Raiding the raid: a summary of the Brenthurst conference 'the Jameson raid and beyond', 20-22 January 1997.

148 NEW CON TREE

RAIDING THE RAID: A SUMMARY OF THE

BRENTHURST CONFERENCE 'THE JAMESON

RAID AND BEYOND', 20-22 JANUARY 1997.

1

Alan H. Jeeves

(Department of History, Queen's University, Canada)

1\

Ify starting point in this presentation is Professor Mottie

1 V

lramarkin's keynote address and the session on the Politics of

the Raid that followed it on the first day of the conference.2 _Like

most of those present, I found the opening sessions both stimulat-ing and effective in raisstimulat-ing many of the basic issues that we needed to be concerned throughout the symposium.

The goal of this paper is to try to pull together some of the ele-ments of the complex puzzle that is the Jameson Raid. In that regard, the paper tries to do two things. One is to come back to some of the big questions that were raised but not resolved in the opening sessions. And the second is to address the gaps, to look at least briefly at some important aspects that the symposium has so far not discussed very much.

Reading the discussion so far, it seems there was much agree-ment that considered in and of itself, the Jameson Raid was a trivial, almost inconsequential event. The episode of a colonial adven-turer leading yet another filibustering expedition against a ram-shackle mini-state in pursuit of political advantage or economic benefit on the periphery of empire would not normally warrant the attention that historians have paid to it.

Editor's note: On the occasion of the publication of The Jameson Raid: A Centennial retrospective (The Brenthurst Press, 1996), the Brenthurst Library convened a sym-posium that brought together most of the contributors to the book with other scholars who have written on the subject for a three day examination of the issues involved. The symposium included sessions on 'The politics of the Raid', the 'Role of the media and popular literature', the 'Economic debate' and the 'Black perspective'. In a public lecture associated with the symposium, five scholars spoke briefly about some of the key personalities of the Raid: Cecil John Rhodes, Leander Starr Jameson, S. J. P. Kruger, Percy FitzPatrick and John Hays Hammond. Alan Jeeves' paper which is reproduced below was one of two given on the final day of the symposium that at-tempted to sum up its findings.

'The politics of the Raid' featured presentations by Professors Apollon Davidson, Bill Guest and Robert Rotberg and was chaired by Dr lain Smith.

NEW CON TREE 149

What then should be said about significance and consequences? In the keynote address, MottieTamarkin insisted that the Raid must be entirely uncoupled from the War that fOllowed; only a heavy dose of hindsight, he argued, would allow the historian to make any connection. If this is an argument against inevitability, against the idea that somehow the Raid triggered developments bound to lead to war, then I can agree. If the point is meant to suggest that there was no influence from the Raid that actually occurred on the crisis that later led to war, then I for one take a different view. From a somewhat different point of view, Professor Robert Rotberg argued for downgrading the significance of the Raid on the grounds that an "irreconcilable conflict" was already underway; although the phrase irreconcilable conflict carries the suggestion of inevitability, Robert noted that he, of course, wanted to make no such claim. But the Raid he said was "premature" and was a detour in the grow-ing crisis. Suppose it had succeeded, he asked, what would have

been the result? - a prolonged guerrilla war as the Transvaalers

struggled to regain their independence, a context presumably like that of 1880-1881 or even 1900-1902. If the struggle for southern Africa was irreconcilable already before the Raid, what were its elements? What were the forces in play?

In response to these and related arguments, there were some highly pertinent questions and observations from the audience that bear

directly on the issu~ of consequences and that also need further

discussion and development:

During the discussion, Dr. Rodney Davenport made the important suggestion that the Raid was one of a number of events that poi-soned the diplomatic well between Britain and the South African Republic and further weakened the chances of a peaceful outcome. That point was a thrust both against Professor Tamarkin's argu-ment about no causal link between the Raid and the coming of the South African War and Professor Rotberg's suggestion that an ir-reconcilable conflict was already evident before the Raid.

Then there was the question about the need to separate the Raid

that actually occurred from the plot that preceded it. Jameson's

actual Raid was not part of anybody's plot, probably not even Jameson's until he actually made the fateful decision to ride in. This suggestion pointed to the need to separate the two analyti-cally and ask what, if anything, was the wider significance of each.

A very helpful suggestion, I thought, but it got a weak response. Third, there were questions about the Transvaal and Afrikaner side of the equation: about how the Raid may have strengthened Kruger's possibly insecure political position before the Raid and ensured his easy re-election in 1898; about the new Transvaal-Free State alliance that followed directly from the Raid; without that treaty would the Free State have entered the war when it came?; absent assurance of support from the Free State might Transvaal diplo-macy have been different? I could add another point noted at the time by Sir Hercules Robinson, Governor and High Commissioner at the time of the Raid. Robinson did not doubt that the Raid enor-mously strengthened Kruger's position among Afrikaners not only in the Transvaal but throughout southern Africa. To the extent that Kruger and his advisers themselves understood that, how might it have effected their diplomacy and their response to the reform de-mands of the Uitlanders?

To take these points in turn:

The first is the suggestion that only a heavy dose of hindsight can make a connection with the Raid and the War. There are two com-ments I want to make. One is to talk about the immediate response of the Imperial government to the Raid and the second is to com-ment on Professor Davenport's point about the poisoning of the diplomatic well in Anglo-Transvaal relations that resulted from Jameson's invasion.

For the Imperial government, the response of the Secretary of State at the Colonial Office, Joseph Chamberlain, to the news of the Raid was immediate. He cabled Robinson on 4 January 1896 with a forceful message that associated the Imperial government di-rectly with the cause of the Uitlanders in Johannesburg and their demands for the vote and the redress of other grievances. He described their unresolved situation in the Transvaal as a major factor making for instability throughout the region, outlined needed reforms, and called for the granting of municipal self-government to the mining areas.

Historians from J. S. Marais to Andrew Porter have recognised the importance of this despatch because it associated Imperial

pres-tige and power directly with Uitlander rights.3 _{Sir Henry Loch had}

seen in 1894 that the Uitlanders were the key to the Transvaal's bolted door and proposed to use a rising in Johannesburg

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152 NEW CON TREE

Reluctantly, Chamberlain accepted the advice that Sir Hercules gave. Briefly during March 1896, Chamberlain and the Parliamen-tary UndersecreParliamen-tary at the Colonial Office, Lord Selborne, consid-ered an ultimatum to force concessions on Uitlander rights from the Transvaal Republic. Neitherthe Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, nor the cabinet was prepared to authorise such action at that time, although they may have agreed that an ultimatum was unlikely ac-tually to lead to war. Given the international situation, they did not want to become embroiled in another crisis. More important in restraining policy was the state of opinion within South Africa, as Robinson had described it. Robinson had explained that in the event of conflict on any of the areas of dispute arising out of the Raid, Kruger could count on the support of the Free State and, at the least, the sympathy of many Afrikaners in the Cape and Natal. The result of any war would be ongoing ethnic conflict and en-demic hatreds among the whites that would persist for decades and require the maintenance of large Imperial forces at great ex-pense for many years. Drawing back from thoughts of forcing the pace, Chamberlain shifted temporarily away from the issue of Uit-lander grievances but continued to hammer at enlarging the claims to British suzerainty over the Transvaal under the London

Conven-tion.5

Nevertheless, the January 4 despatch was a fateful indicator of crises to come. Put in a different governor in the person of Milner; create a rabid agit.ation over Uitlander rights through the South African League which began to organise later in 1896; back them up with a virulent press campaign and you have the ingredients of renewed trouble with very dangerously Imperial prestige directly on the line. The point is that within days of Jameson's surrender, Chamberlain saw in effect that Rhodes was finished politically, at least for the time being, and he stepped in to fill the vacuum. That intervention was an immediate, direct and potentially calamitous consequence of the Raid, not the plot that preceded it but the Raid itself, that supposedly trivial, inconsequential event that we have been talking about for the last two days.

P. Lewsen, (ed.), Selections from the correspondence of J. X. Merriman, vol. II, 1890-1898, (1963), pp. 181 -183; Marais, Kruger's Republic, pp. 99-100; R. Robinson and J. Gallagher with A. Denny, Africa and the Victorians; The climax of Imperialism in the

Dark Continent, (1961), pp. 430-433; D. E. Torrance, The strange death of the Liberal

Empire: Lord Selborne in South Africa, (1995), pp. 35-36; R. H. Wilde, "Joseph Cham-berlain and the South African Republic, 1895-1899", Archives Yearbook for South

NEWCONTREE 153

The potential for disaster was the greater because of the complete absence of trust in Anglo-Transvaal diplomacy which was, I agree with Professor Davenport, an important consequence of the Raid, not the Raid alone but the Raid very substantially. Distrust arose because of the well founded suspicion that Kruger, his advisors and some of their sympathisers at the Cape most certainly had that Chamberlain and his officials were deeply implicated in a plot to destroy their independence. When Kruger told the intransigent Milner in 1899, "it is my country that you want;" he was thinking not only of Milner himself but also of a whole series of, in his view, treacherous dealings at the hands of Britain, perhaps going back, as Davenport also suggested, to Shepstone and the first annex-ation in 1877. In the litany of events that Kruger probably had in mind, the Raid must have been near the top of that list.

The effect of the Raid in undermining the possibility of serious dis-cussions between the Imperial and Transvaal government is shown by the latter's efforts during 1896 to evade an invitation from Cham-berlain to Kruger to come to London for talks on outstanding is-sues. Convinced that he would be facing British officials who were deeply implicated in plots againstTransvaal independence, Kruger showed how reluctant he was to do any such thing. The proposed meeting foundered in the atmosphere of suspicion and distrust that the Raid had done much to intensify. That was another, direct, immediate and important consequence of the Raid that had an important bearing ill preparing the ground for the final crisis that led eventually to War.

Should we conclude then that the Raid was "the first shot" in the South African War? No, but it was one event in a long series that led to that result. It had serious consequences for the future of southern Africa which when combined with other developments helped to bring on the conflict. The Raid was important for what it did to make a peaceful resolution of outstanding issues between Britain and the ZAR more difficult.

Second, what about Professor Rotberg's suggestion that an "irrec-oncilable conflict" already existed before the Raid occurred. My question is where are the signs of it? The irreconcilable conflict up to that point was between Rhodes, Kruger and their advisers and had been fought out all around the periphery of southern Africa over the previous decade. With the pre-Raid conspiracy, Rhodes's plot brought the contest into the citadel of Transvaal power. But

once the Raid knocked Rhodes out of the game, for all anyone knew in January 1996 probably forever, where is the "irreconcil-able conflict"? All the other elements are missing before the Raid. To repeat those ingredients are: an actively interventionist Imperial government taking up the cause of the Uitlanders and dOing so publicly and directly; an Uitlander agitation to make such interven-tion credible; the poisoned diplomatic well; an Afrikanerdom in-creasingly alarmed and inin-creasingly united to resist the forces gath-ering against the Transvaal; and a rabid press bent on throwing petrol on the flames. None of those elements was visibly present before the Raid; it was the Raid itself that helped to unleash them. It seems to me that if you want to speak about the sin of hindSight, it is not those who find serious consequences flowing from the Raid who are guilty of it but those, like Professor Rotberg, who find an "irreconcilable conflict" already in progress before the Raid. In discussion, Professor Rotberg explained that he had in mind the structural conflict between the traditional agrarian society of the Transvaal and the modern industrial order that was emerging in its midst around the mining industry. In a basic way that conflict was irresolvable without profound change in the Transvaal's rural order. However, such conflicts only become "irreconcilable" when they cannot be managed politically. There was little to suggest during 1895 that social and economic change in the Transvaal was pro-ducing an unmanageable political crisis of sufficient magnitude that was likely to lead to war.

In general, the symposium was less successful in addressing is-sues concerning the Transvaal side of the crisis and the response of the Kruger government to it.

First, how important was the Raid in strengthening Kruger's posi-tion in Transvaal politics? Sir Hercules Robinson thought it was very important. There seems to be much evidence of opposition to Kruger among the burghers up to 1895, even over his policies of

dealing with the Uitlanders.6 _{On the face of it, the invasion itself}

and even more the suspicion of the Imperial government's involve-ment must have helped to make opposition to Kruger, as

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effort to recognize the gold industry's centrality in the economic

future of the republic.a

The government's reform intentions were also indicated by its ap-pointment of an Industrial Commission of Inquiry to advise on eco-nomic policy and the grievances of the gold industry. The Commis-sion held hearings during 1897 and produced a comprehensive report at the end of the year. As was noted in one of the sessions, the State's response was quite limited and the reforms actually implemented fell well short of the industry's minimum demands. There was a contradiction between the decision to appoint the Commission an to name people to it who were serious advocates of economic reform on the one hand, followed by the failure to implement significant changes to economic policies. The failure to follow through suggests serious internal divisions within the Transvaal state on how to deal with the mining industry. Neverthe-less both Harries and Van Onselen emphasise the importance of its reformist intentions and attempts to modernise itself in order better t6 cope with an emerging industrial order.

It can be argued that Kruger's ministers after the Raid and in re-sponse to it began seriously to work toward a political and admin-istrative system that was capable of meeting the needs of the mod-ern city and industrial system which had grown up in their midst over the previous decade. The young Jan Smuts, who had moved north from the Cape immediately after the Raid and later joined the South African Republic as attorney-general, promoted reforms in the administration of justice that made possible better enforce-ment of the laws against gold theft and against the sale of liquor to black miners. Shortly before the War, the Wernher, Beit firm ac-knowledged the success that Smuts and his chief detective had in disrupting the illicit liquor trade, that was one of the mines major grievances. The decision (in 1897) to grant municipal status and broader powers of local self- government to Johannesburg was a product of the same modernizing impulse.

So successful were these reform policies, according to Harries, that the economic issues no longer provided any valid basis for the mining industry or the Imperial government to bring on a crisis to

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158 NEWCONTREE

opment. In that regard, I wrote that the Raid brought into much sharper relief than ever before the interconnectedness of Transvaal power, the wealth and needs of the mining industry, Uitlander rights, British supremacy, and the prospects of a united South Africa. Rhodes saw that, as did Sir Henry Loch before him. Chamberlain understood it immediately the Raid had occurred as is shown by his famous cable of January 4, 1896. Kruger's government now seemed the one remaining obstacle to resolving these matters in ways favourable to British, Cape and Rhodesian interests. Rhodes and Loch both thought that a single blow aimed at Kruger where he seemed most vulnerable might speed things up.

Rhodes failed, partly because of serious deficiencies in his so-called 'plan', partly because of divisions among the Uitlander Re-form Committee, but mainly because of the failure of the individu-als on whom he relied and his own inability to take the measure of Kruger, to see that in the Transvaal State President he faced a much more shrewd, able and determined leader than he had usu-ally faced in the past. This failure was the more inexcusable since Rhodes was no stranger to negotiations with Kruger and had had every opportunity properly to understand him. When Chamber-lain, attempting to rescue something from Jameson's folly, proposed to put the focus squarely on Uitlander grievances in his despatch of 4 January 1896, it had no effect at first because the high com-missioner refused to respond as the Secretary of State thought

was necessary. Ja~eson's foolhardiness, however, did have

seri-ous consequences; it helped to intensify a dangerseri-ous dynamic in South African affairs. Consequently, questions of private profit and political change, and the demand of white British subjects to have these things on terms that they would dictate, continued to domi-nate southern Africa affairs, not only up to the South African War but also right through another decade of economic reconstruction, political turbulence and, finally, Union.