CHAPTER 1
The Boer war: First and Foolish
The factors we are examining appear in bold relief in the story of the Boer War. Their appearance in this poorly remembered South African adventure previews many aspects of the world conflagration that soon followed:
* It was the quintessential example of the union of capitalism and imperialism.
* Canada's participation allied her with gross human rights abuses and civilian deaths.
* As it was a white on white, Christian versus Christian war, it was necessary that churches and the government machinery of propaganda play a major supporting role. They did that.
* The racist assumptions underlying the conflict were deplorable. The actual treatment of Africans was far worse.
The common reaction to the Boer War by Canadians, if they recall it at all, is "Well, you have to understand that we were part of the British Empire". That is perhaps some explanation. But when the war ended, a realistic assessment of the costs and benefits to Canada might very well have kept her out of the global slaughter that would erupt little more than a decade later. Such an assessment might have identified the influence of the war-promoting factors in play.
Uniquely Canadian antiwar factors were also apparent in the story of Canada's participation in this little war. The imperial expedition to South Africa was the first war in which Canadians fought overseas as Canadians. It was also arguably the most foolish. Perhaps an understanding of just how little Canada had at stake is at least part of the reason for the appearance of the Canadian antiwar factors. Our participation could have been more extensive and more costly absent the reluctance of the prime minister and the ruling party. The relatively small size of our expeditionary force reflected the desire to minimize casualties. Many of the troops were privately financed volunteers. In spite of poor British leadership, Canadian troops were far better at the kind of war they were called upon to fight than were the British. We were delighted when the British belatedly praised their performance.
Incidentally, we begin with the Boer War because the War of 1812 was not a Canadian war. That one was a bloody boundary adjustment between the British and their breakaway American colony. The half million "Canadians" were British, disaffected Americans, and original inhabitants caught between the two. Absolutely essential to what the British were able to gain in the adjustment was the participation of First Nation warriors led by Shawnee Chief, Tecumseh. The chief was certainly not fighting to establish Canada. He wanted a united native entity, free from white oppression and his earlier experiences had led him to believe that the British were a better choice than the Americans. As it turned out, his choice did not matter. For First Nations, both sides had rigged the game against them.
The War of 1812 was as senseless as those that followed. The conflict also revealed some of the nascent Canadian antiwar factors. It settled nothing that could not have been settled without it, though it did adjust some borders in areas that were destined in any event to develop as separate countries. Canadians are fortunate that the war marked the point where the two big powers got tired of fighting one another. It was always up to them to make that decision.
Pre-War Canada and Britain: Parallel Political Struggles - Imperialism Prevails
Any understanding of the Boer War requires a bit of elementary reference to its background. Canada's mother country was at the height of her imperial glory in the years leading up to this war. Although Canada by 1897, the year of Queen Victoria's lavish Diamond Jubilee, was well along the road to autonomy, it is understandable that the two peoples shared a similar approach to world affairs. At least that was true of English Canadians. They eagerly bought the solemn pronouncements of their Protestant churches that every war fought by the British was a just war.
Nevertheless, the leaders of the two countries would each find in the ranks of their governments some opposition to this war, and the more horrific one for which it served as a dress rehearsal.
In Britain, Benjamin Disraeli and William Gladstone alternated as prime minister in the late 19 century. The contest was between Queen Victoria and Disraeli on one side, and Gladstone and the memory of Victoria's beloved consort Prince Albert on the other. In Canada, it was between Wilfred Laurier, elected the country's first French-Canadian prime minister in 1896, and a friend, Henri Bourassa from Quebec, whom he had recruited to run for a seat in Parliament and who became the voice of French speaking Canada. For the public, the tension represented by the sides in Britain was between the intoxication of imperialism and the sobering truth that its material fruits were denied most of the population, who lived in appalling poverty and degradation. In Canada it was between the imperialist loyalties of English Protestant Canadians, opposed by French Catholic Canadians whose aspirations for their country understandably did not include blind support of the British.
Had Victoria not been queen and had not psychiatry been in its infancy in her time, she might have been in danger of involuntary commitment. In 1861, the 20th year of her reign, Prince Albert died. For the rest of her life, she wore mourning clothes and engaged in eccentric behavior, including having his wardrobe laid out daily and otherwise pretending that he still lived. She had depended on him for everything, which may partially explain her need to keep him alive in some form.
Unfortunately, what Victoria was not able to preserve was Albert's worldview. His was a more enlightened imperialism, holding that might should serve right, and he had a vision of improving the lives and education of ordinary people around the world. After his death, the question of whether his more benign vision would be the main influence on Victoria or whether she would succumb to the call to raw power was played out in the contests between Disraeli and Gladstone. Disraeli was a Conservative Party imperialist. Gladstone a Liberal who shared Albert's vision and was determined to keep Britain out of pure conquest. The two would alternate as prime minister for over 15 years. Disraeli, and war, won out.
One strain of Canadian imperialism was a bit different. In a study of the years leading up to the Boer War and the Great War, Carl Berger saw Canadian imperialism as a form of nationalism. In the view of its advocates, Canada supported the Empire in order to establish a more important, even dominant place within it. Independence was not a realistic option. It would mean living under the shadow of the powerful British. Even living under U.S. protection, as one writer put it, Canada would be like a kept woman, living "a harlot's independence."
In Berger's portrait of Canadian imperialists are also interesting aspects of the factors we are examining. They include an ethnic variety of racism that assumes a special ability to govern inherent in the "Anglo-Saxon race". Apparently, climate as well as genetics produced this remarkable trait. It resided in those living in northern climes and their descendants. The view was, as Emerson wrote, "Wherever snow falls, there is usually civil freedom".
Canada was also said to be blessed by her French/English mix with a harmonious blend in service of militarism. Grace and cheerfulness were inherent in the French; drive and will in the Anglo-Saxons. The two "races" shared a "birthright of military spirit derived from long lines of warlike ancestry".
Regardless of these imperial nuances, the practical result was the same. Canada went to war when Britain called. But Berger's outline of the context in which Canadians sought to define their role at the time is valuable to understanding how the contest between Laurier and Bourassa differed from that between Disraeli and Gladstone.
Laurier and Bourassa were initially of one mind that British designs on the Boers were part of a petty tribal conflict in which Canada need have no part. Laurier, however, though sincerely and desperately trying to hold together a new country, eventually relented. He was a Canadian nationalist with respect for the mother country, yet he was perhaps the first of our leaders to see international matters from a Canadian perspective. Nevertheless, the combination of imperialist sympathy, propaganda, and religion captured the public imagination and overwhelmed his wise initial position. Laurier had also made a promise to the British that he probably came to regret. He had been feted at the Diamond Jubilee, given a knighthood and a carriage right behind that of the queen in the parade through London. At a reception, he made a florid promise that if England were ever in danger, the colonies would do whatever was required to help her. Two years later, though England was certainly not in any danger, Victoria called in that pledge.
Since Canada's choice was, as it always is, not whether to lead but whether to follow, the deciding drama was the Disraeli/Gladstone contest. Victoria had lost interest in everything upon Albert's death. While Disraeli was prime minister, he revived her spirits with charming personal and affectionate letters as a substitute for the stiff formal reports he was required by protocol to make. The letters included flattery and a romanticized version of the Empire. When Gladstone was in and it was his turn to report, his liberal views did not sit well with Victoria. She was, well, Victorian — horrified, for example, by moves toward female equality.
Disraeli's flattery also included encouraging the queen to come out of her shell and take a greater role in public affairs. And the struggle between Disraeli and Gladstone was not simply a mismatch of charm skills. All Gladstone could offer was an appeal to justice and a comparatively enlightened view of empire, similar to that of her beloved Alfred. Disraeli managed concrete additions to the empire, the most significant of which was the Suez Canal — trade lifeline and passage to the Jewel in the Crown — India.
In 1875 when the canal's owners, the ruler of Egypt and French investors, got into difficultly they offered it for sale and a bidding war began. Britain was not in a financial position to compete but Disraeli, with Victoria's blessing, pledged the full faith and credit of the country as collateral and secured funding from Baron Rothschild. The queen was pleased. Securing the canal would prompt Victoria to opt for investiture as Empress of India in 1876 in a grand ceremony that stoked public support for aggressive imperialism. More importantly, British jitters in the future about the security of the canal would soon be the focal point for bloody involvement in Africa. The jitters would surface again in 1956, when the diplomacy of Canadian Lester Pearson averted significant bloodshed — a story we will later visit. In the late 19 century, however, the imperial vision of getting to the canal via a railway running the length of the continent would cost many lives, some of them Canadian.
The canal gave the British a great advantage, as all the European powers were competing for African territory and commercial dominance. One example illustrates not only another chapter in the Disraeli/Gladstone struggle but also the triumph of propaganda, even over religion. The Turks, whose aging Ottoman Empire still controlled much of North Africa, were massacring their Christian population. Disraeli, however, feared encroachment by Russia if the Turks were weakened. He took a position reminiscent of current western backing of Middle East dictators like the military rulers of Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Disraeli argued that Britain had to back the Turks in the name of "stability" no matter what they were doing to their people. Gladstone, a powerful orator, came out of retirement and for a time gained attention with accounts of Turkish atrocities. Disraeli, with the backing of the queen, countered by demonizing the Russians. The British already considered themselves superior to the Russians, having defeated them in the Crimean War of 1854-1855. Disraeli even gained public support for another war. Fortunately, the Russians asked for negotiations and diplomacy won out. Victoria continued to back Disraeli and made him an Earl.
Gladstone did have a curtain call, but his reluctance to back aggressive imperialism in Africa finally did him in. After the British waged war on the Zulus and with superior weaponry and slaughtered 10,000 of them, his powerful appeals to justice swept the Liberals back into power. Victoria refused to see him. The final undoing of Gladstone came when his concern for fairness prompted him to back revolutionaries in Sudan instead of a stable but despotic government. A popular general got himself trapped in the war. Gladstone, like Laurier in the war to come, was hesitant to send troops and sought compromise. By the time he relented, the general had been killed by rebels and was glorified at home as an even greater hero. Gladstone lost the next election and the way was clear for unlimited imperialism in Africa.
Final Warm Up
Consistent with the well known propensity of the British officer corps to view war as a sporting event, there would be one more practice session for the conflict that would a short time later include Canadians. Sudan would again be the practice field. This session introduced some of the major players in Canada's next two wars. Practice included use of an alarming new development in weapons technology — the machine gun.
In 1898, Sudan was still not behaving in a properly subservient manner. The British sent a large contingent of troops, along with some journalists. The entourage included two officers, Major General Sir Horatio Herbert Kitchener and Major Douglas Haig. In the Boer War, Kitchener would qualify in the eyes of many as a war criminal. In the Great War, Haig, a solid believer in the unity of imperialism and capitalism, would be an extravagant spender of lives. The journalists included Rudyard Kipling and future British wartime prime minister, Winston Churchill, who would all be valuable assets in the propaganda effort.
The "battle" of Omdurman, burnished the reputations of Kitchener, Haig, and Churchill. Of the 50,000 Sudanese, armed with spears and obsolete rifles, the new British Maxim machine gun managed to kill almost 11,000 and severely wound 6,000 more. The British lost 48 men. The Germans, who had also wielded machine guns in their tardy efforts at African imperialism, watched this development, and later others in the Boer War, with interest. They also failed to appreciate the impact of the change heralded by the new weaponry. Many in British and German leadership anticipated a future war between the two countries. That they were blind to the devastation that modern weaponry would wreak in that war may be partly attributable to the racism that is inherent in imperialism. The sight of mowing down blacks apparently did not evoke an image of the same scene in a future white on white encounter.
Rhodes and Milner: The War's Most Powerful Faces of Capitalism, Imperialism, and Racism
The persons most responsible for precipitating the Boer War were civilians who were not present at Omdurman. They were fortune seeker Cecil Rhodes, who would become arguably the most dangerous man in the Empire, and Sir Alfred Milner, appointed in 1897 to be High Commissioner to South Africa. While the views of the two conveniently overlapped, Milner was primarily the aggressive imperialist, impatient with any political delay in expanding the reach and rule of the Empire. His refusal to compromise on any matter that he saw as even a minor impediment to British supremacy during peace negotiations with the Boers prolonged the war and the dying. Rhodes was all for imperialism also, but primarily for economic reasons. By the time of the war, he had created two colonies of his own, named after himself. They were subsidiaries of his own Crown Company, complete with their own private army, police force, and armed paddleboat navy. Rhodesia would become Zimbabwe in 1980. The legacy of imperialism there has provided the excuse for massive corruption and a campaign of white-hating racism employed by president Robert Mugabe. Rhodes was not averse to politics. He was even elected prime minister of the Cape Colony. But the primary use of imperial politics for Rhodes was to facilitate making money. The two men embodied the union of capitalism and imperialism.
Rhodes and Milner were in complete agreement that overt racism based on colour was an essential ingredient of each of the main interests they sought to further. In addition to his famous quote I would annex the planets if I could, Rhodes once said I contend that we are the first race in the world, and that the more of the world we inhabit the better it is for the human race}1 Milner was every bit his equal and a little more blunt: The white man must rule, because he is elevated by many steps above the black man; steps which it will take the latter centuries to climb}% The pre-war Cape Colony was race-neutral. Blacks had the vote and even sat on juries judging whites. Milner and Rhodes sought to have that taken from them, and it was done. Rhodes' and Milner's little war laid the foundation for Apartheid in South Africa. The continuation of institutionalized racial oppression until the 1990s was thus a significant part of what Canadians fought for in the Boer War.
