MATABELE CAMPAIGN 1896: Being a Narrative of the Campaign in Suppressing the Native Rising in Matabeleland and Mashonaland

by Robert Baden-Powell

Before he found fame as the triumphant defender of Mafeking in the Boer War, Robert Baden-Powell, later the founder of the worldwide Scout movement, was a notable colonial soldier in India and Africa and recorded his exploits in a number of books. This is his account of his campaign to put down a revolt against British rule raised by the warlike Matabele tribe in the territory that later became Rhodesia and is today's Zimbabwe. This lavishly illustrated book - it carries 100 drawings, photos and and maps, some drawn in B.Ps own hand, for he was as gifted an artist as he was a warrior - is the great man's own campaign diary. The ideals of the Scout movement he would one day lead were already forming in B.P's head, for the book is full of advice to 'Be Prepared' - later the Scout movement's motto, - as well as unconscious humour such as the caption to a picture of B.P charging down rocks hotly pursued by Matabele warriors: 'When pursued by the Matabele among the boulders of the Matopo country it was of the greatest advantage to be equipped with rubber-soled shoes, and to have that command of your feet which is acquired in the practice of skirt-dancing'. More than just a curio of a colonial campaign, this book is a fascinating compendium of scouting lore and a must for anyone interested in Africa.

520 pages, Paperback

First published March 23, 1994

About the author

Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell , British general and first baron Baden-Powell, founded the Boy Scouts in 1908 and with his sister Agnes Baden-Powell founded the Girl Guides in 1910.

This also known lord and lieutenant in the Army wrote of the movement.

Charterhouse school educated Baden-Powell, who afterward from 1876 served in the Army in India and Africa until 1910. In 1899 during the second Boer War in South Africa, Baden-Powell successfully defended the besieged city of Mafeking. He wrote several also read military books for reconnaissance and training in his African years. Based on those earlier books, he wrote Scouting for Boys , which Pearson published in 1908 for youth readership. During writing, he tested his ideas on Brownsea island through a camping trip that began on 1 August 1907, now seen as the beginning.

Baden-Powell and notably Olave Saint Clair Soames, his wife, after their marriage actively gave the movement. Baden-Powell lived his last years in Nyeri, Kenya, where he died.

Reviews

[Monty Milne]

Oh dear. What can I say about this embarrassing book? The best thing about it is the illustrations – Baden Powell was a gifted artist, and his drawings and photographs are excellent. I knew next to nothing about this particular little colonial war, so it was of some interest to hear more, though in truth it wasn’t much of a war, merely an armed uprising by an oppressed people, swiftly and ruthlessly suppressed.

However…this book is embarrassing for a number of reasons. It is written for his mother, because Baden Powell – who spent most of his life assiduously avoiding the company of females – was very much a Mummy’s Boy. His personality, intellect and literary gifts resemble those of a lively but emotionally and sexually repressed fifteen year old. His gung ho Jingoism is unpleasant, not least because he records war crimes in which he himself participated, and yet he reveals not a glimmer of self doubt about any of this.

Worst of all is his pervasive and egregious racism. I am the descendant of white people who settled in Africa in the nineteenth century. None of them would ever have used the opprobrious epithets for black people which disfigure almost every page of this book. I quote (clenching my teeth) one of the most loathsome sentences to give a flavour of the whole:

“Don’t think I am a nigger hater…I have met lots of good friends, especially among the Zulus.”

Don’t get me wrong, I have no time for BLM or critical race theory or any of that Marxist nonsense, but this is just egregiously offensive, even by the standards of the time. And the elevation of the Zulu was in itself a mark of British racism and imperialism, because they were perceived to be a noble race of warriors who seized the land by right of conquest – just as a superior tribe (i.e the Anglo Saxon) was now going to dispossess them of their conquests in turn. Banging on about the Zulu in Rider Haggard style is a subtle way of denigrating all other black African groups and also of legitimising British imperialism. This is my opinion, as a political conservative.

I closed this book feeling a great sadness. Scouting gave me much enjoyment in my youth, and I’m glad I never read this book in those days. I would probably have left the scouts in dismay that its origins were tainted by such a disagreeable founder. I also kept thinking about a boy with the unusual and somewhat risible name (to English ears) of Randy, who was a rara avis in my Scout troop in the 1970’s in that he was black. If he and BP could have met, I wonder what each would have thought of the other. Not much, is my guess, in either case. Shame on you, BP, you were not worthy of my youthful enthusiasms.