Mhodes, Rhodesia and the Jameson RaidR, S. RobertsDepartment of History, University College of Rhodesia,Salisbury.Yet four more books have recently appearedon these closely related subjects;* and this, as the* BUTLER, J. 1968 The Liberal Party and the JamesonRaid. Oxford, Clarendon Press.ROBERTS, B. 1969 Cecil Rhodes and the Princess,London, Hamish Hamilton.GLASS, S. 1968 The Matabele War. London, Long-mans.SAMKANGE, S. 1968 Origins of Rhodesia. London,Heineraann.author of one of them says, "might well causescholars to groan",1 Nevertheless, all four works,although different in character, are useful con-tributions to a subject that still arouses strongfeelings, especially in Southern Africa.There was a time a few years ago when thesubject of the Jameson Raid seemed to be ap-proaching exhaustion. A series of studies bySouth African historians had elaborated a strongcase in favour of an overall Rhodes-Jamesonplan for an uprising and a raid, to which supporthad been given by Joseph Chamberlain.2 Otherhistorians have tried to take the sting out of thischarge against Chamberlain by insisting on adistinction between the uprising and the Raid.3At the same time there has been a similar pro-cess in respect of Rhodes. A standard biographywas published* and some of the problems of the"Missing Telegrams"5 and Stead's History6 werecleared up; but the whole subject had begun tolook more a matter of bibliographical rather thanof historical research.7Yet even then, unanswered questions remained.The biography of Rhodes was in many ways toomuch a defence of a hero, and much of hisstrange character was left either unremarked orunexplained. In a review of Lockhart and Wood-house's biography, Ranger doubted whether thiswas "The Last Word on Rhodes"; and he rightlypointed to the less publicised aspects of hischaracter and policies.8It is upon Rhodes' character that BrianRoberts now focuses more attention in his studyof Rhodes and Princess Catherine Radziwill {neeRzewuski). This work is largely based on second-ary sources, but the papers of Le Sueur havebeen used to throw some interesting sidelightson the relationship between the ailing Rhodesand the forceful princess who forged his signa-ture to pay debts incurred in her publicising hispolicies. Furthermore, by careful use of hissources, the author has succeeded in drawingbetter character sketches of these two strangepeople than previous writers who have tended tosteer away from any unpleasantness. ThusRoberts documents more fully than ever beforethe complicated emotional make-up of Rhodes,the squeaky misogynist surrounded by attractive,virile young men who acted as a sort of playfulbodyguard. Although he never says quite asmuch, bluntly, it is clear from his sympatheticbut unsentimental account that Rhodes was aman of strong, but almost certainly repressed,homosexuality.9Whether this is of any importance, historically,is difficult to decide; but it is possible that77Rhodes' loneliness and emotional emptiness afterPickering's death in 1886 did contribute to, andso helps explain, his later actions which today wefind so distastefulŠthe brash materialism, theruthlessness towards the Matabele kingdom, thecruel solicitude for Lofoengula's sons, the reck-lessness of the Johannesburg Rising and theJameson Raid, the final cynicism of "equal rightsfor all civilised men".In Roberts' account of Rhodes and thePrincess there are two weaknesses, but both areprobably determined by lack of documentation.The first is that there is little serious discussionof what Rhodes felt for (or against) this womanwhose unwelcome friendship for him aggravatedhis last illness. It may well be right to dismissany emotional entanglement; but if this is so,we are left with no convincing explanation ofthe hold over Rhodes that Princess Radziwillappeared to have. The author's attempt toanswer this last point is the second weakness ofhis work: for he argues that the princess hadstolen from. Rhodes incriminating documents,perhaps the missing telegrams, concerning theJameson Raid. There is, however, no real evi-dence for this answer, despite its dramaticattraction; and certainly the princess never pro-duced the papers, either to avoid the sentence oftwo years' imprisonment or even to obtain moneyin her declining years of poverty.It is to the question of the Raid that ProfessorButler has directed his attention. This scholarlywork, however, is different in character frommost other works on the subject, the main in-terest of which has been to estimate the extentof Chamberlain's collusion. Butler is more con-cerned with the impact of the Raid and theInquiry on British political life, and particularlyon the Liberal Party in opposition. For it is rarethat a colonial problem becomes a major issue indomestic politics; it seems unlikely, for example,that the illegal declaration of independence byRhodesia in 1965 will be a subject of intensepolitical conflict at the forthcoming general elec-tion in Britain in the way that the Jameson Raidof 1895 did in 1900.This work then is more a case study in parlia-mentary technique and in political judgment, astudy which raises questions of public moralityand private knowledge. The essence of the studyis the failure of the Liberal leaders, notably SirWilliam Harcourt, to exploit the Raid politically.According to Butler, this was due to the simplefact, ignored by historians, that Harcourt hadexactly the same views as Chamberlain and hisother political contemporaries on the legitimacyof revolution, or intervention in support of therights of suffering people. For this very reason,indeed, the Liberal government in 1894 had beenprepared to intervene on behalf of the Uitlanders;and the disagreement between Liberals andUnionists was rather over means.What neither party accepted, however, was thatintervention should precede a rising or should befor private gain. On the first of these two counts,Rhodes was clearly guilty; and Chamberlaintherefore denounced the Raid immediately heheard of it, before he knew whether it wouldsucceed or not. Because of this action, Harcourtwas prepared to defend Chamberlain. Similarly,Rhodes was not guilty of the second charge ofmere money-making, and therefore Chamberlain,in turn, was prepared to defend him.Thus the effective failure of the Inquiry todestroy Rhodes' influence or to enhance thepopularity of the Liberal Party is no mystery:the role of Harcourt as a British statesman seek-ing to strengthen British foreign policy, and thatof Chamberlain as an Imperial statesman holdingthe Empire together helped Rhodes, the Capepolitician, to maintain the basis of his politicalpower in South Africa.In this detailed account by Butler there aretwo minor points that can be amplified by meansof material in the Salisbury Archives. The firstis the hitherto unpublished letter which AlbertGrey wrote to Chamberlain on 17th November,1895 (wrongly dated as 7th November inButler's text, p. 56). The purpose of this letterwas to remind Chamberlain that the British SouthAfrica Company's "eagerness to get immediateAdministration of the [Bechuanaland] Protec-torate has been prompted by political considera-tions alone ... fin order] to place ourselvesin a position to help British interests in theTransvaal in the event of anything taking placethere. . . ". Butler logically concludes that thisshows Chamberlain to have gone further downthe path of intervention than had his Liberalpredecessor, although it does not prove guiltyknowledge of a Raid before the Rising. The in-teresting point which Butler omits, however, isthat this letter is not a copy, of which the originalwould be among Chamberlain's papers, but theoriginal which, with its envelope, was neverposted! Grey apparently had second thoughts:was it too blunt, too revealing, or was it anunfair reflection of which Chamberlain did infact know?The second point is the substance of Labou-78chere's accusation that "Chamberlain when heheard of the raid went to the office of the[Telegraph] Company and insisted on all thecablegrams being shown to him" (p. 169 quotingLabouchere to Harcourt, 7th May, 1897). Thischarge was not pursued at the Inquiry, but Butlerraises the question of whether Chamberlain hadin fact seen all the "missing telegrams" as earlyas January, 1896, and had taken action then tomake sure that they were not produced. Anotherletter by Grey, however, appears to describe theepisode in question and, in doing so, shows itto have been far less sinister than Laboucherethought: Grey, Maguire and Hawkesley went tothe Eastern Telegraph Cable office late at nightsoon after the Raid to discover why there hadbeen no news from the Cape for more than 24hours. When they were told that the cable wasblocked with government business, they drove toChamberlain's house at 1.15 in the morning.Chamberlain returned with them and successfullydemanded the production of the cables receivedthat day [my italics] which they then read.10The third book under discussion is a usefulstudy of Rhodes and Jameson's previous gamble,their unprovoked war against the Ndebele in1893. By careful use of the records of the BritishSouth Africa Company and of the High Com-missioner, Glass is able to give a detailed, almostday-to-day, account of the progress of theirhighly successful aggression against Lobengula.As an explanation of the war, however. Glass'work is not satisfactory.In the first place, Jameson and the Companyare taken too much at the face value of theirofficial communications. Ranger has shown thatJameson as early as 17th July, 1893, had virtuallydecided on the necessity of force: "unless someshooting is done I think it will be difficult to getlabour even after they [Ndebele impi] have allgone . . . [therefore! I intend to treat them likedogs . . .". Two days later Jameson cynicallyadded that "we have the excuse for a row overmurdered women & children now & the gettingMatabeleland open would give us a tremendouslift in shares . . ,".11In the second place, the context within whichthe British South Africa Company was operatingneeds more attention. The financial burden ofadministering Mashonaiand was so great, evenafter Jameson's ruthless cutting back, that theCompany's only hope lay in taxing the Shona.In the absence of any legal right on the Com-pany's part, the only argument which might carryweight with the Colonial Office was that theShona were being protected from the bloodthirstydepredations of LobengulaŠand it was thiscrucial argument that the Victoria Incident throwinto jeopardy.Finally, and most importantly, the victims ofhis aggressive war, the Ndebele, are barely con-sidered, certainly not in their own right as anAfrican polity which had its own political andmilitary problems and strategy.The fourth book, by Samkange, stops shortwith these events of 1893 and concentrates uponthe machinations of Rhodes that led to the occu-pation of Mashonaland and then, inevitably, tothe Matabele War of 1893-1894. This also is asubject that has been gone over many times, butSamkange's contribution is a useful one by virtueof its detailed documentation. Good use is madeof the official records of the British authoritiesto show the tortuous nature of Rhodes' plans andBritish connivance.The definitive work on these decisive years,however, remains to be written, for there areobvious defects in Samkange's reconstruction.The whole work is marred by a shrillness of tonein dealing with Rhodes and the various treatiesand concessions. Historians have long sinceceased to think well of that unpleasant man; butto try to justify Lobengula as a man of his timeand not to see Rhodes equally as a product ofa jingoistic, grasping, materialistic age in Europe,is a one-sided and unhistorical approach. Thereis also a certain naivety in insisting that the sidewhich wonŠRhodes and the British authoritiesŠwas the only party to push its economic in-terests and behave dishonestly in that age ofdouble-dealing concession-hunting. If this werejust a polemical interpretation of the evidence, itwould not matter so much, but in fact the polemi-cal approach seems to have determined whatevidence should be consulted and what ignored.Thus by uncritical reliance on secondary works,such as Preller's untrustworthy Lobengula, theBoers' attitude to the Ndebele state becomessimply one of "sincerity and desire to maintainpeace and friendly relations" (p. 44). TheAdendorff Concession and Trek therefore receiveno comment, although in intention this was amore blatant attempt at open seizure of Africans'land than either the Rudd or Lippert concessions.Similarly there is no attempt to look at theevidence in the Salisbury Archives, some of whichRanger has published,12 concerning the exact wayin which the conquest of Mashonaland cameabout. Johnson and Selous had their own in-terests, notably in the Mazoe area, and Rhodes79in some ways became enmeshed in their ambi-tions.Lastly, and perhaps most surprisingly, is thefact that evidence concerning the Ndebele isignored: no attention to the work of Brown andthe segmentary nature of their state, for example;no consideration of a possible division of econo-mic interest between the younger men of theregiments who could advance only by preservingthe traditional political-military structure and theolder men at Bulawayo who could profit fromconcessionaires and the development of trade. Ineffect this work is as European-orientated asGlass'; and by its shrillness of tone reads ratherlike a nineteenth century British Liberal's attackon the British South Africa Company rather thana considered historical analysis by an African ofthe interaction of British imperialism and anAfrican polity; and, as Professor Butler's workshows in respect of Labouchere at the time ofthe Inquiry (here, p. 125, made into a "Labour"M.P.!), inaccurate denunciations sometimes havethe effect of helping those who ought to becondemned.It is a sad comment on present race relationsin Rhodesia that such a tone should be felt neces-sary in a historical work dealing with events 80years ago; it is some excuse for such an approachŠand an even sadder comment on race relationsŠthat this book is banned to Rhodesia's generalreading public.REFERENCES1. BUTLER, J. 1968 The Liberal Party and the Jameson Raid. Oxford. Clarendon Press, p. [1].2. VAN DER POEL, J. 1951 The Jameson Raid. London, Oxford University Press.DRUS, E. 1952 A Report on the Papers of Joseph Chamberlain relating to the Jameson Raid and the Inquiry.Bull. Inst. hist. Res., 25, 33-63.1953 The Question of Imperial Complicity in the Jameson Raid. Engl. hist. Rev., 68, 582-593.1954 Select Documents from the Chamberlain Papers Concerning Anglo-Transvaal Relations, 1896-1899.Bull. Inst. hist. Res., 27, 156-189.MARAIS, J. S. 1961 The Fall of Kruger's Republic. Oxford, Clarendon Press.3. WILDE, R. H. 1956 Joseph Chamberlain and the South African Republic 1895-1899. . . . Archs Yr Bk for S.Afr. Hist. Pretoria, Government Printer,HARLOW, V. T. 1957 Sir Frederic Hamilton's Narrative of Events relative to the Jameson Raid. Engl. hist. Rev.,72, 279-305.PAKENHAM, E. 1960 Jameson's Raid. London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson.4. LOCKHART, J. G. and WOODHOUSE, C. M. 1963 Rhodes. London, Hodder and Stoughton.5. WOODHOUSE, C. M. 1962 The Missing Telegrams and the Jameson Raid. Hist. Today, 12, 395404, 506-514.6. BAYLEN, J. O. 1964 W. T. Stead's History of the Mystery and the Jameson Raid. /. Br. Stud., 4, 104-132.7. HOLLI, M. G. 1963 Joseph Chamberlain and the Jameson Raid: a Bibliographical Survey. /. Br. Stud., 3, 152-166.8. RANGER, T. O. 1964 The Last Word on Rhodes? Past & Present, 28, 116-127.9. ROBERTS, pp. 52-55, 63-66, 352-356.10. NATIONAL ARCHIVES OF RHODESIA, HISTORICAL MANUSCRIPTS COLLECTION. GREY PAPERS[GR 2/1/1], Grey to wife, undated [January 1896].11. RHODES HOUSE, Mss. Afr. s.228 C.3B, Jameson to Harris, 17 and 19.vii.1893, quoted by RANGER, T. O. 1967Revolt in Southern Rhodesia 1896-7. . . . London, Heinemann, pp. 93, 94. The latter quotation had already beenused by RANGER, 1964, 117.12. RANGER, T. O. 1967 The Rewriting of African History during the Scramble: the Matabele Dominance inMashonaland. Afr. soc. Res., 4, 271-28280