Our South African Empire. by GRESWELL, William - 1885

London: Chapman and Hall, Limited, 1885. 2 volumes, octavo. Original brown cloth, spines and boards lettered and ruled in gilt, black frames to front boards, publisher's device in black to rear, yellow surface-paper endpapers. Folding colour map frontispiece to vol. 1. Slightly soiled overall, a few bumps to extremities and vol. 2 spine, contents toned but clean. A good copy, vol. 1 largely unopened. First edition, association copy of this political history of South Africa, with "interesting remarks on Sir Bartle Frere's policy, the Afrikaner Bond, Basutoland, and the German occupation of Namaqualand and Damaraland" (Mendelssohn). The two largely exculpatory chapters on Frere (who had died the year before publication) contain frequent pencilled marginalia, which according to a contemporary laid-in note were "made at Lady Frere's request by the Rev. G. W. Stegmann, Sir Bartle Frere's Dutch Secretary". Stegmann, a minister of the Dutch Reformed Church, accompanied Frere as secretary and translator during his time as high commissioner for South Africa, and as a result "was an important eyewitness to the events leading up to and including the early months of the Anglo-Zulu War, 1879" (Raugh). Stegmann notably corrects Greswell's assessment of his role in Frere's dealings in the Transvaal in 1878, which was not, as Greswell writes, "to persuade the Transvaal Boers to accept the [British] annexation as an inevitable thing", but, according to Stegmann, "to help towards the establishment of a mutual understanding between the British forces & the Boers".