page_title: Henry Bartle Frere
section_title: Outbreak of Zulu and Boer Wars
hierarchical_section_title: Henry Bartle Frere / Africa / Outbreak of Zulu and Boer Wars
caption_attribution_description: English: Sir Henry Bartle Frere, 1st Baronet
context_page_description: Sir Henry Bartle Edward Frere, 1st Baronet GCB GCSI PC was a British colonial administrator. He had a successful career in India, rising to become Governor of Bombay. However, as High Commissioner for Southern Africa, he implemented a set of policies which attempted to impose a British confederation on the region and which led to the overthrow of the Cape's first elected government in 1878 and to a string of regional wars, culminating in the invasion of Zululand and the First Boer War. The British Prime Minister, Gladstone, recalled Frere to London to face charges of misconduct; Whitehall officially censured Frere for acting recklessly.
context_section_description: The Zulu Kingdom under King Cetshwayo remained independent of British control but Frere impressed upon the Colonial Office his opinion that if confederation was to succeed, Cetshwayo's forces had to be eliminated and Zululand annexed. While Carnarvon remained as Colonial Secretary in London the view had support but his replacement, Sir Michael Hicks-Beach strongly wished to avoid any war in southern Africa. Frere nonetheless used the delay in mail between London and Cape Town, to time his letters so as to circumvent the Colonial Office's opposition to war. Frere then sent Cetshwayo an impossible ultimatum in December 1878, effectively declaring war.
  Cetshwayo was unable to comply with Frere's ultimatum – even if he had wanted to; Frere ordered Lord Chelmsford to invade Zululand, and so the Anglo-Zulu War began. On 11 January 1879, British troops crossed the Tugela River; fourteen days later the disaster of Isandlwana was reported, and that was enough for the House of Commons to demand that Frere be recalled. Beaconsfield supported him, however, and in a strange compromise he was censured but asked to stay on. Frere had severely underestimated the Zulus, whom he had characterized as "a bunch of savages armed with sticks."
  The Zulu trouble, and disaffection brewing in the Transvaal, reacted upon each other most disastrously. The delay in giving the country a constitution afforded a pretext for agitation to the resentful Boers, a rapidly increasing minority, while the defeat at Isandlwana had badly tarnished the reputation of the British Empire in the region. Owing to the Xhosa and Zulu wars, Sir Bartle had been unable to give his undivided attention to the state of things in the Transvaal until April 1879, when he was at last able to visit a camp of about 4,000 disaffected Boers near Pretoria. Though conditions were grim, Frere managed to win the Boers' respect by promising to present their complaints to the British government, and to urge the fulfilment of the promises that had been made to them. The Boers did eventually disperse, on the very day upon which Frere received the telegram announcing the government's censure. On his return to Cape Town, he found that his achievement had been eclipsed—first by 1 June 1879 death of Napoleon Eugene, Prince Imperial in Zululand, and then by the news that the government of the Transvaal and Natal, together with the high commissionership in the eastern part of South Africa, had been transferred from him to Sir Garnet Wolseley. Meanwhile, growing Boer resentment at Frere's policies erupted in December 1880 into the disastrous First Boer War. The First Boer War, with the humiliating British defeats at Bronkhorstspruit, Laing's Nek, Schuinshoogte and Majuba Hill led to the independence of the Boer Republics and the final end of Carnarvon's confederation scheme.
caption: Sir Henry Bartle Frere in the 1880s.
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