A Short History on the Boer War
by Two conflicts waged by Dutch settlers in resistance to the expansion of the British Empire in South Africa. Dutch settlers, later known as “Boers,” established farms in southern Africa beginning in the seventeenth century, gradually expanding north into the hinterland, pressing against lands held by indigenous African tribes.
Dutch rule ended, however, when in 1795, Britain seized Cape Colony during the French Revolutionary Wars, and at the general European peace of 1815, the colony became a permanent British imperial possession. From the 1830s, many Boers ventured north to establish independent communities that would later become the republics of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State, both of which shared borders with the British possessions of Cape Colony and Natal.
The source of the wars principally lay with the desire for British expansion into Boer lands, not least after the discovery of gold and diamonds. After the Transvaal was proclaimed in December 1880, conflict arose in what subsequently became known as the Transvaal Revolt or First Anglo-Boer War. Two thousand Boers invaded Natal and defeated a British force of 1,400 under General George Colley at Laing’s Nek on January 28, 1881. The decisive encounter took place at Majuba Hill on February 27, when Colley, occupying a hill in the Drakensberg Mountains with a contingent of 550 men, lost 20 percent of his force, himself numbering among the dead. The British government had no desire to pursue the conflict further and on April 5, 1881 concluded the Treaty of Pretoria, which granted independence to the Transvaal, of which Paul Kruger became president. The discovery of gold in the Witwatersrand in 1886 increased British interest in the area and led directly to the annexation of Zululand, part of a strategy to isolate the Transvaal from access to the sea.
Internally, both Boer republics welcomed foreigners (known as Uitlanders) seeking work in the goldfields, but in the diamond industry and in various urban services, the Boers often resented what they perceived as a growing trend of immorality and licentiousness that permeated their strict, largely rural, Calvinist society. On the other hand, immigrants, most of whom came from Britain, resented the disproportionate share of taxation that fell on their shoulders and campaigned for a share in the political life of the country. Both Boer republics made large purchases of foreign weapons in 1899, and when Cape authorities refused to conform to an ultimatum from Pretoria to withdraw troops from the borders, hostilities opened in October, with the Boers assuming the offensive. On October 13, General Piet Cronjé laid siege to Mafeking, where Colonel Robert Baden-Powell, the future founder of the Boy Scout movement, made superb use of limited resources to establish a determined and successful defense. At the same time, forces from the Orange Free State invested Kimberley on October 15, while the main Boer blow fell on General Sir George White at Talana Hill and Nicholson’s Nek later that month, forcing White’s troops to take refuge in Ladysmith. In an effort to relieve the three towns, General Sir Redvers Buller divided his forces, a strategy that led to failure in all cases.
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