Why did the British fight a war against the Boers for a second time? (734 hits)
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Submitted by Zoobie2000 (View user info) at 2008-02-28 19:03:50 EST
'' The franchise... formed the stalking horse behind which... British supremacy over the Transvaal was being advanced. '' When the Boers left British rule behind to embark on their Great Trek in search of their own independence in the interior they were, presumably viewed with a casual indifference by the British government; so long as the lands taken by these essentially rural people ('Boer' means farmer) were economically inconsequential and preferably landlocked. An attempt to set up a Natalian Republic near present- day Durban had been quashed by the British in the 1840's and yet the independence of the Orange Free State and the Transvaal (South African Republic) was recognised by them at the Sand River and Bloemfontein Conventions of 1852 and 1854. An attempt to annex the Transvaal in 1877 had led to a very short war in 1880- '81 and led to the restoration of independence under a never clearly defined British 'suzerainty'. The discovery of the world's largest known gold reefs at the Witwatersrand in 1887, however, thoroughly changed the dynamic of South African power politics meaning that war might almost be said to have been highly likely thereafter. The reasons for this are far less obvious than simple greed. The protection of the sea route to India was the central thought in British foreign policy and the original cause of the two British snatchings of the Cape of Good Hope around the turn of the 19th century. The fear of a wealthy and over mighty, foreign- (possibly German-) influenced Transvaal was key. It was not mere jingoism or greed than propelled the British to war on 12th October 1899; but a profound paranoia at the fragility of their position.
Like the Dutch with their own East India Company, the British with theirs had been motivated to take the Cape in order to protect their sea lanes to their eastern possessions; and not out of any interest in the interior. South Africa remained key in this regard even after the discovery of its own very considerable wealth (and the opening of the Suez Canal). There was considerable fear of German power and influence in the region. Germany's response to the Transvaal's repulsing of the Jameson Raid at the turn of 1895- '96 was to send a telegram to the Transvaal's President Kruger congratulating him on '' re-establishing peace and defending the independence of the country against attacks '' without friendly powers ''. This offended the British as it appeared to threaten military aid to the Transvaal and it asserted an 'independence' that the it was not meant to have according to the 1884 London Convention. It also worried the U.K as German control of South West Africa with the port of Luderitz already threatened the sea lane. A possible German- Transvaal co- expansion into the Rhodesias, though unlikely, was the stuff of Colonial Office nightmares and would have ended Rhodes' dreams of a Cape- Cairo British railway as well as threatening the Indian sea lane.
The Boers of the two republics already had a long and bitter history with the British and were keen to attain full- blooded republican independence. Suddenly finding themselves as the stewards of the Witwatersrand's super- wealth brought problems as well as opportunities for them to assert their sovereignty. Like many a small nation the Transvaal sought to use a larger one to defend its independence. When asked in January 1896 the German Ambassador in London claimed that German interests in the Transvaal amounted to about 500 million Marks in capital and about 15,000 people. When the landlocked state had been reckoned to be economically inconsequential this it had been seen as politically likewise. It wasn't so much that the British government wanted to own the good reefs itself, the level of sunk capital required meant that they were certain to remain in private hands under any state. It was worried that the tax revenues from the Rand might be used to fund a war against it. Moreover the huge pouring in of foreign immigrants ( Uitlanders ) to the area indicated that the power balance had swung in favour of the Transvaal as the custodian of South Africa's new economic power house. It was surely thoroughly conceivable in the minds of the British, if unlikely, that the three- fifths Boer majority within the white population of the Cape Province, less than sixty years separated by the Trek, might elect to secede from the Empire to join their kith and kin in a pan- Boer republican South Africa. The new golden egg of the Rand might eventually force Britain even out of the Cape. This fear of the ' Dominion of Afrikanerdom ' was played on by both Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain and Milner the U.K High Commisioner for South African. '' The British government was naturally reluctant to acquiesce to the birth of a second source of 'White' political power in South Africa. '' Before the discovery of grandiose mineral wealth the two dustbowl republics to the north, with their quasi- European Calvinist overlords, had probably been viewed by the British as harmless and quaint museum pieces. Though it is likely that such pan- Boer calls as were made were more a call for aid to defend Transvaal independence than expressive of any expansionist aims. Nevertheless the threat to Cape economic and political regional hegemony, real or imagined, was a potent force adding to the likelihood that war would break out.
The growing wealth of the Transvaal led to fears of an over mighty German- influenced white state that could economically and, hence politically, dominate South Africa for that this would entail, but some things were just more prosaic: greed. The world's largest known good reefs had been discovered on the Rand (the source of the later name of South Africa's currency) and with Cecil Rhodes as PM of the Cape Colony from 1890 the British government could not ignore the calls from the mainly British Randlords like Rhodes and Barney Barnato, especially since the Uitlanders were chiefly British in origin. These pressures grew greater still when Rhodes' British South Africa Company '' Pioneer Column '' expedition (which he funded) into what were to become the Rhodesias failed to find mineral wealth: a second Rand that was so the much hoped for. He had extensive mining interests on the Rand as well as at Kimberly in the Orange Free State. The personal financial fallout for him from the Pioneer Column affair made him as keen as a businessman as he was as a jingoist- politician to see the South African Republic (Transvaal) brought under British dominion. As PM and virtual dictator of the Cape Colony he could expect the same kind of real power in the Transvaal that he enjoyed at Cape Town should the Boer Republics fall. The Randlords helped to publicise the real, imagined or probably wildly exaggerated grievances of the Uitlanders and Rhodes was forced to resign as PM when his part in the Jameson Raid (of the turn of 1895- '96) was exposed. The real issue was the annexation of the republics of course, as was long sought by Rhodes. Although he was forced to resign as PM in1896 after the Jameson Raid he remained the world's richest man and a confidant of Colonial Secretary Chamberlain and High Commissioner Milner, as well as a major newspaper and mining magnate on the Rand. For him, as with so many of the super- rich, the aim probably wasn't material personal profit anymore but power. As displayed in the famous Punch Cartoon his goal was a Cape to Cairo railway running through U.K territory throughout and to have all of South Africa under British dominion as a vital part of this dream. Although there was a British route north through the Rhodesias and Bechuanaland a super- wealthy and historically unfriendly Boer republic in the Transvaal would surely pose a serious threat to this dream. For most of the other Randlords, however the concerns were probably more to do with business matters like taxation and the dynamite monopoly. There is little evidence that the bulk of the rank and file Uitlanders were interested in politics and many of them may have had little other than the pursuit of gold. This may have changed somewhat over the shooting of Tom Eggars by a Boer policeman in 1899, though it is hard to discern how much of the discontent came from rank and file Uitlanders and how much was exaggerated by Rhodes and the Randlord newspaper magnates. British Prime Minister Salisbury declared that what existed was '' a moral field prepared by Milner and his jingo supporters ''. The Transvaal government of Paul Kruger was primarily agrarian in outlook (the word 'Boer' means farmer) and probably regarded the new urban and cosmopolitan Sodom and Gomorrah of Johannesburg, founded in just 1886, with disdain. It was happy for it to provide over 90% of the republic's income tax haul as long as this would not lead to the Uitlanders achieving the perilous franchise. The Rand area was now mainly anglophone in its white population Uitlanders and their Randlord owned newspapers clamoured for better schools, bilingualism, an end to the government monopoly on dynamite (vital for mining) and chiefly the right to vote. It was feared that if given the franchise they would vote away Transvaal independence; though this may not really have been the case as subsequent events appeared to indicate.
The Bloemfontein conference of mid- 1899 looked like it was a last ditch attempt to prevent war and though President Kruger eventually agreed to a seven year franchise war still would not be prevented. It was nothing but a British ruse in order to find an excuse for war. Milner even demanded at this point that all laws passed by the Volksraad be approved by Westminster! This would have ended SAR independence even if an Uitlander franchise might not have done. There is no certainty that an Uitlander franchise actually would have resulted in the end of the South African Republic under the Vierkleur as many of them would surely have been keen to retain the U.K or other nationality. The efforts of the Kruger administration to accommodate their demands by adding a new chamber to the Republic's Volksraad (giving them some say in local Rand matters rather than state and national ones) resulted in dismal voting turnouts. Indeed President Kruger recognised this fact and even acceded to the British demands more relaxed franchise at the Bloemfontein conference. Maybe Milner, Rhodes and Chamberlain's goal for the Bloemfontein conference was not so much so much to prevent war as to find a pretext for it. Kruger than recognised that the issue was not anything but the independence of the South African Republic. Ultimatums on both sides then led to war on October 12th. The issue never had been the Uitlanders; it was land and independence. The Bloemfontein conference proved that it was intolerable to the Milner- Chamberlain- Rhodes imperialist- jingoist cabal that there should be such a wealthy and potentially powerful Boer state in South Africa.
The Boers and the British went to war for a second time because of differing vision of South Africa. The Boers were keen to preserve their independence. As an agrarian Calvinist people they may in fact have wished that they hadn't chanced to settle upon the world's greatest known source of gold. The independence of their republics had almost been respected, (apart from during 1877- '81) under the Sand River and Bloemfontein conventions of 1852 and '54 prior to the discovery of the Rand gold reef in 1886. Once it became clear that the Rand was to be the economic hub of South Africa the British felt threatened. A wealthy and therefore powerful, Germanophile, and possible expansive SAR might threaten the Cape. The Dutch- Afrikaans speaking three fifths of the Cape Colony whites might elect to join their brethren across the Orange River in a Boer republican federation built on the wealth of the Rand. It is unlikely that Kruger truly planned anything more than the total independence for the SAR. The Republic in the Transvaal could not now be allowed to be independent from a UK point of view. It dominated South African economic life and therefore threatened the sea lane to India (the fixation of all British colonial and foreign policy in this era). History from 1795 onwards meant that any Boer state would be unlikely to be anything but Anglophobe. A rich, therefore powerful, and meaningfully independent Boer republic was a threat to British interests in South Africa and hence India. '' The key to the political control of southern Africa lay in the Transvaal. '' The issue was not wealth for its own sake but the power that resulted from it. Britain went to war in 1899 not in pursuit of Rand gold but ultimately in order to protect the jewel in its own crown: India.
L.T. Spyropoulos
User Reviews
Submitted by redskieslookfake (user info) at 2008-02-29 18:02:07 EST (#)
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Submitted by Ltap (user info) at 2008-02-29 14:53:23 GMT (#)
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Submitted by skrapmetal (user info) at 2008-02-28 21:54:39 EST (#)
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GO BOERS WOO!!!
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This should have occurred to me. Bravo.
Submitted by Caulaincourt (user info) at 2008-02-29 17:43:22 EST (#)
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Submitted by Ltap (user info) at 2008-02-29 09:53:23 EST (#)
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Submitted by skrapmetal (user info) at 2008-02-28 21:54:39 EST (#)
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GO BOERS WOO!!!
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This should have occurred to me. Bravo.
Submitted by HurtByTheSun (user info) at 2008-02-29 05:37:30 EST (#)
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No Comment
Submitted by Nellypaal (user info) at 2008-02-29 04:49:55 EST (#)
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I'd expect a similar response if I started posting my old essays.
Submitted by HellRazer (user info) at 2008-02-28 22:10:40 EST (#)
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I'm not reading all that.
+1 for effort though.
Submitted by skrapmetal (user info) at 2008-02-28 21:54:39 EST (#)
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GO BOERS WOO!!!
Submitted by monkeyswithguns (user info) at 2008-02-28 19:27:36 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
WTFINRAT, however, I am a big fan of the Boers, as the originators of modern guerilla warfare. Some sneaky shit, but damned if they didn't have righteousness on their side.
Submitted by Ltap (user info) at 2008-02-28 19:22:19 EST (#)
Ranking: -2
I'm going to give you a -2 because there's no possible way you could have written this yourself. If you find some kind of proof, I'll give a +2 to make up for it.
Submitted by Jeanneee (user info) at 2008-02-28 19:05:36 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
ZOOOBIEEEEEEEEEEEEE