had supported
the government, pro-Boers had opposed it, and a central
group led by Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman
had endorsed the war in
principle but denounced the resort to what he called "methods of barba-
rism" in the treatment
of civilians. The Liberals later converged on
the center, criticizing Milner's
reconstruction
program,
especially the
importation
of Chinese labor, and in a general election in January
1906
they won a majority of eighty-four over all other parties in the House of
Commons.
Campbell-Bannerman's
government was no less anxious than its prede-
cessor to preserve British interests in South Africa, but it differed pro-
foundly about the means. The Unionists' resort to force had been coun-
terproductive; it had alienated the Afrikaners. As British historian Bernard
Porter has said, the Liberals appeased the Whites at the expense of the
Africans because they realized that the imperial connection depended on
the help of colonial collaborators,
and they believed that "in South Africa
collaboration
had to be with the white communities," including the Af-
rikaners, who constituted the majority among the Whites. They were fol-
lowing their predecessors in classing South Africa in the same category as
the other great British colonies of European settlement-Canada,