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Joseph Chamberlain and the Jameson Raid: a Bibliographical Survey

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2014

Melvin G. Holli
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Extract

Joseph Chamberlain, British Colonial Secretary from 1895 to 1903 in the Salisbury administration, remains a subject of controversy for historians largely because of his role in the Jameson Raid. Just as his contemporary protagonists and antagonists, known as Unionists and pro-Boers, marshalled official and unofficial documents to support their cases, so have historians of recent times. There is a difference, however, between the historians writing in Chamberlain's era and those whose work is of recent date. At the turn of the century historians and polemicists had to depend upon official Blue Books and popular sources, while recent historians have had access to more extensive forms of evidence, such as personal letters and memoirs, edited and unedited diaries, and unexpurgated governmental records. Access to original sources, although it has not resolved differences in interpretation, has enabled Jean van der Poel to construct a good case for Joseph Chamberlain's complicity in the Jameson Raid. Van der Poel defines complicity as Chamberlain's foreknowledge of, failure to stop, and alleged advice in favor of the Johannesburg uprising and the Rhodes-Jameson plan, which she argues were integral parts of the same master scheme that set off the Raid. Similarly, historians of the earlier period, although precluded by lack of evidence from asking all of Van der Poel's questions and although not inclined to link the Raid and uprising into a single master plan, did, with few exceptions, address themselves to the question of Chamberlain's responsibility as an accomplice of the Raid and uprising.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 3 , Issue 2 , May 1964 , pp. 152 - 166
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1964

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References

1. Marris, Nora Murrell, Joseph Chamberlain, The Man and the Statesman (New York, 1900), p. 332Google Scholar. Stead, W. T., The History of the Mystery (London, 1896)Google Scholar; Stead, W. T., The Scandal of the South African Committee (London, 1899)Google Scholar; Stead, W. T., Joseph Chamberlain — Conspirator or Statesman? (London, 1900)Google Scholar. Stead, a jonrnalist and pamphleteer, first attempted to cushion the impact on Rhodes and Chamberlain of any inquiry about the Raid, but later turned on Chamberlain with a vengeance. See Joseph O. Baylen, “W. T. Stead's History of the Mystery and the Jameson Raid,” to be published in the J.B.S., and Galbraith, John S., “The Pamphlet Campaign on the Boer War,” J.M.H., XXIV (1952), 111–26Google Scholar.

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5. Ibid., p. 263. John Hayes Hammond, an eye witness of the Johannesburg uprising, played up the Uitlander grievances, the stubborn “provincialism of Kruger,” and German intrigue as the general causes of British embarrassment in South Africa and by implication wiped away the curse of Chamberlain's complicity in the Raid. Hammond, John Hayes, The Truth about the Jameson Raid (Boston, 1918)Google Scholar.

6. Mackintosh, Alexander, From Gladstone to Lloyd George, Parliament in Peace and War (London, 1923), p. 217Google Scholar. Mackintosh affirmed his earlier opinion and suggested that it was highly improbable, if not absurd, to link Chamberlain to the Jameson Raid. Lionel Phillips, one of the participants in the Johannesburg uprising wrote: “Was Mr. Chamberlain privy to the Raid? I reply No. I was in South Africa….” Phillips, Lionel, Some Reminiscences (London, 1924), p. 166Google Scholar. By 1926 Elsie E. Gulley could ignore the whole dispute over the Raid and in the sphere of foreign relations take cognizance only of Chamberlain's interest in improving the welfare of the Africans. Gulley, Elsie E., Joseph Chamberlain and English Social Politics (New York, 1926), pp. 310–11Google Scholar.

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9. Garvin, James L., The Life of Joseph Chamberlain (London, 1934), III, 42Google Scholar.

10. Ibid., III, 58.

11. Ibid., III, 35, 36.

12. Ibid., III, 73.

13. Ibid., III, 56.

14. Ibid., III, 125.

15. Ibid., III, 61, 62.

16. Ibid., III, 63.

17. Ibid., III, 111.

18. Ibid., III, 72.

19. Ibid., III, 73.

20. Ibid., III, 77. [paraphrased]

21. Ibid., III, 79.

22. Ibid., III, 82, note 2.

23. Ibid., III, 82.

24. Ibid., III, 125.

25. Ibid., III, 83.

26. Winkler, Henry R., “Joseph Chamberlain and the Jameson Raid,” A.H.R., LIV (1949), 842Google Scholar. Somewhat earlier Strauss, William L. in Joseph Chamberlain and the Theory of Imperialism (Washington, 1942), pp. 84, 75, 83, 88Google Scholar, writing under what appears to be the impact of the Second World War, referred to Joseph Chamberlain's complicity and the new imperialism in terms of “Machtpolitik,” “imperialism coldly and maliciously schemed,” “the brutalization of whole peoples,” and asserted: “While his [Chamberlain's] responsibility for Jameson's actions may not have been direct, it certainly was indirect.” Strauss paired the Boer War, “for which Chamberlain had accepted personal responsibility,” with “the Italian rape of Ethiopia.”

27. Van der Poel, Jean, The Jameson Raid (Cape Town, 1951), p. 29Google Scholar.

28. Ibid., p. 259.

29. Ibid., pp. 38, 62, 63, 98.

30. Ibid., pp. 148, 149.

31. Ibid., pp. 231, 160, 161.

32. Ibid., pp. 162, 244-48.

33. Innes, James Rose, James Rose Innes: Autobiography, ed. Tindall, B. A. (London, 1949), p. 164Google Scholar. Van der Poel, , Jameson Raid, pp. 247–48Google Scholar. Van der Poel cites a letter from Bower to Innes (written in the 1930's) in which Bower declined Innes's suggestion that he clear himself because Bower felt such a revelation would be “‘morally if not technically a breach of the Official Secrets Act.’”

34. Innes, , James Rose Innes, p. 164Google Scholar. Innes contended that Chamberlain's role in the Raid “was not confined to mere knowledge; it extended to consultation and advice.” Ibid., p. 160.

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47. Ibid., p. 34.

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53. Madden, A. F., “Changing Attitudes and Widening Responsibilities, 1895-1914,” Cambridge History of the British Empire (London, 1959), p. 357, 358Google Scholar.

54. Ibid., III, 358.

55. Ibid., III, 359.

56. Marais, J. S., The Fall of Kruger's Republic (London, 1961), p. 79Google Scholar. Marais claimed that his chapter on “Joseph Chamberlain and the Raid” was written before he had seen the manuscript of Van der Poel's Jameson Raid.

57. Marais, , Fall of Kruger's Republic, pp. 94, 95Google Scholar.

58. Woodhouse, C. M., “The Missing Telegrams and the Jameson Raid, Part I,” History Today, XII (1962), 404Google Scholar.

59. Woodhouse, C. M., “The Missing Telegrams and the Jameson Raid, Part II,” History Today, XII (1962), 514Google Scholar.

60. Ibid., XII, 512, 514.

61. Ibid., XII, 514.