complete the disorganisation of the country (1882), France and Britain
decided that they ought to intervene to restore order, the other powers
all agreeing. But at the last moment France withdrew, and the task was
undertaken by Britain single-handed.[7] In a short campaign Arabi was
overthrown; and now Britain had to address herself to the task of
reconstructing the political and economic organisation of Egypt. It was
her hope and intention that the work should be done as rapidly as
possible, in order that she might be able to withdraw from a difficult
and thankless task, which brought her into very delicate relations with
the other powers interested in Egypt. But withdrawal was not easy. The
task of reorganisation proved to be a much larger and more complicated
one than had been anticipated; and it was greatly increased when the
strange wave of religious fanaticism aroused by the preaching of the
Mahdi swept over the Soudan, raised a great upheaval, and led to the
destruction of the Egyptian armies of occupation. Britain had now to
decide whether the revolting province should be reconquered or
abandoned. Reconquest could not be effected by the utterly disorganised
Egyptian army; if it was to be attempted, it must be by means of
British troops. But this would not only mean a profitless expenditure,
it would also indefinitely prolong the British occupation, which
Britain was desirous of bringing to an end at the earliest possible
moment.
[7] See above, p. 164
The romantic hero, Gordon, was therefore sent to Khartoum to carry out
the withdrawal from the Soudan of all the remaining Egyptian garrisons.
On his arrival he came to the conclusion that the position was not
untenable, and took no steps to evacuate. There was much dangerous
delay and vacillation; and in the end Gordon was besieged in Khartoum,
and killed by the bands of the Mahdi, before a relief force could reach
him. But this triumph of Mahdism increased its menace to Egypt. The
country could not be left to its own resources until this peril had
been removed, or until the Egyptian army had been fully reorganised. So
the occupation prolonged itself, year after year.
The situation was, in fact, utterly anomalous. Egypt was a province of
Turkey, ruled by a semi-independent Khedive. Britain's chief agent in
the country was in form only in the position of a diplomatic
representative. But the very existence of the country depended upon the
British army of occupation, and upon the work of the British officers
who were reconstructing the Egyptian army. And its hope of future
stability depended upon the work of the British administrators,
financiers, jurists, and engineers who were labouring to set its
affairs in order. These officials, with Sir Evelyn Baring (Lord Cromer)
at their head, had an extraordinarily difficult task to perform. Their
relations with the native government, which they constantly had to
overrule, were difficult enough. But besides this, they had to deal
with the agents of the other European powers, who, as representing the
European creditors of the Egyptian debt, had the right to interfere in
practically all financial questions, and could make any logical
financial reorganisation, and any free use of the country's financial
resources for the restoration of its prosperity, all but impossible.
Yet in the space of a very few years an amazing work of restoration and
reorganisation was achieved. Financial stability was re-established,
while at the same time taxation was reduced. The forced labour which
had been exacted from the peasantry was abolished; they were no longer
robbed of their property under the lash; they obtained a secure tenure
in their land; and they found that its productive power was increased,
by means of great schemes of irrigation. An impartial system of justice
was organised--for the first time in all the long history of Egypt
since the fall of the Roman Empire. The army was remodelled by British
officers. Schools of lower and higher grade were established in large
numbers. In short, Egypt began to assume the aspect of a prosperous and
well-organised modern community. And all this was the work, in the
main, of some fifteen years.
Meanwhile in the Soudan triumphant barbarism had produced an appalling
state of things. It is impossible to exaggerate the hideousness of the
regime of Mahdism. A ferocious tyranny terrorised and reduced to
desolation the whole of the upper basin of the Nile; and the population
is said to have shrunk from 12,000,000 to 2,000,000, although exact
figures are of course unattainable. One of the evil consequences of
this regime was that it prevented a scientific treatment of the flow of
the Nile, on which the very life of Egypt depended. Scientific
irrigation had already worked wonders in increasing the productivity of
Egypt, but to complete this work, and to secure avoidance of the
famines which follow any deficiency in the Nile-flow, it was necessary
to deal with the upper waters of the great river. On this ground, and
in order to remove the danger of a return of barbarism, which was
threatened by frequent Mahdist attacks, and finally in order to rescue
captives who were enduring terrible sufferings in the hands of the
Mahdi, it appeared that the reconquest of the Soudan must be undertaken
as the inevitable sequel to the reorganisation of Egypt. It was
achieved, with a wonderful efficiency which made the name of Kitchener
famous, in the campaigns of 1896-98. The reconquered province was
nominally placed under the joint administration of Britain and Egypt;
but in fact the very remarkable work of civilisation which was carried
out in it during the years preceding the Great War was wholly directed
by British agents and officers.
The occupation of the Soudan necessitated a prolongation of the British
occupation of Egypt. But, indeed, such a prolongation was in any case
inevitable; for the beneficial reforms in justice, administration,
finance, and the organisation of the country's resources, which had
been effected in half a generation, required to be carefully watched
and nursed until they should be securely rooted: to a certainty they
would have collapsed if the guardianship of Britain had been suddenly
and completely withdrawn. The growing prosperity of Egypt, however, and
still more the diffusion of Western education among its people, has
naturally brought into existence a nationalist party, who resent what
they feel to be a foreign dominance in their country, and aspire after
the institutions of Western self-government. But it has to be noted
that the classes among whom this movement has sprung up are not the
classes who form the bulk of the population of Egypt--the fellahin, who
from the time of the Pharaohs downwards have been exploited and
oppressed by every successive conqueror who has imposed his rule on the
country. This class, which has profited more than any other from the
British regime, which has, under that regime, known for the first time
justice, freedom from tyranny, and the opportunity of enjoying a fair
share of the fruits of its own labour, is as yet unvocal. Accustomed
through centuries to submission, accepting good or bad seasons, just or
unjust masters, as the gods may send them, the fellah has not yet had
time even to begin to have thoughts or opinions about his place in
society and his right to a share in the control of his own destinies;
and if the rule which has endeavoured to nurture him into prosperity
and self-reliance were withdrawn, he would accept with blind
submissiveness whatever might take its place. The classes among whom
the nationalist movement finds its strength are the classes which have
been in the past accustomed to enjoy some degree of domination; the
relics of the conquering races, Arabs or Turks, who have succeeded one
another in the rule of Egypt, the small traders and shopkeepers of the
towns, drawn from many different races, the students who have been
influenced by the knowledge and the political ideas of the West. It is
natural and healthy that a desire to share in the government of their
country should grow up among these classes: it is in some degree a
proof that the influence of the regime under which they live has been
stimulating. But it is also obvious that if these classes were at once
to reassume, under parliamentary forms, the dominance which they
wielded so disastrously until thirty years ago, the result must be
unhappy. They are being, under British guidance, gradually introduced
to a share in public affairs. But the establishment of a system of full
self-government and national independence in Egypt, if it is to be
successful, must wait until not only these classes, but also the
classes beneath them, have been habituated to the sense of self-respect
and of civic obligation by a longer acquaintance with the working of
the Reign of Law.
Since the Great War broke out, the British position in Egypt has been
regularised by the proclamation of a formal British protectorate.
Perhaps the happiest fate which can befall the country is that it
should make that gradual progress in political freedom, which is alone
lasting, under the guidance of the power which has already given it
prosperity, the ascendancy of an impartial law, freedom from arbitrary
authority, freedom of speech and thought, and emancipation from the
thraldom of foreign financial interests; and in the end it may possibly
be the destiny of this ancient land, after so many vicissitudes, to
take its place as one among a partnership of free nations in a
world-encircling British Commonwealth of self-governing peoples.
The most vexed, difficult, and critical problems in the history of the
British Empire since 1878--perhaps the most difficult in the whole
course of its history--have been those connected with the South African
colonies. In 1878 there were four distinct European provinces in South
Africa, besides protected native areas, like Basutoland. All four had
sprung from the original Anglo-Dutch colony of the Cape of Good Hope.
In two of them--Cape Colony and Natal--the two European peoples,
British and Dutch, dwelt side by side, the Dutch being in a majority in
the former, the British in the latter; but in both the difficulty of
their relationship was complicated by the presence of large coloured
populations, which included not only the native African peoples,
Hottentots, Kaffirs, Zulus, and so forth, but also a large number of
Asiatics, Malays who had been brought in by the Dutch before the
British conquest, and Indians who had begun to come in more recently in
large numbers, especially to Natal. Difference of attitude towards
these peoples between the British authorities and the Dutch settlers
had been in the past, as we have seen, a main cause of friction between
the two European peoples, and had caused the long postponement of full
self-government. In the other two provinces, the Transvaal and the
Orange Free State, the white inhabitants were, in 1878, almost
exclusively Dutch. The native populations in these states were no
longer in a state of formal slavery, but they were treated as
definitely subject and inferior peoples: a law of the Transvaal laid it
down that 'there shall be no equality in Church or State between white
and black.' Thus the mutual distrust originally aroused by the native
question still survived. It was intensified by ill-feeling between the
Boers and British missionaries. When Livingstone, the British
missionary hero, reported the difficulties which the Boers had put in
his way, British opinion was made more hostile than ever. Of the two
Boer republics, the Orange Free State had enjoyed complete independence
since 1854; and no serious friction ever arose between it and the
British government. But the Transvaal, which had been turbulent and
restless from the first, had been annexed in 1878, largely because it
seemed to be drifting into a war of extermination with the Zulus. As a
consequence, Britain was drawn into a badly managed Zulu-War; and when
this dangerous tribe had been conquered, the Transvaal revolted. The
Boers defeated a small British force at Majuba; whereupon, instead of
pursuing the struggle, the British government resolved to try the
effect of magnanimity, and conceded (1881 and 1884) full local
independence to the Transvaal, subject only to a vague recognition of
British suzerainty.
This was the beginning of many ills. The Transvaal Boers, knowing
little of the world, thought they had defeated Britain; and under the
lead of Paul Kruger, a shrewd old farmer who henceforth directed their
policy with all but autocratic power, began to pursue the aim of
creating a purely Dutch South Africa, and of driving the British into
the sea. Kruger's policy was one of pure racial dominance, not of
equality of rights. It was a natural aim, under all the conditions. But
it was the source of grave evils. Inevitably it stimulated a parallel
movement in Cape Colony, where Dutch and British were learning to live
peaceably together. The Boer extremists also began to look about for
allies, and were tempted to hope for aid from Germany, who had just
established herself in South-West Africa. Full of pride, the
Transvaalers, though they already held a great and rich country which
was very thinly peopled, began to push outwards, and especially to
threaten the native tribes in the barren region of Bechuanaland, which
lay between the Transvaal and the German territory. To this Britain
replied by establishing a protectorate over Bechuanaland (1884) at the
request of native chiefs: the motive of this annexation was, not
suspicion of Germany, for this suspicion did not yet exist, but the
desire to protect the native population.
Kruger's vague project of a Dutch South Africa would probably have
caused little anxiety so long as his resources were limited to the
strength of the thinly scattered Boer farmers. But the situation was
fundamentally altered by the discovery of immense deposits first of
diamonds and then of gold in South Africa, and most richly of all in
the Rand district of the Transvaal. These discoveries brought a rapid
inrush of European miners, financiers, and their miscellaneous
camp-followers, and in a few years a very rich and populous European
community had established itself in the Transvaal, and had created as
its centre the mushroom new city of Johannesburg (founded 1884). These
immigrants, who came from many countries, but especially from Britain,
changed the situation in the Transvaal; it seemed as though the
majority among the white men in that state would soon be British.
A simple and primitive organisation of government, such as sufficed for
the needs of Boer farmers, was manifestly inadequate for the needs of
the new population, which included, in the nature of things, many
undesirable elements; and it was natural that the mining population
should desire to be brought under a more modern type of government, or
to obtain an effective share in the control of their own affairs. But
this was precisely what the Boers of Kruger's way of thinking were
determined to refuse them. They were resolved that Boer ascendancy in
the Transvaal should not be weakened. They therefore denied to the new
immigrants all the rights of citizenship, and would not even permit
them to manage the local affairs of Johannesburg. At the same time
Kruger imposed heavy taxation upon the gold industry and the people who
conducted it; and out of the proceeds he was able not only to pay the
expenses of government without burdening the Boer farmers, but to build
up the military power by means of which he hoped ultimately to carry
out his great project. Thus the 'Uitlanders' found themselves treated
as an inferior race in the land which their industry was enriching.
They practically paid the cost of the government, but had no share in
directing it.
The policy of racial ascendancy has seldom been pursued in a more
mischievous or dangerous form. One cannot but feel a certain sympathy
with the Boers' desire to maintain Boer ascendancy in the land which
they had conquered. Yet it must be remembered that they were themselves
very recent immigrants: the whole settlement of the Transvaal had taken
place in Paul Kruger's lifetime.
The diamonds and the gold of the recent discoveries had produced in
South Africa a new element of power: the power of great wealth, wielded
by a small number of men. Some of these were, of course, mean and
sordid souls, to whom wealth was an end in itself. But among them one
emerged who was more than a millionaire, who was capable of dreaming
great dreams, and had acquired his wealth chiefly in order that he
might have the power to realise them. This was Cecil Rhodes, an almost
unique combination of the financier and the idealist. If he was
sometimes tempted to resort to the questionable devices that high
finance seems to cultivate, and if his ideals took on sometimes a
rather vulgar colour, reflected from his money-bags, nevertheless
ideals were the real governing factors in his life.
He dreamed of a great united state of South Africa; it was to be a
British South Africa; but it was to be British, not in the sense in
which Kruger wished it to be Dutch, but in the sense that equality of
treatment between the white races should exist within it, as in all the
British lands. He dreamed also of a great brotherhood of British
communities, or communities governed by British ideals, girdling the
world, perhaps dominating it (for Rhodes was inclined to be a
chauvinist), and leading it to peace and liberty. As a lad fresh from
Oxford, in long journeyings over the African veldt, he had in a
curious, childlike way thought out a theology, a system of politics,
and a mode of life for himself; having reached the conclusion that the
British race had on the whole more capacity for leading the world
successfully than any other, he had resolved that it should be his
life's business to forward and increase the influence of British ideas
and of British modes of life; and he had systematically built up a
colossal fortune in order that he might have the means to do this work.
At the roots of this strange medley of poetry and chauvinism which
filled his mind was an unchanging and deep veneration for the
outstanding memory of his youth, Oxford, which in his mind stood for
all the august venerable past of England, and was the expression of her
moral essence. When he died, after a life of money-making and intrigue,
in a remote and half-developed colony, it was found that most of his
immense fortune had been left either to enrich the college where he had
spent a short time as a lad, or to bring picked youths from all the
British lands, and from what he regarded as the two great sister
communities of America and Germany, so that they might drink in the
spirit of England, at Oxford, its sanctuary.
His immediate task lay in South Africa, where, from the moment of his
entry upon public life, he became the leader of the British cause as
Kruger was the leader of the Dutch: millionaire-dreamer and shrewd,
obstinate farmer, they form a strange contrast. The one stood for South
African unity based upon equality of the white races: the other also
for unity, but for unity based upon the ascendancy of one of the white
races. In the politics of Cape Colony Rhodes achieved a remarkable
success: he made friends with the Dutch party and its leader Hofmeyr,
who for a long time gave steady support to his schemes and maintained
him in the premiership. It was a good beginning for the policy of
racial co-operation. But Rhodes's most remarkable achievement was the
acquisition of the fertile upland regions of Mashonaland and
Matabililand, now called Rhodesia in his honour. There were episodes
which smelt of the shady practices of high finance in the events which
led up to this acquisition. But in the result its settlement was well
organised, after some initial difficulties, by the Chartered Company
which Rhodes formed for the purpose. Now one important result of the
acquisition of Rhodesia was that it hemmed in the Transvaal on the
north; and, joined with the earlier annexation of Bechuanaland,
isolated and insulated the two Dutch republics, which were now
surrounded, everywhere except on the east, by British territory. From
Cape Town up through Bechuanaland and through the new territories
Rhodes drove a long railway line. It was a business enterprise, but for
him it was also a great imaginative conception, a link of empire, and
he dreamed of the day when it should be continued to join the line
which was being pushed up the Nile from Cairo through the hot sands of
the Soudan.
But Rhodes's final and most unhappy venture was the attempt to force,
by violent means, a solution of the Transvaal problem. He hoped that
the Uitlanders might be able, by a revolution, to overthrow Kruger's
government, and, perhaps in conjunction with the more moderate Boers,
to set up a system of equal treatment which would make co-operation
with the other British colonies easy, and possibly bring about a
federation of the whole group of South African States. He was too
impatient to let the situation mature quietly. He forced the issue by
encouraging the foolish Jameson Raid of 1895. This, like all wilful
resorts to violence, only made things worse. It alienated and angered
the more moderate Boers in the Transvaal, who were not without sympathy
with the Uitlanders. It aroused the indignation of the Cape Colony
Boers, and embittered racial feeling there. It put the British cause in
the wrong in the eyes of the whole world, and made the Boers appear as
a gallant little people struggling in the folds of a merciless
python-empire. It increased immensely the difficulty of the British
government in negotiating with the Transvaal for better treatment of
the Uitlanders. It stiffened the backs of Kruger and his party. The
German Kaiser telegraphed his congratulations on the defeat of the Raid
'without the aid of friendly powers,' and the implication that this aid
would be forthcoming in case of necessity led the Boers to believe that
they could count on German help in a struggle with Britain. So every
concession to the Uitlanders was obstinately refused; and after three
years more of fruitless negotiation, during which German munitions were
pouring into the Transvaal, the South African War began. It may be that
the war could have been avoided by the exercise of patience. It may be
that the imperialist spirit, which was very strong in Britain at that
period, led to the adoption of a needlessly high-handed tone. But it
was neither greed nor tyranny on Britain's part which brought about the
conflict, but simply the demand for equal rights.
The war was one in which all the appearances were against Britain, and
the whole world condemned British greed and aggression. It was a case
of Goliath fighting David, the biggest empire in the world attacking
two tiny republics; yet the weaker side is not necessarily always in
the right. It seemed to be a conflict for the possession of gold-mines;
yet Britain has never made, and never hoped to make, a penny of profit
out of these mines, which remained after the war in the same hands as
before it. It was a case of the interests of financiers and
gold-hunters against those of simple and honest farmers; yet even
financiers have rights, and even farmers can be unjust. In reality the
issue was a quite simple and straightforward one. It was the issue of
racial ascendancy against racial equality, and as her traditions bade
her, Britain strove for racial equality. It was the issue of
self-government for the whole community as against the entrenched
dominion of one section; and there was no question on which side the
history of Britain must lead her to range herself. Whatever the rest of
the world might say, the great self-governing colonies, which were free
to help or not as they thought fit, had no doubts at all. They all sent
contingents to take part in the war, because they knew it to be a war
for principles fundamental to themselves.
The war dragged its weary course, and the Boers fought with such
heroism, and often with such chivalry, as to win the cordial respect
and admiration of their enemies. It is always a pity when men fight;
but sometimes a fight lets bad blood escape, and makes friendship
easier between foes who have learnt mutual respect. Four years after
the peace which added the Transvaal and the Orange Free State as
conquered dominions to the British Empire, the British government
established in both of these provinces the full institutions of
responsible self-government. As in Canada sixty years earlier, the two
races were bidden to work together and make the best of one another;
because now their destinies were freely under their own control. Yet
this was even a bolder experiment than that of Canada, and showed a
more venturesome confidence in the healing power of self-government.
How has it turned out? Within five years more, the four divided
provinces which had presented such vexed problems in 1878, were
combined in the federal Union of South Africa, governed by institutions
which reproduced those of Britain and her colonies.