the Portuguese colony of Mozambique. The British had hemmed the Trans-
vaal in politically, "as it were in a kraal."38
Even so, by 1895 the Transvaal was loosening the British stranglehold.
It was channeling the bulk of its foreign trade through the Mozambique
port of Lourenco Marques (now Maputo) at Delagoa Bay, by controlling
the Delagoa Bay railroad and giving it preferential rates over the lines from
the Cape Colony and Natal. The Transvaal government had also entered
into diplomatic relations with Germany, which supported
its refusal to
enter into a customs union with the British colonies. In fact, in annexing
South West Africa and encouraging the Transvaal, the German government
had no intention of challenging British supremacy in the region. Trying to
coerce Britain into an alliance, it was using the region as a pawn in Euro-
pean diplomacy. But Rhodes and the British government could not be sure
of this.t?
By that time, British politicians were becoming alarmed about the polit-
ical dynamics in Southern Africa. The relative decline of British industrial
power relative to other Western states; the aggressive diplomacy of Ger-
many; the rise of popular chauvinism in Britain-all
these factors coin-
cided with the realization that the Witwatersrand
discoveries were the