the first navigable stretch of the Nile, and during the World War a
line connecting the Uganda railway with the Usambara railway in
German East Africa was constructed.
The telegraphic system was greatly extended between 1910 and 1920, while from the first-named year gaps in the telegraph lines were increasingly filled by wireless telegraphy. The first wireless station in South Africa (at Durban) was opened in 1910. The Germans by the middle of 1914 had just completed powerful wire- less stations in Togoland, South- West and East Africa. The French built stations in West and North Africa (Dakar, Algiers, etc.) and in 1920 had a trans-S.aharan wireless service, there being two sta- tions in the desert. Wireless stations in Egypt and the Sudan con- nected with Mombasa, Tabora and South Africa.
The World War gave a great impetus to aerial communications, and Cairo became the junction for services to and from Europe, Asia and the Cape. In 1919 an air route was laid out by British officers from Cairo to Cape Town, aerodromes being built at 24 different places. The distance by the air route was 5,206 m., com- pared with 6,823 m - by tj 16 Cape-to-Cairo land route. The first attempt to fly across Africa was made in Feb. 1920 by Dr. P. Chalmers Mitchell in an aeroplane chartered by The Times. At Tabora, a little over half way, the machine crashed (Feb. 27). The first to succeed in the enterprise were Col. Sir H. A. van Ryneveld and Maj. Sir C. J. Brand, of the South African forces. They reached the Wynberg aerodrome, Cape Town, after many delays and having had to use three machines, on March 20 1920. Their actual flying time from Cairo to Cape Town was 72 hours, 40 minutes. At the same time (Feb.-March 1920) French airmen, Maj. Vuilleman and a comrade, flew from Algiers across the Sahara to the Niger at Gao, and thence to Dakar. The first regular air service in Africa was established in 1921, with seaplanes along the Congo from Stanley Pool to Stanleyville, a dis- tance of 1 ,000 miles. 1
3. History. A summary statement of recent territorial changes affords a guide to the course of events in Africa. In 1910 the British self-governing colonies of the Cape, Natal, Transvaal and Orange Free State were formed into the Union of South Africa, with a single government and one legislature. In 1911 a considerable area of French Equatorial Africa was transferred to the German protectorate of Cameroon, and in return Germany acknowledged a French protectorate over the greater part of Morocco, the protectorate treaty between France and Morocco being signed in April 1912. In Nov. 1912 a Franco-Spanish treaty defined the Spanish zones in Morocco. In 1912 also Italy annexed the Turkish vilayets of Tripoli and Bengazi (Cyrenaica), to which they gave the common name of Libya. In the same year the United States acquired financial control of Liberia, part of its hinterland having passed to France in 1910. In Dec. 1914 a British protectorate over Egypt was proclaimed. In June 1919, by the Treaty of Versailles (which came into force Jan. 10 1920), Germany renounced possession of all her oversea protectorates in favour of the principal Allied and Associated Powers. These protectorates were placed under mandatories. The Union of South Africa became mandatory for German South- West Africa, which her troops had conquered in 1915. It was renamed the South- West Protectorate. Togoland was divided between France and Great Britain (it had been conquered by British and French troops in Aug. 1914). France became the mandatory for Cameroon, but a small portion was transferred to (British) Nigeria. Came- roon had been conquered by Anglo-French forces in 1915-6. Britain became mandatory for German East Africa, renamed the Tanganyika Territory. A small fragment (the Kionga triangle) of German East Africa was, however, added to Portuguese East Africa, and the greater part of the provinces of Ruanda and Urundi to the Belgian Congo. German East Africa had been conquered, as to the greater part in 1916, by British and Belgian troops. An Anglo-French convention of Sept. 1919, rati- fied in 1921, settled the boundary between Wadai and Darfur, which had been in dispute since 1899. In 1920-1 Italy gained additions to Tripoli and Cyrenaica by arrangements with France and Great Britain; also the promise of an addition to Italian Somaliland at the expense of British East Africa. British East Africa, up to then a protectorate, was in 1920 annexed to the British Crown and renamed Kenya Colony.
As a result of these changes Africa was divided among the
1 A mail air service from Toulouse to Casablanca had been in- stituted in 1920.
following Powers, territories governed under a mandate being reckoned in the possessions of the Powers named:
sq. m.
Great Britain . . 4,364,ooo 2
France 4,200,000
Portugal 788,000
Italy 650,000
Spain 140.000'
Belgium 930 ooo
Liberia 40,000
Abyssinia (Independent) 350,000
These figures give a total of 11,462,000 sq. m. as the area of Africa. In the absence of definite surveys of large areas of the continent this may be regarded as a close approximation to accuracy. In 1914 the German possessions in Africa had an area of approximately 1,030,000 sq. m.; the Turkish possessions (not reckoning the legal suzerainty it possessed over Egypt) an area of some 400,000 sq. miles.
'The extinction of Turkish rule in North Africa had long been foreseen and was no matter for regret. It ended a connexion which had lasted five centuries and had been almost wholly evil in its effects. German sovereignty in Africa had dated from 1884 only and had been rapidly enlarged. Endeavours further to extend it had been a prominent factor in German policy for a decade before the World War began, and closely affected very large areas of Africa. Germany desired to secure a footing on the African coast of the Mediterranean and a port on the Atlantic coast of Morocco. These desires conflicted with Italian and French ambitions, and in 1911 the issue on both points was decided against Germany. As to Morocco the Franco-German convention of Feb. 9 1909 had recognized the privileged posi- tion of France in Morocco, but not a French protectorate over that country, and the sending of the German gunboat " Panther " to Agadir in July 1911 was a protest against what Germany considered an unwarranted extension of French influ- ence in Morocco, and an intimation that if German treaty rights in Morocco were to be renounced France must make com- pensation. According to Prince Billow, Germany in 1911 " never had any intention of taking possession of any part of Morocco . . . England and Spain, besides France, would have opposed us there " (Imperial Germany, 1913 ed.). Although this statement may be an after-the-event reflection the inter- vention of Britain on the side of France was decisive. Germany withdrew her opposition to the establishment of a French protectorate over Morocco, and accepted compensation in Central Africa. While the Franco-German negotiations were still in progress, Italy, by abruptly declaring war on Turkey and invading Cyrenaica and Tripoli, deprived Germany of her last opportunity short of war of gaining a footing in the Mediter- ranean. 4
The alternative scheme to territorial acquisitions in North Africa which Germany had prepared were indicated in a note addressed to France on July 15 1911, during the Agadir crisis. Germany then proposed that France should cede the greater part of the coast and the interior of French Equatorial Africa as far as the Sanga tributary of the Congo river, and further renounce in favour of Germany her right of preemption over the Belgian Congo. These proposals Germany was com- pelled greatly to modify, but by the convention of Nov. 4 1911 large tracts of French territory were added to Cameroon. On the south these additions made Spanish Guinea an enclave
2 Including Egypt and the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan.
3 Including the Spanish zones in Morocco.
4 In view of the position publicly assumed by Germany in 1898 of friendship to Moslems in general and to Turkey in particular, Germany had not sought direqt rule over the Ottoman provinces in question. Turkish sovereignty was to be respected, but an Austro- Hungarian chartered company had been formed under German aus- pices for the exploitation of Tripoli and Cyrenaica, and under the charter Austrian (in effect German) authority would have been imposed upon those vilayets. Italy, however, ever since the establish- ment of the French protectorate over Tunisia in 1881, had " ear- marked " Tripoli and Cyrenaica for herself. See the Memoirs of Francesco Crispi (London, 1914) and H. H. Johnston in Geog. Jnl. (vol. 44, pp. 280-1).
