The Boer War

Uncaptioned, Western Mail, 3 December 1900

A shadow on the hills

Artist J M Staniforth

The second Boer War as I will demonstrate in my January 2020 course for the Oxford University Department for Continuing Education was ‘the first media war’ in the UK. It reflected several factors, increased adult literacy, the novelty of a large war fought overseas against fellow whites, the advent of mass photography, the advent of large circulation newspapers. It became in press terms, a propaganda war- with the foreign (non-British) press lined up against the imperial aggressor, the British.

I have chosen two cartoons, one British, and one French, to illustrate the use of propaganda whether implicitly or explicitly in the fight to influence public opinion during this war.

The Staniforth cartoon shows two Boer farmer soldiers on horseback peering anxiously behind them at a large shadow appearing in the hills. The shadow which is larger than life is that of Lord Kitchener.

The cartoon is intriguing for the starkness and brevity of the depiction. It is unusual for there to be no caption for a cartoon as where there is a caption, it invariably steers the reader to appreciate better the message contained in the cartoon.

Here it is as though the image of Kitchener is striking enough not to require any further explanation. The Boers are fearful of Kitchener’s imminent arrival to take over running the war from Lord Roberts, given Kitchener’s reputation at Khartoum, and Omdurman.

Kitchener was put in sole charge (he was previously chief of staff, second in charge to Roberts) at the end of November 1900. Roberts himself was sent home towards the end of 1900 having successfully defeated the Boers (so it seemed at the time). Together with Kitchener he had reversed the disasters at Ladysmith Mafeking and Colenso, and had captured Pretoria the capital of Transvaal, one of the key Boer states (together with Orange Free State). The government view was that the war was over; the War Office sent Roberts home. Sensing that public opinion supported the Government’s military exploits the Government opportunistically called a snap General Election. Opponents of the war though growing were ill- organised, and the Government was re-elected. Kitchener was tasked with finishing off the job.

The artist imagines that the Boers will be much afraid of the arrival of Kitchener. His reputation from winning battles against the Sudanese at Omdurman, and avenging Gordon’s death at Khartoum, preceded Kitchener. And Roberts had mentioned him in dispatches for his tactical shrewdness during the 1900 campaign. There is an implicit sense of fulfilment- Kitchener will now finish things off. Little did he and the Government realise how the newly planned guerrilla tactics of the Boers would delay the war for over a year. The Boers, similarly, did not foresee quite how long it would take the British to counter their new tactics.

The cartoon conveys a powerful internal as well as external propaganda message. The internal message is that Kitchener is so powerful his image towers literally over the pesky Boers. The external message is that the British are all powerful and their sheer power (size) will crush the enemy. Staniforth’s prolific output during the Boer War did not represent any specific pro- British propagandistic point of view. Initially unenthusiastic about the prospect of war between Britain and the Boers, he nevertheless supported the war efforts in the early phases. With the end of the conventional military campaign he began to question the tactics used to suppress the guerrilla warfare employed by the Boers. The question then arises about the context of a specific cartoon – should it be viewed on its own, or as part of a series? Staniforth was not unambiguously pro the war- he sympathized with the health and welfare of the troops and offered contemporaneous criticism of some of the consequences of British military actions in late 1901/2.

Le nuage, L’Assiette au Beurre, 28 September 1901 (Artist Jean Veber)

One of the main reasons for choosing this Staniforth image is the link to Jean Veber’s concentration camp issue of the French satirical periodical, L’Assiette au beurre, dated 28 September 1901. This issue vividly brought to life Veber’s view of the Boer War, namely an anti-British litany of cruelties carried out by the occupying British forces on the heroic local Boer people. This is after all at time when public indignation globally was being whipped up by Emily Hobhouse’s reports of the inhumane conditions that Boer civilians were suffering in the concentration camps.

One of the cartoons Le nuage (the cloud) depicts a gigantic image of president Kruger dominating the military parade beneath him. The Tsar was visiting France to observe the traditional autumn manoeuvres as part of a state visit to see the French President Loubet. The parade is at Betheny and whilst this parade was not held for Kruger (but for the Russian Tsar Alexander as befitted the current state of the newly created Franco-Russian military and political alliance) the symbolism is clear. Kruger, in exile after the British captured most of the Boer state territory, arrived in France on his way to permanent exile in the Netherlands. He was welcomed in Marseille by a crowd of 60,000. The inference from the superimposition of the Kruger image over the parade is that the artist was invoking his own salute to the Boers. But coming as it does less than a year after the image in the Western Mail it raises interesting issues.

To what extent did foreign cartoons get published abroad? In the Netherlands for example the satirical periodical, De Gruene (otherwise known as de gruene Amsterdammer) was publishing weekly cartoons of the Boer War taken from numerous European (including British) satirical periodicals. So, cartoons from differing countries were being published freely in other countries, but the extent to which these were broadly shared is unclear. Veber is making surely a conscious stand against Staniforth’s image of Kitchener. The latter’s image fuelled British patriotic fervour against the fearful Boers, so Veber countered this in satirical vein by having an even larger image of Kruger dominating the scene.

President Kruger was by this time on his way to exile in the Netherlands, having seen his state, Transvaal, captured by the British earlier that year. Veber was expressing visually a powerful metaphor of a ‘shadow casting a pall over the proceedings’. Here Veber depicts the ceremonial state parade accorded to the Russian Tsar. This parade reflecting the contemporary Franco-Russian alliance shows five figures passing by the massed French infantry. But towering over them was the figure of Kruger. Whilst Veber represented the commonly held view in France that the Boer was the underdog, French, and for that matter, Russian, foreign policy was decidedly more nuanced. Veber, by superimposing the figure of Kruger over the French love of ceremonial, was questioning the official view of neutrality expressed by authority.

The importance attached by Veber to this image can be gauged by its size (most of the cartoons in the issue were single -sided whilst Le Nuage was a two paged cartoon) and the absence of any text beyond the simple words of the caption Le nuage (the cloud).

The concentration camp issue as it is known by is a stark reminder of the simplicity of propaganda. Veber uses propagandist techniques such as using the enemy’s own words against themselves (juxtaposing the enemy’s words with the ‘truth’ demonstrated in the field- the influence of ‘fake news’). He also pulls at the readers’ emotional heart strings. He depicts Boer women and children suffering in anguish from the physical and emotional consequences of the British use of concentration camps. Veber plays on the concept of large than life characters by depicting the Boers in the form of Kruger as huge sympathetically drawn figures. The British by comparison are depicted unsympathetically- the issue’s back page has a celebrated rude caricature of Edward VII depicted as a French peasant. The original depiction of the most powerful country on Earth’s monarch with a huge naked bottom inflamed British sensitivities and forced the French censor to require L’Assiette to reissue the offending image with a blue skirt covering the King’s posterior (though the intent of the image and of the other images in the issue was left intact).

That cartoonists on one side of the debate saw and reacted to cartoons from the other side is not in debate. In Britain WM and Punch both reacted to the perceived propaganda of foreign cartoons belittling British prowess. And France and Germany to name but two European countries both reacted to British cartoons extolling British military efforts – they attacked the imperialism and bloodthirsty nature of the British military campaign.

Whether Staniforth intended to make such a comment on the power and influence of the British war effort is unclear. The message to his internal audience was positive- the Boers should beware. But did he intend to provoke a comment externally in countries which might pick up his cartoons and print them for a foreign audience? There is no evidence to that effect. On the other hand, Veber consciously turned the Staniforth cartoon to make a different message to his French (and perhaps non-French readers). Whereas Staniforth did not to my knowledge borrow the image of a large shadow, Veber certainly did to make a political point. But was that point solely addressed to his domestic French readers to involve them in his pursuit of pro-Boer policies??

I will end with a quote from David Low, the famous cartoonist of the twentieth century ‘symbolism and analogy are highly subjective…a cartoon that wanders beyond moronic simplicity seems… capable of an infinite number of interpretations.’