to which they are assigned. The figures in the case of Great Britain are so startling as to call for a little further interpretation. I have thought it right to add to the recognized list of colonies and protectorates[1] the “veiled Protectorate” of Egypt, with its vast Soudanese claim, the entire territories assigned to Chartered Companies, and the native or feudatory States in India which acknowledged our paramountcy by the admission of a British Agent or other official endowed with real political control.
All these lands are rightly accredited to the British Empire, and if our past policy is still pursued, the intensive as distinct from the extensive Imperialism will draw them under an ever-tightening grasp.[2]
In a few other instances, as, for example, in West Africa, countries are included in this list where some small dominion had obtained before 1870, but where the vast majority of the present area of the colony is of more recent requisition. Any older colonial possession thus included in Lagos or Gambia is, however, far more than counter-balanced by the increased area of the Gold Coast Colony, which is not included in this list, and which grew from 29,000 square miles in 1873 to 39,000 square miles in 1893.
The list+is by no means complete. It takes no account of several large regions which passed under the control of our Indian Government as native or feudatory States, but of which no statistics of area or population, even approximate were available. Such are the Shan States, the Burma Frontier, and the Upper Burma Frontier, the districts of Chitral, Bajam, Swat, Waziristan, which came under our
- ↑ The Statistical Abstract for British Empire in 1903 (Cd. 2395, pub. 1905), gives an area of 9,631,109 sq. miles and a population of 360,646,000.
- ↑ The situation is that of 1905. The transfer of large regions from the control of our Foreign Office to that of our Colonial Office is a register of the tightening process. Northern and Southern Nigeria underwent this change in 1900, the E. African Protectorate, Uganda, and Somaliland in 1904.
