Un Siècle d’Injustice

Publié sous les auspices de F. W. Reitz, Sécretaire d'État de la Republique Sud-Africaine (A Century of Wrong: published under the auspices of FW Reitz, Secretary of State of the South African Republic)

1st French Edition, 1900; Imprimerie Paul Dupont, Paris. Octavo, (21.5 x 13.5 cm), 95 +1 pp. Buff wraps with black titles to front.

At the advent of the South African War (Second Anglo-Boer War), F.W. Reitz, in his capacity of State Secretary of the South African Republic, published an overview of Anglo-Boer relations in the nineteenth century in Dutch, under the title ‘Eene Eeuw van Onrecht’. The book was an important propaganda instrument against the British.

The actual authorship of the book is unclear. The second Dutch edition of the book carried the text 'Op last van den staatssekretaris der Z.A.R., F.W. Reitz' ('By order of the State Secretary of the S.A.R., F.W. Reitz'). J.C. Smuts is indicated as author, but probably only edited the introduction and the end of the book, in collaboration with the historian E.J.P. Jorissen. The rest of the text was probably prepared by J. de Villiers Roos.

In 1900, translations appeared in French, German and English.

Francis William Reitz, Jr. (Swellendam, 5 October 1844 – Cape Town, 27 March 1934) was a South African lawyer, politician, statesman, publicist and poet, member of parliament of the Cape Colony, Chief Justice and fifth State President of the Orange Free State, State Secretary of the South African Republic at the time of the Second Boer War, and the first president of the Senate of the Union of South Africa.

Trained as a lawyer in Cape Town and London, Reitz started off in law practice and diamond prospecting before being appointed Chief Justice of the Orange Free State. Here he played an important role in the modernisation of the legal system and the state's administrative organisation. He was a popular personality, both for his politics and his openness. When State President Brand suddenly died in 1888, Reitz won the presidential elections unopposed. After being re-elected in 1895, subsequently making a trip to Europe, Reitz fell seriously ill, and had to retire. In 1898, now recovered, he was appointed State Secretary of the South African Republic, and became a leading Afrikaner political figure during the Second Boer War.

Reluctant to shift allegiance to the British, Reitz went into voluntary exile after the war ended. Several years later he returned to South Africa and set up a law practice in Pretoria. In the late 1900s he became involved in politics once more, and upon the declaration of the Union of South Africa in 1910, Reitz was chosen the first president of the Senate. Reitz was an important figure in Afrikaner cultural life during most of his life, especially through his poems and other publications.

Condition: Wraps split at spine with chips to edges. Text Block very good.