Publisher's Synopsis
Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Or, Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal - By H. Rider Haggard. "I am told that these men (the Boers) are told to keep on agitating in this way, for a change of Government in England may give them again the old order of things. Nothing can show greater ignorance of English politics than such an idea. I tell you there is no Government-Whig or Tory, Liberal, Conservative, or Radical-who would dare, under any circumstances, to give back this country (the Transvaal). They would not dare, because the English people would not allow them."-(Extract from Speech of Sir Garnet Wolseley, delivered at a Public Banquet in Pretoria, on the 17th December 1879.) "There was a still stronger reason than that for not receding (from the Transvaal); it was impossible to say what calamities such a step as receding might not cause. . . . For such a risk he could not make himself responsible. . . . Difficulties with the Zulu and the frontier tribes would again arise, and looking as they must to South Africa as a whole, the Government, after a careful consideration of the question, came to the conclusion that we could not relinquish the Transvaal."-(Extract from Speech of Lord Kimberley in the House of Lords, 24th May 1880" Sir Henry Rider Haggard, KBE (22 June 1856 - 14 May 1925) was an English writer of adventure novels set in exotic locations, predominantly Africa, and a founder of the Lost World literary genre. He was also involved in agricultural reform throughout the British Empire. His stories, situated at the lighter end of Victorian literature, continue to be popular and influential. Haggard's stories are still widely read today. Ayesha, the female protagonist of She, has been cited as a prototype by psychoanalysts as different as Sigmund Freud (in The Interpretation of Dreams) and Carl Jung. Her epithet "She Who Must Be Obeyed" is used by British author John Mortimer in his Rumpole of the Bailey series as the private name which the lead character uses for his wife, Hilda, before whom he trembles at home (despite the fact that he is a barrister with some skill in court). Haggard's Lost World genre influenced popular American pulp writers such as Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E. Howard, Talbot Mundy, Philip Jose Farmer, and Abraham Merritt. Allan Quatermain, the adventure hero of King Solomon's Mines and its sequel Allan Quatermain, was a template for the American character Indiana Jones, featured in the films Raiders of the Lost Ark, Temple of Doom, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Quatermain has gained recent popularity thanks to being a main character in the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.
