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Library of Congress: early stereograph image from the Boer War (shown at the 1904 World's Fair)

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Library of Congress: early stereograph image from the Boer War (shown at the 1904 World's Fair)

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Spartacus Educational: links and information on the Boer Wars

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Spartacus Educational: links and information on the Boer Wars

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The Boer Wars was the name given to the South African Wars of 1880-1 and 1899-1902, that were fought between the British and the descendants of the Dutch settlers ( Boers) in Africa. After the first Boer War, William Gladstone granted the Boers self-government in the Transvaal. (1)

Paul Kruger, resented the colonial policy of Joseph Chamberlain and Alfred Milner which they feared would deprive the Transvaal of its independence. After receiving military equipment from Germany, the Boers had a series of successes on the borders of Cape Colony and Natal between October 1899 and January 1900. Although the Boers only had 88,000 soldiers, led by the outstanding soldiers such as Louis Botha, and Jan Smuts, the Boers were able to successfully besiege the British garrisons at Ladysmith, Mafeking and Kimberley. On the outbreak of the Boer War, the conservative government announced a national emergency and sent in extra troops. (2)

Asquith called for support for the government and "an unbroken front" and became known as a "Liberal Imperialist". Campbell-Bannerman disagreed with Asquith and refused to to endorse the despatch of ten thousand troops to South Africa as he thought the move "dangerous when the the government did not know what it might lead to". David Lloyd George also disagreed with Asquith and complained that this was a war that had been started by Joseph Chamberlain, the Colonial Secretary. (3)

It has been claimed that Lloyd George "sympathised with the Boers, seeing them as a pastoral community like Welshmen before the industrial revolution". He supported their claim for independence under his slogan "Home Rule All Round" assuming "it would lead to a free association within the British Empire". He argued that the Boers "would only be subdued after much suffering, cruelty and cost." (4)

Lloyd George also saw this anti-war campaign as an opportunity to stop Asquith becoming the next leader of the Liberals. Lloyd George was on the left of the party and had been campaigning with little success for the introduction of old age pensions. The idea had been rejected by the Conservative government as being "too expensive". In one speech he made the point: "The war, I am told, has already cost £16,000,000 and I ask you to compare that sum with what it would cost to fund the old age pension schemes.... when a shell exploded it carried away an old age pension and the only satisfaction was that it killed 200 Boers - fathers of families, sons of mothers. Are you satisfied to give up your old age pension for that?" (5)

The Daily Mail (19th May, 1900)

The overwhelmingly majority of the public remained fervently jingoistic. David Lloyd George came under increasing attack and after a speech at Bangor on 4th April 1900, he was interrupted throughout his speech, and after the meeting, as he was walking away, he was struck over the head with a bludgeon. His hat took the impact and although stunned, he was able to take refuge in a cafe, guarded by the police.

On 5th July, 1900, at a meeting addressed by Lloyd George in Liskeard ended in pandemonium. Around fifty "young roughs stormed the platform and occupied part of it, while a soldier in khaki was carried shoulder-high from end to end of the hall and ladies in the front seats escaped hurriedly by way of the platform door." Lloyd George tried to keep speaking and it was only when some members of the audience began throwing chairs at him that he left the hall. (6)

On 25th July, a motion on the Boer War, caused a three way split in the Liberal Party. A total of 40 "Liberal Imperialists" that included H. H. Asquith, Edward Grey, Richard Haldane, and Archibald Primrose, Lord Rosebery, supported the government's policy in South Africa. Henry Campbell-Bannerman and 34 others abstained, whereas 31 Liberals, led by Lloyd George voted against the motion.

Robert Cecil, the Marquess of Salisbury, decided to take advantage of the divided Liberal Party and on 25th September 1900, he dissolved Parliament and called a general election. Lloyd George, admitted in one speech he was in a minority but it was his duty as a member of the House of Commons to give his constituents honest advice. He went on to make an attack on Tory jingoism. "The man who tries to make the flag an object of a single party is a greater traitor to that flag than the man who fires upon it." (7)

Francis Carruthers Gould, Khaki Election (September, 1900)

Henry Campbell-Bannerman with a difficult task of holding together the strongly divided Liberal Party and they were unsurprisingly defeated in the 1900 General Election. The Conservative Party won 402 seats against the 183 achieved by Liberal Party. However, anti-war MPs did better than those who defended the war. David Lloyd George increased the size of his majority in Caernarvon Borough. Other anti-war MPs such as Henry Labouchere and John Burns both increased their majorities. In Wales, of ten Liberal candidates hostile to the war, nine were returned, while in Scotland every major critic was victorious.

John Grigg argues that it was not the anti-war Liberals who lost the party the election. "The Liberals were beaten because they were disunited and hopelessly disorganised. The war certainly added to their confusion, but this was already so flagrant that they were virtually bound to lose, war or no war. The government also had the advantage of improved trade since 1895, which the war, admittedly, turned into a boom. All things considered, the Liberals did remarkably well." (8)

Lord Kitchener, the Chief of Staff in South Africa, reacted to these raids by destroying Boer farms and moving civilians into concentration camps. It was reported: "When the eight, ten or twelve people who lived in the bell tent were squeezed into it to find shelter against the heat of the sun, the dust or the rain, there was no room to stir and the air in the tent was beyond description, even though the flaps were rolled up properly and fastened. Soap was an article that was not dispensed. The water supply was inadequate. No bedstead or mattress was procurable. Fuel was scarce and had to be collected from the green bushes on the slopes of the kopjes by the people themselves. The rations were extremely meagre and when, as I frequently experienced, the actual quantity dispensed fell short of the amount prescribed, it simply meant famine." (9)

Emily Hobhouse, formed the Relief Fund for South African Women and Children in 1900. It was an organisation set up: "To feed, clothe, harbour and save women and children - Boer, English and other - who were left destitute and ragged as a result of the destruction of property, the eviction of families or other incidents resulting from the military operations". Except for members of the Society of Friends, very few people were willing to contribute to this fund. (10)

Hobhouse later wrote: "It was late in the summer of 1900 that I first learnt of the hundreds of Boer women that became impoverished and were left ragged by our military operations. That the poor women who were being driven from pillar to post, needed protection and organized assistance. And from that moment I was determined to go to South Africa in order to render assistance to them". (11)

Hobhouse arrived in South Africa on 27th December, 1900. Hobhouse argued that Lord Kitchener's "Scorched Earth" policy included 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. Civilians were then forcibly moved into the concentration camps. Although this tactic had been used by Spain ( Ten Years' War) and the United States ( Philippine-American War), it was the first time that a whole nation had been systematically targeted. She pointed this out in a report that she sent to the government led by Robert Cecil, the Marquess of Salisbury. (12)

When she returned to England, Hobhouse campaigned against the British Army's scorched earth and concentration camp policy. William St John Fremantle Brodrick, the Secretary of State for War argued that the interned Boers were "contented and comfortable" and stated that everything possible was being done to ensure satisfactory conditions in the camps. David Lloyd George took up the case in the House of Commons and accused the government of "a policy of extermination" directed against the Boer population. (13)

Walter Crane, Justice Journal (1907)

After a meeting with Emily Hobhouse, the leader of the Liberal Party, Henry Campbell-Bannerman, gave his support to Lloyd George against Asquith and the Liberal Imperialists on the subject of the Boer War. In a speech to the National Reform Union he provided a detailed account of Hobhouse's report. He asked "When is a war not a war?" and then provided his own answer "When it is carried on by methods of barbarism in South Africa". (14)

The British action in South Africa grew increasingly unpopular and anti-war Liberal MPs and the leaders of the Labour Party saw it as an example of the worst excesses of imperialism. The Boer War ended with the signing of the Treaty of Vereeniging in May 1902. The peace settlement brought to an end the Transvaal and the Orange Free State as Boer republics. However, the British granted the Boers £3 million for restocking and repairing farm lands and promised eventual self-government. David Lloyd George commented: "They are generous terms for the Boers. Much better than those we offered them 15 months ago - after spending £50,000 in the meantime". (15)

(1) Emily Hobhouse wrote about how she decided to visit South Africa during the Boer War.

It was late in the summer of 1900 that I first learnt of the hundreds of Boer women that became impoverished and were left ragged by our military operations. That the poor women who were being driven from pillar to post, needed protection and organized assistance. And from that moment I was determined to go to South Africa in order to render assistance to them.

The Lord Mayor of London appeared in his robes and made a speech to the crowd. I cannot remember his exact words, but they announced that after intolerable insults from an old man named Kruger, Her Majesty's government had declared war upon the South African Boers. There was terrific and tumultuous cheering. Top hats were flung up after the crowd had sung "God Save the Queen". I don't believe I joined in the cheering. Certainly I did not fling up my top hat. Brought up in the Gladstonian tradition to the Liberals, and being, anyhow, a liberal-minded youth hostile to the loud-mouthed jingoism of the time, I was not swept by enthusiasm for a war which seemed to me, as it did to others, a bit of bullying by the big old British Empire.

You hear the squeal of the things all above, the crash and pop all about, and wonder when your turn will come. Perhaps one falls quite near you, swooping irresistibly, as if the devil had kicked it. You come to watch the shells - to listen to the deafening rattle of the big guns, the shrilling whistle of the small, to guess at their pace and their direction. You see now a house smashed in, a heap of chips and rubble; now you see a splinter kicking up a fountain of clinking stone-shivers. This is a dangerous time. If you have nothing else to do, you get shells on the brain, think and talk of nothing else, and finish by going into a hole in the ground before daylight, and hiring better men than yourself to bring you down your meals.

(4) Sarah Wilson was in Mafeking during the Boer War. She reported on the siege for the Daily Mail during April, 1900.

There was a remarkable decrease in the applications at the soup kitchen today, yesterday, and the day before, thanks to the arrival of enormous clouds of locusts, which in ordinary times are unwelcome visitors, but in our present condition were hailed with joy. The natives gathered sacks full, and feed on them tell their stomachs project in prominence of plenitude.

When the eight, ten or twelve people who lived in the bell tent were squeezed into it to find shelter against the heat of the sun, the dust or the rain, there was no room to stir and the air in the tent was beyond description, even though the flaps were rolled up properly and fastened. Soap was an article that was not dispensed. The water supply was inadequate. No bedstead or mattress was procurable. Fuel was scarce and had to be collected from the green bushes on the slopes of the kopjes by the people themselves. The rations were extremely meagre and when, as I frequently experienced, the actual quantity dispensed fell short of the amount prescribed, it simply meant famine.

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The Boer Wars was the name given to the South African Wars of 1880-1 and 1899-1902, that were fought between the British and the descendants of the Dutch settlers ( Boers) in Africa. After the first Boer War, William Gladstone granted the Boers self-government in the Transvaal.

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Encyclopedia Britannica: The South African Wars

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Encyclopedia Britannica: The South African Wars

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South African War | British-South African history

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South African War: South African War, war fought from Oct. 11, 1899, to May 31, 1902, between Great Britain and the two Boer (Afrikaner) republics-the South African Republic (Transvaal) and the Orange Free State-resulting in British victory.

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First Boer War

Initially, the Transvaal Boers adopted a policy of passive resistance. When the British government made its determination to uphold the annexation clear, the Boers turned to armed resistance in December 1880.

They reinstated the republic, led by a triumvirate consisting of Vice President Paul Kruger, Commandant-General Piet Joubert and MW Pretorius. The first Boer War broke out on 16 December 1880 with a skirmish between the British garrison in Potchefstroom and a 'commando' under General Piet Cronjé.

The Boer 'commando' system evolved from the early defence system at the Cape. Each district was divided into three wards or more, with a field cornet for each ward and a commandant taking military control of the entire district.

The burghers elected these officers, including the commandant-general of the Transvaal. When mobilised, a burgher had to be prepared with his horse, rifle and 50 (later 30) rounds of ammunition and food enough to last for eight days, after which the government would provide supplies. Assembled burghers formed a 'commando'.

Except for the artillery and the police in the second Boer War, no uniforms were worn, the burghers preferring drab everyday clothes. The Boer force is the classic example of a citizen army, because virtually the entire white male population of the republics between the ages of sixteen and 60 was conscriptable for unpaid military service.

Growing up on the farms with a rifle in their hands made the burghers generally good marksmen, with the ability to judge distance accurately. The commando formation for driving home an attack was a loose swarm intent on outflanking the opponents.

Once the enemy was located by efficient scouting, the commando would approach in a solid column under cover of dead ground in order to get within effective rifle range. Then the men would get into line, gallop into the nearest dead ground, dismount and open individual fire.

Essential tactics were speed in concentration and attack, and a readiness to withdraw to a more favourable position in case the fire-fight was going against them. The commando system called for initiative and self-reliance, which were essential in irregular warfare when men were widely scattered and not in close communication with their officers. Although the commandos had had mixed success against the indigenous black societies within their borders, they were to prove their mettle in the wars against the British.

Total surprise

Going into the first Boer War, the Boers' most popular firearm was the British-made .450 Westley Richards, falling-block, single-action, breech-loading rifle, with accuracy up to 600 yards. It was very similar in manufacture, sighting, calibre, weight and ammunition to the Martini-Henry Mark II carried by British troops.

In the British army the officers were from the gentry and the professional middle classes, and the recruits from the poorest sections of society. Firing from medium to long range - 300 to 1,400 yards - was delivered in volleys. Independent fire was normally only ordered from close range - less than 300 yards.

Before the Boer Wars, the late Victorian Army had been engaged in colonial campaigns against irregulars inferior in armaments, organisation and discipline. The Boer experience therefore came as a total surprise.

In the first Boer War the British uniform consisted of the serge frock, which was scarlet for the infantry and engineers, dark green for the rifles and blue for all others. Dark blue trousers were worn with a red welt down the seam for infantry and a wide red stripe for artillery, with black leather boots. Highland regiments wore tartan kilts instead of trousers.

The 92nd Highlanders came to South Africa with khaki tunics instead of scarlet ones. Khaki was finally adopted in 1897 as service wear overseas, so the British soldier of the second Boer War was clad in khaki.

Upon the outbreak of the first Boer War, the Boer commandos - as had been their custom in the wars against the black communities - lay siege to the British garrisons in the towns of Potchefstroom, Pretoria, Rustenburg, Standerton and Marabastad near Pietersburg, in an attempt to starve them into submission.

Meanwhile, the main force under Piet Joubert was bent on preventing the British relieving force under Major-General Sir George Pomeroy Colley, the governor of Natal and high commissioner for South East Africa, from entering the Transvaal from Natal.

Ladysmith and Mafeking

The first five months of the war consisted mainly of set-piece battles. The Boers besieged Ladysmith in Natal and Kimberley and Mafeking in the Cape Colony, while the British forces strove to relieve their beleaguered garrisons in these towns - Lord Methuen in the west and General Redvers Buller in Natal.

From their camouflaged positions, the Boers scored impressive victories at Stormberg, Magersfontein and Colenso in mid-December 1899 (called 'Black Week' in Britain), and Spioenkop in January 1900.

But by late February 1900 there was a definite change in their fortunes. Kimberley and Ladysmith were relieved and Piet Cronjé surrendered at Paardeberg with 4,000 burghers. All Boer fronts collapsed.

The next six months was a period of great confusion for the Boers. Everywhere they were compelled to retreat. On 13 March 1900, Lord Roberts, the British commander in chief, occupied Bloemfontein and on 5 June 1900 he took Pretoria.

With both republican capitals in British hands, he annexed the Free State as the Orange River Colony on 24 May 1900 and the Transvaal on 1 September 1900. The relief of Mafeking on 17 May 1900 caused tumultuous joy in Britain, making the commander of the relieved garrison, Colonel Robert Baden-Powell, an instant hero throughout the British empire.

Lured by British promises of peace and protection, many burghers surrendered. They were called hendsoppers(having 'hands-upped') by the men remaining in the field. By the end of the war they totalled 20,000 men - a third of the original Boer numbers.

In the last six months of the war, 5,400 of them joined the British Army as collaborators ('joiners'), with General Piet de Wet becoming one of the leaders of the Orange River Colony Volunteers.

Meanwhile, there was a revival in the Boer military effort. In the Free State, General Christiaan de Wet, brother of Piet de Wet, led the recovery of Boer resistance with surprise attacks on Roberts' vulnerable lines of communication.

After Roberts dispersed the Transvaal forces in the last pitched battle of the war at Bergendal (Dalmanutha), in August 1900, General Louis Botha's officers, similarly to De Wet in the Free State and General Koos de la Rey in the Western Transvaal, applied the tactic of swiftly gathering their scattered commandos whenever the occasion arose, attacking isolated British columns and then disappearing into thin air.

In this way the resistance of about 20,000 Boer bitter-enders was to continue for almost two more years, in what is known as the guerrilla phase of the war.

Concentration camps

Lord Herbert Kitchener, who succeeded Roberts in November 1900, adopted a three-fold strategy to end the war. Firstly, he continued Roberts' 'scorched earth' policy, in which the republics were deliberately and systematically devastated to deprive the guerrillas of food and shelter.

Some towns and thousands of farmsteads were burnt or ravaged. This onslaught on Boer survival was backed up by the destruction of food supplies. Herds of livestock were wiped out and crops were burnt.

Secondly, Roberts' 'concentration camp' system was expanded, wherein civilians were confined in camps, especially women and children whose houses had been burned. In Kitchener's view this meant that burghers on commando would no longer be able to obtain food from women on the farms, and would, moreover, surrender in order to reunite their families.

Black people, too, were gathered in concentration camps, partly to deprive the commandos of yet another means of getting to food producers, and to obtain black labour for the gold mines that had been re-opened by mid-1901.

The British were not the first in the modern age to use the concentration camp system. The Spanish General Valeriano 'Butcher Weyler had enforced a similar system on a far larger scale to crush a rebellion in Cuba in 1896, leaving more than 100,000 dead. The United States authorities had also established concentration camps to suppress the insurrection in the Philippines early in 1899.

In South Africa, the bad administration of the camps led to poor quality of food, unhygienic conditions and inadequate medical arrangements. Consequently civilians suffered terribly. Eventually 28,000 Boer women and children and at least 20,000 black people died in the camps.

A turning point in the death rate in the Boer camps came about by November 1901, after the Fawcett Ladies Commission had made some recommendations for improvement. However, this was only after Emily Hobhouse from the Liberal opposition in Britain had revealed the terrible conditions in the camps to a sceptical British public and an embarrassed government, and High commissioner, Lord Alfred Milner had taken over the administration of the camps from the army.

The concentration camp system caused the widest opprobrium of the second Boer War. In the first half of the 20th century Afrikaaner leaders effectively used the suffering and deaths in the Boer camps to promote Afrikaaner nationalism.

(The term concentration camp has also been highly emotive since the advent of Nazi Germany's death and labour camps. However, it is worth noting that there is very little similarity between the Nazi camps and the concentration camps established by the British army in the second Boer War. The latter were not set up with the express intention of exterminating a section of the human race, but to deprive the Boer commandos of supplies and to induce the burghers to surrender. Things went horribly wrong because of the poor administration of the camps by the British and their callous lack of care.)

Race and apartheid

Although the leaders of both the Boers and the British believed that this should be a 'white man's war', black people played an important part, and also suffered severely.

From the start British and Boer forces alike employed black people in non-combatant roles. About 10,000 agterryers ('after-riders') accompanied the Boers to perform small duties on commando. A very tiny number of them unofficially took up arms on the Boer side.

In the British Army, at least 14,000 black people worked as wagon drivers. The British Army increasingly employed blacks in combatant roles, such as spies, guides and eventually soldiers. Under Kitchener's command they were armed for self-defence against the Boers, who were executing them when captured.

By the end of the war there were probably 30,000 armed black men in the British Army. Moreover, black communities drove Boer commandos and families from large areas of the Transvaal, thus further curtailing Boer operations and contributing to the Boer acceptance of the peace terms.

The imperial policy promoted by Milner, which included rigorous Anglicisation efforts, failed soon after the war and merely fanned Afrikaaner nationalism. The British empire had been shaken by its efforts to force two small nations into submission, just a decade before World War One.

The war had devastated the Afrikaaners economically and psychologically. This contributed to Boer poverty and accelerated urbanisation. In the course of the 20th century, the Afrikaaners 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 urbanisation. Moreover, their occupation of Boer land during the second Boer War was not recognised, 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.

With the coming of Union in 1910, these aspirations were again frustrated which led to the founding of the South African Native National Congress in 1912. This became the African National Congress in 1923. The black struggle was to continue throughout the 20th century and would achieve success in 1994 with a democratically elected South African government.

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.

During the war in South Africa, clear terrain had been sought when on the offensive, and rough terrain in defence. The new emphasis on fields of fire meant a reversal in policy. And, finally, following the French, the British began to consider frontal attacks as decisive, giving them official sanction in the 1912 field service regulations. This marked the greatest diversion from the Boer War experience and the flank attacks of Lord Roberts.

Find out more

Books

The Times History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 by Amery, L.S., ed. (7 Vols. Sampson Low, Marston, 1900-1909.)

The Dynamics of Treason. Boer Collaboration in the South African War of 1899-1902 by Albert Grundlingh (Protea, 2006)

The Boer War by Denis Judd and Keith Surridge (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003)

The Transvaal Rebellion. The First Boer War, 1880-1881 by John Laband (Pearson Longman, 2005)

Volunteers on the Veld. Britain's Citizen-Soldiers and the South African War, 1899-1902 by Stephen M Miller ( University of Oklahoma Press, 2007)

The South African War 1899-1902 by Bill Nasson (Arnold, 1999)

The Boer War by Thomas Pakenham (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1979)

The Anglo-Boer War 1899-1902 by Fransjohan Pretorius (Struik and Pretoria: Protea, 1998)

Life on Commando during the Anglo-Boer War 1899-1902 by Fransjohan Pretorius (Human and Rousseau, 1999)

Scorched Earth by Fransjohan Pretorius, ed (Human and Rousseau, 2001)

The Origins of the South African War 1899-1902 by Iain R Smith (Longman, 1996)

Black People and the South African War 1899-1902 by Peter Warwick (Cambridge University Press, 1983)

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Initially, the Transvaal Boers adopted a policy of passive resistance. When the British government made its determination to uphold the annexation clear, the Boers turned to armed resistance in December 1880. They reinstated the republic, led by a triumvirate consisting of Vice President Paul Kruger, Commandant-General Piet Joubert and MW Pretorius.