The
Second Boer War ( , Afrikaans: Tweede Boereoorlog), commonly
referred to as The Boer War and also known as the
South African War (outside of South Africa), the
Anglo-Boer War (among most South Africans) and in
Afrikaans as the Anglo-Boereoorlog or Tweede
Vryheidsoorlog ("Second War of Liberation"), or the
Engelse oorlog (English War) was fought from 11
October 1899 until 31 May 1902, between the British Empire and the two independent
Boer republics of the South African Republic (Transvaal
Republic) and the Orange Free State
.
Origins
The origins of the war were complex, resulting from over two
centuries of conflict between the
Boers and
the
British Empire. The British had,
in 1806, during the
Napoleonic Wars,
taken permanent possession of the
Cape
Colony and over subsequent decades successive waves of Boers
had migrated away from the rule of the British Empire in the Cape
Colony, first along the eastern coast towards Natal and then, after
Natal was annexed in 1843,
northwards towards the interior where two independent Boer
republics (the Orange Free State, and the South African Republic -
also called the Transvaal) were established. The British recognised
the two Boer Republics in 1852 and 1854 but the annexation of the
Transvaal in 1877 led to the
First Boer
War, 1880-1.
After British defeats, most heavily at the
Battle of Majuba
, Transvaal
independence was restored subject to certain conditions but
relations were uneasy.
When, in 1886, massive deposits of gold were discovered in the
South African Republic, a
huge inflow of
uitlanders
(foreigners), mainly from Britain, came to the region in search of
employment and fortune. Gold made the Transvaal the richest and
potentially the most powerful nation in southern Africa but it also
resulted in the number of uitlanders in the Transvaal eventually
exceeding the number of Boers and precipitated confrontations over
the old order and the new. Disputes over uitlander political and
economic rights resulted in the failed
Jameson Raid of 1895.
This raid led by (and
named after) Dr Leander Starr
Jameson, the Administrator in Rhodesia
of the Chartered Company, was intended to encourage an uprising of
the uitlanders in Johannesburg
. However Johannesburg failed to rise and
Transvaal government forces surrounded the column and captured
Jameson's men before they could reach Johannesburg.
As tensions escalated from local to national level, there were
political manoeuvrings and lengthy negotiations to reach a
compromise ostensibly over the issue of "uitlander rights" but
ultimately over control of the gold mining industry and the British
desire to incorporate the Transvaal and the Orange Free State in a
federation under British control. Given the number of British
uitlanders already resident in the Transvaal and the ongoing
inflow, the Boers recognised that the franchise policy demanded by
the British would inevitably result in the loss of independence of
the South African Republic. The negotiations failed, and in
September 1899
Joseph Chamberlain
(the British Colonial Secretary) sent an ultimatum to the Boers,
demanding full equality for those uitlanders resident in the
Transvaal. President
Kruger, seeing no
other option than war, issued his own ultimatum, giving the British
48 hours to withdraw all their troops from the border of the
Transvaal, failing which the Transvaal, allied with the Orange Free
State, would declare war against the British. The rejection of the
ultimatum followed and war was declared.
Phases
The war had three distinct phases.
First, the Boers mounted pre-emptive
strikes into British-held territory in Natal and the Cape Colony,
besieging the British garrisons of Ladysmith
, Mafeking and
Kimberley
. The Boers then won a series of tactical
victories at Colenso
, Magersfontein
and Spionkop
against a failed British counteroffensive to
relieve the three sieges. Second, after the introduction of
greatly increased British troop numbers under the command of
Lord Roberts,
another, and this time successful, British offensive was launched
in 1900 to relieve the sieges.
After Natal and the Cape Colony were secure,
the British were able to invade the Transvaal and the republic's
capital, Pretoria
, was
captured in June 1900.
Finally, beginning in March 1900, the Boers engaged a protracted
hard-fought
guerrilla warfare
against the British forces. This marked the beginning of the third
phase of the war. It lasted a further two years, during which the
Boers raided targets such as British troop columns,
telegraph sites,
railways
and storage depots. In an effort to cut off supplies to the
raiders, the British, now under the leadership of
Lord Kitchener,
responded with a
scorched earth
policy of destroying Boer farms and moving civilians into
concentration camps.
The campaign had been expected by the British government to be over
within months, and the protracted war gradually became unpopular
especially after revelations about the conditions in the
concentration camps (where tens of thousands of women and children
died of disease and malnutrition). The demand for peace led to a
settlement of hostilities, and in 1902, the
Treaty of Vereeniging was signed. The
two republics were absorbed into the British Empire, although the
British were forced to make a number of concessions and reparations
to the Boers. The granting of limited autonomy for the area
ultimately led to the establishment of the
Union of South Africa. The war had a
lasting effect on the region and on British domestic politics. The
war, known as the last British imperial war, was the longest
(almost three years), the most expensive (over £200 million), and
the most disastrous of all wars for Britain between 1815 and
1914.
Background
The southern part of the
African continent
was dominated in the 19th century by a set of epic struggles to
create within it a single unified state. While the
Berlin Conference of 1884-5 sought to draw
boundaries between the European powers' African possessions, it set
the stage for further scrambles. The British attempted to annex
first the South African Republic in 1880, and then in 1899 both the
South African Republic and the Orange Free State. In 1868, the
British annexed
Basutoland in the
Drakensberg Mountains following an
appeal from
Moshesh, the leader of a mixed
group of African refugees from the
Zulu wars,
who sought British protection against the Boers.
In the 1880s,
Bechuanaland (modern Botswana
, located north of the Orange River) became the
object of dispute between the Germans to the west, the Boers to the
east, and the British Cape Colony to the
south. Although Bechuanaland had no economic value, the
"Missionaries Road" passed through it towards territory farther
north.
After the Germans annexed Damaraland and Namaqualand (modern Namibia
) in 1884,
the British annexed Bechuanaland in 1885.
The Boers of the Transvaal Republic had in the 1880-1881 war
("
First Boer War") proved skillful
fighters in resisting the British attempt at annexation, resulting
in a series of British defeats. The British government of
William Gladstone had been unwilling to
become bemired in a distant war, which required substantial troop
reinforcement and expense, for what was at the time was perceived
to be minimal return. An armistice followed, ending the war, and
subsequently a peace treaty followed with the Transvaal President
Paul Kruger.
However
when, in 1886, a major gold field find was made
at an outcrop on a large ridge some sixty kilometers south of the
Boer capital at Pretoria
, it
reignited British imperial interests. The ridge, known
locally as the "Witwatersrand
" (literally "white water ridge"—a watershed)
contained the world's largest deposit of gold-bearing ore.
Although it was not as rich as gold finds in Canada and Australia,
its consistency made it especially well-suited to industrial mining
methods.
With the 1886 discovery of gold in Transvaal
, thousands of British and other prospectors and
settlers streamed over the border from the Cape Colony (annexed by Britain earlier) and
from across the globe.
The city
of Johannesburg
sprang up as a shanty
town nearly overnight as the uitlanders (foreigners) poured in and
settled around the mines. The influx was such that the uitlanders
quickly outnumbered the Boers in Johannesburg
and along the Rand, although they remained a
minority in the Transvaal as a whole. The
Boers, nervous and resentful of the uitlanders' growing
presence, sought to contain their influence through requiring
lengthy residential qualifying periods before voting rights were
obtained, imposing taxes on the gold industry, and introducing
controls through licensing, tariffs and administrative
requirements. Amongst the issues giving rise to tension between the
Transvaal government on the one hand, and the Uitlanders and
British interests on the other, were:
(a) the established uitlanders including the mining magnates wanted
political, social and economic control over their lives and hence
rights including a stable constitution, a fair franchise law, an
independent judiciary, and a better educational system. The Boers
for their part recognized that the more concessions they made to
the Uitlanders the greater the likelihood, with approximately
30,000 white male Boer voters and potentially 60,000 white male
Uitlander, that the independence of the Transvaal would be lost and
absorbed into the British Empire;
(b) the uitlanders resented the taxes levied by the Transvaal
government, particularly where the monies raised were not expended
on Johannesburg or uitlander interests but diverted to projects
elsewhere in the Transvaal. By way of example, as the gold-bearing
ore sloped away from the outcrop underground to the south, more and
more blasting was necessary for extraction and mines consumed vast
quantities of explosives. A box of dynamite costing five pounds
included five shillings tax. Not only was this tax perceived as
exorbitant but British interests were offended when President
Paul Kruger gave monopoly rights for the
manufacture of the explosive to a non-British operation of the
Nobel company, which infuriated the British. The so-called
"dynamite monopoly" became a major pretext for war.
(c)
British imperial interests were alarmed when in 1894–95 Kruger
proposed building a railway through Portuguese
East Africa
to Delagoa
Bay
, thereby bypassing British controlled ports in
Natal and Cape Town and avoiding British tariffs.
At the
time the Prime Minister of the Cape Colony was Cecil Rhodes
, a man driven by a vision of a British controlled
Africa extending from Cape to
Cairo.
Certain self-appointed
Uitlanders representatives and
British mine owners became increasingly angered and frustrated by
their dealings with the Transvaal government. A Reform Committee
(Transvaal) was formed to represent the uitlanders.
Jameson Raid
In 1895,
a plan was hatched with the connivance of the Cape Prime Minister
Cecil
Rhodes
, a Johannesburg gold magnate Alfred Beit and Sir Alfred Milner (British High
Commissioner for South Africa and Lieutenant Governor of the Cape)
to liberate Johannesburg
from the control of the Transvaal
government. A column of 600 armed men (mainly made up of his
Rhodesian and
Bechuanaland policemen) was led by Dr
Leander Starr Jameson (the
Administrator in Rhodesia of the Chartered Company of which Cecil
Rhodes was the Chairman) over the border from Bechuanaland towards
Johannesburg. The column was equipped with six Maxim machine guns,
two 7 pounder mountain guns, and a 12½ pounder field piece. The
plan was to make a three-day dash to Johannesburg before the Boer
commandos could mobilise, and once there, trigger an uprising by
the primarily British expatriate workers (uitlanders) organised by
the Reform Committee. However, the Transvaal authorities had
advance warning of the
Jameson Raid and
tracked it from the moment it crossed the border.
Four days later, the
weary and dispirited column was surrounded near Krugersdorp
within sight of Johannesburg. After a brief
skirmish in which the column lost 65 killed and wounded, and the
Boers lost one man, Jameson's men surrendered and were arrested by
the Boers.
The botched raid resulted in repercussions throughout southern
Africa and in Europe. In Rhodesia, the departure of so many
policeman enabled the
Matabele and
Mashona tribes to rise up against the Chartered
Company, and the rebellion, known as the
Second Matabele War, was suppressed only
at great cost. A few days after the raid, the German Kaiser sent a
telegram ("
Kruger telegram")
congratulating President Kruger and the South African Republic
government on their success, and when this was disclosed in the
British press, it generated a storm of anti-German feeling. In the
baggage of the raiding column, to the great embarrassment of the
British, the Boers found telegrams from Cecil Rhodes, and the
plotters in Johannesburg.
Joseph
Chamberlain, the British Colonial Secretary, quickly moved to
condemn the raid, despite previously having approved Rhodes' plans
to send armed assistance in the case of a Johannesburg uprising.
Subsequently, Rhodes was severely censured at the Cape enquiry and
the London parliamentary enquiry, and forced to resign as Prime
Minister of the Cape and as Chairman of the Chartered Company for
having sponsored the failed
coup
d'état.
The Boer government handed their raid prisoners over to the British
for trial. Dr. Jameson was tried in England for leading the raid.
However, the British press and London society inflamed by anti-Boer
and anti-German feeling and in a frenzy of jingoism, lionized Dr.
Jameson and treated him as a hero. Although sentenced to 15 months
imprisonment (which he served in
Holloway),
Jameson was later rewarded with Prime Ministership of the Cape
Colony (1904-08) and ultimately anointed as one of the founders of
the Union of South Africa. For conspiring with Jameson, the
uitlander members of the Reform Committee (Transvaal) were tried in
the Transvaal courts and found guilty of high treason. They were
sentenced to death by hanging, but this sentence was later commuted
to 15 years' imprisonment, and in June 1896, all surviving members
of the Committee were released on payment of stiff fines by the
British.
Jan C. Smuts wrote in 1906, "The Jameson Raid was the real
declaration of war…And that is so in spite of the four years of
truce that followed…[the] aggressors consolidated their
alliance…the defenders on the other hand silently and grimly
prepared for the inevitable."
Escalation and war

righr
The Jameson Raid alienated many Cape Afrikaners from the British,
and united the Transvaal Boers behind President Kruger and his
government.
It also had the effect of drawing the
Transvaal and the Orange Free State
(led by President Martinus Theunis Steyn) together in
opposition to perceived British imperialism. In 1897, a
military pact was concluded between the two republics. President
Paul Kruger proceeded to re-equip the
Transvaal army, and imported 37,000 of the latest magazine
Mauser rifles, and some of the
most modern artillery in Europe including German
Krupp artillery. The Transvaal army was within a short
period transformed; approximately 25,000 men equipped with modern
rifles and artillery could mobilise within two weeks. However,
President Kruger's victory in the Jameson Raid incident did nothing
to resolve the fundamental problem; the impossible dilemma
continued, namely how to make concessions to the uitlanders without
surrendering the independence of the Transvaal.
The failure to gain improved rights for uitlanders became a pretext
for war, and to justify a major military buildup in the Cape
Colony. The case for war was justified and espoused as far away as
the Australian colonies. Several key British colonial leaders
favoured annexation of the independent Boer republics.
These figures
included Cape Colony Governor Sir Alfred
Milner, Cape Prime Minister Cecil Rhodes
, British Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain and mining syndicate
owners or Randlords (nicknamed the gold
bugs) such as Alfred Beit, Barney Barnato and Lionel Phillips. Confident that the
Boers would be quickly defeated, they planned and organised a short
war, citing the uitlanders' grievances as the motivation for the
conflict.
President
Steyn of the Orange Free State invited Milner and Kruger to attend
a conference in Bloemfontein
which started on 30 May 1899, but negotiations
quickly broke down, despite Kruger's offer of concessions.
In September 1899, Chamberlain sent an ultimatum demanding full
equality for British citizens resident in Transvaal. Kruger, seeing
that war was inevitable, simultaneously issued his own ultimatum
prior to receiving Chamberlain's. This gave the British 48 hours to
withdraw all their troops from the border of Transvaal; otherwise
the Transvaal, allied with the Orange Free State, would declare
war.
News of
the ultimatum reached London
on the day
it expired. Outrage and laughter were the main responses.
The editor of the
Times laughed out loud when he read it,
saying 'an official document is seldom amusing and useful yet this
was both'.
The Times denounced the ultimatum as an
'extravagant farce',
The Globe denounced this 'trumpery
little state'. Most editorials were similar to the
Daily
Telegraph, which declared: 'of course there can only be one
answer to this grotesque challenge. Kruger has asked for war and
war he must have!'.
First phase: The Boer offensive (October – December 1899)
War was declared on 11 October 1899. The Boers had no problems with
mobilisation, since the fiercely independent Boers had no regular
army units (apart from the
Staatsartillerie of both
republics). When danger threatened, all the burghers (citizens) in
a district would form a military unit called a commando and would
elect officers. A full-time official titled a
Veldkornet
maintained muster rolls, but had no disciplinary powers. Each man
brought his own weapon and his own horses. The Presidents of the
Transvaal and Orange Free State simply signed decrees to
concentrate within a week and the Commandos could muster between
30-40,000 men.
Although it seemed a mismatch between the might of the British
Empire on the one hand and farmers on the other, and the British
anticipated a quick and easy victory, it became clear from the
start that Britain would have problems. What the Boers presented
was a mobile and innovative approach to warfare, drawing on their
experiences from the First Boer War and strategies that had first
appeared in the
American Civil
War. The average Boers who made up their Commandos were farmers
who had spent almost all their working life in the saddle both as
farmers and hunters. They had to depend for the pot on their horse
and their rifle and were skilled stalkers and marksmen. As hunters
they had learnt to fire from cover, from a
prone position and to make the first shot count,
knowing that if they missed the game would be long gone, or
potentially kill them. At community gatherings, target shooting was
a major sport and they practised shooting at targets such as hens'
eggs perched on posts away. They made expert light cavalry, using
every scrap of cover, from which they could pour in a destructive
fire using their modern
Mauser rifles.
Furthermore, in preparation for hostilities
the Boers had acquired around one hundred of the latest Krupp field guns, all horse-drawn and dispersed among
the various Commando group, and several Le Creusot
"Long Tom" siege guns. The Boers' skill in
adapting themselves to becoming first-rate artillerymen shows them
to have been a versatile adversary.
The Boers
struck first on 12 October at Kraaipan
, an attack that heralded the invasion of the
Cape Colony and Colony of Natal between October 1899 and
January 1900. With elements of both speed and surprise the
Boer drove quickly towards the major British garrison at Ladysmith
and the smaller ones at Mafeking and Kimberley. The quick Boer
mobilisation resulted in early military successes against the
scattered British forces.
Sir
George Stuart White,
commanding the British division at Ladysmith, had unwisely allowed
Major-General Penn Symons to throw a brigade forward to the
coal-mining town of Dundee (also reported as Glencoe) which was
surrounded by hills.
This became the site of the first engagement
of the war, the Battle of Talana Hill
. Boer guns began shelling the British camp
from the summit of Talana Hill at dawn on 20 October. Penn-Symons
immediately counter-attacked. His infantry drove the Boers from the
hill, but at the cost of 464 British casualties including
Penn-Symons himself.
Another Boer force had occupied Elandslaagte which lay between
Ladysmith and Dundee. The British under Major General
John French and Colonel
Ian Hamilton attacked
to clear the line of communications to Dundee.
The resulting
Battle of
Elandslaagte
was a clear-cut British tactical victory, but Sir
George White feared that more Boers were about to attack his main
position and ordered a chaotic retreat from Elandslaagte, throwing
away any advantage gained. The detachment from Dundee was
compelled to make an exhausting cross-country retreat to rejoin
White's main force.
As Boers surrounded Ladysmith and opened fire on the town with
siege guns, White ordered a major sortie against the Boer artillery
positions. The result was a disaster, with 140 men killed and over
1000 captured.
The Siege of Ladysmith
began, and was to last several months.
Meanwhile to the north-west at Mafeking, on the border with
Transvaal, Colonel
Robert
Baden-Powell had raised two regiments of local forces amounting
to some 1,200 men in order to attack and create diversions if
things further south went amiss. Mafeking, being a railway
junction, provided good supply facilities and was the obvious place
for Baden-Powell to fortify in readiness for such attacks. However,
instead of being the aggressor Baden-Powell and Mafeking were
forced to defend when 6,000 Boer, commanded by Piet Cronje,
attempted a determined assault on the town. But this quickly
subsided into a desultory affair with the Boer prepared to starve
the stronghold into submission and so, on the 13 October, began the
217-day
Siege of Mafeking.
Lastly, over to the south of Mafeking lay the diamond mining city
of Kimberley, which was also subjected to a siege.
Although not
militarily significant, it nonetheless represented an enclave of
British Imperialism on the borders of the Orange Free
State
and was hence an important Boer objective.
From early November about 7,500 Boer began their siege, again
content to starve the town into submission. Despite Boer shelling,
the 40,000 inhabitants of which only 5,000 were armed, were under
little threat as the town was well-stocked with provisions.
The
garrison was commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Robert Kekewich, although Cecil Rhodes
was also a prominent figure in the
defence.
Siege life took its toll on both the defending soldiers and the
civilians in the cities of Mafeking, Ladysmith, and Kimberley as
food began to grow scarce after a few weeks. In Mafeking,
Sol Plaatje wrote, "I saw horseflesh for the
first time being treated as a human foodstuff." The cities under
siege also dealt with constant artillery bombardment, making the
streets a dangerous place.
Near the end of the siege of Kimberley, it
was expected that the Boers would intensify their bombardment, so
Rhodes displayed a notice encouraging people to go down into shafts
of the Kimberley
Mine
for protection. The townspeople panicked,
and people flowed into the mineshafts constantly for a 12-hour
period. Although the bombardment never came, this did nothing to
diminish the distress of the civilians.
The most well-heeled
of the townspeople, such as Cecil Rhodes, sheltered in the
Sanatorium, site of the present-day McGregor Museum
; the poorer residents, notably the Black
population, did not have any shelter from the
shelling.
First British relief attempts
It was at this point that General Sir
Redvers Henry Buller, a much respected
commander, arrived in South Africa with major British
reinforcements (including an Army Corps of three divisions).
Buller
originally intended an offensive straight up the railway line
leading from Cape
Town
through Bloemfontein
to Pretoria
. Finding on arrival that the British troops
already in South Africa were under siege, he split his Army Corps
into several widely spread detachments, to relieve the besieged
garrisons. One force, led by Lieutenant General
Lord Methuen, was to
follow the Western Railway to the north and relieve Kimberley and
Mafeking. A smaller force of about 3,000 led by Major General
William Gatacre, was to push
north toward the railway junction at Stormberg, to secure the
Cape Midlands district from Boer raids
and local rebellions by Boer inhabitants. Finally, Buller himself
would lead the major force and relieve Ladysmith to the east.
The
initial results of this offensive were mixed with Methuen winning
several bloody skirmishes at Belmont
on 23 November, Graspan on 25 November and a larger
conflict at the Modder River
on 28 November resulting in British losses of 71
dead and over 400 wounded. British commanders had trained on
the lessons of the
Crimean War, and were
adept at battalion and regimental set pieces with columns
manoeuvring in jungles, deserts and mountainous regions; what they
entirely failed to comprehend was the impact of destructive fire
from trench positions, and the mobility of cavalry raids both of
which had been developed in the American Civil War. The British
troops went to war with what would prove to be antiquated tactics,
and in some cases antiquated weapons , against the mobile Boer
forces with the destructive fire of their modern Mausers, the
latest Krupp field guns and their innovative tactics.
The middle of December was disastrous for the British army.
In a
period known as Black Week (10 – 15
December 1899), the British suffered a series of devastating losses
at Magersfontein
, Stormberg
, and Colenso
.
On 10
December, General Gatacre tried to recapture Stormberg railway
junction about south of the Orange River
. Gatacre's attack was marked by
administrative and tactical blunders, and the Battle of
Stormberg
ended in a British defeat, with 135 killed and
wounded, as well as two guns and over 600 troops
captured.
At the
Battle of
Magersfontein
on 11 December, Methuen's 14,000 British troops
attempted to capture a Boer position in a dawn attack to relieve
Kimberley. This turned into a disaster when the
Highland Brigade became pinned
down by accurate Boer fire. After suffering from intense heat and
thirst for nine hours, they eventually broke in ill-disciplined
retreat. The Boer commanders,
Koos de la
Rey and
Piet Cronje, had devised a
plan to dig
trenches in an unconventional
place to fool the British and to give their riflemen a greater
firing range. The plan worked and this tactic helped write the
doctrine of the supremacy of the defensive position, using modern
small arms and trench fortifications. The British lost 120 killed
and 690 wounded and were prevented from relieving Kimberley and
Mafeking. A British soldier encapsulated the soldiers view of the
defeat:
"Such was the day for our regiment
Dread the revenge we will take.
Dearly we paid for the blunder -
A drawing-room General’s mistake.
Why weren’t we told of the trenches?
Why weren’t we told of the wire?
Why were we marched up in column,
May Tommy Atkins
enquire…."
But the
nadir of Black Week
was the Battle of
Colenso
on 15 December where 21,000 British troops
commanded by Buller himself, attempted to cross the Tugela River
to relieve Ladysmith where 8,000 Transvaal Boers,
under the command of Louis Botha, were
awaiting them. Through a combination of artillery and
accurate rifle fire, and a better use of the ground, the Boers
repelled all British attempts to cross the river. After his first
attacks failed, Buller broke off the battle and ordered a retreat,
abandoning many wounded men, several isolated units and ten field
guns to be captured by Botha's men. Buller’s forces lost 145 men
killed and 1,200 missing or wounded. The Boers suffered 40
casualties.
Second phase: The British offensive of January to September
1900
The British Government took these defeats badly and with the sieges
still continuing was compelled to send two more divisions plus
large numbers of colonial volunteers. By January 1900 this would
become the largest force Britain had ever sent overseas, amounting
to some 180,000 men with further reinforcements being sought.
While
waiting for these reinforcements, Buller made another bid to
relieve Ladysmith by crossing the Tugela west of Colenso
. Buller's subordinate, Major General
Charles Warren, successfully crossed
the river, but was then faced with a fresh defensive position
centred on a prominent hill known as Spion Kop.
In the resulting
Battle of
Spion Kop
, British troops captured the summit by surprise
during the early hours of 24 January 1900, but as the early morning
fog lifted they realised too late that they were overlooked by Boer
gun emplacements on the surrounding hills. The rest of the
day resulted in a disaster caused by poor communication between
Buller and his commanders. Between them they issued contradictory
orders, on the one hand ordering men off the hill, while other
officers ordered fresh reinforcements to defend it. The result was
350 men killed and nearly 1,000 wounded and a retreat back across
the Tugela River into British territory. There were nearly 300 Boer
casualties.
Buller
attacked Louis Botha again on 5 February at Vaal
Krantz
and was again defeated. Buller withdrew
early when it appeared that the British would be isolated in an
exposed bridgehead across the Tugela, and was nicknamed "Sir
Reverse" by some of his officers.
By taking command in person in Natal, Buller had allowed the
overall direction of the war to drift. Because of concerns about
his performance and negative reports from the field, he was
replaced as Commander in Chief by
Field Marshal Lord
Roberts. Roberts first intended like Buller to attack directly
along the Cape Town - Pretoria railway but, again like Buller, was
forced to relieve the beleaguered garrisons.
Leaving Buller in
command in Natal, Roberts massed his main force near the Orange River
and along the Western Railway behind Methuen's
force at the Modder River, and prepared
to make a wide outflanking move to relieve Kimberley.
Except in Natal, the war had stagnated. Other than a single attempt
to storm Ladysmith, the Boers made no attempt to capture the
besieged towns.
In the Cape Midlands, the Boers did not
exploit the British defeat at Stormberg, and were prevented from
capturing the railway junction at Colesberg
. In the dry summer, the grazing on the veld
became parched, weakening the Boers' horses and draught oxen, and
many Boer families joined their menfolk in the siege lines and
laagers (encampments), fatally encumbering Cronje's
army.
Roberts launched his main attack on 10 February 1900 and although
hampered by a long supply route, managed to outflank the Boers
defending Magersfontein. On 14 February, a cavalry division under
Major General
John
French launched a major attack to relieve Kimberley. Although
encountering severe fire, a massed cavalry charge split the Boer
defences on 15 February, opening the way for French to enter
Kimberley that evening, ending its 124 days’ siege.
Meanwhile, Roberts pursued Piet Cronje’s 7,000 strong force, which
had abandoned Magersfontein to head for Bloemfontein. General
French’s cavalry was ordered to assist in the pursuit by embarking
on an epic 30-mile drive towards Paardeberg where Cronje was
attempting to cross the Modder River.
At the Battle of
Paardeberg
from 18 February to 27 February, Roberts then
surrounded General Piet Cronje's
retreating Boer army. On 17 February, a pincer movement
involving both French’s cavalry and the main British force
attempted to take the entrenched position, but the frontal attacks
were uncoordinated and so were easily repulsed by the Boers.
Finally, Roberts resorted to bombarding Cronje into submission, but
it took a further ten precious days and with the British troops
using the polluted Modder River as water supply, resulting in a
typhoid epidemic killing many troops. General Cronje was forced to
surrender with 4000 men.
In Natal, Buller began his fourth attempt to relieve Ladysmith on
14 February. Despite reinforcements his progress was painfully slow
against stiff opposition. However, on 26 February, after much
deliberation, Buller used all his forces in one all-out attack for
the first time and at last succeeded in forcing a crossing of the
Tugela, and defeated Botha's outnumbered forces north of Colenso.
The
Relief of Ladysmith occurred
after a siege lasting 118 days the day after Cronje surrendered,
but at a total cost of 7,000 British casualties.
After a succession of defeats, the Boers realised that against such
overwhelming superiority of troops they had little chance of
defeating the British and so became demoralised.
Roberts then advanced
into the Orange Free State from the west, putting the Boers to
flight at the Battle of Poplar Grove
and capturing Bloemfontein
, the capital, unopposed on 13 March with the Boer
defenders escaping and scattering. Meanwhile, he detached a
small force to relieve Baden-Powell, and the
Relief of Mafeking on 18 May 1900
provoked riotous celebrations in Britain.
On 28 May, the Orange Free State was annexed and renamed the Orange
River Colony.
After being forced to delay for several weeks at Bloemfontein due
to shortage of supplies and
enteric
fever (caused by poor hygiene, drinking bad water at Paardeburg
and appalling medical care), Roberts resumed his advance.
He was
forced to halt again at Kroonstad for 10 days, due once again to
the collapse of his medical and supply systems, then finally
captured Johannesburg on 31 May and the capital of the Transvaal,
Pretoria
, on 5 June. The first into Pretoria, was Lt.
William Watson of the New South Wales Mounted Rifles, who persuaded
the Boers to surrender the capital.(Before the war, the Boers had
constructed several forts south of Pretoria, but the artillery had
been removed from the forts for use in the field, and in the event
the Boers abandoned Pretoria without a fight).
This allowed the Roberts to declare the war over, having won the
principal cities and so, on the 3 September 1900, the South African
Republic was formally annexed.
British observers believed the war to be all but over after the
capture of the two capital cities.
However, the Boers had earlier met at the
temporary new capital of the Orange Free State, Kroonstad
, and planned a guerrilla campaign to hit the British
supply and communication lines. The first engagement
of this new form of warfare was at Sanna's Post
on 31 March where 1,500 Boers under the command of
Christiaan De Wet attacked
Bloemfontein's waterworks about east of the city, and ambushed a
heavily escorted convoy which resulted in 155 British casualties
and the capture of seven guns, 117 wagons and 428 British
troops.
After the
fall of Pretoria, one of the last formal battles was at Diamond
Hill
on 11 – 12 June, where Roberts attempted to drive
the remnants of the Boer field army beyond striking distance of
Pretoria. Although Roberts drove the Boers from the hill,
the Boer commander, Louis Botha, did not regard it as a defeat, for
he inflicted more casualties on the British (totalling 162 men)
while suffering around 50 casualties.
The set-piece period of the war now largely gave way to a mobile
guerrilla war, but one final operation
remained. President Kruger and what remained of the Transvaal
government had retreated to eastern Transvaal.
Roberts, joined by
troops from Natal under Buller, advanced against them, and broke
their last defensive position at Bergendal
on 26 August. As Roberts and Buller
followed up along the railway line to Komatipoort
, Kruger sought asylum in Portuguese East Africa
(modern Mozambique
). Some dispirited Boers did likewise, and
the British gathered up much war material. However, the core of the
Boer fighters under Botha easily broke back through the
Drakensberg mountains into the Transvaal
highveld after riding north through the bushveld. Under the new
conditions of the war, heavy equipment was no use to them, and
therefore no great loss.
There was much sympathy for the Boers on mainland Europe and in
October, President Kruger and members of the Transvaal government
left South Africa on the Dutch warship
De Gelderland, sent by the Queen of the
Netherlands
Wilhelmina, who had simply
ignored the British naval blockade of South Africa. Paul Kruger's
wife however was too ill to travel and remained in South Africa
where she died on 20 July 1901 without seeing Paul Kruger again.
President
Kruger first went to Marseille and then on to The Netherlands where
he stayed for a while before moving finally to Clarens
, Switzerland, where he died in exile on 14 July
1904.
POWs sent overseas
The first
sizable batch of Boer prisoners of war taken by the British
consisted of those captured at the Battle of
Elandslaagte
on 21 October 1899. At first, many were put
on ships, but as numbers grew, the British decided they did not
want them kept locally. The capture of 400 POWs in February 1900
was a key event, which made the British realise they could not
accommodate all POWs in South Africa. The British feared they could
be freed by sympathetic locals. They already had trouble supplying
their own troops in South Africa, and did not want the added burden
of sending supplies for the POWs. Britain therefore chose to send
many POWs overseas.
The first overseas (off African mainland) camps were opened in
Saint Helena, which ultimately received
about 5,000 POWs.
About 5,000 POWs were sent to Ceylon
Other POWs were sent to Bermuda
and India. No evidence exists of Boer POWs
being sent to the Dominions of the British Empire such as
Australia, Canada or New Zealand.
In all, about 26,000 POWs were sent overseas.
Third phase: Guerrilla war (September 1900 – May 1902)
By September 1900, the British were nominally in control of both
Republics, with the exception of the northern part of Transvaal.
However, they soon discovered that they only controlled directly
the territory which their columns physically occupied. The Boer
commanders adopted
guerrilla
warfare tactics, primarily conducting
raids against infrastructure, resource and
supply targets, all aimed at disrupting the operational capacity of
the British Army.
Each Boer commando unit was sent to the district from which its
members had been recruited which meant that they could rely on
local support and personal knowledge of the terrain and the towns
within the district thereby enabling them to live off the land.
Their orders were simply to act against the British whenever
possible. Their tactics were to strike fast and hard causing as
much damage to the enemy as possible, and then to withdraw and
vanish before enemy reinforcements could arrive. The vast distances
of the Republics allowed the Boer commandos considerable freedom to
move about and made it impossible for the 250,000 British troops to
control the territory effectively using columns alone. As soon as a
British column left a town or district, British control of that
area faded away.
The Boer commandos were especially effective during the initial
guerrilla phase of the war because Roberts had assumed that the war
would end with the capture of the Boer capitals and the dispersal
of the main Boer armies. Many British troops were therefore
redeployed out of the area, and had been replaced by lower-quality
contingents of
Imperial Yeomanry
and locally-raised irregular corps.
From late May 1900, the first successes of the Boer strategy were
at Lindley (where 500 Yeomanry surrendered), and at Heilbron (where
a large convoy and its escort were captured) and other skirmishes
resulting in 1,500 British casualties in less than ten days.
In
December 1900, De la Rey and Chistiaan
Beyers mauled a British brigade at Nooitgedacht
. As a result of these and other Boer
successes the British, led by Lord Kitchener, mounted three
extensive searches for De Wet, but without success. However, by its
very nature the guerrilla war was sporadic, poorly planned and with
little overall objective in mind except to harass the British. This
led to a disorganised pattern of scattered engagements throughout
the whole region.
British response
The British were forced to quickly revise their tactics. They
concentrated on restricting the freedom of movement of the Boer
commandos, and depriving them of local support. The railway lines
had provided vital lines of communication and supply, and as the
British had advanced across South Africa, they had used armoured
trains and had established fortified
blockhouses at key points. They now built
additional blockhouses (each housing 6-8 soldiers) and fortified
these to protect supply routes against Boer
raiders. Eventually some 8,000 such
blockhouses were built radiating from the larger towns. Each
blockhouse cost between 800 and 1,000 pounds and took 3 months to
build. However, they proved very effective. Not one bridge where
one of these blockhouses was sited and manned was blown.
The blockhouse system required an enormous number of troops to
maintain. Well over 50,000 British troops, or 50 battalions, were
involved in blockhouse duty, greater than the approximately 30,000
Boers in the field during the guerilla phase. In addition, up to
16,000 Africans were used both as armed guards and to patrol the
line at night. The Army linked the blockhouses with barbed wire
fences to parcel up the wide veld into smaller areas. "New Model"
drives were mounted under which a continuous line of troops could
sweep an area of veld bounded by blockhouse lines, unlike the
earlier inefficient scouring of the countryside by scattered
columns.
The British also implemented a "
Scorched
Earth" policy under which they targeted everything within the
controlled areas that could give sustenance to the Boer guerrillas
with a view to making it harder and harder for the Boers to
survive. As British troops swept the countryside, they
systematically destroyed crops, burned homesteads and farms,
poisoned wells, and interned Boer and African women, children and
workers in
concentration camps.
Finally, the British also established their own mounted raiding
columns in support of the sweeper columns. These were used to
rapidly follow and relentlessly harass the Boers with a view to
delaying them, and cutting off escape, while the sweeper units
caught up. Many of the 90 or so mobile columns formed by the
British to participate in such drives were a mixture of British and
Colonial troops but also had a large minority of armed Africans and
the total number of armed Africans serving with these columns has
been estimated at approximately 20,000. The British also utilised
armoured trains to deliver rapid reaction forces much more quickly
to incidents (such as Boer attacks on blockhouses and columns) or
to drop them off ahead of retreating Boer columns.
The Orange Free State
While the
British occupied Pretoria
, the Boer fighters in the Orange Free
State
had been driven into a fertile area known as the
Brandwater Basin in the north east of the Republic. This
offered only temporary sanctuary, as the mountain passes leading to
it could be occupied by the British, trapping the Boers. A force
under General
Archibald Hunter set
out from Bloemfontein to achieve this in July 1900. The hard core
of the Boers under
Christiaan de
Wet, accompanied by President Steyn, left the basin early.
Those remaining fell into confusion and most failed to break out
before Hunter trapped them. 4,500 Boers surrendered and much
equipment was captured, but as with Robert's drive against Kruger
at the same time, these losses were of relatively little
consequence, as the hard core of the Boer armies and their most
determined and active leaders remained at large.
From the Basin, de Wet headed west. Although hounded by British
columns, he succeeded in crossing the Vaal into western Transvaal,
to allow Steyn to travel to meet the Transvaal leaders.
Returning
to the Orange Free
State
, de Wet inspired a series of successful attacks and
raids from the hitherto quiet western part of the country, though
he suffered a rare defeat at Bothaville
in November 1900. Many Boers who had earlier
returned to their farms, sometimes giving formal parole to the
British, took up arms again. In late January 1901, De Wet led a
renewed invasion of
Cape Colony. This
was less successful, because there was no general uprising among
the Cape Boers, and de Wet's men were hampered by bad weather and
relentlessly pursued by British forces.
They narrowly escaped
across the Orange
River
.
From then until the final days of the war, de Wet remained
comparatively quiet, partly because the Orange Free State was
effectively left desolate by British sweeps.
In late 1901, De Wet
overran an isolated British detachment at Groenkop
, inflicting heavy casualties. This prompted
Kitchener to launch the first of the "New Model" drives against
him. De Wet escaped the first such drive, but lost 300 of his
fighters. This was a severe loss, and a portent of further
attrition, although the subsequent attempts to round up De Wet were
badly handled, and De Wet's forces avoided capture.
Western Transvaal
The Boer commandos in the Western Transvaal were very active after
September 1901. Several battles of importance were fought here
between September 1901 and March 1902. At Moedwil on 30 September
1901 and again at Driefontein on 24 October, General
Koos de la Rey’s forces attacked the British,
but were forced to withdraw after the British offered strong
resistance.
A time of relative quiet descended thereafter on the western
Transvaal. February 1902 saw the next major battle in that region.
On 25 February,
Koos de la Rey
attacked a British column under Lieutenant-Colonel S. B.
Von Donop
at Ysterspruit near Wolmaransstad
. Koos de la
Rey succeeded in capturing many men and a large amount of
ammunition. The Boer attacks prompted Lord Methuen, the British
second-in-command after
Lord Kitchener, to
move his column from Vryburg to Klerksdorp to deal with
Koos de la Rey.
On the morning of 7
March 1902, the Boers attacked the rear guard of Methuen’s moving
column at Tweebosch
. Confusion reigned in British ranks and
Methuen was wounded and captured by the Boers.
The Boer victories in the west led to stronger action by the
British. In the second half of March 1902, large British
reinforcements were sent to the Western Transvaal under the
direction of Ian Hamilton.
The opportunity the British were waiting for
arose on 11 April 1902 at Rooiwal
, where a commando led by General Jan Kemp and Commandant Potgieter
attacked a superior force under Kekewich. The British
soldiers were well positioned on the hillside and inflicted severe
casualties on the Boers charging on horseback over a large
distance, beating them back. This was the end of the war in the
Western Transvaal and also the last major battle of the war.
Eastern Transvaal
Two Boer forces fought in this area; under Botha in the south east
and Ben Viljoen in the north east around Lydenburg. Botha's forces
were particularly active, raiding railways and British supply
convoys, and even mounting a renewed invasion of Natal in
September, 1901.
After defeating British mounted infantry in
the Battle of
Blood River Poort
near Dundee
, Botha was forced to withdraw by heavy rains which
made movement difficult and crippled his horses. Back on the
Transvaal territory around his home district of Vryheid, Botha
attacked a British raiding column at Bakenlaagte, using an
effective mounted charge. One of the most active British units was
effectively destroyed in this engagement. This made Botha's forces
the target of increasingly large and ruthless drives by British
forces, in which the British made particular use of native scouts
and informers.
Eventually, Botha had to abandon the high
veld and retreat to a narrow enclave bordering Swaziland
.
To the north, Ben Viljoen grew steadily less active.
His forces mounted
comparatively few attacks and as a result, the Boer enclave around
Lydenburg
was largely unmolested. Viljoen was
eventually captured.
Cape Colony
In parts of Cape Colony, particularly the Cape Midlands district
where Boers formed a majority of the white inhabitants, the British
had always feared a general uprising against them. In fact, no such
uprising took place, even in the early days of the war when Boer
armies had advanced across the Orange. The cautious conduct of some
of the elderly Orange Free State generals had been one factor which
discouraged the Cape Boers from siding with the Boer republics.
Nevertheless, there was widespread pro-Boer sympathy.
After he escaped across the Orange in March 1901, de Wet had left
forces under Cape rebels Kritzinger and Scheepers to maintain a
guerrilla campaign in the Cape Midlands. The campaign here was one
of the least chivalrous of the war, with intimidation by both sides
of each other's civilian sympathisers.
In one of many
skirmishes, Commandant Lotter's small commando was tracked down by
a much-superior British column and wiped out at Groenkloof
. Several captured rebels, including
Scheepers (who was captured when he fell ill with appendicitis) and
Lotter, were executed by the British for treason or for capital
crimes such as the murder of prisoners or of unarmed civilians.
Some of the executions took place in public, to deter further
disaffection. Since the Cape Colony was Imperial territory, its
authorities forbade the British army from burning farms and forcing
Boers into concentration camps.
Fresh Boer forces under
Jan
Christiaan Smuts, joined by the surviving rebels under
Kritzinger, made another attack on the Cape in September 1901.
They
suffered severe hardships and were hard pressed by British columns,
but eventually rescued themselves by routing some of their pursuers
at the Battle of
Elands River
and capturing their equipment. From then
until the end of the war, Smuts increased his forces from among
Cape rebels until they numbered 3,000. However, no general uprising
took place, and the situation in the Cape remained
stalemated.
In
January 1902, Boer leader Manie Maritz was implicated in the
Leliefontein
massacre
in the far Northern
Cape.
Surgery and medicine during the war
More than half of British casualties during the war were caused by
illness, especially
typhoid fever,
rather than enemy action.
Concentration camps (1900 - 1902)
The
English term "concentration camp"
was first used to describe camps operated by the British
in South Africa during this conflict.
The camps had originally been set up by the
British Army as "
refugee camps" to provide refuge for civilian
families who had been forced to abandon their homes for one or
other reason related to the war. However, when
Kitchener succeeded
Roberts as commander-in-chief in South Africa in 29 November 1900,
the British Army introduced new tactics in an attempt to break the
guerrilla campaign and the influx of civilians grew dramatically as
a result. Kitchener initiated plans to
"flush out guerrillas in a series of systematic drives,
organized like a sporting shoot, with success defined in a weekly
'bag' of killed, captured and wounded, and to sweep the country
bare of everything that could give sustenance to the guerrillas,
including women and children....
It was the clearance of civilians—uprooting a whole
nation—that would come to dominate the last phase of the
war."
As Boer farms were destroyed by the British under their "
Scorched Earth" policy—including the
systematic destruction of crops and slaughtering of livestock, the
burning down of homesteads and farms, and the poisoning of wells
and salting of fields—to prevent the Boers from resupplying from a
home base many tens of thousands of women and children were
forcibly moved into the concentration camps. This was not the first
appearance of internment camps. The Spanish had used internment in
the
Ten Years' War that led to the
Spanish-American War, and the
United States had used them to devastate guerrilla forces during
the
Philippine-American War.
But the Boer War concentration camp system was the first time that
a whole nation had been systematically targeted, and the first in
which some whole regions had been depopulated.
Eventually, there were a total of 45
tented
camps built for Boer internees and 64 for black Africans. Of the
28,000 Boer men captured as
prisoners
of war, 25,630 were sent overseas. The vast majority of Boers
remaining in the local camps were women and children. Over 26,000
women and children were to perish in these concentration
camps.
The camps were poorly administered from the outset and became
increasingly overcrowded when Kitchener's troops implemented the
internment strategy on a vast scale. Conditions were terrible for
the health of the internees, mainly due to neglect, poor
hygiene and bad sanitation. The supply of all items
was unreliable, partly because of the constant disruption of
communication lines by the Boers. The food
rations were meagre and there was a two-tier
allocation policy, whereby families of men who were still fighting
were routinely given smaller rations than others. The inadequate
shelter, poor diet, inadequate hygiene and overcrowding led to
malnutrition and endemic contagious diseases such as
measles,
typhoid and
dysentery to which the children were particularly
vulnerable. An additional problem was the Boers' use of
traditional medicines like a cow-dung
poultice for skin diseases and crushed
insects for convulsions. Coupled with a shortage of modern medical
facilities, many of the internees died.
As many Africans became refugees as the war raged across their
farms and with the destruction of their homes, they, like Boers,
moved to the towns where the British army hastily created
internment camps. Subsequently, the "Scorched Earth" policy was
ruthlessly applied to both Boers and Africans; although most black
Africans were not considered by the British to be hostile, many
tens of thousands were also forcibly removed from Boer areas and
also placed in concentration camps.
Africans were separately held from Boer internees. Eventually there
were a total of 64 tented camps for Africans. Conditions were as
bad as in the camps for the Boers, but although after the Fawcett
Commission report conditions improved in the Boer camps,
"improvements were much slower in coming to the black camps." It is
worth noting that
Emily Hobhouse and
the Fawcett Commission only ever concerned themselves with the
camps that held Boer refugees. No one paid much attention to what
was going on in the camps that held African refugees. It is thought
that about 12% of all black African inmates died (about 14,154) but
the precise number of deaths of Africans in concentration camps is
unknown as little attempt was made to keep any records of the
107,000 black Africans who were interned.
Public opinion and political opposition
Although the
1900
UK general election, also known as the "Khaki election", had
resulted in a victory for the
Conservative government on the back
of recent British victories against the Boers, public support
quickly waned as it became apparent that the war would not be easy
and unease developed following reports about the treatment by the
Army of the Boer civilians. Public and political opposition to
Government policies in South Africa regarding Boer civilians was
first expressed in Parliament in February 1901 in the form of an
attack on the policy, the government, and the Army by the radical
Liberal MP
David Lloyd George.
Emily Hobhouse, a delegate of the
South African Women and Children's Distress Fund, visited some of
the camps in the Orange Free State from January 1901 and in May,
1901 she returned to England on board the ship, the
Saxon.
Alfred Milner, High Commissioner in
South Africa, also boarded the
Saxon for holiday in
England but, unfortunately for both the camp internees and the
British government, had no time for Miss Hobhouse, regarding her as
a Boer sympathizer and "trouble maker." On her return, Emily
Hobhouse did much to publicize the distress of the camp inmates.
She managed to speak to the Liberal Party leader,
Henry Campbell-Bannerman who
professed to be suitably outraged but was disinclined to press the
matter, as his party was split between the imperialists and the
pro-Boer factions.
The more radical Liberals however such as
David Lloyd George and
John Ellis were prepared to
raise the matter in Parliament and to harass the government on the
issue, which they duly did.
St John Brodrick, the
Conservative secretary of state for war, first defended the
government's policy by arguing that the camps were purely
'voluntary' and that the interned Boers were "contented and
comfortable", but was somewhat undermined as he had no firm
statistics to back up his argument so when that position proved
untenable, he resorted to the "military necessity" argument and
stated that everything possible was being done to ensure
satisfactory conditions in the camps.
Hobhouse published a report in June 1901 which contradicted
Brodrick's claim, and Lloyd George then openly accused the
government of "a policy of extermination" directed against the Boer
population. In June 1901, Liberal opposition party leader
Campbell-Bannerman took up the assault and answered the rhetorical
"When is a war not a war?" with "When it is carried on by methods
of barbarism in South Africa," referring to those same camps and
the policies that created them. The Hobhouse report caused uproar
both domestically and in the international community.
The Fawcett Commission
Although the Government had comfortably won the parliamentary
debate by a margin of 252 to 149, it was stung by the criticism and
concerned by the escalating public outcry, and called on
Kitchener for a
detailed report. In response, complete statistical returns from
camps were sent in July 1901. By August 1901, it was clear to
Government and Opposition alike that Miss Hobhouse's worst fears
were being confirmed - 93,940 Boers and 24,457 black Africans were
reported to be in "camps of refuge" and the crisis was becoming a
catastrophe as the death rates appeared very high, especially
amongst the children.
The Government responded to the growing clamour by appointing a
commission. The Fawcett Commission as it became known was, uniquely
for its time, an all-woman affair headed by
Millicent Fawcett who despite being the
leader of the women's suffrage movement was a
Liberal Unionist and thus a government
supporter and considered a safe pair of hands. Between August and
December 1901, the Fawcett Commission conducted its own tour of the
camps in South Africa. Whilst it is probable that the British
Government expected the Commission to produce a report that could
be used to fend off criticism, in the end it confirmed everything
that
Emily Hobhouse had said. Indeed,
if anything the Commission's recommendations went even further, the
Commission insisted that rations should be increased and that
additional nurses be sent out immediately, and included a long list
of other practical measures designed to improve conditions in the
camp. Millicent Fawcett was quite blunt in expressing her opinion
that much of the catastrophe was down to a simple failure to
observe elementary rules of
hygiene.
Under pressure, the Colonial Secretary
Joseph Chamberlain in November 1901
ordered Alfred Milner to ensure that "all possible steps are being
taken to reduce the rate of mortality". The civil authority took
over the running of the camps from Kitchener and British Command
and by February 1902, the annual death-rate in the concentration
camps for white inmates dropped to 6.9% and eventually it dropped
to 2%, which was a lower rate than pertained in many British cities
at the time.
However, by then the damage had been done. A report after the war
concluded that 27,927 Boers (of whom 24,074 [50% of the Boer child
population] were children under 16) had died of
starvation,
disease and
exposure in the
concentration camps. In all, about one in
four (25%) of the Boer inmates, mostly children, died.
"Improvements [however] were much slower in coming to the black
camps." It is thought that about 12% of black African inmates died
(about 14,154) but the precise number of deaths of black Africans
in concentration camps is unknown as little attempt was made to
keep any records of the 107,000 black Africans who were interned.
It is, however, worth noting that Emily Hobhouse and the Fawcett
Commission only ever concerned themselves with the camps that held
white Boer refugees. No one paid much attention to what was going
on in the camps that held native refugees.
“The main decisions (or their absence) had been left to
the soldiers, to whom the life or death of the 154,000 Boer and
African civilians in the camps rated as an abysmally low
priority.
[It was only] ... ten months after the subject had
first been raised in Parliament…[and after public outcry and after
the Fawcett Commission that remedial action was taken and] ... the
terrible mortality figures were at last declining.
In the interval, at least twenty thousand whites and
twelve thousand coloured people had died in the concentration
camps, the majority from epidemics of measles and typhoid that
could have been avoided.”
Somewhat higher figures for total deaths in the concentration camps
are given by S.B. Spies.
Kitchener's policy and the post-war debate
It has been argued that "this was not a deliberately genocidal
policy; rather it was the result of disastrous lack of foresight
and rank incompetence on part of the [British] military" .
Fergusan
also argues that "Kitchener no more desired the deaths of women and
children in the camps than of the wounded Dervishes after Omdurman
, or of his own soldiers in the typhoid stricken
hospitals of Bloemfontein
." .
However, to Kitchener and the British Command "the life or death of
the 154,000 Boer and African civilians in the camps rated as an
abysmally low priority" against military objectives. As the Fawcett
Commission was delivering its recommendations, Kitchener wrote to
St John
Brodrick defending his policy of sweeps, and emphasizing that
no new Boer families were being brought in unless they were in
danger of starving. This was disingenuous as the countryside had by
then been devastated under the "Scorched Earth" policy (the Fawcett
Commission in December 1901 in its recommendations commented that:
"to turn 100,000 people now being held in the concentration camps
out on the veldt to take care of themselves would be cruelty") and
now that the New Model counter insurgency tactics were in full
swing it made cynical military sense to leave the Boer families in
desperate conditions in the countryside.
According to writer S.B. Spies, "at [the Vereeniging negotiations
in May 1902] Boer leader Louis Botha stated that he had tried to
send [Boer] families to the British, but they had refused to
receive them,". Spies quotes a Boer Commandant referring to Boer
women and children made refugees by Britain's scorched-earth policy
as saying "Our families are in a pitiable condition and the enemy
uses those families to force us to surrender." Spies adds, "and
there is little doubt that that was indeed the intention of
Kitchener when he had issued instructions that no more families
were to be brought into the concentration camps."
Thomas Pakenham writes of
Kichener's policy U-turn,
"No doubt the continued 'hullabaloo' at the death-rate
in these concentration camps, and Milner's belated agreement to
take over their administration, helped changed Kitchener's mind
[some time at the end of 1901].
...
By mid-December at any rate, Kitchener was already
circulating all column commanders with instructions not to bring in
women and children when they cleared the country, but to leave them
with the guerrillas...
Viewed as a gesture to Liberals, on the eve of the new
session of Parliament at Westminster, it was a shrewd political
move.
It also made excellent military sense, as it greatly
handicapped the guerrillas, now that the drives were in full
swing.
.
.
.
It was effective precisely because, contrary to the
Liberals' convictions, it was less humane than bringing them into
camps, though this was of no great concern to
Kitchener."
The end of the war
Towards the end of the war, British tactics of containment, denial
and harassment began to yield results against the guerillas. The
sourcing and coordination of intelligence became increasingly
efficient with regular reporting from observers in the
blockhouses from units patrolling the fences and
conducting "sweeper" operations, and from native Africans in rural
areas who increasingly supplied intelligence, as the
Scorched Earth policy took effect and they
found themselves competing with the Boers for food supplies.
Kitchener's forces at last began to seriously affect the Boers'
fighting strength and freedom of manoeuvre, and made it harder and
harder for the Boers and their families to survive.
The Boers and the British both feared the consequences of arming
Africans. The memories of the Zulu and other tribal conflicts were
still fresh, and they recognised that whoever won would have to
deal with the consequences of a mass militarisation of the tribes.
There was therefore an unwritten agreement that this war would be a
“white man's war”. At the outset, British officials instructed all
white magistrates in the Natal Colony to appeal to Zulu ama-khosi
to remain neutral, and President Kruger sent emissaries asking them
to stay out of it. However, in some cases, there were old scores to
be settled and certain Africans were eager to enter the war such as
the Swazi’s for example which had a specific aim of reclaiming land
which had been confiscated by the Boers. As the war went on there
was greater involvement of Africans, and in particular large
numbers became embroiled in the conflict for the British, either
voluntarily or involuntarily. By the end of the war, many blacks
had been armed and had shown conspicuous gallantry in roles such as
scouts, messengers, watchmen in blockhouses, or auxiliaries. And
there were more flashpoints outside of the war; on 6 May 1902 at
Holkrantz in the southeastern Transvaal, a Zulu faction had their
cattle stolen and their people mistreated by the Boers as a
punishment for helping the British. The local Boer officer then
sent an insulting message to the tribe, challenging them to take
back their cattle. The Zulus attacked at night, and in a mutual
bloodbath, the Boers lost 56 killed and 3 wounded, while the
Africans suffered 52 killed and 48 wounded.The official statistics
of blacks who had served as combatants or non-combatants, and who
died in the concentration camps, are unreliable. Many black
combatants were dumped in unmarked graves while most of the
superintendents of the concentration camps did not record the
deaths of black inmates.After the war, the British government went
to great lengths to attempt to conciliate Boer opinion to the
extent of refusing to officially recognise the military
contribution made by blacks by issuing campaign medals. It was felt
that the Boers would already feel insecure and angry at the arming
of blacks, and granting medals would have prejudiced the stability
of the region. Boer insecurity and the British government’s
favouring of Boer interests over African interests caused much
bitterness, and did much to shape the racial politics of the
region.
The British offered terms of peace on various occasions, notably in
March 1901, but were rejected by Botha. The last of the Boers
surrendered in May 1902 and the war ended with the
Treaty of Vereeniging signed on 31 May
1902. Although the British had won, this came at a cost; the Boers
were given £3,000,000 for reconstruction and were promised eventual
limited self-government granted in 1906 and 1907.
The treaty ended the
existence of the South African
Republic and the Orange Free State
as independent Boer republics and placed them
within the British Empire. The
Union of South Africa was
established as a member of the Commonwealth in 1910.
In all, the war had cost around 75,000 lives; 22,000 British
soldiers (7,792 battle casualties, the rest through disease),
between 6,000 and 7,000 Boer fighters, and, mainly in the
concentration camps, between 20,000 to 28,000 Boer civilians
(mainly women and children) and perhaps 20,000 black Africans (both
on the battlefield and in the concentration camps). During the
conflict, 78
Victoria Crosses (VC) —
the highest and most prestigious award in the British armed forces
for bravery in the face of the enemy — were awarded to British and
Colonial soldiers. See
List of Boer War
Victoria Cross recipients.
Aftermath and analysis
The Second Boer War cast long shadows over the history of the South
African region. The predominantly agrarian society of the former
Boer republics was profoundly and fundamentally
affected by the scorched earth policy of Roberts and Kitchener. The
devastation of both Boer and black African populations in the
concentration camps and through war and exile were to have a
lasting effect on the demography and quality of life in the region.
Many exiles and prisoners were unable to return to their farms at
all; others attempted to do so but were forced to abandon the farms
as unworkable given the damage caused by farm burning and salting
of the fields in the course of the scorched earth policy. Destitute
Boers and black Africans swelled the ranks of the unskilled urban
poor competing with the "uitlanders" on the mines.
The postwar reconstruction administration was presided over by
Lord Milner and his largely Oxford
trained
Milner's Kindergarten.
This small group of civil servants was to have a profound effect on
the region, eventually leading to the
Union of South Africa. “In the
aftermath of the war, an imperial administration freed from
accountability to a domestic electorate set about reconstructing an
economy that was by then predicated unambiguously on gold. At the
same time, British civil servants, municipal officials, and their
cultural adjuncts were hard at work in the heartland of the former
Boer Republics helping to forge new
identities—first as "British South Africans" and then, later still,
as white "South Africans." Some scholars, for good reasons,
identify these new identities as partly underpinning the act of
union that followed in 1910. Although challenged by a
Boer rebellion only four years later, they
did much to shape South African politics between the two world wars
and right up to the present day”.
The
counterinsurgency techniques and lessons (the restriction of
movement, the containment of space, the targeting of anything and
everything that could give sustenance to guerrillas, the relentless
harassment through sweeper groups coupled with rapid reaction
forces, the sourcing and coordination of intelligence, and the
nurturing of native allies) learned during the Boer War were used
by the British (and other forces) in future guerrilla campaigns
including to counter Malayan
communist rebels during
the Malayan
Emergency.
Many of the Boers referred to the war as the second of the
Freedom Wars. The most resistant of Boers wanted to
continue the fight and were known as "
bittereinders" (or
irreconcilables) and at the end of the war a number of
Boer fighters such as
Deneys Reitz
chose exile rather than sign an undertaking such as the following
to pledge allegiance to Britain: Over the following decade, many
returned to South Africa and never signed the undertaking. Some,
like Reitz, eventually reconciled themselves to the new
status
quo, but others could not.
Union of South Africa
One of the most important events in the decade after the end of the
war was the creation of the
Union
of South Africa (later the
Republic of South Africa). It was
to prove a key ally to Britain as a
Dominion of the
British
Empire during the World Wars. At the start of
First World War a crisis ensued when the
South African Government led by
Louis
Botha and other former Boer fighters such as
Jan Smuts, declared support for Britain and agreed
to send troops to capture and take over the German colony of
German South-West Africa
(Namibia).
Many Boers were opposed to fighting for Britain, especially against
Germany which had been sympathetic to their struggle. A number of
bittereinders and their allies took part in a revolt known as the
Maritz Rebellion. This was quickly
suppressed and in 1916, the leading Boer rebels in the Maritz
Rebellion got off lightly (especially compared with the fate of
leading Irish rebels of the
Easter
Rising), with terms of imprisonment of six and seven years and
heavy fines. Two years later, they were released from prison, as
Louis Botha recognised the value of reconciliation. Thereafter the
bittereinders concentrated on political organisation within the
constitutional system and built up what later became the
National Party which took
power in 1948 and dominated the politics of South Africa from the
late 1940s until the early 1990s, under the
apartheid system.
Effect of the war on domestic British politics
Many
Irish nationalists
sympathised with the Boers, viewing them to be a people oppressed
by British
imperialism, much like
themselves. Irish miners already in the Transvaal at the start of
the war formed the nucleus of two
Irish
commandos. The Second Irish Brigade was headed up by an
Australian of Irish parents, Colonel
Arthur Lynch. In addition, small groups
of Irish volunteers went to South Africa to fight with the Boers —
this despite the fact that there were many Irish troops fighting
with the British army. In Britain, the "Pro-Boer" campaign
expanded, with writers often idealizing the Boer society.
The war also highlighted the dangers of Britain's policy of
non-alignment and deepened her isolation. The
1900 UK general
election, also known as the "
Khaki
election", was called by the
Prime Minister,
Lord
Salisbury, on the back of recent British victories. There was
much enthusiasm for the war at this point, resulting in a victory
for the
Conservative
government.
However, public support quickly waned as it became apparent that
the war would not be easy and it dragged on, partially contributing
to the Conservatives' spectacular defeat in 1906. There was public
outrage at the use of
scorched earth
tactics — the forced clearance of women and children, the
destruction of the countryside, burning of
Boer
homesteads and poisoning of wells, for example — and the conditions
in the
concentration camps. It
also became apparent that there were serious problems with
public health in Britain: up to 40% of
recruits in Britain were unfit for
military
service, suffering from medical problems such as
rickets and other poverty-related illnesses. This
came at a time of increasing concern for the state of the poor in
Britain.
Having taken the country into a prolonged war, the electorate
delivered a harsh verdict at the first general election after the
war was over. Balfour, succeeding his uncle
Lord
Salisbury in 1903 immediately after the war, took over a
Conservative party that had won two successive landslide majorities
but led it to a landslide defeat in 1906.
The war and its aftermath reverberated across the Empire. The
importing to South Africa and use (especially on the gold mines) of
Chinese labour, known as
Coolies,
after the war by the governor of the new
crown colonies,
Lord Milner as cheap
labour to repress local workers and break strikes, also caused much
revulsion in the UK and Australia. The Chinese workers were
themselves often kept in appalling conditions, receiving only a
small wage and isolated from the local population — revelations of
homosexual acts between those
forbidden contact with the local population and the services of
prostitutes led to further public
shock. Some believe the Chinese
slavery
issue can be seen as the climax of public antipathy with the
war.
Horses
The number of horses killed in the war was at the time
unprecedented in modern warfare.
For example, in the Relief of
Kimberley
, French's cavalry rode 500 horses to their deaths
in a single day. The wastage was particularly heavy among
British forces for several reasons; overloading of horses with
unnecessary equipment and saddlery, failure to rest and acclimatise
horses after long sea voyages and, later in the war, poor
management by inexperienced mounted troops and distant control by
unsympathetic staffs. The average life expectancy of a British
horse, from the time of its arrival in Port Elizabeth, was around
six weeks.
Horses were on occasion slaughtered for their
meat.
During the Siege of Kimberley
and Siege of Ladysmith
, horses were consumed as food once the regular
sources of meat were depleted. The besieged British forces
in Ladysmith also produced
Chevril, a
Bovril-like paste, by boiling down the horse meat to
a jelly paste and serving it like
beef tea.
The
Horse
Memorial
in Port
Elizabeth is a tribute to the 300,000 animals that died during the
conflict.
Empire involvement
- See also History of the British
Army
The vast majority of troops fighting for the British Army came from
the United Kingdom. However, a large number did come from other
parts of the
British Empire and later
the
Commonwealth of Nations.
These countries had their own internal disputes over whether they
should remain tied to the United Kingdom, or have full
independence, which carried over into the debate around the sending
of forces to assist the United Kingdom. Though not fully
independent on foreign affairs, these countries did have local say
over how much support to provide, and the manner in which it would
be provided. Ultimately, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand all
sent volunteers to aid the United Kingdom. Australia provided the
largest number of troops followed by Canada. Troops were also
raised to fight with the British from the
Cape Colony and the
Colony of Natal. Some Boers fighters such as
Jan Smuts and Louis Botha were technically British subjects as they
came from the Cape Colony and Colony of Natal respectively.
There were also many volunteers from the Empire who were not
selected for the official contingents from their countries and
travelled privately to South Africa to form private units such as
the Canadian Scouts and Doyle’s Australian Scouts. There were also
some European volunteer units from
British
India and
British Ceylon, though
the British Government refused offers of non-white troops from the
Empire. Some
Cape Coloureds also
volunteered early in the war, but later some of them were
effectively conscripted and kept in segregated units. As a
community, they received comparatively little reward for their
services. In many ways, the war set the pattern for the Empire's
later involvement in the two
World Wars.
Specially raised units, consisting mainly of volunteers, were
dispatched overseas to serve with forces from elsewhere in the
British Empire.
Australia
- See also History
of the Australian Army
From 1899 to 1901 the six separate
self-governing colonies in Australia
sent their own contingents to serve in the Boer War.
Much of the
population of the colonies had originated from Great Britain
(England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland) and the desire to support
Britain
during the conflict appealed to many. After
the colonies formed the
Commonwealth of Australia in 1901,
the new
Government of
Australia sent "Commonwealth" contingents to the war. The Boer
War was thus the first war in which the Commonwealth of Australia
fought. However it must also be noted that a few Australians fought
on the Boer side.
The most famous and colourful character was
Colonel Arthur Alfred Lynch,
formerly of Ballarat
, Victoria, who raised the Second Irish
Brigade.
The
Australian climate and geography
were far closer to that of South Africa than
most other parts of the empire, so Australians adapted quickly to
the environment, with troops serving mostly among the army's
"mounted rifles". Enlistment in all official Australian
contingents totalled 16,463. Another five to seven thousand
Australians served in "irregular" regiments raised in South Africa.
Perhaps five hundred Australian irregulars were killed. In total,
20,000 or more Australians served and about a 1,000 were killed. A
total of 267 died from disease, 251 were killed in action or died
from wounds sustained in battle. A further 43 men were reported
missing.
When the war began some Australians, like some Britons, opposed it.
As the war dragged on some Australians became disenchanted, in part
because of the sufferings of Boer civilians reported in the press.
In an interesting twist (for Australians), when the British missed
capturing President Paul Kruger, as he escaped Pretoria during its
fall in June 1900, a
Melbourne Punch, 21 June 1900,
cartoon depicted how the War could be won, using the
Kelly Gang.
The convictions and executions of two Australian Lieutenants,
Breaker Morant and
Peter Handcock in 1902, and the imprisonment
of a third,
George Witton, had little
impact on the Australian public at the time despite later legend.
The controversial
court-martial saw
the three convicted of executing
Boer prisoners
under their authority. After the war, though, Australians joined an
empire-wide campaign that saw Witton released from jail. Much
later, some Australians came to see the execution of Morant and
Handcock as instances of wrongfully executed Australians, as
illustrated in the 1980 Australian film
Breaker Morant.
Canada
- See also Military history of
Canada
At first, Canadian Prime Minister
Sir
Wilfrid Laurier tried to keep Canada out of the war. The
Canadian government was divided between those, primarily
French Canadians, who wished to stay out of
the war and others, primarily
English
Canadians, who wanted to fight. In the end, Laurier compromised
by agreeing to support the British by providing only volunteers,
equipment and transportation to the war. The United Kingdom would
be responsible for paying the troops and returning them to Canada
at the end of their service. The Boer War marked the first occasion
in which large contingents of Canadian troops served abroad
(individual Canadians had served in the Crimean War and a Canadian
contingent was sent to the
Nile
Expedition). The 1st Canadian Contingent was composed of 1000
men recruited from the
Canadian
Militia to form the 2nd (Special Service) Battalion of
The Royal Canadian Regiment of
Infantry. This contingent served under the command of the
Permanent Force officer
William
Dillon Otter.
The
Battle of
Paardeberg
in February 1900 represented the second time
Canadian Troops saw battle abroad, the first being the Canadian
involvement in the Nile Expedition
of 1884-85. Canadians also saw action at the Battle of
Faber's Put on 30 May 1900.
On 7 November 1900, the Royal Canadian Dragoons engaged the
Boers in the Battle of Leliefontein
, where they saved British guns from capture
during a retreat from the banks of the Komati River.
The Canadians had four
Victoria Cross
recipients in this war:
Lieutenant Turner,
Lieutenant Cockburn,
Sergeant Holland and
Arthur Richardson.
Ultimately, over 8,600 Canadians volunteered to fight in the South
African War.
However, not all saw action since many
landed in South Africa after the hostilities ended while others
(including the 3rd (Special Service) Battalion, The Royal Canadian Regiment)
performed garrison duty in Halifax
, Nova
Scotia
so that their British counterparts could join at
the front. Later on, contingents of Canadians served with
the paramilitary South Africa Constabulary. Approximately 267
Canadians died in the War. 89 men were killed in action, 135 died
of disease, and the remainder died of accident or injury. 252 were
wounded.
New Zealand
- See also
Military history of New Zealand
When the Second Boer War seemed imminent, New Zealand offered its
support. On 28 September 1899, Prime Minister
Richard Seddon asked
Parliament to approve the offer to
the imperial government of a contingent of mounted rifles thus
becoming the first British Colony to send troops to the Boer War.
The British position in the dispute with the Transvaal was
'moderate and righteous', he maintained. He stressed the 'crimson
tie' of Empire which bound New Zealand to the Mother-country and
the importance of a strong British Empire for the colony's
security.
By the time peace was concluded two and a half year later, ten
contingents of volunteers, totalling nearly 6,500 men from New
Zealand, with 8,000 horses had fought in the conflict, along with
doctors, nurses, veterinary surgeons and a small number of school
teachers. 70 New Zealanders died from enemy action, with another
158 killed accidentally or by disease.
South Africa
During the war, the British army also included substantial
contingents from South Africa itself.
There were large
communities of English-speaking immigrants and settlers in Natal and Cape
Colony (especially around Cape Town
and Grahamstown
), which formed volunteer units which took the
field, or local "town guards". At one stage of the
war, a "Colonial Division", consisting of five light horse and
infantry units under Brigadier General Edward Brabant, took part in the invasion of
the Orange Free
State
. Part of it withstood a siege by Christiaan
De Wet at Wepener
on the borders of Basutoland
. Another large source of volunteers was the
uitlander community, many of whom
hastily left Johannesburg
in the days immediately preceding the
war.
Later during the war,
Lord Kitchener
attempted to form a Boer Police Force, as part of his efforts to
pacify the occupied areas and effect a reconciliation with the Boer
community. The members of this force were despised as traitors by
the Boers still in the field. Those Boers who attempted to remain
neutral after giving their parole to British forces were derided as
"hensoppers" (hands-uppers) and were often coerced into
giving support to the Boer guerillas. (This was one of the reasons
for the British ruthlessly scouring the countryside of people,
livestock and anything else which the Boer commandos might find
useful.)
Like the Canadian and particularly the Australian and New Zealand
contingents, many of the volunteer units formed by South Africans
were "
light horse" or
mounted infantry, well suited to the
countryside and manner of warfare. Some regular British officers
scorned their comparative lack of formal discipline, but the light
horse units were hardier and more suited to the demands of
campaigning than the overloaded British cavalry, who were still
obsessed with the charge with lance or sabre. At their peak, 24,000
South Africans (including volunteers from the Empire) served in the
field in various "Colonial" units. Notable units (in addition to
the Imperial Light Horse) were the South African Light Horse,
Rimington's Guides, Kitchener's
Horse and the Imperial Light Infantry.
See also
References
Notes
Primary sources
- Arthur Conan Doyle:
The Great Boer War. London: Smith, Elder,
1900.
- Sol T. Plaatje: Mafeking diary: a black man's view of a
white man's war. Cambridge: Meridor Books; Athens: Ohio
University Press, 1990. ISBN 0-85255-064-2 (Meridor) ISBN
0-8214-0944-1 (Ohio UP). Originally published as The Boer War
diary of Sol T. Plaatje; an African at Mafeking.
Johannesburg: Macmillan, 1973 ISBN 0-86954-002-5.
- Alfred Milner: "The Milner
Papers", vol. II South Africa 1899 – 1905, edited by Cecil Headlam,
London: Cassell, 1933.
- J.H.M. Abbott, Tommy Cornstalk, Longmans London, 1902,
(an autobiography of Abbott's service in the War).
- Droogleever, R.W.F. (ed.), From the Front: A.
B. (Banjo) Patterson's Dispatches from the Boer
War, MacMillan, Sydney, 2000. (A completed compilation of the
reporter 'Banjo Patterson's (1864-1941) dispatches (75 letters and
articles sent to Australia during the period November 1899 to July
1900. Patterson was present at numerous engagements including
Paardeberg, Bloemfontein, Pretoria and finally the surrender of
General Martinus Prinsloo at the Brandwater Basin. These writings
give a military and literary insight into events, with comments on
the medical crisis in Bloemfontein following its occupation and
outbreak of enteric fever) ISBN 07329 1062 5
- Lieut. George Witton, Scapegoats of the Empire,
Melbourne, 1907; republished as George R. Witton, Scapegoats of
the Empire, Angus & Robertson Melbourne, 1982., (Witton's
autobiography of his trial and conviction along with "Breaker
Morant"). ISBN 0 207 146667
- Field, Kingslet (edt). Book "Soldier Boy" A young New Zealander
writes home from the Boer War, compiled by Kingsley Field. Letters
written by Harry Gilbert to his family in New Zealand from April
1901. First published in 2007 by New Holland Publishers (NZ) Ltd.
ISBN 978 186966 177 9.
- Lt. Col. P.L. Murray, (ed.) Official Records of the
Australian Military Contingents to the War in South Africa,
Government Printer, Melbourne, 1911. (Rare, but this book lists all
Colonial Forces, plus Commonwealth troops' names, number rank,
including nurses rates of pay and promotions. Citations on each
serviceman's /servicewoman's injuries, illnesses, wounds, killed in
action etc. Details the ships on which contingents sailed and
returned, the number of horses per contingent despatched to the
war, unit establishments, active services and honours, unit patrols
and engagements etc. Book comprises 607 pages)
- New South Wales Imperial Bushmen Contingent War
Diary and letters written by the Adjutant, Major David Miller.
They tell the day by day story of the deployment in 1900 of this
unique unit raised by private subscription in New South Wales.
Scholarly secondary sources
- Byron Farwell: The Great
Anglo-Boer War. New York: Harper and Row, 1976. ISBN
0-06-011204-2 (published in the UK as The Great Boer War.
London: Allen Lane, 1977. ISBN 0-7139-0820-3).
- April A. Gordon and Donald L. Gordon (eds.): Understanding
contemporary Africa. 3rd ed. Boulder, Colorado: Lynne Rienner,
2001. ISBN 1-55587-850-4.
- David Harrison: The white tribe of Africa: South Africa in
perspective. Los Angeles: University of California Press,
1981. ISBN 0-520-04690-0.
- Denis Judd and Keith Surridge. The Boer War. London:
John Murray, 2003. ISBN
0-7195-6169-8.
- W. Baring Pemberton. Battles of the Boer War. First
published 1964 by B.T. Batsford - republished by Pan, 1969.
- Fransjohan Pretorius : Scorched Earth. Cape Town:
Human & Rousseau, 2001; ISBN 0-7981-4192-1.
- Kit Denton, Australian at War: For Queen and
Commonwealth, Time-Life Books, Australia, 1987,
(pp. 76–163) ISBN 0949118 08 7 (many photos and maps)
- Laurie Field, The Forgotten War, Melbourne University
Press, 1979.
- R.L. Wallace, Australians at the Boer War, AGPS,
Canberra, 1976. ISBN 0 642 999391 2 (an important work in
re-awaking Australian interest in the Boer War - but hard to
locate)
- William (Bill) Woolmore, The Bushveldt Carbineers and the
Pietersburg Light Horse, Slouch Hat Publications, Rosebud,
2002. ISBN 0 9579752 0 1 (solid work on the men who served in the
ill-fated unit)
- Neil G. Speed, Born to Fight, Caps & Flints Press,
Melbourne, 2002. (an Australian Maj. Charles Ross DSO who served
with Canadian Scouts) ISBN 0 9581356 0 6
- Craig Wilcox, Australia's Boer War, Oxford University
Press, 2002. (important academic work) ISBN 0 19 551637 0
- William (Bill) Woolmore,Steinaecker's Horsemen: South
Africa 1899-1903, South African Country Life,Barberton, 2006.
ISBN 0 9584782 4 4 (solid research by an Australian writer into the
men who served in this unit)
- Max Chamberlain & Robert Droogleever, The War with
Johnny Boer: Australians in the Boer War 1899-1902, Ligare,
Riverwood, 2003. (sound research with maps, drawing and pictures of
Australian participants)
- Dave C. George, Carvings from the Veldt: Rifle carvings
from Anglo-Boer War, 1899-1902, Northern Rivers N.S.W., 2004.
(photographic and historical record of surviving Boer War rifles
(in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, UK and USA) and the variety of
stock carvings) ISBN 0 646 44043 8
- Richard Tomlinson, "Masonry blockhouses of the Anglo-Boer War
1900-1902", Fort (Fortress
Study Group), 1998, (26), pp169–199
External links
- The Second Boer War. Its Effects on Military and Diplomacy
- The
Register of the Anglo-Boer War; casualties and
participants
- Chronology South Africa Boer War
- The Australian
War Memorial (hundreds of photos in the Boer War section)
- Canada & The South African War, 1899-1902 - Canadian
War Museum
- Chronology Great Britain Boer War
- Colonial Units
- The New Zealand Contingents
- Field Gun
photos and video
- British casualties - Officers: A to
Z
- War
Museum of the Boer Republics. Anglo Boer War
Museum (accessed 24 December 2003)
- National UK Archives site
- Online Catalogue entry for The Women's Library: Millicent
Fawcett's personal copy of the Fawcett Commission Report, search
for RefNo=7mgf/e/1
- Royal Engineers Museum Royal Engineers in the
Anglo-Boer war (Ballooning, Blockhouses, Bridging, Railways,
Searchlights, Signals, Steam Transport and Telegraph)
- A Handbook of the Boer War by Gale and Polden, Limited, from Project Gutenberg
- The Record of a Regiment of the Line, by M. Jacson,
from Project Gutenberg
- Commando: A Boer Journal of the Boer War (now
in the public domain and readable online), by Deneys Reitz, a participant and later deputy
prime minister of South Africa
- The Boer War from a Boer Perspective
- British Soldiers who served, were wounded or
died
- Soldiers of the Queen - Heritage Resources
Saint John
- Australian Light Horse Studies Centre Resources
relating to the Australian participation in the Boer War by their
mounted troops.
- A Fading Memory: Canada’s First Military Action
Article chronicling the Canadian involvement.
- Scottish Regiments Shipping Out to the Boer War
1899-1902
- The Boer War
1899-1902