FRERE, HENRY BARTLE

Sir Henry Bartle Edward Frere (March 29, 1815-May 29, 1884) was a British imperial administrator. After a long and distinguished career in India, he served as governor and high commissioner of Cape Colony from 1877-80.

He was born in Brecknockshire, in Wales, and graduated from Baileybury College in 1834. He then entered the Indian civil service, and was chief commissioner of the province of Sind from 1850 – 59.

In 1857 he played a key role in suppressing the Indian Mutiny in Sind and the neighbouring province of the Punjab. He was then knighted, and served as a member of the viceroy’s council in Calcutta from 1859-62. From 1862-67 he was governor of Bombay. He then returned to England, where for ten years he served on the India Council. During this time, in 1872, he was also sent on a special mission to Zanzibar to negotiate a treaty for the suppression of the slave trade. In 1875 he accompanied the Prince of Wales on a tour of India, being accorded a baronetcy on his return.

In 1877 he was sent out to South Africa as British governor and high commissioner in Cape Colony. The British colonial secretary, Lord Carnarvon, who sent him, had given him the task of uniting Britain’s South African possessions as well as the Boer republics into a confederation.

His mission was ill-starred. He arrived at a time of turbulence, and events were to move beyond his control. Two weeks before his arrival, Sir Theophilus Shepstone, the British agent in Natal, had annexed the Transvaal Republic to the British crown a development that undermined the basis for Anglo-Boer cooperation in the discussions on confederation.

Frere was then faced with a series of African uprisings of the Xhosa in the Eastern Cape (1877-78), the Pedi in the Transvaal (1878-79), the Griqua in the western and Eastern Cape (1878), and the Phuthi in Lesotho (1879). The task of dealing with these challenges diverted Frere’s attention from pursuing the goal of confederation. He also had a falling out with the Cape Colony’s first prime minister, John C. Molteno who was opposed to Carnarvon’s confederation plan, over the use of imperial troops in the Xhosa war.

In 1878, therefore, Frere dismissed Molteno, and appointed John Gordon Sprigg as prime minister in his place. In the same year, however, Frere lost the mainstay of his support for confederation when Lord Carnarvon resigned from the Colonial Office.

Frere then decided that the best way to obtain the cooperation of the Boer republics was to break the power of the Zulu kingdom, which the Boers saw as the major threat facing them at that time. On December 11, 1878 he therefore issued an ultimatum to Cetshwayo, the king of the Zulus, requiring him to disarm and disband his armies. The Zulu War of 1879 followed, with British troops invading Zululand in January.

On January 22, British forces were disastrously defeated by the Zulu at Isandlwana Hill. Elsewhere, however, British arms were victorious, and the Zulu kingdom was dismembered. In London, however, Frere’s action in launching the war was seen as “inopportune” and he was blamed for the defeat at Isandlwana. Publicly censured, he was replaced as high commissioner by Sir Garnet Wolseley. He retained his governorship until 1880, however, when he was recalled to London. Despite the collapse of the confederation plan for which he had worked, he remained popular among the colonists at the Cape. He spent his last years in England, preparing a vindication of his conduct in office.

KEITH IRVINE