Friday Boer War Cartoon

Today’s cartoon appeared in a French magazine during the early months of the war, drawn by Jead’Aurian.

It shows Transvaal president Paul Kruger, with a sickle in his right hand and his left arm around a young lady, who has an armful of flowers. Slightly behind and to the left is Queen Victoria, with a wounded left arm and a worried expression on her face. The young lady has Republique d’Orange written on the hem of her dress. The sling around Victoria’s left arm has the word Ladysmith upon it, and the bandage on her head has the word Glencoe. The inscription below is:-

“Nous n’irons pas aux Boers, les lauriers sont coupés, la belle que voila vient de les ramasser!” – which is a pun on the first line from an old traditional French rhyme. If you substitute bois for Boers you get, - we will not go to the woods, because the laurel trees have been cut down and the beautiful girl has come to gather them up - . Which pretty much seems to have the meaning that the best peas have gone to farrow. The meaning when applied to the images are basically that the Transvaal has embraced the Orange Free state, and together the two Boer republics have wounded Britain with the siege of Ladysmith and the heavy casualties inflicted upon the British forces at the Battle of Glencoe, also called the Battle of Talana Hill, the first major engagement of the war.

What strikes me about this cartoon is how modern it looks stylistically. In terms of the modelling of the main figures it might easily have been made in the 1960s or after. If anything, this is a pointer towards the future. In Britain, though, the more realistic tradition of Tenniel would continue to be dominant for some time yet.

Thursday Boer War Cartoon

Today’s cartoon is copied from an original by Clifford K. Berryman. Berryman was a cartoonist who worked extensively in Washington D.C. and this cartoon appeared in the Washington Post on March First 1900.

 

The cartoon shows a very large John Bull-ish British soldier looking down on a diminutive Boer soldier, between which are the words Paadeberg Drift. Paarderberg was a hard fought battle in February 1900 in which the Boer forces of General Piet Cronje were besieged and then surrendered to the British force commanded by Lord Roberts.

The message of the cartoon seems pretty clear to me. American public opinion, like that of much of the rest of the world, was pretty hostile to the war and in this cartoon the relative sizes of the soldiers are reinforced by the two banners proclaiming the sizes of the relative armies in the battle. The overweight, sneering British soldier – and John Bull was a figure commonly used to depict Britain by American cartoonists – looks like a swaggering bully

Wednesday Boer War Cartoon

Today’s cartoon is a very interesting one. It was drawn by Bernard Partridge and it was published in Punch on May 15^th 1901.

Bernard Partridge was the artist who became the chief cartoonist in Punch after Edward Linley Sambourne in 1909. He had trained as an architect and then gone on to design stained glass windows for churches, having also acted on stage under the name Bernard Gould. Partridge joined the staff of Punch in 1891, so worked for the magazine at the same time as Tenniel and Linley Sambourne. Partridge, like Tenniel before him, would produce work for Punch for over 50 years, continuing right up until his death in 1945. He’s probably better known for his work during world war I than he Boer War, when he did design posters for the Government as well, and again, like Tenniel before him, he would receive a knighthood, in 1925.

In some ways Partridge seems to have been less reactionary than Tenniel was. For example, he supported the cause of women’s suffrage. And you can maybe make out a case that this cartoon is less conspicuously anti-Boer than many I’ve copied. But. The cartoon presents the stage of the war as a cricket match. A Boer general – I’m not sure which one it is meant to represent – stands at the wicket, steadfastly ready to block the next delivery. Herbert Kitchener, in the guise of a wicketkeeper stands ready to make a catch. Beneath the cartoon is the title The Last Wicket, and underneath that the caption ‘Kitchener (Captain and wicket keeper) “He has kept us in the field a deuce of a time; but we’ll get him now we’ve closed in for catches.” To me this is commenting on Kitchener’s policy of using block houses and concentration camps – the block houses restricting the Boers’ opportunities to range wide and strike strategically and the concentration camps preventing the Boer families imprisoned there from providing aid to the fighters. And in one way, the cartoon is right in as much as Kitchener’s policies would , eventually, result in the Boer surrender.

But. Although you might say that the cartoon does seem to acknowledge the Boers’ tenacity, to a modern eye it’s just a bit obscene comparing what was really happening to a cricket match. It’s all very ‘playing fields of Eton’. I cut Partridge a little bit of slack here since Emily Hobhouse had not yet delivered her report on the conditions in the concentration camps to Parliament – that would happen in June, so he probably had no more idea of exactly what was going on than the rest of the country.

Tuesday Boer War Cartoon

Another J.M. Staniforth cartoon from the build up to the Boer War. This is titled SLOW and SURE.

 

The cartoon shows a miner in the foreground who seems to be undergoing instruction from Paul Kruger who is chalking upon a blackboard. Between the two the ghostly figure of Joseph Chamberlain looms disapprovingly. On the blackboard, Kruger has been chalking up the conditions for the Uitlanders – people born outside the Transvaal, primarily gold miners – to be eligible to vote. The figure of 11 years has been crossed out to be replaced with 9. Below it the caption reads:-

PRESIDENT KRUGER (to British colonist) :”There, see what I am doing for you. Ain’t you very grateful. Who is your true friend now?”

The subtext, I should think is that Kruger is by no means being a friend to the Uitlanders, whose real friend was Joseph Chamberlain in the Colonial Office in London. It’s a bit misleading. I firmly believe that his actions show that Chamberlain wanted to annex the Boer Republics all along. Yes, it’s not clear how much he knew about the Jameson Raid, but many have speculated that it was all part of his strategy. The Uitlanders were a convenient cause to adopt as a pretext. The cartoon is misleading as well, because Kruger would have tried to find a way to accept a reduction to 7 years qualification period. But it was also about the oath of loyalty. In order to vote in an election, Uitlanders would also be expected to swear an oath of loyalty to the Transvaal and this proved to be a sticking point for many of them.

Monday Boer War Cartoon

Today’s cartoon is another Edward Linley Sambourne cartoon. This one is from late 1900 at a time when Transvaal President Paul Kruger had managed to leave Africa and was trying his best to raise support for the Boer cause from Europe.

The cartoon shows Paul Kruger, smoking a pipe and reading a paper with a glass of wine by his side. The setting seems to be a bar of some kind, and the waitress, glancing at him, seems rather concerned about him being there. The clue to the meaning is the sing at the top of the wall, that reads “Unter Den Linden”. This is a famous street in Berlin which ran from the Kaiser’s palace to the Brandenburg gate. The significance of this is that Kruger had to cool his heels in a bar, reading the paper and smoking his pipe, because Kaiser Wilhelm II refused to meet him. The waitress’ expression is probably indicative of the fact that his presence is a bit of an embarrassment.

Kaiser Wilhelm II was a complicated personality. His arm was injured in the way he was delivered when he was born, and he suffered from feelings of inferiority . He was at times very proud of his English connection – he was the first grandson of Queen Victoria – yet at the same time he could be very suspicious and jealous of Great Britain. After the failure of the Jameson Raid, Wilhelm sent a telegram of congratulations to Paul Kruger, and then was astonished when this was angrily condemned in Britain, and led to him being ostracised by the British Royal Family for some time. This may be why he distanced himself from the Boers.

After the war he would even claim that he had provided Lord Roberts with the plans and strategy to defeat the Boers!

Sunday Boer War Cartoon

Well, would you believe it? I found another source and managed to find a couple more Tenniel Boer War cartoons. This one was published in Punch on 27^th December 1899.

I think that this one is pretty self-explanatory. We see Father Christmas speaking to the seated figure of Transvaal President Paul Kruger and blaming him for spoiling the Christmas season of 1899.

In one way you have to almost admire Tenniel’s sheer cheek in this. Cartoon. He clearly blames Kruger for having been given no other choice than effectively give up the Transvaal’s independency and ceded sovereignty to Britain, or go to war. Either that or he blames Kruger for the Boer Army not rolling over obediently but instead having the best of the fighting in 1899.

Tenniel would reuse this image of Kruger in his 1900 cartoon Full of Resource. As for Father Christmas, well, Tenniel often made Christmas cartoons for Punch using Father Christmas, and it was this very traditional English version of Father Christmas that he tended to use, compared with the Santa Claus cartoons being produced by his American friend and contemporary, the great Thomas Nast. Tenniel’s Father Christmas is not Santa, the giver of gifts to children who hve managed to stay off the naughty list. He’s the spirit of seasonal good cheer, and this certainly makes sense of why he would be appearing in Punch after Christmas Day.

I’ve copied several of Tenniel’s Christmas cartoons in the past, for example the 1891 Punch cartoon – Awakening Father Christmas.

Saturday Boer War Cartoon

Since I’ve already widened my repertoire of copies of Boer War cartoons to Edward Linley Sambourne, I’ve copied this cartoon which appeared just before the start of the Boer War, by J.M. Staniforth.

 

Joseph Marwood Staniforth started publishing cartoons, mainly in the Wales and West of England Western Mail newspaper in the late 1880s. His cartoons often focused on social arrest in these areas, and he would continue as the Western Mail’s principal cartoonist until his death in December 1821.

Staniforth made a significant number of cartoons on the subject of the Boer War.This one appeared in the immediate period leading up to the outbreak of the Boer War. The editorial accompanying this cartoon spoke of what it called the very reasonable terms and conditions put forward by Joseph Chamberlain and the Colonial office  and the – as they saw it – intransigence and delaying of tactics of the Transvaal President Paul Kruger, pictured here as the Sphinx.

I’m not an expert ln Staniforth, but generally of his cartoons that I’ve seen they seem to be rather less detailed than either Tenniel or Linley Sambourne and make less use of shading.