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THE LEADE_
OF
THE 'BOERS:
Paul Kruger,
President
of the Transvaal, Photographed
just
before the Outbreak ofWar
Kmger
was
the champioR of l}oer
in4ependince
andconserv~~ agai~ Britis~
influence and the foreign business interests
in
t'!e Rand goldfiel?s.
He dreamed-of enlarging the Transvaal at the-cost of the Bntash colonIeS. President of the Transvaalfrom
1883
to
1900,
he resisted any
concessron
to
foreigners.
During
the war,
in 1900,
he escaped
to
Europe
in
a
last
unsuccessful
attempt to
win
Continental help for the Boers.
b~tO.rr
of
100
mears in pbotograp'bs-No.
21
BOER
\
TH
R
'To secure her 2Osition in South Africa, Britain fought a war which cost 10,000 lives. It destr?yed the
independence of the Dutch Republics, but it set South Africa on the path to
Unity.
A
T the beginning of
the
nineteenth
the Cape to escape British
rule
and live
century,
Britain was locked in
their own lives.
Men who
had
been
on
a
10ng 'SUUggle
against
F~
the Great
Trek
as
childreD
and never
supremacy
in
Europe.
At the
~
•
forgotten it ruled these Dutch
Repub-
~-
deep
in
an ,Imperial
War
to
lies;
aDd
between
them
and
the
British
establiSh her own
supremacy
in
South
there
Was
a
great
rift.
. Africa.
'
The Dutch,
or
Boers
as
they were
When '
the
Doer
War broke
out in
called,
were
farmers
and,
settlers
in the
October, i899, South
Afri~
contained
stem CalviniSt tradition. They ,ruled
tw9
dominating ,while communities
their homesteads with Bible and rod.
hostile to one,another" and' two conflict-
\ They sincerely believed
God
had
set
~g
politiCallind ea>nomic systems.
The ,
them above the native races, and
that
Capewas a self-governingBritish colony,
concessions to the nativeS were against
then very much under the influence of
the
will
of
God.
They were narrow in
Cecil '
Rhodes,
aposde of
J;m~t
their oudook, and
intensely
conser-
~ansion
and of a united South Africa
vative. Yet independence was their very
under British leadership:-
Natal,
too,
life blood. Their spiritual fatherland
was a British colQny, without the big
\Wai
ihcp
Netltedatats,
1ria ..
glorious
Dutch population who complicated
.
.
foreign
politics in the/Cape. ,
.
inter-
But north of the
Cape
and west
of
and
the
Natal
lay
two
Dutch
Republi~ ,
the
Orange
Free State
and
the
T~,
carved out in bloody
battles '
against
Zulu '
and
Matabele
by
the
Dutch
settlers who
made
the
great
trek
from
_
The
Champions
of
Imperialism
Cecil
Rh~es:
Premier of the Cape,
Dr.
Jameson:
Led
raid ' into the
exponent 'of a
imited
South Africa.
Transvaal to
~hrow
Kruger.
mained
onl .............
1h-l '
•.
y
~u.u.uuu.
OOlDlllliliUes, "
war
might
never have come
and
South
Africa would
perhaps
have
achieved
35