The Fall of Kruger`s Republic - Marais

1962 hardcover with 345 pages in very good condition, though ex-library. Dust jacket has some wear.

Marais traces the road to the disintegration of the South African Republic and the explosion of the Boer War from its inceptive event--the Transvaal gold fever of the 1880's. The thousands of gold-digging Uitlanders who descended upon the backward republic both threatened to shift the balance of power away from the Boers and forged Kruger's iron-will for the Republic to remain independent. The determination of Kruger and Cecil Rhodes to funnel gold into the world market, and their series of untenable concessions with the British government developed into something of a cold war, which eventually exploded into the Jameson Raid of 1895.
 
Marais writes a mostly political history work of these twenty years, covering the complex movements and vicissitudes of policy, municipality, disenfranchisement and alliance in the Republic. He does not make any groundbreaking discovery, but his deceptively simple argument remains relevant forty-five years later. Coming to it without knowledge of the key players, however, may obscure the full picture, as Marais reserves analysis of social forces and character portraits of all but one.
 
Any history of the South African Republic becomes the biography of Stephanus Johannes Paulus Kruger, or "Oom" Paul, the president of the Republic from 1883-1902. Marais envisions Kruger as the zealous, worldly but unschooled Boer icon who achieved great diplomatic success by invoking hid political acumen in Chamberlain's office and a grassroots appeal to the Boer ranchers. Even if he failed to prevent the war from swallowing his republic whole, Kruger remains a vastly important historical figure. Marais' lasting achievement becomes clearer when one realizes a biography of Kruger, who some called `the greatest Boer of them all' remains unwritten.