The central significance of the Hunt in the ideology of late nineteenth-century imperialism has never been fully realised. The importance of the Hunt can be identified at every level of the theory and practice of the imperial ethos. It played a part in popular imperialism in Britain. In Africa it acted as a vital point of interaction between Africans and Europeans. Explorers, prospectors, missionaries and pioneers were also hunters. The ivory-hunting frontier in southern Africa was at one and the same time a prime impulse to the interior and the marker of the white advance. Most early colonial administrators were hunters as were the majority of European settlers. The Hunt was extolled by the military as the vital preparation for and adjunct of war. As African access to hunting was progressively reduced, the Hunt became not only the symbol of European dominance, but also the determinant of class within that dominance. As conservation policies developed at the turn of the century, the Hunt became the preserve of famous travellers, high-ranking officers, politicians, royalty and aristocrats, as it had been in India for some time. Conservation was promoted, in part, because these hunters deprecated the plain man's hunting, whether the unbridled depredations of the settler, or, above all, the commercial activities or survival techniques of Africans.