Leander Starr Jameson

Sir Leander Starr Jameson ( born February 9, 1853 in Edinburgh, Scotland, † November 26, 1917 in London) was a British politician and first chairman of the South African Unionist Party. He is mainly known for the Jameson Raid led by him.

Early years

He studied medicine in London and started after successful examination in 1870 as an instructor at the teaching hospital of University College Hospital to work, but because of health problems he ended his academic career.

In South Africa

He participated in 1878 in a successful practice in Kimberley, in the Cape Province, South Africa. He arrived with Cecil Rhodes, founder of De Beers and later Prime Minister of South Africa in contact and do business. He was head of the administration of Rhodesia (1891 ) Through this connection. There he healed King Lobengula and was accepted by him as the only white in the Induna, the nobility of the Matabele what his negotiations for Cecil Rhodes very relieved. Later he took part in the suppression of the Matabeleaufstandes 1896. From there he organized in 1895 the so-called Jameson Raid into submission the Boer republics, the Transvaal and the Orange Free State, under direct British colonial rule, which failed miserably.

Jameson was sentenced to 15 months in prison for participating in July 1896 in England because of the Foreign Enlistment Act, but had to settle for only about 5 months. In South Africa, he was soon rehabilitated, 1900 Member of the Parliament of Cape Colony, and Prime Minister from 1904 to 1908 and 1911 even as baronet raised to the peerage. Rudyard Kipling wrote in 1895 inspired by Jameson's behavior during the raid the poem "If- " which even today is considered one of the most popular in the UK. With Rhodes 's death in 1902, he became leader of the Progressive Party and in 1910 the leader of the Unionist Party and thus the official opposition.

In 1912 he retired from politics and lived in London, where he died in 1917. L.S. Jameson was the great-nephew of the Scottish Natural historian and geologist Robert Jameson.