The Partition by Power: Britain, France, Germany, and Italy

Britain built the largest African colonial empire, driven both by strategic interest in the route to India and by economic ambition. Its occupation of Egypt in 1882, following Ahmed Urabi's nationalist revolt against foreign financial control, was officially justified as temporary but in fact lasted more than seventy years, securing British control of the vital Suez Canal route. General Charles Gordon's death at Khartoum in January 1885 at the hands of Mahdist forces fueled a later British desire for reconquest, achieved by General Herbert Kitchener at the decisive Battle of Omdurman (September 2, 1898), after which an Anglo-Egyptian condominium over Sudan was established in 1899. Businessman Cecil Rhodes developed the strategic vision of a continuous British domain "from Cairo to Cape Town," and his British South Africa Company conquered and administered the territories later named Rhodesia; British expansion in southern Africa culminated in the Second Boer War (1899-1902) and the formation of the Union of South Africa in 1910.