Towards colonial protectorates

Abstract

Colonial boundaries of the nineteenth century seldom coincided with anthropological reality. In Africa they more commonly cut across existing cultural boundaries whereas in the Pacific, with notable exceptions, their effect was the opposite. In the case of the Ellice Islands, over which a protectorate was declared the following month, there were even fewer local reasons to warrant the move. While British interests were predominant within the group, those interests were small and under threat - a few hundred tons of copra for the Auckland firm of Henderson and Macfarlane and 3, 000 adherents for the London Missionary Society. The origin of these wider diplomatic manoeuvres lies in the 1886 convention by which Britain and Germany agreed to carve the Western Pacific into respective spheres of influence. The German move was in character with the backing that German trading and plantation interests in the Pacific, as in Africa, received from their imperial government. Show more