a concession of the 10-miles strip of coast from the Umba river in the south to Kipini in the north. The British association further sought to extend its rights in the sphere reserved to British influence by making treaties with the native chiefs behind the coast strip, and for this purpose various expeditions were sent into the interior. When they had obtained concessions over the country for some 200 m. inland the associated Formation of British East Africa. capitalists applied to the British government for a charter, which was granted on the 3rd of September 1888, and the association became the Imperial British East Africa Company (see British East Africa). The example set by the British company in obtaining a lease of the coast strip between the British sphere of influence and the sea was quickly followed by the German association, which, on the 28th of April 1888, concluded an agreement with the sultan Khalifa, who had succeeded his brother Bargash, by which the association leased the strip of Zanzibar territory between the German sphere and the sea. It was not, however, until August that the German officials took over the administration, and their want of tact and ignorance of native administration almost immediately provoked a rebellion of so serious a character that it was not suppressed until the imperial authorities had taken the matter in hand. Shortly after its suppression the administration was entrusted to an imperial officer, and the sultan’s rights on the mainland strip were bought outright by Germany for four millions of marks (£200,000).
Events of great importance had been happening, meanwhile, in the country to the west and north of the British sphere of influence. The British company had sent caravans into the interior to survey the country, to make treaties with the native chiefs and to report on the commercial and agricultural possibilities. One of these had gone up the Tana river. But another and a rival expedition was proceeding along the northern bank of this same river. Karl Peters, whose energy cannot be denied, whatever may be thought of his methods, set out with an armed caravan up the Tana on the pretext of leading an expedition to the relief of Emin Pasha, the governor of the equatorial province of the Egyptian Sudan, then reported to be hemmed in by the dervishes at Wadelai. His expedition was not sanctioned by the German government, and the British naval commander had orders to prevent his landing. But Peters succeeded in evading the British vessels and proceeded up the river, planting German flags and fighting the natives who opposed his progress. Early in 1890 he reached Kavirondo, and there found letters from Mwanga, king of Uganda, addressed to F. J. Jackson, the leader of an expedition sent out by the British East AfricaUganda secured by Great Britain. Company, imploring the company’s representative to come to his assistance and offering to accept the British flag. To previous letters, less plainly couched. from the king, Jackson had returned the answer that his instructions were not to enter Uganda, but that he would do so in case of need. The letters that fell into Peters’s hands were in reply to those from Jackson. Peters did not hesitate to open the letters, and on reading them he at once proceeded to Uganda, where, with the assistance of the French Roman Catholic priests, he succeeded in inducing Mwanga to sign a loosely worded treaty intended to place him under German protection. On hearing of this Jackson at once set out for Uganda, but Peters did not wait for his arrival, leaving for the south of Victoria Nyanza some days before Jackson arrived at Mengo, Mwanga’s capital. As Mwanga would not agree to Jackson’s proposals, Jackson returned to the coast, leaving a representative at Mengo to protect the company’s interests. Captain (afterwards Sir) F. D. Lugard, who had recently entered the company’s employment, was at once ordered to proceed to Uganda. But in the meantime an event of great importance had taken place, the conclusion of the agreement between Great Britain and Germany with reference to their different spheres of influence in various parts of Africa.
The Anglo-German agreement of the 1st of July 1890 has
already been referred to and its importance insisted upon.
Here we have to deal with the provisions in reference to East
Africa. In return for the cession of Heligoland, Lord Salisbury
obtained from Germany the recognition of a British protectorate
over the dominions of the sultan of Zanzibar, including the
islands of Zanzibar and Pemba, but excluding the strip leased to
Germany, which was subsequently ceded absolutely to Germany.
Germany further agreed to withdraw the protectorate declared
over Witu and the adjoining coast up to Kismayu in favour of
Great Britain, and to recognize as within the British sphere of
influence the vast area bounded, on the south by the frontier
line laid down in the agreement of 1886, which was to be extended
along the first parallel of south latitude across Victoria Nyanza
to the frontiers of the Congo Free State, on the west by the
Congo Free State and the western watershed of the Nile, and on
the north by a line commencing on the coast at the north bank of
the mouth of the river Juba, then ascending that bank of the
river until it reached the territory at that time regarded as
reserved to the influence of Italy[1] in Gallaland and Abyssinia,
when it followed the frontier of the Italian sphere to the confines
of Egypt. To the south-west of the German sphere in East
Africa the boundary was formed by the eastern and northern
shore of Lake Nyasa, and round the western shore to the mouth
of the Songwe river, from which point it crossed the Nyasa-Tanganyika
plateau to the southern end of the last-named lake,Limits of German
East Africa defined.
leaving the Stevenson Road on the British side of the
boundary. The effect of this treaty was to remove
all serious causes of dispute about territory between
Germany and Great Britain in East Africa. It rendered
quite valueless Peters’s treaty with Mwanga
and his promenade along the Tana; it freed Great Britain from
any fear of German competition to the northwards, and recognized
that her influence extended to the western limits of the
Nile valley. But, on the other hand, Great Britain had to relinquish
the ambition of connecting her sphere of influence in the
Nile valley with her possessions in Central and South Africa. On
this point Germany was quite obdurate; and, as already stated,
an attempt subsequently made (May 1894) to secure this object
by the lease of a strip of territory from the Congo Free State was
frustrated by German opposition.
Uganda having thus been assigned to the British sphere of influence by the only European power in a position to contest its possession with her, the subsequent history of that region, and of the country between the Victoria Nyanza and the coast, must be traced in the articles on British East Africa and Uganda, but it may be well briefly to record here the following facts:—The Imperial British East Africa Company, finding the burden of administration too heavy for its financial resources, and not receiving the assistance it felt itself entitled to receive from the imperial authorities, intimated that it would be compelled to withdraw at the end of the year 1892. Funds were raised to enable the company to continue its administration until the end of March 1893, and a strong public protest against evacuation compelled the government to determine in favour of the retention of the country. In January 1893 Sir Gerald Portal left the coast as a special commissioner to inquire into the “best means of dealing with the country, whether through Zanzibar or otherwise.” On the 31st of March the union jack was raised, and on the 29th of May a fresh treaty was concluded with King Mwanga placing his country under British protection. A formal protectorate was declared over Uganda proper on the 19th of June 1894, which was subsequently extended so as to include the countries westwards towards the Congo Free State, eastwards to the British East Africa protectorate and Abyssinia, and northwards to the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. The British East Africa protectorate was constituted in June 1895, when the Imperial British East Africa Company relinquished all its rights in exchange for a money payment, and the administration was assumed by the imperial authorities. On the 1st of April 1902 the eastern province of the Uganda protectorate was transferred to the British East Africa protectorate, which thus secured control of the whole length of the so-called Uganda
- ↑ At this period negotiations between Great Britain and Italy had begun but were not concluded.
