ABSTRACT
The prime minister of the Cape Colony in South Africa, Cecil Rhodes, conspired with his friend, the South African Company’s administrator for Rhodesia, Dr Leander Starr Jameson, to attack the Boer republic of the Transvaal. The attack was planned to coincide with a ‘spontaneous’ rising of the (English) ‘Uitlanders’ in the Transvaal. Although the rising failed to materialize, Jameson launched his famous raid on 29 December 1895. His force was captured by the Boers and forced to surrender on 2 January 1896. The kaiser the next day despatched a telegram congratulating Kruger on his victory which infuriated both the British government and public opinion.
