At its height, Britain ruled more of Africa than any other European power, from Cairo to the Cape and from the Gambia River to Zanzibar. This is the guide to every one of those territories: how Britain took them, how it ran them, and how each one got its freedom back.
For two centuries Britain did not rule Africa. It rented or bought small pieces of coast from African rulers, built forts and traded. The Royal African Company and its successors bought gold, ivory and above all enslaved Africans, who were shipped to the Caribbean and America. Inland, African states such as Asante, Dahomey and Oyo were in charge.
After Britain abolished its slave trade in 1807, the Royal Navy's West Africa Squadron patrolled the coast and Freetown became the base for freed captives. Britain told itself it was now in Africa to suppress the slave trade and spread Christianity and commerce. In practice it moved steadily inland, annexing Lagos in 1861 and the Gold Coast in 1874, and fighting Asante again and again.
In the 1880s the European powers raced to divide Africa among themselves. Britain took Egypt in 1882, the Niger region, Kenya and Uganda, Rhodesia through Cecil Rhodes's British South Africa Company, Nyasaland, Somaliland and, after the war of 1899–1902, the Boer republics. African states that resisted were crushed: Benin City was sacked in 1897 and the Asante king was sent into exile in 1896.
When Germany lost its colonies in 1919, Britain received League of Nations mandates over Tanganyika and parts of Togoland and Cameroon. By the 1920s Britain ruled, in one form or another, territory that is now more than 20 African countries.
Britain ran Africa cheaply. A few hundred British officers governed millions of people, mostly through "indirect rule": chiefs and kings kept their titles and collected taxes for the colonial government. Where no chiefs existed in the British sense, the British sometimes appointed them.
There were two very different kinds of colony. In West Africa, the climate and disease kept white settlers away, and Africans kept their land; cocoa, palm oil and groundnuts were grown by African farmers. In Kenya, Rhodesia and South Africa, white settlers took the best land, and Africans were pushed into reserves and forced into paid labour by hut and poll taxes. These settler colonies saw the worst violence at the end of empire.
African soldiers fought for Britain in both world wars, in East Africa, Burma and the Middle East. Many came home expecting change. Their protests, together with the new nationalist parties and pressure from the United Nations and the United States, ended British rule in Africa within 25 years of 1945.
From the slave forts to the Asante wars, cocoa and Nkrumah. Independent 6 March 1957. Capital: Accra.
From the Lagos colony of 1861 to amalgamation in 1914 and independence on 1 October 1960. Capital: Abuja (Lagos until 1991).
Freetown, the freed slaves and the Hut Tax War. Independent 27 April 1961. Capital: Freetown.
A river colony cut out of Senegal. Independent 18 February 1965. Capital: Banjul.
German colonies split after 1914, and the votes that decided their future. Today parts of Cameroon, Nigeria and Ghana.
The settler colony, the White Highlands and Mau Mau. Independent 12 December 1963. Capital: Nairobi.
Buganda, the protectorate and the railway. Independent 9 October 1962. Capital: Kampala.
German East Africa taken over, Zanzibar's sultans, and the union of 1964. Capital: Dodoma.
Occupation in 1882, nominal independence in 1922, and the Suez crisis of 1956. Capital: Cairo.
Gordon, the Mahdi, Omdurman and the Anglo-Egyptian condominium. Independent 1 January 1956. Capital: Khartoum.
The protectorate that guarded Aden's meat supply. Independent 26 June 1960, united with Somalia days later. Capital of Somaliland: Hargeisa.
The Cape, the Boer wars and the Union of 1910. Capitals: Pretoria, Cape Town and Bloemfontein.
Rhodes, the settlers, UDI and the liberation war. Independent 18 April 1980. Capital: Harare.
Copper, the Central African Federation and Kaunda. Independent 24 October 1964. Capital: Lusaka.
Livingstone's missions, Chilembwe's rising and Nyasaland. Independent 6 July 1964. Capital: Lilongwe.
The three High Commission territories that escaped South Africa. Independent 1966 and 1968. Capitals: Gaborone, Maseru, Mbabane.
South Africa is the odd one out. It became a self-governing dominion in 1910 and a republic in 1961, but the Black majority only won the vote in 1994. Independence from Britain meant freedom for the white minority, not for everyone.
The empire is not only in Africa. In Britain you can follow it through museums and archives:
Entrance fees are included in the tour price; tips are not included but are always welcome.
Ghana, the first colony to break free, is the easiest place to start in Africa:
Where Britain's African story began.
The colonial war Britain paid for in the end.
The man who wanted Africa red from Cape to Cairo.
Where Africa's independence leaders planned the end of empire.
All our pages on Britain's African history.
Britain Adventures is part of a network of independent sites on Africa and its history. These are the places where the stories on this page continue:
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