In the eyes of Curzon and Viscount Alfred Milner the outcome of the war should be the total suppression of imperialist competition by the assertion of British control over the eastern Mediterranean and East Africa, establishing a British Monroe Doctrine in the Indian Ocean and its approaches. It was to be an all-empire project. The Indian Army played a decisive role in all the campaigns against the Turks.71 In 1917 London weighed up the possibility of giving Germany’s East African colonies to India as its own mandate.72 The Admiralty was abuzz with schemes to base squadrons of an imperial navy
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