ABSTRACT
The Gladstonian emphasis on conciliation was an expression not merely of the G.O.M.'s morality taken to imperial questions, but rather more of a symptom of the Victorian condition in the mid-1880s. The steady growth of the Afrikaner Bond at the Cape, and indeed throughout South Africa in these crucial years 1880–85, merely confirmed the growing political consciousness of the Afrikaners as a people. Kimberley's initial loss of nerve during the Majuba campaign—his desire to make a swift if not inglorious peace—had expressed itself in a more conciliatory approach to the Afrikaner. The threat of an Afrikaner insurrection became more than an isolated local challenge when placed alongside the demands and dangers of the German, Russian, Indian and Irish situations. Victorian policy-makers continued to believe in the dangers of a united Afrikaner people, and of a possible pan-Afrikaner front which could one day deprive the British of their presence in southern Africa.
