Edward Henry Stanley, 15th Earl of Derby (1826–1893) — known for most of his political life as Lord Stanley and, after 1869, as Lord Derby — was a senior British Liberal (later Liberal Unionist) statesman who served twice as Foreign Secretary and, in the early 1880s, as Secretary of State for the Colonies. In the final appendix of Van der Kemp’s article on the Acheh agreement of 1819 he appears in his capacity as Colonial Secretary who, in 1883, received the Transvaal deputation and presided — together with Sir Hercules Robinson and Sir Robert Herbert — over the conferences that produced the London Convention of 1884.
The Transvaal deputation of 1883
When, in 1883, the British government agreed to receive a deputation from the South African Republic (Transvaal), Lord Derby — acting on the advice of Sir Hercules Robinson, later Lord Rosmead — asked D. P. Faure to accompany the deputation and to serve as its interpreter. Faure was thus present at all the conferences between the Transvaal representatives and those of the imperial government. The British side consisted of Lord Derby, Sir Robert Herbert and Sir Hercules Robinson; Sir Evelyn Ashley was, Faure believed, present on one or two occasions.
The object of the deputation was to obtain the removal of certain grievances; the most painful of these, in the eyes of the Transvaal representatives, was British suzerainty. Lord Derby and Sir Hercules Robinson, by contrast, regarded the matter as one of little substance. As Faure recalled, Lord Derby observed at one of the conferences that, with regard to suzerainty, the deputation was “making a mountain out of a molehill”. He resisted, however, the insertion in the new convention of an article explicitly repealing Britain’s suzerain rights, on the ground that he had no wish to put weapons into the hands of the parliamentary opposition that might be used to attack the ministry. The opposition was in fact strong: at the very time the conferences were sitting, a public meeting had been held at the Mansion House under the chairmanship of Lord Shaftesbury, at which all the speakers had declared against any further concessions to the Transvaal.
The convention of 1884
Despite Lord Derby’s caution, the result of the conferences was, in Faure’s testimony, that both parties clearly understood and agreed that Britain’s suzerainty would be abolished, except to the extent provided in Article 4 of the London Convention that was afterwards signed. The Transvaal deputation left London fully satisfied with the outcome of its mission, except with regard to the new frontier line. Lord Derby’s part in the negotiation was, therefore, to allow the substance of suzerainty to be withdrawn while keeping its name out of the convention — a piece of diplomatic ambiguity that was to bear bitter fruit in the Second Boer War.
Significance for Acheh studies
Van der Kemp reproduces Faure’s testimony at length because it offers a striking parallel to the Dutch experience with the treaty of 1824. In both cases — the Acheh reservation in 1824 and the omission of the word “suzerainty” in 1884 — a stipulation originally “proposed as of no significance” was later treated by the stronger party as decisive of the legal position. Lord Derby’s role in this structural parallel is that of the British statesman who, in a private conference, allowed a weaker party to believe that it had obtained the substance of its grievance, while carefully declining to record that belief in the text of the treaty. He thus stands in Van der Kemp’s argument as the late-nineteenth-century analogue to those British plenipotentiaries of 1824 who, by couching the Acheh reservation in an exchanged note rather than in the body of the treaty, made possible Palmerston’s later restrictive construction.
See Also
- Sir Hercules Robinson
- Sir Robert Herbert
- Sir Evelyn Ashley
- D. P. Faure
- London Convention on Transvaal (1884)
- Anglo-Dutch Treaty of London (1824)
- P. H. van der Kemp
Source
Raffles’ Atjeh-overeenkomst van 1819, by P. H. van der Kemp, in Bijdragen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch-Indië, 6e Volgr., Deel VII (1900), pp. 159-239. Universiteitsbibliotheek Vrije Universiteit, LS.08781.
Edward Henry Stanley, 15th Earl of Derby (1826–1893) — known for most of his political life as Lord Stanley and, after 1869, as Lord Derby — was a senior British Liberal (later Liberal Unionist) statesman who served twice as Foreign Secretary and, in the early 1880s, as Secretary of State for the Colonies. In the final appendix of Van der Kemp’s article on the Acheh agreement of 1819 he appears in his capacity as Colonial Secretary who, in 1883, received the Transvaal deputation and presided — together with Sir Hercules Robinson and Sir Robert Herbert — over the conferences that produced the London Convention of 1884.
The Transvaal deputation of 1883
When, in 1883, the British government agreed to receive a deputation from the South African Republic (Transvaal), Lord Derby — acting on the advice of Sir Hercules Robinson, later Lord Rosmead — asked D. P. Faure to accompany the deputation and to serve as its interpreter. Faure was thus present at all the conferences between the Transvaal representatives and those of the imperial government. The British side consisted of Lord Derby, Sir Robert Herbert and Sir Hercules Robinson; Sir Evelyn Ashley was, Faure believed, present on one or two occasions.
The object of the deputation was to obtain the removal of certain grievances; the most painful of these, in the eyes of the Transvaal representatives, was British suzerainty. Lord Derby and Sir Hercules Robinson, by contrast, regarded the matter as one of little substance. As Faure recalled, Lord Derby observed at one of the conferences that, with regard to suzerainty, the deputation was “making a mountain out of a molehill”. He resisted, however, the insertion in the new convention of an article explicitly repealing Britain’s suzerain rights, on the ground that he had no wish to put weapons into the hands of the parliamentary opposition that might be used to attack the ministry. The opposition was in fact strong: at the very time the conferences were sitting, a public meeting had been held at the Mansion House under the chairmanship of Lord Shaftesbury, at which all the speakers had declared against any further concessions to the Transvaal.
The convention of 1884
Despite Lord Derby’s caution, the result of the conferences was, in Faure’s testimony, that both parties clearly understood and agreed that Britain’s suzerainty would be abolished, except to the extent provided in Article 4 of the London Convention that was afterwards signed. The Transvaal deputation left London fully satisfied with the outcome of its mission, except with regard to the new frontier line. Lord Derby’s part in the negotiation was, therefore, to allow the substance of suzerainty to be withdrawn while keeping its name out of the convention — a piece of diplomatic ambiguity that was to bear bitter fruit in the Second Boer War.
Significance for Acheh studies
Van der Kemp reproduces Faure’s testimony at length because it offers a striking parallel to the Dutch experience with the treaty of 1824. In both cases — the Acheh reservation in 1824 and the omission of the word “suzerainty” in 1884 — a stipulation originally “proposed as of no significance” was later treated by the stronger party as decisive of the legal position. Lord Derby’s role in this structural parallel is that of the British statesman who, in a private conference, allowed a weaker party to believe that it had obtained the substance of its grievance, while carefully declining to record that belief in the text of the treaty. He thus stands in Van der Kemp’s argument as the late-nineteenth-century analogue to those British plenipotentiaries of 1824 who, by couching the Acheh reservation in an exchanged note rather than in the body of the treaty, made possible Palmerston’s later restrictive construction.
See Also
- Sir Hercules Robinson
- Sir Robert Herbert
- Sir Evelyn Ashley
- D. P. Faure
- London Convention on Transvaal (1884)
- Anglo-Dutch Treaty of London (1824)
- P. H. van der Kemp
Source
Raffles’ Atjeh-overeenkomst van 1819, by P. H. van der Kemp, in Bijdragen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch-Indië, 6e Volgr., Deel VII (1900), pp. 159-239. Universiteitsbibliotheek Vrije Universiteit, LS.08781.