Britain Abroad

_{Paris Communards tear down a statue of Napoleon I. © Getty Images}

The Franco-Prussian war that had started in 1870 continued to dominate the international stage in 1871.

The year began with Paris still under siege; the French government then capitulated but the people of Paris resented the humiliating terms of the Prussian invader, which would have involved the occupation of their city. They refused to surrender their arms and a revolutionary committee took charge. French troops now turned on their own people and the Paris Commune was bloodily suppressed as the city was re-taken street by street while the German invaders remained inactive.

As a result of the war, Germany became united and France became a republic. The vast land mass, population and uncertain ambition of the new Germany made thoughtful Britons fearful for the future of Europe. Britain did nothing to alter the course of the war apart from guaranteeing Belgian neutrality. The British government was blamed in later years for having stood by while the German Chancellor Otto von Bismark imposed German power on Europe.

Queen Victoria did her best, writing to her grandson the German emperor that she hoped his glorious victory would be followed by a magnanimous peace. Wilhelm II was not feeling magnanimous; he made France surrender the province of Alsace and most of Lorraine and a German army of occupation was commanded to remain in France until five billion francs was paid.

The Emperor Napoleon III, who had been deposed on March 1, came to Britain with Empress Eugenie; they settled in Chislehurst with their only son.

Across the Atlantic there were signs of the new power of the US gaining strength with the nation’s recovery from the civil war: the vast grain fields of the west were now supplying the world market and a decline in grain planting in Britain began.

In Southern Africa, Britain became involved in a struggle over the rich territory of Griqualand West. Diamonds had been discovered and some administrative order was necessary: the land was filling with rumbustious miners seeking to strike it rich.

Many of them were international fortune-seekers who were veterans of the Californian and Australian gold rushes. A hill where a particularly fine specimen had been found had been so excavated as to be renamed the Big Hole.

The Orange Free State had established a government but it was unacceptable to the Griqua people, who offered to place the territory under the British crown. The British therefore annexed the area. The mining town, New Rush, would soon be renamed Kimberley after the British Secretary of State for the Colonies, the Earl of Kimberley; it would become the largest city in the area.

A letter from explorer and missionary David Livingstone described atrocities committed by Arab slavers in the service of the Sultan of Zanzibar, producing shock that slavery continued so long after abolition in Britain. The letter had taken a long time to arrive, however, and in the meantime Livingstone was believed dead. Henry Morton Stanley, a Welshman who was correspondent for the New York Herald, travelled to find him. He did so at Ujiji on Lake Tankanyika, in November. In Stanley’s later account he greeted the explorer with the immortal words ‘Dr Livingstone, I presume.’

Jad Adams