An Irregular Corps In Matabeleland

Herbert Charles Onslow Plumer, 1st Viscount Plumer, (1857 - 1932) was a British Army officer. He went to Southern Rhodesia in 1896 to disarm the local police force following the Jameson Raid and then later that year returned there to command the Matabele Relief Force during the Second Matabele War. Matabeleland is a region in Zimbabwe in Southern Africa. In March 1896, the Ndebele revolted against the authority of the British South Africa Company in what is now celebrated in Zimbabwe as the First Chimurenga, i.e., First War of Independence. Mlimo, the Ndebele spiritual/religious leader, is credited with fomenting much of the anger that led to this confrontation. He convinced the Ndebele that the white settlers (almost 4,000 strong by then) were responsible for the drought, locust plagues and the cattle disease rinderpest ravaging the country at the time. "Mlimo's call to battle was well-timed. Only a few months earlier, the British South Africa Company's Administrator General for Matabeleland, Leander Starr Jameson, had sent most of his troops and armaments to fight the Transvaal Republic in the ill-fated Jameson Raid. This left the country's security in disarray. In June 1896, the Shona too joined the war, but they stayed mostly on the defensive. The British would immediately send troops to battle the Ndebele and the Shona ... 'An Irregular Corps in Matabeleland ' is the title of a book by Colonel Plumer. In the form of reminiscences, the work is practically a history of the Matabele campaign. Plumer writes: "THE news which was flashed down from Bulawayo at the latter part of March, 1896, that the Matabele had risen in revolt against the authority of the British South Africa Company, and had expressed their determination to exterminate all the white settlers in the country, caused the utmost consternation, not only throughout South Africa, but in England; and, indeed, it was hardly possible to exaggerate the gravity of the situation. The picture of the small population in that country, among whom were many women and children, exposed to the fanatical fury of a tribe, famed for their ferocities and cruelties, with the long stretch of over 500 miles between them and the nearest place from which reinforcements could be sent, was horrible to contemplate; and the anxiety as to whether, with their limited resources of men and arms, they would be able to hold out until those reinforcements arrived was proportionally intense...."

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This volume deals with the conquest and colonization of Zimbabwe and the establishment of Southern Rhodesia, from the beginnings of British involvement in Bechuanaland to the death of Cecil Rhodes. Its emphasis is on the white invaders and its chief concern is white individuals, their motives, actions, and influence on events. The British South Africa Company and the irregularity of its financial and political operations are dealt with in detail. Keppel-Jones also discusses the development in the midst of the indigenous population of an alien white society and state, from their crude beginnings to their emergence in a form still recognizable today. The reader is led to conclude that by 1902 Southern Rhodesia was already set on the road that would lead to the upheavals of the second half of the twentieth-century. The author examines the racial consciousness and prejudice of the white society and addresses an important question: why did the imperial government grant a royal charter to the BSA Company? The facts show conclusively that the imperial government had little interest in Central Africa or care for its fate except when foreign competition appeared. Keppel-Jones also reveals the important role played by black troops employed by the Company in suppressing the rebellions of 1896-7. For opposite reasons, neither blacks nor whites have been willing to recognize this; on the other hand the habit of the 'men-on-the-spot' of making and carrying out decisions without regard to their superiors in London is a commonplace of imperial history. One of the main themes of the book is the tension between the unofficial imperialists, straining at the leash, and the Colonial Office, struggling to hold them back. Rhodes and Rhodesia is based on extensive use of public records, mainly in the Public Record Office, London, and the National Archives of Zimbabwe, of collections of private papers, and of contemporary published works. Arthur Keppel-Jones is professor emeritus of history at Queen's University.

"During the century 1850-1950 Vancouver Island attracted Imperial officers and other Imperials from India, the British Isles, and elsewhere in the Empire. Victoria was the main British port on the north-west Pacific Coast for forty years before the city of Vancouver was founded in 1886 to be the coastal terminus of the Canadian Pacific Railway. These two coastal cities were historically and geographically different. The Island joined Canada in 1871 and thirty-five years later the Royal Navy withdrew from Esquimalt, but Island communities did not lose their Imperial character until the 1950s."--P. [4] of cover.

Originally published in 1935, this is the memoir of Lord Herbert Plumer, commander of the Second Army during the First World War, and written by Sir Charles Harington Harington, who served as Major-General, General Staff, of the Second Army for a large period of the Great War in the defence of the Ypres Salient. Field Marshal Herbert Charles Onslow Plumer, 1st Viscount Plumer, GCB, GCMG, GCVO, GBE (13 March 1857 - 16 July 1932) was a senior British Army officer of the First World War. After commanding V Corps at the Second Battle of Ypres in April 1915, he took command of the Second Army in May 1915 and in June 1917 won an overwhelming victory over the German Army at the Battle of Messines, which started with the simultaneous explosion of a series of mines placed by the Royal Engineers’ tunnelling companies beneath German lines, which created 19 large craters and was described as the loudest explosion in human history. He later served as Commander-in-Chief of the British Army of the Rhine and then as Governor of Malta before becoming High Commissioner of the British Mandate for Palestine in 1925 and retiring in 1928.

Initially published in 1926, this book seeks to clear some misconceptions of Southern and Northern Rhodesia at the time of the evolution of British colonies that bear the name of Rhodes, their founder. The author who lived there for twenty- three years, used official records and reports, original photographs and his friends and his own narrative to tell this story.