The American Historical Review/Volume 23/Reviews of Books/General Botha

by Wallace Notestein

 

General Botha: the Career and the Man. By Harold Spender. (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company. 1916. Pp. 348. $2.50.)

This is a biography begotten of the war. Useful because the first narrative of Botha's career and because written by one who has known Botha and his friends for a long time, it is nevertheless not a significant addition to the literature of South African history. Mr. Spender has set out to make familiar to the public a man whose services to the British Empire deserve fullest appreciation. He has handled a considerable body of sources, and he has evidently been given opportunities to consult with those public men who have had to do with South Africa, opportunities that should give his work authority. Yet there are indications of hurry and carelessness which impair the value of the book. That part of the biography which I have been able to test by the sources, the part dealing with the South African War and the events immediately following, contains slight inaccuracies and misstatements, most of them the result less of a want of knowledge than of pains. The worst slip is the confusion of the battle of Diamond Hill with that of Berg-en-dal.

The author is too sketchy. Never economical of words, he wants space, nevertheless, to tell us what we would like to know most. Botha's schemes of attack, his gift of holding Boer soldiers, each inclined to go his own way, to one purpose, and of organizing stubborn retreats—such matters he fails to bring into clear relief. The story of Spion Kop is so told that we miss essential and characteristic features. Botha's most signal victories he owed as much to the stupidity of his adversaries as to his own strategy, a fact Mr. Spender blinks. He also fails to recognize Botha's mistakes and indiscretions. The reader might suppose that Botha's military conclusions had never been at fault; he is told nothing of Botha's errors in judgment on his European mission after the war.

The latter part of the work seems to be much better. Certainly the narrative of events from 1906 to 1914 embodies much not so easily found elsewhere. The author has used parliamentary reports, South African newspapers, memoirs, and private information to good effect. The story of Botha's work as premier of the Transvaal, of his part in shaping the Union, of his policies as premier of South Africa, of his handling of the Hertzog split and of the labor crisis, of his quick suppression of the rebellion of 1914, and of his swift invasion of German Southwest Africa is well told. The twistings and involutions of South African politics are straightened out in workmanlike fashion. It becomes easier to account for the Boer support of Britain in 1914. That support was the outcome of the policy of a man of great natural shrewdness and remarkable capacity for growth, who not only mastered in a few years the ins and outs of the English party system and the duties of party leadership, but also caught the conception of British imperialism. It may be that the author gives Botha more than his due, and it is probable that he has interpreted South African politics from the standpoint of a watcher at Westminster. He has drawn a great man, whose policy in the last two years is the finest tribute to imperialism—of the Liberal kind.

Wallace Notestein.