The Jameson Raid was an unofficial and failed attempt by the British to take over the Boer Republic of Transvaal in Southern Africa in December 1895. Masterminded by the millionaire imperialist Cecil Rhodes, the raid failed to gain support from the immigrant community within Transvaal and was easily quashed. Rhodes was discredited over the fiasco, and the heightened mutual suspicion between the British and Boers eventually led to the Second Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902).
Control of Southern Africa
Great Britain had established a colony in Southern Africa in 1806, the Cape Colony, which included the Cape of Good Hope, an important stopping point for ships sailing to and from Britain and its possessions in Asia, particularly British India. Another British colony was founded in 1843, Natal. The British had competition, not only from indigenous Africans but also from the Boers. The Boers were White settlers in Southern Africa who had Dutch or French ancestry. The name Boer means "farmer." They were also known as Afrikaners because they spoke Afrikaans. Through the 1830s, as the British outlawed slavery and population growth applied too much pressure to land and resources around the Cape, over 14,000 Boers migrated to find land elsewhere. From these new territories, two Boer republics were formed: Transvaal (founded in 1852) and the Orange Free State (founded in 1854).
Largely rural and with only a modest trade related to agriculture, Southern Africa's fortunes were transformed following the discovery of diamonds at Kimberley in Griqualand in 1867 and then by the remarkable discovery of massive gold deposits at Witwatersrand in Transvaal in 1886. In between these two discoveries, the British had been steadily expanding their control of the region. Griqualand, renamed West Griqualand by the British, was made a crown colony in 1871. A British army defeated the Zulu Kingdom in 1879, and Zululand became a crown colony in 1887. The British also acquired the Basutoland Protectorate (modern Lesotho) in 1884 and the Bechuanaland Protectorate (modern Botswana) in 1885. Swaziland and Pondoland were added to Britain's motley collection of Southern African states in 1893 and 1894, respectively.
The dream of British colonialists was to unite the various colonies into a single state of South Africa. The Boers, naturally, valued their independence and saw no reason to become another part of the British Empire. Indeed, they had already had a warning of this ambition between 1877 and 1881 when the British, on the excuse of attacks by African tribes, had temporarily taken over Transvaal. The rivalry for land and resources exploded into conflict again in the First Anglo-Boer War (1880-1). The Boers won this rather small-scale encounter, but a bigger and more decisive conflict now seemed only a matter of time. The men who sought to bring on this crisis sooner rather than later were the millionaire gold magnates.
The Gold Bugs
In the final years of the 19th century, the British government was not quite decided on how to approach Southern African affairs. On the one side, it favoured a more natural expansion of British control simply by waiting until sufficient British immigrants tipped the balance and made the Boers a powerless minority in their own republics. On the other side, it was certainly concerned that a gold-rich Transvaal could sooner rather than later link up with a rival colonial power such as Germany, and such a partnership could threaten British interests in Southern Africa and beyond. Another concern was the fact that British investments in Transvaal totalled over £350 by 1899, and two-thirds of Witwatersrand's mines were owned by British shareholders.
The owners of the gold mines of Witwatersrand included such figures as Julius Wernher, Barney Barnato, Alfred Beit, and Cecil Rhodes (1853-1902). These powerful men, who were also heavily involved in the diamond mines at Kimberley, were known to the British as the 'Randlords.' The President of Transvaal, Paul Kruger (1825-1904), called them the 'Gold Bugs.' The 'bugs' were not all united as some magnates preferred a more peaceful method of influencing the Transvaal government for their own benefit, while others were prepared to go to any lengths to increase their personal power and profits.
By the mid-1890s, Johannesburg had a population of 100,000, as immigrants from around the world were attracted to Transvaal's gold mines. The Boers, jealous of their privileged position, passed laws in the Transvaal legislature, the volksraad, to ensure these new White workers, known as Uitlanders ('Outsiders'), could not vote and did not enjoy the same rights of citizenship as Boers in Transvaal. Kruger passed a law that only after 14 years of residency could a White immigrant vote in political elections. The mine magnates were not very happy at the restrictions on the more skilled element of their workforce. The White workers themselves did not take kindly either to having no voting rights but still having the obligation to pay taxes and perform military service for the Transvaal government. The British colonial authorities in Cape Colony and Natal certainly did not agree with Kruger's discrimination against White immigrants, particularly British subjects – here, perhaps, was good moral ground for an otherwise dubious intervention in Transvaal.
Another bone of contention between the mine magnates and the Transvaal government was the latter's policy on alcohol consumption. The mine owners cited statistics such as 15 to 25% of Black labourers were so incapacitated by alcohol that they could not work. The mine owners wanted the government to pass a prohibition law on the sale of alcohol, but the call was ignored until 1896, and even then not practically imposed.
Finally, the mine owners wanted the Transvaal government to change the tax laws, which proportionally hit the deeper mines more than the surface ones of small-time prospectors. In addition, the Transvaal government's control of the railways and dynamite also raised costs of extracting gold from what was an already expensive endeavour, given the very low grade of the gold-bearing ore.
The Takeover Plot
The prime political mover amongst the mine magnates was Rhodes, who had been prime minister of Cape Colony since 1890. The historian M. Corey gives the following summary of one of Britain's most influential imperialists:
Rhodes was an extravagant, dominating man, given to grandness in his actions, whether it was building a railway bridge across Victoria Falls or entertaining international guests at Groote Schuur, the personal palace he renovated in Dutch colonial style in Cape Town. Convinced of the racial superiority of Europeans, he dispossessed vast numbers of black Africans and contributed to generations of racial conflict in southern Africa.
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Rhodes first tried to undermine Transvaal by attempting to buy the republic's only railway access to a seaport, Lourenço Marques, then in the hands of Portugal. Germany stepped in, and diplomatic pressure prevented the sale. Rhodes then went for more drastic measures. He secretly concocted a plot to remove the Transvaal government and take over the republic by force. The troops involved were recruited from Rhodes' own British South Africa Company (BSAC), an organisation he had set up in 1895 and which gained a royal charter to colonise the lands north of Transvaal, which became known as Rhodesia (today's Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Malawi). As it turned out, perhaps significantly for the future of the Boer republics, this territory did not possess the mineral wealth found in Transvaal.
Rhodes selected Dr Leander Starr Jameson (1853-1917), a colonial administrator, magistrate, and veteran of the BSAC war in Matabeleland, to lead the military coup. Jameson was "an extremely foxy and belligerent former physician" (James, 261). The raiding party was only a small one since Rhodes hoped that once inside Transvaal, it would be joined by the Uitlanders in Johannesburg. The Uitlander Reform Committee had been calling for greater rights for its members for several years. The Uitlanders had long been receiving money to stir up trouble from mine owners like Rhodes, Beit, and Wernher.
Jameson's force of 500-600 cavalry, which included policemen of the BSAC, was given a pep talk by Colonel Grey of the Bechuanaland police, which explained the motive of the coup but also that neither Queen Victoria nor the British government knew anything about it. The men were simply told: "You are going to fight for the supremacy of the British flag in South Africa" (James, 108). The force was well-equipped with all men issued the new Lee-Metford magazine rifles. Jameson also had eight Maxim machine guns and three artillery pieces.
Meanwhile, despite Rhodes' agents having handed out cash incentives and weapons, the Uitlander uprising never happened. Rhodes left the decision to Jameson as to whether to proceed anyway. Jameson decided to press on with the coup regardless. The invaders entered Transvaal from their mustering points at Pitsani and Mafikeng in the Bechuanaland Protectorate on 29 December. The expedition had been well planned, as sympathisers to the cause in Transvaal waited with food supplies and fresh horses. The force was meant to be stripped down in terms of equipment so that it could dash the 170 miles or so (273 km) to Johannesburg in just three days, although room was still found for a large keg of brandy and a couple of cases of champagne.
Defeat & Dishonour
Unfortunately for Jameson, the Transvaal government's intelligence service knew of the raid, and a reception committee was mobilised. They had also discovered one of Jameson's hidden supply caches. The Boer commando stationed at Lichtenburg was sent to intercept but missed Jameson's party. A second commando was mobilised – Boer men between the age of 16 and 60 were expected to serve the state whenever required. This second commando headed for Krugersdorp near Johannesburg. The Transvaal force, led by General Piet Cronjé, outnumbered James' column and easily defeated them when the two groups met on 1 January. The raiders retreated to the protection of the rocky outcrop of Doornkop but soon found themselves low on ammunition. The Boers had brought up a heavy field gun to pound the kop, and Jameson was obliged to surrender. A number of prisoners were taken, and Jameson was arrested. The raiders had suffered 16 men killed and 56 wounded, while the Boers suffered just one fatality.
Jameson was ultimately imprisoned in England. The charge was one of enlisting in a foreign army, an action prohibited by the Foreign Enlistment Act (which is still applicable today). The sentence was 15 months' imprisonment, but this did no lasting harm to Jameson's colonial career, since he was voted prime minister of Cape Colony in 1904. Rhodes' reputation, on the other hand, was seriously damaged by the fiasco. The British Crown disowned the raid. Rhodes, when everything came out in the open after official enquiries were conducted both in Cape Colony and London, was obliged to resign both as prime minister of Cape Colony and as director of the BSAC in 1896.
A Second Boer War
The colonial secretary back in London between 1895 and 1902, Joseph Chamberlain, is often blamed for stoking up hostile relations with the Boers, but there is very little indisputable evidence that he ever did so. Alfred Milner, however, did do so. Milner was the British High Commissioner in South Africa between 1897 and 1905. As the historian S. C. Smith notes, by "manipulating the press in both South Africa and Britain, Milner created a climate of opinion which made compromise difficult" (90). The situation was not helped by Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany (reign 1888-1918) sending a well-publicised telegram message to Kruger congratulating him on his successful rebuttal of the Jameson Raid.
A conference was set up to discuss the issue of Uitlander rights, the Bloemfontein Conference of June 1889, but it was Milner who cut this conference short, an action which "shattered Boer confidence in British good faith" (Smith, 90). The Transvaal government's suspicion of British imperialism is reflected in the fact that it had already quadrupled its military budget and signed a defensive alliance with the Orange Free State. In the four years after the Jameson Raid, Kruger equipped his Boers with 80,000 of the latest German Mauser rifles and 80 million rounds of ammunition.
Perhaps inevitably, conflict broke out in October 1899, the Second Anglo-Boer War. As the future prime minister of South Africa, Jan Smuts, stated: "The Jameson Raid was the real declaration of war in the Anglo-Boer conflict" (Fremont-Barnes, 22). Britain eventually won this bitter clash in 1902, but it did its international reputation no good at all through its use of scorched-earth tactics and civilian concentration camps. The two Boer Republics and the British colonies were then united into a single colony in 1910, the Union of South Africa.
