in the wilderness, with a fickle and savage chieftain at their back. But a young daredevil offered to lead the way, and a slender band of a few hundred pioneers was brought together by a promise of fifteen gold claims and three thousand acres of farm-land for each man. They had to travel 460 miles on foot, making a road as they went and often cutting a way through forests, before they reached the Promised Land. There, as Rhodes later admitted, they "found that they could not pick up gold like gooseberries"; tropical rains fell upon their camp; enthusiasm gave way to dismal discouragement, and on the stock markets the shares of the company began to fall. Rhodes himself went out and restored confidence. Slowly the settlement grew, and its cattle began to fatten, not "in peace" as had been promised, but in constant danger of native raids, until at length the Chartered Company sent troops to conquer Lo Bengula, and take his cattle. Like the man who admitted the camel's foot into his tent, Lo Bengula found himself driven ́out (though his sons were magnanimously educated at the expense of Rhodes). What had been Lo Bengula's kingdom became "Rhodesia."

About the international difficulties that attended the marking out of the Chartered Company's domain of Rhodesia, we need not enter into detail. To the north, Rhodesia was extended to meet Congo Free State and touch Lake Tanganyika, as Rhodes had hoped, but it was cut off from further extension by the Anglo-German treaty of 1890,1 which brought German East Africa and the Free State together, leaving no land passage between. To the northeast, there was some danger that Germany or Portugal might obtain a footing in the neighborhood of Lake Nyasa; a British company (the African Lakes Company), however, cooperated with the London Missionary Society in opening up this region for Britain, and in 1893 a protectorate was proclaimed over the western shores of the lake, then styled "British Central Africa," but later renamed Nyasaland. On the east of Rhodesia there were boundary disputes with Portugal, and on the west with Portugal and Germany, but these

1 Cf. supra, p. 126.

'Cf. Sir H. H. Johnston, British Central Africa (London, 1897); H. L. Duff, Nyasaland Under the Foreign Office (London, 1906); S. S. Murray, Handbook of Nyasaland (London, 1922) on a colony to which I give such scant notice here.

were cleared up by the Anglo-German agreements of 1890 and 1893, and the Anglo-Portuguese treaty of 1891.1

Though Rhodes never lived to see Rhodesia become as it is to-day-a link in a completed Cape-to-Cairo empire, the region his company acquired for Great Britain was by no means contemptible 440,000 square miles of fertile land, suitable for white colonization and agricultural development. Only "Southern Rhodesia," a third of this great realm, has yet been colonized or developed to any considerable extent. Even here there were, when the 1921 census was taken, only 33,620 white settlers and 770,000 natives, less than a million all told, in a country three times as big as England. The best agricultural land was, of course, allotted to whites, while large but poorer areas were set aside, temporarily, as "reserves" for the natives. Natives living on the reserves paid a head tax of one pound per annum, while those living on white men's land paid an additional pound to the white owner. One of the purposes of these levies, it may be explained, was to provide the natives with an indirect incentive to work for the whites at wages that seem too incredibly small to mention. Intelligent and persistent efforts were made by the Chartered Company to promote farming and fruit-growing, in the hope of attracting English immigrants, but, as the abovementioned figures indicate, Southern Rhodesia has been less attractive than the United States to Englishmen seeking homes overseas, and desiring, not to break ground in an almost uninhabited wilderness, but to find well-paid employment in a civilized and prosperous country. Gold-mining, after all, has been the economic mainstay of the land. Though gold could not be picked up like gooseberries, it could be mined, and in the period from 1890 to 1921 the total amount of gold produced was no less than a quarter of a billion dollars. Northern Rhodesia, still larger and still more sparsely populated than the southern province, had in 1921 about a million negroes and 3,500 white men, scattered over high forested plateaus more extensive than England and France together. Here lead is mined, instead of gold, and in the clearings cattle graze.

For more than thirty years the Chartered Company governed Rhodesia pretty much as it pleased, though occasionally the

1 State Papers, 82, pp. 27, 35; 85, pp. 41, 65; 92, p. 797; 104, p. 185; 105, p. 276.

London Government intervened to prevent too ruthless treatment of the natives. As the white settlers grew more numerous in Southern Rhodesia, however, and civilized towns sprang up here and there, the Company found it necessary to give the whites representation in a Legislative Council. The demand for complete colonial self-government became increasingly strong, for the settlers were by no means agreeable to the Chartered Company's privileges, both political and economic. At length, in 1922, a vote was taken, on the alternatives of joining the Union of South Africa or becoming a self-governing colony, and as the result favored self-government, Southern Rhodesia was created a colony with government responsible to an elected assembly, and the political rule of the Company in this part of its domain was ended.1

THE JAMESON RAID

From Rhodesia, the greatest achievement of Cecil Rhodes, we must turn our attention to the Boer communities of Transvaal and Orange River. These, as we have seen, had been recognized as self-governing republics,2 and had been left to pursue their own interests, until with the discovery of gold in the northern republic, Transvaal, about the year 1886, a new factor entered into the situation. The thousands of prospectors, laborers, and tradesmen, who rushed into the Transvaal gold fields in the period after 1886, soon incurred the bitter hostility of the Boer farmers, who believed the land was theirs by right of conquest and settlement, and regarded the newcomers, with some cause, as a disorderly and dangerous element. The Boers, for their part,

'See Parliamentary Papers, Cmd. 1914 and Cmd. 1984 of 1923. For other aspects of Rhodesia, see Hone, Southern Rhodesia; E. T. Jollie, The Real Rhodesia; Harris, Chartered Millions; Ian Colvin, Life of Jameson; Annual Reports of the British South Africa Company.

The independence of Transvaal (South African Republic) and Orange Free State was recognized in 1852 and 1854, respectively. Transvaal had been annexed in 1877 but by the Pretoria Convention of Aug. 3, 1881, it had been given self-government under British suzerainty. This action followed the famous battle of Majuba Hill. The London Convention of Feb. 27, 1884, went a step farther, omitting all mention of British suzerainty, but stipulating in article 4 that the republic "will conclude no treaty or engagement with any state or nation, other than the Orange Free State

until the same has been approved by her Majesty the Queen." See State Papers, 72, p. 900, and 75, p. 5; also, on the interpretation of this convention, 91, pp. 557-646.

angered the miners by excluding them from political rights, by levying heavy tariff duties on food and other supplies, by establishing dynamite1 and railway monopolies which interfered with the miners' business. Furthermore, mine-owners like Rhodes and Rudd needed native labor, and believed that the natives should be forced to work by means of taxation or otherwise. As Rudd said, "If under the cry of civilization we in Egypt lately mowed down ten or twenty thousand dervishes with Maxims (he was referring to the battle of Omdurman), surely it cannot be considered a hardship to compel the natives in South Africa to give three months in the year to do a little honest work." But the Boer government interfered with the importation of native labor. John Hays Hammond, a well-known American engineer associated with Rhodes, estimated that "good government" would mean a saving of six shillings per ton on gold ore production costs, and that would mean an increase of about twelve million dollars a year in dividends. And to cap the climax, the Boer president, "Oom Paul" Kruger, showed altogether too friendly a disposition toward the German Emperor, who was known to have an indiscreet fondness for the Boers.

Under such circumstances some of the British gold producers and business men in Johannesburg conspired to overthrow the Boer government of Transvaal. Hearing of the plot, Cecil Rhodes with characteristic self-confidence decided that his was the genius to direct the revolt. He took charge of the scheme, provided funds, arranged for the smuggling of arms as company supplies, and planned to have his Rhodesian military police invade Transvaal in concert with the internal revolution. The capitalists backing the Johannesburg conspiracy, however, insisted that the aim must be to hoist the British flag, whereas the "reformers" in the so-called National Union, which was the backbone of the movement, desired an independent republican government. This dissension, and other circumstances, delayed

This item alone, it was alleged, took $3,000,000 a year from the pockets of the mine-owners. For an interesting partisan discussion of this and other grievances, see the manifesto (Dec. 27, 1895) of Charles Leonard, President of the Transvaal National Union, in State Papers, 89, pp. 248 ff. Cf. J. A. Hobson, The War in South Africa. Leonard claimed: "We (the Uitlanders) are the vast majority in this State. We own more than half of the land, and, taken in the aggregate, we own at least nine-tenths of the property in this country; yet in all matters affecting our lives, our liberties, and our properties, we have absolutely no voice." Bryce's Impressions of South Africa (N. Y., 1897), ch. 25, is worth re-reading in this connection.

action until Dr. Leander Starr Jameson, an able Scottish physician whom Rhodes had made administrator of Rhodesia and who had been delegated to lead the Rhodesian police into Transvaal, grew impatient and resolved to wait no longer. Rhodes. attempted to countermand the invasion, but the wires had been cut by Jameson's orders.

On Dec. 29, 1895, "Dr. Jim," as Jameson was called, set out with about five hundred men to invade the Transvaal republic. When Rhodes heard the news he exclaimed in consternation, "Jameson has upset my apple cart." He had. The invaders were captured on Jan. 2, 1896, after a little fighting. The Johannesburg conspiracy "fizzled out as a damp squib," in the words of Rhodes, and the leading conspirators, including John Hays Hammond, an American, were arrested.1 The Jameson Raid was a fiasco. Had it succeeded, perhaps it might have been sung by later bards as a glorious deed, but its ignominious failure allowed its true nature to appear clearly-it was an illegitimate armed attack on a peaceful neighbor. Rhodes himself had to resign office as a premier of Cape Colony and submit to a parliamentary inquiry which condemned the Raid and censured him. For his accomplices Rhodes generously paid lawyers' fees and staggering fines.

2

More alarming was the effect of the Raid in releasing pentup German animosity toward England. As soon as he heard of the Raid, the German foreign minister, Baron von Marschall, warned the British ambassador that Germany must insist on the "maintenance of the status quo" in South Africa, and that the London cabinet was perilously mistaken if it felt strong enough to pursue its aggressive policy without consulting the other

1 They were tried and condemned to death, but later released on payment of large fines.

2 On the Raid in general see Ian Colvin, The Life of Jameson (London, 1922), II, ch. 25; J. Hays Hammond, The Truth About the Jameson Raid (Boston, 1918); Lionel Phillips, Reminiscences (London, 1925), ch. 6. Compare Chamberlain's review of the affair in State Papers, 89, pp. 33549, and correspondence in the same, pp. 247-335, and 91, pp. 474 ff.

See Second Report from the Select Committee on British South Africa (1897). The minutes of evidence taken contain many racy items on the profits and methods of the mine-owners and on the fabulous careers of certain mining stocks. See also J. A. Spender, Life of Campbell-Bannerman, I, pp. 191-207, and A. G. Gardiner, Life of Sir William Harcourt, II, chs. 20, 22, for some of the inside story of the investigation and the views of the Liberal leaders regarding the Rhodesian variety of "stock-jobbing imperialism."