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Scrambling for South Africa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

Shula Marks
Shula Marks
Affiliation:
S.O.A.S., London
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Type
Review Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 23 , Issue 1 , January 1982 , pp. 97 - 113
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1982

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References

1 Hobson, J. A., The War in South Africa (London, 1900)Google Scholar, and Imperialism – a Study (London, 1902).Google Scholar

2 By 1888 de Beers Consolidated controlled South African diamond production and was responsible for half the gross national product of the Cape Colony, while little more than ten years later nine mining houses on the Rand produced about a quarter of the world's supply of new gold.

3 For the most recent and extensive attempt, see Innes, Duncan, ‘Monopoly capital and imperialism in Southern Africa: the role of the Anglo American group’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of Sussex, 1980).Google Scholar

4 Robinson, Ronald and Gallagher, John, with Denny, Alice, Africa and the Victorians: The Official Mind of Imperialism (London, 1961).Google Scholar

5 Schreuder, Scramble, 2.

6 Ibid. 3–4.

7 See, for example, Ibid. 23, 24, 50, 56, 85, 88, 160, 190, 200, 201 et passim.

8 Ibid. 3, 57, 64, 200, 256, 305, 306 et passim.

9 Ibid. 33, 37, 40, 50–2, 57, 58, 65–6, 103, 273, 286 et passim.

10 Cain, P. J. and Hopkins, A. G., ‘The political economy of British expansion overseas, 1750–1014’, Economic History Review, 2nd series, XXXIII, 4 (11 1980), 463–90.Google Scholar

11 Schreuder, Scramble, 5.

12 Harcourt, Freda, ‘Disraeli's imperialism, 1866–1868: a question of timing’, Historical Journal, XXIII, 1 (1980), 109.Google Scholar

13 Schreuder, , Scramble, 18.Google Scholar

14 Ibid. 317–18.

15 Atmore, A. and Marks, S. in Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, in (10, 1974)Google Scholar; also in Penrose, E. F. (ed.), European Imperialism and the Partition of Africa (London, 1975), 105–39.Google Scholar For the ‘indebtedness’, see Schreuder, , Scramble, 373.Google Scholar

16 For this phrase, see Schreuder, , Scramble, 315.Google Scholar For the dichotomy between expansive local interests and reluctant imperialists, see also Ibid. 252, 270, 286, 308 and 310, esp. p. 270: ‘The scramble in South-East Africa acquired its belligerent energy from a unique British concern for vital strategic imperial interests at risk plus the economic concerns of local colonial agencies in African resources.’

17 Schreuder, , Scramble, 5.Google Scholar

18 Purkiss, A., ‘The politics, capital and labour of railway building in the Cape Colony, 1870–1885’ (D.Phil, thesis, Oxford, 1978), 440, 451Google Scholar, for the quotations.

19 Ibid. 453–4.

20 Schreuder, , Scramble, 3.Google Scholar

21 Harcourt, , ‘Disraeli's imperialism’, 87–109.Google Scholar The years 1868–70 witnessed the publication of Dilke's Greater Britain (1868), the inaugural meeting of the Royal Colonial Institute (1869) and the ‘working man's petition on behalf of emigration’ presented to Queen Victoria (1870): Faber, R., The Vision and the Need: Late Victorian Imperial Aims (London, 1956), 51.Google Scholar

22 Harcourt, , ‘Disraeli's imperialism’, 109.Google Scholar

23 Cain, and Hopkins, , ‘Political economy of British expansion’, 485.Google Scholar

24 Schreuder, , Scramble, 311–12.Google Scholar

25 Ibid. 314.

26 On page 51 we were informed that in 1899 ‘“the imperial factor” as a result of Milner's machinations frontally challenge[d] republican Afrikanerdom’– which would seem to suggest it was ‘Milner’s war’.

27 As Jeeves, Alan H. has shown in his important but as yet unfortunately unpublished thesis, ‘The Rand capitalists and Transvaal politics, 1892–9’ (Ph.D., Queen's University, Canada, 1971)Google Scholar, in the run-up to the war Cape moderates attempted to secure a peaceful solution to the crisis, by putting pressure on Kruger rather than Milner, who was wholly impatient of their mediatory efforts. Much of the main argument of the thesis is summarized in his ‘The Rand Capitalists and the coming of the South African War, 1896–1899’, Canadian Historical Papers (1973), 61–83.Google Scholar

28 Schreuder, , Scramble, 316–17.Google Scholar

29 Porter, , Origins, vii.Google Scholar

30 Ibid. 20.

31 Ibid. 26.

32 Ibid. 208.

33 Ibid. 246; see also 169.

34 See, for example, Ibid. 131, 249–54, 264–5.

35 Ibid. 206.

36 Cohen, S., Folk Devils and Moral Panic: The Creation of the Mods and Rockers (London, 1972), 28.Google Scholar

37 Porter, , Origins, vii, xii.Google Scholar

38 Ibid. 122.

39 Ibid.

40 Ibid. 25.

41 The as yet unpublished work of Preben Kaarsholm, of Roskilde University, Copenhagen, on imperialist ideology in the Boer War period is suggestive of the ways this can be done. I owe the notion of ‘contradictory voices’ to his presentation of a summary of his work to History Workshop 15, held at Brighton, 6–8 November 1981.

42 Semmel, B., Imperialism and Social Reform: English Social Thought 1895–1914 (London, 1960)Google Scholar; Pakenham, T., The Boer War (London, 1979).Google Scholar

43 Cited in O'Brien, , Milner, 153.Google Scholar

44 For a more extended critique, see Marks, S. and Trapido, S., ‘Lord Milner and the South African state’, History Workshop, 8 (Autumn 1979), 77–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

45 Porter, , Origins, xii.Google Scholar

46 O'Brien, , Milner, 210.Google Scholar

47 See Marks, and Trapido, , ‘Lord Milner’, 79–83.Google Scholar

48 Cited in Fraser, M. and Jeeves, A. H. (eds.), All that Glittered: Selected Correspondence of Lionel Phillips, 1890–1924 (Cape Town, 1977), 122–3Google Scholar (letter dated 13 November 1903).

49 Was it purely coincidence that immediately after his appointment as High Commissioner to South Africa Milner spent the weekend with Lord Rothschild, who had extensive share interests in de Beers, Consolidated Goldfields and Rand Mines (O'Brien, , Milner, 128Google Scholar)?

50 Kubicek, , Economic Imperialism, 3.Google Scholar

51 Ibid. 20.

52 See references in note 80, below.

53 Kubicek, , Economic Imperialism, 197.Google Scholar

54 For a discussion which takes account of the extensive debate in the literature, see Warren, Bill, Imperialism: Pioneer of Capitalism, ed. Sender, J. (London, 1980), 57–65.Google Scholar Warren agrees with the findings of many other scholars who have demolished the Hobson–Lenin underconsumptionist view.

55 Kubicek, , Economic Imperialism, 202.Google Scholar

56 Ibid. ch. 4.

57 Ibid. 199.

58 Ibid.

59 Duminy, A. H. and Guest, W. R., eds., Fitzpatrick, South African Politician: Selected Papers, 1888–1906 (Johannesburg, 1976)Google Scholar; Fraser and Jeeves, All that Glittered.

60 Pakenham, , Boer War, 88–9.Google Scholar

61 ‘Lord Milner and the South African State’, esp. 85 ff.

62 See Van-Helten, J.J., ‘British and European economic investment in the Transvaal, with specific reference to the Witwatersrand goldfields and district, 1886–1910’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 1981), 47–8, 117, 124, 136, 164.Google Scholar Cf. the conversation with J. C. Smuts which Fitzpatrick reported in a speech at the Rand Club (13 March 1899): ‘Mr Fitzpatrick, Dr Leyds is a changed man….since he came back from Europe. When he was in Paris they received him politely and when he talked about a loan they said “Oh yes, Dr Leyds, but what about the Mining Industry?” He then went to Berlin and, after making representations there, they said “Oh yes, but what about the Mining Industry?” and they chased him from one end of Europe to the other with the question…’ (Duminy and Guest, M.Fitzpatrick, 192Google Scholar; see also 186).

63 Noer, , Briton, Boer and Yankee, 30–3.Google Scholar

64 Ibid. 32.

65 Ibid. xi.

66 Ibid. 100 ff.

67 Cited at length in Marks and Trapido, ‘Lord Milner and the South African State’, 86–7.

68 I am indebted here to the work of, and discussions with, J.J. Van-Helten and Peter Richardson.

69 Mendelsohn, R., ‘Blainey and the Jameson Raid: the debate renewed’, J. Southern African Studies, vi, 2 (April 1980), 170.Google Scholar

70 Richardson, Peter, ‘The provision of Chinese indentured labour for the Transvaal gold mines, 1903–1908’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 1977), 28.Google Scholar This is to be published in revised form as Chinese Mine Labour in the Transvaal (London, 1982).Google Scholar

71 de Kiewiet, C. W.. A History of South Africa, Social and Economic (London, 1941), 134.Google Scholar

72 Jeeves, A. H., ‘The Rand Capitalists and the coming of the South African War’, 68Google Scholar; one should not need to be reminded of this, but Kubicek appears to doubt the point.

73 Kubicek, , Economic Imperialism, 15.Google Scholar

74 Richardson, Chinese Mine Labour.

75 ‘Capital and Capitalists in the Transvaal in the 1890s and 1900s’, Historical Journal, xxiii, 1 (1980), 111–32, esp. 122.Google Scholar

76 Both Van-Helten and Richardson make this point and the figures are drawn from their work. See Van-Helten, , ‘British and European investment’, 55–6, 286–323Google Scholar and table 6; and Richardson, Chinese Mine Labour, ch. 1.

77 Kubicek, , Economic Imperialism, 197–8.Google Scholar

78 Innes, , ‘Monopoly capital and imperialism’, esp. 108 ff.Google Scholar

79 ‘British and European Economic Investments’, abstract, ch. 3 and esp. 302–3, 314, 316–24; see also his ‘Mining and imperialism’ J. Southern African Studies, vi, 2 (1980), 230–5.Google Scholar I am particularly grateful to Dr Van-Helten for his assistance in tightening the argument in this section of my critique.

80 See, for example, Gann, L. and Duignan, P., Why South Africa Will Survive (London, 1981), 12Google Scholar; and, more substantially, Yudelman, D., ‘Capital, capitalists and power in South Africa: some zero-sum fallacies’, Social Dynamics, vi, 2 (1980), 59–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

81 Warren's Imperialism: Pioneer of Capitalism is perhaps the most devastating of the Marxist critiques of Lenin. See also Arrighi, G., The Geometry of Imperialism: The Limits of Hobson's Paradigm, trans. Canuller, P. (London, 1978)Google Scholar; Owen, R. and Sutcliffe, B. (eds.), Studies in the Theory of Imperialism (London, 1972)Google Scholar and the unpublished paper by Gavin Kitching, ‘The Marxist theory of imperialism and the historical study of underdevelopment ’, which has influenced much of the above.

82 Hopkins, A. G., ‘Imperialism in West Africa: Lagos, 1880–1892’, Econ. Hist. Review, 2nd series, xxi (1968), 583.Google Scholar

83 Imperialism: Pioneer of Capitalism, 67–8.

84 For the significance of South African gold at this time, see Van-Helten. ‘British and European investment’, ch. 2.

85 Fraser, and Jeeves, , All that Glittered, 234–5.Google Scholar Italics and bracket in original.

86 Hynes, W. G., The Economics of Empire: Britain, Africa and the New Imperialism, 1870–95 (London, 1979), 5.Google Scholar