While the speech was greeted positively in South Africa at the time, it was immediately seen elsewhere as striking a blow for decolonization and majority rule—including in British East Africa. Macmillan’s premiership coincided with the end of the Mau-Mau insurgency in Kenya, which had been a combination of Kikuyu tribal civil war, anti-colonial struggle, and—as it was seen in much of the Western press—an outbreak of savage barbarism against British settlers. With the Mau-Mau defeated, it appeared Kenya’s colonial future might be at an end.
Britain’s interest in East Africa was nominal at first. The Royal Navy might sail its coasts looking for slavers, missionaries and explorers might investigate it, but it was not until 1886 that Uganda and Kenya became Britain’s responsibility, and even then the British government’s chief interest was combating the slave trade, limiting German expansion in the area, and defending Egypt by controlling the source of the Nile. The Imperial British East Africa Company was established in 1888. In Uganda it had to navigate politics riven by Catholic, Protestant, and Arab-Muslim factions. In Kenya, things were simpler, but nevertheless the Company was dissolved, free trade imposed, and in 1895 the British government created the British East Africa Protectorate.
Jomo Kenyatta on the Mau-Mau
“We are determined to have independence in peace, and we shall not allow hooligans to rule Kenya. We must have no hatred towards one another. Mau-Mau was a disease which had been eradicated, and must never be remembered again.”
Jomo Kenyatta 1962, quoted in Robert B. Edgerton, Mau Mau: An African Crucible (The Free Press, 1989), p. 216; Kenyatta was the “founding father” and first president (1964–78) of independent Kenya
One of its first orders of business was building a railway from Mombasa into the interior, all the way to Uganda, a project that had to fight through tsetse country, lion attacks, and a sometimes arid landscape parched of water. Indian workers, who were considered far more reliable and skilled than the Africans, were imported to work on the railway construction. White settlers arrived too; for them, Kenya was an ideal land for enormous tea, coffee, and other plantations. The white farmers worked extraordinarily hard—the soil was good, but they were developing a country from scratch and had to defeat exotic tropical pests.
The British showed their usual facility for development, civilization, and self-rule. After the Great War—in which there were extensive, if small-scale, combat operations in East Africa—the British took over formerly German Tanganyika. By the end of the Second World War, the Kenyan Legislative Council, to which white voters had been electing members since 1919, had two black African representatives (one of them an Oxonian), a number that would slowly increase.
Of all Britain’s possessions in East Africa—Uganda, Tanganyika, Zanzibar, Kenya—only Kenya was seen as “a white man’s country.” That complicated its politics and made it a focal point of international attention during the Mau-Mau rebellion. The state of emergency to deal with the Mau-Mau lasted from 1952 to 1960, though the movement was essentially defeated by 1956. The rebellion was limited almost entirely to the Kikuyu and the areas around Nairobi and the Aberdare mountain range, but the bestial nature of the Mau-Mau oath-taking ceremonies and the bloody nature of its terror and atrocities launched it into international headlines even if the number of European civilians murdered (about 30) was relatively small (the Mau-Mau were estimated to have murdered another 2,000 black Africans). The war pitted the Mau-Mau terrorists not only against British rule, but against Kikuyu Christians, loyalists, and the more conservative-minded tribesmen. Mau-Mau atrocities incited the security forces to abuses themselves; and while there have been some hysterically exaggerated accounts of British-imposed torture, the fact is that the British government curbed these abuses and never authorized a campaign of terror.
Films about British Africa That Anti-Colonialists Don’t Want You to See
The Four Feathers, 1939 (this version is by far the best), with John Clements, Ralph Richardson, and C. Aubrey Smith. Classic tale of heroism and redemption set during the Sudanese campaign to avenge the death of General Charles George Gordon.
Simba, 1955, with Dirk Bogarde and Virginia McKenna. Gripping drama of British settlers in Kenya trying to maintain their liberal values while under the threat of Mau-Mau terrorism.
Guns at Batasi, 1964, with Richard Attenborough and Jack Hawkins. Well-acted and well-scripted drama of British soldiers serving in post-colonial Africa.
Zulu, 1964, with Stanley Baker, Michael Caine, Jack Hawkins, and Nigel Green. Superb action adventure about the defense of Rorke’s Drift. A few liberties, betraying a modern sensibility, have been taken with the history, but all in all a rousing film.
Khartoum, 1966, with Charlton Heston, Laurence Olivier, Richard Johnson, and Ralph Richardson. Memorable big-budget adventure that captures the spirit of General Gordon quite well.
The war became, in the end, not an attempt to maintain white rule (it should be noted that most of those fighting the Mau-Mau were black Africans), but a matter of restoring peace so that Kenya could make an orderly transition to independence, which came in 1964. Compared to its neighbors—Uganda gained independence in 1962; Tanganyika in 1961, becoming Tanzania in 1964 after its merger with Zanzibar—Kenya has done reasonably well, maintaining a moderately free market, a relatively free state, and avoiding the clownish barbarism of Idi Amin and the socialist flummeries of Julius Nyerere. Kenya’s progress has been far from perfect, of course—but, as many Africans might tell you, the wind of change came much too fast for their continent.
Chapter 16
GENERAL CHARLES GEORGE GORDON (1833–1885)
“I have met but two men who realize my ideas of what a true hero should be: my friend [General] Charles Gordon was one, General [Robert E.] Lee was the other.”
—Field Marshal Viscount Wolseley1
General Gordon is the epitome of a British imperial hero, the preeminent Christian soldier-martyr of the British Empire. But he is also important because Lytton Strachey turned his virtues into vices in his famous and influential book Eminent Victorians. Strachey, a wilting, effeminate socialist, wanted to discredit the patriotic muscular Christianity that lay at the center of the Victorian ideal of the British Empire, and Gordon was one of his targets.2 Gordon was thus traduced by “liberals” (broadly speaking) after his death (though he was a Liberal himself), just as he was abandoned by the political leader of the Liberals, Prime Minister William Gladstone, during his life.
* * *
Did you know?
Though a serving British officer, Gordon spent much of his career as a mercenary—who didn’t care about money
An amateur Biblical archaeologist, he believed he had located the actual site of the Garden of Eden
A doughty abolisher of the slave trade in the Sudan, he nevertheless allowed the Sudanese to employ slaves because the practice was too popular
* * *
Gordon was born in London on 28 January 1833. His father, a Royal Artillery major, had a career not a quarter as colorful as his son’s, but he retired as a lieutenant-general, a higher rank than “Charlie” Gordon ever reached. Young Charlie was full of rambunctious mischief and had a knack for martial arts—in the sense that he excelled at drawing maps and intimidating his peers. At the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich he polished his map-drawing skills and proved himself a rebellious and quick-tempered lad (he once head-butted a cadet through a glass door). Nevertheless, he graduated and was commissioned in the Royal Engineers. After some specialized training and humdrum assignments repairing barracks, he was sent to Pembroke to build fortifications, and it was here that he met a couple who inspired him to become a firm Bible-based Christian.3
Gordon first saw action in the Crimean War (1853–56), arriving in Balaclava in January 1855. His first job was building huts for the troops exposed to the harsh Russian winter, but he soon found himself working on trenches, and exploring no-man’s land. He befriended a young officer much like himself in high
spirits, courage, and eagerness to reform the Army—Garnet Wolseley, who noted, as did many, that Gordon’s “full, clear and bright blue eyes seemed to court scrutiny, whilst at the same time they searched into your inner soul.”4
The Eyes Have It
“His clear blue eye seemed to possess a magic power over all who came within its influence. It read you through and through, it made it impossible for you to tell him anything but the truth, it invited your confidence, it kindled with compassion at every story of distress and it sparked with good humour at anything really witty or funny. From its glance you knew at once that at any risk he would keep his promise, that you might trust him with anything and everything, and that he would stand by you if all other friends deserted you.”
W. G. Lilley, clerk of the Royal Engineers, on Gordon’s much-remarked-upon piercing blue eyes, quoted in Charles Chenevix Trench, The Road to Khartoum: A Life of General Charles Gordon (Dorset Press, 1987), pp. 21–22
Gordon distinguished himself in the Crimea for his energy, readiness for action, and keen observation of enemy movements. He was awarded the Légion d’honneur by the French and assigned by his superiors to help survey the post-war border between the Ottoman Empire and Russia. It kept him abroad, which was what he wanted, because Charlie Gordon was eager to renew his acquaintance with the crack of musket balls and the roar of cannon.
The Ever Victorious Army
In 1860 he volunteered for the war in China, where the British and French were enforcing the Treaties of Tientsin (which had ended the Second Opium War, allowing for freer European trade with China and opening up the country to Christian missionaries), and was present for the sack of Peking. Though he bought some spoils for himself, he hated the wanton destruction of the emperor’s summer palace (which he blamed on the French) and was appalled at how “everybody was wild for plunder.”5 Gordon built barracks and stables and anything else that needed building, pitching in with his own labor wherever he could, and helped manage a fund of donations for impoverished Chinese.
The Manchu dynasty was under threat not only from Europeans eager to open China to trade but by a massive domestic uprising, the Taiping Rebellion led by Hung-sen-Tsuen, a religious fanatic who propounded a new trinity of God the Father, God the Elder Son Jesus, and God the Younger Son Hung-sen-Tsuen. Hung proclaimed himself Tien Wang, the Heavenly King whose task was to create a Dynasty of Perpetual Peace—though of course the path to perpetual peace required massive slaughter of his opponents and also required that he marry thirty wives and keep a harem. Despite these rather heterodox beliefs and the movement’s propensity for violence, some British evangelical Christians, flexible in doctrine themselves, based on each man’s reading of the Bible, maintained a sympathy for what they viewed as a reformist Christian uprising against a cruel Manchu regime. A century later, the Taipings won praise from the Communist Chinese for their war against the Manchu monarchy and feudalism. Yet a better assessment came from the British vice-consul at Ningpo: “The Taipings have a fume of blood and a look of carnage about them. Their chief condition for success is to strike terror, first by numbers, and secondly by the tawdry harlequin garb worn by them.... Their long, shaggy black hair adds to the wildness of their look, and... this fantastic appearance is accompanied by a certain show of fury and madness.”6
The Taipings captured Nanking and made it their capital in 1853. Aiding Hung were his chief lieutenants, his wangs (kings), who become warlords in their own right. One proclaimed himself the Holy Ghost and criticized Hung—and was executed for his impertinence. By 1860 the Taipings were threatening the international entrepôt of Shanghai. Though Shanghai was guarded by a small force of French and British troops, the city’s merchants thought it prudent to raise an army of their own, the Shanghai Foreign Arms Corps, later and better known as the Ever Victorious Army, under the command of American soldier of fortune Frederick Townsend Ward. Ward, however, was killed in 1862, the year Captain Gordon arrived as chief officer of engineers for the British general Charles Stavely. Stavely had orders to clear the Taipings from a thirty-mile radius of Shanghai. He was impressed by Gordon and recommended he command the Ever Victorious Army, which had fallen into indiscipline and disarray since Ward’s death.
In March 1863, Gordon, now a brevet-major, was given leave from the British Army, made a mandarin, and appointed commander of the Ever Victorious Army, a body of an estimated 4,000 Chinese and assorted rascally American and European mercenaries. Gordon brought with him five British officers and set to work whipping his new army into shape (and whipping the Taipings simultaneously). He uniformed his men, disciplined them, drilled them, barracked them, and let them know he cared for them, sick, wounded, or well; he banned hard liquor and looting; and he led them into battle calmly smoking a cigar and waving a bamboo cane (after having thoroughly scouted the enemy positions). The Ever Victorious Army now lived up to its name, and Gordon showed his tactical acumen in organizing its handful of small steamships for combined naval and land operations. The Taipings feared him and the Manchu authorities respected him, even if they disliked his insistent independence. He had told Li Hung Chang, the provincial governor and leader of the Manchu forces against the Taipings, that he would defeat the rebels in eighteen months. He did, though Gordon quarreled violently with Li whom he suspected of ordering the decapitation of several Taiping wangs who had surrendered on conditions of clemency. In protest, Gordon turned down the emoluments offered him by the Chinese emperor, though he did accept elevation to the highest rank of Chinese general and the award of a yellow jacket, which had been granted to only forty Mandarins and never before to a European.
In the British press, he earned the moniker “Chinese” Gordon. Yet whatever fame he gained—and he certainly did not seek it; he shunned social invitations and avoided and disparaged dinner parties—did not lead to fortune. Gordon made a habit of spurning financial rewards for himself; whatever money he had flowed through his fingers to others. Sir Frederick Bruce, the British minister at Peking, noted that “Not only has he [Gordon] refused any pecuniary reward but he has spent more than his pay in contributing to the comfort of the officers who served under him and in assuaging the distress of the starving population whom he relieved from the yoke of their oppressor [the Taipings].”7
The last thing Gordon wanted was to build forts in England, yet that was the next command he was given. He wanted postings abroad and he wanted action, but did his engineering chores with his usual impressive energy; he also spent hours every afternoon and evening working with the poor and needy as part of his Christian commitment and kept his early mornings reserved for private Bible study and prayer. The great epiphany that motivated Gordon was the idea that God is within us, or within every believer in Jesus Christ—that was the lamplight of his Christian faith.8
Gordon’s Wangs
Early on, Gordon decided he would never marry. He recommended marriage to his bachelor friends, citing it as a cure for selfishness, but for himself—no woman, he thought, could ever sacrifice the comforts of home for his Spartan conception of his imperial duty. Gordon’s celibacy became part of his mystique, especially impressive to the Arabs and Sudanese who could hardly fathom such a virtue. It was a sign—as with a priest—of his self-mastery and self-denial (another aspect of this was that he ate little, preferring to give food to the poor, though he was a champion smoker).
As part of his Christian life, Gordon, throughout his career, took in orphaned boys. Some became his servants during the Taiping campaigns; one he named “Quincey” and paid for his education (Quincey later became a Shanghai police officer). In England, he dubbed his collection of orphans or boys from poor or fatherless families his “wangs.” He had his housekeeper scrub them clean, bought them clothes, gave them pocket money, and set them onto careers (often at sea). He was proud to chart their lives and fortunes, sticking pins in a map to mark their travels. Those who sense something untoward in this are apt to overlook that Gordon was equally devoted to comfortin
g the aged and dying. His motivation was clearly charitable.
Gordon of Khartoum
Gordon did not have another foreign posting until October 1871 when he was appointed to map out navigation rights on the Danube; it proved dull work, but he met Nubar Pasha, a powerful adviser to the khedive in Egypt who offered him a better posting: the khedive wished to make Gordon governor of Equatoria in the southern Sudan, replacing another Briton, the explorer Sir Samuel Baker. Gordon agreed, pending the approval of the British government, which granted its assent in September 1873.
Gordon, the former Chinese general, now became an Ottoman general, and took with relish to abolishing the slave trade. He crushed the slavers by force when he found them, won over previously hostile tribes, and built way stations along the Nile. In 1877, after a period of leave in England (which is what it amounted to, though he had officially resigned in protest at the khedive not expanding his governing powers), the khedive coaxed Gordon to return as governor-general of the entire Sudan, giving him the military rank of Egyptian field marshal. Gordon’s program was the same—establishing peace, eliminating corruption (a never-ending task, he found), and most of all laboring to end the slave trade (if not slavery itself), which, along with ivory was the centerpiece of the Sudanese economy. He rode at speed everywhere on his camel, dropping unsuspecting among tribes and potential rebels demanding—and usually winning—their fealty. He was also something of a dealmaker, frequently trying to find ways to employ the slavers who were among the canniest and most powerful men in the country. He abolished whipping in Khartoum, cancelled projects the government could not afford (including a railway along the Nile), and defended “his” people (the Sudanese) against the khedive’s French and British creditors. The arrival of a new khedive provided an exhausted Gordon with the opportunity to resign; he left Egypt in January 1880.
The Politically Incorrect Guide to the British Empire Page 20
