Envisaging Canada as “51st State”: A Preoccupation with Invading and Annexing, an American Tradition North of the 49th Parallel

Posted on by Sloane Snodgrasse
International Relations, Military history, Political geography, Regional History

During the time of European settlement of North America there has been at least three attempts to invade Canada by Americans (or by British settlers in what was to become the United States of America). All three ended ignominiously. The first in 1690, part of the Anglo-French conflict known as King William’s War, was a naval expedition by the Massachusetts Bay Colony led by Sir William Phips with the objective of seizing Québec City, the capital of New France. The English bombardment of Québec was an abject failure and Phips’ expedition was forced to return to Boston in smallpox-infested ships on which hundreds perished on the journey [‘King William’s War 1688-1697’, Colonial Society of Massachusetts,  www.colonialsociety.org]<ᵃ>.

1690 assault on Québec City from Massachusetts Bay colonists

The second invasion attempt was in 1775, during the early days of the American Revolutionary War. The idea to invade came from American army colonel (and later defector to the British side) Benedict Arnold, the rationale being to try to induce French Canadians to join the war for independence against their British rulers. The assault on Québec led by Arnold was easily repulsed by a reinforced British garrison and the American patriots reduced to 100 men were forced to retreat with their tails between their legs back to the American side [‘Battle of Québec: When Benedict Arnold Tried to Invade Canada’, Patrick J. Kiger, History, Upd. 29-Sep-2021, www.history.com].

1775 invasion of Québec, brainchild of Benedict Arnold
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The third occurrence was during the War of 1812, when the Americans invaded Canada, urged on by the “war hawks” in Congress who predicted it would an easy victory (in Thomas Jefferson’s words, “a mere matter of marching”)<ᵇ>.Despite making several invasion attempts, via both Upper and Lower Canada, the Americans again emerged empty-handed from their efforts (due to a combination of factors including inept US military leadership and woeful preparedness, and fierce resistance from the allied forces of British ‘Redcoats’ and First Nation warriors). In early 1813 the  Vermont newspaper Green-Mountain Farmer lamented that the Canadian campaign had produced nothing but “disaster, defeat, disgrace, and ruin and death” [‘How U.S. Forces Failed to Conquer Canada 200 Years Ago’, Jesse Greenspan,  History, Upd. 29-Aug-2018, www.history.com].

Guernsey Is stamp, commemoratingMaj-Gen Brock, War of 1812 (Source: rpsc.org)

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In addition there have been other unsanctioned invasions from the US, such as the Patriot War of 1837-38, a series of disjointed raids from the US borderlands in support of the Canadian rebels (Rebellions of 1837). The Americans who participated, many from the Hunters’ Lodges, were motivated both by antagonisms against what they saw as British tyranny and by a sense of adventurism (Washington under Van Buren maintained a policy of neutrality during this episode to safeguard its trade interests with Britain).

Map source: New York Almanack

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After the American Civil War Irish-American Republicans from the Fenian Brotherhood crossed the border, raiding British military strongholds in both the west and east of Canada as part of a stratagem to force the British into negotiation for Irish independence…the most notable of these engagements was the Battle of Ridgeway (1866) in which the Fenians were victorious over inexperienced Canadian volunteers. For the Fenian militia it was a pyrrhic victory, serving only to a spur for the realisation of Canadian confederation rather than to advance the cause of Irish independence<ᶜ> . [‘An Irishman’s Diary on the Battle of Ridgeway, the Fenian Invasion of Canada in 1866’, Brendan Ô Cathaoir, The Irish Times, 01-Jun-2016, www.irishtimes.com].

And when Americans weren’t engaged in the process of actually invading Canada, they were often scheming and planning to annex their northern neighbour. One of the more bizarre instances of this was “War Plan Red”, this 1930 US plan to invade Canada was, unlike earlier ones, supposedly a scheme to get in first! The US military’s predessors to the Pentagon feared that Britain in the years following WWI might launch an invasion of the US from Canada. Canadians in fact had already preempted the US with the military coming up with its own “Defender Scheme No. 1”, a five-pronged attack plan to invade the US (the idea was that Canada would make the initial (surprise) strike on key American cities and then rely on Britain and it’s other dominions to follow up the invasion).  Fortunately, nothing came of either of these plans and they were quietly shelved by the time North Americans managed to crystallise in their minds who the real enemy was (Nazi Germany) [‘The Time the U.S. Almost Went to War With Canada’, Kevin Lippert, Politico Magazine, 21-Jun-2018, www.politico.com].

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Parliament ablaze in Montreal

Another odd manifestation of the tendency toward annexation came from north of the 49th Parallel in the 1840s. In 1846 Britain repealed the Corn Laws<ᵈ> ending preferential colonial trade which provoked a merchant revolt in Canada. Conservative Anglophone businessmen were fearful that without protection for their produce the Canadian economy might plummet into recession,  some of them rioted, burning down the new parliament building in Montreal. 325 of the Tory businessmen, convinced that republican system of the United States would be more profitable to them, signed a document known as the Montreal Annexation Manifesto (1849), calling for the US to annex Canada. This of course never came to reality but the movement’s primary objective,  reciprocal free trade with the US and access to its market, was ultimately realised with the Elgin-Marcy (Reciprocity) Treaty in 1854…by which Canadian lumber and wheat entered the US duty-free, in exchange the Americans were given fishing rights off Canada’s Atlantic coast.

 

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<ᵃ> an unexpected consequence of Phips’ disastrous Québec adventure was Massachusetts’ introduction of the first government-backed paper currency in the American colonies, necessary to pay the near-mutinous troops, promised a share of the loot from Québec’s capture [Goldberg, Dror. “The Massachusetts Paper Money of 1690.” The Journal of Economic History 69, no. 4 (2009): 1092–1106. http://www.jstororg/stable/25654034.]

<ᵇ> once again the American invaders made the error of thinking they would be received as liberators in Canada

<ᶜ> curiously, in this same year (1866) a bill—designed to appeal to American Fenians—was introduced into the US Congress to formally annex “British North America”, but it never passed the House of Reps

<ᵈ> the ‘corn’ laws in the UK encompassed all cereal grain crops

 

Juggling the Double-edged Sword of Late Antiquity Imperial Migration: The Roman Empire’s Mishandling of a 4th Century Gothic Refugee Crisis

Posted on by Sloane Snodgrasse
Inter-ethnic relations, Military history, Regional History

2015 was an apogean year for international refugee influx into Europe, the dislocation of war and the fear of persecution in Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and Eritrea brought more asylum seekers to the continent than any time to that point since WWIIa.The sheer scale of the refugee movements, the tragedy of mass drownings, military interventions and border controls, the hostility of some governments towards the continuous tide of migration, the utter chaos and misery of the refugees’ plight, the whole humanitarian disaster all has echoes from distant history.

⍓ Clash between refugees and Hungarian police (Photo: www.rt.com)

The Huns, movers and shakers in the barbarian lands
The refugee crisis in Europe reminded some observers of a chapter in the declining days of imperial Rome. The catalyst for this Late Antiquity migration story was the emergence of the nomadic and war-like Huns. Leaving their homeland (not known for certain but possibly Kazakhstan in Central Asia) after AD 350, the Huns moved along the Black Sea, engaging and defeating the Vandals, the Alans, the Goths and other Germanic and Slavic peoples that they encountered on their path of destruction. By circa 370 the military success of the Hunnic hordes had forced many of the defeated peoples to migrate west toward the Roman Empire. As a consequence, in 376 a large group of Goths comprising perhaps 100,000 men, women and children from two tribes—the Thervingi and the Greuthungi—suddenly turned up on the banks of the lower Danube River, the boundary of Rome’s eastern imperial reach, fleeing from the Huns. The Goths pleaded with Valens, emperor of the east for sanctuary, pledging their allegiance to the empire. The absorption of ‘barbarians’ within the Empire was an established policy of assimilation practiced by Rome, an initial step on a process of transforming foreigners into Roman citizens, albeit with certain limitations on their rights [‘1,700 years ago, the mismanagement of a migrant crisis cost Rome its empire’, Annalisa Merelli, Quartz, Upd. 09-May-2016, www.qz.com].

⍓ Valens’ numismatic likeness

Receptiob or denego?
After lengthy deliberation Valens made a momentous decision…allowing the Thervingi into the imperial territory in return for loyalty to Constantinople and that they provide infantry for the emperor’s armies. At the same time Valens denied permission to the second group of Goths, the Greuthungi, to enter Roman territory. According to the main source we have for this period, historian Ammianus Marcellinus, Valens thought he had secured himself a great deal, a cheap supply of foreign labour and a boost to the empire’s tax revenue [Dan Jones, Power and Thrones: A New History of the Middle Ages (2021)].  

⍓ Moesia/Danube border, Roman Empire

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Roman border security
Traditionally, the Romans were very efficient at managing the flow of migration within the empire. Rarely using walls, they relied on natural barriers in the landscape such as rivers and mountains. To defuse any potential threats, the foreign tribes were customarily relieved of their weapons, broken up into smaller groupings and sent off to underpopulated regions. Unfortunately for this project, the traditional practices were not implemented. The operation, delegated to two venal Roman officials to coordinate, was a disaster. The two, Lupicinus and his deputy (dux) Maximus, were incompetent, corrupt and exploitative in their duties. The Thervingi were not made to hand over their weapons, nor were they divided into smaller numbers and dispersed to different regions. In their greed the Roman officials allowed too many of the Thervingi to cross the Danube at the same time, with the result that many Goths perished in the river. When it came to settling the Goths, the two officials committed a series of abuses against the new settlers including selling them the desperately needed supplies at massively inflated pricesc .  And to top off the snafu, Lupicinus and Maximus failed to prevent the barred Greuthungi from crossing the Danube illegally by their own means further downstream [‘Immigration: How ancient Rome dealt with the Barbarians at the gate’, Cavan W. Concannon, The Conversation, 13-Feb-2019, www.theconversation.com].

(Image: slidetodoc.com)

Spirally out of hand fast
From there things went from bad to worst between the Romans and the ever more aggrieved Thervingi. Valens tried to eliminate the Thervingi leadership which backfired spectacularly…a riot ensued and their chieftain Fritigern reneged on his allegiance to the emperor, and most dangerously allied with the Greuthungi against the Romans. Valens was faced with “a unified, massive Gothic army, loose and armed in Roman territory” (Concannon).  The increasingly formidable Goths launched a series of revolts and plundered wealthy Thracian villages and estates (Jones).

Blundering into a military catastrophe 
In 378 Emperor Valens, underestimating the strength of the enemy and imprudently declining to wait until reinforcements arrived from the western Roman emperor (his nephew Gratian), engaged a combined army of Goths and Alans (with cavalry) in the Battle of Adrianopled . The battle went badly for the Romans, Valens made tactical errors and the army was outnumbered and outmanoeuvred by the barbarians led by Fritigern, resulting in a crushing total defeate .This time Valens paid for his blunder with his life, along with that of roughly two-thirds of the Roman army. Reverberations from the debacle went deep, both Christian and pagan contemporaries saw it as the beginning of the end of the Roman Empire. For St Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, it signified “the end of all humanity, the end of the world” [Lenski, Noel. “Initium Mali Romano Imperio: Contemporary Reactions to the Battle of Adrianople.” Transactions of the American Philological Association (1974-) 127 (1997): 129–68. https://doi.org/10.2307/284390.]

⍓ Solidus depicting Emperor Theodosius

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The new emperor, Theodosius I, brokered a peace with the Goths in 382, the circumstances after Adrianople compelling him to accept the settlement of the semi-autonomous group of the Thervingi between the Danube River and the Balkan mountains. Within the Roman Empire, the Goths and other barbarians were granted the status of foederati (a federation of client peoples allied by treaty to Rome – in return for certain subsidies and benefits the barbarians were required to provide manpower for military service, eg, as auxiliary mercenary forces to guard the Empire’s frontiers, AKA līmitāneī). At best Theodosius’s pax Gothica was a holding operation, buying the declining Empire time only. The barbarians once inside the imperial borders evolved swiftly into an entrenched force and a growing threat, as the rise of the Visigoths (see note below) and their king, Alaric I, was to demonstrate in the 390s.

 

⍓ Delacroix’s painting of Attila the Hun

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Postscript: The Huns’ invasions of the lands to the south and west, a decisive push to expand its empire, stimulated  the “Great Migration” of peoples, successive waves of migration, raids and rebellions, which weakened the fabric of Roman civilisation, contributing to the eventual collapse of the Roman Empire (AD 410).The Hunnic empire reached its peak in the two decades from 434 when its most famous leader Attila attained power. Under Attila the Huns cut a swathe through Eastern Europe (even invading Gaul), forcing the eastern Roman emperor to agree to pay him an annual tribute of 2,100 pounds of gold in return for peace. Attila died in 453 and bereft of his cohesive and dynamic leadership the Hunnic empire collapsed within six years.

(Image: Historical Atlas of the Mediterranean)

Note: Visigoths vs Ostrogoths
Visigoths was the name ascribed to the western tribes of Germanic Goths, who are thought to have descended from the Thervingi tribe. In the 5th century their sphere of influence extended as far west as the Iberian Peninsula. Ostrogoths is the corresponding name for the eastern tribes of Goths, their antecedents coming from the Greuthungi tribe. From their base north of the Black Sea the Ostrogoths in the 5th century extended their influence into Italy.

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 a 1.3M, escalating rapidly thereafter, by the end of 2016 the numbers had reached 5.2M (‘Refugee crisis in Europe’, www.unrefugees.org

b receptio (Latin) was the Roman term for integrating external groups seeking asylum in the Empire

c even forcing the starving Goths to sell them their children for slavery in return for dog food!

d modern-day Edirne in Turkey

e Rome’s worst military reversal since Cannae and Hannibal (216 BC)

 

 

Woman Behaving Outrageously: Bea Miles, Sydney Larrikin and Eccentric Sui Generis

Posted on by E Curb Nottus
Biographical, Local history, Memorabilia, Popular Culture, Social History
‘Coniston’ Ashfield, Bea’s first home (Source: hafs.org.au)


You’d be hard pressed to come up with a personality that epitomised Sydney eccentricity more than the legendary Bea Miles who died in 1973. When the subject arises even today, so many Sydneysiders of a certain vintage have a Bea Miles anecdote to tell. Either it’s a chance (and sometimes disconcerting) encounter they had as a school kid–usually on inner Sydney public transport–with the larger (and louder) than life character herself, or one recounted to them by their mother or father. Such was her profile in this city that newspapers in the Forties and Fifties claimed that Bea (or ‘Bee’ as she later insisted it be spelt) was “more widely known than the prime minister” of the day. Bea’s popularity was rooted in that honoured tradition of Australian larrikinism, the unusual thing about this was that she was female※.

Early days, the athletic Bea Miles

Born into a wealthy merchant family, young Beatrice Miles was already exhibiting the rebellious nature that made her buck against the straitjacketed proprieties of conservative Sydney (and specifically North Shore) society, when the illness befell her that would profoundly change her forever. Contracting Encephalitis Lethargica at 21, Bea over time changed physically from a tall, trim and athletic young woman to a seriously overweight, matronly-looking woman.

(Photo: Daily Tele)

Going rogue
More immediately and crucially, Bea underwent a complete personality change, becoming totally disruptive, hyper-kinetic, manic and basically uncontrollable§. When her father couldn’t cope any more with her behaviour he had her committed to an asylum, she was shuffled around between psyche facilities in Gladesville, Kenmore (Goulburn) and Callan Park. After her last escape attempt a Sydney tabloid, Smith’s Weekly, ran a story which exposed Bea’s dire plight in the psychiatric gulag of Callan Park (with sensationalised headline “Mad House Mystery of Beautiful Sydney Girl”) which helped secure her release.

No fixed address
Unable to return to the family home in St Ives, Bea had a sojourn in Sydney’s Kings Cross where she mixed happily with the locale’s Bohemian artists and writers. After this she lived rough in Sydney, finding shelter where she could – a Rushcutters Bay stormwater drain, a cave above a Sydney beach, a park bench opposite Central Station, the steps of a church rectory, etc. Ratbags author Keith Dunstan called her “very nearly the first drop-out, the first hippie”.


Bea with men of the press, circa 1946

Enemy of authority, laws and law-enforcers, habitually disruptive public presence
Bea revelled in being controversial and confrontational, especially towards political and social authorities…abusing police, doctors and magistrates came instinctually to her, and she certainly had plenty of practice at it! By her own (not necessarily reliable) count she was “falsely convicted 195 times, fairly 100 times”…Bea defiantly refused to pay for public transport or to enter cinemas. Other offences earning her the ire of the law included swearing in public and vagrancy.


Bea’s recital services board

Bea Miles, literary orator
Bea loved pulling stunts and making a spectacle of herself, some she did for the heck of it—like riding a man’s push bike through the streets while wearing a formal evening dress—other stunts were to earn money after her grandmother’s inheritance allowance dried up – on the street she would hold a sign up to passing punters advertising her declamatory services, for a set “schedule of fees” she would verbatim quote passages from Shakespeare.


Main Reading Room, NSW State Library (Flickr)

Rogue scholar
Under the rough edges of Bea’s (very) public persona, was a formidable intellect. She had excelled at school (Abbotsleigh Girls) and gained admission to medicine at Sydney University. In her post-illness nomadic years, the “wayward waif” as one article called her, never held a formal job and generally gave her occupation as ‘student’. Bea was a habitué of public libraries, especially the State Library in Macquarie Street…a life-long voracious reader and produced her own collection of writings, such as “Dictionary by a Bitch”φ.


Bea in the driving seat? (Photo: Daily Telegraph)

Scourge of taxis
The stunts Bea is best remembered and most notorious for involved her with taxis and their drivers. Her propensity for refusing to pay for taxi trips and commandeering taxis to demand that they take her to vastly distant locations has gone into folklore. Legendary instances of this were the 19-day taxi trip she took to Perth (fortunately for the female cabbie involved Bea paid her £600 for the assignment), as well as trips to Broken Hill via Melbourne and Adelaide). As is the way with legendary public figures, some of her outrageous taxi exploits were more urban myths than actual events, like the tale that used to circulate of Bea taking a taxi to Broken Hill and then on approaching the outskirts of the town she was supposed to have done a runner leaving the poor hapless driver fleeced of his massive fare. Bea’s most dramatic encounter with a cab, one that did happen, saw her respond to the driver’s refusal to take her by wrenching the door completely off the taxi’s hinges (she was a big woman!). This legendary “Bea-act” landed her in Long Bay Gaol for a spell (and a rest).


“Bee in charcoal”, Roderick Shaw (Source: portrait.gov.au)

Terror of trams
Tram drivers didn’t escape the attentions of Bea either…the popular press labelled her the “Terror of Trams” and on at least one occasion her antics flirted with real danger as one tram driver who refused to move until Bea paid the fare discovered. Bea, never one to back down, hijacked the tram, seizing its controls and piloted it to Bondi, even stopping to pick up passengers on route.

The Bea Miles “signature look”: The original “bag lady” apparel
Bea’s unorthodox ways made her a Sydney institution and an unmissable sight. Her irregular and unkempt mode of dress made her readily recognisable wherever she went…Bea’s regular ‘outfit’ described by the Sydney Morning Herald as a “down-at-heel uniform” of tennis shoes, white (or was it green) tennis sun visor and ever more scruffy overcoat. Always pinned to the overcoat’s lapel was a £5 note (Bea’s idea of countering any notion the police might get about arresting her for vagrancy).

Years of homeless living, sleeping rough, took their toll on Bea and in 1964 she was taken in by the Little Sisters of the Poor Home for the Aged in Randwick. Those last nine years of her life allowed Bea a clean, dry bed and gave the inveterate bookworm that she was joyous access to another library (borrowing an average of 14 books a week from the Randwick branch library).


(Sydney Morning Herald)

Footnote: Deviating from the mainstream, inheriting some of her father’s idiosyncrasies
Despite the love-hate conflict with her father and his eventual disowning of her, Bea gained quite a number of her radical and non-conformist predispositions and beliefs from him. In his own right, wealthy businessman William J Miles was also an individualist and an eccentric. Miles was a rationalist and a secularist (Bea herself was a staunchly committed atheist❡)… from him she also got her love of Shakespeare and her anti-British imperialist/strident Australian patriotism). In the late 1930s Miles’ odd brand of political extremism found its voice in The Publicist. Funded and edited by Miles, the journal advocated fascism (curiously in tandem with Aboriginal rights), wholeheartedly embracing German Nazism and anti-Semitism𝄢. Bea endorsed his pro-Aboriginal and anti-British stand but never enunciated far-right or racist sentiments during her life, although at the end she did express some views that inferred the supremacy of the “white race”.

♾♾♾♾♾♾♾♾♾♾♾♾♾♾

※ one of precious few non-male Aussie public larrikins, Dawn Fraser also comes to mind

§ though she still retained her sharpness of intellect afterwards

until she was barred from the library in the late 1950s for being a nuisance (What, Bea?!? Never!)

φ example of an entry, “Duty: an excuse for showing unwarranted interference in somebody else’s business”

❡ there’s some dispute over whether her deathbed conversion to Catholicism was genuine or merely Bea’s way of thanking the church for taking her in off the streets in her twilight years

𝄢 it was a forerunner of the Australia First Movement. William’s dalliance with fascism prompted Cunneen’s assessment that, “with dangerous obsessions and money to spend, Miles represented an unstable element in Australian society”

ℼ ℼ~ ℼ ℼ~ ℼ ℼ

Articles and websites consulted:

Chris Cunneen, ‘Miles, William John (1871–1942)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/miles-william-john-7576/text13225, published first in hardcopy 1986, accessed online 27 October 2021.

Judith Allen, ‘Miles, Beatrice (Bea) (1902–1973)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/miles-beatrice-bea-7573/text13219, published first in hardcopy 1986, accessed online 27 October 2021.

Pip Wilson, ‘Bee Miles One of Sydney’s favourite individualists’, Wilson’s Almanac, 18-Feb-2012, web.archive.org

Robert Kaplan, ‘Miles From Her Father’, Quadrant, 07-Aug-2016, http://quadrant.org.au

Imperial Games of Cricket and War: South Africa v England, 1901

Posted on by Bonza Rottwheeler
International Relations, Leisure activities, Military history, Social History, Society & Culture, Sport, Sports history
1900 map of SA (Source: fruugoaustralia.com)

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Between 1899 and 1902 Britain and the Afrikaner republics of Transvaal and Orange Free State were locked in conflict in the Second South African War, more commonly known as the Boer War (or more accurately the Second Anglo-Boer War). With the overconfident British failing to secure the expected quick victory over the Boers’ “citizen army”, the war dragged on into a long guerrilla engagement. In 1901, in the middle of the conflict in South Africa, of all things a cricket team from South Africa visited England and Ireland to take part in a series of international matches. How did this sporting incongruity take place while the two countries were engaged in a controversial, bitterly fought and increasingly divisive war?

Lord Hawke’s MCC tourists to SA 1898-99

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Making it happen: JD Logan, the “Squire of the Southern Karoo”
In fact, the tour of Britain had been originally meant to occur in 1900ⓐ, but was cancelled due to the outbreak of hostilities, understandably enough. At this point in stepped Cape Province-based expat entrepreneur and cricket patron James Douglas Logan with his (long-cherished) plan to organise a new tour. Logan negotiated with the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) through the highly influential Lord Hawke, who managed to persuade the MCC to give the tour the green light. Despite the war still very much raging and the outcome far from decided, it was rescheduled for the following year. The announcement for the tour to take place in 1901 unleased opposition and misgivings from within both countries.

Newspaper cartoon of James Logan (Source: hermanus-history-society.co.za)

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The South African press lambasted the team chosen–a mix of “socialite-gentleman” cricketers (including Logan’s own son who had never played first-class cricket!) and more skilful players—for being overall well below par. Moreover, the press criticised the private venture by the “Laird of Matjiesfontein” as being not legitimate because the touring players predominantly from the Cape Colony had not been officially selected by the South African Cricket Union (which had suspended the Currie Cup and disbanded with the onset of war) {Sport Past and Present in South Africa: Trans(forming) the Nation, Scarlett Cornelissen, Albert Grindingh (Eds.), (contributor Dean Allen) 2013; Peter Wynn Thomas, The Complete History of Cricket Tours At Home and Abroad, 1989}.

Sherlock’s creator: make war, not cricket
From the host country, probably the most vociferous critic was world renowned author (and cricket fan and amateur player) Arthur Conan Doyle. Conan Doyle, in the forefront of countering the anti-war propaganda within the British homeland with his own pro-war propaganda, was incensed that a team of predominantly English-speaking cricketers should be coming to Britain to play when they should be stay in South Africa and fight the Boers. The vexed author of Sherlock Holmes called it “a stain on their manhood” (Cornelissen, Grindingh).

Conan Doyle in cricket gear (Source: arthur-conan-doyle.com)

Despite the dissenting voices, what ultimately clinched it for Logan’s private tour was the MCC and the major English county clubs’ agreeing to give the tour matches first-class status. Even then there were second thoughts on the South Africa side and a suggestion made that the tour should not go ahead…this was scotched by the MCC who insisted it proceed to prevent the dislocation of the 1901 English season (Cornelissen, Grindingh).

Jimmy Sinclair (Photo: Cricket Weekly Record)

The cricket tour 🏏
Logan’s 14-man team was predominantly Uitlanders (‘foreigners’, immigrants, mainly British in composition but from other countries as well)…it included one Afrikaner cricketer Johannes Kotze who proved one of the more accomplished performers. The South Africans’ ‘gun’ batsman coming in to the tour was JH Sinclair, however his batting never really got going on the tour (unlike his bowling which was quite effective). Sinclair had been captured by the Boers but escaped in time to make the trip to Britain. Maitland Hathorn was the most successful “willow-wielder” on the tour (827 runs, average 35.95). Overall the team performed moderately though it did beat five of the major counties and tied one. Financially, Logan lost a substantial sum on the venture.

1901 Sth African tourists (Source: ebay.com)
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Cricket’s special role serving the Empire
To the English, cricket, the game they invented, was the quintessential sport, and an essential companion of empire building. This was the “golden age“ of cricket (1895-1914) with WG Grace’s shadow still very much dominating the sportⓑ. The Victorians revered cricket as an established institution, it was integral to the ethos of the English gentleman and a sign of his cultural supremacy. Moreover cricket was considered educative, part of an Englishman’s training. Spreading the game to the Empire, to Australasia, the West Indies, the Indian Sub-continent and Southern Africa, symbolised the “civilising mission of the Englishman abroad”. Participation in cricket was equated with the civility of English Victorian society and an endorsement of Anglo-Saxon values. Cricket tours by the MCC, the sport’s governing body in England, stimulated the colonies‘ interest in the English game, but its deeper purpose was to “promote imperial ideology”, extolling the virtues of allegiance to Britain, Empire and patriotic duty {Dean Allen, Empire, War and Cricket in South Africa, Logan of Matjiesfontein, 2015}. Allen’s thesis is that cricket was injected by the English ruling classes into South Africa “as much for political and propagandistic reasons as for sporting ones”

War an instrument of empire with cricket the mentor
The late Victorians affirmed that “manly games” were integral to training for life. Above all the ‘school’ of cricket taught lessons of “discipline, self-abnegation, a sense of fair play and team-work”, it built character. Britain’s willingness to engage in the 1899 War to enlarge the Empire—the scramble for colonies in Africa in competition with Germany and France—brought the cricketing fraternity squarely into the frame. Cricketers, to the English mind, were “made of the right stuff” for mortal combat, they were up for martial challenges (Donaldson, Peter (2017) ‘We are having a very enjoyable game’: Britain, sport and the South African War, 1899-1902. War in History, 25(1). ISSN 0968-3445). Many cricketers enlisted in the South African War (some former teammates found themselves on opposing sides), and there were cricketing casualties in the conflict {Dean Allen (2005) ‘Bats and Bayonets’: Cricket and the Anglo-Boer War, 1899–1902, Sport in History, 25:1, 17-40, DOI: 10.1080/17460260500073033}, including some fine players of the day like Anglo-Australian test bowling ace JJ Ferris.

Australian troops playing cricket at the front in SA (Photo: awm.org.au)
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Endnote: Pioneering South African XI on the Sub-continent
An unintended co-occurrence of the Boer War was that it led to the staging of the first cricket match between South Africans and local cricketers on Sub-continent soil, 90 years before Apartheid sport ended in South Africa. ‘Representing’ South Africa were Afrikaner POWs incarcerated in Ceylon…Diyatalawa Camp v Colts XI, Nondescripts Club ground, Colombo 1901. The local XI won! {‘The First South Africa. side to play in the sub-continent: Boer Prisoners of War in 1901’, CricketMash, 4-Jul-2020, www.cricmash.com}.

Mafeking reported in cricketing terms (source: independentaustralia.net)
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Postscript: 1899 South African War, cricket as antidote to physical and moral degeneration
The poor health of many Boer War recruits and Britain’s early reversals in the war added weight to prevailing concerns about national and ‘racial’ degeneration {Robb, George. “The Way of All Flesh: Degeneration, Eugenics, and the Gospel of Free Love.” Journal of the History of Sexuality, vol. 6, no. 4, University of Texas Press, 1996, pp. 589–603, http://www.jstor.org/stable/4617222.} Some commentators of the day, bemoaning the ”neglect of an active athleticism“, called for more playing fields as an antidote to the decline of young working class men, so that they could be the beneficiaries of the ”cricket way of making honest and healthy Englishmen” {Anthony Bateman, Cricket, Literature and Culture: Symbolising the Nation, Destabilising Empire, 2016}.

𓁾𓁽𓁾𓁽𓁾𓁽𓁾𓁽𓁾𓁽𓁾𓁽𓁾𓁽

ⓐ the English MCC side had just concluded their own tour of South Africa in April 1899, just six months before the war commenced
ⓑ Dr Grace loomed larger than life in cricket during this period as the sport’s first genuine superstar