AQA A LEVEL HISTORY 7402/1J COMPONENT 1J BRITISH EMPIRE ,C VERSION 1.0 FINAL QUESTION PAPERS & MERGED MARKING SCHEME | JUNE 2023

Extract A The expansion of the British Empire was fuelled by the Victorians’ love of adventure and a desire for new knowledge. The interior of Africa held the most enticing mysteries left in the world. The public at home shared the thrill of discovery of the man on the spot. The Victorians loved a hero and imperial explorers and quarrelsome scientists filled this role. These men wrote long, and often dramatic, accounts of their experiences for their public and government at home to demonstrate the possibilities of these ‘new’ regions for the Empire. The possibilities seemed unlimited, as the new Victorian technology, the steamship, the telegraph and, above all, the railway, promised for the first time the real opening up of the interior of Africa to these explorers, and by extension to Britain. As a result of the explorers’ discoveries, men began to ‘think big’ and planning was on a continent-wide scale for Britain’s expanded rule. Adapted from ME Chamberlain, The Scramble for Africa, 2013 5 10 Extract B Private traders played the central role in expanding Britain’s imperial rule in Africa. Late-nineteenth-century British governments, Liberal and Conservative alike, were reluctant to commit themselves either financially, or in terms of time and energy, to an extensive, virtually non-stop, process of colonial expansion. They were, on the other hand, content to let capitalist entrepreneurs undertake the dirty work of conquest and penetration on their behalf. Rhodes was the most successful of these entrepreneurial individuals. His success was due to his great international trading companies, his private army in the form of the British South African Police Force, and his steamships on the Zambezi River functioning as a small private navy. He was determined to drive British power northwards and persistently advocated the use of force by the government to defeat the Boer Republics. Other chartered companies in different parts of Africa also acted as agents for British imperial expansion and consolidation. Adapted from D Judd, Empire: The British Imperial Experience from 1765 to the Present, 2001