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Strategic and Socio-Economic Explanations for Carnarvon's South African Confederation Policy: the Historiography and the Evidence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 May 2014

R.L. Cope
R.L. Cope*
Affiliation:
University of the Witwatersrand
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Extract

Although Carnarvon's attempt to unite South Africa in the 1870s was a failure, the forward movement represented by his “confederation policy” marks an important turning point in South African history. The destruction of the Zulu and the Pedi polities, which resulted directly from the confederation scheme, together with the last Cape frontier war and a rash of smaller conflicts, constituted the virtual end of organized black resistance in the nineteenth century and the beginning of untrammelled white supremacy. Britain's annexation of the Transvaal in 1877, which Carnarvon had hoped would be the decisive move towards confederation, instead set the scene for the conflict between Boer and Briton which dominated the history of the last two decades of the nineteenth century in South Africa.

Carnarvon's confederation scheme had important effects, but there is little agreement on its causes. The author of the standard work on the subject, Clement Goodfellow, took the view that Carnarvon's interest in South Africa arose essentially from its strategic importance within the empire as a whole. The Cape lay athwart the vital sea-route to Britain's eastern possessions, and confederation was designed, in Goodfellow's words, “to erect from the chaos of the subcontinent a strong, self-governing, and above all loyal Dominion behind the essential bastion at Simon's Bay.” This view, or some variant of it, sometimes with “Simonstown” or “Cape Town” or “the naval bases” or “the Cape peninsula” substituted for “Simon's Bay,” has been widely accepted and now appears as a matter of fact in the most recent and widely used general accounts of South African history.

Type
Research Article
Information
History in Africa , Volume 13 , 1986 , pp. 13 - 34
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1986

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References

NOTES

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9. CO. 879/9, African no 84, Memorandum on South African Affairs, by E[dward] F[airfield], Jan. 1876. This memorandum also discusses the diamond fields dispute, and the history of Carnarvon's attempts to that date to bring about confederation. The reasons for confederation will be found on pp. 5-9, from which all quotations in this paper are taken.

10. C. 1244, 1, Carnarvon to Barkly, 4 May 1875.

11. C.O. 879/10, African no 102, 3, Conference on South African Affairs, Carnarvon's opening speech, 3 Aug. 1876.

12. H.L. Deb., 3rd ser., CCXXV (23 July 1875) 1896.

13. H.L. Deb., 3rd ser., CCXXIII (12 April 1875) 693.

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15. H.L. Deb., 3rd ser., CCCXXXIII (23 April 1877) 1651.

16. C.O. 879/10, African no 102, 3, Conference on South African Affairs, Carnarvon's opening speech, 3 Aug. 1876.

17. Ibid., 4.

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19. P.R.0. 30/6/84, p. 37, Carnarvon to Froude, 2 Sept. 1875.

20. H.L. Deb., 3rd ser., CCXXXIII (23 April 1877) 1658.

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25. Ibid., ix; the volume is P.R.O. 30/6/84. The originals were not destroyed, as Goodfellow supposed; they are now in the Carnarvon Papers in the British Library, in a bound volume, Add. Mss. 60798, which also contains the previously inaccessible correspondence between Carnarvon and Froude during the latter's first visit to South Africa in 1874. The two sets of letters require some disentangling, since Froude dated his letters only by the day and month, and whoever bound and indexed them (not the staff of the British Library) was evidently unaware that he had paid two visits to South Africa and consequently mixed them up together in a single sequence.

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27. P.R.O. 30/6/49, Froude to Herbert, 9 July [1874]; B.L. Add. Mss. 60798, nos 6 and 56, Froude to Carnarvon, 8 July and 11 Oct. [1874]; Froude, J.A., Short Studies on Great Subjects, third series, (London, 1877), 493, 507.Google Scholar

28. P.R.O. 30/6/43, Froude to Carnarvon, 10 April [1877]; B.L. Add. Mss. 60798, nos 65 and 66, Froude to Carnarvon, 19 Nov. and 1 Dec. [1874]; B.L. Add. Mss. 60799A, Froude to Carnarvon, 15 Jan. [1878] and 3 March [1879]; Froude to Burgers, 12 March 1877, in Engelbrecht, S.P., Thomas Francois Burgers, a Biography (Pretoria, 1946), 137Google Scholar; Froude, , Short Studies, 528.Google Scholar

29. B.L. Add. Mss. 60798, nos 104 and 111, Froude to Carnarvon, 27 Sept. and 21 Nov. [1876].

30. B.L. Add. Mss. 60798, nos 66, 93 and 95, Froude to Carnarvon, 1 Dec. [1874], 5 July [1876] and Sunday [16 July 1876].

31. B.L. Add. Mss. 60798, no 65, Froude to Carnarvon, 19 Nov. [1874]; Froude, , Short Studies, 530–31, 518.Google Scholar See also the discussion of Froude's opinions in this period in Bodelson, Carl, Studies in Mid-Victorian Imperialism (Copenhagen, 1924), 176–86.Google Scholar

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35. Ibid., 26, Froude to Carnarvon, 8 July 1875.

36. Ibid., 81, Froude to Carnarvon, 24 Oct. 1875.

37. Ibid., 57, Froude to Carnarvon, 19 Sept. 1875.

38. B.L. Add. Mss. 60798, no 104, Froude to Carnarvon, 27 Sept. [1876]. Emphasis in original.

39. Ibid., no 106, Carnarvon to Froude, 16 Oct. 1876. Carnarvon had attempted to acquire Delagoa Bay for Britain, without success, not for the purpose of establishing a naval base there, but because the South African Republic hoped to retain its economic and hence political independence bybuilding a railway to this Portuguese possession. The annexation of the Transvaal solved this Delagoa Bay question by rendering it unimportant. “Nor indeed do I care so much for Delagoa Bay now that I have got the Transvaal” – P.R.O. 30/67/45, no. 147, Carnarvon to Morier, 2 July 1877.

40. B.L. Add. Mss. 60798, no 111, Froude to Carnarvon, 21 Nov. [1876]. Emphasis in original.

41. Ibid., no 110, Froude to Carnarvon, 24 Oct. [1876].

42. P.R.O. 30/6/3, no 51, Carnarvon to Ponsonby, 3 Oct. 1876.

43. Robinson, Ronald E. and Gallagher, John, with Denny, Alice, Africa and the Victorians; the Official Mind of Imperialism (London, 1961).Google Scholar

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52. Robinson, R.E. and Gallagher, J., “The Partition of Africa,” chap. 22 of Hinsley, Francis H., ed., The New Cambridge Modern History XI (Cambridge, 1962), 633–39.Google Scholar They write (633): “Until the 1870's official London had been content to secure the Cape route through colonial control of the Cape and Natal, leaving the inland republics of the Trekboers in the Transvaal and the Orange Free State their ramshackle independence. But with the diamond discoveries at Kimberley and the beginnings of investment and railway-building, the British aim became specifically imperial, as it was not in Egypt or tropical Africa.” Thereafter the various attempts (including Carnarvon's confederation scheme) at maintaining British paramountcy in South Africa are discussed without further reference to naval bases or sea routes. The question of why Britain considered it important to maintain its paramountcy is not directly addressed, but anyone who had not read Africa and the Victorians would, I think, form the impression from this later account that it was for essentially economic reasons.

53. De Kiewiet, Cornelius W., The Imperial Factor in South Africa; A Study in Politics and Economics (Cambridge, 1937), 66.Google Scholar

54. Robinson, /Gallagher, , Africa and the Victorians, 60.Google Scholar

55. P.R.O. 30/6/49, 3.

56. My emphases.

57. Carnarvon, , Speeches, 447.Google Scholar

58. Schreuder, Deryck M., Gladstone and Kruger; Liberal Government and Colonial ‘Home Rule’ 1880-85 (London, 1969).Google Scholar

59. See above.

60. P.R.O. 30/6/49, 3, Herbert's comments, n.d., on Froude to Herbert, 9 July [1874].

61. Van Jaarsveld, Floris A., The Awakening of Afrikaner Nationalism (Cape Town, 1961), 104–05, 108–09, 121.Google Scholar

62. Schreuder, , Gladstone and Kruger, 245, 503.Google Scholar

63. Ibid., 304-05. See Schreuder's comments on the difference between the 1870s and the 1880s in this respect, ibid., 467-68.

64. Marais, Johannes S., The Fall of Kruger's Republic (Oxford, 1961), 329Google Scholar; Robinson, /Gallagher, , Africa and the Victorians, 410–411, 434–37, 454–55.Google Scholar

65. Robinson, /Gallagher, , Africa and the Victorians, 420, 461n.Google Scholar

66. Robinson, /Gallagher, , Africa and the Victorians, 434–37Google Scholar, quote a very long extract from an 1896 memorandum which they describe as “perhaps the best evidence of the fundamental considerations which inspired Chamberlain and Selborne henceforward.” It contains, however, no mention of naval bases or sea routes; so Robinson and Gallagher are reduced to adding (439): “Perhaps they argued in the Cabinet Defence Committee that a United States of South Africa would deprive Britain of the Cape Town naval base” (my emphasis).

67. Marais, , Fall of Kruger's Republic, 325, 329.Google Scholar

68. Robinson, /Gallagher, , Africa and the Victorians, 57nGoogle Scholar; Goodfellow, , Great Britain, 1–2.Google Scholar

69. Jaarsveld, Van, Awakening, 122–39Google Scholar; Delius, , The Land Belongs to Us, 126–57.Google Scholar

70. P.R.O. 30/6/52, Carnarvon to Simmons, 7 Feb. 1881.

71. Carnarvon to Frere, 11 Sept. 1877 in Hardinge, Arthur, The Life of Henry Howard Molyneux Herbert, Fourth Earl of Carnarvon, 1831-1890 (3 vols.: Oxford, 1925) 2: 289.Google Scholar

72. Standard Encyclopaedia of Southern Africa (12 vols.: Cape Town, 1970–1976), 9: 638.Google Scholar

73. P.R.O. 30/6/52, Carnarvon to Frere, 31 Oct. 1879, and to Simmons, 7 Feb. 1881.

74. Goodfellow, , Great Britain, 70, quoted above.Google Scholar

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76. See above.

77. P.R.O. 30/6/32, no 11, Barkly to Carnarvon, 25 July 1874.

78. H.C. Deb., 3rd ser., CCXXXV (24 July 1877), 1755.

79. P.R.O. 30/6/49, Froude to Herbert, 9 July [1874], and Herbert's comments (n.d.) thereon.

80. Goodfellow, , Great Britain, 67–68, 80, 116–18.Google Scholar

81. Ibid., 72.

82. Ibid., 214.

83. Ibid., 210.

84. Ibid., 215.

85. Ibid., 216.