Great Britain and Africa: The Myth of Imperialism
The traditional version of the scramble for empire in Africa during the late nineteenth century is here challenged and critically re-appraised by Eric Stokes.
Until recently, it was commonly assumed that British colonial policy in the nineteenth century could be divided into two sharply defined and contrasting phases: an anti-imperialist phase, running roughly from the Vienna settlement of 1815 down to 1870, and an expansionist phase, lasting from 1870 until the end of the century.
The shift was brought about, it was held, primarily by economic factors; growing international competition for markets and raw materials discredited the free-trade anti-colonial views of the Manchester School and substituted the imperialist doctrine that trade followed the flag.1
It was usual to point out how British policy swung from the extreme of indifference to empire—symbolized in the report of the Parliamentary committee of 1865, recommending the ultimate abandonment of all Britain’s West African possessions except Sierra Leone—to a consuming “earth-hunger.”
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