ABSTRACT
The January 1, 1896, issue of Vorwans carried a report dated Pretoria (Transvaal), December 31: Approximately 800 armed men of the Chartered Company had invaded the Transvaal with six Maxim guns and other cannon, headed for Johannesburg; President Kruger had ordered that they be stopped and had called on the Boers to defend their homeland. Ominously, the report concluded that conflict seemed virtually inevitable. Later Vorwans added that the band was led by a Dr. Jameson but that both Cecil Rhodes and the British government denied responsibility. The Boers defeated Jameson and his men on January 2; and on January 3 Emperor Wilhelm II telegrammed President Kruger,
I sincerely congratulate you that without needing to appeal for help from friendly powers you and your people were able through your own strength to re-establish the peace in the face of the armed hoards which had broken into your country as disturbers of the peace and were able to guard the independence of your country against foreign attack. 1
No doubt the thought furthest from the minds of both Jameson and Wilhelm II was the contribution they were making to the history of Marxist theory. Yet, Jameson's raid and Wilhelm D's "Kruger Telegram" played significant roles in socialist intellectual history between Engels's death and the Revisionist Controversy. They were among several major political crises of 1896, the discussion of which produced sharp differences between Kautsky and Bernstein on the one hand and Liebknecht and the SDF on the other. The debates brought Kautsky, Bernstein, and Rosa Luxemburg to develop ideas which figured prominently in the altercation beginning in January 1898.
