ABSTRACT
The time-lag, between Whitehall thinking and the local reality in the Boer states, was to bedevil policy and the policy-makers. The Sand River Convention was not negotiated with elected representatives of the Transvaal, but with a self-appointed group of Boers. Professor's Macmillan's classic study, Bantu, Boer and Briton, has chronicled these courageous attempts of extending the new British liberalism of the Wilberforce era to the Cape. In southern Africa, as in Ireland, there was soon to begin a revolt on the part of the Afrikaner people which threatened to be as bitter and costly as the Irish problem. A re-examination of the sources provides surprisingly new, yet cogent answers, to the traditional if basic questions of 'how' and 'when' the Victorians lost their initiative to manipulate, at will, local events in southern Africa. The natural inclination of the Victorians was to abandon the troublesome dilemma of maintaining peace and authority in southern Africa.
