As the title says. What happens if Portugal gets their way and gets the land to link up Angola and Mozambique?
The problem is, protection treaties are "built" faster than railroads. And it was the Portuguese that made the treaties that caused Rhodes to instigate the British government to make the ultimatum.The way for Portugal to make good it's claim to link up Angola and Mozambique would be to get SOMEONE to build a railroad from Angola to Mozambique from Luanda to Nova Sofala or better yet, Lourenco Marques. It could be an American railroad builder like Jay Gould or the Southern Pacific "Big Four" (Leland Stanford, Collis P. Huntington, Crocker and I believe Wells or Fargo) as long as it's someone not beholden in anyway to British interests and they start building by 1879. Cecil Rhodes can make all the treaties with African tribes like the Tswana and the Barotse that he wants, but a railroad running across the African savannah from Luanda to Mozambique with a branch to Benguela and another to Katanga will trump them all.
To Britain, assuming there's no Cape-to-Cairo dream in the first place, there are not many butterflies.As the title says. What happens if Portugal gets their way and gets the land to link up Angola and Mozambique?
or the Southern Pacific "Big Four" (Leland Stanford, Collis P. Huntington, Crocker and I believe Wells or Fargo)