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Beyond Yugoslavia
Eastern Europe After Communism
Sabrina Petra Ramet, Series Editor

Since the collapse of communism throughout Eastern Europe, 1989–1990,

the societies of the region have begun searching for new social and political
formulae, setting new tasks, and facing new challenges. New social forces
have arisen, such as nationalism and chauvinism, and preexisting social
institutions and groupings, such as the churches and feminist groups, have
intensified their activity. Above all, Eastern Europe is dominated, in the
years following the collapse, by the twin tasks of democratization and
privatization, tasks that are complex and multifaceted, with consequences
that reach far beyond the formal goals associated with these processes.
This new series is designed to provide a set of windows on the changing
realities of Eastern Europe and to chart these societies’ courses as they
attempt to deal with the legacy of communism and the problems of
transition. This volume looks at the processes leading up to the breakup of
Yugoslavia and the consequences thereof. Future volumes will examine the
security context and offer perspectives on other countries in the region.

Books in This Series

The New Eastern Europe and the World Economy, edited by Jozef M. van
Brabant

FORTHCOMING
Albania, edited by Elez Biberaj
Romania, edited by Trond Gilberg
Security, edited by Robin Remington
Eastern Germany, edited by Patricia Smith
Hungary, edited by Ivan Volgyes
Czech Republic, edited by Sharon Wolchik
Slovakia, edited by Sharon Wolchik
Beyond Yugoslavia
Politics, Economics, and Culture in a
Shattered Community

EDITED BY
Sabrina Petra Ramet and Ljubiša S. Adamovich
First published 1995 by Westview Press

Published 2018 by Routledge

52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Copyright © 1995 by Taylor & Francis

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any
form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publishers.

Notice:
Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only
for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Beyond Yugoslavia : politics, economics, and culture in a shattered
community / Sabrina Petra Ramet and Ljubiša S. Adamovich, ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8133-7953-9
1. Yugoslavia—Economic conditions—1945–1992. 2. Yugoslavia—
Politics and govemment—1980–1992. 3. Yugoslavia—Social
conditions. I. Ramet, Sabrina P., 1949– II. Adamović, Ljubiša
S.
HC407.B39 1995
338.9497.dc20 94-35987
CIP

ISBN 13: 978-0-367-01481-0 (hbk)

For our spouses, Christine and Ann
Contents

Preface

Introduction: The Roots of Discord and the Language of War, Sabrina Petra
Ramet

PART ONE
Adumbrations of the Breakup

1 The Avoidable Catastrophe, Dennison Rusinow

2 The Dissolution of Yugoslav Historiography, Ivo Banac

3 The Armed Forces of Yugoslavia: Sliding into War, Marko Milivojević

4 Media: The Extension of Politics by Other Means, Jasmina Kuzmanović

PART TWO
The Republics

5 The Serbian Church and the Serbian Nation, Sabrina Petra Ramet

6 Democracy and Nationalism in Croatia: The First Three Years, Dijana

Pleština

7 The Bosnian Crisis in 1992, Paul Shoup

8 Slovenia’s Road to Democracy, Sabrina Petra Ramet

9 The Macedonian Enigma, Sabrina Petra Ramet

10 Politics in Montenegro, Milan Andrejevich

PART THREE
Economics

11 Economic Transformation in Former Yugoslavia, with Special Regard to

Privatization, Ljubiša S. Adamovich

12 Foreign Economic Relations, Oskar Kovač

13 Environmental Issues and Policies, with Special Attention to Montenegro,

Svetlana Adamović and Vukašin Pavloviċ

PART FOUR
Foreign Relations

14 Relations with the Superpowers, Branko Pribičević

15 Yugoslavia’s Relations with European States, Zachary T. Irwin

PART FIVE
Culture and Society

16 The New Democracy—With Women or Without Them? Rada Iveković

17 “Only Crooks Can Get Ahead”: Post-Yugoslav Cinema/TV/Video in the

1990s, Andrew Horton

18 The Catholic Church in a Time of Crisis, Jure Kristo

PART SIX
Conclusion

The Yugoslav Crisis and the West, Sabrina Petra Ramet

About the Editors

About the Contributors

About the Book

Index
Preface

Planning for this book was begun in early 1988. The initial invitations
were issued in August-September 1989, and organizational work related to
an eventual conference was begun in 1990. By early 1991, it was apparent
that the long-feared breakup of Yugoslavia had become irreversible and was
now imminent, and at that point, we reassessed the project and redesigned
it, adding the section entitled “The Republics” in order to give individual
attention to each of the six constituent republics of what once was socialist
Yugoslavia.
This book was designed as a joint Yugoslav-American cooperative
enterprise, and care was taken to invite some of the most accomplished
scholars and experts working in the field. Chapters were contracted from
scholars working in the US, Britain, Germany, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, and
Macedonia. Regrettably, neither of the two scholars from Slovenia and
neither of the two scholars from Macedonia came through, and only one of
the two scholars from Germany finally offered a chapter for the book. In
addition, although great effort was expended in attempting to obtain a
chapter on the Serbian political scene from a distinguished Serbian scholar,
eventually our efforts in that connection proved unavailing, as first one and
then another Serbian scholar left us empty-handed. The result was that we
were constrained, for the sake of structural balance, to move the Serbian
Orthodox Church chapter from the social issues section of the book to the
“Republics” section, even though it only partially covers the terrain covered
by other chapters in this section. Nor was it our original intention that the
Slovenia and Macedonia chapters be contributed by one of us; this solution
was forced on us by the withdrawal of the scholars contracted for these
chapters. Yet, for all the travails that this book has gone through—travails
that are by no means unique, but are, on the contrary, thoroughly familiar to
any who have participated in collaborative projects—we believe that this
book makes a unique contribution to the existing literature, both in terms of
the breadth of its coverage and in terms of the range of opinion offered
herein.
Our original intention was to hold the conference in Dubrovnik, with
November 1991 as the prospective date. But by July 1991, it seemed
increasingly likely that Dubrovnik would shortly come under siege and we
decided to convene our meeting somewhere outside the country. Later that
year, when Dubrovnik was in fact besieged by Serbian forces, the
international center in which we would have met was completely destroyed
by bombardment. Meanwhile, our conference was rescheduled for 9–11 June
1992, in Budapest, Hungary. The final versions of all chapters except the
conclusion were completed in early 1993 and reflect the situation at that
time.
We are deeply indebted to IREX for generously funding our conference
and related expenses as well as for providing a publication subsidy to
Westview Press, to Obrad Kesić of IREX, who provided valuable assistance
at every stage in the process, to the East European Institute in Budapest for
providing fine facilities for our conference, and to Susan McEachem of
Westview Press for her consistently efficient work and wise counsel in
connection with this project. We also wish to thank Karen Walton, who
coded the computer discs used to generate this book.
Ivo Banac’s chapter, although presented at the conference in Budapest,
was first published in American Historical Review (October 1992), and we
are grateful to the editors of that journal for permission to reprint the article
here. Sabrina Rameťs chapter on Slovenia was first published in Europe-Asia
Studies (1993), and we are likewise grateful to the editors of that journal for
permission to reprint the article in question.
Finally, we should like to note what a pleasure it has been working with
each other on this book. Collaboration on a book can often strain a
relationship, but in this case, the entire collaboration proceeded so very
smoothly and with such pleasure on both sides that it seems only
appropriate to celebrate our successful collaboration publicly here.
Sabrina Petra Ramet

Ljubiša S. Adamovich
Introduction
The Roots of Discord and the Language of
War

Sabrina Petra Ramet

No more serve your brutal war-lords, join our dance!

No more slavery, join our dance!
Oh dance to our sun! Oh dance to our sun!
Cruel war priest of proud walled city
Feared this dancing madness,
Led his brutal army out to battle,
Slew all dancers, burned alive the Mad Dancing Girl, She danced in flames
until she was ashes.
—Alan Hovhaness, American composer, in the text to his “Lady of Light” (1968)

Such nonsense—wanting to put Serbs, Croats, and Albanians into one state each. The
Balkans are the most mixed region in Europe, all people should learn to live together

instead of making this absurd attempt to create ethnically cleansed states.

—Kiro Gligorov, President of Macedonia1

I
 I used to believe that nationalism had both beneficial and harmful
incarnations. After more than three years of inter-ethnic savagery in former
Yugoslavia, I am no longer certain of the supposed beneficial incarnations,
and am more inclined to believe that it is better to suppress nationalism
altogether rather than to water a plant that may bear such poisonous fruit.
For a “good nationalist” it is nothing to kill a member of the “enemy nation”;
on the contrary, it is a point of duty, the fulfillment of which is expected to
be rewarded both in this life and in a supposed hereafter in which the
Supreme Deity himself is seen as favoring one’s own nation.
The founding of the Yugoslav state at the end of 1918 was accompanied by
much fanfare, both among South Slavs and in the West, about the triumph of
the principle of national self-determination. This fanfare notwithstanding,
the Yugoslav state quickly revealed internal fragility as a result of
fundamental differences over its structure and appropriate orientation
toward national differences. The interwar kingdom lasted exactly 23 years
before it slid, under the impact of the Nazi-fascist occupation, into an
internal civil war between Croatian Ustaše, Serbian Chetniks, and
communist Partisans. Tito rebuilt a new Yugoslavia on the ashes of the old,
and the second Yugoslavia lasted 46 years—exactly twice as long as the first
Yugoslavia—before once again sliding into interethnic war. Both the
interwar kingdom and the Tito regime began by attempting to impose a
centralized regime, and gradually came to realize that, in the context of
multinational Yugoslavia, only a decentralized model had any hope of
success. But decentralization also had its foes, who argued alternatively that
the approach was inefficient, unnecessary, and even “unmodern.”2
The consequent perennial tensions between advocates of centralism and
advocates of decentralism (or even confederation), whether in the interwar
era, the Tito era, or the post-Tito period, produced an atmosphere of
perpetual crisis, in which monumental energies were rivetted on every issue
and in which economic, developmental, structural, personnel, and policy
questions were inevitably translated into ethnic/national questions. The
instability of both the interwar and postwar political formulas lent Yugoslav
politics a perennial sense of urgency, but simultaneously prevented the
regimes from setting priorities on the basis of anything other than ethnic
and national grounds. In the early 1980s, for example, Sergej Krajgher of
Slovenia headed a commission which prepared a report which made various
recommendations for economic stabilization. Among other things, his
recommendations would have entailed some compromise with the practice
of near-confederal decentralization, itself a concession to the “national
question.” As a result, the Krajgher report was stillborn.
Alongside this perpetual crisis, there have been recurrent pressures from
Yugoslavia’s discontents. Thus, as Ljubo Boban has noted, “… the Ustaša
[wartime Croatian fascist] movement itself was a direct product of the
Yugoslav state and its Great Serbian hegemonist policies.”3 The communists
wanted to avoid the mistakes of the interwar kingdom, but ironically, made
the same mistake of provoking nationalist resentment. After 1971, important
sectors of the Croatian public were alienated, and after the Albanian riots in
Kosovo in 1981, the Serbian public became both more disenchanted with the
federalized state and more vulnerable to manipulation.
One of the debates which the Serbs’ expansionist war against Croatia and
Bosnia has reinforced, but which actually began at least eight years prior to
the outbreak of the war, has to do with the question as to whether the war
was inevitable or not. The mere fact that various scholars, including myself,4
warned in the months between October 1990 and February 1991, that the
outbreak of ethnic war was imminent makes it clear that the country’s drift
toward strife was increasingly evident, and not some sort of unpredictable
thunderbolt. There were, of course, optimists and these scholars took a very
different approach, and stressed, on the contrary, the possibility for
containment of the crisis and for negotiated settlements.5
And yet, there was some point at which war became inevitable. For the
most bright-eyed optimists, that day was 26 June 1991, the day that JNA
tanks actually rolled into Slovenia. A more pessimistic interpretation might
argue that civil war became inevitable when Slobodan Milosevic, a
committed Serbian nationalist, took the helm of power in Serbia toward the
end of 1987. Milosevic’s ascent to power was, of course, a turning point, but
despite the escalation of tensions which accompanied his rise, it was
probably not until the arming of the Serbian civilian population in the
summer of 1990 that internal ethnic war became, strictly speaking,
“inevitable.” The danger of civil war had, however, been growing for years,
and ordinary citizens had openly talked of their fears of civil war for at least
three years prior to that summer.
The perpetual Yugoslav crisis was often seen largely in national terms and
indeed, the national question affected every sphere of social life.6 But the
crisis was also reflected quite autonomously in these sundry spheres, so that,
for example, as the Yugoslav economy soured over the course of the 1980s,
policy-makers and economic managers instinctively shifted the brunt of the
suffering onto women. As of the end of 1990, thus, some 70 percent of
unemployed persons in Yugoslavia were women.7 Similarly, the increase in
nationalist chauvinism in the country between 1989 and 1992 also
contributed directly to a new male chauvinism and to increased difficulties
for women. Or, to take another example, the gathering political and social
crisis confronted the leading Churches (chiefly the Catholic Church and the
Serbian Orthodox Church) with new challenges, new opportunities, and new
“rules of the game.” The result is that both the Catholic and the Orthodox
Church have adopted a more strident tone in public discourse and public
debate since the withering away of communism.

II
Accompanying the war against the “enemy” is a war against “enemy
ideas,” and consequently an effort to alter not merely boundaries but
language as well. Bullets can terminate resistance on the battlefield, but
resistance—even if, as in history’s most one-sided clashes, only a spiritual
resistance—continues all the same, as long as any of the vanquished nation
are alive and remember. Only a successful imposition of one’s own preferred
“national script” holds out the promise of a still more complete victory, in
which even the survivors know only the history written by the victors. The
war about language is at the same time a war for the minds of one’s own
nation, a war to consolidate ranks around the “national idea,” as defined and
rendered in the national script being propounded. Nation as victim or as
hero, as justified by God or fate or history, as old or new, as united or
divided by unjust forces—nation is the value at the heart of many such
struggles over language.
Newsreports inevitably focus their attention in the first place on the
purely military level on which wars are waged, and to a somewhat lesser
extent, on the diplomatic-political and economic levels (which include such
matters as embargoes, illicit trade, price manipulations, and so forth). But
there are other levels of warfare which are also concomitants of the process.
While one might enumerate a number of additional levels, including
cultural, sexual (re. this, see Rada Iveković’s chapter), and religious, I shall
focus here only on the linguistic level.
In this process of the dissolution of Socialist Yugoslavia, the linguistic
struggle has been waged at various levels. First, there is the renaming of
towns and villages. Titograd, thus, has reverted to its historical name,
Podgorica, and sundry Hungarian villages in Vojvodina have been given
Serbian names, even though no Serbs have lived there. The Edvard Kardelj
University of Ljubljana is no longer called such. And the Serbs and Croats
alike have concocted their own names for lands they have seized: e.g., the
Serbian designation of part of Croatia as the “Krajina,” and the Croatian
designation of Croat-occupied Herzegovina as “Herzeg-Bosna.” This
argument about the names of places has extended to the province of Kosovo,
which Serbs lately call Kosmet, as they did from 1945 to 1968 (reviving, thus,
a name repugnant to the Albanians), and to Macedonia (which the Greeks
are willing to concede, at most, is “former Macedonia”), and even to the
name “Yugoslavia,” with Croatian resentment that the Serbs and
Montenegrins have chosen to call their truncated state by this name.
Second, there is a conscious effort to find “appropriate” names for the
enemy. The Serbs, for example, started calling the Croats “Ustaša” already in
1989, two years before the outbreak of war, suggesting that Tudjman’s
program is pure fascism. The Croats, offended by this usage, have
themselves replied by calling the Serbs “Chetniks,” but in this case, the name
carries no sting, because many of the Serbs are in fact proudly calling
themselves Chetniks. On other fronts, the Serbs have taken to calling the
Albanians “Shiptars” (even though in Serbo-Croatian, Albanians have
wanted to be called “Albanci”), and the Muslims “Islamic fundamentalists.”
Tito is a special case here, in that Milosevic has insisted on calling him
“Broz” (Tito’s actual family name), at the same time forcing the Serbian
media to follow his lead.
Third, at least some citizens have considered it necessary, in times of war,
to change their names, in order to assert their patriotism or just to preserve
their lives and property. Nedeljna Dalmacija, a Split-based weekly, presented
evidence in January 1993 of a wave of Croatian citizens, mostly Serbs, who
had changed their names since 1991. As the newspaper explained, these
people “for reasons well known to themselves want to nullify the awkward
national sound of their own names through this action.”8
And fourth, there has been a drive to purify the language itself,
manifested, in Croatia, chiefly in a pseudo-Croatization of Croatian,
involving the coining of new words with indigenous derivation and the
revival of archaic Croatian-only words, and, in Serbia, in the suppression of
the Latin alphabet (which had been widely promoted in Tito’s day) in favor
of an exclusive use of the Cyrillic alphabet, which both Serbs and Croats
have associated with Serbian culture.
In addition to these four broad areas, there are also a number of specific
areas of controversy, such as those surrounding the words “minority” and (as
already mentioned briefly) “Yugoslavia,” and the nature of the war itself.
Let us take our first case, the word “minority.” Webster’s New World
Dictionary of the American Language defines “minority” as “less than half of
a total; a group, party, or faction with a smaller number of votes or
adherents than the majority.”9 The word has, thus, a purely mathematical
reference, and accordingly, 49 percent of a population constitutes a minority,
while 51 percent of a population constitutes a majority. For reasons having
to do with the nature of Titoism’s claims vis-a-vis the nationalities
question,10 the Yugoslavs never allowed, in the years following World War
Two, that there were any “minorities” in the country, although under a strict
definition of the word, there were only minorities, since even the largest
group (the Serbs) constituted less than 40 percent of the total. As long as the
state was at peace, however, this question as to whether the Macedonians,
let us say, were a “minority” within Yugoslavia, or a “nation” within
Yugoslavia (why not both?) seemed a quibble, and most observers seemed
content to let the Yugoslavs reject mathematical concepts and choose more
subjective ideological concepts. With the dissolution of the state, however,
has come the strange spectacle of Serbs within Croatia insisting that, with
11.6 percent of the population of that republic, they were “not a minority,”
while their co-ethnics in Bosnia insisted that with 32 percent of the
population of Bosnia-Herzegovina, they were also “not a minority” of the
population of Bosnia. The consequence drawn from this language, as Paul
Shoup explains in his chapter, was a rejection of the concept of majority
rule, or of any concept of self-determination by a majority vote. This, in
turn, opened up the prospect of an infinite spiral: when areas of Serbian
concentration in Croatia declared their secession from Croatia, areas of
Croatian concentration within those Serbian areas declared their secession
from the Serbian secessionist area. Had war not intervened to resolve the
issue, Serbian families living in the areas of Croatian density within the
largely Serbian regions of Croatia could have declared their secession from
the Croatian secessions from the Serbian secessions from the Croatian
republic, which was seceding from Yugoslavia. What we have is something
along the lines of a “this is the house that Jack built” formula, and is, in fact,
the logical consequence of the rejection of the principle of majority rule
which lay at the heart of the Titoist enterprise and which has been taken
over by the ruling nationalists in both Serbia and Croatia.11
Another word which has been disputed in this war is the word
“Yugoslavia.” Until June 1991 everyone knew what “Yugoslavia” meant. But
when Slovenia and Croatia declared their independence, the question
immediately opened as to whether Yugoslavia was splitting up, or whether,
rather, Slovenia and Croatia were seceding from a Yugoslavia which still
existed. The controversy continued even after the declarations of
independence by Bosnia-Herzegovina and Macedonia. At the heart of the
issue was Belgrade’s claim that Serbia and Montenegro constituted
“Yugoslavia,” and should enjoy the privileges of being the successor state to
Yugoslavia (for example, retaining membership in international bodies).
Belgrade later reinforced this claim by declaring the formation of the
“Federal Republic of Yugoslavia”—not a “new” state, the world was told, but
a reorgnization of the old “Socialist Federated Republic of Yugoslavia.”
And finally, there is the matter of the war itself. Were Serbia and Croatia
to agree on the terminology to describe the war, there would be considerable
cause for surprise. But, on the contrary, they have construed the war rather
differently.12 In Serbia’s eyes, there is a profound difference between the war
with Croatia and the war with Bosnia. The former has been consistently
portrayed in the Serbian media as a war to liberate unjustly persecuted
Serbs from the claws of a fascist regime. That war is thus seen as political in
nature. FRY President Dobrica Ćosić told Greek state television in January
1993 that the Croats were waging a “genocidal war” against the Serbs,
adding that “entire villages have been burnt down.”13 By contrast, the
Serbian press has repeatedly argued that the war against Bosnia is a
“religious war,” occasioned by the need to defend Serbian Christians against
Islamic “fundamentalism.” Thus, Tanjug, the official Serbian press agency,
cited Dobrica Ćosić to the effect that “… a religious war is taking place in the
Balkans and … is acquiring international dimensions, especially because of
the presence of the Mujaheddin warriors in Bosnia-Herzegovina.”14 In a
typical effort to drive this point home, the politically rabid Belgrade daily
Politika ekspres reported (falsely) in March 1992 that Ismet Kusumagic,
described as a minister in the Bosnian government of Alija Izetbegovic, was
demanding that Islamic Shariat law be made the basis of civil law in Bosnia-
Herzegovina.15 By contrast, in Croatian eyes and media portrayals, there is
ultimately no difference between Serbia’s war against Croatia itself and
Serbia’s war against Bosnia. Both are seen as wars of territorial expansion,
stoked by inflaming nationalist chauvinism and inter-ethnic hatreds.
Ironically, it was Slobodan Milosevic himself who warned, in January 1990,
about the danger of “national and religious hatreds” which could “spring
from out of the darkness concealing them into the light of day, the hatreds
that led us into a fratricidal war in the past, a war which we well know was
such that its consequences will burden the consciousness even of the
generations that are yet to be bom.”16

III
It will be years before the full consequences of the war are known. Most
Western news reports are based either on battlefield observation or on visits
to the respective capital city. Ignored are the various towns and villages
which are not under siege, but which, typically, bear the brunt of the burden
of war: the capital city is, as a rule, the last to feel shortages. This is why
Western journalists’ and other travelers’ reports that shops in Belgrade and
Zagreb are full of goods (qualified, at high prices) miss the point, which is
that the war is indeed destroying the economies of these republics, gutting
entire communities and driving huge numbers of people below the poverty
line. Kragujevac, once a thriving industrial town, has been economically
ravaged by the war, and many local Serbs are without work and roam the
streets idly: random crime in Kragujevac has soared since early 1992, as a
result.17 Again, the Serbian economy has slid steadily downwards, enduring
an inflation rate of 19,810 percent in 1992.18 According to renowned
Yugoslav economist Oskar Kovač, up to 90 percent of enterprises in the
Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) may go bankrupt
before the end of 1993, with many markets permanently lost to Serbian
firms.19 Health services and medical protection have likewise deteriorated in
the FRY since the outbreak of the war, and Belgrade authorities feared
widespread food shortages by the end of 1993, in the event that the
international embargo was not lifted (or more effectively circumvented).20
There are, of course, always those who profit during times of hardship and
scarcity, and consistent with this pattern some Belgrade firms have chalked
up sizeable profits recently.21 But by November 1992, there were already
nearly 3 million unemployed in Serbia and the number was rising.22
The situation is, of course, worse in Croatia, whose labor force of 1.2
million persons must sustain the burden of financing the 270,000
unemployed (as of December 1992), 550,000 refugees, and 667,000 pensioners.
Recently, the Croatian economy has been marking up an annual budget
deficit of $2.5 billion, and Croatian authorities announced steep tax increases
to take effect in January 1993.23 Industrial production has fallen in Croatia—
by 28.5 percent in 1991 alone and by another 28.1 percent in the first six
months of 199224—while inflation, which roared at 609.9 percent in 1990,
slowed to 122.6 percent in 1991, and has crept upwards again to 384.3
percent in the first six months of 1992. Exports declined 24.7 percent in 1991,
and another 19.3 percent in the first seven months of 1992.25 In the Serbian
Krajina, which was always the poorest region in Croatia, there have been
reports of the exhaustion of food supplies, and the emigration of locals to
Slovenia and inner Serbia.
Bosnia’s economy is completed gutted, with entire industrial sectors
physically destroyed or damaged beyond simple repair. Moreover, much of
the transport infrastructure linking Bosnia with Croatia and linking parts of
Bosnia has been destroyed, chiefly by Serbian militias, according to news
reports. And even those republics not involved in the fighting, viz., Slovenia
and Macedonia, have been affected by the war: the disruption of trade
connections, the restrictions of the UN imposed trade embargo on Serbia
and Montenegro, and, in Macedonia’s case, the derivative Greek blockade
have all hit these economies hard.
The result is a region seriously impacted by the war—whether in terms of
lives lost, or in terms of the destruction of the economic infrastructure
necessary for those who survive to make their way. The old Yugoslavia,
which died a stormy death as rising nationalism tore it limb from limb, has
not only been politically dismantled, thus. It has also been psychologically
scarred and economically retrogressed, while all the while, the new muses of
war have elaborated national scripts to celebrate this new purgatory (with
its moments of sheer hell) as if it were heaven.

Notes
1. In interview with Profil (Vienna), 30 November 1992, p. 57, trans. in FBIS, Daily Report
(Eastern Europe), 1 December 1992, p. 60.

2. Radoslav Stojanović, Jugoslavija, nacije i politika (Belgrade: Nova knjiga, 1988).

3. Ljubo Boban, “Still More Balance on Jasenovac and the Manipulation of History,” in
East European Politics and Societies, Vol. 6, No. 2 (Spring 1992), p. 215.

4. See my article, “The Breakup of Yugoslavia”, in Global Affairs, Vol. 6, No. 2 (Spring
1991), p. 97.

5. Bogdan Denitch, Limits and Possibilities: The Crisis of Yugoslav Socialism and State

Socialist Systems (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1990); and V. P. Gagnon, Jr.,
“Yugoslavia—Prospects for Stability” in Foreign Affairs Vol. 70, No. 3 (Summer 1991). Also
Dennison Rusinow, “To Be or Not to Be? Yugoslavia as Hamlet,” in UFSI Field Staff Reports,
1990–91 series, No. 18 (June 1991).

6. Including even the rock scene: for discussion of this lesser known dimension, see
Sabrina Petra Ramet, Balkan Babel: Politics, Culture, and Religion in Yugoslavia (Boulder,
Colo.: Westview Press, 1992), chapter 5 (“Rock Music”).

7. Cynthia Cockbum, “A Women’s Political Party for Yugoslavia: Introduction to the

Serbian Feminist Manifesto,” in Feminist Review, No. 39 (Winter 1991), p. 156.

8. Nedeljna Dalmacija, as quoted in Borba (Belgrade), 20 January 1993, p. 12, trans. in

FBIS, Daily Report (Eastern Europe), 2 February 1993, p. 48.

9. Webster’s New World Dictionary of the American Language, 2nd College Ed.
(Cleveland, Ohio: William Collins and World Publishing Co., 1976), p. 906.
 10. For discussion, see Sabrina Petra Ramet, Nationalism and Federalism in Yugoslavia,

1962–1991,2nd ed. (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1992).

11. Zoran Djindjic offers a somewhat different approach, arguing that insofar as old
Yugoslavia has ceased to exist, so too have old Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia- Herzegovina, and
Macedonia, leaving only peoples with legitimate rights, but not preexisting legitimate
states, as is usually supposed. This argument would, of course, appeal to the Greeks. See
Djindjić’s “Jugoslawien—ein unerwünschter Staat,” in Die Neue Gesellschaft, Frankfurter

Hefte, Vol. 38, No. 9 (September 1991), p. 775.

12. The remainder of this paragraph draws freely from my essay, “Delegitimation and
Relegitimation in Yugoslavia and After,” in George Andreopoulos (ed.), International

Security in Eastern Europe, forthcoming from Green-wood Press.

13. Tanjug (26 January 1993), in FBIS, Daily Report (Eastern Europe), 27 January 1993, p.
44.

14. Tanjug (17 October 1992), in FBIS, Daily Report (Eastern Europe), 20 October 1992, p.
37.

15. Politika ekspres (Belgrade), 31 March 1992, summarized in Tanjug (31 March 1992), in
FBIS, Daily Report (Eastern Europe), 1 April 1992, p. 42.

16. Politika (Belgrade), 22 January 1990, p. 2.

17. Borba (6 November 1992), p. 11.

18. Tanjug (1 February 1993), in FBIS, Daily Report (Eastern Europe), 2 February 1993, p.
53.

19. Ibid.

20. Re. medical services, see Tanjug (3 February 1993), in FBIS, Daily Report (Eastern
Europe), 4 February 1993, p. 52; re. food shortage, see Tanjug (25 January 1993), in FBIS,
Daily Report (Eastern Europe), 26 January 1993, p. 62.

21. Politika (5 November 1992), p. 11.

22. Tanjug (13 November 1992), in FBIS, Daily Report (Eastern Europe), 16 November
1992, p. 40.

23. Financial Times (12 December 1991), p. 8.

 24. Vjesnik (28 March 1992), p. 2, trans. in FBIS, Daily Report (Eastern Europe), 20 April
1992, p. 32; and Neue Zürcher Zeitung (30 September 1992), p. 16.

25. Neue Zürcher Zeitung (30 September 1992), p. 16.

Part One
Adumbrations of the Breakup
1
The Avoidable Catastrophe

1
Dennison Rusinow

Historians and social scientists are adept at retrospectively discovering

why whatever happens was always inevitable, as if the various efforts to
produce some alternative result had never had any prospect of success
whatsoever. So it is with the violent disintegration of Yugoslavia in 1991.
Scholars are already busy following the media in describing Yugoslavia as an
“artificial” state (whatever that means) and an ill-fated experiment that was
doomed to shatter once Tito’s dictatorship was no longer there to hold it
together. The deep cultural, religious, historical, and socio-economic
differences among its peoples and their allegedly ancient or even primordial
hatreds of one another are why its creation was unnatural and its
disintegration inevitable.
This is a doubly flawed argument. The hidden premise of the purportedly
particular and fatal “artificiality” of the Yugoslav state is that only
homogeneous single-nation nation-states are “natural” and therefore
sustainable or even legitimate. Leaving aside as a quibble the counter-
argument that all states are human (and contingent) artifacts and thus
“artificial,” this historically and theoretically debatable and much debated
premise is far from self-evident and at best a potentially misleading over-
simplification of a complex set of modern cultural and political phenomena.2
Secondly, the contention that some or all of the South Slav peoples have
always hated one another so much that only Royal and then Communist
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
to deal. A graphic account of the battle at Elandslaagte was
written by the famous newspaper correspondent, G. W. Steevens,
who died shortly afterwards at Ladysmith. Two days after
Elandslaagte there was another engagement at Reitfontein,
still nearer to Ladysmith, fought for the purpose of keeping
the Boers from intercepting the retreat of General Yule. The
British forces defending Natal were now concentrated at
Ladysmith, which they had chosen for their main position, and
in which they had been collecting large quantities of military
stores. General Sir George White was there in general command.
The Boers, with General Joubert in chief command, were rapidly
closing in upon the town, and, on the 29th, they had a Creusot
(French) six-inch gun on a neighboring hill, within range,
ready to drop shells into its streets. That night General
White made an attempt to break their lines which ended in sore
disaster. One column, which marched far out, to a hill called
Nicholson's Nek, for a flanking attack on the enemy, lost most
of its ammunition and its battery, by a stampede of mules, and
then was caught in so helpless a position that it had to lay down
its arms. "The cursed white flag," wrote Mr. Steevens. "was up
again over a British force in South Africa. The best part of a
thousand British soldiers, with all their arms and equipment
and four mountain guns, were captured by the enemy. The Boers
had their revenge for Dundee and Elandslaagte in war; now they
took it full measure in kindness. As Atkins had tended their
wounded and succoured their prisoners there, so they tended
and succoured him here. One commandant wished to send the
wounded to Pretoria; the others, more prudent as well as more
humane, decided to send them back into Ladysmith. They gave
the whole men the water out of their own bottles; they gave
the wounded the blankets off their own saddles and slept
themselves on the naked veldt. They were short of transport,
and they were mostly armed with Martinis; yet they gave
captured mules for the hospital panniers and captured
Lee-Metfords for splints." It is consoling to come on a bit of
incident like this in the generally horrid story of war.
A few days later the communications of Ladysmith southward
were cut off, and the forces commanded by General White, about
10,000 in number, were hemmed in by superior numbers of the
Boers. British reinforcements were now beginning to arrive in
South Africa, and great numbers were at sea, not only imperial
troops, coming from England, India, Ceylon and elsewhere, but
colonial troops, offered by Canada, New Zealand and the
Australian colonies, and accepted by the imperial government.
The first operations of the British campaign were planned with
three objects, more or less distinct, namely, to rescue
General White's army, at Ladysmith, to relieve Kimberley, and
to expel the Boers from northern Cape Colony. They were
conducted on three lines, from the Natal port of Durban,
towards Ladysmith, under General Clery at the beginning; from
Cape Town towards Kimberley, under General Lord Methuen; from
Port Elizabeth and East London to Queenstown and the Cape
districts occupied by the Boers, under General Gatacre.

In the early battles of General Methuen's campaign, fought at

Belmont, November 23d, at Enslin, or Graspan, on the 25th, and
at Modder River, only 25 miles from Kimberley, on the 28th, he
carried his point, and kept up his advance, but at a heavy
sacrifice of men. The battle with Cronje's forces at Modder
River was a desperate struggle of ten hours duration, in which
the British lost nearly 500 men and gained little. The Boers
withdrew to an equally strong position, behind fortified lines
which extended, some six miles in length, on hills between two
points which bore the names of Spytfontein and Majesfontein.
There General Methuen attacked them again, December 11, and
met with a terrible repulse. His Highland Brigade, advancing
in the darkness, before daybreak, was in the midst of the
enemy's intrenchments before it knew them to be near, and was
horribly cut to pieces, losing 53 officers, including its
commander, General Wauchope, and 650 men. The British fell
back to Modder River, leaving not less than 1,000 men behind.
Just one day before this catastrophe, on the 10th, another of
like nature, but little less serious, was sustained by General
 Gatacre's column, moving from Queenstown. He, too, attempted a
night march and an early morning attack on the Boers in a
fortified position at Stormberg, was misled by guides,
miscalculated the distance, neglected to send scouts ahead,
and so took his men to the very muzzles of waiting guns. From
the storm which then opened on them there were more than 500
who did not escape. Besides the dead and wounded, many went as
prisoners to Pretoria. Before the week of these defeats
reached its end, another, far worse, had been added in the
Natal campaign. General Sir Redvers Buller, appointed to the
chief command in South Africa, had arrived at Cape Town on the
last day of October, and, after some general study of the
field at large, had taken personal direction of the operations
in Natal, for the relief of Ladysmith. His movements were
undoubtedly hurried by urgent appeals from General White. On
the 15th of December he felt prepared to attempt the passage
of the Tugela River, near Colenso, and did so with his full
force, at two drifts, or fords, some two miles apart. Like
Methuen and Gatacre, he seems to have been strangely
misinformed as to the location and strength of the
intrenchments of the Boers. The latter had succeeded again and
again in concealing lines of deadly rifle-pits and batteries
until their assailants fairly stumbled against them, within
fatally close range. This happened at Colenso, as at Stormberg
and Majesfontein and the ill-managed attempt to begin an
advance upon Ladysmith cost 165 men and officers killed, 670
wounded, 337 prisoners and missing, besides 11 guns.

SOUTH AFRICA: The Field of War: A. D. 1900.

Fighting qualities of the Boers.

"Take a community of Dutchmen of the type of those who

defended themselves for fifty years against all the power of
Spain at a time when Spain was the greatest power in the
world. Intermix with them a strain of those inflexible French
Huguenots who gave up home and fortune and left their country
forever at the time of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes.
 The product must obviously be one of the most rugged, virile,
unconquerable races ever seen upon earth.
{496}
Take this formidable people and train them for seven
generations in constant warfare against savage men and
ferocious beasts, in circumstances under which no weakling
could survive, place them so that they acquire exceptional
skill with weapons and in horsemanship, give them a country
which is eminently suited to the tactics of the huntsman, the
marksman, and the rider. Then, finally, put a finer temper
upon their military qualities by a dour fatalistic Old
Testament religion and an ardent and consuming patriotism.
Combine all these qualities and all these impulses in one
individual, and you have the modern Boer—the most formidable
antagonist who ever crossed the path of Imperial Britain."

A. C. Doyle,
The Great Boer War,
chapter 1.

Count Adalbert von Sternberg, a German officer who served with

the Boers, and who has since related his experiences in a
book, writes to the same effect. "The Boers," he remarks,
"were mounted, whilst the English were on foot, a matter of
considerable importance in these hot countries. Given the same
or even slightly superior forces, no Continental army would
have played its part better than the English, and I even doubt
whether, in regard to practical equipment and technical smartness
and efficiency the Continent would have done as well. The fact
is the Boer is an enemy of quite exceptional a character, such
as never has been met before, or is likely to be met again.
Mounted sharpshooters, armed with the very best of weapons,
acclimatized, fanatical, and accustomed to habits of war, are
terrible opponents, and cannot be dealt with off hand as if
they were hordes of savages. One must not forget that the
Boers have the keenest eyes imaginable, and that they
understand better than anyone else how to get the fullest
 advantage of cover. All these are advantages which go far
towards compensating defective leading and the weakening of
moral due to being always on the defensive. … The Boers would
have had much greater successes if they had not abandoned all
idea of taking the offensive. They could not be brought to
that, for that they lacked courage, and to that lack of
courage they owe their destruction."

SOUTH AFRICA: The Field of War: A. D. 1900 (January-February).

Continued British disasters on the Tugela.
Lord Roberts and Lord Kitchener in the field.
Invasion of Orange Free State.
Capture of General Cronje and army.
Relief of Kimberley and Ladysmith.

The dark and heavy clouds of disaster which overhung the

British in South Africa at the close of the year shadowed
England with anxiety and gloom. For the first time, the
seriousness of the task of war in which the country had become
engaged was understood, and energies corresponding to it were
roused. Field-Marshal Lord Roberts, of Indian and Afghan
renown, was sent out to take supreme command, with the equally
famous Lord Kitchener, subjugator of the Egyptian Sudan, for
his chief of staff. Immense reinforcements of troops were
provided for with haste. On the 1st of January it was
estimated that 30,000 fresh troops were afloat or on the point
of embarkation, and that Lord Roberts would have 200,000 men
at command when all then assigned to South Africa should have
reached Natal and the Cape. Lord Roberts landed at the Cape on
the 10th of January, and was occupied for a month in
organizing and preparing for new movements in the field.
Meantime, General Buller had made a second attempt to turn the
strongly fortified position of his opponent on the Tugela,
between his own army and the beleaguered force at Ladysmith,
and had failed more discouragingly than before. Crossing the
Tugela, some miles west of Colenso, on the 17th, he pressed a
hard-fought, uphill advance, from one to another of the rocky
hills (called kopjes) of the region, for several days. On the
23d his troops stormed the fortifications of the Boers on
Spion Kop, a spur of the Drakenberg mountains, and carried
them with heavy loss, only to find that they were commanded
from other heights and could not be held. Again he drew back
to the southern bank of the Tugela, on the 29th; but only for
a few days. On the 5th of February his army was once more
pushed beyond the river, and entrenched in a position among
the hills, which it held until the 9th, and was then, for the
third time, withdrawn. This third movement is supposed to
have been a feint, intended to detain the Boer forces in his
front, either from some assault feared at Ladysmith or from
interference with the campaign which Lord Roberts was about to
open. The besieged at Ladysmith were holding out with grim
resolution, but they were known to be in sore straits.
Occasional messages by the heliograph told of much sickness
and fast approaching starvation in the town. Fever was killing
more than the shells from the bombarding guns; and the chances
of relief seemed to have almost disappeared.

But a sudden change in the whole military situation was about

to be made. Lord Roberts and Lord Kitchener had organized
arrangements of transportation and supplies for handling the
immense force now at their command, and were ready to execute
their plans. The former arrived at Modder River on the 9th of
February; two days later his columns were set in motion, and
the Boer forces, under General Cronje, were too greatly
outnumbered to withstand the avalanche which fell upon them.
General French led a cavalry expedition to Kimberley, reaching
the town on the 15th and raising the siege. The next day
General Cronje was in retreat towards Bloemfontein, the Free
State capital, harassed by British cavalry, and with the main
army of Lord Roberts straining every nerve to strike him
before he reached it. On the 18th he was brought to bay, at a
point on the Madder River, near Paardeberg, where he defended
himself for nine days, in a situation that was impregnable to
assault, but terribly exposed to artillery fire from
 surrounding heights. He was expecting help from the forces in
Natal and elsewhere, and several attempts were made by his
associates to reach him; but the British were too strong to be
driven from their prey. After suffering to such a degree that
his men would endure no more, the brave and stubborn Boer
surrendered on the 27th, his army, reduced to about 4,000,
laying down their arms. Some 500 had been taken in the
previous fighting, and considerable numbers in the last days
of the siege, are said to have deserted and found means to
slip through the enemy's lines. The prisoners were sent, for
convenience of custody, to the island of St. Helena, the
general being accompanied by his whole family, and treated
with much respect.

{497}

While these operations were being carried to success by Lord

Roberts, General Buller was again attacking the formidable
fortifications of the enemy in his front. From the 14th of
February until the 23d he sacrificed great numbers of men in
assaults which failed to break a passage through the kopjes
defended by Boer guns. But Lord Roberts's invasion of the Free
State had, by this time, caused large withdrawals of Boers
from the line of the Tugela, and they were preparing to raise
the siege of Ladysmith. Consequently, when the British attack
was renewed, on the 27th, it achieved success, at last. The
Boers were driven from their main position and abandoned their
whole line. Ladysmith was reached by a swift advance of
cavalry the next day, and the half-starved garrison and
citizens were soon receiving supplies.

SOUTH AFRICA: The Field of War: A. D. 1900 (March).

Overtures of peace from Presidents Kruger and Steyn.
The reply of Lord Salisbury.
Death of General Joubert.

On the 5th of March, the Presidents of the South African

Republic and the Orange Free State addressed the following
telegram, jointly, to Lord Salisbury: "The blood and tears of
the thousands who have suffered by this war, and the prospect
of all the moral and economic ruin with which South Africa is
now threatened, make it necessary for both belligerents to ask
themselves dispassionately, and as in the sight of the Triune
God, for what they are fighting, and whether the aim of each
justifies all this devouring misery and devastation. With this
object, and in view of the assertions of various members of
the British Parliament to the effect that this war was begun
and is being carried on with the set purpose of undermining
Her Majesty's authority in South Africa, and of setting up an
Administration over all South Africa independent of Her
Majesty's Government, we consider it our duty solemnly to
declare that this war was undertaken solely as a defensive
measure for securing the threatened independence of the South
African Republic, and is only continued in order to secure the
incontestable independence of both Republics as sovereign
international States, and to ensure that those of Her
Majesty's subjects who have taken part with us in this war
shall suffer no harm whatever in person or property. On these
conditions, but on these conditions alone, are we now, as in
the past, desirous of seeing peace reëstablished in South
Africa, and of putting an end to the evil now reigning over
South Africa; while, if Her Majesty's Government is determined
to destroy the independence of the Republics, there is nothing
left to us and our people but to persevere to the end in the
course already begun, in spite of the overwhelming
pre-eminence of the British Empire, confident that the God who
lighted the unextinguishable fire of the love of freedom in
the hearts of our fathers will not forsake us, but will
accomplish His work in us and in our descendants. We hesitated
to make this declaration earlier to Your Excellency, as we
feared that as long as the advantage was always on our side,
and as long as our forces held defensive positions far in Her
Majesty's Colonies, such a declaration might hurt the feelings
of honour of the British people; but now that the prestige of the
British Empire may be considered to be assured by the capture
of one of our forces by Her Majesty's troops, and that we are
thereby forced to evacuate other positions which our forces
had occupied, that difficulty is over, and we no longer
hesitate clearly to inform your Government and people in the
sight of the whole civilised world why we are fighting, and on
what conditions we are ready to restore peace."

On the 11th Lord Salisbury replied as follows: "I have the

honour to acknowledge Your Honours' telegram, dated the 5th of
March, from Bloemfontein, of which the purport is principally
to demand that Her Majesty's Government shall recognise the
'incontestable independence' of the South African Republic and
Orange Free State 'as sovereign international States,' and to
offer, on those terms, to bring the war to a conclusion. In
the beginning of October last peace existed between Her
Majesty and the two Republics under the Conventions which then
were in existence. A discussion had been proceeding for some
months between Her Majesty's Government and the South African
Republic, of which the object was to obtain redress for
certain very serious grievances under which British residents
in the South African Republic were suffering. In the course of
those negotiations, the South African Republic had, to the
knowledge of Her Majesty's Government, made considerable
armaments, and the latter had, consequently, taken steps to
provide corresponding reinforcements to the British garrisons
of Cape Town and Natal. No infringement of the rights
guaranteed by the Conventions had, up to that point, taken
place on the British side. Suddenly, at two days' notice, the
South African Republic, after issuing an insulting ultimatum,
declared war upon Her Majesty; and the Orange Free State, with
whom there had not even been any discussion, took a similar
step. Her Majesty's dominions were immediately invaded by the
two Republics, siege was laid to three towns within the
British frontier, a large portion of the two Colonies was
overrun, with great destruction to property and life, and the
Republics claimed to treat the inhabitants of extensive
 portions of Her Majesty's dominions as if those dominions had
been annexed to one or other of them. In anticipation of these
operations the South African Republic had been accumulating
for many years past military stores on an enormous scale,
which by their character could only have been intended for use
against Great Britain. Your Honours make some observations of a
negative character upon the object with which these
preparations were made. I do not think it necessary to discuss
the questions you have raised. But the result of these
preparations, carried on with great secrecy, has been that the
British Empire has been compelled to confront an invasion
which has entailed upon the Empire a costly war and the loss
of thousands of precious lives. This great calamity has been
the penalty which Great Britain has suffered for having in
recent years acquiesced in the existence of the two Republics.
In view of the use to which the two Republics have put the
position which was given to them, and the calamities which
their unprovoked attack has inflicted upon Her Majesty's
dominions, Her Majesty's Government can only answer Your
Honours' telegram by saying that they are not prepared to
assent to the independence either of the South African
Republic or of the Orange Free State."

Great Britain, Papers by Command:

Africa, Number 2, 1900.

{498}

On the 27th of March, the Boer cause experienced a great loss,

in the sudden death, from peritonitis, of General Joubert, the
Commandant-General and Vice President of the South African
Republic.

SOUTH AFRICA: Orange Free State: A. D. 1900 (March).

Proclamation to the burghers by the British commander.

Soon after entering the Orange Free State, Lord Roberts issued
a proclamation addressed to the burghers, assuring them that
the British government did not believe them to be responsible
for the aggressive act of war committed by the government of
the Orange Free State, and bore them no ill-will. "I,
therefore," his proclamation continued, "warn all Burghers to
desist from any further hostility towards Her Majesty's
Government and the troops under my command, and I undertake
that any of them, who may so desist and who are found staying
in their homes and quietly pursuing their ordinary
occupations, will not be made to suffer in their persons or
property on account of their having taken up arms in obedience
to the order of their Government. Those, however, who oppose
the forces under my command, or furnish the enemy with
supplies or information, will be dealt with according to the
customs of war. Requisitions for food, forage, fuel, or
shelter, made on the authority of the officers in command of
Her Majesty's troops, must be at once complied with; but
everything will be paid for on the spot, prices being
regulated by the local market rates. If the inhabitants of any
district refuse to comply with the demands made on them, the
supplies will be taken by force, a full receipt being given.
Should any inhabitant of the country consider that he or any
member of his household has been unjustly treated by any
officer, soldier or civilian attached to the British Army, he
should submit his complaint, either personally or in writing,
to my Headquarters or to the Headquarters of the nearest
General Officer. Should the complaint on enquiry be
substantiated, redress will be given. Orders have been issued
by me, prohibiting soldiers from entering private houses, or
molesting the civil population on any pretext whatever, and
every precaution has been taken against injury to property on
the part of any person belonging to, or connected with, the
Army."

After the occupation of Bloemfontein, Lord Roberts issued a

second proclamation, announcing that he had received authority
from his government to offer the following terms to those "who
 have been engaged in the present war": "All Burghers who have
not taken a prominent part in the policy which has led to the
war between Her Majesty and the Orange Free State, or
commanded any forces of the Republic, or commandeered or used
violence to any British subjects, and who are willing to lay
down their arms at once, and to bind themselves by an oath to
abstain from further participation in the war, will be given
passes to allow them to return to their homes and will not be
made prisoners of war, nor will their property be taken from
them."

Great Britain, Papers by Command:

Cd. 261, 1900, pages 62-63.

SOUTH AFRICA: The Transvaal and the Free State:

A. D. 1900 (March).
Boer Peace Commissioners to Europe and America.

In March, three commissioners, Messrs. Fischer, Wolmeraans and

Wessels were sent to Europe and America by the two Boer
governments to solicit intervention in their behalf. They
visited several European countries and proceeded thence to the
United States, in May. There were many demonstrations of
popular sympathy in their reception, on both sides of the
ocean, but they failed to obtain official recognition.

SOUTH AFRICA: The Field of War: A. D. 1900 (March-May).

The British in Bloemfontein and Kroonstad.
The relief of Mafeking.

From the scene of the surrender of General Cronje Lord Roberts

moved quickly on the Free State capital. His advance was
resisted by considerable forces of the Boers, but he was able
to turn most of their positions, and fought only one severe
battle, at Driefontein, on the 10th of March. On the 12th his
cavalry was in possession of Bloemfontein, and the
Field-Marshal entered the city on the following day, receiving
from the municipal officers a formal surrender of the keys of the
public buildings, and being welcomed by some part of the
population with demonstrations of joy. President Steyn and
most of the members of the government of the Republic had
retired to Kroonstad and established the seat of authority
there. The lighting and the forced marches of a single month,
since he began his advance, had now exhausted the mobility of
Lord Roberts's army, worn out the means of transportation
which Lord Kitchener had hastily organized for it,—while his
troops were being stricken with fever,—and he was compelled to
suspend his campaign for some weeks. The situation at that
time was probably described with accuracy by a military
contributor to "Blackwood's Magazine" for June, 1900, who
wrote: "Lord Roberts found himself at Bloemfontein with the
wreck of an army and a single narrow-gauge line of railway
between himself and his base, upwards of 700 miles distant. It
was very soon known in Boer headquarters at Kroonstad that he
could not move beyond Bloemfontein for some weeks. The
triumphal march of Generals Gatacre and Clements through the
recently captured territory, accepting submissions, hoisting
union-jacks and picking up rifles of antique date, afforded
much amusement to the Boers, who saw their opportunity and
streamed down in large numbers on the small British posts
which were scattered east and south of the railway."

There was a good deal of raiding and fighting on a minor

scale, with a number of mortifying mishaps to the British
arms; but little of importance occurred in the military field
until near the end of April, when Lord Roberts had reinforced
and mobilized his army sufficiently to move forward again,
towards Pretoria. On the 12th of May he entered Kroonstad, and
the Free State government was again in flight. He paused at
Kroonstad for some days, and while he paused there came news
of the relief of Mafeking, which caused a wilder joy in
England than any other event of the war. There had been
painful anxiety on account of the besieged in that remote
town, in the far corner of Bechuanaland, on the border of the
 Transvaal,—so far from help, and so stoutly defended for seven
weary months by a very small force. From a point near
Kimberley, a flying column of mounted men, mostly colonial
troops, commanded by Colonel Mahon, had been started northward
on the 4th of May, taking a route east of the railway, to avoid,
as much as possible, the Boers.
{499}
On the 15th they were 20 miles west of Mafeking, and there
they were joined by another detachment, under Colonel Plumer,
which had been operating in the northern region for some weeks
without being able to break up the siege. The two advanced on
the works of the besiegers, drove them out by hard fighting,
and entered the town on the 18th of May. Meantime, another
column, under General Hunter, had been securing and opening
the railway, to bring up the sorely needed supplies for the
famished and worn-out garrison and people of the town. The
defense of Mafeking was one of the finest performances of the
war, and gave distinction to Colonel Baden-Powell.

SOUTH AFRICA: Cape Colony: A. D. 1900 (April-June).

The question of the treatment of Cape Colonists who had taken
part with the Boers in the war.
Resignation of Premier Schreiner.

On the 28th of April, the Ministers of Cape Colony addressed

to the Governor, Sir Alfred Milner, a Minute upon the subject
of the treatment of those inhabitants of the Colony who had
joined or given aid to the Boers in the war, and who had thus
made themselves liable to the pains and penalties of high
treason. "Ministers submit," they said, "that the ends of
justice would be served by the selection of a certain limited
number of the principal offenders, whose trials would mark the
magnitude of their offence, and whose punishment, if found
guilty, would act as a deterrent. For the remainder, Ministers
believe that the interests both of sound policy and of public
morality would be served if Her Gracious Majesty were moved to
issue, as an act of grace, a Proclamation of amnesty under
which, upon giving proper security for their good behaviour,
all persons chargeable with high treason, except those held
for trial, might be enlarged and allowed to return to their
avocations. Ministers urge such a course not only on the
ground of that natural desire for clemency towards her erring
subjects which they feel sure would spring from Her Gracious
Majesty, but from a deep sense of the importance of such a
step upon the future well-being of this country."

The substance of the Minute was transmitted by cable to Mr.

Chamberlain, and he replied to it on the 5th of May, objecting
to the proposed proclamation of a broad amnesty, saying:
"Clemency to rebels is a policy which has the hearty sympathy
of Her Majesty's Government, but justice to loyalists is an
obligation of duty and honour. The question is how can these
two policies be harmonized. It is clear that in the interest
of future peace it is necessary to show that rebellion cannot
be indulged in with impunity, and above all that if
unsuccessful it is not a profitable business for the rebel.
Otherwise the State would be offering a premium to rebellion.
The present moment, therefore, while the war is still
proceeding, and while efforts may still be made to tempt
British subjects into rebellious courses, is in any case not
appropriate for announcing that such action may be indulged in
with absolute impunity. And if, as has been suggested, a great
many of the Queen's rebellious subjects are the mere tools of
those who have deceived them, it is important that these
should be made aware individually that whatever their leaders
may tell them rebellion is a punishable offence." This
attitude of the Imperial Government on the subject of amnesty
occasioned differences in the Ministry of Cape Colony which
led to the resignation of the Premier, Mr. W. P. Schreiner, on
the 13th of June, and the appointment of a new Ministry, under
Sir Gordon Sprigg.

Great Britain, Papers by Command:

July, 1900, Cape Colony, Cd. 264.
SOUTH AFRICA: The Field of War: A. D. 1900 (May).
The British army stricken with fever.

The losses of the British army in battle during this campaign

of Lord Roberts had not been severe; but it had encountered a
worse enemy than the Boers, and was being terribly thinned and
shattered by the ravages of enteric or typhoid fever. The
sanitary condition of the army in May, and the lack of due
provision for dealing with the dreadful epidemic, have been
graphically described by the writer already quoted, in
"Blackwood's Magazine." Referring to the outset of the
campaign, in February, he wrote:

"The movement of men and cattle depends on flesh and muscle—it

cannot go on for ever; the strain of incessant marching on
insufficient food and forage will find out the weak spot even
in the most willing. General French started on his memorable
ride with 4,800 horses, of which 990 dropped by the way,
though the loss in the ranks, exclusive of Paardeberg, was
only fifty men,—the brunt of the battle for life lay with the
horses. But not for long. The men with worn-out boots,
tattered clothes, hurrying through scorching days and frosty
nights, with half a biscuit and water tainted with dead Boers,
to satisfy an appetite and thirst compelled by hard work at an
altitude of 4,000 feet, who marched in as soldiers, proud of the
victory they had won, staggered and fell out, victims to the
curse that creeps in, unnoticed, wherever camps are
crowded—enteric. … Of all things on which we prided ourselves
was the care and the money we had lavished to provide comforts
for our sick soldiers. The foremost surgeons of the day had
volunteered; military hospitals had been arranged on the
latest plan; private benevolence had provided as many more;
ladies of every rank in life had gone out to nurse: the
soldiers, at all events, would be looked after. Letters from
the front had come from patients to say how well they had been
treated. Mr. Treves at the Reform Club made a speech eulogizing
 the perfection of the hospitals in Natal, and Sir W. MacCormac
spoke of the medical arrangements as admirable—our minds
rested content. All this was so long ago as the 10th March,
but what happened in March, for all we knew, was happening in
May. Then Mr. Burdett-Coutts told us that hundreds of men were
lying in the worst stages of typhoid, with only a blanket to
cover them, a thin water-proof sheet (not even that for many)
between them and the ground; no milk and hardly any medicines;
without beds, stretchers, or mattresses; without pillows, without
linen of any kind, without a single nurse amongst them, with a
few private soldiers as orderlies, and only three doctors to
attend on 350 patients; their faces covered with flies in
black clusters, the men too weak to brush them off, trying in
vain to dislodge them by painful twitching of the
features—there was no one to do it for them. And this a mile
from Bloemfontein, where the army had been for six weeks. It
is true that a terrible epidemic had followed it from
Paardeberg, to break out when it halted. Lord Roberts tells us
that before he left on May 3rd the sick gradually increased to
2,000, reaching on June 4th the appalling number, in
Bloemfontein, of over 5,000 suffering from typhoid alone.
{500}
Such were the bare facts as stated on either side—a sudden and
devastating epidemic with totally inadequate hospital
arrangements to meet it. … Yet typhoid has always been the
scourge of armies in the field,—in South Africa the
water-supply, invariably surface drainage fouled by dead
animals, is proverbial—that at least was known. The medical
authorities on the spot were repeatedly warned by local
medical men that from February onwards ten men would be down
with typhoid for one with wounds. Ladysmith is in evidence of
the persistent presence of typhoid—every one who has visited
South Africa bears witness to the same—it can hardly be urged
that an outbreak was unreasonable to expect; yet when it did
occur it seems to have been taken by the medical
administration at the base as an unwarrantable intrusion."
 The War Operations in South Africa
(Blackwood's Magazine, August, 1900).

SOUTH AFRICA: The Transvaal: A. D. 1900 (May).

Speech of President Kruger to the Volksraads.

The following translation of a speech addressed to both

Volksraads by President Kruger, in May, 1900, was published in
England some months later: "It is known to you," said the
President, "how, before the war started, pressure was brought
to bear to obtain the franchise. It is known to you that the
Government conceded, after the Rand had consented, although
this body saw the difficulty in the matter, till even the
burghers made petitions to the effect that we had parted with
all our rights. The Government had in view the prevention of
shedding blood. The Raad then consented to a seven years'
franchise, and also to grant immediately the franchise to
people resident here longer than seven years. There were then
nearly 30,000 who would obtain the franchise immediately, and
so much was conceded that when these had obtained the
franchise they would have been able to out-vote the old
burghers. We consented to this solely to prevent the shedding
of blood. Yet they were not satisfied and they wanted the
franchise after five years' residence. Our burghers were
against this, and there were also members of the Raad who
would not agree to this, yet, nevertheless, the Government
made a proposition about it, because they had discovered that
it was not about the franchise, but that it was a pretence
full of Pharisaic hypocrisy, because documents had been found
that in 1896 it was decided that the two independent Republics
should not be allowed to exist any more. I cannot express
myself otherwise than to call it a devilish fraud. Peace was
spoken of while a resolution had already been passed to
annihilate us. Even if we had conceded more, yea, even if we
had said that the franchise could be obtained after one year,
then that would not have been accepted. It was proved by
documents that, as this nation could not be allowed to be a
free nation, as was pointed out in the address, the
Government, to prevent the further shedding of blood, made a
proposition to Chamberlain and Salisbury about this matter,
and what was the reply? You have, doubtless, read the paper,
and, although I cannot verbally repeat the contents of the
said document, it amounts to this. That they were annoyed ever
to have acknowledged us as an independent nation, and that,
notwithstanding all conventions made, they would never
acknowledge this nation as self-supporting. Honourable
gentlemen, I had to express that which was in my mind. Psalm
83 speaks of the assault of the evil one on the Kingdom of
Christ. That must not exist. The self-same words of Salisbury
also appear, because he says 'this nation must not exist,' and
God says, 'this nation shall exist.' Who will be victorious?
Certainly the Lord. You see therein the deceit which they then
already practised, even they, for though our nation did not
wish to part with any rights, the Executive Council conceded
so far that we nearly lost the country. The intention was not
to obtain these rights. They wanted our country not to be
independent any longer. Every other proposition was
unsatisfactory to them.

"Let us look this matter in the face and see the cunning
deceit enveloped therein. They wrote to the Orange Free State
that they had nothing against them, but that they had some
grievance against this Republic. Their intention was to tear
the two Republics asunder, and it has been proved by
documentary evidence that neither of them would be allowed to
remain. You see the deception which lies therein. The
documents prove that this was already decided in 1896, from
the time of Jameson's invasion, and yet they maintain that if
the Orange Free State had laid down their weapons that that
country would remain in existence. The Orange Free State
decided not to lay down their arms, and we started together.
We were 40,000 men, but everywhere we had to watch the
Kaffirs, and even the commander of Mafeking informed us that
certain Kaffir chiefs would assist him. We know that these
 numbered 30,000 able-bodied men. The number of Kaffirs nearly
equalled the number of our forces. Besides them, more than
200,000 English troops arrived, and against these we have to
fight. Now, gentlemen, look on God's government. Is it not
wonderful that 40,000 men having to fight these thousands,
besides the coloured people, still live? Acknowledge therein
the hand of God. The matter I wish to impress is this. It is
remarkable that when we meet the enemy we stand in the
proportion of 10 to 100. Yet the Lord hath spared us thus far.
I do not wish to prophesy, but I wish to point out that our
guidance is in the word of God. It is extraordinary, but this
war is a sign of the times. What it amounts to is this. That
the power of the Beast is an obstinate power to persecute the
Church and will continue this until the Lord says, 'Thus far
and no further: and why? Because the Church must be tried and
purified as there is so much iniquity among us. That is why
the war is extraordinary and is a sign of the times. Every one
will be convinced that the word of God can be plainly traced
in this matter. They say that the people 'shall not exist,'
but God says, 'it shall exist and be purified.' In my mind it
lies clear and discernable that the day of grace is not far
off. The Lord will prove to be ruler, and nothing shall take
place without His will. When He allows chastisement to come
upon us we must bend ourselves and humble ourselves, confess
our sins and turn again to the Lord. When the whole nation has
been humbled, and it is seen that we can do nothing ourselves,
the Lord will help us and we shall have peace immediately.
{501}
This humility has not grasped our hearts sufficiently at
present, and we must perform our earnest duty as Peter says in
1 Peter, chapter v., v. 7 and 8:—'Casting all your care upon
Him; for He careth for you'; but in the eighth verse it
states:—'Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the
Devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may
devour.' That is the point on which we must be careful. If we
fall into disbelief then we lower ourselves.