in the mines, which had recruited black labor and paid the workers in
ammunition and guns. One tribe, the Hlubi, under the leadership of a
chief, Langalabalele, had secreted their weapon s, for fear that they
would be confiscated. Rumors spread, and the British settlers were
provoked into a panic of mayhem, wreaking wholesale plunder and
carnage on the offending tribe.
97
Froude’s initial reaction was not, as
might be expected, his own published Henry VIII defense. His enquiries
revealed not a shred of evidence that the Hlubi were planning to revolt,
or to use their guns for anything other than hunting. Yet this flimsy
charge had become the pretext for a governme nt-sponsored rampage in
which Hlubi property had been stolen, the tribe had been scattered, and
hundreds of innocent people – including many women and children –
had been slaughtered in cold blood. What Froude found most astonish-
ing about this episode was its casual acceptance by all sectors of the
white community. People simply shrugged their shoulders, explaining
that this was how the Blacks had to be treate d, according to the precepts
of their own “ Kaffir Law.”
98
After several weeks of listening to such comments, however, Froude
began to fall in with the necessity of accepting this view. A public inves-
tigation might serve the dictates of justice, but, from the perspective of
imperial policy, it would lead to disastrous results. In the first place, it
would embolden the Blacks not to revolts or outrages, but to sauciness,
indiscipline, and the migratory habits to which they were naturally
prone. Even worse, however, it would inflame white opi nion against
interfering liberals from London, and completely stifle any chance of
getting the Boer republics to agree to the imperial federation that was
Carnarvon’s (and Froude’s) ultimate aim. The Boers were essential, not
merely because they constituted the majority of the white population,
but because they had rooted themselves organically in the South African
soil, in ways that the recent British settlers had yet to learn. Their treat-
ment of the natives was exemplary, Froude believed: all migratory tribes
were expelled from their territories, and Blacks were permitted to live
among them only as laborers in their homes and on their farms. The
British, by contrast, oscillated between a false philanthropy that rewarded
97
Edgar Brookes and Colin De B. Webb, A History of Natal (Pietermaritzburg, 1965);
George W. Cox, The Life of John William Colenso, Bishop of Natal, 2 vols. (London,
1888), II: 313–448.
98
Froude, “South African Journal,” 363, 345, 368; Carnarvon Papers, British Library,
London, Add. MSS, 60798, Carnarvon to Froude, November 4, 1874, December 24,
1874; Froude to Carnarvon, February 16, 1875, June 21, 1875, September 11, 1875,
September 20, 1875, October 4, 1875.
Ethnic evolution and Froude’s imperial scheme 191