The Transvaal of To-Day by Alfred Aylward (1881)

A new edition.

By "Joubert’s Fenian", Alfred Aylward, one of the most colourful, eccentric, and polarizing characters in 19th-century South African history.

An Irish Rebel in the Transvaal: Aylward was an Irish Fenian (anti-British revolutionary) who was forced to leave Ireland. He arrived in South Africa and quickly established himself as a master of anti-British press agitation. When the First Anglo-Boer War broke out in 1880, Aylward abandoned his post as editor of the Natal Witness to fight alongside the Boers. He served as a surgeon and military advisor to General Piet Joubert.

The Battle of Majuba Hill: He was present at the decisive British defeat at Majuba Hill in February 1881—the very same year this "New Edition" was printed by William Blackwood and Sons MDCCCLXXXI,l. Aylward famously (and characteristically) boasted that he had personally "put the brains back in British General George Colley’s skull" after Colley was killed in action.

The Association Stamp on the title page: G. Cronjé

While the surname Cronjé is synonymous with Boer military history (most famously General Piet Cronjé, who surrendered at Paardeberg in the Second Boer War), this specific ink stamp belongs to Prof. Geoffrey Cronjé. He was a prominent South African sociologist and academic at the University of Pretoria whose 1940s literary and sociological works heavily theorized, shaped, and laid the ideological framework for the formal implementation of Apartheid. Seeing his personal library mark on a text documenting the early origins of Transvaal autonomy adds a profound layer of 20th-century political history to this 19th-century volume.

The Inscriptions and Provenance

The bold, sweeping signature, possibly reads "J.R. van Reenen". The Van Reenen family is an old, established Cape and regional family with deep roots in agricultural expansion and societal developments across South Africa.

The Gift Inscription is written in Dutch:

"Aan J.R. van Reenen van zijn vriend M.R. Burns"

(To J.R. van Reenen from his friend M.R. Burns)

This book effectively serves as a physical timeline of the Transvaal's turbulent narrative: penned by an Irish rebel right as the First Boer War ended, gifted between colonial-era friends, and later landing in the personal research library of one of the chief architects of mid-20th century Afrikaner nationalism.

Binding beginning to split in the gutter of the end papers. Edges of the binding worn. Edges of the text block foxed.

140mm x 195mm x 30mm

R1,000