Churchill’s Tour, Autumn 1907, and its Consequences

Abstract

Elgin welcomed Churchill’s plan to make a tour of East Africa in the autumn of 1907. For one thing, it would put Churchill safely out of the way. (Or so he thought. He was to discover that it took more than a few thousand miles’ distance to reduce the pressure Churchill tried to exert upon affairs.) For another, it would be of the greatest advantage that one of them should see a region which was the seat of so many difficult problems. In particular it would give a splendid opportunity for a study on the spot of the problem of race relations. It is of great interest to see that this was how Elgin interpreted Churchill’s opportunity. He commended the subject to him as ‘well worth study on the spot’. He looked forward ‘with the greatest interest’ to learning first-hand from Churchill the result of such a consideration by ‘so acute an observer’. In a letter to wish Churchill bon voyage, he set forth at some length his own speculations upon native problems; he wanted to profit by the unique opportunity ‘of your being able to look at them with all your great powers of observation and your knowledge of official information’.¹