THE KEY TO SOUTH-AFRICA IN THE 1890S - DELAGOA BAY AND THE ORIGINS OFTHE SOUTH-AFRICAN WAR

Developments at Delagoa Bay have not generally been seen as having a d irect bearing on the outbreak of war between Britain and the Transvaal in 1899. Britain's lack of control over the Bay has typically been vi ewed as a threat to British ascendancy in southern Africa only in the period prior to the signing of the Anglo-German agreement in August 18 98. Before then, the Bay and its railway to the Rand were seen as prov iding a route through which rival European powers - above all Germany - might promote the Transvaal's political and economic autonomy from B ritain. On the surface, the agreement seemed to place the Bay more fir mly under British control and mark the end of German support for the T ransvaal. in reality (and as the British Colonial Office saw when it e ventually discovered what the Foreign Office had conceded to Germany) the agreement threatened to undermine British ascendancy in southern A frica to a decisive extent by opening the door to the competitive comm ercial development of the Bay. The Colonial Office, fully recognizing what was at stake, became more convinced than ever by March 1899 that an early showdown with the Transvaal was imperative. This article argu es that British concerns about Delagoa Bay were a key, and hitherto ne glected, factor in the origins of the South African war. These concern s sprang from threats posed via the Bay to a whole range of interconne cted British interests relating to strategy, economics, geopolitics, a nd prestige. The article therefore challenges those interpretations of the war which suggest that the British government was driven by a nar rower set of either non-economic or economic motives.