The term Boer War refers to two conflicts, one from 1880 to 1881 and the second from October 11, 1899 to May 31, 1902, both between the British and the settlers of Dutch origin (then called Boers then Afrikaners in the 20th century) in South Africa. At the end of the second conflict, the two republics founded by the Boers lost their independence and became part of the British Empire.
The First Boer War
The first altercation was precipitated by Sir Theophilus Shepstone who annexed the Transvaal (the South African Republic) on behalf of the British in 1877 after the Anglo-Zulu War. The Boers protested and revolted in 1880. The Boers were dressed in earth-colored khaki clothing, while British uniforms sported a bright red color, which allowed the Boers to fire easily and from a distance at Empire troops. After the defeat of a British expedition commanded by George Pomeroy-Collery in February 1881 at the Battle of Majuba Hill, the British government at Gladstone gave the Boers their autonomy under nominal British trusteeship.
The Second Boer War (or South African War)
In 1887, prospectors discovered the largest gold deposit in the world, located at Witwatersrand ("White Water Barrier"), a mountainous ridge running from 100 kilometers east to 50 kilometers south of Pretoria. In response to the profit opportunities that all were considering following such a discovery, Transvaal President Paul Kruger made this prescient remark:"Instead of rejoicing, you had better cry, because this gold will soak our country in blood". br class='autobr' />Paul Kruger
With the discovery of gold in the Transvaal, thousands of British settlers arrived from Cape Colony. Johannesburg became a boomtown almost overnight as uitlanders settled near the mines. The uitlanders quickly outnumbered the Boers on the deposit, although remaining a minority in the Transvaal itself. The Boers, annoyed by the presence of the uitlanders, denied them the right to vote and heavily taxed the gold industry. In response, the uitlanders exerted pressure on the British authorities, with a view to obtaining the overthrow of the Boer government. In 1895, Cecil Rhodes supported an attempted coup with military action, the Jameson Raid.
The failure of this attempt to win rights for British citizens was used to justify a major military operation from Cape Town, especially since the railway envisaged by Cecil Rhodes between Cape Town and Cairo would necessarily have to cross the territory. of the Boers. Several other British colonial leaders came out in favor of the annexation of the Boer republics. Among these leaders were the Governor of the Cape Colony, Sir Alfred Milner, the Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain and the leaders of prospectors' associations (the gold bugs) such as Alfred Beit, Barney Barnato and Lionel Phillips. Confident that the Boers would be quickly defeated, they tried to hasten the war.
President Marthinus Steyn of the Orange Free State invited Milner and Kruger to a conference in Bloemfontein, which began on May 30, 1899, but negotiations soon broke down. In September 1899, Chamberlain sent an ultimatum demanding full equality of rights for British citizens residing in the Transvaal.
Kruger, anticipating that war was inevitable, issued his own ultimatum before he even received Chamberlain's. It gave the British 48 hours to evacuate their troops from the Transvaal borders, or war would be declared on them in agreement with their ally, the Orange Free State.
The first phase:the Boer offensive - October to January 1900
War was declared on October 12, 1899, and the Boers attacked first, invading Cape Colony and Natal Colony between October 1899 and January 1900. Some military successes ensued against General Redvers Buller. The Boers thus besieged the towns of Ladysmith, Mafeking (defended by troops under the orders of Robert Baden-Powell), and Kimberley.
The sieges caused heavy casualties among the defenders and civilians in the towns of Mafeking, Ladysmith and Kimberley when food became scarce after a few weeks. In Mafeking, Sol Plaatje wrote, "I saw horse meat for the first time treated as food". The besieged towns also came under heavy artillery fire, making the streets dangerous to cross. At the end of the siege of Kimberley, assuming an intensification of the bombardments, an announcement was made, encouraging the population to take refuge in the mines for protection. The population panicked, and people were engulfed for 12 hours in the mines. The bombings never took place - which in no way lessens the distress experienced by the civilians.
In mid-December, during a period known as Black Week, from (December 10 to 15, 1899), the British suffered heavy casualties at Magersfontein, Stormberg, and Colenso. At Magersfontein, the Boer commander Koos de la Rey, hatched a plan to dig trenches in an unexpected location, both to fool the British and give his men a better angle of fire. His plan worked perfectly and they defeated the British who left nearly 1,000 men in the field - who therefore could not attack Kimberley and Mafeking. Similar defeats to Stormberg and Colenso concluded this Dark Week.
The second phase:the British offensive - January 1900 to September 1900
After yet another defeat in their attempt to break the siege of Ladysmith at the Battle of Spion Kop, British troops, commanded by Lord Roberts, did not regain the initiative until reinforcements arrived on February 4, 1900. Georges de Villebois-Mareuil joined the Boers in the Transvaal, and commanded the Legion of Foreigners who fought in the war against the British. He was appointed general by President Krüger in March 1900. At Boshof, in April 1900, the small detachment he commanded was surrounded and exterminated by the British. The lifting of the siege of Mafeking on May 18 sparked celebrations in the UK that turned into riots. The British managed to force the surrender of General Piet Cronje and 4,000 of his fighters, and to weaken the rest of the Boer troops. They then advanced into the heart of the two republics, taking the Orange Free State capital, Bloemfontein on March 13 and the Transvaal capital, Pretoria, on June 5.
Many British observers thought the war was over after the capture of the two capitals. But the Boers assembled at a new capital, Kroonstad, and mounted a guerrilla campaign to attack British lines of communication and supply.
The third phase:guerrilla warfare - September 1900 to May 1902
Boer guerrillas began attacking the British Army's railways and telegraph lines. Their new tactics changed the face of warfare and rendered traditional British military formations ineffective.
The new leader of the British army, Lord Kitchener, reacted by building fortified posts, small stone constructions surrounded by barbed wire, in order to reduce the movements of the guerrilla groups to small areas where they could be beaten. Barbed wire was drawn to the next fortified post, about 1,000 yards away. These fences were embellished with bells, tin cans and other noisy materials, and sometimes loaded guns aimed at the wires to serve as an alarm. Between January 1901 and the end of the war, around 8,000 fortified posts made up this web of almost 6,000 kilometres. Each fortified post was manned by a non-commissioned officer and six other soldiers, with a lieutenant commanding three or four fortified posts. The British had about 450,000 men (British and colonial troops) stationed in the area.
The fortified posts indeed made it possible to reduce the movements of the guerrillas, but could not on their own defeat them. Kitchener formed new regiments of irregular light cavalry, including Bushveldt riflemen, who scoured Boer-held territory, tracking down groups of fighters.
In March he adopted a scorched-earth strategy and began to empty the countryside of anything that might be useful to the Boer guerrillas. He seized food stocks, burned crops and farms and evacuated the families who lived there to concentration camps.
This strategy led to the destruction of about 30,000 farms and about 40 small towns. In all, 116,572 Boers were sent to camps, roughly a quarter of the population, to which were added some 120,000 black Africans.
These new battle tactics quickly shattered Boer fighter morale and supply lines. In December 1901, many camps were emptied, and many of the liberated joined two new regiments fighting alongside the British, the Transvaal National Scouts and the Orange River Volunteers, to help end the war.
Canada's intervention
During the war, the settlers called upon the forces of the British Empire. Canada was then solicited. But the French-Canadian elites and press firmly opposed Canadian participation in this imperial and distant war. Eventually, then-Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier offered a compromise:Canada would send only volunteers (7,300 men in all would be recruited) and the United Kingdom would absorb the costs of the military operations.
The concentration camps
These camps were originally set up to accommodate refugees whose farms had been destroyed during the fighting. The term "concentration camp" did not originally have a negative meaning, as it was simply a camp where refugees were concentrated. However, following Kitchener's instructions, many were quickly built and converted into prisons.
There were a total of 45 tent camps built for Boers and 64 others for black Africans. The Boer camps housed mainly old people, women and children for a total of about 120,000 people. 25,630 of them were sent abroad. But the camps for black Africans also had many men. Even after being forced to evacuate Boer territories, black Africans were not seen as hostile to the British and served as hired labour. Detention camps were also set up in Bermuda, India, Saint Helena and Ceylon.
The living conditions in these camps were particularly unsanitary and the food rations reduced. Wives and children of combat soldiers were also given lower rations. The poor diet and the lack of hygiene were at the origin of the appearance of contagious diseases such as measles, typhoid fever and dysentery. Combined with shortages of medical equipment and supplies, the situation caused many deaths - a post-war report put the number of Boers dead at 27,927 (including 22,074 children under 16) and 14,154 black Africans dead. starvation, disease and exposure to the sun. In all, around 25% of the Boers and 12% of the black Africans died (recent research suggests an underestimate of African casualties, which in fact amount to around 20,000 casualties).
A delegate from the South African Women's and Children's Distress Fund, Emily Hobhouse, did much for the detainees on their return from the UK, after visiting camps in the Orange Free State. His fifteen-page report aroused outrage, and led to the dispatch of a government commission, the Fawcett Commission, which visited the camps from August to December 1901 and confirmed the facts mentioned in the report. The commission was extremely critical of the camps and made many recommendations, such as improving the diet and medical facilities.
In February 1902, the annual death rate fell from 6.9% to 2%.
The end of the war
In all, the war cost around 75,000 lives - 22,000 British soldiers (7,792 in clashes, the rest from diseases like typhoid[2]), 4,000[3] to 7,000 Boer soldiers, 20,000 to 28,000 Boer civilians and probably 20,000 blacks. The last Boers surrendered in May 1902 and the war officially ended with the Treaty of Vereeniging the same month. The Boers were given £3 million in compensation, and the promise of independent local government. The Union of South Africa was born in 1910. But the treaty endorsed the end of the existence of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State as Boer republics and placed them under the control of the Empire. British.
The Boers refer to these wars as the Freedom War (in Afrikaans language:Eerste en Tweede Vryheidsoorlog).