British Scholar: Robinson & Gallagher - "Africa and the Victorians"

Africa and the Victorians: The Official Mind of Imperialism
Ronald Robinson and John Gallagher (London: Macmillan, 1961), 491 pages

Africa and the Victorians serves as the logical follow-up to Robinson and Gallagher’s influential and
controversial article of 1953 entitled “The Imperialism of Free Trade.” In that article, Robinson and
Gallagher challenged the notion that the late-Victorian era should be defined as enthusiastic for formal
empire. Instead, they argued that the late-Victorians merely followed the mid-Victorian policy of extending
control informally if possible and formally if necessary. The continuity of British imperial policy throughout
the nineteenth century serves as the basis for this work.

The book systematically investigates the continuity of imperial policy in each of the regions of Africa under
the influence of the British. Moreover, Robinson and Gallagher look to settle why government ministers
decided to advance the mechanisms of formal empire where and when they did. The main contention of
the authors stipulates that the partition of tropical Africa amongst European powers developed following
the Suez Crisis of 1882, when Gladstone and his cabinet found it necessary to invade Egypt and put down
the nationalist uprising of Arabi in order to preserve British access to the Suez Canal. The importance of
the canal as a trade route to the East in general and India specifically underlined its strategic significance.
Although British officials did not want to implement formal empire in Egypt, once the occupation began the
reality of the situation crystallized: they needed to formally control the country. The occupation of Egypt,
in turn, served as the catalyst for the partition of Africa. Thus, the so-called “Age of Imperialism”
developed as a direct result of Britain’s need to maintain the territories that proved vital to the country’s
strategic interests in the East and not, as suggested by theorists on economic imperialism, for economic
aggrandizement at the expense of the Africans.

Overall, Robinson and Gallagher’s seminal work successfully reevaluates the need for formal British
imperialism in Africa during the 1880s. They cogently point out that the official mind of British officials did
not alter, the circumstances did. This book rightly remains one of the most important historical texts of the
twentieth century.