The Transvaal — formally the South African Republic (Dutch: Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek, abbreviated Z.-A. R.) — was the Boer republic established north of the Vaal River, which in the early 1880s became the centre of a celebrated dispute over British suzerainty. Van der Kemp treats the Transvaal question as a structural parallel to the Acheh reservation embedded in the London treaty of 1824, and devotes a substantial appendix (Bijlage 12, noot c) of his monograph to a letter from D. P. Faure to Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain dated 28 May 1899.
The suzerainty dispute, Van der Kemp explains, turned on the question “whether the suzerainty of Great Britain over the Z.-A. R. still exists, or whether it has been abolished by the London Convention” of 1884 (p. 214). The point is presented as directly analogous to the Dutch controversy over Sumatran supremacy: in both cases a clause originally inserted at the last moment — in the Acheh case to satisfy a British qualm about an existing treaty, in the Transvaal case to placate the parliamentary opposition — had subsequently been pressed into service as a substantive title of sovereignty. “The whole question about the denial of our Sumatra-supremacy, because it was not expressly stated, because the Acheh reservation, presented as innocent, was taken up, has been treated in exactly the same way in the famous question of England’s suzerainty over the Transvaal” (p. 214).
Faure’s letter, which Van der Kemp discovered in the Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant of 28 May 1899, supplies a first-hand account of the 1884 negotiations. Faure had been asked by Lord Derby — on the advice of Lord Rosmead (then Sir Hercules Robinson) — to accompany the Transvaal deputation as interpreter. He was thus present at all the conferences between the Boer representatives, led by President Kruger, and the imperial negotiators. According to Faure’s testimony, Robinson told him privately that he could not understand why Kruger was so eager to see suzerainty abolished, since “it really meant nothing,” and that England would in any case never allow the Transvaal to conclude treaties with foreign powers detrimental to British interests. Derby, for his part, resisted inserting an article expressly abrogating suzerainty, because he did not wish to put weapons in the hands of the parliamentary opposition.
The opposition in question had manifested itself publicly during the negotiations in a meeting at the Mansion House in London under the chairmanship of Lord Shaftesbury, at which all the speakers declared against further concessions to the Transvaal (p. 238). Faure’s testimony — corroborated, he notes, by an interview with Lord Rosmead published in the Saturday Review after the latter’s death on 3 November — was that it was “clearly understood and agreed by both contracting parties that H. M.’s suzerainty would be abolished, except to the extent determined in article 4 of the London Convention which was afterwards signed.” The Transvaal deputation left London “perfectly satisfied with the result of their mission, except with regard to the new boundary line” (p. 239).
The episode confirmed, in Van der Kemp’s eyes, a recurring pattern of colonial negotiation with Britain: a clause ostensibly of no importance would be inserted to placate domestic opposition, only to be revived decades later as the foundation of a new claim. The Transvaal parallel is, in this respect, the closing argument of his monograph.
See Also
- South Africa
- Cape of Good Hope
- London Convention on Transvaal
- Suzerainty Question
- Paul Kruger
- D. P. Faure
- Lord Derby
- Sir Hercules Robinson
- Sir Robert Herbert
- Sir Evelyn Ashley
- Lord Shaftesbury
- Mansion House
- Anglo-Dutch Treaty of London 1824
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.