1895 — The Jameson Raid

On December 29, 1895, Dr. Leander Starr Jameson led 500 armed horsemen across the border into the Boer-run Transvaal, riding for Johannesburg in Cecil Rhodes's scheme to topple Paul Kruger's republic. The raid was meant to meet a rising inside the territory and bring down its government in one swift stroke.

The planned Uitlander uprising never materialized, and the raiders surrendered at Doornkop on January 2, 1896. The fiasco forced Rhodes to resign as Cape premier and hardened Anglo-Boer hatred on the road to the 1899 Boer War. A raid that failed in days cast a shadow for years: it destroyed its sponsor's premiership and pushed two peoples closer to open war.

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