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. 

Friday Boer War Cartoon

I confess that I’m running out of Tenniel cartoons about the Boer War to copy, and so this is another Linley Sambourne cartoon, that appeared in Punch on December 13^th 1899.

The title is Disillusioned!. The cartoon is split in two parts by an uneven vertical line. On the left-hand side of the line, which is captioned What they thought Tommy was – it depicts disorganised British soldiers falling around and panicking when an artillery shell bursts overhead. On the right-hand side of the line we see a much larger, more close up British soldier scaling a near vertical cliff face, undaunted by the slumped figure of a comrade to the right.

The message is that, in the view of Linley Sambourne at least, the Boers expected the British army would be easily beaten, especially following what had happened in the first Boer War, but that they soon found out that the British soldiers were a lot tougher and more determined than they expected.

The unintentional irony of the cartoon is that when the cartoon appeared, the British and Empire forces had suffered by far the worst of the fighting thus far, so much so that the same week in which this cartoon was published was nicknamed 'Black Week' after the reverses that they suffered.

Thursday Boer War Cartoon - Edward Linley Sambourne

You know, I’ve been running out of Tenniel cartoons about the Boer War. So I’ve made a copy of a Linley Sambourne cartoon. Who?

Edward Linley Sambourne was born 24 years after Tenniel, in 1844. His original career was as an apprentice engineer, but he was moved into the drawing office when his aptitude was discovered. His work came to the attention of Punch editor Mark Lemon, and he had his first drawing published in the magazine when he was 23 in 1867.Within 4 years he had become a staff member, although he was not to provide his first political cartoon until 1884. Ten years later he began to regularly draw the magazine’s second cartoon. Finally, upon Tenniel’s retirement in 1902 he became the principal cartoonist for Punch.

You have to feel for him a bit. After waiting so long for Tenniel to step down, Linley Sambourne could only enjoy the position as top dog for 8 years, passing away in 1910.

I think it’s fair to suggest that working for the same magazine for which Tenniel had been principal cartoonist for so long must have rubbed off on Linley Sambourne a bit. His personification of Ladysmith in this cartoon, for example, is very similar to the Britannia that Tenniel himself used so often. However, I do feel that there is usually a little less of the caricature about Linley Sambourne’s work than there is with Tenniel. This may be his legacy as an apprentice engineering draughtsman. There’s even a precision about his hatching and shading, compared with Tenniel’s.

I have actually copied one of Linley Sambourne’s drawings before – this one which hailed Tenniel’s knighthood.

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.

Thursday Boer War Cartoon

In March 1900, Sir John Tenniel published this cartoon in Punch. He has a different target in this cartoon.

 

The cartoon has the title “Who said “Dead”?”. The cartoon shows a donkey running away for its life from a roaring lion emerging from a cave. The donkey has ‘Continental Press’ written on its back. By March 1900 the sieges of Kimberley and Ladysmith had been relieved and the British and Empire army under the new commander in chief, Lord Roberts, had begun to win some successes. The message of the cartoon seems pretty much to be that the British and Empire forces have now roused themselves to their warlike best, and proven to the world – well, to Europe at least – that the reports of the death of the Empire have been greatly exaggerated.

Portraying the European media as a donkey shows a certain contempt for them – they are donkeys, or asses, fools in other words. The European reactions to the circumstances of the Boer War were pretty much universally condemning of the British actions in provoking the war, and British Imperialism. There was just a little whiff of hypocrisy about this considering that some of the countries that were the strongest critics had also been willing and enthusiastic participants in the so-called ‘Scramble for Africa’ themselves.

Wednesday Boer War Cartoon

I haven’t found any Tenniel cartoons referring to the so-called ‘Black Week’ of 10-17^th December 1899, when British forces suffered three major defeats to Boer forces. Following a further defeat in January in the Battle of Spion Kop (if you ever wondered why part of Liverpool’s Anfield stadium – and some other grounds – have the name the Kop, they were named after this battle) Redvers Buller was replaced as Commander in Chief by Lord Roberts. In March 1900, this cartoon was published in Punch.

With the situation seemingly changed, Tenniel reverted to the figure of John Bull to represent the British (English) nation. The heading is “Never Say Die!” and the long caption underneath reads,

“JOHN BULL (to himself in the “Mark Tapley” vein). – “NOW, MR. JOHN BULL, JUST YOU ATTEND TO WHAT I’VE GOT TO SAY. THINGS HAVE BEEN LOOKING ABOUT AS BAD AS THEY COULD LOOK, OLD MAN. YOU’LL NOT HAVE SUCH ANOTHER OPPORTUNITY FOR SHOWING YOUR JOLLY DISPOSITION, MY FINE FELLOW, AS LONG AS YOU LIVE. AND THEREFORE, JOHN B., NOW’S YOUR TIME TO COME OUT STRONG; NOW OR NEVER!” And J.B. has come out strong at Kimberley and after.)-Martin Chuzzlewit, ch. xxiii.

Mark Tapley, as the captions suggests, is a character in Dickens’ novel Martin Chuzzlewit whose speciality is deliberately looking on the bright side and staying cheerful in the most awful of situations. The cartoon, without actually saying that things have been going very badly for the British and Empire army, pretty much concedes this. Even the notice behind John Bull, while trumpeting Lord Roberts’ advance and the relief of Kimberley still admits that there have been unexpectedly heavy casualty lists. With the rather smug look on John Bull’s face, you get the idea that the feeling the cartoon is trying to convey is a message of nothing to worry about folks, normal service has been resumed. Which would turn out to be misplaced confidence.

Although the coming months would see the relief of Mafeking and the occupation of the two Boer capitals, Pretoria and Bloemfontein, the war was actually a long way from being over. Indeed, Lord Roberts announced that the war was over on 3^rd September 1900 and formally annexed the South African Republic. But actually the Boers would continue to fight, only changing their tactics to wage a pretty successful guerilla campaign against supply and communication lines.

Tuesday Boer War Cartoon

Today’s Tenniel Boer War cartoon I’ve copied was published on 20^th December 1899 and it’s entitled “The Sullied White Flag”.

 

THE SULLIED WHITE FLAG

JOHN BULL “IF YOU ABUSE THAT FLAG, I WON’T ANSWER FOR MY MEN.”

The caption is :-

JOHN BULL “IF YOU ABUSE THAT FLAG, I WON’T ANSWER FOR MY MEN.”

Now, I’ve tried hard to find out exactly which specific incident prompted this cartoon, and all I’ve managed to find out is that there was some incident involving a flag of truce in Mafeking, which was under siege at the time. What happened, I have not to this point been able to find out.

However, I think that the message within the images seems pretty clear. The Boer on the left looks sly and shifty. His eyes particularly are dark and evil looking. If anything his posture suggests that he is cringing away from John Bull. While John Bull himself looks clean, upright, immaculate and his revolver is pointed towards the ground and not at the back of the Boer. The relationship between the two figures suggests that the British have been having the upper hand, while the Boers have to resort to subterfuge. Yet up to this point the Boers had very much the better of the fighting and action. When I look at the caption I am irresistibly reminded of President Donald Trump threatening there would be ‘no more Mr. Nice Guy’ towards Iran a week or two ago, with much the same effect. At best it’s a misrepresentation of the state of the war at this time.

I’ve no doubt that I haven’t seen every cartoon John Tenniel made between October and December of 1899, but I haven’t seen any cartoon he made in this period which even acknowledged any setbacks suffered by the British army. Tenniel could be a trenchant critic of politicians and governments on purely domestic issues, but when it came to foreign relations he was strongly pro-British. After he was knighted in 1893 at the age of 73, it probably shouldn’t have come as much of a surprise that he would be a strong supporter of the official line on the war.

Monday Boer War Cartoon

This next Boer War cartoon is from November 29th1899. We see a lion advancing through a rocky southern African landscape, underneath which is the title ADVANCING. There is no further caption.

 

To me, this cartoon really displays misplaced confidence. The lion is surely the British lion, and I’ve said before that when Tenniel uses this particular representation of Britain he is usually doing so to stress the power and might of Britain and the British Empire. By the time that the cartoon was published, Boer forces were besieging Ladysmith, Kimberley and Mafeking and public opinion in Britain pretty much demanded that actions were taken to end the sieges. The advance that the cartoon seems to be referring to may well have been Lord Methuen’s advance with three brigades with the intention of raising the siege of Kimberley. On 23^rd November 1899 the forces ran into 2000 entrenched Boers on Belmont Kopje (hill). Poor tactics and inaccurate maps resulted in large casualties, although the British could claim victory of a sort after eventually driving the tenacious Boers into retreat.

However, Methuen’s forces would suffer losses and then a serious defeat on 11^th December in Magersfontein. As for Kimberley, the siege would continue until the following February. 

Sunday Boer War Cartoon

Today’s John Tenniel Boer War cartoon is another from 1899, published on 1^st November, right at the time when large numbers of soldiers were being sent to South Africa on ships.

 

Jack Tar “GOOD LUCK, MATE! YOU’RE GOIN’ TO DO THE JOB ON LAND.
IF THERE’S ANYTHING WANTED AT SEA – AGAINST OTHER PARTIES – I’M ON!”

The title is “TO THOSE IT MAY CONCERN”. The caption beneath this is –

Jack Tar “GOOD LUCK, MATE! YOU’RE GOIN’ TO DO THE JOB ON LAND. IF THERE’S ANYTHING WANTED AT SEA – AGAINST OTHER PARTIES – I’M ON!”

The message seems pretty straightforward, a message of support for the troops heading off to war and also one of confidence in them. As for what the sailor says, maybe I’m reading too much into it, but perhaps this is meant as a reminder that Britain had the most powerful navy in the world. The mention of other parties suggests an awareness that international opinion was pretty solidly against the British Empire, and this is a recognition of the Royal Navy as a deterrent to other countries becoming involved militarily, which I have no doubt that it was.

Other countries did not intervene officially. However, volunteer units who fought for the Boers were formed from Dutch, German and Irish volunteers, and volunteers came from many other parts of Europe. The influx of volunteers began to arrive immediately with the declaration of war and would continue at the rate of about 600 men a month.

Again, maybe I’m reading too much into what appears to be a pretty straightforward cartoon, but I do, with the benefit of hindsight, see an overconfidence here. Despite the lessons of the First Boer War, less than a decade earlier, it does seem to be true that at all levels of British society people did seem to genuinely believe that the British Empire army would just quickly steamroller the Boers into submission in a few weeks.

Didn’t happen

Saturday - Boer War Cartoon

The next John Tenniel Boer War cartoon I’ve copied was published just a few days before war was declared. Here it is.

JOHN BULL (to Orange Free State) “STAND ASIDE YOUNG MAN-
I’VE NO QUARREL WITH YOU!”

 

JOHN BULL (to Orange Free State) “STAND ASIDE YOUNG MAN- I’VE NO QUARREL WITH YOU!”

It’s titled A Word to the Un-Wise. Basically this is Britain, in the shape of John Bull, warning Orange Free State not to get involved in the looming conflict with the Republic of Transvaal. The caption – I’ve no quarrel with you! – is disingenuous. It was never a question that Orange Free State would not be involved in the Boer War, but even if it had not been I can’t believe that the British Empire would not have annexed the republic again even without the excuse of the war. As it was, though, the two Boer Republics had concluded a military pact in 1897.

I find it interesting that Tenniel chose to depict John Bull in army uniform. The subtext to me seems to be – look, this war is going to happen, and if you have any sense whatsoever you’ll keep out of our way, or we’ll crush you like we’re going to crush them. – The caption, calling Orange Free State ‘young man’ is very patronising. Also, the Boer from the Transvaal is the only one of the three figures with a visible gun, a way of suggesting without saying so outright that it is Boer aggression that can be blamed for bringing the countries to the brink of war.

Fair? No, I don’t think so. With hindsight, following the Jameson Raid, and with the British Government’s refusal to compromise on terms for addressing the grievances of the Uitlanders, war was pretty much inevitable.

Friday - Boer War Cartoon

My 4^th Tenniel cartoon from the Boer War is this one titled “The Sinews of War”. It was published in Punch magazine on 18^th October 1899, exactly one week after war was declared.

JOHN BULL. “FIRE AWAY JOE! I’M WITH YOU! I’LL LOOK AFTER THE AMMUNITION!”

You can see John Bull (for more about this allegorical personification of England see my previous post) standing behind a British soldier, sat at his machine gun, in what is presumably a South African landscape. The caption reads,

JOHN BULL. “FIRE AWAY JOE! I’M WITH YOU! I’LL LOOK AFTER THE AMMUNITION!”

This pretty much reflects a few beliefs about the situation at the outset of the war. The British public were overwhelmingly in support of the war when this cartoon was published, but as the war progressed the tide of opinion would turn against it, especially when Emily Hobhouse published her findings on the concentration camps in 1901. In the second half of 1900 support was strong enough to see the Conservative Party win what was nicknamed the Khaki Election on the back of recent victories, but when it became clear that the war was not over and the Boers were continuing to fight, public support waned.

As regards weaponry and ammunition, there is some justification to the claim asserted here that Britain would supply the army well. The guns and artillery was probably as good as the German weaponry with which the Boers had rearmed during the build up to the war. Crucially though it wasn’t significantly better, while this cartoon reflects the mistaken belief that the British army would have a technological advantage.

Today's Boer War Cartoon

 It is with a sense of relief that I finished today’s copy of a Tenniel Boer War cartoon. I made yesterday’s copies before having a second laser operation on my eye, and after a night’s sleep it seems as if everything is as it was and I have been able to make a decent enough fist of a sketch. Here it is.

JOHN BULL (TO BOER) – “AS YOU WILL FIGHT, YOU SHALL HAVE
IT. THIS TIME IT’S A FIGHT TO A FINISH.” October 1899

 

This one appeared in October 1899, the year that the war broke out. The picture shows John Bull squaring up to a Boer farmer ( the word Boer itself means farmer). John Bull was/is an allegorical personification of England. Ironically he was created by a Scottish writer, John Arbuthnot, in 1712, to satirise the English nation, but something about the character appealed to the English nation (or an influential part of it) and its view of itself. John Bull was one of three allegorical personification of Britain that Tenniel regularly used. That's Britain, not just England, although one often suspects that for Tenniel, Britain was England. The other two were Britannia, and the British Lion. Britannia he used when trying to show Britain’s compassion and sympathetic aspects – hence his use of the figure in yesterday’s cartoon, Britannia Consolatrix. The British Lion he used to symbolise the might of the British Empire, and he did use it in several of his cartoons regarding the war. John Bull here stands for the solid, dependable qualities of the people of Britain, small c conservative, fair, slow to anger but steadfast in the defence of what he sees to be right.

The title is “Plain English” while beneath this there is the caption :-

“JOHN BULL (TO BOER) – “AS YOU WILL FIGHT, YOU SHALL HAVE IT. THIS TIME IT’S A FIGHT TO A FINISH.”

This needs some explanation. It’s probably best that I start with a slight digression. When I wrote yesterday of the Boer War as an unjust and unnecessary war, this is what I really feel about it. Which does not mean that I’m trying to paint the two Boer Republics as admirable nations. Their attitudes towards black native African nations was awful, for example. But it is not as if the British were motivated to fight in order to ameliorate conditions for native Africans. No, they were motivated by Imperialistic shortsightedness, and led on by the greed of men like Cecil Rhodes. Just my opinion and as always, feel free to disagree. 

So, as a background to the cartoon, Great Britain annexed the two Boer republics in the 1870s. Despite repeated attempts at negotiating a peaceful solutions, Boer representatives were rebuffed time after time, and this led to rebellion and the first Boer War in December 1880. Superior tactics, and a British army that was poorly led and equipped , along with Prime Minister William Gladstone’s sensible refusal to allow the war to escalate into a more costly and wasteful conflict led to the war concluding in March of 1881 and a treaty which led to the reestablishment and independence of the two Boer Republics. So that’s what Tenniel means when he says ‘THIS time’.

Had gold not been discovered in the Transvaal, then the conditions that led to the Second Boer War may never have arisen. In the 1890s, the Uitlanders – a Boer term for foreigners, that is, prospectors and gold miners lured by the gold rush,- chafed at what they saw as the exorbitant taxes they had to pay, bearing in mind that they were ineligible to vote until they had lived there for 14 years. The Boer governments were willing to enter into negotiation with the British government which took up their cause and proved willing to move on this. However the inflexibility of the British convinced them that war was inevitable, even though Transvaal premier Paul Kruger would say that declaring war on the British Empire was like defending yourself against a lion with a pocket knife. So strictly speaking Tenniel was not incorrect to suggest that the Boer republics started the fight – they declared war – but they really were given no choice, despite knowing that their chances of success were limited.

The overall sense of the cartoon, although very much in line with public opinion in Britain at the time, for Tenniel had an instinctive feel for this, is unfair, presenting Britain as a long-suffering injured party. 

Return to the Sketchbook challenge

Yeah, I know. It has actually been several weeks since I last did any drawings at all. Why? Well, if a personal challenge is becoming a chore sometimes you’re just as well giving yourself a little break from it, rather than risk giving it up entirely. That’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it. Still, yesterday I did pick up my pens and my sketchbook. So what have I been doing.

Well, to start with I made 2 sketches of London featuring buses and trams of years gone by. To be honest with you I wasn’t that impressed with the first that I made. The second was better, but took ages. So I decided to fall back on an old favourite and made a copy of a John Tenniel cartoon from Punch. This one depicts Old Father Thames, although I do believe that it is from some time after the Great Stink, bearing in mind that looks like the Embankment.

This morning I thought, I wonder what Tenniel made of the (2^nd) Boer War? Bearing in mind that while I love his skill and artistry, politically I am poles apart from Tenniel, I wasn’t expecting to like what I found that much. So far I have copied two of his cartoons made in 1899 at the outset of the Boer War. The first is called Kruger’s Vision.

Paul Kruger was President of the Transvaal, one of the two Boer Republics. The caption is “What, will the ‘thin red’ line stretch unto the crack of doom?”. This is an adaptation of a quote from Shakespeare’s “Macbeth”. In the play, on his second visit to the witches, he insists that they show him whether Banquo’s descendants will ever rule. At first they refuse, but he insists and they show him a line of kings descended from Banquo, and he asks the question.

In Tenniel’s cartoon, Kruger is not seeing kings, but columns of British and Empire troops, showing him the irresistible might of the forces ranged against him, and also subtly suggesting that Kruger and the Boers are just as doomed as Macbeth, considering the overwhelming weight of numbers able to be brought against them.

What the cartoon and Tenniel ignored was that in 1881, a few years earlier, the same British and Empire army were defeated by the same Boer Republics in the first Boer War, where superior tactics and marksmanship had prevailed, the same superior tactics and marksmanship that would cause huge setbacks to the British and Empire army in the early stages of this second Boer War.

This second cartoon depicts a scene where a troopship in the distance is setting sail for South Africa, and Britannia is consoling a wife and children, whose husband, presumably, is on board the ship. The title is “Britannia Consolatrix” and the caption beneath reads:- ‘I will take care of you! Your man has gone to do his duty – and I will do mine!’ There’s a lot I don’t like about this. Firstly, the idea that it was anyone’s duty to go and fight in South Africa. Even judging by 19^th century standards this was an unjust and unnecessary war.

Then there’s the idea that Britain, represented by the allegorical figure Britannia, would do its duty, and take care of the casualties of war and their families. Now, I will admit that it was in 1901 that pensions were paid to war widows of NCOs and other ranks. But this had not been on the table in 1899 when the cartoon was made. Nor was it very generous when it was made, and it was subject to strict conditions regarding conduct and being of good character. Should a war widow remarry, she would receive a very small sum and the pension would cease.

Even in the 21^st century we see British army veterans having to accept help from charities because of the injuries, mental and physical, that they received in the name of our country which are not catered for by the Ministry of Defence. So you can imagine just how little real help was available to veterans of the Boer War on their return to Britain.