British public opinion and the annexation of Uganda , 1892 - 1894.

On September 30th, 1888 the Imperial British East Africa Company received a Royal Charter from Lord Salisbury's Government. The Chairman was Sir William Mackinnon, already chairman of the British India Steam Navigation Company. At the end of 1886 the British and the Germans had made their first agreement partitioning East Africa. Germany had obtained the lion's share, but Great Britain gained control of Mombasa, the best harbour on the coast. By an exchange of notes in 1887 the British and German governments agreed to the so- called hinterland doctrine, whereby he who held a stretch of coastline had a pre-emptive right to the interior lying behind. By 1890 the scramble for the area of the Great Lakes was leading to a crisis, a crisis that might have created a Fashoda incident (when Peters and Jackson raced each other for Uganda) nine years before Fashoda. But diplomacy disposed of the problem, and by the Anglo-German Agreement of 1890 Germany recognised inter alia a British sphere of influence which included Buganda.

Paper read at Conference held at the East African Institute of Social Research, Makerere College, January, 1954.