page_title: Paul Kruger
section_title: British annexation; first and second deputations
hierarchical_section_title: Paul Kruger / Diamonds and deputations / British annexation; first and second deputations
caption_attribution_description: Petrus-Jacobus Jourbert (1834-1900)
context_page_description: Stephanus Johannes Paulus "Paul" Kruger was a South African politician. He was one of the dominant political and military figures in 19th-century South Africa, and President of the South African Republic from 1883 to 1900. Nicknamed Oom Paul, he came to international prominence as the face of the Boer cause—that of the Transvaal and its neighbour the Orange Free State—against Britain during the Second Boer War of 1899–1902. He has been called a personification of Afrikanerdom, and remains a controversial and divisive figure; admirers venerate him as a tragic folk hero, and critics view him as the obstinate guardian of an unjust cause.
  Born near the eastern edge of the Cape Colony, Kruger took part in the Great Trek as a child during the late 1830s. He had almost no education apart from the Bible, and through his interpretation believed the Earth was flat. A protégé of the Voortrekker leader Andries Pretorius, he witnessed the signing of the Sand River Convention with Britain in 1852 and over the next decade played a prominent role in the forging of the South African Republic, leading its commandos and resolving disputes between the rival Boer leaders and factions.
context_section_description: Shepstone arrived in Pretoria in January 1877. He outlined criticisms expressed by Carnarvon regarding the Transvaal government and expressed support for federation. After a joint commission of inquiry on the British grievances—Kruger and the State Attorney E J P Jorissen refuted most of Carnarvon's allegations, one of which was that Pretoria tolerated slavery—Shepstone stayed in the capital, openly telling Burgers he had come to the Transvaal to annex it. Hoping to stop the annexation by reforming the government, Burgers introduced scores of bills and revisions to a bewildered volksraad, which opposed them all but then passed them, heightening the general mood of discord and confusion. One of these reforms appointed Kruger to the new post of vice-president.
  The impression of Kruger garnered by the British envoys in Pretoria during early 1877 was one of an unspeakably vulgar, bigoted backveld peasant. Regarding his austere, weather-beaten face, greying hair and simple Dopper dress of a short-cut black jacket, baggy trousers and a black top hat, they considered him extremely ugly. Furthermore, they found his personal habits, such as copious spitting, revolting. Shepstone's legal adviser William Morcom was one of the first British officials to write about Kruger: calling him "gigantically horrible", he recounted a public luncheon at which Kruger dined with a dirty pipe protruding from his pocket and such greasy hair that he spent part of the meal combing it. According to Martin Meredith, Kruger's unsightliness was mentioned in British reports "so often that it became shorthand for his whole personality, and indeed, his objectives". They did not consider him a major threat to British ambitions.
  Shepstone had the Transvaal's annexation as a British territory formally announced in Pretoria on 11 April 1877. Burgers resigned and returned to the Cape to live in retirement—his last act as president was to announce the government's decision to send a deputation, headed by Kruger and Jorissen, to London to make an official protest. He exhorted the burghers not to attempt any kind of resistance to the British until these diplomats returned. Jorissen, one of the Dutch officials recently imported by Burgers, was included at Kruger's request because of his wide knowledge of European languages (Kruger was not confident in his English); a second Dutchman, Willem Eduard Bok, accompanied them as secretary. They left in May 1877, travelling first to Bloemfontein to confer with the Free State government, then on to Kimberley and Worcester, where the 51-year-old Kruger boarded a train for the first time in his life. In Cape Town, where his German ancestor had landed 164 years before, he had his first sight of the sea.
  During the voyage to England Kruger encountered a 19-year-old law student from the Orange Free State named Martinus Theunis Steyn. Jorissen and Bok marvelled at Kruger, in their eyes more suited to the 17th century than his own time. One night, when Kruger heard the two Dutchmen discussing celestial bodies and the structure of the universe, he interjected that if their conversation was accurate and the Earth was not flat, he might as well throw his Bible overboard. At the Colonial Office in Whitehall, Carnarvon and Kruger's own colleagues were astonished when, speaking through interpreters, he rose to what Meintjes calls "remarkable heights of oratory", averring that the annexation breached the Sand River Convention and went against the popular will in the Transvaal. His arguments were undermined by reports to the contrary from Shepstone and other British officials, and by a widely publicised letter from a Potchefstroom vicar claiming that Kruger only represented the will of "a handful of irreconcilables". Carnarvon dismissed Kruger's idea of a general plebiscite and concluded that British rule would remain.
  Kruger did not meet Queen Victoria, though such an audience is described in numerous anecdotes, depicted in films and sometimes reported as fact. Between August and October he visited the Netherlands and Germany, where he a
caption: Piet Joubert, Kruger's associate in the second deputation
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