Chapter 204: A Robber is a Robber
In fact, the British had long wanted to kill the Boers completely.
On December 28, 1895, Dr. Jameson, Prime Minister of the British Cape Colony and a friend of the mining magnate Cecil Rhodes, led 500 South African mining company police on an expedition to the Transvaal Republic, a country formed by the Boers, in an attempt to overthrow the regime of Paul Kruger, President of the Transvaal Republic.
However, on January 2, 1896, just one week after the departure, the British Expeditionary Force with 500 men and several machine guns was surrounded by the Transvaal police force in Krugersdorp, killing 134 of them and ending the rest in the Transvaal prison.
The Aliens Reform Committee, which was preparing to cooperate with the outside world in Johannesburg and Jameson, was easily suppressed after receiving the news of the annihilation of the "expeditionary force".
The captive Jameson and other captives were rescued by the British government and transferred back to China, tried by a British court, and then sentenced to 15 months in prison on the ironic charge of "attempting a military expedition against a friendly country", and were not released on medical parole after spending no time in prison. The leader of the Aliens Reform Commission was sentenced to death by the Republic of De Wasland, but was also sentenced to 15 years in prison and fined £25,000 by the British.
For the British, this is a huge embarrassment, and the embarrassment is not that the British are trying to launch aggression against a sovereign and independent country, which has damaged the international reputation of the British, but that our dignified British Empire has been taught a lesson by a bunch of hillbillies!
The Boers were mostly descendants of German, Dutch, Belgian, and French African immigrants, and although they were white, they were considered by the British to be on the same level as Australians or Americans, who were all poor or the descendants of criminals.
These scumbags have given the British Empire a resounding slap in the face, where do you put my face as the world's number one power?
Of course, the question of face is always just a matter of face, and the real reason why the Boers are damned is, of course, because they are in the way of the British's prosperity. Blocking people's wealth is like killing their parents, so the fate of the Boers is decided.
South Africa is rich in gold reserves, and the gold produced here supports Britain as the center of global economic and trade, so it is only natural that such an important region should be completely under the control of the British Empire.
However, there was a huge stumbling block to the full integration of this area into the colonial system of the empire, the Transvaal Republic established by the Boers.
The Transvaal has huge gold reserves, and the Witwatersrand near Johannesburg is the largest in the world, and while these mines bring huge profits to the Transvaal, they are also increasingly disgusted with the desire to completely control the country.
As a result, the economic and trade friction between the Transvaal and the British became more and more severe, and the trade war and tariff barriers between the Transvaal and the British colonies in South Africa, as well as the high taxes and economic restrictions of the Transvaal on the British-owned mining companies in the country, finally made the British decide to use force to completely solve this stumbling block.
It's just that the British call themselves "gentlemen" and have to "be famous" in everything, so in history, the Germans have become the "name" of this "famous teacher", and in Jochen's evaluation it is "don't speak, rest assured".
This excuse even became an example of the Germans who slandered the Germans for destroying Anglo-German relations, and led to the heinous crimes committed by the British in the Transvaal.
This is the famous "Kruger telegram" sent by the second emperor Wilhelm II.
In 1896, due to the failure of Jameson's expedition, the British Prime Minister Salisbury's government fell into a huge passivity.
On 3 January 1896, Wilhelm II, who was sympathetic to the Boers, who were predominantly Dutch and composed of a considerable number of Germans, did not accept the dissuasion of Foreign Minister Marchar and sent a congratulatory message to President Kruger of the Transvaal, congratulating President Kruger and his people on their victory over the invaders on their independence without the support of any friendly countries.
This telegram stabbed the hornet's nest at once, and the British circles, who had long been disgraced, expressed extreme indignation at the big mouth of the Germans, and the Salisbury government thus had an excellent shield to divert public contradictions.
Therefore, it no longer matters whether it violates the "International Law" that British gentlemen talk about every day to invade a sovereign country, but what matters is to find a "villain" who dares to tell the truth when the British are bullying others.
The British even sent a fleet to demonstrate to Germany on the grounds of "preventing the Germans from sending volunteers to help the Boers fight against the British."
What is even more intriguing is that the reason why the British launched the Second Boer War became "influenced by the Kruger telegram, the British decided to completely eliminate the Boers and their helpers." ”
And this thoroughness, the execution is indeed quite thorough, in this war the British adopted a simple and crude three-light policy against the Boers, who were also white, whether they participated in the war or not, whether they supported the guerrillas or not, as long as you are a Boer, then what awaits them is the "benevolent and fair bestowal demise" of the British Empire.
The death camps, which were used as the most important evidence of Nazi Germany's anti-humanity and anti-society in World War II, were also created by the British on the land of the Boers.
In order to completely eradicate the Boer revolt, the British set up concentration camps in September 1900 to put 136,000 Boer women, children and the elderly, and 80,000 black slaves, while the total number of Boers in the Transvaal Republic and the Orange Free State was only 440,000.
The "benevolent" British stipulated that any Boer who tried to escape should be shot, and those who stayed in the camps were given no more than one pound of food, or 0.45 kilograms, a day. During the Boer War, a total of 27,927 Boers died in concentration camps, including 22,074 children, 4,177 women, and 1,676 elderly people. The death rate in the concentration camps in the Orange area was as high as 40 in 1901!
More than 14 Boers in the Transvaal Republic and the Orange Free State died in concentration camps or were exiled to remote areas such as Bermuda and St. Helena.
However, in the mouths of later commentators of the so-called "boiled persimmon oil", the fundamental reason for such a frenzied move of the British was actually because Wilhelm II, a "war maniac", sent a congratulatory telegram? And the content of this congratulatory message seems, as if, maybe, maybe, probably right?
However, even if the Germans who told the truth did hurt the feelings of the gentlemen of the British Empire and made the faces of these gentlemen a little unbearable, but the seemingly Germans who were deceived by the fleet of the British Royal Navy, right? It was precisely because of the hegemony of the Royal Navy that led to a surge of anti-British sentiment in Germany, and it was precisely because of this that the second German Naval Law was able to be adopted with little amendment.
And this time, the angry Reichstag resolutely approved a naval expansion plan that was more than twice the size of the first "Navy Act", and the Anglo-German naval race began, so from any point of view, it seems that it was, like, maybe, maybe, probably the British themselves who had destroyed Anglo-German relations, right?
The final conclusion of those who claim to be because the "Kruger Telegram" led the British to make up their minds to bloodied the Boers is based on a mindset that creates this bizarre logic of black and white: the victim's suffering is not due to the greed and brutality of the murderer, but to a mouthful bystander who tells the truth.
In the eyes of Jochen, a later generation, every time the British did in the Transvaal and the imperialist powers of later generations came out to make a show of hegemony, they valued the fact that some experts full of "international law" came out to justify such an act, so as to lead the onlookers to conclude that the victims "deserved it" no matter what the circumstances.
These experts seem to be collectively blind on one question: what is the international law that allows a country to openly exclude its own army from invading another country, and if it fails, it is not allowed to be told by others?
However, a robber is a robber, if there is an excuse to rob, if there is no excuse to create a zào excuse, you have to rob, and if you can't create an excuse, then you don't need an excuse to continue robbing.
Now Frederick III has never sent a Kruger telegram, and the Germans are all at ease, just caring about the snow in front of their own door, and the British don't just take the Boers to the same way?
However, unlike Wilhelm II, who only talked but did not practice, Jochen always believed in not saying what he said, but doing what he did. The Kruger telegram poked such a big basket, so the British poured all the dirty water on the heads of Germany, and Wilhelm II, who knew that he had "hurt the feelings of his relatives", honestly became a bystander in the Boer War that followed.
As a result, when the Netherlands, France, Belgium, the United States, and even Britain themselves had volunteers to support the just war of the Boers, Britain still poured its anger on Germany after the war.
So in that case, let's not say anything, but do everything, maybe we can't make the Transvaal an imperial graveyard like Afghanistan, but let the damn British put more blood on African soil, spend more money, and die more people Germany can still work hard.
And the Boers have gold, can we make a fortune from it? But the premise, of course, is that the British don't get the hang of it, and it's better to have someone to help the Germans "don't talk, rest assured"
But there is a huge obstacle to doing so, a safe emperor and a cautious prime minister, will they agree to blackmail the British? R1152