Henry M. Stanley, explorer and journalist One is not too sure that modern schoolchildren are taught about persons like Henry Stanley, or for that matter Dr. Livingstone, with…
Category: African History
The Dominions, and the Statute of Westminster
Readers become confused by the essential differences between dominions and colonies and protectorates. The British Empire, when it existed, embraced all three. ‘Dominions’ was the name used for…
Grabbing Africa
Though some may not believe it, in 1879 little of the vast continent of Africa was in European hands. Colonial administration ruled in the Gold Coast and Senegal…
Colonization
These days the word strikes a sour note, arousing images of rough settlements, starving ‘piccaninies’, whips, shackles, thoughtless government from a distance of thousdands of miles etc. If…
Jan Christian Smuts
The South African soldier, hero and future Prime Minister was born in the Cape Colony in 1870. No-one was more in the centre of South African politics during…
The struggle for independence: Rhodesia
It would seem clear that Cataluña will, by one means or another, free herself from Spain, of which she has always been an integral part. All the signs…
The Barbary Coast, and Wars
It is difficult to find any time since the Byzantine Empire when the North African coast from Morocco to Libya was not infamous for piracy. The worst period…
Commerce in History: the slave trade
Thinking people still get hot under the collar when the subject of the trade in slaves looms. But then, more nonsense is spoken about the slave trade by…
Prime Minister Lord Salisbury
Kind Hearts and Coronets is probably the best and blackest of the British 1950s comedies written for the screen. The film tells the story of an illegitimate boy…
Curious Anglo-German Agreements
Why ‘curious’? Because the first was agreed between Britain and Germany only fourteen years before the outbreak of a world war, the first of its kind. And the…