‘In Defiance of the Highest Principles of Justice,Principles of Righteousness’: The Indenturing of the Bechuana Rebels and the Ideals of Empire, 1897–1900

This article explores the controversy around the suppression of the Langeberg Rebellion and subsequent punitive indenture of the ‘Bechuana rebels’, a serious episode of colonial violence which, like many others, has been forgotten. In recovering this episode, I argue that such controversies were crisis points in wider attitudes towards empire and colonial relationships. The article focuses on what the debate reveals about the articulation of four imperial ‘principles’ that those challenging the punishment argued had been undermined: ‘freedom’, ‘protection’, ‘civilisation’ and ‘justice’. By comparing reactions in Britain and southern Africa, I demonstrate that these values, evoked as if universally understood, were configured in ways that spoke to the specificities of different colonial sites and that their meanings differed, even within what may be described as ‘humanitarian’ networks, across places of Empire. I argue that violent episodes, such as the Bechuanaland controversy, created ruptures that exposed these discrepancies and contradictions.