Lord Salisbury, Britain’s Conservative prime minister, was determined to impose imperial supremacy on the Boer republics. He came to power in 1895 heading a government dominated by Unionists who wanted to be seen as the best defenders of British honour and prestige, even though fi nancial constraints made the prospect of war in a distant corner of the world unpalatable. But outweighing everything else was the fact that the world saw British resolve being tested by the Boers, described by George Bernard Shaw as ‘a small community of frontiersmen totally unfi tted to control the mineral assets of South Africa’. Ultimately the desire to secure the British geopolitical position in South Africa and elsewhere, and with it British honour, made Britain go to war. Chamberlain summed up what was at stake: the ‘position of Great Britain in South Africa and with it the estimate formed of our power and infl uence in our colonies and throughout the world . . . We, not the Dutch, are Boss.’ In September 1899 his cabinet agreed to a request from the government of Natal, engineered by Alfred Milner, high commissioner at the Cape, to defend it against a possible invasion by republican forces. He had been outmaneuvred. He was willing to hold a pistol against Kruger’s head, but Milner and his colonial secretary, Joseph Chamberlain, forced him to pull the trigger. He remarked: ‘We have to act upon a moral fi eld prepared for us by Milner and his Jingo supporters.’ Britain had to engage in ‘considerable military effort – all for people whom we despise and for territory that will bring no profi t or power to England’.
Marthinus Steyn, president of the Orange Free State. (Painting by Erich Mayer.)
Along with his colonial secretary, Britain’s prime minister Lord Salisbury was still wary of war itself and hoped that, once cornered, the ZAR would give in to threat or bluff rather than turn and fight. But the two were uncompromising on the assertion of British power. There was no question that the Boers would have to accept the imposition of imperial supremacy, if not peacefully then through force. If it came to war, it would have to be seen as unavoidable, as Boer refusal to compromise and accept political reform had made things intolerable for British interests. For his part Milner was soon scornful of what in 1898 he termed the waiting game. Accepting the inevitability of conflict, he worked hard to clear the decks for a war, which he wanted. In effect, the high commissioner and his political subordinates did whatever was necessary to undermine any remaining prospects of a republican-imperial compromise.
Fanning the fire with old and new complaints against the ZAR and denouncing it as a tyranny that had enslaved its resident British subjects, Milner turned a deaf ear to restraining voices. Pleas for respectful negotiation came not only from British colonial moderates, but also ZAR and Orange Free State reformists who favoured reaching an accommodation to avert war.
An intransigent Milner intensified demands backed by threats that the Kruger government give in on Uitlander franchise rights. But this only made the Boers dig in their heels. For the republic, that would amount to acceptance of British imperial supremacy over its internal affairs, and an end to its national autonomy. In a memorable observation, Paul Kruger declared that what the British really wanted were not franchise rights but his country.
By the last quarter of 1899, imperialists and republicans had reached the end of their tether. Milner concluded that the solution to Britain’s problem in South Africa would have to be what he termed a purely military one. As in 1880, the republic would again have to take up arms to avoid being forced to submit to what in ZAR Attorney-General Jan Smuts’s view would be a humiliating solution. British actions were certainly more than enough to force the Boers’ hand. Ominously, by September the War Office had decided to despatch 10 000 troops to reinforce Natal and the Cape. This was accompanied by a brusque warning to the Orange Free State to remain neutral in the event of hostilities.
But this menacing brinkmanship strengthened Bloemfontein’s support of Pretoria. With war unavoidable, both republics mobilised their forces at the beginning of October 1899 in readiness for a swift offensive in which they could have an advantage over enemy forces that were still assembling. Kruger and his Orange Free State ally President Marthinus Steyn then presented an ultimatum to London, demanding that Britain back off and consent to neutral arbitration to settle political differences. For the British Empire, long irritated at having to negotiate with what it saw as a primitive state run by Dutch farmers, it was the last straw. On 10 October, republican terms were contemptuously rejected. Having resolved to land the first blow, the Boer republics declared war on Britain the next day. It was what the British wanted, as they could now point to the Boers as the aggressors.
For leading republicans such as Smuts and Jacobus de Villiers Roos, it was clear who was the aggressor and who the victim. In their passionate and imaginative 1899 propaganda piece, A Century of Wrong, they compared the British to vultures and jackals, motivated by greed to fall upon a peaceable and pastoral Boer society that lay before them like a wounded antelope.
For their part, having done so much to contribute to the outbreak of hostilities, Chamberlain and Milner were now full of confidence in the outcome. Along with so many others on the imperial side, it was their belief that the enemy consisted of simple farmers who could not possibly hold out for more than a moment against regular British troops. But the Boers were not about to roll over easily. A bitter and aged Paul Kruger told an American journalist that the war would amount to an apocalypse, as the price that Britain would have to pay to gain the Boer states would be far greater than it could ever have imagined.
