ABSTRACT
Although the tropical colonies had made some important economic advances prior to 1885, and were beginning to assume a much more important role within the British Empire, they still represented a relatively minor component of the whole in the early 1880s. The next thirty years or so, however, were to see a startling transformation, by which the size of the tropical empire was very substantially increased. Most of this expansion took place in Africa, and not surprisingly it has received the most attention and publicity, but it should not be forgotten that the celebrated colonial ‘scramble’ was not confined to Africa, and that important new British colonies were established – or in some cases greatly extended – in Asia and the Pacific Islands as well as in Africa, as may be seen in Table 4.1, which charts the expansion of British colonial rule by region.
