Alfred Sharpe

Alfred Sharpe

Sir Alfred Sharpe (born May 19, 1853 in Lancaster , Lancashire , England , † December 10, 1935 in London ) was a British explorer and colonial administrator .

biography

Sharpe went to the mid- 1880s to Africa to hunt elephants for the ivory to trade. After his arrival in the Shire highlands in Nyassaland , today's Malawi , he got into disputes with Arab slave traders .

In 1889, during his visit to Nyassaland, the African explorer Henry Hamilton Johnston brought him instructions from the British government and from Cecil Rhodes that the British settlements were no longer only threatened by slave traders but also by other colonial powers . Therefore, on the one hand, Sharpe was given the task of pulling the indigenous people west of Lake Nyassa over to the British side. On the other hand, he succeeded in integrating large parts of northern Rhodesia into contractual relationships with the British South Africa Society . He was also successful in incorporating parts of Katangas into the British colonial empire.

In the period that followed, however, there were long battles with several tribes, which were ultimately ended by a peace treaty. Sharpe was instrumental in ending slavery in this part of Central Africa .

Between 1889 and 1895 he explored and mapped Lake Mweru , the northern part of Zambia and Katanga.

In 1891 he was appointed first vice-consul and then in 1896 commissioner of the new British protectorate Nyassaland, of which he was finally appointed governor on May 1, 1908. For his services he was made Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George in 1903 . In 1910 he resigned from British colonial service.

He last explored parts of the interior of Liberia in 1919 .

Works

• Alfred Sharpe: The Backbone of Africa: A Record of Travel During the Great War, with Some Suggestions for Administrative Reform. Witherby, London 1921, LCCN  21-018397 .

Web links

• rulers.org

See also

• British Colonial Malawi 1891–1964