Page:EB1911 - Volume 09.djvu/613

1896–1900] repeated in the ’nineties the sentiments which would have been generally accepted in the ’sixties, were regarded as “Little Englanders.” It is important to note the consequences which these new ideas produced in Africa. Both in the north and in the south of this great and imperfectly explored continent, memories still clung which were ungrateful to imperialism. In the north, the murder of Gordon was still unavenged; and the vast territory known as the Sudan had escaped from the control of Egypt. In the south, war with the Transvaal had been concluded by a British defeat; and the Dutch were elated, the English irritated, at the recollection of Majuba. In 1896 Lord Salisbury’s government decided on extending the Anglo-Egyptian rule over the Sudan, and an expedition was sent from Egypt under the command of Sir Herbert (afterwards Lord) Kitchener to Khartum. Few military expeditions have been more elaborately organized, or have achieved a more brilliant success. The conquest of the country was achieved in three separate campaigns in successive years. In September 1898 the Sudanese forces were decisively beaten, with great slaughter, in the immediate neighbourhood of

Omdurman; and Khartum became thenceforward the capital of the new province, which was placed under Lord Kitchener’s rule. Soon after this decisive success, it was found that a French expedition under Major Marchand had reached the upper Nile and had hoisted the French flag at Fashoda. It was obvious that the French could not be allowed to remain at a spot which the khedive of Egypt claimed as Egyptian territory; and after some negotiation, and some irritation, the French were withdrawn. In South Africa still more important events were in the meanwhile progressing. Ever since the independence of the South African Republic had been virtually conceded by the convention of 1884, unhappy differences had prevailed between the Dutch and British residents in the Transvaal. The discovery of gold at Johannesburg and elsewhere in 1885–1886 had led to a large immigration of British and other colonists. Johannesburg had grown into a great and prosperous city. The foreign population of the Transvaal, which was chiefly English, became in a few years more numerous than the Boers themselves, and they complained that they were deprived of all political rights, that they were subjected to unfair taxation, and that they were hampered in their industry and unjustly treated by the Dutch courts and Dutch officials. Failing to obtain redress, at the end of 1895 certain persons among them made preparations for a revolution. Dr Jameson, the administrator of Rhodesia, accompanied by some British officers, actually invaded the Transvaal. His force, utterly

inadequate for the purpose, was stopped by the Boers, and he and his fellow-officers were taken prisoners. There was no doubt that this raid on the territory of a friendly state was totally unjustifiable. Unfortunately, Dr Jameson’s original plans had been framed at the instance of Cecil Rhodes, the prime minister at the Cape, and many persons thought that they ought to have been suspected by the colonial office in London. England at any rate would have had no valid ground of complaint if the leaders of a buccaneering force had been summarily dealt with by the Transvaal authorities. The president of the republic, Kruger, however, handed over his prisoners to the British authorities, and parliament instituted an inquiry by a select committee into the circumstances of the raid. The inquiry was terminated somewhat abruptly. The committee acquitted the colonial office of any knowledge of the plot; but a good many suspicions remained unanswered. The chief actors in the raid were tried under the Foreign Enlistment Act, found guilty, and subsequently released after short terms of imprisonment. Rhodes himself was not removed from the privy council, as his more extreme accusers demanded; but he had to abandon his career in Cape politics for a time, and confine his energies to the development of Rhodesia, which had been added to the empire through his instrumentality in 1888–1889.

In consequence of these proceedings, the Transvaal authorities at once set to work to accumulate armaments, and they succeeded in procuring vast quantities of artillery and military stores. The British government would undoubtedly have been entitled to insist that these armaments should cease. It was obvious that they could only be directed against Great Britain; and no nation is bound to allow another people to prepare great armaments to be employed against itself. The criminal folly of the raid prevented the British government from making this demand. It could not say that the Transvaal government had no cause for alarm when British officers had attempted an invasion of its territory, and had been treated rather as heroes than as criminals at home. Ignorant of the strength of Great Britain, and elated by the recollection of their previous successes, the Boers themselves believed that a new struggle might give them predominance in South Africa. The knowledge that a large portion of the population of Cape Colony was of Dutch extraction, and that public men at the Cape sympathized with them in their aspirations, increased their confidence. In the meantime, while the Boers were silently and steadily continuing their military preparations, the British settlers at Johannesburg—the Uitlanders, as they were called—continued to demand consideration for their grievances. In the spring of 1899, Sir Alfred

Milner, governor of the Cape, met President Kruger at Bloemfontein, the capital of the Orange Free State, and endeavoured to accomplish that result by negotiation. He thought, at the time, that if the Uitlanders were given the franchise and a fair proportion of influence in the legislature, other difficulties might be left to settle themselves. The negotiations thus commenced unfortunately failed. The discussion, which had originally turned on the franchise, was enlarged by the introduction of the question of suzerainty or supremacy; and at last, in the beginning of October, when the rains of an African spring were causing the grass to grow on which the Boer armies were largely dependent for forage, the Boers declared war and invaded Natal. The British government had not been altogether happy in its conduct of the preceding negotiations. It was certainly unhappy in its preparations for the struggle. It made the great mistake of underrating the strength of its enemy; it suffered its agents to commit the strategical blunder of locking up the few troops it had in an untenable position in the north of Natal. It was not surprising, in such circumstances, that the earlier months of the war should have been memorable for a series of exasperating reverses. These reverses, however, were redeemed by the valour of the British troops, the spirit of the British nation, and the enthusiasm which induced the great autonomous colonies of the empire to send men to support the cause of the mother country. The gradual arrival of reinforcements, and the appointment of a soldier of genius—Lord Roberts—to the supreme command, changed the military situation; and, before the summer of 1900 was concluded, the places which had been besieged by the Boers—Kimberley, Ladysmith and Mafeking—had been successively relieved; the capitals of the Orange Free State and of the Transvaal had been occupied; and the two republics, which had rashly declared war against the British empire, had been formally annexed.

The defeat and dispersal of the Boer armies, and the apparent collapse of Boer resistance, induced a hope that the war was over; and the government seized the opportunity in 1900 to terminate the parliament, which had already endured for more than five years. The election was

conducted with unusual bitterness; but the constituencies practically affirmed the policy of the government by maintaining, almost unimpaired, the large majority which the Unionists had secured in 1895. Unfortunately, the expectations which had been formed at the time of the dissolution were disappointed. The same circumstances which had emboldened the Boers to declare war in the autumn of 1899, induced them to renew a guerilla warfare in the autumn of 1900—the approach of an African summer supplying the Boers with the grass on which they were dependent for feeding their hardy horses. Guerilla bands suddenly appeared in different parts of the Orange River Colony and of the Transvaal. They interrupted the communications of the British armies; they won isolated victories over British detachments; they even invaded Cape Colony. Thus the last year of the century closed in disappointment