Second Anglo-Boer War
Part of the Boer Wars
Boer Commandos at Spion Kop
Date 11 October 1899 – 31 May 1902 Location South Africa, Swaziland[1] Result British victory Territorial changes British sovereignty over The Orange Free State and the Transvaal in accordance with the Treaty of Vereeniging
Belligerents
British Empire Cape Colony Natal Colony Rhodesia[2]  British India  Australia  Canada  New Zealand	Orange Free State  South African Republic Foreign volunteers (Dutch, German, Scandinavian, Russian, French, American, Irish, Polish, Portuguese, Flemish, Italian and Australian volunteers)
Commanders and leaders
Lord Milner Sir Redvers Buller Lord Kitchener Lord Roberts	Paul Kruger Louis Botha Schalk W. Burger Koos de la Rey Martinus Steyn Christiaan de Wet Piet Cronjé
Strength
450,000–500,000 (347,000 British, remainder were colonial troops)[3]	88,000 (25,000 Transvaal and 15,000 Free State Boers at the start of the war) (inclusive Foreign Volunteers and Cape Boers)[3]
Casualties and losses
Military casualties 7,894 killed 13,250 died of disease 934 missing 22,828 wounded[4][5] 44,906 total casualties	Military casualties 9,098 died (4,000 in combat) (24,000 Boer prisoners sent oversea)[3] Civilian casualties: 27,927 Boer civilians died in concentration camps , plus an unknown number of black Africans (107,000 were interned).[6]

The Second Boer War (Dutch: Tweede Boerenoorlog, Afrikaans: Tweede Vryheidsoorlog or Tweede Boereoorlog) was fought from 11 October 1899 until 31 May 1902 between the British Empire and the Afrikaans-speaking Dutch settlers of two independent Boer republics, the South African Republic (Transvaal Republic) and the Orange Free State. It ended with a British victory and the annexation of both republics by the British Empire; both would eventually be incorporated into the Union of South Africa, a dominion of the British Empire, in 1910. The conflict is commonly referred to as The Boer War but is also known as the South African War outside South Africa, the Anglo-Boer War among most South Africans, and in Afrikaans as the Anglo-Boereoorlog or Tweede Vryheidsoorlog ("Second War of Liberation" or lit. "Second Freedom War") or the Engelse oorlog (English War).^[7]

The Second Boer War and the earlier, much less well known, First Boer War (December 1880 to March 1881) are collectively known as the Boer Wars.

Origins[link]

The origins of the war were fairly complex, resulting from over a century of conflict between the Boers and the British Empire, but were primarily about which white nation would control and benefit most from the very lucrative Witwatersrand gold mines.^[8] During the Napoleonic War, a British expedition landed in the Cape Colony and defeated the defending Dutch forces at the Battle of Blaauwberg.^[9] After the war, the British formally acquired the colony, and encouraged immigration by British settlers who were largely at odds with the Dutch settlers. Many Boers who were dissatisfied with aspects of the British administration, in particular Britain's abolition of slavery on 1 December 1834, elected to migrate away from British rule in what became known as the Great Trek.^[9] The migration was initially along the eastern coast towards Natal and then, after Natal was annexed in 1843, northwards towards the interior, where two independent Boer republics (the South African Republic, also known as the Transvaal Republic, and the Orange Free State) were established. The British recognised the two Boer republics in 1852 and 1854, but the annexation of the Transvaal in 1877 led to the First Boer War in 1880–81. After the British defeats, particularly at the Battle of Majuba Hill, the independence of the two republics was restored subject to certain conditions, however, relations remained uneasy.

Boer guerrillas during the Second Boer War

In 1867, diamonds were discovered in Kimberley, prompting a diamond rush and a massive influx of foreigners to the borders of the Orange Free State. Then in 1886, gold was discovered in the Witwatersrand area of the South African Republic. Gold made the Transvaal the richest and potentially the most powerful nation in southern Africa; however, the country had neither the manpower nor the industrial base to develop the resource on its own. As a result, the Transvaal reluctantly acquiesced to the immigration of uitlanders (foreigners), mainly from Britain, who came to the Boer region in search of fortune and employment. This resulted in the number of uitlanders in the Transvaal potentially exceeding the number of Boers, and precipitated confrontations between the earlier-arrived Boer settlers and the newer, non-Boer arrivals.

British expansionist ideas (notably propagated by Cecil Rhodes) as well as disputes over uitlander political and economic rights resulted in the failed Jameson Raid of 1895. This raid, led by (and named after) Dr. Leander Starr Jameson, was intended to encourage an uprising of the uitlanders in Johannesburg. However, the uitlanders did not take up arms to support the raid, and Transvaal government forces surrounded the column and captured Jameson's men before they could reach Johannesburg.^[10]

As tensions escalated, there were political manoeuvrings and negotiations to reach a compromise on the issues of the rights of the uitlanders within the South African Republic, control of the gold mining industry, and the British desire to incorporate the Transvaal and the Orange Free State into a federation under British control. Given that the majority of Uitlanders were of British origin, and that new uitlanders continued to arrive in Johannesburg, the Boers recognised that granting full voting rights to the uitlanders would eventually result in the loss of ethnic Boer control in the South African Republic. Much to Lord Milner's satisfaction, the June 1899 negotiations in Bloemfontein failed, and in September 1899 British Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain demanded full voting rights and representation for the uitlanders residing in the Transvaal. Paul Kruger, the President of the South African Republic, issued an ultimatum on 9 October 1899, giving the British government 48 hours to withdraw all their troops from both the borders of the Transvaal and Orange Free State, failing which the Transvaal, allied to the Orange Free State, would declare war on the British government. The British government rejected the South African Republic's ultimatum, resulting in the South African Republic and Orange Free State declaring war on Britain.

Phases[link]

The war had three distinct phases. In the first phase, the Boers mounted pre-emptive strikes into British-held territory in Natal and the Cape Colony, besieging the British garrisons of Ladysmith, Mafeking and Kimberley. The Boers then won a series of tactical victories at Colenso, Magersfontein and Spionkop against a failed British counteroffensive to relieve the sieges.

In the second phase, after the introduction of greatly increased British troop numbers under the command of Lord Roberts, 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 were able to invade the Transvaal, and the republic's capital, Pretoria, was ultimately captured in June 1900.

In the third and final phase, beginning in March 1900, the Boers launched a protracted hard-fought guerrilla war against the British forces, lasting a further two years, during which the Boers raided targets such as British troop columns, telegraph sites, railways and storage depots. In an effort to cut off supplies to the raiders, the British, now under the leadership of Lord Kitchener, responded with a scorched earth policy of destroying Boer farms and moving civilians into concentration camps.^[11]

Some parts of the British press and British government expected the campaign to be over within months, and the protracted war gradually became less popular, especially after revelations about the conditions in the concentration camps (where 26 thousand women and children died of disease and malnutrition). 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.^[12] This was known as the Treaty of Vereeniging, and 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 creation of the Union of South Africa in 1910.

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 (£200 million), and the bloodiest conflict between 1815 and 1914,^[13] lasting three months longer and resulting in higher British casualties than the Crimean War (1853–56).

Background[link]

The geography of the region; the South African Republic/Transvaal (green), with the Orange Free State (orange), the British Cape Colony (blue), and the Natal (red)

The southern part of the African continent was dominated in the 19th century by a set of struggles to create within it a single unified state. While the Berlin Conference of 1884–5 sought to draw boundaries between the European powers' African possessions, it also set the stage for further scrambles. The British attempted to annexe first the South African Republic in 1880, and then, in 1899, both the South African Republic and the Orange Free State. In 1868, the British annexed Basutoland in the Drakensberg Mountains following an appeal from Moshesh, the leader of a mixed group of African refugees from the Zulu wars, who sought British protection against the Boers. In the 1880s, Bechuanaland (modern Botswana, located north of the Orange River) became the object of a dispute between the Germans to the west, the Boers to the east, and the British Cape Colony to the south. Although Bechuanaland had no economic value, the "Missionaries Road" passed through it towards territory farther north. After the Germans annexed Damaraland and Namaqualand (modern Namibia) in 1884, the British annexed Bechuanaland in 1885.

In the First Boer War of 1880–81 the Boers of the Transvaal Republic had proved skilful fighters in resisting the British attempt at annexation, in causing in a series of British defeats. The British government of William Ewart Gladstone had been unwilling to become bemired in a distant war, which required substantial troop reinforcement and expense, for what was at the time perceived to be a minimal return. An armistice followed, ending the war, and subsequently a peace treaty was signed with the Transvaal President Paul Kruger.

However, when, in 1886, a major gold field was discovered at an outcrop on a large ridge some sixty kilometres south of the Boer capital at Pretoria, it reignited British imperial interests. The ridge, known locally as the "Witwatersrand" (literally "white water ridge"–a watershed) contained the world's largest deposit of gold-bearing ore. Although it was not as rich as gold finds in Canada and Australia, its consistency made it especially well-suited to industrial mining methods. With the 1886 discovery of gold in the Transvaal, the resulting gold rush brought thousands of British and other prospectors and settlers from across the globe and over the border from the Cape Colony (under British control since 1806).

The city of Johannesburg sprang up as a shanty town nearly overnight as the uitlanders ("foreigners," meaning non-Boer whites) poured in and settled around the mines. The influx was such that the uitlanders quickly outnumbered the Boers in Johannesburg and along the Rand, although they remained a minority in the Transvaal as a whole. The Boers, nervous and resentful of the uitlanders' growing presence, sought to contain their influence through requiring lengthy residential qualifying periods before voting rights could be obtained, by imposing taxes on the gold industry, and by introducing controls through licensing, tariffs and administrative requirements. Among the issues giving rise to tension between the Transvaal government on the one hand, and the Uitlanders and British interests on the other, were

(a) Established uitlanders, including the mining magnates, wanted political, social, and economic control over their lives. These rights included a stable constitution, a fair franchise law, an independent judiciary, and a better educational system. The Boers, for their part, recognised that the more concessions they made to the uitlanders the greater the likelihood–with approximately 30,000 white male Boer voters and potentially 60,000 white male uitlanders–that their independent control of the Transvaal would be lost and the territory absorbed into the British Empire.

(b) The uitlanders resented the taxes levied by the Transvaal government, particularly when this money was not spent on Johannesburg or uitlander interests, but diverted to projects elsewhere in the Transvaal. For example, as the gold-bearing ore sloped away from the outcrop underground to the south, more and more blasting was necessary for extraction, and mines consumed vast quantities of explosives. A box of dynamite costing five pounds included five shillings tax. Not only was this tax perceived as exorbitant, but British interests were offended when President Paul Kruger gave monopoly rights for the manufacture of the explosive to a non-British branch of the Nobel company, which infuriated the British.^[14] The so-called "dynamite monopoly" became a major pretext for war.

(c) British imperial interests were alarmed when in 1894–95 Kruger proposed building a railway through Portuguese East Africa to Delagoa Bay, bypassing British controlled ports in Natal and Cape Town and avoiding British tariffs.^[15] At the time the Prime Minister of the Cape Colony was Cecil Rhodes, a man driven by a vision of a British controlled Africa extending from Cape to Cairo.

Certain self-appointed uitlanders representatives and British mine owners became increasingly angered and frustrated by their dealings with the Transvaal government. A Reform Committee (Transvaal) was formed to represent the uitlanders.

Jameson Raid[link]

A sketch showing the arrest of Jameson after the failed raid, in 1896

In 1895, a plan was hatched with the connivance of the Cape Prime Minister Cecil Rhodes, Johannesburg gold magnate Alfred Beit, and Sir Alfred Milner (British High Commissioner for South Africa and Lieutenant Governor of the Cape) to liberate Johannesburg from the control of the Transvaal government. A column of 600 armed men (mainly made up of his Rhodesian and Bechuanaland policemen) was led by Dr. Leander Starr Jameson (the Administrator in Rhodesia of the British South Africa Company (or "Chartered Company") of which Cecil Rhodes was the Chairman) over the border from Bechuanaland towards Johannesburg. The column was equipped with six Maxim machine guns, two 7-pounder mountain guns, and a 12½ pounder field piece. The plan was to make a three-day dash to Johannesburg before the Boer commandos could mobilise, and once there, trigger an uprising by the primarily British expatriate workers (uitlanders) organised by the Reform Committee. However, the Transvaal authorities had advance warning of the Jameson Raid and tracked it from the moment it crossed the border. Four days later, the weary and dispirited column was surrounded near Krugersdorp within sight of Johannesburg. After a brief skirmish in which the column lost 65 killed and wounded—while the Boers lost but one man—Jameson's men surrendered and were arrested by the Boers.^[10]

The botched raid resulted in repercussions throughout southern Africa and in Europe. In Rhodesia, the departure of so many policemen enabled the Matabele and Mashona tribes to rise up against the Chartered Company, and the rebellion, known as the Second Matabele War, was suppressed only at great cost. A few days after the raid, the German Kaiser sent a telegram ("Kruger telegram") congratulating President Kruger and the government of the South African Republic on their success, and when the text of this telegram was disclosed in the British press, it generated a storm of anti-German feeling. In the baggage of the raiding column, to the great embarrassment of the British, the Boers found telegrams from Cecil Rhodes and the other plotters in Johannesburg. Joseph Chamberlain, the British Colonial Secretary, quickly moved to condemn the raid, despite previously having approved Rhodes' plans to send armed assistance in the case of a Johannesburg uprising. Subsequently, Rhodes was severely censured at the Cape inquiry and the London parliamentary inquiry, and forced to resign as Prime Minister of the Cape and as Chairman of the Chartered Company for having sponsored the failed coup d'état.

The Boer government handed their raid prisoners over to the British for trial. Dr. Jameson was tried in England for leading the raid. However, the British press and London society inflamed by anti-Boer and anti-German feeling and in a frenzy of jingoism, lionised Dr. Jameson and treated him as a hero. Although sentenced to 15 months imprisonment (which he served in Holloway), Jameson was later rewarded by being named Prime Minister of the Cape Colony (1904–08) and ultimately anointed as one of the founders of the Union of South Africa. For conspiring with Jameson, the uitlander members of the Reform Committee (Transvaal) were tried in the Transvaal courts and found guilty of high treason. The four leaders were sentenced to death by hanging, but this sentence was next day commuted to 15 years' imprisonment; and in June 1896, the other members of the Committee were released on payment of £2,000 each in fines, all of which were paid by Cecil Rhodes. One Reform Committee member, Frederick Gray, had committed suicide while in Pretoria gaol, on 16 May, and his death was a factor in softening the Transvaal government's attitude to the remaining prisoners.

Jan C. Smuts wrote in 1906, "The Jameson Raid was the real declaration of war. . . . And that is so in spite of the four years of truce that followed . . .[the] aggressors consolidated their alliance . . . the defenders on the other hand silently and grimly prepared for the inevitable."^[16]

Escalation and war[link]

Paul Kruger, leader of the South African Republic, (Transvaal), issued an ultimatum of withdrawal in response to the British ultimatum by Joseph Chamberlain for uitlander rights, which escalated the situation to a state of war

The Jameson Raid alienated many Cape Afrikaners from the British, and united the Transvaal Boers behind President Kruger and his government. It also had the effect of drawing the Transvaal and the Orange Free State (led by President Martinus Theunis Steyn) together in opposition to perceived British imperialism. In 1897, a military pact was concluded between the two republics. President Paul Kruger proceeded to re-equip the Transvaal army, and imported 37,000 of the latest magazine Mauser rifles, and some 40 to 50 million rounds of ammunition.^[17] The best modern European artillery was also purchased. By October 1899 the Transvaal State Artillery had 73 guns, 59 of them new, including four 155-mm Creusot fortress guns, and 25 37mm Maxim Nordenfeldt guns.^[18] The Transvaal army had been transformed; approximately 25,000 men equipped with modern rifles and artillery could mobilise within two weeks. However, President Kruger's victory in the Jameson Raid incident did nothing to resolve the fundamental problem; the impossible dilemma continued, namely how to make concessions to the uitlanders without surrendering the independence of the Transvaal.

The failure to gain improved rights for uitlanders became a pretext for war and a justification for a major military buildup in the Cape Colony. The case for war was developed and espoused as far away as the Australian colonies.^[19] Several key British colonial leaders favoured annexation of the independent Boer republics. These figures included Cape Colony Governor Sir Alfred Milner, Cape Prime Minister Cecil Rhodes, British Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain, and mining syndicate owners or Randlords (nicknamed the gold bugs), such as Alfred Beit, Barney Barnato, and Lionel Phillips. Confident that the Boers would be quickly defeated, they planned and organised a short war, citing the uitlanders' grievances as the motivation for the conflict.

Their influence with the British government was, however, limited. Lord Salisbury, the Prime Minister, despised jingoism and jingoists. He also distrusted the abilities of the British army. Yet he led Britain into war for three main reasons: because he believed the British government had an obligation to British South Africans; because he thought that the Transvaal, the Orange Free State, and the Cape Boers aspired to a Dutch South Africa, and that the achievement of such a state would damage Britain's imperial prestige around the world; and because of the Boers' treatment of black South Africans.^[20] (Salisbury had referred to the London Convention of 1884, after the British defeat, as an agreement 'really in the interest of slavery'.)^[21] Salisbury was not alone in this concern over the treatment of black South Africans; Roger Casement, already well on the way to becoming an Irish Nationalist, was nevertheless happy to gather intelligence for the British against the Boers because of their treatment of black Africans.^[22]

Given this sense of caution among key members of the British cabinet and of the army, it is even harder to understand why the British government went against the advice of its generals (such as Wolsely) to send substantial reinforcements to South Africa before war broke out. One strong argument is that Lansdowne, Secretary of State for War, did not believe the Boers were preparing for war, and also believed that if Britain were to send large numbers of troops, it would strike too aggressive a posture and so prevent a negotiated settlement being reached or even encourage a Boer attack.^[23]

President Steyn of the Orange Free State invited Milner and Kruger to attend a conference in Bloemfontein. The conference started on 30 May 1899, but negotiations quickly broke down, despite Kruger's offer of concessions. In September 1899, Chamberlain sent an ultimatum demanding full equality for British citizens resident in Transvaal. Kruger, seeing that war was inevitable, simultaneously issued his own ultimatum prior to receiving Chamberlain's. This gave the British 48 hours to withdraw all their troops from the border of Transvaal; otherwise the Transvaal, allied with the Orange Free State, would declare war.

News of the ultimatum reached London on the day it expired. Outrage and laughter were the main responses. The editor of the Times laughed out loud when he read it, saying 'an official document is seldom amusing and useful yet this was both.' The Times denounced the ultimatum as an 'extravagant farce.' The Globe denounced this 'trumpery little state.' Most editorials were similar to the Daily Telegraph',' which declared: 'of course there can only be one answer to this grotesque challenge. Kruger has asked for war and war he must have!'

Such views were far from those of the British government, and from those in the army. To most sensible observers, army reform had been a matter of pressing concern from the 1870s, constantly put off because the British public did not want the expense of a larger, more professional army, and because a large home army was not politically welcome. Lord Salisbury, the Prime Minister, had had to explain to a surprised Queen Victoria that: 'We have no army capable of meeting even a second-class Continental Power.'^[24]

First phase: The Boer offensive (October – December 1899)[link]

War was declared on 11 October 1899 with a Boer offensive into the British-held Natal and Cape Colony areas. The Boers had no problems with mobilisation, since the fiercely independent Boers had no regular army units, apart from the Staatsartillerie (Afrikaans for 'States Artillery') of both republics. As with the First Boer War, since the Boers were civilian militia, each man wore what he wished, usually his everyday dark-grey, light-grey, neutral-coloured, or earthtone khaki farming clothes—often a jacket, trousers and slouch hat. Only the members of the Staatsartillerie wore light green uniforms. When danger loomed, all the burghers (citizens) in a district would form a military unit called a commando and would elect officers. A full-time official titled a Veldkornet maintained muster rolls, but had no disciplinary powers. Each man brought his own weapon, usually a hunting rifle, and his own horse. Those who could not afford a gun were given one by the authorities.^[18] (See also the arms procurement mentioned above.) The Presidents of the Transvaal and Orange Free State simply signed decrees to concentrate within a week and the Commandos could muster between 30,000–40,000 men.^[25]

Mafeking, 1899

The average Boer nevertheless was not thirsty for war. Many did not look forward to fighting against fellow Christians and, by and large, fellow Christian Protestants. Many may have had an overly optimistic sense of what the war would involve, imagining that victory could be won as easily as in the First South African War.^[26] Many, including many generals, also had a sense that their cause was holy and just, and blessed by God.^[27]

It rapidly became clear that the Boer forces presented the British forces with a severe tactical challenge. What the Boers presented was a mobile and innovative approach to warfare, drawing on their experiences from the First Boer War. The average Boers who made up their Commandos were farmers who had spent almost all their working life in the saddle, both as farmers and hunters. They had to depend on the pot on their horse and their rifle and were skilled stalkers and marksmen. As hunters they had learned to fire from cover, from a prone position and to make the first shot count, knowing that if they missed, the game would either be long gone or could charge and potentially kill them. At community gatherings, target shooting was a major sport, and they practised shooting at targets such as hens' eggs perched on posts 100 metres (100 yd) away. They made expert mounted infantry, using every scrap of cover, from which they could pour in a destructive fire using their modern, smokeless, Mauser rifles. Furthermore, in preparation for hostilities, the Boers had acquired around one hundred of the latest Krupp field guns, all horse-drawn and dispersed among the various Commando groups, and several Le Creusot "Long Tom" siege guns. The Boers' skill in adapting themselves to becoming first-rate artillerymen shows them to have been a versatile adversary.^[28] The Transvaal also had an intelligence service that stretched across South Africa, and of whose extent and efficiency the British were unaware.^[29]

The Siege of Mafeking was to last 217 days. Robert Baden-Powell (pictured) commanded the defence of the town against the Boers' offensive

The Boers struck first on 12 October at Kraaipan, an attack that heralded the invasion of the Cape Colony and Colony of Natal between October 1899 and January 1900. With elements of both speed and surprise the Boer drove quickly towards the major British garrison at Ladysmith and the smaller ones at Mafeking and Kimberley. The quick Boer mobilisation resulted in early military successes against the scattered British forces.

Sir George Stuart White, commanding the British division at Ladysmith, had unwisely allowed Major-General Penn Symons to throw a brigade forward to the coal-mining town of Dundee (also reported as Glencoe), which was surrounded by hills. This became the site of the first engagement of the war, the Battle of Talana Hill. Boer guns began shelling the British camp from the summit of Talana Hill at dawn on 20 October. Penn Symons immediately counter-attacked. His infantry drove the Boers from the hill, but at the cost of 446 British casualties including Penn Symons himself.

Another Boer force occupied Elandslaagte, which lay between Ladysmith and Dundee. The British under Major General John French and Colonel Ian Hamilton attacked to clear the line of communications to Dundee. The resulting Battle of Elandslaagte was a clear-cut British tactical victory, but Sir George White feared that more Boers were about to attack his main position and ordered a chaotic retreat from Elandslaagte, throwing away any advantage gained. The detachment from Dundee was compelled to make an exhausting cross-country retreat to rejoin White's main force.

As Boers surrounded Ladysmith and opened fire on the town with siege guns, White ordered a major sortie against the Boer artillery positions. The result was a disaster, with 140 men killed and over 1,000 captured. The Siege of Ladysmith began, and was to last several months.

Meanwhile to the north-west at Mafeking, on the border with Transvaal, Colonel Robert Baden-Powell had raised two regiments of local forces amounting to some 1,200 men in order to attack and create diversions if things further south went amiss. Mafeking, being a railway junction, provided good supply facilities and was the obvious place for Baden-Powell to fortify in readiness for such attacks. However, instead of being the aggressor Baden-Powell and Mafeking were forced to defend when 6,000 Boer, commanded by Piet Cronje, attempted a determined assault on the town. But this quickly subsided into a desultory affair with the Boers prepared to starve the stronghold into submission, and so, on 13 October, began the 217-day Siege of Mafeking.

Lastly, over 360 kilometres (220 mi) to the south of Mafeking lay the diamond mining city of Kimberley, which was also subjected to a siege. Although not militarily significant, it nonetheless represented an enclave of British imperialism on the borders of the Orange Free State and was hence an important Boer objective. From early November about 7,500 Boer began their siege, again content to starve the town into submission. Despite Boer shelling, the 40,000 inhabitants, of which only 5,000 were armed, were under little threat as the town was well-stocked with provisions. The garrison was commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Robert Kekewich, although Cecil Rhodes was also a prominent figure in the defence.

Siege life took its toll on both the defending soldiers and the civilians in the cities of Mafeking, Ladysmith, and Kimberley as food began to grow scarce after a few weeks. In Mafeking, Sol Plaatje wrote, "I saw horseflesh for the first time being treated as a human foodstuff." The cities under siege also dealt with constant artillery bombardment, making the streets a dangerous place. Near the end of the siege of Kimberley, it was expected that the Boers would intensify their bombardment, so Rhodes displayed a notice encouraging people to go down into shafts of the Kimberley Mine for protection. The townspeople panicked, and people surged into the mine-shafts constantly for a 12-hour period. Although the bombardment never came, this did nothing to diminish the distress of the civilians. The most well-heeled of the townspeople, such as Cecil Rhodes, sheltered in the Sanatorium, site of the present-day McGregor Museum; the poorer residents, notably the black population, did not have any shelter from the shelling.

In retrospect, the Boer decision to commit themselves to sieges (Sitzkrieg) was a mistake, and one of the best illustrations of the Boers' lack of strategic vision. Historically, it had little in its favour. Of the seven sieges in the First Boer War, the Boers had won none. More importantly, it handed the initiative back to the British and allowed them time to recover, which they then did. Generally speaking, throughout the campaign, the Boers were too defensive and passive, wasting the opportunities they had for victory. Yet that passiveness also testified to the fact that they had no desire to conquer British territory, but only to preserve their ability to rule in their own territory.^[30]

First British relief attempts[link]

It was at this point that General Sir Redvers Henry Buller, a much respected commander, arrived in South Africa with major British reinforcements (including an army corps of three divisions). Buller originally intended an offensive straight up the railway line leading from Cape Town through Bloemfontein to Pretoria. Finding on arrival that the British troops already in South Africa were under siege, he split his army corps into several widely spread detachments, to relieve the besieged garrisons. One division, led by Lieutenant General Lord Methuen, was to follow the Western Railway to the north and relieve Kimberley and Mafeking. A smaller force of about 3,000 led by Major General William Gatacre, was to push north toward the railway junction at Stormberg, to secure the Cape Midlands district from Boer raids and local rebellions by Boer inhabitants. Finally, Buller himself would lead the major part of the army corps to relieve Ladysmith to the east.

The initial results of this offensive were mixed, with Methuen winning several bloody skirmishes at Belmont on 23 November, at Graspan on 25 November, and at a larger conflict, Modder River on 28 November resulting in British losses of 71 dead and over 400 wounded. British commanders had trained on the lessons of the Crimean War, and were adept at battalion and regimental set pieces with columns manoeuvring in jungles, deserts and mountainous regions. What they entirely failed to comprehend, however, was both the impact of destructive fire from trench positions and the mobility of cavalry raids, both of which had been developed in the American Civil War. The British troops went to war with what would prove to be antiquated tactics, and in some cases antiquated weapons,^[31] against the mobile Boer forces with the destructive fire of their modern Mausers, the latest Krupp field guns, and their innovative tactics.

The middle of December was disastrous for the British army. In a period known as Black Week (10 – 15 December 1899), the British suffered a series of losses on each of the three major fronts.

On 10 December, General Gatacre tried to recapture Stormberg railway junction about 50 miles (80 km) south of the Orange River. Gatacre's attack was marked by administrative and tactical blunders, and the Battle of Stormberg ended in a British defeat, with 135 killed and wounded, and two guns and over 600 troops captured.

At the Battle of Magersfontein on 11 December, Methuen's 14,000 British troops attempted to capture a Boer position in a dawn attack to relieve Kimberley. This too turned into a disaster when the Highland Brigade became pinned down by accurate Boer fire. After suffering from intense heat and thirst for nine hours, they eventually broke in ill-disciplined retreat. The Boer commanders, Koos de la Rey and Piet Cronje, had ordered trenches to be dug in an unconventional place to fool the British and to give their riflemen a greater firing range. The plan worked and this tactic helped write the doctrine of the supremacy of the defensive position, using modern small arms and trench fortifications.^[32] The British lost 120 killed and 690 wounded and were prevented from relieving Kimberley and Mafeking. A British soldier encapsulated the soldiers' view of the defeat:

"Such was the day for our regiment
Dread the revenge we will take.
Dearly we paid for the blunder -
A drawing-room General’s mistake.
Why weren’t we told of the trenches?
Why weren’t we told of the wire?
Why were we marched up in column,
May Tommy Atkins enquire…." ^[33]

However, the nadir of Black Week was the Battle of Colenso on 15 December where 21,000 British troops commanded by Buller himself, attempted to cross the Tugela River to relieve Ladysmith where 8,000 Transvaal Boers, under the command of Louis Botha, were awaiting them. Through a combination of artillery and accurate rifle fire, and a better use of the ground, the Boers repelled all British attempts to cross the river. After his first attacks failed, Buller broke off the battle and ordered a retreat, abandoning many wounded men, several isolated units and ten field guns to be captured by Botha's men. Buller's forces lost 145 men killed and 1,200 missing or wounded. The Boers suffered 40 casualties, including only 8 killed.^[34]

Second phase: The British offensive of January to September 1900[link]

British casualties lie dead on the battlefield after the Battle of Spion Kop, 24 Jan. 1900

The British government took these defeats badly and with the sieges still continuing was compelled to send two more divisions plus large numbers of colonial volunteers. By January 1900 this would become the largest force Britain had ever sent overseas, amounting to some 180,000 men with further reinforcements being sought.

While watching for these reinforcements, Buller made another bid to relieve Ladysmith by crossing the Tugela west of Colenso. Buller's subordinate, Major General Charles Warren, successfully crossed the river, but was then faced with a fresh defensive position centred on a prominent hill known as Spion Kop. In the resulting Battle of Spion Kop, British troops captured the summit by surprise during the early hours of 24 January 1900, but as the early morning fog lifted they realised too late that they were overlooked by Boer gun emplacements on the surrounding hills. The rest of the day resulted in a disaster caused by poor communication between Buller and his commanders. Between them they issued contradictory orders, on the one hand ordering men off the hill, while other officers ordered fresh reinforcements to defend it. The result was 350 men killed and nearly 1,000 wounded and a retreat back across the Tugela River into British territory. There were nearly 300 Boer casualties.

Buller attacked Louis Botha again on 5 February at Vaal Krantz and was again defeated. Buller withdrew early when it appeared that the British would be isolated in an exposed bridgehead across the Tugela, and was nicknamed "Sir Reverse" by some of his officers.

Boer General Peter De Wet, 1900

By taking command in person in Natal, Buller had allowed the overall direction of the war to drift. Because of concerns about his performance and negative reports from the field, he was replaced as Commander in Chief by Field Marshal Lord Roberts. Like Buller, Roberts first intended to attack directly along the Cape Town – Pretoria railway but, again like Buller, was forced to relieve the beleaguered garrisons. Leaving Buller in command in Natal, Roberts massed his main force near the Orange River and along the Western Railway behind Methuen's force at the Modder River, and prepared to make a wide outflanking move to relieve Kimberley.

Except in Natal, the war had stagnated. Other than a single attempt to storm Ladysmith, the Boers made no attempt to capture the besieged towns. In the Cape Midlands, the Boers did not exploit the British defeat at Stormberg, and were prevented from capturing the railway junction at Colesberg. In the dry summer, the grazing on the veld became parched, weakening the Boers' horses and draught oxen, and many Boer families joined their menfolk in the siege lines and laagers (encampments), fatally encumbering Cronje's army.

Roberts launched his main attack on 10 February 1900 and although hampered by a long supply route, managed to outflank the Boers defending Magersfontein. On 14 February, a cavalry division under Major General John French launched a major attack to relieve Kimberley. Although encountering severe fire, a massed cavalry charge split the Boer defences on 15 February, opening the way for French to enter Kimberley that evening, ending its 124 days’ siege.

Meanwhile, Roberts pursued Piet Cronje’s 7,000-strong force, which had abandoned Magersfontein to head for Bloemfontein. General French’s cavalry was ordered to assist in the pursuit by embarking on an epic 30-mile drive towards Paardeberg where Cronje was attempting to cross the Modder River. At the Battle of Paardeberg from 18 to 27 February, Roberts then surrounded General Piet Cronje's retreating Boer army. On 17 February, a pincer movement involving both French’s cavalry and the main British force attempted to take the entrenched position, but the frontal attacks were uncoordinated and so were easily repulsed by the Boers. Finally, Roberts resorted to bombarding Cronje into submission, but it took a further ten precious days and with the British troops using the polluted Modder River as water supply, resulting in a typhoid epidemic killing many troops. General Cronje was forced to surrender at Surrender Hill with 4000 men.

The Relief of Ladysmith. Sir George Stuart White greets Major Hubert Gough on 28 February. Painting by John Henry Frederick Bacon (1868–1914)

In Natal, the Battle of the Tugela Heights, which started on 14 February was Buller's fourth attempt to relieve Ladysmith. Despite reinforcements his progress was painfully slow against stiff opposition. However, on 26 February, after much deliberation, Buller used all his forces in one all-out attack for the first time and at last succeeded in forcing a crossing of the Tugela, and defeated Botha's outnumbered forces north of Colenso. After a siege lasting 118 days, the Relief of Ladysmith was effected, the day after Cronje surrendered, but at a total cost of 7,000 British casualties.

After a succession of defeats, the Boers realised that against such overwhelming superiority of troops, they had little chance of defeating the British and so became demoralised. Roberts then advanced into the Orange Free State from the west, putting the Boers to flight at the Battle of Poplar Grove and capturing Bloemfontein, the capital, unopposed on 13 March with the Boer defenders escaping and scattering. Meanwhile, he detached a small force to relieve Baden-Powell, and the Relief of Mafeking on 18 May 1900 provoked riotous celebrations in Britain.

On 28 May, the Orange Free State was annexed and renamed the Orange River Colony.

After being forced to delay for several weeks at Bloemfontein due to a shortage of supplies and enteric fever (caused by poor hygiene, drinking bad water at Paardeburg and appalling medical care),^[35] Roberts resumed his advance. He was forced to halt again at Kroonstad for 10 days, due once again to the collapse of his medical and supply systems, but finally captured Johannesburg on 31 May and the capital of the Transvaal, Pretoria, on 5 June. The first into Pretoria, was Lt. William Watson of the New South Wales Mounted Rifles, who persuaded the Boers to surrender the capital.^[36] (Before the war, the Boers had constructed several forts south of Pretoria, but the artillery had been removed from the forts for use in the field, and in the event the Boers abandoned Pretoria without a fight).

This allowed the Roberts to declare the war over, having won the principal cities and so, on 3 September 1900, the South African Republic was formally annexed.

British observers believed the war to be all but over after the capture of the two capital cities. However, the Boers had earlier met at the temporary new capital of the Orange Free State, Kroonstad, and planned a guerrilla campaign to hit the British supply and communication lines. The first engagement of this new form of warfare was at Sanna's Post on 31 March where 1,500 Boers under the command of Christiaan De Wet attacked Bloemfontein's waterworks about 23 miles (37 km) east of the city, and ambushed a heavily escorted convoy, which caused 155 British casualties and the capture of seven guns, 117 wagons, and 428 British troops.^[37]

General Piet Cronjé as a prisoner of war in Saint Helena, 1900–02. He was captured, with 4000 men, after the loss of the Battle of Paardeberg.

After the fall of Pretoria, one of the last formal battles was at Diamond Hill on 11 – 12 June, where Roberts attempted to drive the remnants of the Boer field army beyond striking distance of Pretoria. Although Roberts drove the Boers from the hill, the Boer commander, Louis Botha, did not regard it as a defeat, for he inflicted more casualties on the British (totalling 162 men) while suffering around 50 casualties.

The set-piece period of the war now largely gave way to a mobile guerrilla war, but one final operation remained. President Kruger and what remained of the Transvaal government had retreated to eastern Transvaal. Roberts, joined by troops from Natal under Buller, advanced against them, and broke their last defensive position at Bergendal on 26 August. As Roberts and Buller followed up along the railway line to Komatipoort, Kruger sought asylum in Portuguese East Africa (modern Mozambique). Some dispirited Boers did likewise, and the British gathered up much war material. However, the core of the Boer fighters under Botha easily broke back through the Drakensberg mountains into the Transvaal highveld after riding north through the bushveld. Under the new conditions of the war, heavy equipment was no use to them, and therefore no great loss.

As Roberts's army occupied Pretoria, the Boer fighters in the Orange Free State had been driven into a fertile area known as the Brandwater Basin in the north east of the Republic. This offered only temporary sanctuary, as the mountain passes leading to it could be occupied by the British, trapping the Boers. A force under General Archibald Hunter set out from Bloemfontein to achieve this in July 1900. The hard core of the Free State Boers under Christiaan De Wet, accompanied by President Steyn, left the basin early. Those remaining fell into confusion and most failed to break out before Hunter trapped them. 4,500 Boers surrendered and much equipment was captured but as with Roberts's drive against Kruger at the same time, these losses were of relatively little consequence, as the hardcore of the Boer armies and their most determined and active leaders remained at large.

From the Basin, Christiaan De Wet headed west. Although hounded by British columns, he succeeded in crossing the Vaal into western Transvaal, to allow Steyn to travel to meet the Transvaal leaders.

There was much sympathy for the Boers on mainland Europe and in October, President Kruger and members of the Transvaal government left Portuguese East Africa on the Dutch warship De Gelderland, sent by the Queen of the Netherlands Wilhelmina, who had simply ignored the British naval blockade of South Africa. Paul Kruger's wife, however, was too ill to travel and remained in South Africa where she died on 20 July 1901 without seeing her husband again. President Kruger first went to Marseille and then on to The Netherlands where he stayed for a while before moving finally to Clarens, Switzerland, where he died in exile on 14 July 1904.

POWs sent overseas[link]

The first sizeable batch of Boer prisoners of war taken by the British consisted of those captured at the Battle of Elandslaagte on 21 October 1899. At first, many were put on ships, but as numbers grew, the British decided they did not want them kept locally. The capture of 400 POWs in February 1900 was a key event, which made the British realise they could not accommodate all POWs in South Africa.^[38] The British feared they could be freed by sympathetic locals. Moreover, they already had trouble supplying their own troops in South Africa, and did not want the added burden of sending supplies for the POWs. Britain therefore chose to send many POWs overseas.

A Transit camp for Prisoners of War near Cape Town during the war. Prisoners were then transferred for internment in other parts of the British Empire.

The first overseas (off African mainland) camps were opened in Saint Helena, which ultimately received about 5,000 POWs. About 5,000 POWs were sent to Ceylon.^[39] Other POWs were sent to Bermuda and India. No evidence exists of Boer POWs being sent to the Dominions of the British Empire such as Australia, Canada or New Zealand.^[38]

In all, about 26,000 POWs were sent overseas.^[40]

Third phase: Guerrilla war (September 1900 – May 1902)[link]

By September 1900, the British were nominally in control of both Republics, with the exception of the northern part of Transvaal. However, they soon discovered that they only controlled the territory their columns physically occupied. The Boer commanders adopted guerrilla warfare tactics, primarily conducting raids against infrastructure, resource and supply targets, all aimed at disrupting the operational capacity of the British army.

Each Boer commando unit was sent to the district from which its members had been recruited, which meant that they could rely on local support and personal knowledge of the terrain and the towns within the district thereby enabling them to live off the land. Their orders were simply to act against the British whenever possible. Their tactics were to strike fast and hard causing as much damage to the enemy as possible, and then to withdraw and vanish before enemy reinforcements could arrive. The vast distances of the Republics allowed the Boer commandos considerable freedom to move about and made it impossible for the 250,000 British troops to control the territory effectively using columns alone. As soon as a British column left a town or district, British control of that area faded away.

A surviving blockhouse in South Africa. Blockhouses were constructed by the British to secure supply routes from Boer raids during the war.

The Boer commandos were especially effective during the initial guerrilla phase of the war because Roberts had assumed that the war would end with the capture of the Boer capitals and the dispersal of the main Boer armies. Many British troops were therefore redeployed out of the area, and had been replaced by lower-quality contingents of Imperial Yeomanry and locally-raised irregular corps.

From late May 1900, the first successes of the Boer strategy were at Lindley (where 500 Yeomanry surrendered), and at Heilbron (where a large convoy and its escort were captured) and other skirmishes resulting in 1,500 British casualties in less than ten days. In December 1900, De la Rey and Christiaan Beyers mauled a British brigade at Nooitgedacht. As a result of these and other Boer successes, the British, led by Lord Kitchener, mounted three extensive searches for De Wet, but without success. However, by its very nature the guerrilla war was sporadic, poorly planned and with little overall objective in mind except to harass the British. This led to a disorganised pattern of scattered engagements throughout the region.

British response[link]

The British were forced to quickly revise their tactics. They concentrated on restricting the freedom of movement of the Boer commandos and depriving them of local support. The railway lines had provided vital lines of communication and supply, and as the British had advanced across South Africa, they had used armoured trains and had established fortified blockhouses at key points.^[41] They now built additional blockhouses (each housing 6–8 soldiers) and fortified these to protect supply routes against Boer raiders. Eventually some 8,000 such blockhouses were built across the two South African republics, radiating from the larger towns. Each blockhouse cost between £800 to £1,000 and took about three months to build. However, they proved very effective. Not one bridge where one of these blockhouses was sited and manned was blown.^[41]

The blockhouse system required an enormous number of troops to maintain. Well over 50,000 British troops, or 50 battalions, were involved in blockhouse duty, greater than the approximately 30,000 Boers in the field during the guerrilla phase. In addition, up to 16,000 Africans were used both as armed guards and to patrol the line at night.^[41] The Army linked the blockhouses with barbed wire fences to parcel up the wide veld into smaller areas. "New Model" drives were mounted under which a continuous line of troops could sweep an area of veld bounded by blockhouse lines, unlike the earlier inefficient scouring of the countryside by scattered columns.

One British response to the guerrilla war was a 'scorched earth' policy to deny the guerrillas supplies and refuge. In this image Boer civilians watch their house as it is burned.

The British also implemented a "scorched earth" policy under which they targeted everything within the controlled areas that could give sustenance to the Boer guerrillas with a view to making it harder and harder for the Boers to survive. As British troops swept the countryside, they systematically destroyed crops, burned homesteads and farms, poisoned wells, and interned Boer and African women, children and workers in concentration camps. Finally, the British also established their own mounted raiding columns in support of the sweeper columns. These were used to rapidly follow and relentlessly harass the Boers with a view to delaying them and cutting off escape, while the sweeper units caught up. Many of the 90 or so mobile columns formed by the British to participate in such drives were a mixture of British and colonial troops, but they also had a large minority of armed Africans. The total number of armed Africans serving with these columns has been estimated at approximately 20,000.

The British Army also made use of Boer auxiliaries who had been persuaded to change sides and enlist as "National Scouts". Serving under the command of General Andries Cronje, the National Scouts were despised as hensoppers (collaborators) but came to number a fifth of the fighting Afrikaners by the end of the War.^[42]

The British utilised armoured trains throughout the War to deliver rapid reaction forces much more quickly to incidents (such as Boer attacks on blockhouses and columns) or to drop them off ahead of retreating Boer columns.

The Orange Free State[link]

Christiaan De Wet (pictured) was considered the most formidable leader of the Boer guerrillas. He successfully evaded capture on numerous occasions and was later involved in the negotiations for a peace settlement.

After having conferred with the Transvaal leaders, De Wet returned to the Orange Free State, where he inspired a series of successful attacks and raids from the hitherto quiet western part of the country, though he suffered a rare defeat at Bothaville in November 1900. Many Boers who had earlier returned to their farms, sometimes giving formal parole to the British, took up arms again. In late January 1901, De Wet led a renewed invasion of Cape Colony. This was less successful, because there was no general uprising among the Cape Boers, and De Wet's men were hampered by bad weather and relentlessly pursued by British forces. They narrowly escaped across the Orange River.

From then until the final days of the war, De Wet remained comparatively quiet, partly because the Orange Free State was effectively left desolate by British sweeps. In late 1901, De Wet overran an isolated British detachment at Groenkop, inflicting heavy casualties. This prompted Kitchener to launch the first of the "New Model" drives against him. De Wet escaped the first such drive, but lost 300 of his fighters. This was a severe loss, and a portent of further attrition, although the subsequent attempts to round up De Wet were badly handled, and De Wet's forces avoided capture.

Western Transvaal[link]

The Boer commandos in the Western Transvaal were very active after September 1901. Several battles of importance were fought here between September 1901 and March 1902. At Moedwil on 30 September 1901 and again at Driefontein on 24 October, General Koos De La Rey’s forces attacked the British, but were forced to withdraw after the British offered strong resistance.

A time of relative quiet descended thereafter on the western Transvaal. February 1902 saw the next major battle in that region. On 25 February, Koos De La Rey attacked a British column under Lieutenant-Colonel S. B. Von Donop at Ysterspruit near Wolmaransstad. De La Rey succeeded in capturing many men and a large amount of ammunition. The Boer attacks prompted Lord Methuen, the British second-in-command after Lord Kitchener, to move his column from Vryburg to Klerksdorp to deal with De La Rey. On the morning of 7 March 1902, the Boers attacked the rear guard of Methuen’s moving column at Tweebosch. Confusion reigned in British ranks and Methuen was wounded and captured by the Boers.

The Boer victories in the west led to stronger action by the British. In the second half of March 1902, large British reinforcements were sent to the Western Transvaal under the direction of Ian Hamilton. The opportunity the British were waiting for arose on 11 April 1902 at Rooiwal, where a commando led by General Jan Kemp and Commandant Potgieter attacked a superior force under Kekewich. The British soldiers were well positioned on the hillside and inflicted severe casualties on the Boers charging on horseback over a large distance, beating them back. This was the end of the war in the Western Transvaal and also the last major battle of the war.

Eastern Transvaal[link]

Two Boer forces fought in this area, one under Botha in the south east and a second under Ben Viljoen in the north east around Lydenburg. Botha's forces were particularly active, raiding railways and British supply convoys, and even mounting a renewed invasion of Natal in September, 1901. After defeating British mounted infantry in the Battle of Blood River Poort near Dundee, Botha was forced to withdraw by heavy rains that made movement difficult and crippled his horses. Back on the Transvaal territory around his home district of Vryheid, Botha attacked a British raiding column at Bakenlaagte, using an effective mounted charge. One of the most active British units was effectively destroyed in this engagement. This made Botha's forces the target of increasingly large and ruthless drives by British forces, in which the British made particular use of native scouts and informers. Eventually, Botha had to abandon the high veld and retreat to a narrow enclave bordering Swaziland.

To the north, Ben Viljoen grew steadily less active. His forces mounted comparatively few attacks and as a result, the Boer enclave around Lydenburg was largely unmolested. Viljoen was eventually captured.

Cape Colony[link]

In parts of Cape Colony, particularly the Cape Midlands district where Boers formed a majority of the white inhabitants, the British had always feared a general uprising against them. In fact, no such uprising took place, even in the early days of the war when Boer armies had advanced across the Orange. The cautious conduct of some of the elderly Orange Free State generals had been one factor that discouraged the Cape Boers from siding with the Boer republics. Nevertheless, there was widespread pro-Boer sympathy.

After he escaped across the Orange in March 1901, De Wet had left forces under Cape rebels Kritzinger and Scheepers to maintain a guerrilla campaign in the Cape Midlands. The campaign here was one of the least chivalrous of the war, with intimidation by both sides of each other's civilian sympathizers. In one of many skirmishes, Commandant Lotter's small commando was tracked down by a much-superior British column and wiped out at Groenkloof. Several captured rebels, including Lotter and Scheepers, who was captured when he fell ill with appendicitis, were executed by the British for treason or for capital crimes such as the murder of prisoners or of unarmed civilians. Some of the executions took place in public, to deter further disaffection. Since the Cape Colony was Imperial territory, its authorities forbade the British army to burn farms or to force Boers into concentration camps.

Fresh Boer forces under Jan Christiaan Smuts, joined by the surviving rebels under Kritzinger, made another attack on the Cape in September 1901. They suffered severe hardships and were hard pressed by British columns, but eventually rescued themselves by routing some of their pursuers at the Battle of Elands River and capturing their equipment. From then until the end of the war, Smuts increased his forces from among Cape rebels until they numbered 3,000. However, no general uprising took place, and the situation in the Cape remained stalemated.

In January 1902, Boer leader Manie Maritz was implicated in the Leliefontein massacre in the far Northern Cape.

Surgery and medicine during the war[link]

More than half of British casualties during the war were caused by illness, especially typhoid fever, rather than enemy action.^[43][44]

Concentration camps (1900–1902)[link]

Media related to Second Boer War concentration camps at Wikimedia Commons

Tents in the Bloemfontein concentration camp

Boer women and children in a concentration camp

The term "concentration camp" was used to describe camps operated by the British in South Africa during this conflict, and the term grew in prominence during this period.

The camps had originally been set up by the British army as "refugee camps" to provide refuge for civilian families who had been forced to abandon their homes for whatever reason related to the war. However, when Kitchener succeeded Roberts as commander-in-chief in South Africa on 29 November 1900, the British army introduced new tactics in an attempt to break the guerrilla campaign and the influx of civilians grew dramatically as a result. Kitchener initiated plans 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.^[45]

Lizzie van Zyl, visited by Emily Hobhouse in a British concentration camp

As Boer farms were destroyed by the British under their "Scorched Earth" policy—including 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 many tens of thousands of women and children were forcibly moved into the concentration camps. This was not the first appearance of internment camps. The Spanish had used internment in the Ten Years' War that led to the Spanish-American War, and the United States had used them to devastate guerrilla forces during the Philippine-American War. But the Boer War concentration camp system was the first time that a whole nation had been systematically targeted, and the first in which some whole regions had been depopulated.

Eventually, there were a total of 45 tented camps built for Boer internees and 64 for black Africans. Of the 28,000 Boer men captured as prisoners of war, 25,630 were sent overseas. The vast majority of Boers remaining in the local camps were women and children. Over 26,000 women and children were to perish in these concentration camps.^[46]

The camps were poorly administered from the outset and became increasingly overcrowded when Kitchener's troops implemented the internment strategy on a vast scale. 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. The food rations were meager and there was a two-tier allocation policy, whereby families of men who were still fighting were routinely given smaller rations than others. The inadequate shelter, poor diet, inadequate hygiene and overcrowding led to malnutrition and endemic contagious diseases such as measles, typhoid and dysentery to which the children were particularly vulnerable. An additional problem was the Boers' use of traditional medicines like a cow-dung poultice for skin diseases and crushed insects for convulsions.^[47] Coupled with a shortage of modern medical facilities, many of the internees died.

As the war raged across their farms and their homes were destroyed, many Africans became refugees and they, like the Boers, moved to the towns where the British army hastily created internment camps. Subsequently, the "Scorched Earth" policy was ruthlessly applied to both Boers and Africans. Although most black Africans were not considered by the British to be hostile, many tens of thousands were also forcibly removed from Boer areas and also placed in concentration camps.

Africans were held separately from Boer internees. Eventually there were a total of 64 tented camps for Africans. Conditions were as bad as in the camps for the Boers, but even though, after the Fawcett Commission report, conditions improved in the Boer camps, "improvements were much slower in coming to the black camps." It is worth noting that Emily Hobhouse and the Fawcett Commission only ever concerned themselves with the camps that held Boer refugees. No one paid much attention to what was going on in the camps that held African refugees.

Public opinion and political opposition[link]

Although the 1900 UK general election, also known as the "Khaki election," had resulted in a victory for the Conservative government on the back of recent British victories against the Boers, public support quickly waned as it became apparent that the war would not be easy and further unease developed following reports about the treatment by the British army of the Boer civilians. Public and political opposition to government policies in South Africa regarding Boer civilians was first expressed in Parliament in February, 1901 in the form of an attack on the policy, the government, and the army by the radical Liberal MP David Lloyd George.

Emily Hobhouse (pictured) campaigned for improvement to the appalling conditions of the concentration camps. She helped to alter public opinion and to force the government to improve conditions in the camps, resulting in the Fawcett Commission.

Emily Hobhouse, a delegate of the South African Women and Children's Distress Fund, visited some of the camps in the Orange Free State from January, 1901, and in May, 1901 she returned to England on board the ship, the Saxon. Alfred Milner, High Commissioner in South Africa, also boarded the Saxon for holiday in England but, unfortunately for both the camp internees and the British government, he had no time for Miss Hobhouse, regarding her as a Boer sympathiser and "trouble maker."^[48] On her return, Emily Hobhouse did much to publicise the distress of the camp inmates. She managed to speak to the Liberal Party leader, Henry Campbell-Bannerman who professed to be suitably outraged but was disinclined to press the matter, as his party was split between the imperialists and the pro-Boer factions.

The more radical Liberals however such as David Lloyd George and John Ellis were prepared to raise the matter in Parliament and to harass the government on the issue, which they duly did. St John Brodrick, the Conservative secretary of state for war, first defended the government's policy by arguing that the camps were purely "voluntary" and that the interned Boers were "contented and comfortable," but was somewhat undermined as he had no firm statistics to back up his argument, so when his "voluntary" argument proved untenable, he resorted to the "military necessity" argument and stated that everything possible was being done to ensure satisfactory conditions in the camps.

Hobhouse published a report in June, 1901 that contradicted Brodrick's claim, and Lloyd George then openly accused the government of "a policy of extermination" directed against the Boer population. In June, 1901, Liberal opposition party leader Campbell-Bannerman took up the assault and answered the rhetorical question "When is a war not a war?" with his own rhetorical answer "When it is carried on by methods of barbarism in South Africa," referring to those same camps and the policies that created them. The Hobhouse report caused uproar both domestically and in the international community. It should be noted however that there was very little public sympathy for the highly reactionary Boer president Kruger.

The Fawcett Commission[link]

Although the government had comfortably won the parliamentary debate by a margin of 252 to 149, it was stung by the criticism and concerned by the escalating public outcry, and called on Kitchener for a detailed report. In response, complete statistical returns from camps were sent in July 1901. By August 1901, it was clear to government and opposition alike that Miss Hobhouse's worst fears were being confirmed – 93,940 Boers and 24,457 black Africans were reported to be in "camps of refuge" and the crisis was becoming a catastrophe as the death rates appeared very high, especially among the children.

The government responded to the growing clamour by appointing a commission.^[49] The Fawcett Commission, as it became known was, uniquely for its time, an all-woman affair headed by Millicent Fawcett who despite being the leader of the women's suffrage movement was a Liberal Unionist and thus a government supporter and considered a safe pair of hands. Between August and December, 1901, the Fawcett Commission conducted its own tour of the camps in South Africa. While it is probable that the British government expected the Commission to produce a report that could be used to fend off criticism, in the end it confirmed everything that Emily Hobhouse had said. Indeed, if anything the Commission's recommendations went even further. The Commission insisted that rations should be increased and that additional nurses be sent out immediately, and included a long list of other practical measures designed to improve conditions in the camp. Millicent Fawcett was quite blunt in expressing her opinion that much of the catastrophe was owed to a simple failure to observe elementary rules of hygiene.

In November 1901, the Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain ordered Alfred Milner to ensure that "all possible steps are being taken to reduce the rate of mortality." The civil authority took over the running of the camps from Kitchener and the British command and by February 1902 the annual death-rate in the concentration camps for white inmates dropped to 6.9 percent and eventually to 2 percent, which was a lower rate than pertained in many British cities at the time. However, by then the damage had been done. A report after the war concluded that 27,927 Boers (of whom 24,074 [50 percent of the Boer child population] were children under 16) had died of starvation, disease and exposure in the concentration camps. In all, about one in four (25 percent) of the Boer inmates, mostly children, died.

"Improvements [however] were much slower in coming to the black camps."^[50] It is thought that about 12 percent of black African inmates died (about 14,154) but the precise number of deaths of black Africans in concentration camps is unknown as little attempt was made to keep any records of the 107,000 black Africans who were interned.

The main decisions (or their absence) had been left to the soldiers, to whom the life or death of the 154,000 Boer and African civilians in the camps rated as an abysmally low priority. [It was only] ... ten months after the subject had first been raised in Parliament ... [and after public outcry and after the Fawcett Commission that remedial action was taken and] ... the terrible mortality figures were at last declining. In the interval, at least twenty thousand whites and twelve thousand coloured people had died in the concentration camps, the majority from epidemics of measles and typhoid that could have been avoided.^[51]

Somewhat higher figures for total deaths in the concentration camps are given by S.B. Spies.^[52]

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had served as a volunteer doctor in the Langman Field Hospital at Bloemfontein between March and June 1900. In his widely distributed and translated pamphlet 'The War in South Africa: Its Cause and Conduct' he justified both the causes of the war and its conduct. He also pointed out that over 14,000 British soldiers had died of disease during the conflict (as opposed to 8000 killed in combat) and at the height of epidemics he was seeing 50–60 British soldiers dying each day in a single ill-equipped and overwhelmed military hospital.

Kitchener's policy and the post-war debate[link]

It has been argued that "this was not a deliberately genocidal policy; rather it was the result of [a] disastrous lack of foresight and rank incompetence on [the] part of the [British] military."^[53] British historian Niall Ferguson also argues that "Kitchener no more desired the deaths of women and children in the camps than of the wounded Dervishes after Omdurman, or of his own soldiers in the typhoid stricken hospitals of Bloemfontein."^[54]

However, to Kitchener and the British Command "the life or death of the 154,000 Boer and African civilians in the camps rated as an abysmally low priority" against military objectives. As the Fawcett Commission was delivering its recommendations, Kitchener wrote to St John Brodrick defending his policy of sweeps, and emphasising that no new Boer families were being brought in unless they were in danger of starving. This was disingenuous as the countryside had by then been devastated under the "Scorched Earth" policy (the Fawcett Commission in December 1901 in its recommendations commented that: "to turn 100,000 people now being held in the concentration camps out on the veldt to take care of themselves would be cruelty") and now that the New Model counter insurgency tactics were in full swing, it made cynical military sense to leave the Boer families in desperate conditions in the countryside.

According to writer S.B. Spies, "at [the Vereeniging negotiations in May, 1902] Boer leader Louis Botha stated that he had tried to send [Boer] families to the British, but they had refused to receive them." Spies quotes a Boer commandant referring to Boer women and children made refugees by Britain's scorched-earth policy as saying, "Our families are in a pitiable condition and the enemy uses those families to force us to surrender." Spies adds, "and there is little doubt that that was indeed the intention of Kitchener when he had issued instructions that no more families were to be brought into the concentration camps." Thomas Pakenham writes of Kichener's policy U-turn,

No doubt the continued 'hullabaloo' at the death-rate in these concentration camps, and Milner's belated agreement to take over their administration, helped change Kitchener's mind [some time at the end of 1901]. ... By mid-December at any rate, Kitchener was already circulating all column commanders with instructions not to bring in women and children when they cleared the country, but to leave them with the guerrillas. ... Viewed as a gesture to Liberals, on the eve of the new session of Parliament at Westminster, it was a shrewd political move. It also made excellent military sense, as it greatly handicapped the guerrillas, now that the drives were in full swing. ... It was effective precisely because, contrary to the Liberals' convictions, it was less humane than bringing them into camps, though this was of no great concern to Kitchener.^[55]

The end of the war[link]

Towards the end of the war, British tactics of containment, denial, and harassment began to yield results against the guerrillas. The sourcing and coordination of intelligence became increasingly efficient with regular reporting from observers in the blockhouses, from units patrolling the fences and conducting "sweeper" operations, and from native Africans in rural areas who increasingly supplied intelligence, as the Scorched Earth policy took effect and they found themselves competing with the Boers for food supplies. Kitchener's forces at last began to seriously affect the Boers' fighting strength and freedom of manoeuvre, and made it harder for the Boers and their families to survive.

The Boers and the British both feared the consequences of arming Africans. The memories of the Zulu and other tribal conflicts were still fresh, and they recognised that whoever won would have to deal with the consequences of a mass militarisation of the tribes. There was therefore an unwritten agreement that this war would be a “white man's war.” At the outset, British officials instructed all white magistrates in the Natal Colony to appeal to Zulu ama-khosi to remain neutral, and President Kruger sent emissaries asking them to stay out of it. However, in some cases there were old scores to be settled, and some Africans, such as the Swazis, were eager to enter the war with the specific aim of reclaiming land confiscated by the Boers. As the war went on there was greater involvement of Africans, and in particular large numbers became embroiled in the conflict on the British side, either voluntarily or involuntarily. By the end of the war, many blacks had been armed and had shown conspicuous gallantry in roles such as scouts, messengers, watchmen in blockhouses, and auxiliaries.

C Company returns from Boer War, King Street in Toronto, Canada

And there were more flash-points outside of the war. On 6 May 1902 at Holkrantz in the southeastern Transvaal, a Zulu faction had their cattle stolen and their people mistreated by the Boers as a punishment for helping the British. The local Boer officer then sent an insulting message to the tribe, challenging them to take back their cattle. The Zulus attacked at night, and in a mutual bloodbath, the Boers lost 56 killed and 3 wounded, while the Africans suffered 52 killed and 48 wounded.^[56] The official statistics of blacks who had served as combatants or non-combatants or who died in the concentration camps are unreliable. Many black combatants were dumped in unmarked graves, and most of the superintendents of the concentration camps did not record the deaths of black inmates.

After the war the British government went to great lengths to attempt to conciliate Boer opinion to the extent of refusing to officially recognise the military contribution made by blacks by issuing campaign medals. It was felt that the Boers would already feel insecure and angry at the arming of blacks, and granting medals would have prejudiced the stability of the region. Boer insecurity and the British government’s favouring of Boer over African interests caused much bitterness, and did much to shape the racial politics of the region.

The British offered terms of peace on various occasions, notably in March, 1901, but were rejected by Botha. The last of the Boers surrendered in May, 1902 and the war ended with the Treaty of Vereeniging signed on 31 May 1902. Although the British had won, this came at a cost; the Boers were given £3,000,000 for reconstruction and were promised eventual limited self-government, which was granted in 1906 and 1907. The treaty ended the existence of the South African Republic and the Orange Free State as independent Boer republics and placed them within the British Empire. The Union of South Africa was established as a member of the Commonwealth in 1910.

In all, the war had cost around 75,000 lives; 22,000 British and allied soldiers (7,792 killed in battle, the rest through disease), between 6,000 and 7,000 Boer fighters, and, mainly in the concentration camps, between 20,000 to 28,000 Boer civilians (mainly women and children) and perhaps 20,000 black Africans (both on the battlefield and in the concentration camps). During the conflict, 78 Victoria Crosses (VC) – the highest and most prestigious award in the British armed forces for bravery in the face of the enemy – were awarded to British and colonial soldiers. See List of Boer War Victoria Cross recipients.

Aftermath and analysis[link]

Memorial to soldiers from Quebec who fell in the Second Boer War, Quebec City

The Second Boer War cast long shadows over the history of the South African region. The predominantly agrarian society of the former Boer republics was profoundly and fundamentally affected by the scorched earth policy of Roberts and Kitchener. The devastation of both Boer and black African populations in the concentration camps and through war and exile were to have a lasting effect on the demography and quality of life in the region. Many exiles and prisoners were unable to return to their farms at all; others attempted to do so but were forced to abandon the farms as unworkable given the damage caused by farm burning and salting of the fields in the course of the scorched earth policy. Destitute Boers and black Africans swelled the ranks of the unskilled urban poor competing with the "uitlanders" in the mines.^[57]

The postwar reconstruction administration was presided over by Lord Milner and his largely Oxford trained Milner's Kindergarten. This small group of civil servants had a profound effect on the region, eventually leading to the Union of South Africa. “In the aftermath of the war, an imperial administration freed from accountability to a domestic electorate set about reconstructing an economy that was by then predicated unambiguously on gold. At the same time, British civil servants, municipal officials, and their cultural adjuncts were hard at work in the heartland of the former Boer Republics helping to forge new identities – first as 'British South Africans' and then, later still, as 'white South Africans'." Some scholars, for good reasons, identify these new identities as partly underpinning the act of union that followed in 1910. Although challenged by a Boer rebellion only four years later, they did much to shape South African politics between the two world wars and right up to the present day.”^[58]

Lord Alfred Milner was the British High Commissioner of Southern Africa. He was partly responsible for the start of the war and also had a role in the eventual peace process and the future creation of the Union of South Africa.

The counterinsurgency techniques and lessons (the restriction of movement, the containment of space, the ruthless targeting of anything, everything and anyone that could give sustenance to guerrillas, the relentless harassment through sweeper groups coupled with rapid reaction forces, the sourcing and coordination of intelligence, and the nurturing of native allies) learned during the Boer War were used by the British (and other forces) in future guerrilla campaigns including to counter Malayan communist rebels during the Malayan Emergency. In World War II the British also adopted some of the concepts of raiding from the Boer commandos when, after the fall of France, they set up their special raiding forces, and in acknowledgement of their erstwhile enemies, chose the name British Commandos.

Many of the Boers referred to the war as the second of the Freedom Wars. The most resistant of Boers wanted to continue the fight and were known as "bittereinders" (or irreconcilables) and at the end of the war a number of Boer fighters such as Deneys Reitz chose exile rather than sign an oath, such as the following, to pledge allegiance to Britain:^[59]

Over the following decade, many returned to South Africa and never signed the pledge. Some, like Reitz, eventually reconciled themselves to the new status quo, but others could not.

Union of South Africa[link]

One of the most important events in the decade after the end of the war was the creation of the Union of South Africa (later the Republic of South Africa). It proved a key ally to Britain as a Dominion of the British Empire during the World Wars. At the start of First World War a crisis ensued when the South African government led by Louis Botha and other former Boer fighters, such as Jan Smuts, declared support for Britain and agreed to send troops to take over the German colony of German South-West Africa (Namibia).

Many Boers were opposed to fighting for Britain, especially against Germany, which had been sympathetic to their struggle. A number of bittereinders and their allies took part in a revolt known as the Maritz Rebellion. This was quickly suppressed and in 1916, the leading Boer rebels in the Maritz Rebellion got off lightly (especially compared with the fate of leading Irish rebels of the Easter Rising), with terms of imprisonment of six and seven years and heavy fines. Two years later, they were released from prison, as Louis Botha recognised the value of reconciliation. Thereafter the bittereinders concentrated on political organisation within the constitutional system and built up what later became the National Party, which took power in 1948 and dominated the politics of South Africa from the late 1940s until the early 1990s, under the apartheid system.

Effect of the war on domestic British politics[link]

Many Irish nationalists sympathised with the Boers, viewing them to be a people oppressed by British imperialism, much like, in their opinion, themselves. Irish miners already in the Transvaal at the start of the war formed the nucleus of two Irish commandos. The Second Irish Brigade was headed up by an Australian of Irish parents, Colonel Arthur Lynch. In addition, small groups of Irish volunteers went to South Africa to fight with the Boers – this despite the fact that there were many Irish troops fighting in the British army.^[62] In Britain, the "Pro-Boer" campaign expanded,^[63] with writers often idealising the Boer society.

The war also highlighted the dangers of Britain's policy of non-alignment and deepened her isolation. The 1900 UK general election, also known as the "Khaki election," was called by the Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, on the back of recent British victories. There was much enthusiasm for the war at this point, resulting in a victory for the Conservative government.

However, public support quickly waned as it became apparent that the war would not be easy and it dragged on, partially contributing to the Conservatives' spectacular defeat in 1906. There was public outrage at the use of scorched earth tactics – the forced clearance of women and children, the destruction of the countryside, burning of Boer homesteads and poisoning of wells, for example – and the conditions in the concentration camps. It also became apparent that there were serious problems with public health in Britain: up to 40% of recruits in Britain were unfit for military service, suffering from medical problems such as rickets and other poverty-related illnesses. This came at a time of increasing concern for the state of the poor in Britain.

Having taken the country into a prolonged war, the Conservative government was rejected by the electorate at the first general election after the war was over. Balfour, succeeding his uncle Lord Salisbury in 1903 immediately after the war, took over a Conservative party that had won two successive landslide majorities but led it to a landslide defeat in 1906.

The war and its aftermath reverberated across the Empire. The importing (to South Africa) and use (especially on the gold mines) of Chinese labour, known as Coolies, after the war by the governor of the new crown colonies, Lord Milner as cheap labour to repress local workers and break strikes, also caused much revulsion in the UK and Australia. The Chinese workers were themselves often kept in appalling conditions, receiving only a small wage and isolated from the local population – revelations of homosexual acts between those forbidden contact with the local population and the services of prostitutes led to further public shock. Some believe the Chinese labour issue can be seen as the climax of public antipathy to the war.

Horses[link]

A horse destined to serve in the war, being off-loaded in Port Elizabeth

The number of horses killed in the war was at the time unprecedented in modern warfare. For example, in the Relief of Kimberley, French's cavalry rode 500 horses to their deaths in a single day. The wastage was particularly heavy among British forces for several reasons: overloading of horses with unnecessary equipment and saddlery, failure to rest and acclimatise horses after long sea voyages and, later in the war, poor management by inexperienced mounted troops and distant control by unsympathetic staffs.^[64] The average life expectancy of a British horse, from the time of its arrival in Port Elizabeth, was around six weeks.^[65]

Horses were on occasion slaughtered for their meat. During the Siege of Kimberley and Siege of Ladysmith, horses were consumed as food once the regular sources of meat were depleted.^[66] The besieged British forces in Ladysmith also produced chevril, a Bovril-like paste, by boiling down the horse meat to a jelly paste and serving it like beef tea.^[67][68]

The Horse Memorial in Port Elizabeth is a tribute to the 300,000 horses that died during the conflict.^[69]

British Empire involvement[link]

See also History of the British Army

Stretcher-bearers of the Indian Ambulance Corps during the war, including the future leader Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (Middle row, 5th from left).

The vast majority of troops fighting for the British army came from the United Kingdom. However, a large number did come from other parts of the British Empire. These countries had their own internal disputes over whether they should remain tied to the United Kingdom, or have full independence, which carried over into the debate around the sending of forces to assist the United Kingdom. Though not fully independent on foreign affairs, these countries did have local say over how much support to provide, and the manner it was provided. Ultimately, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand all sent volunteers to aid the United Kingdom. Australia provided the largest number of troops followed by Canada. Troops were also raised to fight with the British from the Cape Colony and the Colony of Natal. Some Boer fighters, such as Jan Smuts and Louis Botha, were technically British subjects as they came from the Cape Colony and Colony of Natal, respectively.

There were also many volunteers from the Empire who were not selected for the official contingents from their countries and travelled privately to South Africa to form private units, such as the Canadian Scouts and Doyle’s Australian Scouts. There were also some European volunteer units from British India and British Ceylon, though the British Government refused offers of non-white troops from the Empire. Some Cape Coloureds also volunteered early in the war, but later some of them were effectively conscripted and kept in segregated units. As a community, they received comparatively little reward for their services. In many ways, the war set the pattern for the Empire's later involvement in the two World Wars. Specially raised units, consisting mainly of volunteers, were dispatched overseas to serve with forces from elsewhere in the British Empire.

Technically the United States stayed neutral in the conflict, but some American citizens were asked to participate. Early in the war Lord Roberts cabled the American Frederick Russell Burnham, a veteran of both Matabele wars but at that very moment prospecting in the Klondike, to serve on his personal staff as Chief of Scouts. Burnham went on to receive the highest awards of any American who served in the war, but American mercenaries participated on both sides.^[70]

Australia[link]

British and Australian officers in South Africa, ca. 1900

A memorial in Queanbeyan New South Wales unveiled in 1903, dedicated to Australians who served in the conflict (over 20,000).

See also History of the Australian Army

From 1899 to 1901 the six separate self-governing colonies in Australia sent their own contingents to serve in the Boer War. Much of the population of the colonies had originated from Great Britain (England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland) and the desire to support Britain during the conflict appealed to many. After the colonies formed the Commonwealth of Australia in 1901, the new Government of Australia sent "Commonwealth" contingents to the war.^[71] The Boer War was thus the first war in which the Commonwealth of Australia fought. However it must also be noted that a few Australians fought on the Boer side.^[72] The most famous and colourful character was Colonel Arthur Alfred Lynch, formerly of Ballarat, Victoria, who raised the Second Irish Brigade.

The Australian climate and geography were far closer to that of South Africa than most other parts of the empire, so Australians adapted quickly to the environment, with troops serving mostly among the army's "mounted rifles." Enlistment in all official Australian contingents totalled 16,463.^[73] Another five to seven thousand Australians served in "irregular" regiments raised in South Africa. Perhaps five hundred Australian irregulars were killed. In total, 20,000 or more Australians served and about 1,000 were killed. A total of 267 died from disease, 251 were killed in action or died from wounds sustained in battle. A further 43 men were reported missing.^[74]

When the war began some Australians, like some Britons, opposed it. As the war dragged on some Australians became disenchanted, in part because of the sufferings of Boer civilians reported in the press. In an interesting twist (for Australians), when the British missed capturing President Paul Kruger, as he escaped Pretoria during its fall in June 1900, a Melbourne Punch, 21 June 1900, cartoon depicted how the War could be won, using the Kelly Gang.^[75]

The convictions and executions of two Australian lieutenants, Breaker Morant and Peter Handcock in 1902, and the imprisonment of a third, George Witton, had little impact on the Australian public at the time despite later legend. The controversial court-martial saw the three convicted of executing Boer prisoners under their authority. After the war, though, Australians joined an empire-wide campaign that saw Witton released from jail. Much later, some Australians came to see the execution of Morant and Handcock as instances of wrongfully executed Australians, as illustrated in the 1980 Australian film Breaker Morant.

Canada[link]

Wikisource has original text related to this article: Canadian Appeal for the Widows and Orphans of the South African War

See also Military history of Canada

The unveiling of the South African War Memorial in Toronto Canada in 1908

At first, Canadian Prime Minister Sir Wilfrid Laurier tried to keep Canada out of the war.^[76] The Canadian government was divided between those, primarily French Canadians, who wished to stay out of the war and others, primarily English Canadians, who wanted to fight. In the end, Laurier compromised by agreeing to support the British by providing only volunteers, equipment and transportation to the war.^[77] The United Kingdom would be responsible for paying the troops and returning them to Canada at the end of their service. The Boer War marked the first occasion in which large contingents of Canadian troops served abroad (individual Canadians had served in the Crimean War and a Canadian contingent was sent to the Nile Expedition). The 1st Canadian Contingent was composed of 1000 men recruited from the Canadian militia to form the 2nd (Special Service) Battalion of The Royal Canadian Regiment of Infantry. This contingent served under the command of the Permanent Force officer William Dillon Otter.

Canadian contingent in Quebec City, 1899 before departure

As a Major, and Lieutenant Colonel, Arthur Victor Seymour Williams commanded `B`Squadron, Canadian Mounted Rifles, South Africa in 1900. The Canadian Mounted Rifles/ Strathcona's Horse were recruited during "Black Week" where the British suffered a series of defeats and after the war would go on to help form part of the South African Police Forces and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP).^[78] Some in the Canadian Military saw the failures of troops in the early stages of the war effort as the failure of the British leadership against very challenging Boer tactics, later termed Guerilla warfare. Canadian officers commended their troops as being brighter and more adept at handling the Boer war tactics than the British command chain.^[78] More so, the first two battalions sent to South Africa were Canadian Militia, "Battalions servicing under Canadian Officers, carrying their own designation and answered to Militia Headquarters in Ottawa".^[78] This helped to foster a sense of national pride within Canadians on the battle front and back home. Specifically at the Battle of Leliefontein Canadian troops showed courage and bravery by holding the line when the British main forces retreated. This action and other conflicts throughout the war led Lord Kitchener to offer praise about the actions of Canadian forces, including the Strathcona Cavalry and the Canadian Mounted Rifles.^[79]

Boer War Victory Parade, Barrington Street, Halifax, Nova Scotia

The Battle of Paardeberg in February 1900 represented the second time Canadian soldiers saw battle abroad, the first being the Canadian involvement in the Nile Expedition of 1884–85.^[80] Canadians also saw action at the Battle of Faber's Put on 30 May 1900.^[81] On 7 November 1900, the Royal Canadian Dragoons engaged the Boers in the Battle of Leliefontein, where they saved British guns from capture during a retreat from the banks of the Komati River.^[82]

The Canadians had four Victoria Cross recipients in this war: Lieutenant Turner, Lieutenant Cockburn, Sergeant Holland and Arthur Richardson.^[83] Ultimately, over 8,600 Canadians volunteered to fight in the South African War.^[77] Lieutenant Harold Lothrop Borden, however, became the most famous Canadian casualty of the Second Boer War.^[84]

Not all soldiers saw action since many landed in South Africa after the hostilities ended while others (including the 3rd (Special Service) Battalion, The Royal Canadian Regiment) performed garrison duty in Halifax, Nova Scotia so that their British counterparts could join at the front. Later on, contingents of Canadians served with the paramilitary South Africa Constabulary. Approximately 267 Canadians died in the War.^[77] 89 men were killed in action, 135 died of disease, and the remainder died of accident or injury. 252 were wounded.

New Zealand[link]

See also Military history of New Zealand

When the Second Boer War seemed imminent, New Zealand offered its support. On 28 September 1899, Prime Minister Richard Seddon asked Parliament to approve the offer to the imperial government of a contingent of mounted rifles, thus becoming the first British Colony to send troops to the Boer War. The British position in the dispute with the Transvaal was "moderate and righteous," he maintained. He stressed the "crimson tie" of Empire that bound New Zealand to the mother-country and the importance of a strong British Empire for the colony's security.^[85]

By the time peace was concluded two and a half years later, 10 contingents of volunteers, totalling nearly 6,500 men from New Zealand, with 8,000 horses had fought in the conflict, along with doctors, nurses, veterinary surgeons and a small number of school teachers.^[86] Some 70 New Zealanders died from enemy action, with another 158 killed accidentally or by disease.^[87] The New Zealanders in South Africa 1899–1902

South Africa[link]

During the war, the British army also included substantial contingents from South Africa itself. There were large communities of English-speaking immigrants and settlers in Natal and Cape Colony (especially around Cape Town and Grahamstown), which formed volunteer units that took the field, or local "town guards." At one stage of the war, a "Colonial Division," consisting of five light horse and infantry units under Brigadier General Edward Brabant, took part in the invasion of the Orange Free State. Part of it withstood a siege by Christiaan De Wet at Wepener on the borders of Basutoland. Another large source of volunteers was the uitlander community, many of whom hastily left Johannesburg in the days immediately preceding the war.

Later during the war, Lord Kitchener attempted to form a Boer Police Force, as part of his efforts to pacify the occupied areas and effect a reconciliation with the Boer community. The members of this force were despised as traitors by the Boers still in the field. Those Boers who attempted to remain neutral after giving their parole to British forces were derided as "hensoppers" (hands-uppers) and were often coerced into giving support to the Boer guerrillas. (This was one of the reasons for the British ruthlessly scouring the countryside of people, livestock and anything else the Boer commandos might find useful.)

Like the Canadian and particularly the Australian and New Zealand contingents, many of the volunteer units formed by South Africans were "light horse" or mounted infantry, well suited to the countryside and manner of warfare. Some regular British officers scorned their comparative lack of formal discipline, but the light horse units were hardier and more suited to the demands of campaigning than the overloaded British cavalry,^{[citation needed]} who were still obsessed with the charge with lance or sabre. At their peak, 24,000 South Africans (including volunteers from the Empire) served in the field in various "colonial" units. Notable units (in addition to the Imperial Light Horse) were the South African Light Horse, Rimington's Guides, Kitchener's Horse and the Imperial Light Infantry.

See also[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Second Boer War or Boer war memorials

• Category:People of the Second Boer War
• Boer foreign volunteers
• Bombardment in the Second Boer War
• British Logistics in the Boer War
• History of South Africa
• List of Second Boer War Victoria Cross recipients
• London to Ladysmith via Pretoria account of the war by Winston Churchill as a newspaper correspondent accompanying the troops
• Military history of South Africa
• Opposition to the Second Boer War
• The Absent-Minded Beggar
• Volkstaat

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Cartwright, A.P (1964). The Dynamite Company. Cape Town: Purnell & Sons. 
• Davenport; Saunders (2000). South Africa: A Modern History. ISBN 0-8020-2261-8. 
• Pakenham, Thomas (1979). The Boer War. New York: Random House. ISBN 0-394-42742-4. http://books.google.com/?id=aoFzAAAAMAAJ. 
• Wessels, André (2000). "Afrikaners at War". In Gooch, John. The Boer War. London: Cass. 
• Steele, David (2000). "Salisbury and the Soldiers". In Gooch, John. The Boer War: Direction, Experience and Image. London: Cass. 

For other uses, see Boer (disambiguation)

Boers are a distinct group of the larger Afrikaner nation.^{[citation needed]}

Boer people

Paul Kruger, Andries Pretorius, Sarel Cilliers, and Petrus Jacobus Joubert
Total population
approx. 1.5 million.[1]
Languages
Afrikaans, South African English
Religion
Protestant (Afrikaner Calvinism, Reformed churches)
Related ethnic groups
Dutch, Flemish, Frisians; Germans, French, Scots, English; Cape Coloureds, Basters

Boer ( /ˈbʊər/, /ˈboʊ.ər/, or /ˈbɔər/; Afrikaans: [ˈbuːr]) is the Dutch and Afrikaans word for farmer, which came to denote the descendants of the Dutch-speaking settlers of the eastern Cape frontier^[2] in Southern Africa during the 18th century, as well as those who left the Cape Colony during the 19th century to settle in the Orange Free State, Transvaal (which are together known as the Boer Republics), and to a lesser extent Natal. Their primary motivations for leaving the Cape were to escape British rule and extract themselves from the constant border wars between the British imperial government and the native tribes on the eastern frontier.

History[link]

Origin[link]

Boer guerrillas during the Second Boer War

The Trekboers, as they were originally known, were mainly of Dutch origin and included Calvinists, Flemish and Frisian Calvinists, as well as French Huguenot^[3] and German and British protestants who first arrived in the Cape of Good Hope during the period of its administration (1652 – 1795) by the Dutch East India Company (Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie or VOC). Lesser migrations of Scandinavians, Portuguese, Greeks, Italians, Spanish, Polish, Scots, English, Jews, Russians and Irish immigrants also contributed to this ethnic mix.

For more information on history before the Great Trek, see Afrikaner.

Great trek[link]

Those Trekboers who trekked into and occupied the eastern Cape were semi-nomadic. A significant number in the eastern Cape frontier later became Grensboere ("border farmers") who were the direct ancestors of the Voortrekkers. The Voortrekkers were those Boers (mainly from the eastern Cape) who left the Cape en masse in a series of large scale migrations later called the Great Trek beginning in 1835 as a result of British colonialism and constant border wars. When used in a historical context, the term Boer may refer to an inhabitant of the Boer Republics as well as those who were cultural Boers.

Anglo-Boer wars[link]

Though the Boers accepted British rule without resistance in 1877, they fought two wars in the late 19th century to defend their internationally recognized independent countries, the republics of the Transvaal (the Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek, or ZAR) and the Orange Free State (OFS), against the threat of annexation by the British Crown. This led the key figure in organizing the resistance, Paul Kruger, into conflict with the British.^[4]

Boer War diaspora[link]

After the second Anglo-Boer War, a Boer diaspora occurred. Starting in 1903, the largest group emigrated to the Patagonia region of Argentina. Another group emigrated to British-ruled Kenya, from where most returned to South Africa during the 1930s, while a third group under the leadership of General Ben Viljoen emigrated to Mexico and to New Mexico and Texas in south-western USA.

Boer Revolt[link]

Jopie Fourie executed by firing squad for treason

The Maritz Rebellion or the Boer Revolt or the Five Shilling Rebellion or the Third Boer War, occurred in South Africa in 1914 at the start of World War I, in which men who supported the re-creation of the old Boer republics rose up against the government of the Union of South Africa because they did not want to side with the British against Germany so soon after they had had a long bloody war with the British. Many Boers had German ancestry and many members of the government were themselves former Boer military leaders who had fought with the Maritz rebels against the British in the Second Boer War, which had ended only twelve years earlier. The rebellion was put down by Louis Botha and Jan Smuts, and the ringleaders received heavy fines and terms of imprisonment. A renowned Boer, Jopie Fourie, was executed for treason in 1914. He was convicted as a rebel when, as an officer in the Union Defence Force, he refused to take up arms with the British.

Characteristics[link]

Culture[link]

Trekboers crossing the Karoo.

The desire to wander, known as trekgees, was a notable characteristic of the Boers. It figured prominently in the late 17th century when the Trekboers began to inhabit the northern and eastern Cape frontiers, again during the Great Trek when the Voortrekkers left the eastern Cape en masse, as well as after the major republics were established during the Thirstland Trek.^[5] When one such trekker was asked why he has emigrated he explained, "a drifting spirit was in our hearts, and we ourselves could not understand it. We just sold our farms and set out north-westwards to find a new home."^[5] A rustic characteristic and tradition was developed quite early on as Boer society was born on the frontiers of white settlement and on the outskirts of civilization.^[2]

The Boers had cut their ties to Europe as they emerged from the Trekboer group.^[6]

The separation and declaration of the republics was made out of necessity, rather than a personal choice. The Dutch was unwilling to protect the people they abandoned at the Cape of good hope.

The Boer quest for independence manifested in a tradition of declaring republics, which predates the arrival of the British; when the British arrived, Boer republics had already been declared and were in rebellion from the VOC (Dutch East India Company).^[7]

The Boers of the frontier were known for their independent spirit, resourcefulness, hardiness, and self-sufficiency, whose political notions verged on anarchy but had begun to be influenced by republicanism.^[7] Most of the men were also skilled with the use of guns as they would hunt and also were able to protect their families with them.

Nationalism[link]

Boer family, 1886

The Boer nation is well known for their strong nationalistic characteristics. Their nationalism was born of hundreds of years of fighting against imperialism, a continuing struggle for independence battling mainly British expansion into central South Africa, as well as the harsh African climate, a strong sense of nationhood. As with any other ethnic group that has come from troubled land to troubled land, many of them see it as their duty to educate future generations on their people's past.^{[citation needed]}

Calvinism[link]

The Boer nation is mainly descended from Dutch, German and French Huguenots, who migrated to South Africa during the 17th, 18th and early 19th centuries. The Boer nation has revealed a distinct Calvinist culture and the majority of Boers today are still members of a Reformed Church. The Nederduits Hervormde Kerk was the national Church of the South African Republic (1852–1902). Also note the "Orange" in Orange Free State (1854–1902) was named after the Protestant House of Orange in the Netherlands.

The Calvinist influence remains in that some fundamental Calvinist doctrines such as unconditional predestination and divine providence remains present in much of Boer culture, who see their role in society as abiding by the national laws and accepting calamity and hardship as part of their Christian duty.^[8]

A small number of Boers may also be members of Baptist, Pentecostal or Lutheran Churches.

Modern usage[link]

During recent times, mainly during the apartheid reform and post-1994 eras, many more white Afrikaans-speaking people, mainly with "conservative" political views and of Trekboer and Voortrekker descent, have preferred to be called "Boers" or Boere-Afrikaners, rather than "Afrikaners".^[9] They feel that there were many people of Voortrekker descent who were not co-opted or assimilated into what they see as the Cape-based Afrikaner identity which began emerging after the Second Anglo-Boer War and the subsequent establishment of the Union of South Africa in 1910. Certain Boer nationalists have asserted that they do not consider themselves a right-wing element of the political spectrum.^[10]

They contend that the Boers of the South African Republic (ZAR) and Orange Free State republics were recognized as a separate people or cultural group under international law by the Sand River Convention (which created the South African Republic in 1852),^[11] the Bloemfontein Convention (which created the Orange Free State Republic in 1854), the Pretoria Convention (which re-established the independence of the South African Republic 1881), the London Convention (which granted the full independence to the South African Republic in 1884) and the Vereeniging Peace Treaty, which formally ended the Second Anglo-Boer War on 31 May 1902. Others contend, however, that these treaties dealt only with agreements between governmental entities and do not imply the recognition of a Boer cultural identity per se.

The supporters of these views feel that the Afrikaner designation (or label) was used from the 1930s onwards as a means of unifying (politically at least) the white Afrikaans speakers of the Western Cape with those of Trekboer and Voortrekker descent (whose ancestors began migrating eastward during the late 17th century and throughout the 18th century and later northward during the Great Trek of the 1830s) in the north of South Africa, where the Boer Republics were established.^[9]

Since the Anglo-Boer war the term "Boervolk" was rarely used in the 20th century by the various regimes because of this attempt to assimilate the Boervolk with the Afrikaners. A portion of those who are the descendants of the Boerevolk have reasserted this designation.^[9]

The supporters of the "Boer" designation view the term "Afrikaner" as an artificial political label which usurped their history and culture, turning "Boer" achievements into "Afrikaner" achievements. They feel that the Western-Cape based Afrikaners — whose ancestors did not trek eastwards or northwards — took advantage of the republican Boers' destitution following the Anglo-Boer War and later attempted to assimilate the Boers into a new politically based cultural label as "Afrikaners".^[12][13][14]

In contemporary South Africa and due to Broederbond propaganda, Boer and Afrikaner have been used interchangeably despite the fact that the Boers are the smaller segment within the Afrikaner designation as the Afrikaners of Cape Dutch origin are larger. Afrikaner directly translated means "African" and subsequently refers to all Afrikaans speaking people in Africa who have their origins in the Cape Colony founded by Jan Van Riebeeck. Boer is the specific ethnic group within the larger Afrikaans speaking population.^{[citation needed]}

Politics[link]

• Democratic Alliance (South Africa)
• Freedom Front Plus
• Herstigte Nasionale Party

Education[link]

The BCVO (Movement for Christian-National Education) is a federation of 47 Calvinist private schools, primarily in the Free State and the Transvaal, committed to educating Boer children from grade 0 through to 12.^[15]

Media[link]

Some local Radio stations promote the ideals of the people identifying with Boer/Afrikaner people, like Radio Rosestad (in Bloemfontein), Overvaal Stereo and Radio Pretoria.

Territories[link]

Two territorial areas are being developed as settlement exclusively for Boer/Afrikaners, Orania in the Northern Cape and Kleinfontein near Pretoria.

Notable Boers[link]

Voortrekker leaders

• Sarel Cilliers
• Andries Hendrik Potgieter
• Andries Pretorius
• Piet Retief

Great trek

• Racheltjie de Beer
• Dirkie Uys

Participants in the Second Anglo-Boer War

• Koos de la Rey, general and regarded as being one of the great military leaders of the Second Anglo-Boer War.
• Danie Theron, soldier
• Christiaan Rudolf de Wet, general
• Siener van Rensburg, considered a prophet by some.

Politicians

• Louis Botha, first prime minister of South Africa (1910–19) and former Boer general
• Petrus Jacobus Joubert, general and cabinet member of the Transvaal Republic
• Paul Kruger, president of the Transvaal Republic
• Eugene Terre'Blanche, founder of the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging

Spies

• Fritz Joubert Duquesne, a Boer Captain known as the Black Panther, served in the Second Boer War. Captured in Mozambique, he escaped prison in Portugal and returned to South Africa as a British officer. In 1901, he was caught planning to sabotage strategic British installations in Cape Town and sentenced to life in prison; however, he escaped and was re-captured several times again throughout his life. In World War I, Duquesne spied for Germany, earning the Iron Cross for allegedly sinking the HMS Hampshire thereby killing Lord Kitchener in 1916. He also served as a Nazi spy in the United States and, in 1941, he was caught by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the largest espionage case in U.S. history: The Duquesne Spy Ring.

See also[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

•  "Boer". New International Encyclopedia. 1905. 

Media related to Boers at Wikimedia Commons

Robert Baden-Powell, 1st Baron Baden-Powell
Founder of Scouting
Nickname	B-P
Born	22 February 1857 (1857-02-22) Paddington, London, England
Died	8 January 1941 (1941-01-09) (aged 83) Nyeri, Kenya
Service/branch	British Army
Years of service	1876–1910
Rank	Lieutenant-General
Commands held	Chief of Staff, Second Matabele War (1896–1897) 5th Dragoon Guards in India (1897) Inspector General of Cavalry, England (1903)
Battles/wars	Anglo-Ashanti Wars Second Matabele War Siege of Mafeking Second Boer War
Awards	Ashanti Star (1895)[1] Matabele Campaign, British South Africa Company Medal (1896)[2] Queen's South Africa Medal (1899)[3] King's South Africa Medal ( 1902)[4] Boy Scouts Silver Wolf Boy Scouts Silver Buffalo Award (1926)[5] World Scout Committee Bronze Wolf (1935)[6] Grand Cross of the Order of Dannebrog, Denmark (1921) Großes Dankabzeichen des ÖPB (1927) Großes Ehrenzeichen der Republik am Bande (1931) Goldene Gemse (1931) Grand-Cross in the Order of Orange-Nassau (1932) Order of Merit (1937) Wateler Peace Prize (1937) Order of St Michael and St George Royal Victorian Order Order of the Bath
Other work	Founder of the international Scouting Movement; writer; artist
Signature

Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell, 1st Baron Baden-Powell, Bt, OM, GCMG, GCVO, KCB ( /ˈbeɪdən ˈpoʊ.əl/; 22 February 1857 – 8 January 1941), also known as B.-P., B-P or Lord Baden-Powell, was a lieutenant-general in the British Army, writer, founder and Chief Scout of the Scout Movement.

After having been educated at Charterhouse School, Baden-Powell served in the British Army from 1876 until 1910 in India and Africa. In 1899, during the Second Boer War in South Africa, Baden-Powell successfully defended the town in the Siege of Mafeking. Several of his military books, written for military reconnaissance and scout training in his African years, were also read by boys. Based on those earlier books, he wrote Scouting for Boys, published in 1908 by Sir Arthur Pearson, for youth readership. In 1907, he held the first Brownsea Island Scout camp, which is now seen as the beginning of Scouting.

After his marriage to Olave St Clair Soames, Baden-Powell, his sister Agnes Baden-Powell and notably his wife actively gave guidance to the Scouting Movement and the Girl Guides Movement. Baden-Powell lived his last years in Nyeri, Kenya, where he died and was buried in 1941.

Early life[link]

Baden-Powell was born as Robert Stephenson Smyth Powell, or more familiarly as Stephe Powell, at 6 Stanhope Street (now 11 Stanhope Terrace), Paddington in London, on 22 February 1857.^[7] He was named for his godfather, Robert Stephenson, the railway and civil engineer;^[8] his third name was his mother's maiden name. His father Reverend Baden Powell, a Savilian Professor of Geometry at Oxford University, already had four teenage children from the second of his two previous marriages. On 10 March 1846 at St Luke's Church, Chelsea, Reverend Powell married Henrietta Grace Smyth (3 September 1824 – 13 October 1914), eldest daughter of Admiral William Henry Smyth and 28 years his junior. Quickly they had Warington (early 1847), George (late 1847), Augustus (1849) and Francis (1850). After three further children who died when very young, they had Stephe, Agnes (1858) and Baden (1860). The three youngest children and the often ill Augustus were close friends. Reverend Powell died when Stephe was three, and as tribute to his father and to set her own children apart from their half-siblings and cousins, the mother changed the family name to Baden-Powell. Subsequently, Stephe was raised by his mother, a strong woman who was determined that her children would succeed. Baden-Powell would say of her in 1933 "The whole secret of my getting on, lay with my mother."^[7][9][10]

After attending Rose Hill School, Tunbridge Wells, during which his favourite brother Augustus died, Stephe Baden-Powell was awarded a scholarship to Charterhouse, a prestigious public school. His first introduction to Scouting skills was through stalking and cooking game while avoiding teachers in the nearby woods, which were strictly out-of-bounds. He also played the piano and violin, was an ambidextrous artist, and enjoyed acting. Holidays were spent on yachting or canoeing expeditions with his brothers.^[7]

Military career[link]

In 1876, R.S.S. Baden-Powell, as he styled himself then, joined the 13th Hussars in India with the rank of lieutenant. He enhanced and honed his military scouting skills amidst the Zulu in the early 1880s in the Natal province of South Africa, where his regiment had been posted, and where he was Mentioned in Despatches. During one of his travels, he came across a large string of wooden beads, worn by the Zulu king Dinizulu, which was later incorporated into the Wood Badge training programme he started after he founded the Scouting Movement. Baden-Powell's skills impressed his superiors and he was brevetted Major as Military Secretary and senior Aide-de-camp of the Commander-in-Chief and Governor of Malta, his uncle General Sir Henry Augustus Smyth.^[7] He was posted in Malta for three years, also working as intelligence officer for the Mediterranean for the Director of Military Intelligence.^[7] He frequently travelled disguised as a butterfly collector, incorporating plans of military installations into his drawings of butterfly wings.^[11]

Baden-Powell returned to Africa in 1896, and served in the Second Matabele War, in the expedition to relieve British South Africa Company personnel under siege in Bulawayo.^[12] This was a formative experience for him not only because he had the time of his life commanding reconnaissance missions into enemy territory in Matobo Hills, but because many of his later Boy Scout ideas took hold here.^[13] It was during this campaign that he first met and befriended the American scout Frederick Russell Burnham, who introduced Baden-Powell to the American Old West and woodcraft (i.e., scoutcraft), and here that he wore his signature Stetson campaign hat and neckerchief for the first time.^[7]

Baden-Powell was accused of illegally executing a prisoner of war in 1896, the Matabele chief Uwini, who had been promised his life would be spared if he surrendered. Uwini was shot by firing squad under Baden-Powell's instructions. Baden-Powell was cleared by an inquiry, and later claimed he was "released without a stain on my character."

After Rhodesia, Baden-Powell served in the Fourth Ashanti War in Gold Coast. In 1897, at the age of 40, he was brevetted colonel (the youngest colonel in the British Army) and given command of the 5th Dragoon Guards in India.^[14] A few years later he wrote a small manual, entitled Aids to Scouting, a summary of lectures he had given on the subject of military scouting, to help train recruits. Using this and other methods he was able to train them to think independently, use their initiative, and survive in the wilderness.

Baden-Powell returned to South Africa prior to the Second Boer War and was engaged in further military actions against the Zulus. He organised the Legion of Frontiersmen to assist the regular army. While engaged in this, he was at Mafeking when it was surrounded by a Boer army, at times in excess of 8,000 men.

Baden-Powell became garrison commander during the subsequent Siege of Mafeking, which lasted 217 days. Although greatly outnumbered, the garrison held out until relieved, in part thanks to cunning deceptions devised by Baden-Powell. Fake minefields were planted and his soldiers pretended to avoid non-existent barbed wire while moving between trenches.^[15] Baden-Powell did most of the reconnaissance work himself.^[16] In one instance noting that the Boers had not removed the rail line, Baden-Powell loaded an armoured locomotive with sharpshooters and successfully sent it down the rails into the heart of the Boer encampment and back again in a strategic attempt to decapitate the Boer leadership.

Baden-Powell on patriotic postcard in 1900

Contrary views of Baden-Powell's actions during the siege argue that his success in resisting the Boers was secured at the expense of the lives of the native African soldiers and civilians, including members of his own African garrison. Pakenham stated that Baden-Powell drastically reduced the rations to the native garrison.^[17] However, in 2001, after subsequent research, Pakenham decidedly retreated from this position.^[7][18]

During the siege, the Mafeking Cadet Corps of white boys below fighting age stood guard, carried messages, assisted in hospitals, and so on, freeing grown men to fight. Baden-Powell did not form the Cadet Corps himself, and there is no evidence that he took much notice of them during the Siege. But he was sufficiently impressed with both their courage and the equanimity with which they performed their tasks to use them later as an object lesson in the first chapter of Scouting for Boys. The siege was lifted on 16 May 1900. Baden-Powell was promoted to Major-General, and became a national hero.^[19] After organising the South African Constabulary, the national police force, he returned to England to take up a post as Inspector General of Cavalry in 1903. In 1907 he was appointed to command a division in the newly-formed Territorial Force.^[20]

In 1910 Lieutenant-General Baden-Powell decided to retire from the Army, reputedly on the advice of King Edward VII, who suggested that he could better serve his country by promoting Scouting.^[21][22]

On the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Baden-Powell put himself at the disposal of the War Office. No command was given him, for, as Lord Kitchener said: "he could lay his hand on several competent divisional generals but could find no one who could carry on the invaluable work of the Boy Scouts."^[23] It was widely rumoured that Baden-Powell was engaged in spying, and intelligence officers took great care to spread the myth.^[24]

Scouting movement[link]

On his return from Africa in 1903, Baden-Powell found that his military training manual, Aids to Scouting, had become a best-seller, and was being used by teachers and youth organisations.^[25] Following his involvement in the Boys' Brigade as Brigade Secretary and Officer in charge of its scouting section, with encouragement from his friend, William Alexander Smith, Baden-Powell decided to re-write Aids to Scouting to suit a youth readership. In August 1907 he held a camp on Brownsea Island to test out his ideas. About twenty boys attended: eight from local Boys' Brigade companies, and about twelve public school boys, mostly sons of his friends.

Baden-Powell was also influenced by Ernest Thompson Seton, who founded the Woodcraft Indians. Seton gave Baden-Powell a copy of his book The Birch Bark Roll of the Woodcraft Indians and they met in 1906.^[26][27] The first book on the Scout Movement, Baden-Powell's Scouting for Boys was published in six instalments in 1908, and has sold approximately 150 million copies as the fourth best-selling book of the 20th century.^[28]

Reviewing the Boy Scouts of Washington D.C. from the portico of the White House: Baden-Powell, President Taft, British ambassador Bryce (1912)

Statue of Robert Baden-Powell in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Boys and girls spontaneously formed Scout troops and the Scouting Movement had inadvertently started, first as a national, and soon an international phenomenon. The Scouting Movement was to grow up in friendly parallel relations with the Boys' Brigade. A rally for all Scouts was held at Crystal Palace in London in 1909, at which Baden-Powell discovered the first Girl Scouts. The Girl Guide Movement was subsequently formalised in 1910 under the auspices of Baden-Powell's sister, Agnes Baden-Powell. Baden-Powell's friend Juliette Gordon Low was encouraged by him to bring the Movement to the United States, where she founded the Girl Scouts of the USA.

In 1920, the 1st World Scout Jamboree took place in Olympia, and Baden-Powell was acclaimed Chief Scout of the World. Baden-Powell was created a Baronet in 1921 and Baron Baden-Powell, of Gilwell, in the County of Essex, on 17 September 1929, Gilwell Park being the International Scout Leader training centre.^[29] After receiving this honour, Baden-Powell mostly styled himself "Baden-Powell of Gilwell".

Three Scouting pioneers: Robert Baden-Powell (seated), Ernest T. Seton (left), and Dan Beard (right)

In 1929, during the 3rd World Scout Jamboree, he received as a present a new 20-horsepower Rolls-Royce car (chassis number GVO-40, registration OU 2938) and an Eccles Caravan.^[30] This combination well served the Baden-Powells in their further travels around Europe. The caravan was nicknamed Eccles and is now on display at Gilwell Park. The car, nicknamed Jam Roll, was sold after his death by Olave Baden-Powell in 1945. Jam Roll and Eccles were reunited at Gilwell for the 21st World Scout Jamboree in 2007. Recently it has been purchased on behalf of Scouting and is owned by a charity, B-P Jam Roll Ltd. Funds are being raised to repay the loan that was used to purchase the car.^[30][31] Baden-Powell also had a positive impact on improvements in youth education.^[32] Under his dedicated command the world Scouting movement grew. By 1922 there were more than a million Scouts in 32 countries; by 1939 the number of Scouts was in excess of 3.3 million.^[33]

At the 5th World Scout Jamboree in 1937, Baden-Powell gave his farewell to Scouting, and retired from public Scouting life. 22 February, the joint birthday of Robert and Olave Baden-Powell, continues to be marked as Founder's Day by Scouts and Thinking Day by Guides to remember and celebrate the work of the Chief Scout and Chief Guide of the World.

In his final letter to the Scouts, Baden-Powell wrote:

...I have had a most happy life and I want each one of you to have a happy life too. I believe that God put us in this jolly world to be happy and enjoy life. Happiness does not come from being rich, nor merely being successful in your career, nor by self-indulgence. One step towards happiness is to make yourself healthy and strong while you are a boy, so that you can be useful and so you can enjoy life when you are a man. Nature study will show you how full of beautiful and wonderful things God has made the world for you to enjoy. Be contented with what you have got and make the best of it. Look on the bright side of things instead of the gloomy one. But the real way to get happiness is by giving out happiness to other people. Try and leave this world a little better than you found it and when your turn comes to die, you can die happy in feeling that at any rate you have not wasted your time but have done your best. 'Be Prepared' in this way, to live happy and to die happy — stick to your Scout Promise always — even after you have ceased to be a boy — and God help you to do it.^[34]

Personal life[link]

Olave Baden-Powell

In January 1912, Baden-Powell was en route to New York on a Scouting World Tour, on the ocean liner Arcadian, when he met Olave St Clair Soames.^[35][36] She was 23, while he was 55; they shared the same birthday, 22 February. They became engaged in September of the same year, causing a media sensation due to Baden-Powell's fame. To avoid press intrusion, they married in secret on 31 October 1912, at St Peter's Church in Parkstone.^[37] The Scouts of England each donated a penny to buy Baden-Powell a wedding gift, a car (note that this is not the Rolls-Royce they were presented with in 1929). There is a monument to their marriage inside St Mary's Church, Brownsea Island.

Baden-Powell and Olave lived in Pax Hill near Bentley, Hampshire from about 1919 until 1939.^[38] The Bentley house was a gift of her father.^[39] Directly after he had married, Baden-Powell began to suffer persistent headaches, which were considered by his doctor to be of psychosomatic origin and treated with dream analysis.^[7] The headaches disappeared upon his moving into a makeshift bedroom set up on his balcony.

Baden-Powell with wife and three children, 1917

The Baden-Powells had three children, one son (Peter) and two daughters. Peter succeeded in 1941 to the Baden-Powell barony.^[29]

• Arthur Robert Peter (Peter), later 2nd Baron Baden-Powell (1913–1962). He married Carine Crause-Boardman in 1936, and had three children: Robert Crause, later 3rd Baron Baden-Powell; David Michael (Michael), current heir to the titles, and Wendy.
• Heather Grace (1915–1986), who married John King and had two children: Michael, who died in the sinking of SS Heraklion, and Timothy;
• Betty (1917–2004), who married Gervas Charles Robert Clay in 1936 and had a daughter: Gillian, and three sons: Robin, Nigel and Crispin.

In addition, when Olave's sister Auriol Davidson née Soames died in 1919, Olave and Robert took her three nieces, Christian (1912–1975), Clare (1913–1980), and Yvonne, (1918–1995?), into their family and brought them up as their own children.^[40]

Baden-Powell grave

In 1939, Baden-Powell and Olave moved to a cottage he had commissioned in Nyeri, Kenya, near Mount Kenya, where he had previously been to recuperate. The small one-room house, which he named Paxtu, was located on the grounds of the Outspan Hotel, owned by Eric Sherbrooke Walker, Baden-Powell's first private secretary and one of the first Scout inspectors.^[7] Walker also owned the Treetops Hotel, approx 17 km out in the Aberdare Mountains, often visited by Baden-Powell and people of the Happy Valley set. The Paxtu cottage is integrated into the Outspan Hotel buildings and serves as a small Scouting museum.

Baden-Powell died on 8 January 1941 and is buried in Nyeri, in St. Peter's Cemetery^[41] His gravestone bears a circle with a dot in the centre "ʘ", which is the trail sign for "Going home", or "I have gone home":^[42] When his wife Olave died, her ashes were sent to Kenya and interred beside her husband. Kenya has declared Baden-Powell's grave a national monument.^[43]

Personal beliefs[link]

A World War I propaganda poster drawn by Baden-Powell

Tim Jeal, who wrote the biography Baden-Powell, argued that Baden-Powell's distrust of Communism led to his implicit support, through naïveté, of fascism. In 1939 Baden-Powell noted in his diary: "Lay up all day. Read Mein Kampf. A wonderful book, with good ideas on education, health, propaganda, organisation etc. – and ideals which Hitler does not practise himself."^[7]:550 Baden-Powell admired Benito Mussolini early in the Italian fascist leader's career.

Some very early Scouting "Thanks" badges had a swastika symbol on them.^[44] According to biographer Michael Rosenthal, Baden-Powell used the swastika because he was a Nazi sympathiser. Jeal, however, argues that Baden-Powell was ignorant of the symbol's growing association with Nazism and that he used the symbol for its centuries-old meaning of "good luck" in India. Also, Baden-Powell was named by the Nazis in "The Black Book of people to be arrested during the conquest of Great Britain. Scouting was regarded as a dangerous spy organisation by the Nazis.^[45] Finally, when Nazi use of the swastika became well-known, the Scouts stopped using it.

Artist and writer[link]

Baden-Powell made paintings and drawings almost every day of his life. Most have a humorous or informative character.^[7] He published books and other texts during his years of military service both to finance his life and to educate his men.^[7]

Baden-Powell was regarded as an excellent storyteller. During his whole life he told "ripping yarns" to audiences.^[7] After having published Scouting for Boys, Baden-Powell kept on writing more handbooks and educative materials for all Scouts, as well as directives for Scout Leaders. In his later years, he also wrote about the Scout movement and his ideas for its future. He spent the last decade of his life in Africa, and many of his later books had African themes. Currently, many pages of his field diary, complete with drawings, are on display at the National Scouting Museum in Irving, Texas.

Sexuality[link]

Early discussion of Baden-Powell's sexuality focused on his relationship with his close friend Kenneth McLaren.^{[46]:217–218[47]:48} Tim Jeal's later biography discusses the relationship and finds that there is no conclusive evidence that this friendship was physical.^[7]:82 Jeal then examines Baden-Powell's views on women, his appreciation of the male form, his military relationships, and his marriage, concluding that Baden-Powell might have been a repressed homosexual.^[7]:103 Jeal's conclusion is shared by some biographers and disputed by others, but is not yet examined in any detail by other scholars.^[48]:6

Works[link]