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Authors: Jan Morris
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British go to war with the old imperial éclat, or greet their victories with their frank Victorian gusto.
The peace settlement was widely greeted as generous, especially by the British. It handsomely compensated the Boers for the devastation of their country, and it eventually gave them full equality, of law as of language, within a self-governing African union of all four European colonies. It seemed a peace of reconciliation. In this as in much else, though, the Boer War was deceptive. The treaty was magnanimous, but by its terms the British hoped to establish a secure, British-dominated South Africa, to establish a lasting hold over the gold of the Rand, and to ensure some measure of fair play for the black peoples of the land. The Boers were no less calculating, even in defeat. They reasoned that within a constitutional union they might one day achieve mastery not only of their own former republics, but of all South Africa, with complete control of its wealth, and with the freedom to treat their Kaffir subjects just as the Old Testament suggested.
They were right. Some Afrikaners became enthusiastic supporters of the imperial cause, and the Boer generals were greeted as prodigal sons when they visited London after the war—‘Welcome to the dear old flag!’ said a souvenir postcard, with portraits of three fierce commando leaders nestling incongruously beneath the Union Jack. But the Boer conviction proved, in the long run, more obdurate thanthe British: Jehovah survived the Queen-Empress, and the Boers were to win the Boer War in the end. 1
1 Pronounced ‘Reevers’—or later in his career, ‘Reverse’.
1 ‘Ah!’ said the Public Orator of Oxford University, in Latin, of this sorry adventure, ‘let not excessive love of country drive to rashness, and do not resort more than is proper to alliances, stratagems and plots!’ He was addressing Rhodes, who was getting an honorary degree nevertheless.
1 There are fuller accounts of all these events—the Great Trek of the Boers, Majuba, the Jameson Raid—in the opening volume of this trilogy, Heave’n Command (London and New York, 1973).
1 Hardly less tribal was the message once urgently flashed by heliograph, uncoded, to the half-starved garrison of Ladysmith: SIR STAFFORD NORTHCOTE GOVERNOR OF BOMBAY HAS BEEN MADE A PEER
1 He died in Switzerland in 1904, but his body was brought home to Pretoria, and he lies now in the Old Cemetery, West Church Street, not far from Queen Victoria’s grandson Prince Christian Victor of Schleswig-Holstein, who died of enteric fever in 1900 while serving with the British Army against the Volk.
2 And at home a magazine for girls held a competition for limericks to commemorate the victory. Here is one of the winning entries, kindly sent to me by Mr C. P. Wright of Wolfville, Nova Scotia:
There was an old man of Pretoria
Who said ‘ My! How I pity Victoria,
Oh, summon the ranks
And let us give thanks! ’
But something went wrong with the Gloria.
1 Communications were never broken, though the London Times correspondent in town complained that the postal service was quite deplorable.
1 Nothing has greatly changed, in these four battle-grounds. Though Dixon’s Hotel has been demolished, and the African township is today the capital of the Tswana ‘homeland’, Mafeking remains much the same little dorp it was in 1900: the brass-bound steam trains still puff away to the Rand, some of the defence positions can still be traced, and in the station yard a statue of Rhodes gazes wistfully up the track in the general direction of Cairo. At Paardeberg no memorial marks Cronje’s last laager —unlike the British, the Afrikaners prefer to forget their defeats—but people still find shell fragments and sad mementos in the river-bed: on the Magersfontein ridge a series of monuments have been erected, including one to the Highland Brigade—‘Scotland is poorer in men, but richer in heroes.’ Spion Kop, though, is the
The peace settlement was widely greeted as generous, especially by the British. It handsomely compensated the Boers for the devastation of their country, and it eventually gave them full equality, of law as of language, within a self-governing African union of all four European colonies. It seemed a peace of reconciliation. In this as in much else, though, the Boer War was deceptive. The treaty was magnanimous, but by its terms the British hoped to establish a secure, British-dominated South Africa, to establish a lasting hold over the gold of the Rand, and to ensure some measure of fair play for the black peoples of the land. The Boers were no less calculating, even in defeat. They reasoned that within a constitutional union they might one day achieve mastery not only of their own former republics, but of all South Africa, with complete control of its wealth, and with the freedom to treat their Kaffir subjects just as the Old Testament suggested.
They were right. Some Afrikaners became enthusiastic supporters of the imperial cause, and the Boer generals were greeted as prodigal sons when they visited London after the war—‘Welcome to the dear old flag!’ said a souvenir postcard, with portraits of three fierce commando leaders nestling incongruously beneath the Union Jack. But the Boer conviction proved, in the long run, more obdurate thanthe British: Jehovah survived the Queen-Empress, and the Boers were to win the Boer War in the end. 1
1 Pronounced ‘Reevers’—or later in his career, ‘Reverse’.
1 ‘Ah!’ said the Public Orator of Oxford University, in Latin, of this sorry adventure, ‘let not excessive love of country drive to rashness, and do not resort more than is proper to alliances, stratagems and plots!’ He was addressing Rhodes, who was getting an honorary degree nevertheless.
1 There are fuller accounts of all these events—the Great Trek of the Boers, Majuba, the Jameson Raid—in the opening volume of this trilogy, Heave’n Command (London and New York, 1973).
1 Hardly less tribal was the message once urgently flashed by heliograph, uncoded, to the half-starved garrison of Ladysmith: SIR STAFFORD NORTHCOTE GOVERNOR OF BOMBAY HAS BEEN MADE A PEER
1 He died in Switzerland in 1904, but his body was brought home to Pretoria, and he lies now in the Old Cemetery, West Church Street, not far from Queen Victoria’s grandson Prince Christian Victor of Schleswig-Holstein, who died of enteric fever in 1900 while serving with the British Army against the Volk.
2 And at home a magazine for girls held a competition for limericks to commemorate the victory. Here is one of the winning entries, kindly sent to me by Mr C. P. Wright of Wolfville, Nova Scotia:
There was an old man of Pretoria
Who said ‘ My! How I pity Victoria,
Oh, summon the ranks
And let us give thanks! ’
But something went wrong with the Gloria.
1 Communications were never broken, though the London Times correspondent in town complained that the postal service was quite deplorable.
1 Nothing has greatly changed, in these four battle-grounds. Though Dixon’s Hotel has been demolished, and the African township is today the capital of the Tswana ‘homeland’, Mafeking remains much the same little dorp it was in 1900: the brass-bound steam trains still puff away to the Rand, some of the defence positions can still be traced, and in the station yard a statue of Rhodes gazes wistfully up the track in the general direction of Cairo. At Paardeberg no memorial marks Cronje’s last laager —unlike the British, the Afrikaners prefer to forget their defeats—but people still find shell fragments and sad mementos in the river-bed: on the Magersfontein ridge a series of monuments have been erected, including one to the Highland Brigade—‘Scotland is poorer in men, but richer in heroes.’ Spion Kop, though, is the
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