a declaration of sovereignty over North Island (and used somewhat
dubious grounds of right of discovery to extend that declaration to South
Island). Problems were evident very quickly. Although the provision that the
crown would have monopoly powers to buy territory was well intentioned,
designed to prevent the exploitation of native peoples that had occurred in
other colonies, the British government had limited funds at its disposal.
Under pressure to make land available to settlers, it bought for a low price
and sold at a considerable profit, satisfying nobody. Sometimes, too, it
bought from the wrong people because ownership was difficult to establish
when land was communally owned. From 1865, as the tensions mounted (see
NEW ZEALAND LAND WARS), the Maoris’ traditional communal owner-
ship system was replaced by individual title to property—a measure that
facilitated sales and, over the next four decades (and especially during times
of economic recession), resulted in the best terrain passing into European
hands. Moreover, the English text of the Waitangi Treaty did not translate
easily into Maori, leading to a multiplicity of court cases relating to interpre-
tation of the wording and to the validity of the document. As early as the
1920s, land commissions were finding in favor of Maori claims that the
provisions had not been honored, and, since the 1990s, several groups have
received compensation amounting, in individual cases, to well over
100,000,000 New Zealand dollars.

WALVIS BAY. European mariners sought anchorages in Walvis Bay from

the late 15th century, principally because it was the finest natural harbor on
Africa’s southwest coast. Whalers and sealers, in particular, made use of the

563
564 • WALVIS BAY
site, but the mainland lacked sources of fresh water so most of the visitors
stayed only for short periods. By the mid-19th century, however, Britain was
in control of much of southern Africa and Walvis was a strategically impor-
tant location, offering the Royal Navy one of very few bases from which it
could guard maritime routes round the Cape of Good Hope to India. Early in
1878, the colonial secretary—Henry Herbert, earl of Carnarvon—author-
ized annexation of the area, for commercial as well as strategic reasons, so on
12 March Commodore Richard C. Dyer of HMS Industry landed and pro-
claimed British sovereignty over Walvis and a 290-square-mile hinterland,
most of which was desert. After Germany incorporated South-West Africa
within its empire in 1884, the precise location of the colony’s boundaries
became the subject of dispute between the two powers and was not finalized
until 1911, when an arbitrator—Don Joaquin Fernandez Prida, professor of
international law at the University of Madrid—determined the area over
which Britain had effective occupation.
Walvis was included within the Union of South Africa when that self-
governing dominion was formed in 1910 but, geographically, formed an
exclave separated from the rest of the territory by German-held South-West
Africa. It was invaded by the Germans shortly after the outbreak of World
War I but quickly retaken by South African troops then used as a base from
which to launch to launch an attack on Windhoek, the administrative center
of Germany’s colony, which capitulated in July 1915. In order to advance the
invasion, South Africa linked Walvis Bay to the Union’s railroad system,
providing a transport route that furthered the development of the port after
the war ended in 1919.
As Germany’s empire was dismantled in the years following the conflict,
South-West Africa was made a League of Nations Mandated Territory,
nominally British but governed by the Union, which restored civilian govern-
ment in 1921 and, for administrative convenience, added Walvis Bay to the
area on 1 October the following year. That status remained unchanged until
the initiation, in the 1970s, of negotiations designed to lead to the creation of
an independent state. The South African government, fearing that the new
country would be led by members of the militant South West Africa People’s
Organization (SWAPO) and not wanting to lose an important port and mili-
tary base, reasserted control of Walvis Bay on 1 September 1977, making it
part of Cape Province. On 4 November, the General Assembly of the United
Nations declared that action null and void, a resolution confirmed by the
Security Council on 28 July 1978, but South Africa refused to budge until 15
January 1993, when (as it began to dismantle its apartheid policies and devel-
op contacts with black Africa) it agreed to a joint administration with the
government of Namibia, which had been created from South-West Africa
three years earlier. Then, on 1 March 1994, as diplomatic relations continued
to improve, Walvis Bay was ceded to the young state.
 WATSON-WENTWORTH, CHARLES (1730–1782) • 565
See also PENGUIN ISLANDS.

WAR AND COLONIAL OFFICE. See COLONIAL OFFICE.

WAR OF 1812 (1812–1815). See ANGLO-AMERICAN WAR OF 1812

(1812–1815).

WASHINGTON ISLAND. Washington Island, 5.5 square miles in area, lies

in the central Pacific Ocean at 4° 41´ North and 160° 22´ West, some 1,100
miles south of Hawaii and about 90 miles northwest of Fanning Island, its
nearest neighbor. The land’s existence was first reported to Americans and
Europeans by Edward Fanning, a citizen of the United States and captain of
the whaler Betsy, who sighted it on 12 June 1798 (the day after passing
Fanning Island); “with the unananimous approbation of every individual on
board,” he named the territory after George Washington, his country’s first
president. On 3 September 1859, Gerritt Judd claimed the atoll in the name
of the U.S. and the American Guano Company, but the firm opted to concen-
trate on resources elsewhere so permanent occupation began in 1860 when
Henry English, a British subject, expanded the coconut production enterprise
he had established on Fanning eight years earlier. That settlement allowed
the British government to dispatch Lieutenant Jasper Nichols on the sloop
HMS Cormorant to annex the island on 29 May 1889. On 27 January 1916,
along with Fanning and Ocean Islands, it was incorporated within the
crown colony of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands. After English sold his
business in 1864, Washington (now also known as Teraina) experienced
several changes of ownership before being acquired in 1935 by Burns Philp
& Company, an Australian firm that produced copra under the name of
Fanning Island Plantations Ltd. When the Gilbert Islands won independence
on 12 July 1979, the atoll became part of the Republic of Kiribati, which
bought the coconut business from Burns Philp in 1983. Copra production
remains the principal economic activity.
See also CAROLINE ISLAND.

WATSON-WENTWORTH, CHARLES, MARQUESS OF ROCKING-

HAM (1730–1782). Rockingham served as prime minister of Great Britain
on two occasions, both of which were dogged by problems in North Ameri-
ca. The fifth (but only surviving) son of Thomas Watson-Wentworth (the
first marquess) and his wife, Mary, Charles was born on 13 May 1730,
succeeded to the marquessate on 14 December 1750, took his seat in the
House of Lords (the upper chamber in Britain’s bicameral legislature) on 21
May 1751, and by 1765 was leading a faction opposed to the policies of
Prime Minister George Grenville. King George III disliked Grenville, con-
566 • WATSON-WENTWORTH, CHARLES (1730–1782)
sidering him insolent and verbose, so the relationship between the two men
gradually worsened until, on 10 July, the monarch’s patience ran out. Gren-
ville was dismissed and, three days later, replaced by Watson-Wentworth
even though the marquess had never occupied a government office.
The new administration’s immediate concern was American reaction to
the Stamp Act, which Grenville had steered through parliament at the begin-
ning of the year and which had elicited vigorous protests, including several
street riots, from the colonists, who saw no reason why they should be taxed
by a body on which they were not represented. Initially, the marquess in-
sisted on enforcement of the new regulations, which required that all official
documents and newspapers used in the thirteen colonies were printed on
paper that was produced in London and carried an embossed revenue stamp,
with the tax paid in sterling, not in colonial currencies. However, under
pressure from a divided cabinet and from British traders who feared that their
business would be affected, he mellowed and parliament voted to repeal the
legislation—but only because the repeal went hand in hand with a Declarato-
ry Act that asserted Britain’s right “to make laws and statutes of sufficient
force and validity to bind the colonies and people of America . . . in all cases
whatsoever.” The king approved both measures on 18 March 1766, but
Rockingham—a poor orator and equally poor organizer—was unable to unite
his cabinet in support of his policies and differed with the monarch over the
appointment of ministers. On 30 July the same year, George dispensed with
his services and made William Pitt the Elder prime minister in his stead.
For the next 16 years, Rockingham was out of office but, nonetheless, re-
mained an influential parliamentary figure, opposing successive governments
on their policies toward Ireland and the North American colonies and allow-
ing the charismatic Edmund Burke to act as spokesman for the faction he led.
Watson-Wentworth’s support for repeal of the Stamp Act left him open to
criticism that he had backed down from his original position as a result of the
civil disturbances in the thirteen colonies and thus had, in practice, encour-
aged the colonists to use violence as a means of achieving their political
ends. Nevertheless, he consistently argued for conciliation and, while con-
demning behavior such as the settlers’ destruction of East India Company
tea cargoes in Boston in December 1773 and insisting on parliament’s right
to impose taxes on the American Empire, he blamed the British government
for the outbreak of the American Revolution in 1775. When Prime Minister
Frederick North, Lord North, resigned on 22 March 1782, in the wake of
Britain’s defeat at Yorktown on 19 October 1781, during the American
Revolutionary War, the king again asked Rockingham to form a govern-
ment. Believing that the war could not be won, the marquess immediately
took steps to begin peace negotiations with the colonists’ leaders, but he
died, victim of an influenza epidemic, on 1 July, before the discussions could
be completed.
 WATSON-WENTWORTH, CHARLES (1730–1782) • 567
WEIHAIWEI. On 27 March 1898, China granted Russia a 25-year lease of
Port Arthur (now Lüshunkou), which lay at the tip of the Liaodong Peninsula
and controlled maritime routes in the northern Yellow Sea, including those to
the busy harbor at Tientsin (now Tianjin), where Britain had an important
trading base and where France, Germany, and Japan also had political and
commercial interests. Prime Minister Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, marquess of
Salisbury, responded with a note to British representatives in Peking, the
Chinese capital, pointing out that “as the balance of power [in the region] is
materially altered by the cession of Port Arthur to Russia, it is therefore
necessary to obtain a lease of Weihaiwei,” a territory on the eastern tip of the
Shandong Peninsula, some 80 miles across the Yellow Sea from Port Arthur.
The lease, covering “the island of Liu Kung and all the islands in the Bay of
Wei-hai-wei and a belt of land 10 English miles wide along the entire coast
line of the Bay of Wei-hai-wei,” was signed on 1 July, but by then the first
British troops had already moved into their garrison, arriving on 24 May.
Initially, the lease was to last for as long as the Russians remained in Port
Arthur, but after Japan prevailed in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905 it
was extended for the period that the Japanese occupied the settlement.
Renamed Port Edward, Weihaiwei became an important summer station
for Royal Navy vessels in the eastern Pacific, but by 1901 the government
had decided that it no longer had significant strategic value and replaced the
naval administration with a civil authority led by Stewart Lockhart, who had
long experience as a colonial official in Hong Kong. There had been hopes
that Lockhart could use his contacts with Hong Kong merchants to develop
Weihaiwei as a trading port, but the surrounding mountains produced little of
value for export and overland communications were poor. Instead, the settle-
ment became a summer vacation resort for Britons who wanted to escape
Hong Kong’s oppressive heat and humidity and a sanatorium for naval per-
sonnel. In 1909, Sir Frederick Lugard, Hong Kong’s governor, suggested
that sovereignty over the area should revert to China in return for perpetual
control over the New Territories of Hong Kong, but that suggestion was not
pursued by the British government, which relinquished the release voluntari-
ly on 1 October 1930 and returned weihaiwei to Chinese administrators, who
permitted its continued use as a British naval base until 8 March 1938, when
it was occupied by Japanese forces.
See also CHAMBERLAIN, JOSEPH (1836–1914).

WELENSKY, RAPHAEL “ROY” (1907–1991). A devoted anglophile

even though he had not a drop of British blood in his veins, Welensky was
prime minister of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland from 1956
until 1963, striving to keep control of the territory in the hands of the minor-
ity white community while Britain was insisting on black African majority
rule. The son of Michael Welensky (the Lithuanian proprietor of an insalu-
568 • WELENSKY, RAPHAEL “ROY” (1907–1991)
brious boardinghouse) and his Afrikaner wife, Leah, Roy was born in Salis-
bury (now Harare), Southern Rhodesia, on 20 January 1907, the 13th of 14
children. Raised in poverty (later, he claimed that, as a lad, he “swam bare-
arsed in the Makabusi River with many piccanins”), he left school at 14,
worked as storeman for three years, and then, in 1924, took a job as fireman
on the railroads, supplementing his income from success as a heavyweight
boxer. In 1928, he moved to Wankie (now Hwange) in Northern Rhodesia,
where involvement with trade unions brought both experience of politics and
a reputation for facing up to rail company bosses—a combination of attrib-
utes that propelled him into the protectorate’s legislature in 1938 and, in
1941, to an appointment as the area’s director of manpower, a critical office
throughout World War II, when Northern Rhodesia’s copper resources were
in great demand.
After the conflict ended, Welensky forced the British South Africa Com-
pany (which had administered the territory from the early 1890s until 1924)
to surrender its mineral rights to the Northern Rhodesia government, a diplo-
matic success that added significantly to the protectorate’s income. He also
attempted to persuade the British government to amalgamate Northern and
Southern Rhodesia under a single administration then, when the proposal
was turned down (primarily because Britain would not consider any arrange-
ment that entrenched white majority rule), changed tack and argued for fed-
eration. That plan had more success, with the British government convinced
by economic arguments for the links and hoping that a Federation of Rhode-
sia and Nyasaland, with blacks and whites involved in government, would
eventually become a multiracial, independent state.
Roy Welensky became prime minister of the Federation on 1 November
1956, succeeding Sir Godfrey Huggins, who resigned after failing to con-
vince Britain to grant the territory dominion status. He supported British
action at the time of the Suez Crisis a few days later and, over the next few
years, did much to attract overseas investment, develop economic infrastruc-
ture, and strengthen the armed forces. However, many white Northern Rho-
desians felt, rightly, that much of the financial benefit of federation was
accruing to their Southern Rhodesian counterparts, and black Africans found
their progress toward involvement in government glacially slow at a time
when black majority rule was becoming the norm in other European colonies
on the continent. As tensions increased, riots broke out in Nyasaland early in
1959, Welensky dispatched troops to keep order, and an investigative com-
mission, sent by the British government later in the year, described the condi-
tions as those of a police state. Welensky believed that the tide of African
nationalism could be kept at bay by economic progress and opposed sugges-
tions that individual territories should be allowed to secede from the federa-
tion. However, Britain was keen to decolonize and had world political opin-
 WEST AFRICA SQUADRON • 569
ion behind it so Nyasaland and Northern Rhodesia were granted indepen-
dence (as Malawi and Zambia, respectively) and the Federation was dis-
solved on 31 December 1963.
Welensky played an important role in shaping the arrangements for the
transfer of federal resources to the component units, making sure that South-
ern Rhodesia got the lion’s share of the well-equipped armed forces and thus
providing a strong military on which Ian Smith, the crown colony’s prime
minister, could rely when he made a unilateral declaration of independence
(UDI) from the United Kingdom two years later. Welensky opposed that
move, arguing that Southern Rhodesia deserved its freedom but regarding the
UDI as illegal, and also objected to the declaration of a republic in 1969.
Southern Rhodesia eventually became independent, as Zimbabwe, in 1980
and the following year—in failing health and true to his claim that he “could
not live in a country where they [black Africans] were in control”—he
moved to Britain. He died at Blandford Forum, in southern England, on 5
December 1991 after suffering a heart attack. Obituarists condemned Welen-
sky’s white supremacist philosophy but conceded that no individual could
have held the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland together and recognized
that he had risen from a childhood of grinding poverty to shape the politics of
south-central Africa.
See also BANDA, HASTINGS KAMUZU (1898?–1997); MACLEOD,
IAIN NORMAN (1913–1970).

WEST AFRICA SQUADRON. In 1808, the year after the passage of the
Abolition of the Slave Trade Act, parliament authorized the Royal Navy to
form a West Africa Squadron that would intercept vessels attempting to
circumvent the law by carrying slaves to the West Indies and North America
from the Gold Coast and other locations along the shoreline of West Africa.
Initially, because Britain was at war with France, the navy could commit just
one sloop and an aging frigate to the task. Moreover, service on the patrol
ships was unpopular because malaria and other tropical diseases were rife in
the region, and success rates were low because powers to impound vessels
flying the flags of foreign states were limited. Also, the cost of the venture
was much criticized at home, even by some abolitionists. Nevertheless, the
size of the squadron rose after the struggles with Napoleonic France ended in
1815 so by mid-century some 25 ships and 2,000 men were committed to the
task. Freetown (later the administrative headquarters of British West Africa
and capital of Sierra Leone) became the center of operations, with an addi-
tional base on Fernando Po, and supply depots on Ascension Island from
1821 and at Cape Town, in Cape Colony, from 1832. Diplomatic negotia-
tions led to treaties that allowed British naval captains to board slave clippers
used by merchants from Brazil, the United States, and other countries. Also,
government representatives put pressure on African chiefs to end their partic-
570 • WEST FLORIDA
ipation in the slave trade, often replacing those who refused with more com-
pliant leaders, as at Lagos in 1851, and thus furthering colonial influence. By
the 1860s, the Squadron had taken control of about 1,600 slave ships, freeing
around 150,000 African captives, and the transatlantic trade in human lives
was ended, allowing the Navy to concentrate on the Indian Ocean and the
slave markets in Zanzibar.
See also SOUTHERN NIGERIA.

WEST FLORIDA. The provisions of the Treaty of Paris, which formally

ended the Seven Years’ War on 10 February 1763, transferred control of all
of France’s Louisiana possessions east of the Mississippi River (with the
exception of New Orleans) to Great Britain, along with Spain’s Florida
colony. British administrators considered Florida much too large to manage
as a single unit so they divided it into two, naming the area located between
the Apalachicola and Mississippi Rivers, and south of the 31st parallel of
latitude, West Florida. The region was of considerable strategic importance
to Britain because it lay adjacent to the Spanish Empire west of the Missis-
sippi, and offered potential bases for the Royal Navy on the Gulf of Mexico.
However, the European population was small so George Johnstone, the first
governor, had to attract settlers in order to enhance revenues and emphasize
British sovereignty. He approached the task by attempting to develop good
relations with Native American groups (who traded furs in return for guns,
rum, and textiles), by establishing a legislature (in 1766), and by offering
grants of land to immigrants.
Despite an overbearing personality, regular disagreements with military
leaders, and a willingness to go to war with the Creek Indians that annoyed
his masters in London, Johnstone laid a stable foundation of civic order that
helped to attract a considerable number of settlers from Europe and other
areas of North America in the 1760s as well as a further influx (mostly from
British colonies farther north) from 1772–1773. Some of those immigrants
were able to grow indigo, rice, and tobacco on good soils along the Missis-
sippi, but much of the land lacked nutrients so most farmers turned to crops,
such as potatoes and rice, that could be produced on poor soils but had
limited export potential. Cattle raising, fruit growing, and, in particular, ex-
ploitation of timber resources added to the economic output, but the new
arrivals had little time in which to develop their enterprises. West Florida
remained loyal to the crown when other North American colonies rebelled in
1775 (see AMERICAN REVOLUTION; AMERICAN REVOLUTIONARY
WAR (1775–1783); THE THIRTEEN COLONIES), but on 21 June 1779
Spain also declared war on Great Britain and on 10 May 1781 forced the
colony into surrender with the capture of Pensacola (the headquarters of
 WEST INDIES FEDERATION • 571
British administration). Another Treaty of Paris (see PARIS, TREATY OF
(1783)) ended the war on 3 September 1783 and returned both West Florida
and East Florida to Spanish control.

WEST INDIES FEDERATION. On 3 January 1958, Britain linked twelve

of its Caribbean colonies in a federation that, it hoped, would eventually
become an independent state, but the vision was never fulfilled, primarily
because of insularity and personal rivalries. Scholars still debate the relative
importance of the factors that led to the collapse of the experiment but point
out that economic integration was limited (for example, there was no free
movement of labor between the component territories because the wealthier
islands feared inundatation by migrants from poorer areas) and that, political-
ly, there was little common purpose, partly because each territory retained its
own governing assembly, partly because the federal concept had limited
popular support. Moreover, many of the communities, spread over more than
8,000 square miles of sea, had little contact with each other and the popula-
tions of the smaller islands felt that politicans from Jamaica and from Trini-
dad and Tobago—the most populous members of the group—would have
little concern for their interests.
The dissent was particularly strong in Jamaica, where Alexander Busta-
mante and his Jamaica Labour Party argued that moves toward indepen-
dence were proceeding too slowly and complained that their colony was
providing nearly half of the Federation’s funds but electing only 17 of the 45
members to its House of Representatives. A referendum, held on 19 Septem-
ber 1961, showed that 54 percent of the voters on the island agreed, support-
ing secession, so Jamaica withdrew and, on 6 August 1962, became an inde-
pendent state. The United Kingdom attempted to bind the remaining colo-
nies into a new federal community, with the colony of Trinidad and Tobago,
which had 60 percent of the unit’s population, as the first among political
equals, but that territory, too, balked at the budgetary implications and also
opted for independence, achieved just 25 days after Jamaica won control of
its own affairs. Despite the setbacks, Britain continued efforts to weld its
remaining possessions in the region into a single state but received only
limited support and formally dissolved the unit on 31 May 1962. Ultimately,
most of the other island colonies also became independent countries, Barba-
dos on 30 November 1966, Grenada on 7 February 1974, Dominica on 3
November 1978, Saint Lucia on 22 February 1979, Saint Vincent and the
Grenadines on 27 October 1979, Antigua and Barbuda on 1 November
1981, and Saint Kitts and Nevis on 19 September 1983. Montserrat re-
mained a crown colony until 1983, when it was converted into a British
Dependent Territory, as were the Cayman Islands (which was a dependen-
572 • WEST PAKISTAN
cy of Jamaica from 1670 until 4 July 1959), the Turks and Caicos Islands
(which was detached from Jamaica on the same date), and Anguilla (which
was separated from St. Kitts and Nevis in 1980).
See also BRITISH GUIANA; LEEWARD ISLANDS; LENNOX-BOYD,
ALAN TINDAL (1904–1983); MANLEY, NORMAN WASHINGTON
(1893–1969); VIRGIN ISLANDS; WINDWARD ISLANDS.

WEST PAKISTAN. See PAKISTAN.

WESTERN AUSTRALIA. The geography of Australia’s west coast was

known to Europeans from the early 17th century, but the harsh desert envi-
ronment discouraged settlers until 1826, when (primarily in order to preempt
French claims to the area) Britain established a small garrison on the site of
present-day Albany. The following year, James Stirling, a naval officer with
experience of secret missions, was ordered by the British government to visit
the area and assess its economic potential. His report, overemphasizing the
region’s commercial prospects, persuaded the British government to dispatch
HMS Challenger, a 28-gun frigate, from southern Africa with a detachment
of marines and instructions that the captain, Charles Fremantle, should de-
clare British sovereignty over “all of that part of New Holland [as Australia
was still known in some government departments] which is not included
within the territory of New South Wales,” a task achieved on 2 May 1829.
Stirling, appointed governor of King George IV’s new acquisition, arrived
on 31 May to establish a community (initially known as the Swan River
Colony but renamed Western Australia on 6 February 1832) that consisted of
free citizens rather than the felons and petty criminals who had been deported
from Great Britain and provided the majority of settlers elsewhere on the
continent (see NEW SOUTH WALES; QUEENSLAND).
Early development was slow, inhibited by the desert climate, infertile
soils, and stuggles with indigenous aboriginal groups. A lack of manpower
forced landowners to request Britain to enhance the labor force with con-
victs, the first of whom arrived in 1850, but although many of those involun-
tary expatriates were put to work developing public infrastructure, sheep
rearing remained the principal source of income until the 1880s, when
Queenslanders introduced cattle ranching to the tropical grasslands of the
Kimberley district and the discovery of gold attracted miners to Halls Creek.
Long after Britain’s other Australian colonies had been granted some
measure of autonomy over internal affairs, Western Australia was still being
administered by a governor and a legislative council consisting solely of
members he nominated. The improving economy led to increasing demands
for self-government, but British authorities were reluctant to concede control
to citizens of a land that, even by the late 1880s, had only some 50,000
 WESTMINSTER, TREATY OF (1674) • 573
Europeans in an area of nearly 1,000,000 square miles. In 1889, however, the
London parliament passed a Constitution Act approving the introduction of a
bicameral administrative system, with an elected legislative assembly and a
legislative council, appointed by the governor, that would act as a review
group. The colonial power agreed that the council would become an elected
body “When 6 years shall have elapsed from the date of the first summon-
ing” or if Western Australia’s population reached 60,000—a target surpassed
in 1893, much sooner than anyone had expected, because further discoveries
of gold in the Murchison River area (in 1891), at Coolgardie (1892), and at
Kalgoorlie (1893) brought a flood of fortune seekers, the majority of whom
supported the moves that led to the colony joining the Commonwealth of
Australia on 1 January 1901.

WESTERN SAMOA. See SAMOA.

WESTMINSTER, STATUTE OF (1931). On 11 December 1931, King

George V gave royal assent to the Statute of Westminster, an act of parlia-
ment that placed Britain’s six dominions—Australia, Canada, Ireland,
New Zealand, Newfoundland, and the Union of South Africa—on an
equal international footing with the United Kingdom and thus provided
legal backing for the Balfour Declaration of five years earlier. Although the
legislation gave each dominion the right to shape its own foreign policy and
to send ambassadors to foreign states, the most important political implica-
tion was the termination of Britain’s power to pass laws relating to any of the
territories “otherwise than at the request and at the consent” of that domin-
ion’s government. Each dominion recognized the monarch as head of state
and Britain retained certain residual powers (to pass legislation relating to
individual Australian states, for example), but the statute, in effect, gave all
six full independence and marked a critical step in British withdrawal from
Empire.
See also COMMONWEALTH OF NATIONS.

WESTMINSTER, TREATY OF (1674). The Treaty of Westminster,

signed on 19 February 1674, ended the third Anglo-Dutch War, which had
begun in 1672 after King Charles II had secretly committed England to join
France in a campaign against the Netherlands and ended two years later
when parliament—afraid that close alliance with France would lead to a
reintroduction of Roman Catholicism to English churches—refused to sanc-
tion further funds for the venture. One provision of the treaty declared that
“whatsoever countries, islands, towns, ports, castles, or forts have or shall be
taken on both sides, since the time the late unhappy war broke out, either in
Europe or elsewhere, shall be restored to the former lord or proprietor, in the
574 • WILLOUGHBYLAND
same condition they shall be in when the peace itself shall be proclaimed.”
As a result, New York, which the Dutch had captured in July 1673, was
returned to English control and the Caribbean islands of Saba, Sint Eustatius
(see SAINT EUSTACE), and Tobago, all of which England had invaded in
1672, were restored to the Dutch. Tortola should also have been returned but
remained in English hands and became part of the Virgin Islands.

WILLOUGHBYLAND. See SURINAM.

WILSON, JAMES HAROLD (1916–1995). Harold Wilson—prime minis-

ter from 1964–1970 and from 1974–1976—oversaw late stages of Britain’s
post–World War II withdrawal from Empire. The son of chemist James
Herbert Wilson and his wife, Ethel, he was born in Huddersfield on 11
March 1916 and educated at Oxford University, entering parliament in the
Labour Party cause after the general election of 1945 and (somewhat to his
surprise) immediately getting a post as a parliamentary secretary at the Min-
istry of Works in Prime Minister Clement Attlee’s administration. Two
years later, on 10 July 1947, he was made secretary of state for overseas trade
then, on 29 September, at the age of 31, entered the cabinet as president of
the Board of Trade. On 23 April 1951, he resigned from that post, citing
opposition to government proposals to meet the cost of fighting the Korean
War by levying charges on users of the previously free National Health
Service. At the general election held in October of that year, Labour was
voted out of office and remained so for more than a decade, but, for Wilson,
that time was productive because he earned a reputation as a witty parliamen-
tary orator, strengthened his standing with political colleagues, and on 23
February 1963 was elected leader of the party. Contrasting Labour enthu-
siasm for the “white heat of the [scientific] revolution” with the “grouse
moor” image of the leaders of the Conservative Party, he became prime
minister on 16 October 1964 after a narrow general election victory.
Wilson’s administration inherited a large balance of payments deficit from
the outgoing Conservative Party government and so focused on economic
issues, which, in turn, shaped many foreign affairs policies. For several
years, Britain’s military presence in the Far East had been shrinking, partly
because colonies had become independent and thus responsible for their own
defense but also because the armed forces faced recruitment problems and
because the financial cost of maintaining troops at bases around the globe
was a drain on the country’s resources. On 18 July 1967, Denis Healey,
Wilson’s defence secretary, announced that British troops would be with-
drawn from “East of Suez” by the end of 1976 and in January the following
year the prime minister truncated that timetable, declaring that the country’s
 WITULAND • 575
armed forces would be “concentrated in Europe” by 1971. Much criticized at
the time, those decisions were regarded by many later observers merely as a
natural stage in the dismantling of the United Kingdom’s imperial role.
However, Wilson refused to grant independence to Southern Rhodesia,
where the political leaders of the white minority resisted black rule, and he
encouraged the United Nations to impose economic sanctions on the territory
after it declared independence unilaterally in 1965. Also, he supported the
governments of former colonial territories that faced rebellion, as in the case
of Nigeria during the civil war of 1967–1970. At home, the difficult eco-
nomic situation led to the introduction of austerity measures (including high-
er charges for National Health Service dental treatment), and those measures
contributed to a Labour Party defeat at the general election on 18 June 1970.
Wilson remained Labour’s leader and won a narrow victory at the next
election on 28 February 1974 but, to the surprise of most observers, resigned
on 16 March 1976, claiming that he was mentally and physically exhausted.
He died in London on 23 May 1995.
See also ADEN; ADEN EMERGENCY (1963–1967); SOUTH ARABIA,
FEDERATION OF.

WINDWARD ISLANDS. On 1 April 1833, Britain grouped its possessions

in the southern area of the Lesser Antilles (an archipelago at the eastern edge
of the Caribbean Sea) into the Windward Islands colony, which was renamed
the Federal Colony of the Windward Islands in 1871 and then the Territory
of the Windward Islands in 1956. The colony included Barbados (until
1885, when it became a separate colony), Dominica (from 1940, when it
transferred from the British Leeward Islands), Grenada, the Grenadines,
Saint Lucia (added in 1838), Saint Vincent, and Tobago (until 1889, when
it united with Trinidad). Although each island retained its own institutions
and laws, the arrangement was never popular because communities prided
themselves on their identities, emphasized their differences, and resented the
lack of a resident governor. The Windwards joined the West Indies Federa-
tion when that organization formed in 1958 but was dissolved on 1 January
1960 so when the Federation broke up in 1962 the islands became individual
British colonies.
See also BRITISH WEST INDIES.

WITULAND. The provisions of the Heligoland-Zanzibar Treaty, signed

on 1 July 1890, included the transfer of the German protectorate of Wituland,
on the East African coast, to Great Britain. The 1,200-square-mile territory,
consisting primarily of the small settlement of Witu and extensive areas of
rubber-producing hardwood forest, was of strategic value because it contrib-
uted to British politicians’ vision of a chain of colonies extending from
576 • WITULAND
Egypt (in the north of the continent) to Cape Colony (in the south) and
because its acquisition helped to contain German expansion in the region.
The initial weeks were stormy for the new regime because Germany de-
manded retributive action against the murderers of nine of its forestry work-
ers, who had felled trees that, according to local residents, were the home of
powerful spirits. In March the following year, after several months of con-
flict, the British government transferred administrative responsibility to the
Imperial British East Africa Company (IBEAC) and some 250 policemen
were transported from India to maintain law and order, but a series of raids
on rural dwellings convinced the firm that expenses would exceed likely
profits so on 31 March 1893 it withdrew from the arrangement and control
passed to the consul-general in Zanzibar. Then, on 1 July 1895, the area was
absorbed within the East Africa Protectorate, which was created when the
Foreign Office relieved IBEAC of responsibility for governing the lands that
later became the core of Kenya Colony.
 Z
ZANZIBAR. In the mid-19th century, the Zanzibar archipelago, lying off
the east coast of Africa, was a major commercial hub, its wealth based on
trade in ivory, slaves, and spices. The United States had established a consu-
late in 1837 and Great Britain had followed four years later, partly because
of the area’s economic importance but also in an effort to curb the traffic in
human lives. Eventually, on 5 June 1873, Sultan Barghash ibn Said agreed to
close the slave market, a decision undoubtedly influenced by the threat of a
naval blockade of the islands but, more importantly, by the negotiating skills
of Dr. John Kirk. Kirk had accompanied David Livingstone on an expedi-
tion along the Zambezi River from 1858–1864 (he described the missionary
as “most unsafe” and “out of his mind”) then, from 1866, served for 20 years
in consular positions at Zanzibar, becoming the sultan’s confidant and the
power behind the throne. His influence was critical again in 1885–1886,
when he encouraged Barghash to accept the loss of much of the African
mainland over which the sultan claimed sovereignty; Britain and Germany
divided the territory between them, with Britain taking the land between the
Tana and Umbe Rivers that became the East Africa Protectorate (and, from
1920, Kenya Colony), leaving the ruler of Zanzibar with only nominal au-
thority over a 10-mile-wide coastal strip that stretched from the Tana to the
Rovuma River, near Cape Delgado (now in Mozambique).
In July 1890, the British government transferred control of Heligoland to
Germany in return for a German agreement to refrain from interfering in
Zanzibar (see HELIGOLAND-ZANZIBAR TREATY (1890)) and on 7 No-
vember the islands were made a protectorate. The coastal strip was ac-
corded the same status (as Kenya Protectorate) on 1 July 1895, and by the
end of the century the focus of seaborne trade had moved to that area of the
African mainland, concentrated in Mombasa. Khalid—Barghash’s eldest
son—attempted to seize the throne following the sudden death of Sultan
Hamad ibn Thuwayni (whom Khalid allegedly poisoned) in August 1896,
but he ruled for only three days before his palace was shelled by Royal Navy
warships and he was forced to flee to German East Africa (see ZANZIBAR
WAR (1896)). British officials installed the compliant Hamud ibn Mo-

577
578 • ZANZIBAR WAR (1896)
hammed in his place then, for more than six decades, administered Zanzibar
through him and his successors, one of whom (Khalifa ibn Harub), in 1917,
declared himself the child of his majesty’s government, “always ready loyal-
ly to carry out its wishes.” Political parties began to form after World War II,
but the first elections organized on the basis of full adult suffrage, in January
1961, failed to produce a clear result. A rerun in June ended with a victory
for the Arab-dominated Zanzibar Nationalist Party and its smaller ally, the
Zanzibar and Pemba People’s Party, but the event was marred by serious
interracial rioting in which 68 people died.
Initial attempts to take further steps toward self-government foundered on
the rocks of a community deeply divided on ethnic grounds and unable to
reach agreement on such matters as the size of the legislature and the timing
of elections, but the islands of Zanzibar eventually achieved independence as
a constitutional monarchy, with the sultan as head of state, on 10 December
1963. The coastal strip became part of an independent Kenya two days later,
but the new sultanate survived for just one month. On 12 January 1964, as
many as 12,000 citizens of Arab descent died in a revolt that overthrew the
constitution, creating a People’s Republic of Zanzibar and Pemba with
Sheikh Abied Amani Karume, leader of the, primarily African, Afro-Shirazi
Party as president. Then, on 20 April, Zanzibar united with Tanganyika to
form the United Republic of Tanganyika and Zanzibar, which was renamed
the United Republic of Tanzania on 29 October.
See also BRITISH EAST AFRICA; BURTON, RICHARD FRANCIS
(1821–1890); MACKINNON, WILLIAM (1823–1893); MOLUCCAS; SA-
MOA; THOMSON, JOSEPH (1858–1895); UNIVERSITIES’ MISSION TO
CENTRAL AFRICA.

ZANZIBAR WAR (1896). The war that is considered by some writers to be

the shortest in history was fought over the succession to the sultanate of
Zanzibar. The incumbent—Hamad ibn Thuwayni—died suddenly on 25
August 1896, allegedly poisoned by his cousin, Khalid ibn Barghash. Khalid,
supported by influential families and with an army some 2,800 strong, en-
tered the palace and declared himself sultan, but Zanzibar was a British
protectorate and the colonial authorities claimed that, under the terms of a
treaty approved by Sultan Barghash (Khalid’s father) in 1886, the successor
to the throne had to get their approval before taking office.
At 8 a.m. on 27 August, General Lloyd Matthews, the commander of the
British forces in the area, issued Khalid an ultimatum, telling him to leave the
palace within an hour or face the consequences. Shortly after 9 a.m., with no
answer received, the five Royal Navy warships in Zanzibar’s harbor
launched a bombardment of the residence, setting it on fire and, after less
than an hour, forcing Khalid to take refuge in the German consulate. Reject-
ing demands to surrender him (on the grounds that the extradition treaty
 ZIMBABWE AFRICAN NATIONAL UNION • 579
between Germany and Great Britain excluded political prisoners), the Ger-
mans moved him to Dar es Salaam, in German East Africa, but he was
captured in 1916 and exiled, first to Saint Helena and then (with an entour-
age that included two wives and numerous relatives and servants) to the
Seychelles. In 1922, Winston Churchill, the secretary of state for the colo-
nies (see COLONIAL OFFICE), approved his transfer to Mombasa, in the
Kenya Protectorate, after Sir Eustace Edward Twistleton-Wyckham-
Fiennes, the Seychelles’ governor, had complained about the cost of incar-
cerating the group. Khalid died five years later without returning to the
islands of Zanzibar. After his hasty departure in 1896, Britain installed the
more biddable Hamud ibn Mohammed as sultan then ruled the territory
through him and his successors until it won independence in 1963.

ZIMBABWE AFRICAN NATIONAL LIBERATION ARMY. See ZIM-

BABWE AFRICAN NATIONAL UNION.

ZIMBABWE AFRICAN NATIONAL UNION. The Zimbabwe African

National Union (ZANU) fought for nearly two decades to end white minority
rule in Southern Rhodesia then formed a government when the crown
colony won independence, as the Republic of Zimbabwe, in 1980. The or-
ganization was founded when several senior members of Joshua Nkomo’s
Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU) became so disenchanted by the
lack of progress toward black emancipation that, led by Ndabaningi Sithole
(a Methodist minister), they broke away on 8 August 1963, eschewing nego-
tiation in favor of militancy. Tensions between the rival black groups flared
into violence early the following year, Sithole and other alleged ringleaders
(including Nkomo and Robert Mugabe, ZANU’s secretary general) were
arrested, then, on 4 July, ZANU guerillas—intending both to terrorize the
white community and to win respect from black citizens—killed farmer Pe-
trus Oberholzer in front of his family. On 26 August, the Southern Rhodesia
government made membership of the group a criminal offense, but its sup-
porters moved to Tanzania and, with Chinese support, established a Zimbab-
we African National Liberation Army (ZANLA) commanded by London-
trained barrister Herbert Chitepo. From 1972, Chitepo also launched assaults
on the territory from Mozambique, concentrating largely on rural areas (by
attacking white-owned farms and by laying land mines on roads in an at-
tempt to disrupt the economy, for example).
In February 1969, the Rhodesian courts found Sithole guilty of inciting his
followers to assassinate Ian Smith, the colony’s prime minister, and sen-
tenced him to six years’ hard labor. However, after hearing the sentence, he
disassociated himself “in word, thought or deed from any subversive activ-
ities, from any terrorist activities, and from any form of violence”—a state-
580 • ZIMBABWE AFRICAN PEOPLE’S UNION
ment that precipitated a steep decline in his reputation among hard-line na-
tionalists. Mugabe, given his freedom in 1974, took advantage of Sithole’s
diminishing influence and the murder of Chitepo in March 1975 to assert
control of ZANU and mastermind ZANLA’s attacks. Simultaneously, South
Africa was adopting a policy of détente with black governments on the
continent and Portugal was withdrawing from Mozambique, so the Southern
Rhodesian government lost its most important international buttresses at a
time when the cost of counterinsurgency measures was having a significant
impact on the colony’s economy and many of the white population were
emigrating, fearing for their lives.
With majority rule seemingly inevitable, Smith negotiated with moderate
black leaders, notably Bishop Abel Muzorewa and Ndabaningi Sithole, to
form a multiracial government in 1979, but ZANU and ZAPU both refused
to take part in talks, believing that the proposals left the whites in a privileged
position. The fighting continued until all-party talks in London led to a
ceasefire on 21 December and to an agreement that Southern Rhodesia would
become independent as the Republic of Zimbabwe, with a black majority
government, on 18 April 1980. At the elections for the new legislature, held
in February, ZANU won 57 of the 100 seats and formed a government led by
Mugabe. Seven years later, under duress, ZAPU merged with ZANU, mak-
ing the country a one-party state.

ZIMBABWE AFRICAN PEOPLE’S UNION. The Zimbabwe African

People’s Union (ZAPU) was one of the principal African nationalist groups
in Southern Rhodesia. Formed by Joshua Nkomo on 17 December 1961, it
was banned by the crown colony’s government on 20 September 1962 fol-
lowing a wave of petrol bombings and arson attacks on churches and schools.
At the time, Nkomo was arguing that independence could be achieved
through diplomatic means, but many ZAPU members were critical of his
leadership style and frustrated by the lack of progress toward black majority
rule. As a result, the organization split on 8 August 1963, with several senior
figures (including Robert Mugabe, later president of Zimbabwe) breaking
away to form the more militant Zimbabwe African National Union
(ZANU). In response, Nkomo formed a People’s Caretaker Council, linked
to ZAPU and designed to provide a legal alternative to ZANU, but in 1965
that, too, was proscribed. Meanwhile, Jason Moyo, one of his deputies, was
organizing a Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA) that would
function as ZAPU’s military wing, be based in Zambia (formerly Northern
Rhodesia), and be armed by the Soviet Union.
From 16 April 1964 until 15 December 1974, Nkomo was held in deten-
tion camps, and ZIPRA mounted a campaign of violence against supporters
of ZANU as well as against the white population. In 1974, however, ZANU
and ZAPU combined, albeit somewhat loosely, as the Patriotic Front, facili-
 ZULULAND • 581
tating a greater degree of cooperation between their forces. Because ZAPU’s
political approach always relied more heavily on negotiation than on insur-
gency, ZIPRA’s organization was never as complex as that of ZANU’s gue-
rilla unit, the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army, but even so, as
the “Bush War” progressed, its tactics became more structured and its weap-
onry more sophisticated, allowing it to shoot down civilian Air Rhodesia
flights with surface-to-air missiles on 3 September 1978 and 12 February
1979; a total of 107 people died in those two attacks (including 10 who were
killed by guerillas after surviving the first crash), and Nkomo was seen
exulting over the success of the 1978 operation in a British Broadcasting
Corporation television interview.
By the second half of the 1970s, the mounting cost of countering the
insurgency was having a serious effect on the Southern Rhodesian economy
and recruitment to the security forces was drying up because many white
settlers were leaving the territory, fearing for their lives. Late in 1979, Prime
Minister Ian Smith conceded that black majority rule was inevitable, the ban
on ZANU and ZAPU was lifted, and elections to a new legislative assembly
were held in February the following year. Voting at those elections split
along tribal lines, with ZAPU (which campaigned under the Patriotic Front
banner) winning only 20 of the 100 seats and polling strongly only in Mata-
beleland, Nkomo’s home territory and a heartland of the Ndebele people.
Robert Mugabe’s ZANU, supported by the majority Shona tribe, took 57 of
the seats and formed the government of the Republic of Zimbabwe on 18
April 1980. Nkomo was given the post of minister for home affairs, but his
relationship with Mugabe was always uneasy and uprisings in Matabeleland
led to accusations that ZAPU was preparing the ground for a coup d’état.
Mugabe sent troops, trained by North Koreans, into the area to quell the
troubles, killing an estimated 20,000 people over a period of three years.
Nkomo escaped to Britain but, in 1987, agreed to merge ZAPU with ZANU,
claiming later that he made the decision in order to end the massacre. For the
next two decades, Zimbabwe was a one-party state, but in November 2008 a
group of dissidents broke away from ZANU and reconstituted the ZAPU
party as a small opposition group.

ZIMBABWE PEOPLE’S REVOLUTIONARY ARMY. See ZIMBAB-

WE AFRICAN PEOPLE’S UNION.

ZULULAND. In the early 19th century, the Zulu were a significant power in
the southeast of the African continent, dominating an area from the Indian
Ocean (in the east) to the Drakensburg Mountains (in the west) and from the
Umzimkulu River (in the north) to the Bashee River (in the south). Contacts
with Britain date from 1824, when Lieutenant Francis Farewell and 25 com-
582 • ZULULAND
panions established a trading post, named Port Natal, on the northern shore
of the Bay of Natal at a site now occupied by the city of Durban. Henry Fynn,
one of the group, was able to treat a stab wound that Shaka, the Zulu king,
had suffered in battle; in gratitude, the monarch granted the community a
strip of land that included 25 miles of coastline and stretched inland for 100
miles. Fynn, who fathered numerous children by a series of Zulu women,
designated himself “King of Natal” but in 1838 the settlement was evacuated
following conflict between the Zulu and the Boer “Voortrekkers,” who had
left Cape Colony in order to escape British rule. The Boers declared an
independent Republic of Natalia, but in 1843 Britain annexed the area, nam-
ing it the Colony of Natal and, in addition, negotiated acquisition of the
territory between the Buffalo and Tugela Rivers from Mpande, the Zulu
monarch.
For more than 30 years, British colonists and the Zulu warriors lived in
relative harmony, but the relationship turned sour in 1878. A decade earlier,
Colonial Secretary Henry Herbert, Lord Carnarvon, had won parliament’s
approval of measures that would merge Britain’s Canadian colonies in a
federation, and he believed that a similar arrangement would bring commer-
cial and political benefits to southern Africa, largely because it would allow
cheap native labor to be utilized in European-owned enterprises across the
region. He ordered Sir Henry Bartle Frere, the high commissioner respon-
sible for the territory, to implement the scheme, but, in order to do that, Frere
first had to bring the Zulu kingdom, which was still independent of Britain,
under his control. Provoking a conflict by issuing an ultimatum that Cetsh-
wayo, the Zulu monarch, was never likely to accept because it would require
him to dismantle his warrior army, Frere—acting without the knowledge of
the British government, which had no desire for war—authorized Lieutenant-
General Frederic Thesiger, Baron Chelmsford, to invade Zulu lands in Janu-
ary 1879 (see ZULU WAR (1879)).
An embarrassing defeat at Isandlwana led to ignominious retreat, but the
British returned five months later, with heavy reinforcements, and destroyed
Ulundi, Cetshwayo’s base, on 4 July. Cetshwayo attempted to escape but was
captured on 28 August, and Sir Garnet Wolseley, who succeeded Frere as
high commissioner in the region, determined to prevent the Zulus from re-
uniting under a single ruler by partitioning the area into 13 districts, each of
which had its own chief. However, the plans to divide and rule collapsed in
civil war, and efforts to end the violence by returning Cetshwayo to the
throne of a smaller Zulu kingdom were foiled by the king’s death, possibly
by poisoning, in February 1884. Cetshwayo was succeeded by his son, Dinu-
zulu, who attempted to shore up his throne by enlisting Boer mercenaries,
who were given extensive grants of land in return for their military services.
When these farmers prepared to set up an independent republic on their
newly acquired territory, Britain stepped in and, on 21 June 1887, annexed
 ZULU WAR (1879) • 583
the area as the crown colony of Zululand. Ten years later, on 30 December
1897, it was incorporated within Natal, whose government wanted access to
the resources of the territory.
See also DISRAELI, BENJAMIN, EARL OF BEACONSFIELD
(1804–1881); RORKE’S DRIFT, BATTLE (OR DEFENSE) OF (22–23
JANUARY 1880).

ZULU WAR (1879). The six-month conflict between British and Zulu
forces in 1879 ended with the absorption of the Zulu kingdom into Britain’s
African Empire. In 1867, Colonial Secretary Henry Herbert, Lord Carnar-
von, successfully steered the British North America Act through parlia-
ment, creating a federal structure for the government of Canada. A decade
later, believing that a similar arrangement in southern Africa would produce
a large pool of cheap native labor that could be employed at white-owned
farms, mines, and plantations, he appointed Sir Henry Bartle Frere to the post
of high commissioner for Southern Africa and charged him with putting the
plan into effect. In order to achieve that end, Frere had to win control of the
independent Zulu nation, ruled by King Cetshwayo, who was unwilling to
submit to British sovereignty.
Britain, with 40,000 men committed to war in Afghanistan (see SECOND
AFGHAN WAR (1878–1880)) and determined, also, to maintain its influ-
ence in the eastern Mediterranean, was in no mood for unnecessary struggles
on a third front, but, even so, in December 1878 Frere issued Cetshwayo an
ultimatum that included a requirement that the Zulu army would disband.
When the monarch refused (unsurprisingly, in view of his people’s warrior
culture), well-armed British troops, led by Lieutenant-General Frederic The-
siger, Baron Chelmsford, advanced into his territory from Natal on 11 Janu-
ary 1879 but, less than two weeks later, were outmaneuvered at the battle of
Isandlwana, suffered heavy casualties, and were left with no option but to
retreat. Embarrassed by the defeat, the British government authorized a sec-
ond invasion, by a heavily reinforced artillery and infantry, in June of the
same year and, despite initial setbacks, eventually routed the Zulu at Ulundi,
Cetshwayo’s principal base, on 4 July. The king fled but was captured on 28
August and detained for three years. Sir Garnet Wolseley, who succeeded
Frere as high commissioner in the region and replaced Chelmsford as com-
mander of the invading army, divided the conquered territory into 13 districts
and placed each under a different chief—a scheme that was intended to
prevent the Zulu from reuniting under a single ruler but which, in practice,
led to strife between tribal factions. Henry Bartle Frere (who referred to
Wolseley’s administrative arrangement as “divide and don’t rule”) was cen-
sured by the government and Chelmsford never led an army into battle again.
584 • ZULU WAR (1879)
See also DISRAELI, BENJAMIN, EARL OF BEACONSFIELD
(1804–1881); GLADSTONE, WILLIAM EWART (1809–1898); RORKE’S
DRIFT, BATTLE (OR DEFENSE) OF (22–23 JANUARY 1880); THIRD
BURMESE WAR (1885); ZULULAND.
 Appendix A

Secretaries of State with Responsibilities for the

Colonies

The secretary of state for the colonies (informally termed the colonial secre-
tary) was the government official responsible for policy in Britain’s North
American possessions from 1768 until 1782 and in other territories from
1854 until 1966. However, from 1782 until 1801 the duties were allocated to
the secretary of state for the Home Department, and from 1801 until 1854 to
the secretary of state for war and the colonies. Also, for much of the century
from 1858, a secretary of state for India exercised political authority over the
subcontinent and adjacent regions; the post was abolished when India won
independence from the United Kingdom in August 1947, but a secretary of
state for Burma held office until that colony, too, became self-governing
early the following year.
In 1925, the post of secretary of state for dominion affairs was created and
the office holder charged with overseeing relations with those former colo-
nies that were considered political equals of the United Kingdom; the coloni-
al secretary concentrated on possessions still held by the crown. In 1947, as
Britain’s worldview changed and decolonization became a priority, the do-
minion secretary’s job was recast and the office retitled to secretary of state
for Commonwealth relations. Then, in 1966, as the Empire dwindled, the
roles of the colonial secretary and the Commonwealth relations secretary
were combined in one secretary of state for Commonwealth affairs. Two
years later, all overseas responsibilities were merged in a Foreign and Com-
monwealth Office, led by a secretary of state for foreign and Commonwealth
affairs, with Commonwealth matters delegated to a minister of state.
Those individuals who have held secretaryships are listed below with the
dates during which they were in office and (for those in post from 1782) their
party allegiance.

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE COLONIES (1768–1782)

Name Term of Office

Wills Hill, earl of Hillsborough 27 February 1768–27 August 1772

585
586 • APPENDIX A
William Legge, earl of 27 August 1772–10 November 1775
Dartmouth
Lord George Germain 10 November 1775–9 February 1782
Welbore Ellis 9 February 1782–8 March 1782

Note: Responsibilities transferred to the secretary of state for the Home De-
partment on 27 March 1782.

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT

Name Term of Office Party

William Petty- 27 March 1782–10 July Whig
Fitzmaurice, earl of 1782
Shelburne
Thomas Townsend 10 July 1782–2 April Whig
1783
Frederick North, Lord 2 April 1783–19 Tory
North December 1783
George Nugent- 19 December 1783–22 Whig
Temple-Grenville, Earl December 1783
Temple
Thomas Townshend, 23 December 1783–5 Whig
Baron Sydney June 1789
William Wyndham 5 June 1789–8 June Tory
Grenville 1791
Henry Dundas 8 June 1791–11 July Tory
1794
William Cavendish- 11 July 1794–30 July Tory
Bentinck, duke of 1801
Portland

Note: Responsibilities transferred to the secretary of state for war and the
colonies on 17 March 1801.
 APPENDIX A • 587
SECRETARY OF STATE FOR WAR AND THE COLONIES

Name Term of Office Party

Robert Hobart, Baron 17 March 1801–12 May Tory
Hobart 1804
John Pratt, Earl Camden 14 May 1804–10 July Tory
1805
Robert Stewart, 10 July 1805–5 Tory
Viscount Castlereagh February 1806
William Windham 5 February 1806–25 Whig
March 1807
Robert Stewart, 25 March 1807–1 Tory
Viscount Castlereagh November 1809
Robert Jenkinson, earl 1 November 1809–11 Tory
of Liverpool June 1812
Henry Bathurst, Earl 11 June 1812–30 April Tory
Bathurst 1827
Frederick Robinson, 30 April 1827–3 Tory
Viscount Goderich September 1827
William Huskisson 3 September 1827–30 Tory
May 1828
Sir George Murray 30 May 1828–22 Tory
November 1830
Frederick Robinson, 22 November 1830–3 Whig
Viscount Goderich April 1833
Edward Stanley 3 April 1833–5 June Whig
1834
Thomas Spring Rice 5 June 1834–14 Whig
November 1834
Arthur Wellesley, duke 17 November 1834–9 Tory
of Wellington December 1834
George Hamilton- 20 December 1834–8 Conservative
Gordon, earl of April 1835
Aberdeen
Charles Grant, Baron 18 April 1835–20 Whig
Glenelg February 1839
588 • APPENDIX A
Constantine Phipps, 20 February 1839–30 Whig
marquess of Normanby August 1839
Lord John Russell 30 August 1839–30 Whig
August 1841
Lord Edward Stanley 30 August 1841–23 Conservative
December 1845
William Gladstone 23 December 1845–27 Conservative
June 1846
Henry Grey, Earl Grey 6 July 1846–21 Whig
February 1852
Sir John Pakington 27 February 1852–17 Conservative
December 1852
Henry Pelham-Clinton, 28 December 1852–10 Peelite
duke of Newcastle- June 1854
under-Lyme

Note: Responsibilities transferred to the secretary of state for the colonies on

12 June 1854.

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE COLONIES (1854–1966)

Name Term of Office Party

Sir George Grey 12 June 1854–8 Whig
February 1855
Sidney Herbert 8 February 1855–23 Whig
February 1855
Lord John Russell 23 February 1855–21 Whig
July 1855
Sir William Milesworth 21 July 1855–21 Whig
November 1855
Henry Labouchère 21 November 1855–21 Whig
February 1858
Lord Edward Stanley 26 February 1858–5 Conservative
June 1858
Sir Edward Bulwer- 5 June 1858–11 June Conservative
Lytton 1859
 APPENDIX A • 589
Henry Pelham-Clinton, 18 June 1859–7 April Liberal
duke of Newcastle- 1864
under-Lyme
Edward Cardwell 7 April 1864–26 June Liberal
1866
Henry Herbert, earl of 6 July 1866–8 March Conservative
Carnarvon 1867
Richard Temple- 8 March 1867–1 Conservative
Grenville, duke of December 1868
Buckingham and
Chandos
Granville Leveson- 9 December 1868–6 Liberal
Gower, Earl Granville July 1870
John Wodehouse, earl 6 July 1870–17 Liberal
of Kimberley February 1874
Henry Herbert, earl of 21 February 1874–4 Conservative
Carnarvon February 1878
Sir Michael Hicks 4 February 1878–21 Conservative
Beach April 1880
John Wodehouse, earl 21 April 1880–16 Liberal
of Kimberley December 1882
Edward Stanley, earl of 16 December 1882–9 Liberal
Derby June 1885
Frederick Stanley 24 June 1885–28 Conservative
January 1886
Granville Leveson- 6 February 1886–20 Liberal
Gower, Earl Granville July 1886
Edward Stanhope 3 August 1886–14 Conservative
January 1887
Henry Holland, Lord 14 January 1887–11 Conservative
Knutsford August 1892
George Robinson, 18 August 1892–21 Liberal
marquess of Ripon June 1895
Joseph Chamberlain 29 June 1895–16 Liberal Unionist
September 1903
Alfred Lyttleton 11 October 1903–4 Liberal Unionist
December 1905
590 • APPENDIX A
Victor Bruce, earl of 10 December 1905–12 Liberal
Elgin April 1908
Robert Crewes-Milnes, 12 April 1908–3 Liberal
earl of Crewe November 1910
Lewis Vernon Harcourt 3 November 1910–25 Liberal
May 1915
Andrew Bonar Law 25 May 1915–10 Conservative
December 1916
Walter Long 10 December 1916–10 Conservative
January 1919
Alfred Milner, Viscount 10 January 1919–13 Liberal
Milner February 1921
Winston Churchill 13 February 1921–19 Liberal
October 1922
Victor Cavendish, duke 24 October 1922–22 Conservative
of Devonshire January 1924
James Henry Thomas 22 January 1924–3 Labour
November 1924
Leo Amery 6 November 1924–4 Conservative
June 1929
(Responsibility for the dominions transferred to the new post of secretary of
state for the dominion affairs on 11 June 1925)
Sidney Webb, Baron 7 June 1929–24 August Labour
Passfield 1931
James Henry Thomas 25 August 1931–5 National Labour
November 1931
Sir Philip Cunliffe- 5 November 1931–7 Conservative
Lister June 1935
Malcolm MacDonald 7 June 1935–22 National Labour
November 1935
James Henry Thomas 22 November 1935–22 National Labour
May 1936
William Ormsby-Gore 28 May 1936–16 May Conservative
1938
Malcolm MacDonald 16 May 1938–12 May National Labour
1940
 APPENDIX A • 591
George Lloyd, Baron 12 May 1940–8 Conservative
Lloyd February 1941
Walter Guinness, Baron 8 February 1941–22 Conservative
Moyne February 1942
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 22 February 1942–22 Conservative
Viscount Cranborne November 1942
Oliver Stanley 22 November 1942–26 Conservative
July 1945
George Hall 3 August 1945–4 Labour
October 1946
Arthur Creech Jones 4 October 1946–28 Labour
February 1950
Jim Griffiths 28 February 1950–26 Labour
October 1951
Oliver Lyttelton 28 October 1951–28 Conservative
July 1954
Alan Lennox-Boyd 28 July 1954–14 Conservative
October 1959
Iain Macleod 14 October 1959–9 Conservative
October 1961
Reginald Maudling 9 October 1961–13 July Conservative
1962
Duncan Sandys 13 July 1962–16 Conservative
October 1964
Anthony Greenwood 18 October 1964–23 Labour
December 1965
Frank Pakenham, earl 23 December 1965–6 Labour
of Longford April 1966
Frederick Lee 6 April 1966–1 August Labour
1966

Note: Responsibilities transferred to the new post of secretary of state for

Commonwealth affairs on 1 August 1966.
592 • APPENDIX A
SECRETARY OF STATE FOR INDIA

Name Term of Office Party

Edward Stanley, Lord 2 August 1858–11 June Conservative
Stanley 1859
Sir Charles Wood 18 June 1859–16 Liberal
February 1866
George Robinson, earl 16 February 1866–26 Liberal
de Grey June 1866
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 6 July 1866–8 March Conservative
Viscount Cranborne 1867
Sir Stafford Northcote 8 March 1867–1 Conservative
December 1868
George Campbell, duke 9 December 1868–17 Liberal
of Argyll February 1874
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 21 February 1874–2 Conservative
marquess of Salisbury April 1878
Gathorne Gathorne- 2 April 1878–21 April Conservative
Hardy, earl of 1880
Cranbrook
Spencer Cavendish, 28 April 1880–16 Liberal
marquess of Hartington December 1882
John Wodehouse, earl 16 December 1882–9 Liberal
of Kimberley June 1885
Lord Randolph 24 June 1885–28 Conservative
Churchill January 1886
John Wodehouse, earl 6 February 1886–20 Liberal
of Kimberley July 1886
Richard Cross, 3 August 1886–11 Conservative
Viscount Cross August 1892
John Wodehouse, earl 18 August 1892–10 Liberal
of Kimberley March 1894
Henry Fowler 10 March 1894–21 June Liberal
1895
Lord George Hamilton 4 July 1895–9 October Conservative
1903
 APPENDIX A • 593
William St. John 9 October 1903–4 Conservative
Brodrick December 1905
John Morley, Viscount 10 December 1905–3 Liberal
Morley of Blackburn November 1910
Robert Crewe-Milnes, 3 November 1910–7 Liberal
earl of Crewe March 1911
John Morley, Viscount 7 March 1911–25 May Liberal
Morley of Blackburn 1911
Robert Crewe-Milnes, 25 May 1911–25 May Liberal
earl of Crewe 1915
Austen Chamberlain 25 May 1915–17 July Conservative
1917
Edwin Samuel Montagu 17 July 1917–19 March Liberal
1922
William Peel, Viscount 19 March 1922–22 Conservative
Peel January 1924
Sydney Olivier, Baron 22 January 1924–3 Labour
Olivier November 1924
Frederick Edwin Smith, 6 November 1924–18 Conservative
earl of Birkenhead October 1928
William Peel, Viscount 18 October 1928–4 June Conservative
Peel 1929
William Wedgwood 7 June 1929–24 August Labour
Benn 1931
Sir Samuel Hoare 25 August 1931–7 June Conservative
1935
Lawrence Dundas, 7 June 1935–28 May Conservative
marquess of Zetland 1937

Note: The secretary of state for India assumed responsibilities for Burma on
28 May 1937, and the title of the post changed accordingly.

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR INDIA AND BURMA

Name Term of Office Party

594 • APPENDIX A
Lawrence Dundas, 28 May 1937–13 May Conservative
marquess of Zetland 1940
Leo Amery 13 May 1940–26 July Conservative
1945
Frederick Pethick- 3 August 1945–17 April Labour
Lawrence, Baron 1947
Pethick-Lawrence
William Hare, earl of 17 April 1947–14 Labour
Listowel August 1947

Note: India achieved independence at midnight on 14 August 1947, leaving

the secretary of state responsible only for Burma.

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR BURMA

Name Term of Office Party

William Hare, earl of 14 August 1947–4 Labour
Listowel January 1948

Note: The secretary of state post was abolished when Burma achieved inde-
pendence on 4 January 1948.

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR DOMINION AFFAIRS

Name Term of Office Party

Leo Amery 11 June 1925–4 June Conservative
1929
Sidney Webb, Lord 7 June 1929–5 June Labour
Passfield 1930
James Henry Thomas 5 June 1930–22 Labour
November 1935
Malcolm MacDonald 22 November 1935–16 National Labour
May 1938
Edward Stanley, Lord 16 May 1938–16 Conservative
Stanley October 1938
 APPENDIX A • 595
Malcolm MacDonald 31 October 1938–29 National Labour
January 1939
Sir Thomas Inskip 29 January 1939–3 Conservative
September 1939
Anthony Eden 3 September 1939–14 Conservative
May 1940
Thomas Inskip, 14 May 1940–3 October Conservative
Viscount Caldecote 1940
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3 October 1940–19 Conservative
Viscount Cranborne February 1942
Clement Attlee 19 February 1942–24 Labour
September 1943
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 24 September 1943–26 Conservative
Viscount Cranborne July 1945
Christopher Addison, 3 August 1945–7 July Labour
Viscount Addison 1947

Note: Responsibilities transferred to the new post of secretary of state for

Commonwealth relations on 7 July 1947.

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR COMMONWEALTH RELATIONS

Name Term of Office Party

Christopher Addison, 7 July 1947–7 October Labour
Viscount Addison 1947
Philip Noel-Baker 7 October 1947–28 Labour
February 1950
Patrick Gordon Walker 28 February 1950–26 Labour
October 1951
Hastings Ismay, Baron 28 October 1951–12 Conservative
Ismay March 1952
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 12 March 1952–24 Conservative
marquess of Salisbury November 1952
Philip Cunliffe-Lister, 24 November 1952–7 Conservative
April 1955
596 • APPENDIX A
Alex Douglas-Home, 7 April 1955–27 July Conservative
earl of Home 1960
Duncan Sandys 27 July 1960–16 Conservative
October 1964
Arthur Bottomley 18 October 1964–1 Labour
August 1966

Note: Responsibilities transferred to the new post of secretary of state for

Commonwealth affairs on 1 August 1966.

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR COMMONWEALTH AFFAIRS

Name Term of Office Party

Herbert Bowden 1 August 1966–29 Labour
August 1967
George Thomson 29 August 1967–17 Labour
October 1968

Note: By late 1968, most of Britain’s colonies had won independence. On 17

October 1968, responsibility for the few remaining territories was transferred
to the secretary of state for foreign affairs, whose post was renamed secretary
of state for foreign and Commonwealth affairs. A minister of state deals with
matters relating to the Commonwealth, with other ministers allocated respon-
sibilities for specific world regions.
 Appendix B

The Changing Membership of the

Commonwealth of Nations

15 November 1926 The Balfour Declaration gives the six

dominions—Australia, Canada, Ireland, New
Zealand, Newfoundland, and South Africa—
political equality with the United Kingdom,
“united by common allegiance to the Crown, and
freely associated as members of the British
Commonwealth of Nations.”
11 December 1931 The Statute of Westminster provides a legal
foundation for the Balfour Declaration.
16 February 1934 Newfoundland’s membership lapses as its self-
governing status is rescinded.
15 August 1947 India and Pakistan (both formerly parts of British
India) join on winning independence.
4 February 1948 Ceylon (later renamed Sri Lanka) joins on
winning independence.
18 April 1949 Ireland withdraws after declaring itself a republic.
6 March 1957 Ghana (formed by the merger of British Togoland
and the Gold Coast) joins on winning
independence.
31 August 1957 The Federation of Malaya (formed of 11 British
possessions on the Malay Peninsula) joins on
winning independence.
1 October 1960 Nigeria joins on winning independence.
13 March 1961 Cyprus joins, seven months after winning
independence.
27 April 1961 Sierra Leone joins on winning independence.
31 May 1961 South Africa withdraws after Commonwealth
countries condemn its apartheid policies.
6 August 1962 Jamaica joins on winning independence.

597
598 • APPENDIX B
31 August 1962 Trinidad and Tobago joins on winning
independence.
9 October 1962 Uganda joins on winning independence.
9 December 1962 Tanganyika joins, one year after winning
independence.
16 September 1963 Malaysia—formed by a union of the Federation
of Malaya (which joined in 1957), Sabah
(formerly North Borneo), Sarawak, and
Singapore—joins, replacing the Federation of
Malaya.
10 December 1963 Zanzibar joins on winning independence.
12 December 1963 Kenya joins on winning independence.
26 April 1964 Tanganyika (which joined in 1962) and Zanzibar
(which joined in 1963) merge as the United
Republic of Tanganyika and Zanzibar (later
renamed Tanzania).
21 September 1964 Malta joins on winning independence.
6 July 1964 Malawi (formerly Nyasaland) joins on winning
independence.
24 October 1964 Zambia (formerly Northern Rhodesia) joins on
winning independence.
18 February 1965 The Gambia joins on winning independence.
26 May 1966 Guyana (formerly British Guiana) joins on
winning independence.
9 August 1966 Singapore joins after seceding from the
Federation of Malaysia; the date of joining is
backdated to 9 August 1965, the date of the
secession.
30 September 1966 Botswana (formerly Bechuanaland) joins on
winning independence.
4 October 1966 Lesotho (formerly Basutoland) joins on winning
independence.
30 November 1966 Barbados joins on winning independence.
12 March 1968 Mauritius joins on winning independence.
6 September 1968 Swaziland joins on winning independence.
 APPENDIX B • 599
1 November 1968 Nauru joins as a “special member” (with limited
participation, reflecting limited financial
resources) nine months after winning
independence from the joint trusteeship of
Australia, New Zealand, and the United
Kingdom.
4 June 1970 Tonga joins on winning independence.
28 August 1970 Western Samoa joins, eight years after winning
independence from New Zealand.
10 October 1970 Fiji joins on winning independence.
30 January 1972 Pakistan withdraws after Commonwealth leaders
recognize Bangladesh (formerly East Pakistan) as
an independent country.
18 April 1972 Bangladesh joins, 11 months after declaring
independence from Pakistan.
10 July 1973 The Bahamas joins on winning independence.
7 February 1974 Grenada joins on winning independence.
16 September 1975 Papua New Guinea joins on winning
independence from Australia.
29 June 1976 The Seychelles joins on winning independence.
7 July 1978 The Solomon Islands joins on winning
independence.
1 October 1978 On winning independence, Tuvalu (formerly the
Ellice Islands) joins as a special member, with a
limited participation that reflects the country’s
limited finances.
3 November 1978 Dominica joins on winning independence.
22 February 1979 St. Lucia joins on winning independence.
12 July 1979 Kiribati (formerly the Gilbert Islands) joins on
winning independence.
27 October 1979 On winning independence, St. Vincent and the
Grenadines joins as a “special member,” with a
limited participation that reflects the country’s
limited finances.
30 July 1980 Vanuatu (formerly the New Hebrides) joins on
winning independence.
600 • APPENDIX B
1 October 1980 Zimbabwe (formerly Southern Rhodesia) joins,
six months after its independence is recognized
internationally.
21 September 1981 Belize joins on winning independence.
1 November 1981 Antigua and Barbuda joins on winning
independence.
9 July 1982 The Maldive Islands join as a “special member,”
with a limited participation that reflects the
country’s limited finances.
19 September 1983 St. Kitts and Nevis joins on winning
independence.
1 January 1984 Brunei joins on winning independence.
1 June 1985 St. Vincent and the Grenadines (admitted as a
“special member” in 1979) is elevated to full
membership.
20 July 1985 The Maldive Islands (admitted as a “special
member” in 1982) is elevated to full membership.
15 October 1987 Fiji’s membership lapses following the
declaration of a republic and two military coups
that result in a government that is “fundamentally
at odds with the basic Commonwealth ethos.”
15 September 1989 Pakistan, which withdrew from the
Commonwealth in 1972, is readmitted.
21 March 1990 Namibia joins on winning independence from
South Africa.
1 June 1994 South Africa, which withdrew in 1961, rejoins.
11 November 1995 Nigeria is suspended after its military regime
executes nine human rights activists.
13 November 1995 Cameroon becomes the first francophone country
to join, following pressure from the anglophone
minority population. Also, Mozambique (never a
British possession) is admitted because of its
support for the Commonwealth’s antiracial
policies toward South Africa and Southern
Rhodesia in the 1960s and 1970s.
1 October 1997 Fiji (whose membership lapsed in 1987) is
readmitted after revising its constitution.
 APPENDIX B • 601
1 May 1999 Nauru (admitted as a “special member” in 1968)
is elevated to full membership.
29 May 1999 Nigeria, suspended in 1995, is readmitted as its
military regime transfers power to a civilian
government.
18 October 1999 Pakistan is suspended following a coup d’état and
the suspension of the country’s constitution.
6 June 2000 Fiji is suspended after its government declares
martial law.
20 December 2001 Fiji (suspended in 2000) is readmitted following
the formation of a democratically elected
government.
1 September 2001 Tuvalu (admitted as a “special member” in 1978)
is elevated to full membership.
19 March 2002 Zimbabwe is suspended following reports of
abuse of human rights and election rigging.
7 December 2003 Zimbabwe (suspended in 2002) withdraws.
22 May 2004 Pakistan, suspended in 1999, is readmitted after
taking steps to restore democracy.
1 July 2005 Nauru is relegated to “special membership,” with
limited participation rights, after failing to meet
its financial obligations.
8 December 2006 Fiji is suspended from councils of the
Commonwealth following a coup d’état.
22 November 2007 Pakistan is suspended for a second time after its
government failed to restore the constitution and
to “fulfil its obligations in accordance with
Commonwealth principles.”
22 May 2008 Pakistan, suspended in 2007, is readmitted after
rescinding emergency rule and easing restrictions
on the country’s media.
1 September 2009 Fiji (suspended from ministerial meetings in
2006) is fully suspended after failing to call
elections.
29 November 2009 Rwanda joins despite having no colonial links to
the United Kingdom.
602 • APPENDIX B
26 June 2011 Nauru (relegated to “special membership,” with
limited participation rights, in 2006) returns to
full membership.
2 October 2013 The Gambia withdraws because it does not wish
to be “a member of any neo-colonial institution.”
 Bibliography

CONTENTS

Introduction 603
Africa, the Middle East, and the Persian Gulf 605
The Americas and the Caribbean 630
Asia and the Indian Ocean 655
Australia, New Zealand, and Oceania 678
Europe 686
Polar and Subpolar Regions and Southern Atlantic Ocean Islands 691
Autobiography and Biography 693
General 708
Reference 719

INTRODUCTION

The literature dealing with the British Empire is extensive so, in order to
keep the following bibliography within reasonable bounds, citations are lim-
ited to books published in English since 1980. Many of these contain refer-
ences to earlier publications, thus expanding the range of source material
available to readers.
The most encompassing single study of the growth and structure of the
Empire is the five-volume Oxford History of the British Empire, prepared by
an international cast of distinguished scholars under the supervision of Wm.
Roger Lewis, professor of history at the University of Texas, and published
by Oxford University Press in 1998–1999. That work is supplemented by a
companion series, which includes such texts as Gender and Empire, edited
by Philippa Levine (Oxford University Press, 2004), Missions and Empire,
edited by Norman Etherington (Oxford University Press, 2005), and Canada
and the British Empire, edited by Phillip Buckner (Oxford University Press,
2008). Students seeking single-volume overviews have a wide choice of
material ranging from studies written primarily for academic audiences to
those prepared for a wider readership. These include Niall Ferguson’s Em-
pire; The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for
Global Power (Basic Books, 2003), Lawrence James’s The Rise and Fall of
the British Empire (St. Martin’s Press, 1996), Trevor Lloyd’s Empire; A

603
604 • BIBLIOGRAPHY
History of the British Empire (Hambledon and London, 2001), and Bernard
Porter’s The Lion’s Share; A Short History of British Imperialism (Pearson,
2012).
Students will also find numerous studies that deal with specific time peri-
ods (such as C. A. Bayly’s Imperial Meridian; the British Empire and the
World, 1780–1830, published by Longman in 1989) or that focus on geo-
graphical areas (for example, Lawrence James’s Raj; The Making and Un-
making of British India, published in the United States by St. Martin’s Press
in 1998, or Anne Phillips’s The Enigma of Colonialism; British Policy in
West Africa, published by Indiana University Press in 1989). These can be
read in conjunction with biographical studies of administrators and politi-
cians—examples include Travis L. Crosby’s Joseph Chamberlain; A Most
Radical Imperialist (I. B. Tauris, 2011), Victoria Glendinning’s Raffles and
the Golden Opportunity, 1781–1826 (Profile, 2012), and Arthur Herman’s
Gandhi and Churchill; The Epic Rivalry that Destroyed an Empire and
Forged Our Age (Bantam, 2008)—and those of explorers who extended
knowledge of poorly described territories, including Miriam Estensen’s The
Life of Matthew Flinders (Allen & Unwin, 2002), Jon R. Godsall’s The
Tangled Web; A Life of Sir Richard Burton (Matador, 2008), and Tim Jeal’s
Livingstone (Yale University Press, 2013).
The geographical spread of the Empire is charted in such works as C. A.
Bayly’s Atlas of the British Empire (Facts on File, 1989), Nigel Dalziel’s
Historical Atlas of the British Empire (Penguin, 2006), and A. N. Porter’s
Atlas of British Overseas Expansion (Simon & Schuster, 1991). Porter has
also compiled a lengthy Bibliography of Imperial, Colonial, and Common-
wealth History since 1600 (Oxford University Press, 2002) that lists a much
more extensive range of books and journal articles than can be provided here,
and Scarecrow Press’s series of Historical Dictionaries complements that,
covering individual states and adding to the range of references while also
presenting brief entries describing the commerce, individuals, and politics
that shaped many former colonies.
Scholars seeking access to original documents will find that many are
housed in the British Library or the National Archives, both located in Lon-
don—the British Library has nearly nine miles of shelving devoted to the
records of the East India Company and the India Office alone—but some are
more readily accessible through Frank Madden’s eight-volume Select Docu-
ments on the Constitutional History of the British Empire and Common-
wealth (Greenwood Press, 1985–2000) or in the similarly multivolume Brit-
ish Documents on the End of Empire, produced by Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office (later The Stationery Office), with Series A dealing with policy and
Series B with individual colonies. The Royal Geographical Society, also in
London, has an extensive collection of maps and related materials that are
available for consultation.
 BIBLIOGRAPHY • 605
Details of the works noted below have been checked against the catalog
records of the British Library, the Library of Congress, and WorldCat, but
readers will find that many are available from different publishers, at differ-
ent dates, and in other formats (including, increasingly, electronic) so the
following should be considered a guide to the available literature rather than
an exhaustive coverage.

AFRICA, THE MIDDLE EAST, AND THE PERSIAN GULF

Abu-Hakima, Ahma Mustafa. The Modern History of Kuwait, 1750–1965.

Montreal: McGill University Press, 1982.
Adi, Hakim. West Africans in Britain, 1900–1960: Nationalism, Pan-
Africanism, and Communism. London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1998.
Adyanga, Onek C. Modes of British Imperial Control of Africa: A Case
Study of Uganda, c.1890–1990. Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Schol-
ars, 2011.
Al-Tajir, Mahdi Abdallah. Bahrain, 1920–1945: Britain, the Shaikh and the
Administration. New York: Croom Helm, 1987.
Alam, S. M. Shamsul. Rethinking the Mau Mau in Colonial Kenya. New
York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
Alie, Joe A. D. A New History of Sierra Leone. New York: St. Martin’s
Press, 1990.
Allison, Philip. Life in the White Man’s Grave: A Pictorial Record of the
British in West Africa. New York: Viking, 1988.
Anderson, David. Histories of the Hanged: The Dirty War in Kenya and the
End of Empire. New York: Norton, 2005.
Anscombe, Frederick F. The Ottoman Gulf: The Creation of Kuwait, Saudi
Arabia, and Qatar. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997.
Arbuthnott, Hugh, Terence Clark, and Richard Muir. British Missions
Around the Gulf, 1575–2005: Iran, Iraq, Oman, Kuwait. Folkestone, UK:
Global Oriental, 2008.
Asher, Michael. Khartoum: The Ultimate Imperial Adventure. New York:
Viking, 2005.
Baker, Colin. Chipembere: The Missing Years. Zomba Malawi: Kachere,
2008.
———. Development Governor: A Biography of Sir Geoffrey Colby. New
York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994.
———. Seeds of Trouble: Government Policy and Land Rights in Nyasa-
land, 1946–1964. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993.
———. Sir Glyn Jones: A Proconsul in Africa. New York: I. B. Tauris,
2000.
606 • BIBLIOGRAPHY
———. State of Emergency: Crisis in Central Africa, Nyasaland
1959–1960. London: I. B. Tauris, 1997.
Baker, Geoffrey L. Trade Winds on the Niger: The Saga of the Royal Niger
Company, 1830–1971. London: Radcliffe Press, 1996.
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 About the Author

Kenneth J. Panton is emeritus professor of geography at the University of

Southern Mississippi. A graduate of the University of Edinburgh and of
King’s College, University of London, he taught at London Guildhall Uni-
versity before moving to Mississippi to lead Southern Mississippi’s British
Studies Program, taking 200 graduate and undergraduate students to the
United Kingdom every summer. His publications include five previous
books for Scarecrow: the two-volume Historical Dictionary of the United
Kingdom (coauthored with Keith A. Cowlard), the Historical Dictionary of
London, the Historical Dictionary of the Contemporary United Kingdom
(also coauthored with Keith Cowlard), and, most recently, the Historical
Dictionary of the British Monarchy. He lives in Scotland and New Zealand.

727