Dr. Jameson's Raid - It's Causes and Consequences (1896)

Publisher's pictorial cream light card wrappers.

180pp. Map of Dr. Jameson's route into the Transvaal opposite title page.

Very old former University of the Witwatersrand bookplate on the verso of the front wrap. Interestingly the bookplate states on the bottom edge that this was a donation to replace books destroyed by the fire at the University on 24 December, 1931 - the famous fire that destroyed the largest part of the Gubbins collection. There is also a small "withdrawn" stamp at the head of the contents page.

'A compilation dealing with the Raid, the despatch of Mr. Chamberlain to President Kruger, dated February 4, 1896, the trials of the Reformers, and of Dr. Jameson and his officers. In a chapter on the "Present State of Affairs in the Transvaal," a letter from a Mr. Robert W. Leitch is reproduced, in which the writer asserts that although the Uitlanders state that they have been seeking for the redress of their grievances for five years, no political meeting had been called during his fourteen months' residence in the country. Previous meetings, it is observed, were characterised by the "arrogant, insolent, and contemptuous spirit " displayed by the Uitlanders, one of whom, in speaking to a large assembly, remarked that Kruger "had the morals of a hypocrite and the manners of a clown." The writer did not deny that there were "gross inequalities " in the Transvaal Government, which was stated to be "bristling on all sides with injustice of the most flagrant character," but he ridicules the idea that the "millionaires" at the head of the Reform movement were actuated by any desire "to pave or make smooth the way of the more humble classes," and asserts that they were seeking their own advantage and their own self-aggrandisement.' - Mendelssohn Vol.1, page 828