Empire Cricket Booklet

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THE 1907 CRICKET TOUR OF ENGLAND

of the empire'. 68 Chief among the political problems to be resolved between the British and Transvaal governments was the question of the unification of the colonies in South Africa under British leadership. The Boers had lost the war in 1902, but their leaders continued to fight tooth and nail to maintain political control of the Transvaal and Orange Free State, while accommodating British interests. 69 The conference came at a time when the very notion of what constituted South Africa was a matter of debate and confusion. The political shape of South Africa, and its geographical extent, was yet to be decided, but there was a much more intangible question to be decided about South African identity which continues to be played out in the twenty-first century: who was a South African? It was a crucial question, for South Africa, in the wake of the economic boom caused by the discovery of vast quantities of gold on the Rand at the end of the nineteenth century, had been swamped by a cosmopolitan population of labourers, adventurers and speculators, not just from Britain but from all over the world, to exploit the mines. The mining companies were generally under British control, or at least listed on the London Stock Exchange, but the population of the Rand was a mixture of indigenous Africans, immigrant Africans, Boers, Brits, Americans, Germans, Chinese labourers, Jews and many other creeds and races besides. The Boers had failed to enforce a division of south ern Africa into a British colony aside a Boer republic, but theirs was still the dominant culture among whites. In the census of 1904, one in five of the population of present-day South Africa was classed as 'European'. Of those, Afrikaans-speakers were the majority in every colony, except Natal, but especially in Orange Free State and the Transvaal, the centre of the mining industry. 70 Some in Britain were uncertain as to whether South Africa was ready to take its place within the British empire; the usually pro-imperial Daily Mail asserted in 1906 that it 'is difficult to assign South Africa a place among the daughter nations. Canada we know, Australia we know. But South Africa is like a sealed book. What form will Colonial Nationalism in South Africa assume?' 7 1 The South African cricket tour was a part of the project

an examination of the British character and its ability to maintain imperial expansion. 65 The South Africans were presented as an affirmation of the success of the 'British character' in the colonies. For colonial nationalists like Bailey, who were attempting to bring about a union of the colonies, it was more important to emphasise the strength of the nascent South African state from all its (white) constituents, be they Boer, British or other, and that presented them above all as loyal imperialists communing in the field with men of the mother country in an English sport. Looking back over nearly a century of Test cricket between England and South Africa, it seems entirely natural that South Africa should have joined the family of Test-playing nations, and be a logical part of the growth of the game throughout the British empire. However, the fact that South Africa was the third such nation after England and Australia, and it would be over twenty years before the next joined, is curious given that cricket was being played to a high standard all over the empire, and particularly in India. 66 If looked at in the context of the political and social situation in Britain and South Africa, where people wondered whether the country would be 'British or Boer', it becomes apparent that there was an ideological and commercial imperative behind the tour that had everything to do with attempting to make South Africa culturally British. 67 London in 1907 was the focus for the visit of two groups of prominent South Africans. On 1 May, the South African cricket team, the first ever to visit England with Test status, arrived at their lodgings at the Imperial Hotel in Russell Square. A couple of miles away on the Strand, the entourage of President Botha of the Transvaal was already well established at the Cecil Hotel, having arrived in April for the Colonial Conference of Prime Ministers - a conference which aimed in part to resolve the political issues of South Africa which were the legacy of the South African War. Contemporaries saw the conference as 'one of conspicuous importance in the history of the Empire' which amounted to a 'Cabinet Council 'British or Boer?' Making South Africa British