Boer wars. The first Boer War (1880–1) was hardly more than a skirmish, won by the Boers (Dutch-origin South African farmers) after a famous victory over a British force at
Majuba on the northern frontier of
Natal. That gave the Boer republics of the
Transvaal and
Orange Free State the independence they craved from the British empire, in most things except foreign policy. Britain accepted this while they were poor and backward. That soon changed, however, when the vast Witwatersrand goldfield was discovered in the Transvaal in 1886, offering untold riches to whichever power controlled it. In 1899 Britain went to war again against the Boers, and got it back. It would be too simplistic, however, to assume that this was out of mere cupidity.
Britain had other reasons for noticing the Boers' new wealth. One worry was that if it made them too powerful, they could threaten her supremacy in the rest of South Africa, possibly in league with Germany. The aftermath of the
Jameson Raid fuelled that fear. The kaiser sent a telegram congratulating the Boer president for repelling the raid. Britain regarded that as unwonted interference in the one aspect of the Transvaal's affairs she had not surrendered control over. The republic was behaving cockily in other ways too. A lot was made of its slightly less liberal ‘native policy’ by comparison with Britain's, which had been one of the reasons for setting up the independent Boer states in the first place. There were also complaints of mistreatment of immigrant diggers (‘uitlanders’) in the goldfields, though these were mostly invented or exaggerated. Britain negotiated to ease these grievances, but possibly not genuinely. Her main agent in South Africa,
Milner, seems to have wanted war. British troops were poured in. In the end, on 10 October 1899, it was the Boers who issued the ultimatum, but under provocation. Most foreign opinion saw Britain as the aggressor, an evil Goliath against the David who was pluckily standing up to his bullying.
David did surprisingly well initially. The first months of the war went disastrously against Britain, with the Boers advancing deep into Natal and holding several British garrisons under siege. Only in May 1900 did the tide begin to turn, mainly through the sheer force of the numbers Britain could deploy. By October the Transvaal had been largely reconquered, Kruger, its president, had fled, and both republics were annexed to the British flag. Back in London the government used the opportunity to call a snap ‘khaki’ election, which it won. But the war was not over yet. The Boers continued a ‘guerrilla’ kind of warfare, which was only crushed in the end by a policy of methodical land-razing, farm-burning, and herding non-combatant Boers—mainly women—into unhealthy ‘concentration camps’. In June 1901
Campbell-Bannerman, the Liberal leader, publicly attacked all this as ‘methods of barbarism’, which shocked patriots, but seemed to touch a wider chord.
When the last Boers eventually surrendered, in May 1902, most Britons were heartily sick of the war. They had won, but at a price. 5,774 Britons had been killed (more than on the other side), and 22,829 injured. The Boers had been beaten, but not bowed. In the treaty of
Vereeniging (31 May) they stuck out in defence of their racial policies, and got their new masters to back down on that. Resentment continued to simmer, contributing to more Boer rebellions later, and South Africa's withdrawal from the
Commonwealth in 1961. In Britain, the army's poor showing proved salutary, leading to a cessation of aggressive
imperialism for a while, and a great national self-examination, especially of her ‘decadence’. The war also boosted anti-imperialism. Overall, therefore, the Boer War was probably not a good one to have won.
Bernard Porter
Bibliography
Nasson, B. , The South African War 1899–1902 (1999).
