Theodor Mommsen, British Imperialism and the South African War of Independence
(1899-1902)
The cause of the Afrikaners in their struggle against the British in the South African War of
Independence (1899-1902), more widely known as the Boer War, was the subject of an
extensive debate among historians of imperialism, including the famous German historian,
Theodore Mommsen, in the first years of the twentieth century. In 1902, Mommsen was
awarded the Nobel Prize for literature at the age of 86. This celebrated event coincided with
the bitter conclusion of the Boer War as a result of Kitchener's use of concentration camps
for Afrikaner women and children to isolate their guerrillas, and also with the death of Cecil
John Rhodes, whose aggressive promotion of British Imperialism and land acquisition in
Southern Africa had been largely responsible for the conflict. Rhodes had become something
of a cult figure in Germany and he was later to become a model leader for prominent Nazis,
including Goebbels and even Hitler himself. As an ancient historian, Mommsen could
scarcely have avoided the notion of imperialism, and his views on contemporary empires,
such as the British one, was widely sought after in Germany and in South Africa, where
contacts with German intellectuals, including Classicists, was gaining momentum and would
later lead to significant scholarly exchanges. Mommsen is generally viewed by British
Classicists as a supporter of Caesar and as a critic of Cicero's republicanism as it was
practiced in Rome in the first century before our era. At the same time, however, Mommsen
greatly admired Edward Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
and he was otherwise politically liberal and an admirer of the achievements of the English
parliamentary government. Despite this, he argued that British empire-building in South
Africa went beyond the needs of the British nation and by overreaching itself it would bring
about its fall, just as Rome had by her relentless acquisition of the territories of the
Mediterranean from England to Iraq. Mommsen's critique did not go unanswered, however.
The distinguished Classicist Adolf Sonnenschein, the Professor of Classics in Birmingham,
joined the Oxford Indologist, Max Müller, in rebutting his views. Both Müller and
Sonnenschein were of German extraction but they had forged highly successful careers in
England. So high did feelings run during this debate that, when the British navy intercepted
three German ships on suspicion of gun-running and escorted them into Durban harbour for
inspection, public opinion in Germany was outraged. However, Mommsen's opposition to
imperialism in his own day was inevitably doomed to failure. The German public failed to
appreciate his Anglophile sentiments, while his criticisms of British imperialism in South
Africa alienated his friends in England. This paper analyses the use of the Roman Empire and
Roman imperialism as an exemplum in this important debate, as it was carried out in the
British, German, and South African newspapers of the day.