FRERE, SIR HENRY BARTLE EDWARD, I ST BART., cr. 1876 (1815-1884), British administrator, born at Clydach in Brecknockshire on March 29, 1815, was the son of Edward Frere, and a nephew of J. H. Frere, of Anti-Jacobin and Aristoph anes fame. After leaving Haileybury, Bartle Frere was ap pointed a writer in the Bombay civil service in 1834, and in assistant collector at Poona. In 1842 he became private secretary to Sir George Arthur, governor of Bombay. In 1844 he became political resident at the court of the raja of Satara, administer ing the province, on the raja's death in 1848, even after its for mal annexation in 1849. In 1850 he was appointed chief com missioner of Sind, where he established municipal buildings and made many other improvements.
On his return to India from leave in 1857 Frere learnt at Karachi of the mutiny. He sent his only European regiment to secure the strong fortress of Multan against the rebels, and sent further detachments to aid Sir John Lawrence in the Punjab. For his services he received the thanks of both houses of parlia ment and was made K.C.B. In 1862 he was appointed governor of Bombay, where he effected great improvements, including the inauguration of the university buildings. He established the Dec can college at Poona, and a college for instructing natives in civil engineering. The prosperity, due to the American Civil War, which rendered these developments possible, resulted in a specu lative mania, leading eventually to the disastrous failure of the Bombay bank, for which Frere incurred severe and not wholly undeserved censure. In 1867 he returned to England and was made a member of the Indian council. In 1872 he was sent by the foreign office to negotiate a treaty with the sultan, Seyyid Burghash, at Zanzibar, for the suppression of the slave traffic. In 1875 he accompanied the prince of Wales to Egypt and India.
But the greatest service that Frere undertook on behalf of his country was to be attempted not in Asia, but in Africa. He landed at Cape Town as high commissioner of South Africa on March 31, 1877. He had been chosen by Lord Carnarvon in the previous October as the statesman most capable of carrying his scheme of confederation into effect, and within two years it was hoped that he would be the first governor of the South African Dominion. He went out in harmony with the aims and enthusiasm of his chief, "hoping to crown by one great constructive effort the work of a bright and noble life." In this hope he was disappointed. The first year of his rule was marked by a Kaffir war on the one hand and by a rupture with the Cape (Molteno-Merriman) ministry on the other. The Transkei Kaffirs were subjugated early in 1878 by General Thesiger (the 2nd Lord Chelmsford) and a small force of regular and colonial troops. The constitutional difficulty was solved by Frere dismissing his obstructive cabinet and entrusting the formation of a ministry to Gordon Sprigg. Frere emerged successfully from a year of crisis, but the advantage was more than counterbalanced by the resignation of Carnarvon early in 1878, at a time when Frere required the steadiest and most un flinching support. He was convinced that there was a widespread insurgent spirit pervading the natives, which had its focus and strength in the celibate military organization of Cetywayo. Frere told the colonial office that this organization must be broken up, if necessary, by force. The colonial office appeared to agree, but when Frere sent, in Dec. 1878, an ultimatum to Cetywayo, the home Government abruptly discovered that a native war in South Africa was inopportune and raised difficulties about reinforce ments. Having entrusted to Lord Chelmsford the enforcement of the British demands, Frere's immediate responsibility ceased. On Jan. II, 1879 the British troops crossed the Tugela, and 14 days later the disaster of Isandhlwana was reported; and Frere, attacked and censured in the House of Commons, was but feebly defended by the Government. Lord Beaconsfield, it appears, supported Frere; the majority of the cabinet were inclined to recall him. He was censured, but begged to stay on.
The Zulu trouble and the disaffection that was brewing in the Transvaal reacted upon each other in the most disastrous manner. Frere had had no part in the actual annexation of the Transvaal, which was announced by Sir Theophilus Shepstone a few days after the high commissioner's arrival at Cape Town. The delay in giving the country a constitution afforded a pretext for agita tion to the malcontent Boers, a rapidly increasing minority, while the reverse at Isandhlwana had lowered British prestige. Owing to the Kaffir and Zulu wars Frere had hitherto been unable to give his undivided attention to the state of things in the Transvaal, which he visited in 1879. A large camp, numbering 4,000 dis affected Boers, had been formed near Pretoria, and they were ter rorizing the country. Frere visited them unarmed and practically alone. On the condition that the Boers disperse, Frere undertook to present their complaints to the British Government, and to urge the fulfilment of the promises that had been made to them. They parted with mutual good feeling, and the Boers did eventu ally disperse—on the very day upon which Frere received the tele gram announcing the Government's censure. But bad news met him on his return to Capetown—on June 1, 1879, the prince impe rial had met his death in Zululand—and a few hours later Frere heard that the Government of the Transvaal and Natal, together with the high commissionership in the eastern part of South Africa, had been transferred from him to Sir Garnet Wolseley.
When Gladstone's ministry came into office in the spring of 188o, Lord Kimberley had no intention of recalling Frere. In June, however, a section of the Liberal party memorialized Glad stone to remove him, and the prime minister weakly complied (Aug. 1, 188o). Upon his return Frere replied to the charges re lating to his conduct respecting Afghanistan as well as South Africa, previously preferred in Gladstone's Midlothian speeches, and was preparing a fuller vindication when he died at Wimbledon from the effects of a severe chill on May 29, 1884. He was buried in St. Paul's, and in 1888 a statue of Frere upon the Thames em bankment was unveiled by the prince of Wales. Frere edited the works of his uncle, Hookham Frere, and the popular story-book, Old Deccan Days, written by his daughter, Mary Frere. He was three times president of the Royal Asiatic Society.
His Life and Correspondence, by John Martineau, was published in 1895. For the South African anti-confederation view, see P. A. Mol teno's Life and Times of Sir John Charles Molteno (2 viols., 1900) . See W. B. Worsfold, Sir Bartle Frere (1923) . See also Correspondence respecting the Affairs of South Africa, H.M.S.O. (C. 2220. 1878), and Further Correspondence (C. 2222. 1879), in Accounts and Papers (II) vol. 52 (1878-79) ; also the article SOUTH AFRICA: History.