The Cowboy Capitalist

The Jameson Raid of 1895–1896 was a pivotal moment in the history of South Africa, linking events from the Anglo-Boer War to the declaration of the Union of South Africa in 1910 and the advent of apartheid in 1948. For over a century, the failed revolution has been interpreted through the lens of British imperialism, with responsibility laid at the feet of Cecil John Rhodes.

But rigorous historical analysis points in a different direction – to a plot that drew not only on British jingoes and disgruntled Afrikaner fifth-column elements, but also on the culture of the American West, a culture that embraced wild adventurism, filibustering and the writ of the vigilance committees. In The Cowboy Capitalist, Charles van Onselen challenges a historiography of over 120 years, locating the raid in American rather than British history and forcing us to rethink the histories of at least three countries. He identifies Californian mining engineer John Hays Hammond, a confidant of both Cecil Rhodes and Leander Starr Jameson, as the principal architect of the attempted coup in Paul Kruger's Boer republic. In so doing, he uncovers the hidden history of the American West on the South African Highveld, situating Hammond's career against the backdrop of the global expansion of the United States during the Gilded Age.

This radical reinterpretation challenges the commonly held belief that the Jameson Raid was quintessentially British and, in doing so, drives splinters into our understanding of South African history at the turn of the 19th century and well beyond.