13b Part 5 - Eastern and Southern Africa
Africa
The Horn of Africa
The Horn of Africa has long been defined by the struggle between Egypt and its neighbours to the South. Our age is no different. King Theodore II (Tewodros II) of Abyssinia clashed several times with the expansionist Sultanate of Egypt during the late 1860s and early 1870s.
With the Klondike Crisis of 1875, and the apparent likelihood of war between Britain and France, as allies of the two main protagonists in North America, Britain began to worry about the potential for French strangling the route to India. Since the early 1860s the route had increasingly been through the Egyptian Suez Canal. Egypt, an ally of France, might be expected to act to interdict this passage, and if not willing initially to do so, France had enough influence through credit and commercial agreements to bring pressure to bear upon the sultanate.
The British response was that if France were to close the Suez Canal, then France herself would not be able to gain in any potential conflict. Even as the Radical uprising occurred in Paris and the danger of war receded, the British went ahead with their plans. Using existing trading bases in Aden, Britain acquired possession of several Somali ports, concluding agreement with native chiefs who were willing, or backing others to take power to be in a position to conclude such.
During the Anglo-American War of the mid 1880s some of these positions were abandoned, and in a twist of fate one or two were in turn occupied by France, securing agreements in turn with the native rulers. With the conclusion of the war, the British and French occupied ports were formalised in a bi-lateral agreement between the two nations.
Eastern Africa
The East coast of Africa is the territory of Arab sultanates. The Omani sultanate, wracked by internal problems has divided into two, the Southern portion securing its capital at Zanzibar. Owning a large swathe of the East African coast, sharing it with the Somali sultanates, this sultanate began pressing inland in earnest with the advent of European adventurers. Men like Stanley, proving to their paymasters that the interior offered profit, led to Arab penetration and settlement into the Eastern Congo, where the new states came into contact and thus conflict with the Cannibalistic peoples there. By 1890, the Arab sultanates, their interior governors and breakaway statelets, account for the majority of Eastern Africa, and form a continuum both along the coast, and within the interior from Tanganyika, the Congo and up to Equatoria.
Southern Africa
Portugal
The Empire of Portugal owns a wide strip of land from Angola in the West to Mozambique in the East. Until the 1870s the largest settlements were on the coasts, but starting with the British action in the Horn of Africa, and receiving a greater stimulus from Arab penetration into the interior, Portuguese expeditions to join their holdings with more than a theoretical line on a map occurred. During the period of the wars in Italy, and between Britain and the USA, Portugal steadily expanded its exploration and colonisation efforts. By 1890, the interior has established provincial capitals, and trade routes with both the Arab states to the North, and the Boers to the South
The Boers
The Boers, a Dutch-originated protestant people had been settled in the Cape of Good Hope when Britain took possession of the colony at the start of the century. By the time of the British Civil War, in the early-mid 1830s,, Britain had outlawed slavery and was moving towards emancipation of the last of the slave populations. This, combined with a reaction against radical Protestantism in the form of the Settlement of 1836, added impetus to a Boer movement to move out of the Cape Province and into the interior - the Voortrek.
By the 1890s half a dozen Boer states exist, spanning from Southern Bechuanaland, across the Orange River, the Transvaal, into Natal in the South and North into Bulawayo and Matebeleland. Conflict with the native states, with the Zulu Kingdom, and clashes with the Portuguese have made the Boer community a militarised one.
I realise this is still something of a hodgepodge but to be honest its been gnawing at me so much its beginning to depress me, so I felt it was better to get the vague outline of the big picture down on 'paper' than to try to tidy it up too much. I hope I have used the many good ideas and comments from people to produce something that is at least plausible. Thanks !
Grey Wolf
I see slavers and traders from Zanzibar as being the ones to open up the interior from the East. The Wargames Foundry has some very interesting articles on the Arabs in the Eastern Congo, on Stanley's role with them, and on how 'European' some of their settlements there impressed people as being. Without Belgium to destroy them, I see these as dominating the interior and joining borders with Egyptian Equatoria.
