ABSTRACT
Britain gained large areas in West Africa, including the whole of the modern Nigeria, as a direct result of the Scramble. She also acquired vast tracts of East Africa. The simplest and most likely explanation of the West African acquisitions is defence of trade. But Britain had nothing like such an old and well-established trading connection with East Africa as with the West. Can the same explanation hold good there? Some authorities have suggested that it cannot; that, although trade may have been the dominant motive in West Africa, in the East strategy was more important. This was powerfully argued by Professors Robinson and Gallagher who went further and contended: ‘The concentration on east Africa shows the preoccupation with supreme strategic interests…. Trade prospects had always seemed better in western than in eastern regions…. Yet … the late Victorians … preferred to make the empire safer in the poorer east Africa than to make it wealthier in the richer west’ (1961: 393).
