Wednesday Boer War Cartoon

This cartoon appeared in Punch in September 1900. It depicts Transvaal President Paul Kruger in a rowing boat, sadly abandoning a sinking ship called the Transvaal and it has the title THE SINKING SHIP.

 The meaning is fairly obvious, although the connotations are a little unfair to Kruger. The Transvaal Government, Pretoria having been captured in June, decided that they would not risk Paul Kruger being captured and so sent him first to Laurenco Marques in Portuguese Mozambique, from which he would eventually embark to Europe, where he would spend the rest of his life until his death in 1904.

When I say the connotations, what I mean is that when you look at the phrase “sinking ship’ you can’t help thinking about the saying ‘rats leaving a sinking ship’. Well, I’m sorry but I don’t see Paul Kruger as being any kind of rat. But also there’s the connotation of him fleeing from his country and leaving it to its fate to save his own skin. Unless you believe that the man was a total hypocrite, it just wasn’t the case. Kruger believed that he could do the best job for his country by not being caught and imprisoned and raising as much international support as he could.

Tuesday Boer War Cartoon

Sorry, somehow I just didn't manage to get my act together yesterday morning. Tuesday’s cartoon was published on September 27^th 1899, just a matter of days before the outbreak of the Boer War.

 

The title is “All a Toss Up” and the scene is an aging matador facing nervously up to a huge, angry bull with a human face. The matador is president of the Transvaal Paul Kruger – you can see the word Transvaal written on the cloak he is waving in the bull’s face. The bull itself is a visual pun, for it has the face of John Bull, the allegorical personification of Middle England. The title, all a toss up, strikes me as a little bit of a pun too. We know that the phrase has the colloquial meaning of something that could go either way. However, I think it also has the idea behind it that if the matador puts a foot wrong, he will end up being tossed up into the air on the bull’s horns.

In the events behind the cartoon, Kruger was as sure footed as anyone could have been in his manoeuvring and negotiations with the British over Uitlanders rights, until given no choice, really. So, if Tenniel was suggesting that war might have been avoided he was either ignoring or severely underestimating the intransigence of the British.

Monday Boer War Cartoon

I’ve backtracked a little for today’s cartoon. This is called THE BOER AT BAY and it appeared in July 1889, a couple of months before ethe outbreak of the war.

So we have a rather strangely dressed hunter, with a spear and a pack of dogs, having cornered a wild boar. It’s a visual pin, the cornered boar representing the Boers who were being forced into an impossible position by the British government, using the pretext of the cause of the Uitlanders as the pretext. If we look a little closer we can identify the main figures. The hunter’s hounds helpfully have Uitlanders written on their backs. The uitlanders were the people who had come to settle in the Transvaal, the majority being brought by the gold rush. They believed that the taxes charged them by the government were exorbitant especially considering that they were ineligible to vote until they had lived in the Transvaal for 14 years.

The wild boar has the white beard that was one of the most characteristic features of the appearance of the Transvaal president Paul Kruger. As for the hunter, well, the monocle certainly suggests that this is Joseph Chamberlain. Chamberlain, the father of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, was a very interesting man and an important political figure. He was a Birmingham businessman and his background was strikingly different from other top politicians of the day. Originally a Liberal MP, he split with the Liberals over his opposition to Gladstone’s goal of Home Rule for Ireland, creating the Liberal Unionists. They allied with the Conservative party ( to this day their official name is the Conservative and Unionist Party) and following the 1895 General Election he became Secretary of State for the Colonies, and it was from this position of power that he really helped push the Transvaal into the position where war became inevitable.

Chamberlain had been suspected of complicity with Cecil Rhodes in the planning of the Jameson Raid – how much he knew or was involved though remains a matter of speculation.

Sketchbook Challenge - Sketchbook filled

Well, I’ve finally filled my 8^th sketchbook of my sketchbook challenge, and there’s two months to go. I will be honest, having concentrated on copying political cartoons from the turn of the 20^th century meant that even when I took up my pens again having taken a break in the second half of April it has taken a long time, because it takes so long to copy a cartoon properly.

So what’s the verdict on this Nassau A5 sketchbook?

Well, it’s certainly from the cheaper end of the market. If you shop around you can get this sketchbook for less than £6. For that you get 62 sheets/124 pages of ivory coloured 130gsm paper. It’s 13x21cm, and looks very similar to a Moleskine sketchbook, although the corners aren’t at all rounded and there’s no document pocket attached to the inside back cover.

I primarily use fineliners and this isn’t that great for them. The lines you get aren’t as crisp as you get in books like the Seawhite, Leuchtturm or Moleskine. At 130 gsm it really should be able to cope with ordinary black fineliner, but on many drawings I got telltale dots showing through on the other side of the page. The paper buckles with watercolour but then I expected that anyway.

You can buy the book separately, but I received mine as part of a 12 piece urban sketching set I was gifted for Christmas 2024. And I don’t want to be too harsh about it, because the set also has fineliner pens , pencils, rubber and eraser, al for less than £12. Which maybe makes it a decent place to start if you’re thinking about giving urban sketching a try and want to get all the basics in one go. But I don’t plan on buying a Nassau sketchbook again any time soon myself.

Sunday Boer War Cartoon

Today’s Tenniel Boer War cartoon is another one depicting Transvaal president Paul Kruger. It was published in June 1900.

 

Its title is SHIFTING HIS CAPITAL. The caption reads :-

President Kruger had abandoned Pretoria on the near approach of the British Forces, taking with him, it was reported, bullion to the value of £2,000,000, which, he said, was simply required for State purposes.

When I read the caption I picture Tenniel rubbing his chin as he wrote it. The ‘he said’ might just as well have been followed by “but I don’t believe him’. By the end of May 1900 British Empire forces were nearing Pretoria, the capital of the Transvaal.  They had captured Bloemfontein, the capital city of Orange Free State in March. Paul Kruger left on the 31^st March and the government on June 2^nd, a couple of days before Lord Roberts’ forces entered the city.

By September, Lord Roberts announced that the Transvaal was now annexed to the British Empire, and that the war was over. Yet it wasn’t. The Boers would continue to wage guerilla warfare until the war formally ended on 31^st May 1902.

Kruger did continue the business of the Boer Government despite the scepticism of the cartoon. Only until September, though, when his government voted for him to avoid capture by moving first to Laurenco Marques in Portuguese Mozambique and thence to Europe. He would never return to Pretoria, indeed he never returned to Africa at all. He did in July 1904 in Switzerland, but in December British authorities gave permission for his body to be buried in Pretoria in the Church Street Cemetery.

Saturday Boer War Cartoon

This next cartoon looks forward to possibly the most famous action of the 2^nd Boer War, namely the relief of Mafeking, the raising of the siege of the city. The cartoon was published on 9^th May 1900.

 

The title is THE ELEVENTH HOUR

The caption is

COLONEL BADEN POWELL (TO MAFEKING) “ALL RIGHT! CHEER UP! ‘BOBS’ IS A MAN OF HIS WORD!”

In the cartoon we see the leader of the British defenders of Mafeking, Robert Baden-Powell, yes, the same Baden-Powell who would create the Scouting movement after the war, consoling a thing, downcast lady, the allegorical personification of the city of Mafeking. They are in a ruined townscape, and Baden Powell is pointing to a notice on the war, with Lord Roberts’ promise to relieve the city by the 18^th May.

As it was, the relief came two days earlier, on the 16^th May and this was the trigger for wild celebrations as soon as the news reached Britain. So huge were the celebrations that for a while a word derived from the name of the city – ‘mafficking’ – became a slang verb for making merry.

Mafeking itself was a town in the British Cape Colony where Colonel Baden-Powell chose to keep stores for his cavalry corps. Immediately prior to the outbreak of the war he built up the defences of the town. In the end, the siege of Mafeking lasted longer than either of the other two Boer sieges of the war, those of Ladysmith and Kimberley, 217 days in total.

Baden-Powell became a public hero due to his leadership during the siege, being promoted to Major-General and made a Companion of the Order of the Bath. In more recent times his role had had just a little bit of a reappraisal, in particular the fact that he only made one attempt to break out from Mafeking despite the fact that at times the siege was not committing large numbers of Boer soldiers.

Baden-Powell later said that it was organising civilians and children that would later help him form plans for the boy scout organisation, his lasting legacy.

Friday Boer War Cartoon

This cartoon was published in March 1900. The title is Full of Resource. 

The caption is:-

PRESIDENT KRUGER (reading the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s speech on the Budget debate):-

“I am not going to bind myself as to what I will do on the termination of the War. I look first to the Transvaal.”

“Oh, DOES he? I know what I’M going to do on the termination of the war. I’M going through the BANKRUPTCY COURT!”

Paul Kruger was the president of the Transvaal Republic. His appearance made him something of a gift to cartoonists like John Tenniel. He wore a moustacheless, Amish style beard, and usually dressed in a plain black coat and top hat, a style of dress adopted by members of the Doppers, the religious sect to which he belonged. He’s a very interesting character. Kruger’s ancestors emigrated from Germany to the Cape Colony. When he was a child, he and his family took part in the Great Trek. This was the migration of Dutch speaking settlers who did not want to live under British colonial administration. When he had grown up, Kruger would serve the Transvaal republic as a soldier and then a statesman. He was a gifted orator, despite the fact that he (claimed he) had only ever read one book, the Bible. His nickname, certainly amongst the Boers, was Oom Paul – or – Uncle Paul.

I’m not totally sure that I completely understand the cartoon. By the time it was published in March 1900 the ineffective and unsuccessful Sir Redvers Buller had been replaced as British Commander in Chief by Lord Roberts, and the sieges of Kimberly and Ladysmith had been raised. British public opinion was mistakenly starting to feel that the war was all over bar the shouting. The Chancellor of the Exchequer had made this statement which seemed to be saying that the Boer Republics would be expected to pay reparations after the end of the war, without actually making a hard and fast commitment to the policy. Kruger’s response in the caption seems to be saying – well, there will be no chance of that happening since there will be no wealth left here to take. I’m unsure, though, on exactly what Tenniel is saying. The expression on Kruger’s face seems to suggest he isn’t unhappy about this. Likewise, it seems to be more of a criticism of the Government’s attitude, suggesting that the idea of forcing the Boers to pay for the cost of the war is pie in the sky. As indeed it turned out to be.

The 2^nd Boer War was the most expensive war Britain had ever fought and remained so until the First World War. Far from imposing war reparations, the Treaty of Vereeniging which officially ended the war saw the British government commit to paying £3 million for reconstruction in the two former republics and for repatriation of the Boers.