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The Quest for East African Neutrality in 1915

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 May 2014

Kent Forster
Kent Forster*
Affiliation:
Pennsylvania State University
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Extract

When Britain's foreign secretary on 3 August 1914 ruefully observed that the lamps were going out all over Europe, he had not yet fully grasped the dimensions of the war about to begin. Within three days, however, Sir Edward Grey was attending a cabinet meeting in which he and his fellow members sketched a war strategy against Germany which was global in context. Whatever prewar British respect had existed for German empire-builders (Stengers, 1967: 345), the new War Sub-Committee of Britain's cabinet decided to seize as soon as possible all of Germany's overseas possessions. The initial motive was to secure the sealanes by occupying German overseas ports that could serve commerce raiding German cruisers and by destroying the German wireless stations which would serve those cruisers. Even then, however, Colonial Secretary Lewis Harcourt entertained the notion of British annexation of the whole German colonial empire (Louis, 1967: 36-37).

As Winston Churchill described that session,

On an August morning, behold the curious sight of a British Cabinet of respecable Liberal politicians sitting down deliberately and with malice aforethought to plan the seizure of the German colonies in every part of the world! … With maps and pencils, the whole world was surveyed, six different expeditions were approved (Churchill, 1923: I, 305-306).

Prime Minister Asquith, once a Gladstonian minister, later remembered, almost apologetically, “we looked more like a gang of Elizabethan buccaneers than a meek collection of black coated Liberal Ministers” (Asquith, 1928: II, 31). Since the principal German territories were in Africa, it was here that the major impact of Whitehall's action would be felt, and, indeed, an abundant literature on Africa in the First World War describes what happened.

Type
Research Article
Information
African Studies Review , Volume 22 , Issue 1 , April 1979 , pp. 73 - 82
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1979

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References

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