Canada Day is boring (and that’s a good thing)
Britain’s bloody attempt to unite South Africa helps us appreciate how successful and peaceful our own Confederation process truly was
‘ As much as British authorities desired a Canadian federation, they were reluctant to impose such a thing on the provinces.’
Isandlwana: A towering outcrop of rock set amid the flat, arid interior of South Africa. In the Zulu language, its name means “looks like a little hut.” At one time, this mountain served as a guidepost pointing travellers to the heartland of the powerful and fiercely independent Zulu Kingdom.
On January 22, 1879, Isandlwana earned everlasting fame as the site of the greatest defeat ever suffered by the British Army in the history of its colonial empire. A horde of King Cetshwayo’s Zulu warriors armed with spears and shields crushed an entire British column backed by all the (then) modern accoutrements of war. It remains today a significant reminder of Africa’s bloody and complicated colonial past.
But this historical landmark also has something to say — albeit indirectly — about the creation of Canada, on July 1, 1867, a dozen years earlier.
The founding of our country 146 years ago may seem today like a boring event to us, little more than an excuse for a long weekend. yet the concept of Confederation — knitting together a diverse handful of British colonies into a single self-governing nation — was not always guaranteed to bring about a safe, boring outcome. As Isandlwana testifies, the process of Confederation could go horribly wrong. The standard Canadian textbook version of Confederation casts the scheme as one arising from the visionary leadership of Sir John A. Macdonald and a supporting cast of mutton-chopped, frock-coated Fathers of Confederation who, beginning in 1864, conferenced, cajoled and outright bribed Nova Scotia and New Brunswick into joining with Ontario and Quebec to create modern Canada out of four former British colonies.
The role of the British government in this process generally is seen as something akin to a judging panel on a reality television competition — flintyeyed doubters won over by the arguments of eager colonial contestants. National Post columnist Conrad Black, for example, claimed recently on these pages that “Macdonald in particular convinced a largely, but not entirely, skeptical Colonial Office in London” of Confederation’s benefits.
And yet the British were much more interested participants in Confederation than is often assumed. British scholar Ged Martin’s 1995 book Britain and the Origins of Canadian Confederation, 1837-67 exhaustively details the extent to which the Colonial Office, along with the British government, opposition parties, intelligentsia and even the press had convinced themselves of the need to bring together the diverse, expensive and difficult-to-defend colonies of British North American into a single entity.
British Colonial Secretary, the duke of Newcastle, for example, declared in 1862 that “I cannot imagine an object more clearly marked out for a British statesman to aim at than to secure ... the eventual foundation of a powerful State out of the disjointed and feeble British North American Provinces.”
As much as British authorities desired a Canadian federation, however, they were reluctant to impose such a thing on the provinces for fear of sparking unrest. Instead, the Colonial Office waited patiently for the Canadians themselves to propose a workable solution. When Macdonald and Co. finally did so, they immediately grabbed the opportunity.
After 1867, Confederation was widely seen by the British as a tremendous success: Fractious english and French enclaves with little in common and a history of mutual animosity agreed to set aside their differences and rule themselves. Canada was no longer a Colonial Office headache. So when Colonial Secretary Lord Carnavon, who’d been responsible for the British North America Act in 1867, found himself facing familiar problems in South Africa, he reached for a familiar solution.
In the mid-19th century, South Africa was divided into the three British-run, english-speaking dependencies of Cape Colony, Natal and Grinqueland West (home to the Kimberley diamond fields) alongside two Afrikaner-speaking Boer republics, Transvaal and Orange Free State, plus several independent Black kingdoms such as Zululand.
“The parallels are quite strong between Canada and South Africa,” says Ian Knight, British-based author of the 2010 book Zulu Rising, and an expert on colonial South African history. “Lord Carnavon recalled Canada, with its disparate colonies and language conflicts, and saw it had been successfully managed by Confederation. So he decided to try the same thing in South Africa.”
A series of constitutional conferences modelled on Canada’s Confederation process was arranged by Carnavon in 1875, but with disappointing results. So he dispensed with the soft-soap approach and drew up the South Africa Act, explicitly modelled on his earlier British North America Act, to impose Confederation on the reluctant African colonies.
Things initially went Carnavon’s way as the British annexed Transvaal when it flirted with bankruptcy in 1877. He then sent emissary Sir Henry Bartle Frere to bring the Brit- ish colonies together. (The Orange Free State had earlier told Carnavon to get lost.)
Frere, however, was prone to deliberate acts of provocation and lacked Macdonald’s political skill or desire for consensus. To win over the newly-annexed Boers of Transvaal, Frere figured the best approach was to pick a fight with their longtime enemies: the Zulu.
“It was a carrot and stick approach,” says Knight of Frere’s military preamble to South African Confederation. “The goal was to protect the Boers by pacifying their foes, and at the same time impress on them the great military strength of the British.” It didn’t work out that way.
On Jan. 11, 1879, British forces under the command of Lord Chelmsford crossed the Mzinyathi river into Zululand to put Frere’s plan in motion. Nine days later, the army arrived at the local landmark of Isandlwana en route to King Cetshwayo’s capital at ulundi.
After receiving intelli- gence that the main Zulu army was east of camp, Chelmsford hurriedly departed the next morning with half his force to intercept the enemy, leaving 1,700 troops behind. In fact, the Zulus had flanked the British overnight and were hiding in a river valley north of Isandlwana.
Around noon on January 22, a mounted patrol from the troops who remained at Isandlwana spotted a few Zulus chasing cattle along a northern ridgeline and gave pursuit. When they crested the
The battle of Isandlwana, with its dramatic image of all those Red Coats slaughtered, ended the idea that Confederation would be viable in South Africa
rise, this handful of British and native cavalrymen suddenly came face to face with 25,000 Zulu warriors hunkered in the valley below. “We saw the Zulus like ants in front of us, in perfect order as quiet as mice stretched out in a long line,” one of the surviving riders later recalled.
In an instant, the once-silent Zulu army rose to the attack, streaming over the ridge in a noisy, chaotic mass. The troops at Isandlwana were caught completely by surprise. And the thin red line quickly proved rather too thin.
The initial forward firing positions of the British were overwhelmed and the fighting collapsed into the camp itself; rifle and bayonet were pitted against shield and spear in furious hand-to-hand combat. When the fighting was over, 1,300 British and allied native soldiers lay dead, as were 3,000 Zulu warriors. Less than 100 whites survived, and every senior officer was killed. Such a defeat at the hands of a supposedly primitive tribe of herdsmen was a crushing blow to British prestige.
Victorian pride naturally demanded retribution. Less than six months later, Chelmsford, heavily reinforced from Britain, delivered a crushing blow at ulundi and brought the Zulu War to a prompt close. But the damage to Carnavon’s plan had been done.
“The battle of Isandlwana, with its dramatic image of all those red Coats lying slaughtered at the foot of the mountain, spelled the end of the idea that Confederation was ever going to be viable in South Africa,” observes Knight in an interview.
rather than impressing Transvaal with British military might, the defeat convinced the Boers that Queen Victoria’s finest were outmatched on the South African veld. This led directly to Boer rejection of further offers of political union, then later to rebellion and finally the
Boer War of 1899-1902. It was only with the application of overwhelming military superiority that the British were finally able to bring all of South Africa under one flag.
So why did Confederation work so well in Canada, yet bring calamity and bloodshed to South Africa?
The Canadian model of Confederation, with the British Colonial Office waiting patiently for locals to come up with a plausible plan, obviously proved more attractive than Carnavon’s efforts at a top-down policy in South Africa. But political culture and personality also matter.
“The problem with South Africa has always been that everyone resorts to violence very quickly,” says Knight in an interview. British, native and Boer conflicts became entrenched quite early on during the colonial period, and were never resolved. “Once you get to the point of killing each other, it becomes much more difficult to persuade everyone that living together in a Confederation is a good idea,” he notes.
Given the (non-violent) regional and language conflicts that so frequently dominate our own country’s politics, the Canadian lesson of Isandlwana lies in recognizing the vast degree of peaceful co-operation, acceptance and flexibility that actually occurs within our system. despite a colonial history that was every bit as complicated and fractious as South Africa’s, Canadians managed to build a peaceful country out of a long series of compromises, mutual conciliations, side-deals and outright embarrassments, many of which continue to this day.
None of this may be efficient. Or remotely exciting. But it’s certainly better than the alternative.