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railway under one local colonial
administration. Because the railway
experienced cost overruns in Kenya,
the British decided to justify its
exceptional expense and pay its
operating costs by introducing large-
scale European settlement in a vast
tract of land that became a center of
cash-crop agriculture, known as the
“White Highlands.”
In much of Uganda, by contrast,
agricultural production was placed
in the hands of the Africans, if they
responded to the opportunity. Cotton
was the crop of choice, largely
because of pressure from the British
Cotton- Growing Association, which
looked to the colonies to provide raw
materials for British mills. Even the
Church Missionary Society joined the
effort, by launching the Uganda
Company (managed by a former
missionary) to promote cotton-
planting and to buy and transport
the produce. It was a financial
success but eventually caused
resentment, in that the Africans
remained cotton-growers, Europeans
then processed the crop, and the
Indians came in as merchants,
buying crops and supplying imports
to the country-dwellers.
The government in East Africa
was paternalistic and the people
became conditioned to follow the
lead offered by others. Eventually,
when independence was imminent,
the elite took up government
service, rather than commerce, and
African paternalism replaced the
colonial kind.
The Invention of Africa
Africa did not offer the same kind of
framework for rule as India, where
the British inherited an empire, the
Moghuls having been overlords in
most of the continent, their rule, at
times, extending into Afghanistan.
As far as the British could fathom,
there was an assortment of
monarchs in India, and Britain made
better use of existing rulers than
most. The French, meanwhile, must
have had a difficult time trying to
incorporate republicanism into
areas that once boasted their own
imperial power, and
Liberté, Égalite,
Fraternité
must have needed a good
deal of explanation.
The British emphasized the
notion of the “Great White Mother,”
concerned for all her imperial
subjects. Queen Victoria, although
interested in Africa, cared most
strongly about India, the jewel in the
crown, to the extent of employing a
tutor to teach her Urdu, while later
British monarchs were in the habit of
regaling African rulers with letters
and messages, rather like a father
to a son.
Colonialism
LEFT:
Cotton became the most
important crop grown in the British
colonies. The raw crop was used to
supply the British cotton mills.
OPPOSITE:
Queen Victoria as head of
the British Empire was referred to as the
“Great White Mother.”
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