Britain and the Ultimatum of 1890

Abstract

This chapter is the author’s only foray into diplomatic history and was written on the occasion of the centenary of the 1890 confrontation between Portugal and Britain over the colonial seizure of the Zambezi heartlands. The episode reverberated long and loud in Portuguese history but not in British history. One of the key figures, however, was Cecil Rhodes, who subsequently became an imperial folk-hero in Britain and an archetypal villain in Portugal. The original paper was presented to a centenary conference on the ultimatum in the Faculty of Letters of the Classical University at Lisbon in 1990 and was subsequently published in the Portuguese colonial studies review Studia in 1996.