Boer Wars

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Boer Wars

The Boer Wars were a series of conflicts fought between the descendants of Dutch settlers and British troops in South Africa in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The conflicts stemmed from Britain's attempts to expand its South African colonial empire.

Dutch colonists had settled the Cape region of South Africa since the seventeenth century, where they became known as Boers, meaning "farmers" in Dutch. After Great Britain acquired control of the Cape in 1806, many Boers felt harassed by British colonial policies, especially the abolition of African slavery, and they began migrating inland to escape British rule. The Boers eventually established two landlocked independent republics: the South African Republic (also known as the Transvaal Republic) and the Orange Free State. The Boers were conservative, deeply religious, and practiced an agricultural way of life; they spoke a form of Dutch later called Afrikaans, and called themselves Afrikaners, meaning "Africans" in their language.

By the 1870s the British had annexed most of southern Africa with the exception of the two Boer republics, and they now hoped to incorporate the two republics into a larger South African federation. The discovery of diamonds at Kimberley in 1867, and British annexation of the diamond region near the border with the Orange Free State, also brought the British into conflict with the Boers.

FIRST BOER WAR (1880–1881)

The first war between the British and Boers was short and resulted in little loss of life. In 1877 the British annexed the Transvaal, claiming the territory as their own. In 1880 the Boers revolted, and the Transvaal declared its independence from Great Britain. The Boers attacked British army garrisons in the Transvaal and defeated the British at the Battle of Laing's Nek on January 28, 1881; this was followed by other Boer victories. On February 27, 1881, the Boers defeated the British in the decisive Battle of Majuba Hill.

At this point the British government under Prime Minister William Gladstone (1809–1898) decided to recognize Boer independence, and the Convention of Pretoria was signed on April 5, 1881, confirming the sovereignty of the Orange Free State and the South African Republic (Transvaal). To the Boers, the war became known as the First War for Freedom; it is also known to historians as the First South African War and the First Anglo-Boer War.

SECOND BOER WAR (1899–1902)

The Second Boer War is also known to Afrikaners as the Second War for Freedom, and as the Second South African War and the Second Anglo-Boer War. Though the end of the First Boer War restored peace in the Transvaal, it did not end the disputes between the British and the Boers. The discovery of gold on the Witwatersrand in the Transvaal resulted in a huge influx of new settlers, most of them British or from British colonies. Gold mining began apace and the city of Johannesburg became the center of the gold mining region.

The rise in new settlers, known in Afrikaans as Uitlanders, or "foreigners," disturbed the Boers; the Uitlanders appeared to have little respect for Boer culture and were instead focused on profiting from the Transvaal's resources. The Boers therefore required a long period of residency—fourteen years—in order to acquire Transvaal citizenship and voting rights in the republic, but Uitlanders were still taxed. These conditions angered the Uitlanders, most of whom supported British colonial expansion into the Transvaal.

In 1895 Dr. Leander Starr Jameson (1853–1917), with the backing of the Cape Colony's prime minister, Cecil Rhodes (1853–1902, who had his own commercial interests in the region later to be called Rhodesia), staged a raid on the city of Johannesburg, a nearly farcical event that was a dramatic failure. The failed raid embarrassed the British government, as it made Britain appear to be engaged in aggression against a republic whose independence it had guaranteed. Rhodes was forced to resign as prime minister of the Cape. To the Boers, the event revealed British imperial designs. Paul Kruger (1825–1904), the Transvaal president, was especially effective in rallying his people against the British, as was President Marthinus Steyn (1857–1916) in the Orange Free State. The Transvaal and Orange Free State formed an alliance, and both republics began importing arms from Germany. Germany had given verbal support to the Boer cause, but never intervened when war began.

The British continued their scheming to acquire the Boer republics. The Cape high commissioner, Sir Alfred Milner (1854–1925), as well as the colonial secretary, Joseph Chamberlain (1836–1914), both wanted war against the Boer republics on the grounds of poor treatment against the Uitlanders, but really as part of their imperialist design for the expansion of empire, as well as the desire for gold. At a conference between British and Boer leaders in 1899, the British demanded citizenship and voting rights for Uitlanders, while the Boers demanded that British troops withdraw from the borders of the Transvaal. When the British failed to withdraw their troops, President Kruger ordered the Boers to attack British positions in the Cape Colony and Natal.

War was declared on October 12, 1899. Initially, the Boers had the advantage, besieging the cities of Ladysmith, Mafeking, and Kimberley, and defeating British troops at the battles of Magersfontein and Colenso. Nevertheless, the British prime minister, Lord Salisbury (Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil, 1830–1903), of the Conservative-Unionist Party, was optimistic and expected the war to last only a few months. British troops led by Sir Redvers Buller (1839–1908) arrived in Cape Town at the end of October, with reinforcements under Lord Frederick Sleigh Roberts (1832–1914) arriving in February 1900, helping to relieve the besieged cities. Robert Baden-Powell (1857–1941, founder of the Boy Scouts) also led a raid against the Transvaal. The British captured the Orange Free State's capital of Bloemfontein in March 1900 and the Transvaal capital of Pretoria in June 1900. The fall of the two capitals led the British to believe that the war would now be over.

At this point, however, the war entered into a guerilla stage as the Boers continued to resist the British onslaught. Unlike the British, who wore uniforms and were organized into hierarchical and highly structured military units, the Boers wore civilian clothes, and were organized into self-governing commandos led by such generals as Jacobus Hercules (Koos) De la Rey (1847–1914), Christiaan de Wet (1854–1922), Louis Botha (1862–1919), and Jan Smuts (1870–1950). Boer commandos continued their attacks on British garrisons and communications lines. The British replaced their earlier command with more able leaders, including Lord Roberts and Lord Horatio Herbert Kitchener (1850–1916), both military heroes. About 80,000 Boers fought against about 450,000 British troops, including colonial troops from Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. Africans fought for both sides, though most fought for the British, believing that a British victory would bring them greater rights.

The continuance of war in South Africa prompted an antiwar movement in Great Britain, supported by parliamentary opposition parties, including most of the Liberals (such as David Lloyd George [1863–1945]) and the various smaller Labor parties. The British antiwar movement was also motivated by British treatment of Boer prisoners. The Boers themselves tended to release captured British soldiers after a few days because they had no place to imprison them. The British sent their prisoners of war out of the country to such places as Bermuda and Ceylon. The British also employed a scorched earth policy, burning crops and farmhouses (about 30,000 homes were burned), and evicting Boer families, placing women and children in concentration camps. Over 116,000 Boers were imprisoned in about forty-five concentration camps, where 27,000 of them, mainly children, died. Over 120,000 Africans were also imprisoned in concentration camps. Though Africans were important participants in the war and were substantially affected by it, there is relatively little documentation about their experiences and most historians have focused on the British-Boer conflict, rather than on the African role.

Faced with overwhelming force as well as the destruction of their farms, the Boers considered surrendering. Boer generals disagreed among themselves; some, such as Botha, argued for surrender with better terms, while others, such as de Wet, wanted to hold out until the bitter end. Eventually the Boers came to an agreement and surrendered. The Treaty of Vereeniging was signed on May 31, 1902, with the Boers recognizing British annexation of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State, which now became British colonies. These colonies would be merged into the new Union of South Africa in 1910, with Louis Botha becoming the first prime minister of a united South Africa.

The British were active in reconstructing the former republics in an attempt to gain Boer confidence. Africans gained little from the Second Boer War. Many had supported the British in the belief that they would obtain voting rights with a British victory. With the exception of the recognition of some preexisting rights for Africans in the Cape Province, the war did little to help them.

The Boer Wars were significant in defining modern South Africa. The peace treaty in 1902 brought the British and Boers together in an uneasy alliance, allowing the formation of a unified South Africa. Afrikaner feelings about the war are still strong, helping to define Afrikaner nationalism in a way similar to how the American Civil War defines southern political culture. The Boer Wars have been compared by some historians to both the Vietnam and Gulf Wars, in which smaller independent nations were attacked by imperial forces.