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.
By the Treaty of Vereeniging, concluded on May 31, 1902, the Boers recognized British sovereignty over their two conquered republics, and the British offered substantial financial compensation for the destruction of Boer farms. In one of the great ironies of a war, the absorption of the republics into the British Empire rapidly led to the establishment in 1910 of the Republic of South Africa which, although it included the large English-speaking populations of Cape Colony and Natal, emerged with an Afrikaner majority, thus effectively placing an erstwhile people in control of what amounted to a single-and massively enlarged-new Boer-dominated republic.
Apart from such far-reaching political consequences, the conflict exposed great deficiencies in the war-making capacity even of the world’s largest empire, as a consequence of which substantial army reforms took place in the ensuing years. The conflict also highlighted the problem of troop shortages. In more than two and half years of fighting, Britain found its manpower resources stretched to the limit, thus requiring, for the first time, the deployment of Australian, New Zealand, and Canadian troops for service to the Mother country in a far-flung land. Almost half a million men would eventually be required to subdue the Boer republics, which together could scarcely field more than 40,000 men at any one time.
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