Episode 245 - Sir Bartle Frere’s Excellent Adventure: A Gentleman’s Guide to Igniting Wars

Episode 245 - Sir Bartle Frere’s Excellent Adventure: A Gentleman’s Guide to Igniting Wars

Published: October 19, 2025

Duration: 20:35

Sir Bartle Frere had sailed into South Africa in March 1877 - lauded as a great British administrator in India. He arrived just in time to witness Sir Theophilus Shepstone seize, sorry, annex the Transvaal under the noses of the incredulous and in equal amounts, contemptuous Boers.

Frere was another of Carnarvon’s boys, determined to enforce confederation onto south Africa. He was regarded as one of the most effective English civil servants in India, keeping the vital province of Sind quiet during the recent Indian Mutiny, and as Governor of Bombay, now Mumbai, he had been instrumental in up...