[Bart.]. British South African statesman, son of R. W. Jameson, a writer to the signet in Edinburgh; born at Edinburgh in 1853, and was educated for the medical profession at University College Hospital, London (M.R.C.S. 1875; M.D. 1877). After acting as house physician, house surgeon and demonstrator of anatomy, and showing promise of a successful professional career in London, his health broke down from overwork in 1878, and he went out to South Africa and settled down in practice at Kimberley. There he rapidly acquired a great reputation as a medical man, and, besides numbering President Kruger and the Matabele chief Lobengula among his patients, came much into contact with Cecil Rhodes. In 1888 his influence with Lobengula was successfully exerted to induce that chieftain to grant the concessions to the agents of Rhodes which led to the formation of the British South Africa Company; and when the company proceeded to open up Mashonaland, Jameson abandoned his medical practice and joined the pioneer expedition of 1890. From this time his fortunes were bound up with Rhodes’s schemes in the north. Immediately after the pioneer column had occupied Mashonaland, Jameson, with F. C. Selous and A. R. Colquhoun, went east to Manicaland and was instrumental in securing the greater part of that country, to which Portugal was laying claim, for the Chartered Company. In 1891 Jameson succeeded Colquhoun as administrator of Rhodesia. At the end of 1894 “Dr. Jim” (as he was familiarly called) came to England and was fêted on all sides; he was made a C.B., and returned to Africa in the spring of 1895 with enhanced prestige. On the last day of that year the world was startled to learn that Jameson, with a force of 600 men, had made a raid into the Transvaal from Mafeking in support of a projected rising in Johannesburg, which had been connived at by Rhodes at the Cape (see Rhodes). Jameson’s force was compelled to surrender at Doornkop, receiving a guarantee that the lives of all would be spared; he and his officers were sent to Pretoria, and, after a short delay, during which time sections of the Boer populace clamoured for the execution of Jameson, President Kruger on the surrender of Johannesburg (Jan. 7) handed them over to the British government for punishment. They were tried in London under the Foreign Enlistment Act in May 1896, and Dr. Jameson was sentenced to fifteen months’ imprisonment at Holloway. He served a year in prison, and was then released on account of ill-health. He still retained the affections of the white population of Rhodesia, and subsequently returned there in an unofficial capacity. He was the constant companion of Rhodes on his journeys up to the end of his life, and when Rhodes died in May 1902 Jameson was left one of the executors of his will. In 1903 Jameson came forward as the leader of the Progressive (British) party in Cape Colony; and that party being victorious at the general election in January–February 1904, Jameson formed an administration in which he took the post of prime minister. He had to face a serious economic crisis and strenuously promoted the development of the agricultural and pastoral resources of the colony. He also passed a much-needed Redistribution Act, and in the session of 1906 passed an Amnesty Act restoring the rebel voters to the franchise. Jameson, as prime minister of Cape Colony, attended the Colonial conference held in London in 1907. In September of that year the Cape parliament was dissolved, and as the elections for the legislative council went in favour of the Bond, Jameson resigned office, 31st of January 1908. In 1908 he was chosen one of the delegates from Cape Colony to the intercolonial convention for the closer union of the South African states, and he took a prominent part in settling the terms on which union was effected in 1909. It was at Jameson’s suggestion that the Orange River Colony was renamed Orange Free State Province.—[Unattributed author].
The union of the South African colonies in 1909 accomplished the main object which Jameson had set before himself as a political leader. He wished to carry the spirit of union further by forming a combination of political parties to support a non-racial Government for the new Union, regarded Gen. Botha as the natural leader of such a combination, and was completely ready to serve under him. This project of a “best man” Government, however, was not accepted by Botha, who thought that the Dutch-speaking people of South Africa were not ready for it. The alternative, to which Jameson then set himself, was the formation of a new party representing the majority of the English-speaking people in the Cape, the Transvaal, the Orange Free State and Natal. At a conference in Bloemfontein in 1910, before the first general election for the new South African Parliament took place, this project was carried out. Jameson presided over the conference with a patience, a tact and an insight which exhibited once more his remarkable gift for the ruling of men. The programme of the party thus formed—known as the Unionist party of South Africa—showed his influence in every clause. It repudiated opposition to the Botha Government for the mere sake of opposition, and promised the Prime Minister support in all measures designed to promote racial peace and material prosperity in South Africa. At the first South African general election in September 1910 the Unionists fought on this programme with a considerable measure of success, especially in the Cape and Transvaal provinces. Natal, where the English-speaking people were in a great majority, withheld from Jameson and the Unionists the general support which it might have been expected to give, though the Unionists won a number of seats in that province. For two years Jameson led the Unionists in the South African House of Assembly with great moderation and self-restraint, but was compelled by ill-health to retire from the leadership of the party in 1912. He returned to England and settled in London, devoting himself, when his health took a turn for the better, to business interests. He had an intimate knowledge of the affairs of the De Beers Corp. and of the British South African Co., commonly known as the Chartered Co. In June 1913 he became chairman of the Chartered Co., whose general meetings gave him, year by year, till his death in 1917, opportunities of proving in a new sphere his power of exercising a dominating influence over assemblies of men. When the war came in 1914 Jameson devoted himself to public work, leaving to members of the Government the choice of the sphere in which they thought he could be most useful. Meanwhile he had made more than one visit to Rhodesia as chairman of the Chartered Co., and the work which he did on behalf of the territory that he had helped to establish was recognized even by opponents of the policy of the Chartered Co. The war work which the Government chose for him was that of chairman of the Central Prisoners-of-War Committee, to which he devoted himself with all his remaining strength, organizing at the same time more than one private hospital overseas. Jameson’s health had been precarious for years, and on the 26th of November 1917 he succumbed to a short illness. His name will stand very high among those of the men who did service to South Africa and Rhodesia. Diffident and utterly free from self-seeking, he was of those who make the least of their service to their country. But his labours for racial reconciliation and material prosperity in South Africa were conspicuous, and the close friendship of Botha was a final proof of the quality of his patriotism. It was, too, the measure of his stature as a man able beyond the recognition of most of his contemporaries, honest and plain-speaking, with a deep devotion to the most lofty ideals of public service. Jameson was created a K.C.M.G. on the inauguration of the Union in 1910 and a baronet in 1911.—[Basil Kellett Long].
