TNAG-0714-FCO40-910-Future-of-the-Dependent-Territories-1978 — Page 17

0.

8.

Our acquisition of the W. Pacific S.D's belongs to a later and entirely

different phase of our 'colonial' activity and was greatly different in

Doth circumstances and purpose from the former phases. It was essentially

a part of that diplomatic/strategic 'offensive' of the last 3 decades of

the 19th century (to which we have referred in Section I, p. 2 above) to

which we were reluctantly driven by the world-wide expansionist ambition:

of both France and Imperial Germany and of which the so-called 'Partitio

of Africa' was part. And, as merely a means of countering or containing

this, our acquisitions in the Pacific were essentially negative, i.e. to

secure these islands etc against occupation by a hostile Power threaten÷

-ing both our communications with our Australian and N.Zealand Colonies

and the interests if not security of those Colonies themselves.

The French expansionist policy was largely stimulated by her humiliat ing defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 but was quickly followed,

in the early 1880's by a comparable competition from Germany which was

regarded as constituting a greater threat to us both, and just as it

brought about the so-called 'Partition of Africa', it did much the same,

on a smaller scale, in the Pacific. Just as French expansionist activity

on the African littoral of the Mediterranean and in W. Africa threatened

our communications via Suez etc, and German German activity in S.W.Africa

threatened our communications via the Cape, so were those with our Aust-

ralian and N. Zealand colonies also threatened by the danger of hostile

possessions in that area. So our interest in these Pacific S.D's originate

in a joint concern for our maritime comminications and the interests of

our existing Colonies in that area.

French interest in the area of New Calendonia and the New Hebrides

had begun in the 1850's but greatly increased with threats of annexation

in the 1870's. Certain Australian State governments therefore urged HMG

in 1878 to annex the New Hebrides and Samoa, but the home government,

habitually averse now to any further overseas and especially colonial (i.e. administrative) comittments (as they had already shown themselves in refusing till the last minute to annex Fiji, 1874, merely to protect