First Anglo-Boer War

British & Boer Competition in Southern Africa

Great Britain established a colony in Southern Africa in 1806, the Cape Colony, which included the Cape of Good Hope, an important stopping point for ships sailing to and from Britain and its possessions in Asia, particularly British India. Another British colony was founded in the region in 1843: Natal. The British had competition, not only from indigenous Africans but also from the Boers. The Boers were White settlers in Southern Africa who had Dutch, German, or French ancestry. These settlers had first come to this part of Africa in the 17th century when it was controlled by the Dutch East India Company.

The name Boer means "farmer." They were also known as Afrikaners because they spoke Afrikaans. These settlers "were tough, independent-minded and Calvinist, and later developed a trenchant anti-Britishness" (Reid, 71). The Boer attitude to Africans was one of absolute racial superiority. "In their conflicts with black people they were uniquely uncompromising. On the frontier they ruled by the whip and the gun" (Pakenham, 45).

Through the 1830s, when both the British outlawing of slavery – the Boers extensively used slaves on their farms – and significant population growth applied too much pressure to land and resources around the Cape, over 14,000 Boers migrated to find land elsewhere, an epic event known as the Great Trek. From these new territories, two Boer republics were formed: Transvaal (founded in 1852) and the Orange Free State (founded in 1854). The British government officially recognised these Boer states in the 1852 Sand River Convention and the 1854 Bloemfontein Convention, respectively.

Largely rural and with only a modest trade related to agriculture, Southern Africa's fortunes were transformed following the discovery of diamonds at Kimberley in Griqualand in 1867. The British steadily expanded their control of the region. Griqualand, renamed West Griqualand by the British, was made a crown colony in 1871. The dream of many senior British colonialists was to unite the various colonies into a single state of South Africa. The Boers, naturally, valued their independence and saw no reason to become another part of the British Empire.

Tensions between the British and Boers over who should control what territory in Southern Africa were further complicated by the fact that thousands of Boers lived within the Cape Colony and Natal. Another source of contention was the policy of the settlers towards native Africans. The British were generally keen to maintain peaceful relations with African chiefs (although this did not stop them from taking what land and resources they wanted now and then), while the Boers considered Africans an excellent source of cheap labour and were continually fighting to expand their frontiers and steal cattle from indigenous peoples. The British government in London felt the Boers were needlessly causing instability in the region, while the Boers resented imperial interference in their affairs. The Boers also resented the increasing influence of Anglo-Saxon culture on their republics, both of which had a large British population.

The British Takeover of Transvaal

In the mid-1870s, a new British Colonial Secretary began to push for a more aggressive policy of expansion in Southern Africa. Lord Carnarvon believed a federal South Africa would bring definite benefits: "Federation would greatly improve and cheapen the administration of affairs in almost every branch and greatly lessen the probability of a demand for aid in the shape of Imperial money or troops" (quoted in Smith, 87).

A crisis in British-Boer relations came in 1877. The most dangerous obstacle to the British ambition of creating a federation of colonies was the Zulu Kingdom, a powerful state with a large and successful army. The Zulus were such a threat to neighbouring Transvaal that the British decided to temporarily take over the Boer state on 12 April 1877. The Boers, through necessity, complied with the takeover for their own protection. Transvaal had almost bankrupted itself through the constant frontier wars, and the state had recently been invaded by the Pedi tribe. A failed railway project to build a line from Mozambique to Pretoria, the Transvaal capital, had left the state's finances with a credit of a mere 12 shillings and 6 pence. The British takeover was implemented by a handful of officials and just 25 police officers. The next month, a British battalion arrived to dissuade any Boers from changing their minds. The British injected £100,000 into the Transvaal treasury, set up a telegraph line, and raised their flag over the Volksraad parliament building.

Simmering Resentment

A British army defeated the Zulu Kingdom in 1879 (Zululand became a crown colony in 1887). Ironically for the British, the removal of the Zulu threat only strengthened the position of the Boer republics, who could now concentrate on their struggle with their fellow Whites. In 1880, the Transvaal Boers wanted their independence back, but the British government refused to grant it. The Boers, though, were willing to fight for independence, which would, at the very least, remove from them the burden of paying taxes to the British. The first step was to send a delegation, one which included the vice president of Transvaal, Paul Kruger (1825-1904), to London to plead the case for political autonomy. The mission, which presented a petition signed by 6,591 Boer farmers calling for independence to be restored, was sent back to Africa with a polite but firm no ringing in their ears.

The Transvaal Boers were not at all happy that most of the British investment in their new colony had gone to the telegraph network. There had been no investment in roads, bridges, or hospitals. The legislative council, which governed the state from Pretoria, was packed with Britishers and strikingly empty of Boer delegates. Many Boer farmers now threatened to boycott British-owned businesses and to withhold their tax obligations. Trouble was brewing.

A party of 1,000 armed Boers threatened to force the issue at Wonderfontein, but the British general in charge in Transvaal, the veteran Garnet Wolseley (1833-1913), had the leaders arrested. Wolseley returned to England, but, in an epic misread of the local situation, not before he recommended reducing the battalions in Natal and Transvaal from six to four.

War Breaks Out

In November 1880, one of those seemingly innocuous events in colonial life occurred: a man was arrested for not paying his taxes. In fact, this event sparked a full-scale rebellion. The Boer arrested was called Bezuidenhout, and the local sheriff attempted to seize his farm wagons in lieu of taxes. A group of armed Boers led by Piet Cronjé (1836-1911) intervened to defend Bezuidenhout. On 16 December, shots were exchanged between a Boer commando and the British garrison at Potchefstroom. Later that month, around 5,000 armed Boers met at Paardekraal, and they were roused by speeches of defiance delivered by Kruger and the firebrand clergyman-lawyer Edward Jorissen. It was agreed by all present that a declaration of independence would be made and the old Boer parliament restored.

Small groups of armed Boers would tackle each of the various British garrisons, while a larger force would head to the border with Natal to prevent any new British forces from entering Transvaal. The Boers were not professional soldiers. They had excellent rifles and were good at shooting them, but they had no artillery. They had numbers on their side, provided they struck before the British could reinforce their colonies by ship. Perhaps the greatest advantage the Boers had was their knowledge of the local terrain and how best to fight in it.

The first action occurred on 20 December 1880 when a British column of around 250 soldiers was warned to turn back and, when the commanding officer refused, was attacked. The invaders had reached Bronkhorst Spruit, two days' march from Pretoria. The British could not even see where the Boers were firing from, such was their clever use of terrain. With one-third of their number dead and another third wounded, the British surrendered. The Boers had captured a valuable supply of guns and ammunition. A second Boer victory came at Laing's Nek on 28 January 1881.

The Boers again inflicted a serious defeat on the British at Majuba Hill in northern Natal on 27 February. A 600-man column led by Major-General George Colley attempted to climb Majuba and then attack a Boer camp on the other side. In the event, it was the Boers who went on the attack, climbing the hill and effectively sniping at the British, who had not prepared any trench defences. The British took heavy casualties and retreated in a panic. Only Colley remained on the hill; he was shot in the forehead as he walked towards the enemy.

Armistice

The Battle of Majuba was a bad enough defeat, but there was even more troubling news for the British government. Rumours abounded that many Boers in the Orange Free State and even Cape Colony were prepared to join the Transvaal rebellion. A military solution seemed now the least likely to redress the real causes of the war. Crucially, Kruger was willing to accept an armistice.

The new British prime minister, William Gladstone (1809-1898), was determined not to involve Britain in colonial wars where strategic interests were not at stake. The government was also preoccupied with the serious troubles then ongoing in Ireland. Consequently, and despite calls from some quarters to seek revenge for Majuba Hill, Gladstone chose not to send a British army to South Africa but instead signed provisional peace terms with the Transvaal Boers on 23 March. As the historian I. Knight notes:

The Transvaal War achieved none of Britain's aims, either militarily or politically, and it was the only consistently unsuccessful campaign waged by the British army during the Victorian period.

(39)

Two conventions were signed between the British and the Boer republics, one in Pretoria in August 1881 and the second in London in February 1884. The conventions restored Boer independence, but there was some ambiguity to the situation since there was a reference in the 1881 Convention's preamble that asserted British suzerainty, particularly over foreign policy. There was also a clause that prevented Transvaal from taking any action that might economically harm other colonies in Southern Africa. The Boers thought they had their independence back. The British thought they had given back only a limited independence. This ambiguity of interpretation permitted peace but was also a recipe for a future disaster.

Aftermath

Defeat in the Transvaal War did not prevent the British from continuing their imperialist expansion. They acquired the Basutoland Protectorate (modern Lesotho) in 1884 and the Bechuanaland Protectorate (modern Botswana) in 1885. Swaziland and Pondoland were added to Britain's motley collection of Southern African states in 1893 and 1894, respectively.

In the middle of all this imperialism, there was the remarkable discovery of massive gold deposits at Witwatersrand in Transvaal in 1886. Perhaps inevitably, another conflict broke out, the Second Anglo-Boer War in 1899. This war was conducted on a much larger scale than the first conflict. Hostilities originally centered on the political rights of non-Boer Whites in Transvaal and the suspicion caused by the failed Jameson Raid of December 1895 (an unofficial British attempt at a coup d'etat). The war would decide who would control Southern Africa and its rich resources. The British won the war, although they were widely discredited for the use of scorched-earth tactics and civilian concentration camps. The two Boer Republics and the various British colonies were united into the Union of South Africa in 1910.