For various reasons the attention of statesmen turned almost solely on Africa.  Central and South America were divided among States that were nominally civilised and enjoyed the protection of the Monroe Doctrine put forward by the United States.  Australia was wholly British.  In Asia the weakness of China was but dimly surmised; and Siam and Cochin China alone offered any field for settlement or conquest by European peoples from the sea.  In Polynesia several groups of islands were still unclaimed; but these could not appease the land-hunger of Europe.  Africa alone provided void spaces proportionate to the needs and ambitions of the white man.  The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 served to bring the east coast of that continent within easy reach of Europe; and the discoveries on the Upper Nile, Congo, and Niger opened a way into other large parts.  Thus, by the year 1880, everything favoured the “partition of Africa.”

Rumour, in the guise of hints given by communicative young attaches or “well-informed” correspondents, ascribes the first beginnings of the plans for the partition of Africa to the informal conversations of statesmen at the time of the Congress of Berlin (1878).  Just as an architect safeguards his creation by providing a lightning-conductor, so the builder of the German Empire sought to divert from that fabric the revengeful storms that might be expected from the south-west.  Other statesmen were no less anxious than Bismarck to draw away the attention of rivals from their own political preserves by pointing the way to more desirable waste domains.  In short, the statesmen of Europe sought to plant in Africa the lightning-conductors that would safeguard the new arrangements in Europe, including that of Cyprus.  The German and British Governments are known then to have passed on hints to that of France as to the desirability of her appropriating Tunis.  The Republic entered into the schemes, with results which have already been considered (Chapter XII.); and, as a sequel to the occupation of Tunis, plans were set on foot for the eventual conquest of the whole of the North-West of Africa (except Morocco and a few British, Spanish, and Portuguese settlements) from Cape Bon to Cape Verde, and thence nearly to the mouth of the River Niger.  We may also note that in and after 1883 France matured her schemes for the conquest of part, and ultimately the whole, of Madagascar, a project which reached completion in the year 1885[425].

[Footnote 425:  For the French treaty of December 17, 1885, with Madagascar see Parl.  Papers, Africa, No. 2 (1886).]

The military occupation of Egypt by Great Britain in 1882 also served to quicken the interest of European Powers in Africa.  It has been surmised that British acquiescence in French supremacy in Tunis, West Africa, and Madagascar had some connection with the events that transpired in Egypt, and that the perpetuation of British supremacy in the valley of the Nile was virtually bought by the surrender of most of our political and trading interests in these lands, the lapse of which under the French “protective” regime caused much heart-burning in commercial circles.