In contrast to Europe, where competing powers were always jostling for territory, the situation in Africa was calm when war broke out in 1914. The colonial powers had settled on their territorial borders in 1890, when the great ‘scramble for Africa’ had concluded, and there wasn’t much friction between German, French, Belgian, British and Portuguese holdings. There was little to tempt Britain and its allies in Germany’s African colonies, and although the Germans harboured ambitions of establishing a vast swathe of colonial possessions across Africa (a
