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.