Scramble for Africa;: The great trek to the Boer War

by Anthony Nutting

This is the dramatic story of the scramble by the European powers, and in particular England, for power and influence in Africa during the 19th century. Though the author ranges over much of the huge continent, the principal focus of Anthony Nutting's narrative is South Africa, where the struggle was sharpest and the stakes highest. The Dutch had been in Africa since the late 16th century and the Portuguese, with their missionary settlements, long before. The British did not arrive till the period of the Napoleonic Wars, when the possibility of a hostile French presence at the Cape was not one England could lightly overlook, for Holland had joined France in declaring war against her. On June 11th, 1795, nine English men-of-war anchored in False Bay and landed a small force of redcoats with an order signed by Holland's refugee king, bidding the Dutch garrison to allow them to occupy the Cape. Thus began the long period of British hegemony in South Africa.

Genres: Africa, History

454 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1971

About the author

Sir Harold Anthony Nutting, 3rd Baronet was a British diplomat and Conservative Party politician who served as a Member of Parliament from 1945 and 1956. He was a Minister of State for Foreign Affairs from 1954 until he resigned in 1956 in protest against the Suez invasion.

During WW2 he entered the Foreign Service, serving as an attaché at the British Embassy in Paris. When France fell, he was assigned to the embassy in Madrid, where he organised escape routes for Allied servicemen caught behind enemy lines from 1940 to 1944. He joined the Embassy in Rome from 1944 to 1945 and was briefly private secretary to Anthony Eden, the then Foreign Secretary.

At the 1945 general election, at 25, Nutting was elected as the MP for Melton in Leicestershire. He served as chairman of the Young Conservatives (1946 - 47) and he was the youngest member of Winston Churchill's Government in the 1950s.

He was made a Privy Councillor in 1954 and he led the British delegation to the United Nations General Assembly and Disarmament Commission in 1954 and 1955. He was an internationalist, an early enthusiast for British membership of the European Economic Community and an Arabist who was a founding member of the Council for the Advancement of Arab-British Understanding (CAABU) in 1967.

In 1954, he negotiated the final steps of the treaty with President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt under which British troops withdrew from Suez; so when he discovered the joint British and French invasion plan at a meeting on 14 October 1956, he believed that the mission was mistaken and deceitful. On 31 October, despite attempts by future Prime Minister Harold Macmillan to persuade him not to resign, Nutting quit his post as Minister of State for Foreign Affairs. He did not give the customary resignation speech in the House of Commons for security reasons, and his unexplained action proved so unpopular that his constituents forced him to give up his seat in Parliament.

Reviews

[Everett F. · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Scramble for Africa: The Great Trek to the Boer War," written by former Conservative MP and British Foreign Minister Anthony Nutting, tells the story of how England came to assert its dominance over what is now South Africa, beginning with the origins of such actions in the colonization by the Dutch of the Cape in the seventeenth century. For one hundred years, the Dutch managed to establish and operate a colony centered around a small military base at what would eventually become Cape Town, though as the years went by, increasing problems brought about by rebellious freemen known as "boers" or "burghers" meant that Holland's ability to maintain control over the Cape hung in the balance. Added to that inability was the fact that the Dutch administration was rife with corruption and mismanagement on all fronts, as well as the fact that many of these Dutch burghers (who were largely the descendants of poor farmers) began searching for greener pastures to the north, wherein they established the first Boer Republics, a collection of small states that over time merged into two major ones: the Orange Free State (Bloemfontein) and the South African Republic or Transvaal (Pretoria; this is the prototype for modern South Africa). Simply put, each republic generally went their own way, though they were united by a common Dutch language and culture, as well as by a fiercely conservative outlook on the world around them, placing Christianity at the center of everything (especially in the Transvaal) and fervently refusing to bow down to outside pressure. English imperialists such as Cecil Rhodes felt that they could take advantage of a people they saw as being nothing more than backward, Bible-thumping hillbillies for their own ends by pressuring them to acquiesce to their demands through various means, all with an ultimate goal of bringing about a South African union under English domination. After all, England already had the Cape and Natal under its control, and was to a large extent already the preeminent power in the region thanks to Cecil Rhodes' machinations of personal ambition. Overall, Nutting's book provides for an excellent survey of early South African history despite its occasional datedness in some parts (eg. the claim that apartheid is still current policy in South Africa; hasn't been so for nearly three decades now), as well as the fact that the Boers (especially the Transvaalers) are seen as often buffoonish authoritarians clinging to their guns and religion, though this is compensated by the fact that Transvaal President Paul Kruger is ultimately shown to have been a man trying the best he could to save his little nation from being taken over by a hostile foreign power. Even so, the book's general perspective is of a highly British, specifically Tory, bent, and that distinction is not lost when considering how the Dutch are portrayed by Nutting earlier in the book in comparison to the English, who, while not without faults themselves, are ultimately seen as being more adept at rule than their predecessors, not only amongst the whites themselves, but with the black tribes, too. Even Dutch loyalists (Hofmeyr is the most famous example I can think of) are seen as pawns at the mercy of their English superiors, never really getting anything done because of their affinities (real or imagined) with their more traditional northern cousins. The scholarship is good, though he could have gone into further detail on what happened after the Boer War (1899-1902) and the subsequent unification of the South African lands in 1910. He notes, though, that the new union was under Afrikaner control in reality, having been British in all but name.



Some characters


1. Cecil J. Rhodes: Die-hard imperialist, he arrived in South Africa at the age of seventeen after his doctor had told him to move to warmer climates for his health. While there, he became deeply involved in politics and business, especially in the diamond trade. He also involved himself in a variety of conspiracies and was known to play sides whenever it suited British interests. Nutting portrays him as an evil genius willing to stop at nothing to further England's glory.


2. Jan H. Hofmeyr: Prominent leader of the Cape's Dutch community, he founded the Afrikaner Bond as an organization/political party dedicated to advancing Dutch interests, as well as promoting harmony between English and Dutch alike. All white Cape residents are allowed to join the Bond regardless of their ethnic background, and this goes well for him for quite some time. For most of his career, Hofmeyr has the support of his English Prime Minister and friend, Rhodes, who has ambitiously cast himself as a champion of all white South Africans. He later has a falling out with Rhodes over his actions in the infamous Jameson Raid, which attempted an overthrow of Kruger's Republic.

3. Paul Kruger: The stubborn, elderly president of the South African Republic (Transvaal), he is descended from German migrants who arrived in South Africa nearly a century before his birth, his earliest Kruger ancestor having arrived from Berlin in 1713 after joining the Dutch army. Kruger constantly faces pressure from the English to grant the vote to "uitlanders"—mostly British businessmen running mines in the Transvaal, to which he continuously refuses. In terms of personality and behavior, Kruger is essentially an introvert who resists change from any quarter, and has been said to have rigged elections to his benefit, and is also often accused of being a dictator. A devout Christian, he ascribes to a literalist interpretation of the Bible, and believes that the planet is flat because "that's what the Bible says." He knows that the Brits are up to no good, and tries his very best to save his country's independence. He has only a fifth grade education, and grew up poor. Prone to outbursts of anger and/or crying on occasion.



3. Chamberlain: Colonial Secretary, he is also one of Rhodes' allies and coconspirators in the plot to undermine the Transvaal's sovereignty.


*In addition to Africa, Rhodes also secretly plotted the overthrow of another republic: the United States. His goal was to make it an English colony once again, and he said this much in his will that he wrote as a young man. PM Gladstone was in this plot, too.