DIAMONDS. GOLD.AND BRITISHIMPERIALISM
origin remained deeply divided. Milner's obsession with "race" had made
him miscalculate their political behavior. He failed to realize that most of
them subordinated
their ethnic sentiments to their economic interests,
which differed vastly. In his haste to revive and expand the gold-mining
industry, Milner sided so blatantly with management
that he alienated
many British artisans, professionals, and businesspeople.
By 1905,
when Milner left South Africa, the political pendulum had
turned in Britain. The jingoistic spirit that had added the word mafficking
to the English vocabulary, when a mob celebrated the lifting of the siege of
Mafeking on May 17,
1900,
had been dissipated by the knowledge that the
war had claimed the lives of 22,000
imperial soldiers and cost the British
taxpayers
£200
million. The internal strains in the Unionist party were
accentuated in 19°3
when Chamberlain resigned from the cabinet to cam-
paign for a high imperial tariff to knit the empire together as a closed
economic bloc.
During the war, the Liberal party had been divided. Liberal imperialists
had supported
the government, pro-Boers had opposed it, and a central
group led by Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman
had endorsed the war in