Introduction

Professors R. E. Robinson and J. Gallagher argues that the concentration on east Africa shows the preoccupation with supreme strategic interests. The highlands, particularly the area round Mount Kilimanjaro, might even be suitable for extensive European settlement. Enthusiasts began to suggest that East Africa might be not only the new India but a new Australia. The history of the British East Africa Company, and that of the German chartered companies which suffered similar financial difficulties, seems almost sufficient in itself to demolish the theory that it was surplus capital seeking foreign outlets that caused the annexations of the late nineteenth century. The East Africa Company, despite its precarious financial position, managed to rally significant support from Chambers of Commerce and trading organisations. In 18856 European attention was attracted to Uganda; first, by the murder on Mwangas orders, of an Anglican bishop, James Hannington; and, second, by the massacre of thirty of Mwangas pages, Catholic converts who refused to recant.