Second Boer War - 1899-1902 by tigerfaceswe on DeviantArt (original) (raw)

Not my best, but at least it gets the job done.

The Second Boer War was a conflict fought between the British Empire and the two independent Boer (Dutch settlers in South Africa) states, The South African Republic (otherwise known as The Republic of Transvaal) and the Orange Free State over the overall influence of the British Empire in South Africa. This short but bloody ca three year conflict lasted between the 11th of October 1899 and the 31st of May 1902 and would cost massive casualities on both British and Boer sides, and would even extend towards totally innocent civilians. Not the most cheerful event, really...in fact, downright terrible. So let's discuss it today. While the second of two wars between the British and Boers, this one is the more famous one compared to the First Boer War (1880-1881), which was much shorter and, as far as I am concerned, not as brutal.

The origins of the conflict are confused and absurd (foreshadowing to another great early 20th century conflict much?). Territorial questions were obviously of importance in the war, considering the Republic of Transvaal and the Orange Free State (founded respectively in 1852 and 1854) were basically in the way for British total rule over South Africa, even though the British had recognized both of these states, but this is the Scramble for Africa we are talking about. So, the British tried annexing Transvaal already as early as 1877, which led to the

First Boer War of 1880-1881

, which pretty much ended in a status quo anyways. Even if relations between the Boers and the British were getting pretty darned tense after that whole nonsense. The main reason behind the conflict though was the question as to who would control and benefit most from the gold and diamond mines in Witwatersrand. As it happens, in 1886 gold was discovered in Witwatersrand Basin (near modern day Johannesburg) and a huge gold rush was sparked. This made Transvaal basically the richest nation in Africa at the time! Yeah, that's great and all except that the Boers didn't have the manpower or industrial power to basically dig out all those gold nuggets and flakes, so they reluctantly had to hire some outside employees for all that. Mainly English-speaking men from Britain came for fortune and riches, and soon they would exceed the number of Boers in the area, which also resulted in conflicts between the Boers and the new miners. Obviously the whole concept of the mines themselves was also of interest to the whole of the British Empire (again; the Scramble for Africa!). As tensions escalated, political manoeuvrings and negotiations attempted to reach a compromise on the issues of the rights of the British within the Boer areas, control of the gold mining industry and Britain's desire to incorporate the Transvaal and the Orange Free State into a federation under British control. Needless to say, the Boers didn't want anything to do with that, and on the 9th of October 1899, president of the Republic of Transvaal Paul Krueger (1825-1904) presented a an ultimatum, giving the British government 48 hours to withdraw all their troops from the borders of both the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. The British refused, and war was declared by the two Boer states.

The war itself can be divided into three phases.
In the first phase (October to December 1899), the Boers mounted preemptive strikes into British-held territory in Natal and the Cape Colony, besieging the British garrisons of the towns of Ladysmith (2nd of November 1899-28th of February 1900, ending in British victory), Mafeking (13th of October 1899-17th of May 1900, also British victory with the town being relieved) and Kimberley (14th of October 1899-15th of February 1900, British victory). The Boers also won a series of tactical victories at Stormberg (10th of December 1899), Magersfontein (11th of December 1899), Colenso (15th of December 1899) and, most famously, Spion Kop (23rd to 24th of January 1900).
In

the second phase

(January to September 1900), after the number of British troops was greatly increased under the command of Frederick Roberts, 1st Earl Roberts (1832-1914), the British launched another offensive in 1900 to relieve the sieges, this time achieving success. After Natal and the Cape Colony were secure, the British army was able to invade the Transvaal, capturing the capital of Pretoria (cool name) in June 1900.
In the third and final phase (September 1900 to May 1902), lasting a further two years, the Boers conducted a hard-fought guerrilla war, attacking British troop columns, telegraph sites, railways, and storage depots. It was like the African equivelant of the wild west. To deny supplies to the Boer guerrillas, the British, now under the leadership of Lord Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener (yes, that guy. 1850-1916), adopted a scorched earth policy, clearing whole areas destroying Boer farms and moving the civilians into concentration camps.

Wait a minute! What was that last detail? Well...yeah. Here comes that one brutal part I was talking about earlier. These camps had originally been set up by the British Army as "refugee camps" to provide shelter for civilian families who had been forced to abandon their homes for whatever reason related to the war. when Kitchener took over in late 1900, he introduced new tactics in an attempt to break that whole guerilla warfare the Boers were enacting at the time, and the influx of civilians grew dramatically as a result of that whole scorched earth policy that the British used under Kitchener's leadership. Disease and starvation killed thousands in these camps, and this wasn't any at all coincidence. Kitchener himself initiated plans in late 1900 to...
" flush out guerrillas in a series of systematic drives, organised like a sporting shoot, with success defined in a weekly 'bag' of killed, captured and wounded, and to sweep the country bare of everything that could give sustenance to the guerrillas, including women and children ... It was the clearance of civilians—uprooting a whole nation—that would come to dominate the last phase of the war."

Good lord man, calm down.

As Boer farms were destroyed by the British, including the systematic destruction of crops and slaughtering of livestock, the burning down of homesteads and farms, to prevent the Boers from resupplying from a home base, many tens of thousands of women and children were forcibly moved into these concentration camps. The camps were poorly administered from the outset and became increasingly overcrowded. Conditions were terrible for the health of the internees, mainly due to neglect, poor hygiene and bad sanitation. The supply of all items was unreliable, partly because of the constant disruption of communication lines by the Boers, so I guess they did shoot themselves in the foot there as well. Food rations were meager as all hell and there was a two-tier allocation policy, whereby families of men who were still fighting were routinely given smaller rations than others. The Boer War concentration camp system was the first time that a whole nation had been systematically targeted, and the first in which whole regions had been depopulated (Jesus Christ, the foreshadowing!). Over 27,000 women and children were to perish in these concentration camps. And what wasthe British reaction on all of this? To be quite fair, they were kind of livid. Some parts of the British press and British government expected the campaign to be over within months, and as the war gradually grew longer it also gradually became less popular, especially after that whole concentration camp-thingy.

The Boer forces finally surrendered on Saturday, 31 May 1902, with 54 of the 60 delegates from the Transvaal and Orange Free State voting to accept the terms of the peace treaty; the

Treaty of

Vereeniging (31st of May 1902). Under its provisions, the two republics were absorbed into the British Empire, with the promise of self-government in the future. This promise was fulfilled with the foundation of the Union of South Africa in 1910, which would last up until 1961. The war had a lasting effect on the region and on British domestic politics. For Britain, the Second Boer War was the longest, the most expensive and the bloodiest conflict between 1815 and 1914. And boy, would the numbers rise in 1914! Wait and god damn see!

Oh, and this was a long due remake of this old piece of crap I made in 2014.

Waka waka, ey ey.