Description

PRECIOUS AUTOGRAPH MANUSCRIPT Émile Zola, dated 12 May 1900.

In the midst of the Dreyfus Affair, Zola called for an end to the Second Boer War:

"I vow that the abominable war between the
and the Boers ended as soon as possible,
and that, if necessary, the entire civilised world
rises up and imposes peace on the combatants,
in the name of human brotherhood.
Paris 12 May 1900.
Emile Zola

After an initial failed attempt to take over the Transvaal in 1880 (First Boer War), the British set their sights on the world's largest gold deposit, discovered in the Witwatersrand district in 1887. A mass movement of English settlers from Johannesburg to the Witwatersrand prompted the Boers to tax the gold industry heavily and deny them the right to vote. After a failed coup attempt by the British (1895) and the murder of the Boer police chief (1898), the Second Boer War was declared on 1 January 1898. 11th October 1899. Until January 1900, the British troops suffered heavy defeats at the hands of the Boer offensive (it captured the young Winston Churchill during an attack on a train). The arrival of reinforcements on On 4 February 1900, they regained the initiative and control of the capital of the Orange Free State (Bloemfontein) on 13 March, the capital of the Transvaal (Pretoria) on 5 June and Johannesburg on 31 May.
According to Christophe Prochasson, thehe Anglophilia of the majority of the French intelligentsia during the First Boer War was undermined in the middle of the Second War by statements made by several of them.
"The Boer War marked a moment of crisis not only in Franco-British diplomatic relations but also in the outlook of the majority of French intellectuals, who saw the advent of a bad England as a betrayal in love. "This crisistook place at a time when French intellectuals were themselves caught up in a national crisis. The Dreyfus affair sheds light on many aspects of this. Nationalist intellectuals took advantage of the Boer War to invent their own Dreyfus affair and trap Dreyfus supporters, who were often indulgent towards England, in their own values.."
The year 1900 saw the culmination of all these initiatives. Meetings in support of the Boers, subscriptions and petitions multiplied. On 5 March, according to a police report, a French Transwaal Committee, very close to the nationalists, managed to gather 500 people. On 1 April, the French women  publish at the bottom of a petition  for the Boers an initial list of signatures. At the end of May, the Alliance des savants et philanthropes, chaired by Émile Burnouf, approached Delcassé to ask him to intervene with England.

Written on 12 May, the very day of a Boer attack on the siege of Mafeking, Zola's wishes for peace". in the name of human brotherhood"It also reflects the position of the Dreyfusards in a "Dreyfus counter-affair" exploited by the nationalists.

The remark in blue grease pencil "Bataille 1 col[onne]" - a tool traditionally used by printers - suggests that this statement was, like the I accuse, prepared to appear in the front column of a newspaper probably reporting the battle of 12 May. We have not been able to identify the newspaper that published it; the document appears to be unknown to the most well-documented bibliographies.

Historical document. 

Christophe Prochasson - An English crisis in French thought? French intellectuals and England at the time of Fachoda and the Boer War, 2003.