Second Boer War - Background - Jameson Raid

Jameson Raid

In 1895, a plan was hatched with the connivance of the Cape Prime Minister Cecil Rhodes, Johannesburg gold magnate Alfred Beit, and Sir Alfred Milner (British High Commissioner for South Africa and Lieutenant Governor of the Cape) to take Johannesburg, ending the control of the Transvaal government. A column of 600 armed men (mainly made up of his Rhodesian and Bechuanaland policemen) was led by Dr. Leander Starr Jameson (the Administrator in Rhodesia of the British South Africa Company (or "Chartered Company") of which Cecil Rhodes was the Chairman) over the border from Bechuanaland towards Johannesburg. The column was equipped with six Maxim machine guns, two 7-pounder mountain guns, and a 12½ pounder field piece. The plan was to make a three-day dash to Johannesburg before the Boer commandos could mobilise, and once there, trigger an uprising by the primarily British expatriate workers (uitlanders) organised by the Reform Committee. However, the Transvaal authorities had advance warning of the Jameson Raid and tracked it from the moment it crossed the border. Four days later, the weary and dispirited column was surrounded near Krugersdorp within sight of Johannesburg. After a brief skirmish in which the column lost 65 killed and wounded—while the Boers lost but one man—Jameson's men surrendered and were arrested by the Boers.

The botched raid resulted in repercussions throughout southern Africa and in Europe. In Rhodesia, the departure of so many policemen enabled the Matabele and Mashona tribes to rise up against the Chartered Company, and the rebellion, known as the Second Matabele War, was suppressed only at great cost.

A few days after the raid, the German Kaiser sent a telegram ("Kruger telegram") congratulating President Kruger and the government of the South African Republic on their success, and when the text of this telegram was disclosed in the British press, it generated a storm of anti-German feeling. In the baggage of the raiding column, to the great embarrassment of the British, the Boers found telegrams from Cecil Rhodes and the other plotters in Johannesburg. Joseph Chamberlain, the British Colonial Secretary, quickly moved to condemn the raid, despite previously having approved Rhodes' plans to send armed assistance in the case of a Johannesburg uprising. Subsequently, Rhodes was severely censured at the Cape inquiry and the London parliamentary inquiry, and forced to resign as Prime Minister of the Cape and as Chairman of the Chartered Company for having sponsored the failed coup d'état.

The Boer government handed their raid prisoners over to the British for trial. Dr. Jameson was tried in England for leading the raid. However, the British press and London society inflamed by anti-Boer and anti-German feeling and in a frenzy of jingoism, lionised Dr. Jameson and treated him as a hero. Although sentenced to 15 months imprisonment (which he served in Holloway), Jameson was later rewarded by being named Prime Minister of the Cape Colony (1904–08) and ultimately anointed as one of the founders of the Union of South Africa. For conspiring with Jameson, the uitlander members of the Reform Committee (Transvaal) were tried in the Transvaal courts and found guilty of high treason. The four leaders were sentenced to death by hanging, but this sentence was next day commuted to 15 years' imprisonment; and in June 1896, the other members of the Committee were released on payment of £2,000 each in fines, all of which were paid by Cecil Rhodes. One Reform Committee member, Frederick Gray, had committed suicide while in Pretoria gaol, on 16 May, and his death was a factor in softening the Transvaal government's attitude to the remaining prisoners.

Jan C. Smuts wrote in 1906, "The Jameson Raid was the real declaration of war. . . . And that is so in spite of the four years of truce that followed . . . aggressors consolidated their alliance . . . the defenders on the other hand silently and grimly prepared for the inevitable."