The Project Gutenberg EBook of Impressions of South Africa, by James Bryce

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Title: Impressions of South Africa

Author: James Bryce

Release Date: August 14, 2007 [EBook #22323]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IMPRESSIONS OF SOUTH AFRICA ***

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IMPRESSIONS
OF SOUTH AFRICA

BY

JAMES BRYCE

AUTHOR OF "THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE," "TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT,"
"THE AMERICAN COMMONWEALTH," ETC.

_With Three Maps._

THIRD EDITION, REVISED THROUGHOUT

WITH A NEW PREFATORY CHAPTER, AND WITH THE
TRANSVAAL CONVENTIONS OF 1881 AND 1884

London
MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited
1899

_All rights reserved_

RICHARD CLAY AND SONS, LIMITED,
LONDON AND BUNGAY.

_First Edition, 8vo. November 1897_

_Reprinted, November 1897_

_Second Edition, January 1898_

_Third Edition, Crown 8vo. November 1899_

_Reprinted, December 1899_

TO

THE COMPANION OF MY JOURNEY

PREFATORY CHAPTER

This new edition has been carefully revised throughout, and, as far as
possible, brought up to date by noting, in their proper places, the
chief events of importance that have occurred since the book first
appeared. In the historical chapters, however, and in those which deal
with recent politics, no changes have been made save such as were needed
for the correction of one or two slight errors of fact, and for the
mention of new facts, later in date than the first edition. I have left
the statements of my own views exactly as they were first written, even
where I thought that the form of a statement might be verbally improved,
not only because I still adhere to those views, but also because I
desire it to be clearly understood that they were formed and expressed
before the events of the last few months, and without any reference to
the controversies of the moment.

When the first edition of the book was published (at the end of 1897)
there was strong reason to believe as well as to hope that a race
conflict in South Africa would be avoided, and that the political
problems i