Challenge: Get Britain in control of ALL of Africa

Lusitania

Donor
That would be very difficult, for they were for the most part a huge drain of resources and personnel for the colonial powers. Africa was the last continant to be devided up. Only after all the rich prizes had already been carved up and claimed was the European attention focused on Africa. France, Germany and Italy claimed huge areas for patriotic purposes, in some ways to offset the huge amount of Pink on maps (Canada, India, Australia).

The only part of British Africa profitable was South Africa.
 

Lusitania

Donor
Don't forget the Suez Canal in Egypt. [/nitpick]

But was it profitable or strategic. When you consider the costs of the British army to guard it and everything did they make any money. I mean government for if I am correct it was owned by a company, so did the taxes they paid pay for the British presence in Egypt?
 
I don't think it is likely that Britain would ever manage to control the entire continent; other powers had trading stations and ports on the Continent dating from the Golden Age of Discovery, and the French got into Algeria relatively early, and would be hard to displace for a variety of reasons. However, if one excludes the pre-existing European enclaves and French Algeria, I do think it would be possible for Britain to gain the majority (60-75%) of Africa in the period between 1815 and the 1870's when Britain's European rivals would finally have the money and motivation to stake claims to new land in Africa.

Expanding north from their base in South Africa, the British would not have run into much into much hard resistance aside from the Zulu. Although dry, Southern Africa (OTL South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe) also mostly lacks the deadly tropical diseases that kept out Europeans. If the English, for whatever reason were to battle the Zulu in Post-Waterloo period, and defeat them, they would have a clear path to dominating Southern Africa. A political accommodation with the Boers would make this much easier. The Zulu were formidable in battle, but their weaponry was too primitive to stand against disciplined musket fire, so as long as the British were able to stay in tight columns and quickly form up into infantry squares, they could probably avoid the disasters that accompanied OTL's Zulu War.

The next logical area for expansion would be East Africa. That part of the continent was largely dominated by petty kingdoms and Arab sultanates, the most formidable of which were Zanzibar, and the Omani Arabs. The British had the naval capacity to clear the Indian Ocean of their navies, it would be within the capacity of the RN and Royal Marines to force their suzerainty on the local elites through a combination of force and other inducements.

Beyond the Coast of East Africa, the next major obstacile would be the Abyssinian Empire. Before than country had the opportunity to import European weaponry they would have been an easy target. The British had enough troops in India to take them on during the middle of the 19th century, the problem would be how to borrow them from the EITC, and equipping them. In fact any British conquest of East Africa would probably rely heavily upon Indian raised troops such as Gurkhas and Sikhs, which could have interesting butterflies.

With the control of East Africa to the borders of Egyptian Sudan, I think the British would be inclined to stand pat until at least the 1870's. During that time they could gain de facto control of the Khedivite of Egypt, and thus control the entire East coast of the continent, from Alexandria to Cape Town. Barring the discovery of gold, there was little to attract Europeans to the interior of the continent, and the tropical diseases were far too deadly. In fact, I can think of no rational motive that would induce the British to expand into Central Africa (the Congo) or Northwest Africa other than national pride, or fear, at least until medicine had advanced a bit.

However, explorers would eventually penetrate the interior of Africa, and discover sources of wealth to be exploited. Starting in the Great Lakes Region, the British could expand into the heart of the continent, until they reached the Kingdom of the Kongo, another hard nut to crack. Both the logistics of operating that far from the Indian Ocean, and supplies, as well as the presence of deadly diseases which would kill both man and horse would make a sustained campaign difficult. Reliance on Indian troops and local auxiliaries could reduce these difficulties somewhat.

I leave it to others to contemplate how the British could extend their conquest of (most of) Africa from South of the Congo River to encompass what became French West Africa. I cannot even think of any reasons the British would have to tangle with the Taureg nomads of the Sahara, other than abolishing slavery (something even the present governments of that region have not succeeded in doing)
 
But was it profitable or strategic. When you consider the costs of the British army to guard it and everything did they make any money. I mean government for if I am correct it was owned by a company, so did the taxes they paid pay for the British presence in Egypt?

It was both, it vastly reduced the cost of getting goods in India, as well as reducing the cost of sending troops there and back, and the funds from other nation's ships increased its profits.
 

Thande

Donor
Not easy but it could be done. The best way is to have a situation where Europe gets taken over by a hostile power with no maritime assets, so Britain can grab all the colonies of all the occupied countries and wave them around to say 'we didn't lose this war, honest!'

Three times when this might be possible: the Napoleonic Wars, WW1, and WW2.

This would have to be done for jingoistic reasons because, as said above, most of the African colonies weren't profitable.
 

Thande

Donor
Not easy but it could be done. The best way is to have a situation where Europe gets taken over by a hostile power with no maritime assets, so Britain can grab all the colonies of all the occupied countries and wave them around to say 'we didn't lose this war, honest!'

Three times when this might be possible: the Napoleonic Wars, WW1, and WW2.

This would have to be done for jingoistic reasons because, as said above, most of the African colonies weren't profitable.

If I had to pick a single method, here's one.

POD: 1910 Portuguese Revolution goes into more scary radical dangerous commie territory and the great powers get alarmed enough that they take the precaution of grabbing all Portugal's colonies.

WW1 goes approximately as OTL until Germany breaks through in the Western Front in 1916, just after Italy joined the Entente (worst timing ever). Spain then opportunistically joins the CPs. German victory in the west is followed by the Russians throwing in the towel in order to get a relatively mild peace, while in the west everywhere becomes part of a German-led hegemony. Britain, in order to save some face and deny her former allies' colonies to the enemy, takes possession of (nearly) all of Africa, and props up a French splinter government in Algiers for the sake of legality. Probably going to bankrupt the UK in the long run but...

Now all you need is to find some way to get Abyssinia and Liberia into it, assuming you count South Africa as 'British' here.

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If I had to pick a single method, here's one.

POD: 1910 Portuguese Revolution goes into more scary radical dangerous commie territory and the great powers get alarmed enough that they take the precaution of grabbing all Portugal's colonies.

WW1 goes approximately as OTL until Germany breaks through in the Western Front in 1916, just after Italy joined the Entente (worst timing ever). Spain then opportunistically joins the CPs. German victory in the west is followed by the Russians throwing in the towel in order to get a relatively mild peace, while in the west everywhere becomes part of a German-led hegemony. Britain, in order to save some face and deny her former allies' colonies to the enemy, takes possession of (nearly) all of Africa, and props up a French splinter government in Algiers for the sake of legality. Probably going to bankrupt the UK in the long run but...

Now all you need is to find some way to get Abyssinia and Liberia into it, assuming you count South Africa as 'British' here.

This is about as plausible as this challenge is going to get.

Another possibility to get all of Africa legally under British control would be to have most of Europe (the colonial powers, anyway) fall under Communist rule after an Entente victory that takes Germany's colonies. After WWI, the Germans have a copy of the Bolshevik Revolution, and the French, Italians, and Spanish fall soon after. Britain goes the opposite direction into a sort of soft fascism, and uses its fleet to take the colonies of the European Communists.
 
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