East Africa

The Edwardian era is often seen as a peaceful interlude between the violence of Victorian expansion and the First World War. In reality, Edward’s reign bore witness to dozens of conflicts across the Empire.

On 5 April 1889 John Hore died aged only seven years old. His adventures in East Africa saw him immortalised by Victorian evangelicals as ‘the boy missionary’.

The world’s fourth largest island was among the prizes of Europe’s ruthless African land grab. When one American diplomat made plans for his own enterprise, he soon found that the French had other ideas. 

A newly independent Tanganyika hoped to capture part of the lucrative European market for African tourism. But its rivalry with neighbouring Kenya proved an obstacle.

At a discouraging time during the Second World War, writes Geoffrey Evans, British and Indian troops gained a spectacular victory over the Italian forces in East Africa.

For mixed motives, writes C.E. Hamshere, the construction of the British East African railway was begun in 1892,  to which the development of modern Kenya and Uganda is greatly indebted.

Charles Chevenix Trench describes how an adventurous Greek in British Service played a large part in the trade and politics of the Horn of Africa.

In the coastal regions of the modern colonies of Kenya and Tanganyika,  the Portuguese, first among Europeans, came into contact with the Arab-African civilization that flourished on the edges of the Indian Ocean.

On November 17th, 1874, when Henry Morton Stanley marched away from Bagamoyo on what was to be his greatest exploring achievement, he was retracing his own steps of 1871 along the well-worn caravan route used by Burton and Speke in 1857; by Speke and Grant in 1860, and, writes C.E. Hamshere, many Arab traders before them.

Prospects seemed encouraging for the Italian Empire in 1940, writes Patricia Wright, but an arduous defeat ensued.