Empire-building
The trade in black slaves made some English merchants rich in the eighteenth century. But Parliament banned the slave trade in 1807. And in 1833 it ordered that the slaves should all be set free. In the West Indies, the freed slaves worked for wages on the sugar plantations. But the wages were low, partly because the price of sugar took a sharp fall.
The first white settlers at the Cape of Good Hope were Dutch (or Boers). In 1815, the Cape became British. For the rest of the nineteenth century, there was a long string of quarrels between the British and the Boers. Britain lost the first Boer War in 1881. And the second Boer War (1899-1902) began badly as well.
The second half of the nineteenth century was a time of great growth in the British Empire. The reasons were mainly to do with trade. And trade with India and the Far East meant that the Suez Canal, which was built in 1869, was vital to Britain. So when there was disorder in Egypt in 1882, Britain used it as an excuse to send in troops and take over.
From the 1880s, a 'Scramble for Africa' took place, as the states of western Europe rushed to carve up the continent. They were all looking for new markets for the goods their industries produced. Soldiers came in with the traders, and the map of Africa was drawn to suit the statesmen of Europe.
Walter Robson: Britain 1750 – 1900; Oxford University Press, 1993/2002, page 77