Expansion in Africa

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A is the Jameson Raid of 1895-96, when Jameson led a force into the Transvaal hoping to start an Uitlander rising. B is the start of the Boer War in October 1899, after the Boers issued an ultimatum to Britain.

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Source A is useful because it shows some of the main reasons for British involvement in Egypt. Disraeli is delighted that 'the French Government has been out-generalled', which shows that rivalry with France was important. The Suez Canal had been built by a French company and opened in 1869, and Britain did not want France to control Egypt. The letter also shows how much the canal mattered to the British government: Disraeli spent 'four millions sterling' and arranged the money 'almost immediately' through the Rothschild bank. This fits what I know, because the canal had cut the journey from Britain to India by about 40 per cent, and most of the ships using it were British, so it was vital to Britain's trade and to the defence of India.

The provenance makes the source valuable. It is a private letter from the Prime Minister to the Queen, written immediately after the deal, so it shows the real thinking of the government rather than public propaganda. However, Disraeli liked to flatter Victoria and wanted to impress her, so he exaggerates when he says that 'the entire interest of the Khedive is now yours'. The shares gave Britain a large stake, about 44 per cent, but not control of the canal. The letter also does not mention India directly, even though protecting the route to India was the main strategic reason for British interest.

The source is also limited because it dates from 1875. It does not explain why Britain went on to occupy Egypt in 1882. That happened after Egypt went bankrupt, Britain and France took control of its finances, and Urabi's nationalist revolt threatened foreign interests, leading Gladstone's government to defeat Urabi at Tel el-Kebir. Overall, Source A is useful for showing the importance of the canal and rivalry with France, but it gives only part of the explanation for British involvement in Egypt.

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The discovery of diamonds and gold was significant because it turned southern Africa from a strategic outpost on the route to India into one of the richest prizes of the empire. Diamonds were found near Hopetown in 1867 and at Kimberley in 1871. Britain quickly annexed the diamond fields, even though the Orange Free State claimed them. Kimberley became a boom town, and Cecil Rhodes made a fortune there; by 1888 his De Beers company controlled most of the world's diamond production. Rhodes then used this wealth to expand British rule northwards through the British South Africa Company.

Gold was even more significant. It was discovered on the Witwatersrand in the Boer republic of the Transvaal in 1886, and Johannesburg grew at astonishing speed. By the late 1890s the Transvaal was one of the world's largest gold producers and the richest state in southern Africa, which threatened Britain's dominance in the region. Thousands of Uitlanders, many of them British, came to work in the mines, but President Kruger refused to give them the vote. Rhodes backed the Jameson Raid in 1895-96 to overthrow Kruger, and when talks between Milner and Kruger failed in 1899, the Boer War began. Historians disagree about how far the war was fought for gold, but control of the gold mines was certainly a major factor.

The discoveries also had a huge impact on Africans. The mines needed vast numbers of workers, so hundreds of thousands of black Africans became migrant labourers, housed in closed compounds, controlled by pass laws and paid low wages.

In the long term, the mineral wealth shaped modern South Africa. After the Boer War, the Union of South Africa was formed in 1910 under white rule, and laws such as the Natives Land Act of 1913 laid the foundations of the segregation that later became apartheid.

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War was the main means by which Britain gained its empire, and it played a large part in the empire's decline. However, wars were usually fought to protect economic interests, and the end of the empire owed as much to nationalism and to Britain's economic weakness as to war itself.

War shaped England's overseas possessions from the Middle Ages. Lands in France were won and lost by war: King John lost Normandy in 1204, and in the Hundred Years' War England won Calais in 1347 but lost almost everything else by 1453. Later, war built the empire. Cromwell's Western Design captured Jamaica from Spain in 1655. The Seven Years' War (1756-63) gave Britain Canada and made it the leading European power in India, where Clive's victory at Plassey in 1757 began the Company's rule over Bengal. Further wars against Mysore, the Marathas and the Sikhs extended British rule across India, and the Napoleonic Wars gave Britain the Cape and naval supremacy. In Africa, war was the means of conquest: the Zulu were defeated in 1879, Egypt was occupied after Tel el-Kebir in 1882, Sudan was reconquered at Omdurman in 1898, and the Boer republics were defeated in 1902.

War also contributed to the empire's fall. The American War of Independence lost Britain thirteen colonies in 1783. The First World War encouraged nationalism: more than a million Indians served, and when Indians demanded more say, the Amritsar massacre of 1919 turned many against British rule. The Second World War left Britain bankrupt and showed it could not defend its empire, as the fall of Singapore in 1942 proved; India became independent in 1947. The Suez Crisis of 1956 showed that Britain could no longer act as a great power without American support, and the Mau Mau emergency showed the cost of holding on to colonies.

However, other factors were also important. Economic resources explain why many wars were fought: the East India Company went to India to trade, and in Africa the discovery of gold led to the Boer War. Much expansion was carried out by companies, not by armies, such as Rhodes's British South Africa Company. The fall of the empire owed much to nationalism and to individuals who led it, such as Gandhi, whose Salt March of 1930 won worldwide attention, and Nkrumah, who led Ghana to independence in 1957. Government decisions also mattered: Attlee's government chose to leave India, and Macmillan accepted the 'wind of change' in Africa in 1960.

Overall, war was the main factor in the rise of the British Empire, because almost every major addition of territory came through war, even if economic motives lay behind it. War was less clearly the main factor in its fall: the world wars weakened Britain, but nationalism, economic weakness and government decisions brought about the end of the empire. War was therefore the single most important factor across the whole story, but it worked alongside economic motives and nationalism.