How Britain gained an empire - religion and ideasAfrican missionaries and Rhodes' confession

Expansion and empire

British involvement with Africa had begun with slavery and this had led to racist thinking about the inferiority of African peoples in relation to Europeans.

African missionaries

British Christians had been heavily involved in the campaigns to abolish the Transatlantic Slave Trade and slavery itself. They saw success when both were abolished (in 1807 and 1833 respectively). Following abolition, the campaigners kept a watchful eye on the states of Africa to make sure that slavery did not continue illegally. One of the aspects of this anti-slavery work was to encourage new kinds of trade and another was to bring the religion of Christianity to the native African peoples.

David Livingstone (1813-1873) was one of the leading missionaries from Scotland who was involved in exploring the territories of Central Africa in the mid-19th century. He was not very successful in converting the people to Christianity, but he did explore the region thoroughly and was responsible for encouraging more trade along the Zambezi River.

Rhodes’ confession

In South Africa, a young man named Cecil John Rhodes led the way in exploiting the diamond mines that were discovered in Kimberley in the north of the Cape Colony in the 1860s. Rhodes went to Oxford University after he had begun his diamond business activities. Then in 1877 he wrote down a statement of his vision for the British Empire around the globe called ‘Confession of Faith’. He was utterly convinced of British superiority, which he extended to the Americans as fellow Anglo-Saxon peoples. His vision of British rule going from the bottom to the top of Africa (Cape to Cairo) lay behind his invasion of African territories in the south and the creation of the colony of Rhodesia (named after him in 1895).

Jingoism

There was a great deal of intense enthusiasm for British imperialism in the United Kingdom in the late 19th century. Some of these sentiments were xenophobic and some were racist. The term 'jingoism' was used to describe this patriotic enthusiasm.