The Great Boer War 1899-1902

The Great Boer War (also called the South African War) was fought between Great Britain and the two Boer (Afrikaner) republics -- the South African Republic and the Orange Free State. The total British military strength in South Africa reached nearly 500,000 men, most lyfrom Britain but including large numbers of volunteers also from Australia, New Zealand and Canada. Approximately 30,000 Africans were also employed as soldiers by the British. The Boers never had more than 40,000 men in the field at one time and had a total manpower potential of 80,000-90,000 men of fighting age. But the British were fighting in a hostile country over difficult terrain, with long lines of communications, while the Boers, mainly on the defensive, were able to use modern rifle fire to good effect, at a time when attacking forces had no means of overcoming it.

The war began on October 11, 1899, following a Boer ultimatum directed against the reinforcement of the British garrison in South Africa. The crisis was caused by the refusal of the South African Republic, under President Paul Kruger, to grant political rights to the Uitlander (foreigners, primarily British) population of the gold mining areas of the Witwatersrand and the aggressive attitudes of Alfred Milner (1st Viscount Milner), the British high commissioner, and Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain, in response to Boer obduracy. An underlying cause of the war was the presence in the Transvaal (Republic of South Africa) of the largest gold-mining complex in the world, beyond direct British control, at a time when the world's monetary systems, preeminently the British, were increasingly dependent upon gold.

Initially, the British in South Africa were unprepared and militarily weak. Boer armies attacked on two fronts, into Natal from the Transvaal and into the northern Cape from the Orange Free State; the northern districts of the Cape Colony rebelled against the British and joined the Boer forces. In the course of Black Week (December 10-15) the Boers defeated the British in a number of major engagements and besieged the key towns of Ladysmith, Mafeking, and Kimberley; but large numbers of British reinforcements were being landed, and slowly the fortunes of war turned. Before the siege of Ladysmith could be relieved, however, the British suffered another reverse at Spion Kop (January 1900).

With the arrival of heavy British reinforcements in 1900, the war turned against the Boers. The British, under Lord Kitchener and Frederick Sleigh Roberts (1st Earl Roberts) relieved the besieged towns, beat the Boer armies in the field, and rapidly advanced up the lines of rail transportation. Bloemfontein, capital of the Orange Free State, was occupied by the British on March 13, 1900; Johannesburg on May 31 and Pretoria, capital of the South African Republic, on June 5. Kruger left the Transvaal for Europe. Roberts, believing the war was over, left for home. But the war, which until then had been largely confined to military operations, was by no means at an end, and at the end of 1900 it entered upon its most destructive phase.

For 15 months Boer commandos, under the brilliant leadership of generals such as Christiaan Rudolf de Wet and Jacobus Hercules De la Rey, harried the British army bases and communications; large rural areas of the Orange Free State (which the British annexed as the Orange River Colony) and the South African Republic (annexed as the Transvaal September 3, 1900) remained out of British control. Kitchener responded with barbed wire and blockhouses along the railways, but when these failed he retaliated with a scorched-earth policy. More than 30,000 farms of Boers and Africans alike were destroyed and the Boer inhabitants of the countryside were rounded up and held in segregated concentration camps. The plight of the Boer women and children in these camps became an international outrage -- more than 20,000 died in the carelessly run, unhygienic camps. The commandos continued their attacks, many of them deep into the Cape Colony, General Jan Smuts leading his forces to within 50 miles (80 km) of Cape Town. But Kitchener's drastic and brutal methods slowly paid off. Kitchener wore down Boer morale and systematically was able to destroy the guerrilla units.

The Boers had unsuccessfully sued for peace in March 1901. Peace was finally concluded at the town of Vereeniging on May 21, 1902. Milner, who drew up the terms, intended that Afrikaner power should be broken forever. He required that the Boers hand over all their arms and agree to the incorporation of their territories into the British empire as the Orange River Colony and the Transvaal. However, he made one significant concession to Boer sentiments by agreeing that the franchise would not be extended to Africans throughout South Africa (they had no vote in the Boer republics) until the local white population could decide that issue themselves. Additionally, the British provided a grant of £3,000,000 to reconstruct the Transvaal. Total British casualties were 5,774 killed and 22,829 wounded. The Boers lost an estimated 4,000 killed; there is no accurate toll of the wounded. About 40,000 Boer soldiers had been captured.

References

Dictionary of Wars, 59-60; Military History, 933-6; South Africa - A Country Study; South African War; Peace of Vereeniging.

Category

TBD

Region

TBD

State(s)

TBD

Belligerents

TBD

Dispute

TBD

Initiation Date

TBD

Termination Date

TBD

Duration

TBD

Outcome

TBD

Fatalities

TBD

Magnitude

TBD