THE SOUTH AFRICAN BOER WAR (SECOND BOER WAR)
The South African Boer War
begins between the British Empire and the Boers of the Transvaal and Orange
Free State. The Boers, also known as Afrikaners, were the descendants of the original
Dutch settlers of southern Africa. Britain took possession of the Dutch Cape
colony in 1806 during the Napoleonic wars, sparking resistance from the
independence-minded Boers, who resented the Anglicization of South Africa and
Britain’s anti-slavery policies. In 1833, the Boers began an exodus into
African tribal territory, where they founded the republics of the Transvaal and
the Orange Free State. The two new republics lived peaceably with their British
neighbors until 1867, when the discovery of diamonds and gold in the region
made conflict between the Boer states and Britain inevitable.
Minor fighting with Britain
began in the 1890s, and in October 1899 full-scale war ensured. By mid-June
1900, British forces had captured most major Boer cities and formally annexed
their territories, but the Boers launched a guerrilla war that frustrated the
British occupiers. Beginning in 1901, the British began a strategy of
systematically searching out and destroying these guerrilla units, while
herding the families of the Boer soldiers into concentration camps. By 1902,
the British had crushed the Boer resistance, and on May 31 of that year the
Peace of Vereeniging was signed, ending hostilities. (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/boer-war-begins-in-south-africa
)
THREE DISTINCT PHASES TO THE WAR
Stage
1 - Boer offensive.
At first, the Boer republican fighters were
successful in three major offensives. Their commandos invaded northern
Natal and besieged the town of Ladysmith, invaded Cape Colony to lay siege to
the British garrisons in Kimberley and Mafeking. While the British did
achieve some tactical victories at Talana and Elandslaagte, there were serious
defeats for the British at Stormberg, Magersfontein and Colenso which became
known as 'Black Week' (10th - 15th December 1899).
Stage
2 - British response.
With heavy reinforcements and the assumption of
overall command by Lord Roberts with Lord Kitchener as his Chief of Staff, the
British turned the situation around. Imperial troops eventually relieved
the besieged towns of Ladysmith (28th February 1900), Kimberley (15 February
1900) and Mafeking (18th May 1900). On 13th March 1900 Roberts occupied
Bloemfontein, the capital of the Orange Free State, and on 28th May the
province was annexed and renamed the Orange River Colony. On 31st May,
British troops entered Johannesburg and, on 5th June, Pretoria was taken. The
Transvaal was annexed on 1st September 1900. To many it seemed that there
was over. At the end of November, Roberts made a triumphal return to
England.
Stage
3 - Guerrilla war.
Under the leadership of Louis Botha, Christian de Wet,
Jan Smuts and de la Rey, the Boers abandoned the British style of warfare and
increased their reliance on small and mobile military units. The mobility
of these units enabled them to capture supplies, disrupt communications and
undertake raids on the army of occupation. They were very successful in
evading capture. In response, the British embarked on a scorched earth
policy to deny supplies to the fighters. Approximately 30,000 farms were
burnt. In March 1901 the need to restrict the movement of the Boers
brought the development of 8,000 blockhouses and 3,700 miles of wire fencing
guarded by 50,000 troops. This was followed by a number of 'drives'
which had the intention of cornering the Boers but the operations mainly
produced large numbers of displaced Boer and African families. These refugees
were sent to concentration camps around South Africa. These measures were
largely responsible for bringing the Boers to the negotiation table to end the
War. (http://www.angloboerwar.com/boer-war)
CAUSES OF THE WAR
With the 1886 discovery of gold in the Transvaal, the resulting gold rush brought thousands of British and other
prospectors and settlers from across the globe and over the border from the Cape
Colony (under British
control since 1806). The city of Johannesburg sprang up as a shanty
town nearly overnight as
the uitlanders ("foreigners," meaning non-Boer
whites) 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 could be obtained, by
imposing taxes on the gold industry, and by introducing controls through
licensing, tariffs and administrative requirements. Among the issues giving
rise to tension between the Transvaal governments on the one hand, and the
uitlanders and British interests on the other, were:
Established uitlanders, including the mining
magnates, wanted political, social, and economic control over their lives.
These rights included 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 uitlanders–that their independent control of the
Transvaal would be lost and the territory absorbed into the British Empire.
The uitlanders resented the taxes
levied by the Transvaal government, particularly when this money was not spent
on Johannesburg or uitlander interests, but diverted to projects elsewhere in
the Transvaal. For 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 branch of the Nobel Company,
which infuriated the British. The so-called "dynamite monopoly"
became a major pretext for war.
British imperial interests were alarmed
when in 1894–95 Kruger proposed building a railway through Portuguese East
Africa to Delagoa Bay, 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 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Boer_War)
EFFECT OF THE WAR
The
Treaty of Vereeniging is
signed in 1902 to end the war. The treaty officially ended the Boer War. Peace
began to seem attainable in the early weeks of 1902. In January of that year
the Queen of the Netherlands even offered to mediate between Britain and the
Bores; however, the British Government declined her offer. Though that specific
resolution did not work, it opened the door to consideration of peace
agreements. Also the Britain clearly forces the Transvaal and Orange Free State
into the British Empire.
The
Union of South Africa (Minority rule) formed in 1907 gave away many of the
things Britain had fought for in the war. Racial discrimination was now
allowed and much autonomy was given back to Transvaal and Orange Free
State. In addition, Boers now became the largest group of voters and
former Boer commando leaders eventually became leaders of South Africa.
Britain agreed to all this in order to gain some loyalty from the Boers in case
of a coming war with Germany in Europe. Britain did not want South Africa
to rebel in the case of a war in Europe.
Lord
Robert Baden Powell, the leader of the heroic British resistance at Mafeking
later starts a worldwide movement called the Boy Scouts. His experience
with boys in Mafeking showed him a need for boys to learn chivalry, outdoor
skills, citizenship and physical fitness.
The war had devastated the
Afrikaners economically and psychologically. This contributed to Boer poverty
and accelerated urbanization. In the course of the 20th century, the Afrikaners
took control of South African politics, and they resolved to become independent
of the British sphere of influence.
It shaped them as 'race
patriots' and revealed an aggressive nationalism, which led them to aspire to
self-determination and complete dominance of South Africa. This, together with
a fear of the black majority, may partly explain the implementation of the
policy of apartheid (racial segregation). With the forming of the Republic of
South Africa in 1961, the Peace of Vereeniging seemed to have been avenged.
Black people were equally
devastated by the war, with similar results concerning poverty and
urbanization. Moreover, their occupation of Boer land during the second Boer
War was not recognized, and they did not receive an extension of the qualified
franchise (practiced in the Cape Colony and Natal) to the Transvaal and the
Orange River Colony.
The second Boer War had a major
impact on British tactics leading up to World War One. The war had shown that
modern rifles and artillery provided greater accuracy, range and rates of fire
than before. This led to the belief in a fire zone of increased depth and
danger, and the need for formations that were more open. One of the most useful
lessons was the necessity of cover for the attackers.
In generally 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 proved 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 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
recognized the value of reconciliation. Thereafter the bittereinders
concentrated on political organization 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.
REFFERENCE
Conan
Doyle. A (1902) The
great boer war. London, smith, elder & co.
Davenport,
T. R. H., and Saunders, C. (2000). South Africa: A
Modern History, 5th ed. Palgrave Macmillan.
SBN 0312233760
Doyle,
A. Conan (1902). The
Great Boer War. Toronto: George N. Morang & Company.
Jackson,
Tabitha (1999). The
Boer War. Basingstoke, U.K.: Channel 4 Books/Macmillan. ISBN075221702X
Thompson, L, (2000) A history of South
Africa, Yale university press, Third edition
Maoni
Chapisha Maoni