In the scramble for Africa the French and the British often worked at cross purposes. Many times approaching a state of war, both colonial powers were determined to gain more territory and prestige than their rival. During the closing decade of the nineteenth century this imperial conflict became very evident in Madagascar and Zanzibar. These islands off the east coast of Africa became an arena for bitter and dangerous competition, and the clash of the imperial powers over these two islands reflected the entire race for the unclaimed portions of the non-European world. The lines of colonialism were sharply drawn there, and both powers overtly tried to cancel out the gains of the other. The French, smarting from their diplomatic defeat in Egypt over the Suez Canal in 1882, were certain that they could win a foothold in Eastern Africa, close to the Nile. The British, just as resolved to protect the Nile and the Arabian Peninsula, knew that they had to hold as much East African territory as possible. In a land where the white colonialists were in a minority, in regions where native resistance was determined, England and France waged an imperialist-diplomatic war. Madagascar and Zanzibar, then, serve as a classic case study in African colonial friction.

Zanzibar, long a center of the East African slave trade, became in the late 1880's a focal point of British and, to a lesser extent, German expansion. In the last year of the decade the two powers came to an agreement over spheres of influence.