The
Kruger telegram was a message sent by
GermanyThe German Empire refers to Germany during the "Second Reich" period from the unification of Germany and proclamation of Wilhelm I as German Emperor on 18 January 1871, to 1918, when it became a federal republic after defeat in World War I and the abdication of the Emperor, Wilhelm II.The German...
's Kaiser Wilhelm II to
Stephanus Johannes Paulus KrugerStephanus Johannes Paulus Kruger , better known as Paul Kruger and affectionately known as Uncle Paul was State President of the South African Republic...
, president of the
Transvaal RepublicThe South African Republic , often informally known as the Transvaal Republic, was an independent Boer-ruled country in Southern Africa during the second half of the 19th century. Not to be confused with the present-day Republic of South Africa, it occupied the area later known as the South African...
, on 3 January 1896. The Kaiser congratulated the president on repelling the
Jameson RaidThe Jameson Raid was a botched raid on Paul Kruger's Transvaal Republic carried out by a British colonial statesman Leander Starr Jameson and his Rhodesian and Bechuanaland policemen over the New Year weekend of 1895–96...
, a sortie by 600
BritishThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was the formal name of the United Kingdom during the period when what is now the Republic of Ireland formed a part of it....
irregulars from
Cape ColonyThe Cape Colony, part of modern South Africa, was established by the Dutch East India Company in 1652, with the founding of Cape Town. It was subsequently occupied by the British in 1795 when the Netherlands were occupied by revolutionary France, so that the French revolutionaries could not take...
into the Transvaal under the command of
Leander Starr JamesonSir Leander Starr Jameson, 1st Baronet, KCMG, CB, , also known as "Doctor Jim", "The Doctor" or "Lanner", was a British colonial statesman who was best known for his involvement in the Jameson Raid....
. The raid was intended to trigger an anti-government uprising by the primarily British expatriate miners, but was a fiasco with 65 of the raiders killed to only one Boer commando, and the rest surrendering.
The telegram
The telegram read:
In his
Memoirs, the Kaiser claimed that the Kruger telegram had been composed by Adolf Marschall von Bieberstein, one of the Secretaries of State. According to the Kaiser:
The Kaiser also asserted that there was a subsequent Russo-French proposal for war against England.
Fallout
The telegram was applauded by the German
pressMass media refers collectively to all media technologies which are intended to reach a large audience via mass communication. Broadcast media transmit their information electronically and comprise of television, film and radio, movies, CDs, DVDs and some other gadgets like cameras or video consoles...
, but caused huge indignation in Great Britain and led to a further deterioration in relations between the two countries. The telegram was taken to mean that the Kaiser endorsed the Transvaal's independence in what was seen by the British as their own
sphere of influenceIn the field of international relations, a sphere of influence is a spatial region or conceptual division over which a state or organization has significant cultural, economic, military or political influence....
, and the reference to "friendly
powersA great power is a nation or state that has the ability to exert its influence on a global scale. Great powers characteristically possess military and economic strength and diplomatic and cultural influence which may cause small powers to consider the opinions of great powers before taking actions...
" interpreted by them as meaning that assistance would have been available from Germany if asked for — and such assistance might be available in the future.
The TimesThe Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
newspaperA newspaper is a scheduled publication containing news of current events, informative articles, diverse features and advertising. It usually is printed on relatively inexpensive, low-grade paper such as newsprint. By 2007, there were 6580 daily newspapers in the world selling 395 million copies a...
proclaimed that "England will concede nothing to menaces and will not lie down under insult." The windows of German shops were broken, and German sailors were attacked in London. The German
diplomaticDiplomacy is the art and practice of conducting negotiations between representatives of groups or states...
response was essentially conciliatory, with the Kaiser responding to a letter from
Queen VictoriaVictoria was the monarch of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until her death. From 1 May 1876, she used the additional title of Empress of India....
(his grandmother) with "Never was the Telegram intended as a step against England or your Government...."
The Kruger Telegram is often seen as marking the point at which Anglo-German antagonism became firmly established
http://www.history.ac.uk/ihr/Focus/Empire/reviews/mombauer.html. This antagonism and the naval arms race which it promoted were important factors behind the outbreak of the First World War.