A Russian protectorate for the Boer republics. A rejected idea for countering British imperialism

Abstract

The South African War, also known as the Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902, was one of the most important armed conflicts of the age of imperialism. The war evoked an immense public response in Russia; not even the power circles remained unmoved. Russian public opinion supported the struggle for the independence of the Boer republics, the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. For their part, the governments of the two republics convinced their fellow citizens that the Russian Empire, as the initiator of the Hague Peace Conference and the only great power that never had colonies in Africa, would be able to unite other states of Europe and the United States to help the Boers in countering British imperialism. By June 1900, it had become clear that the Great Powers would not take military action in defence of the South African republics. Moreover, they were unable to overlook their geopolitical differences in order to offer collective mediation or good offices to the belligerents. On behalf of the official Boer delegation, who was visiting the United States, the Transvaal envoy conveyed to the foreign offices of Russia and its ally France a request for a joint protectorate over the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. Documentary evidence of this demarche, which has not yet received sufficient coverage in historiography, has been preserved in the archive of the Transvaal envoy Leyds, as well as in the Archive of Foreign Policy of the Russian Empire. Appealing to Russia and France, the Boer delegates assumed that these powers, for humanitarian reasons, would provide friendly guardianship to the two republics in South Africa. However, the European governments of the period understood protectorate as a form of colonial dependence. Besides, Russia and France did not want a military confrontation with the mighty British Empire for the sake of the Boer states that were outside the sphere of their political and colonial interests. The attempt of the representatives of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State to secure a Russo-French protectorate for their republics was predestined to fail.