The causes of the Boer War (aka Second Anglo-Boer War, South Africa War, and Second War of Freedom, 1899-1902) stretched back to the early 19th century and competition for land and resources between British and Boer settlers. The rivalry turned to animosity as the century progressed, accentuated by discoveries of diamonds and gold, and further fuelled by mutual suspicions of uncontrolled imperialism and nationalism. A brief war in 1880-81 and a failed coup d'etat in 1895 pushed the two sides even further apart until the coming of a second, much larger conflict proved unstoppable.
The varied causes of the conflict, commonly referred to at the time simply as the South Africa War and fought between the Boer republics of Transvaal and Orange Free State and the British colonies of Cape Colony and Natal, included:
- Competition for agricultural land.
- Competition to control valuable natural resources like diamonds and gold.
- The British claim of suzerainty over the foreign policy of the Boer republics.
- Boer dissatisfaction with Britain's prohibition of the use of slaves in Southern Africa.
- British dissatisfaction at the discriminatory treatment of non-Boers in the Boer republics.
- Boer resentment at the increasing influence of Anglo-Saxon culture in the republics.
- British resentment over the Boers' continuing raids on neighbouring African peoples, which caused regional instability.
- Boer suspicions aroused by the Jameson Raid, an unofficial British attempt to take over Transvaal.
- British suspicion that the Boers wished to form an alliance with Germany, which would threaten Britain's regional dominance.
- Britain wanted to create a single union of Southern African states.
Competition for Land
The Boers were settlers in Southern Africa with Dutch ancestry (and that of certain other European countries, notably Germany and France). 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). They had first arrived in the 17th century, and they eventually created two republics: Transvaal (1852) and Orange Free State (1854). These republics were created after the Great Trek of the 1830s, a Boer migration away from British control in the south. The Boers had not agreed with the British policy of abolishing slavery and resented the increasing influence of Anglo-Saxon culture on their own.
Meanwhile, British settlers, who had arrived later than the Boers, created the colonies of Cape Colony (1806) and Natal (1843), principally to safeguard the Cape of Good Hope, an important stopping point on shipping routes between Europe and Asia.
Both the British and the Boers had acquired their land at the expense of African states, continuously expanding their territory in search of more land suitable for farming and to control trade routes. The British made Griqualand a crown colony in 1871 and merged it with Cape Colony in 1873. The British defeated the Zulu Kingdom in the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879. Zululand became a crown colony in 1887 and was absorbed into Natal in 1897. British expansion continued with the establishment of the Basutoland Protectorate (modern Lesotho, 1884), British Bechuanaland and the Bechuanaland Protectorate (modern Botswana, 1885), and Swaziland (1893). The acquisition of these territories backfired spectacularly since the Boers were released from fighting Africans and could now concentrate their fight for territorial expansion against the British.
Diamonds & Gold
Southern Africa did not have natural resources of any great value to the White settlers, but this all changed when diamonds were discovered in Griqualand in 1867. "Within five years of the discovery in Griqualand, more than £1.6 million-worth (£170 million today) of diamonds were being annually exported" (Boahen, 183). The blatant British takeover of the diamond mines at Kimberley was bitterly resented by the Boers. Relations got even worse when a loss by the Boers to a Pedi attack gave the British the excuse to annex Transvaal in January 1877, claiming that only a British military presence would guarantee security. This led to the First Anglo-Boer War (1880-81), really a series of skirmishes, which the Boers won.
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.
The British government had been reluctant to invest its armed forces in the region during the First Boer War, but that policy changed when even more riches were discovered in 1886. This time the vast new wealth came in the form of gold, discovered in Witwatersrand in Transvaal. The Rand gold mines would soon be producing 40% of the world's gold. Gold and diamonds would together account for 75% of South Africa's exports. Although Transvaal maintained control of the gold mines, British investments in Transvaal totalled over £350 million by 1899, and two-thirds of Witwatersrand's mines were owned by British shareholders. The fact that the gold was in the Boers' territory and that Transvaal "was transformed into the richest independent state in Africa" (James, 101) was a constant source of ire for the British.
Mass Immigration
The British mine magnates were not very happy at the restrictions on the more skilled element of their workforce in Transvaal. Whites were attracted from all over the world to come and work in Witwatersrand; 44,000 of them came to the mines by 1896. In 1870, Southern Africa had around 250,000 White settlers. By 1891, there were 600,000. The Boers, jealous of their privileged position, passed laws to ensure these new White workers, known as Uitlanders ('Outsiders'), could not vote and did not enjoy the same rights of citizenship as Boers in Transvaal. The president of Transvaal, Paul Kruger (1825-1904), passed a law that only after 14 years of residency could a White immigrant vote in political elections. The non-Boer White workers did not take kindly to having no voting rights but still having the obligation to pay taxes and perform military service for the Transvaal government.
The Jameson Raid
Mutual suspicions were raised on both sides by the unofficial British attempt at a coup in Transvaal with the failed Jameson Raid of December-January 1895. The raid was funded by British mining magnates, including Cecil Rhodes (who was also the prime minister of Cape Colony), who wanted to control the gold fields for themselves. The raid collapsed when miners in Transvaal refused to support it. Another factor in the failure was that the raiders numbered a mere 600 men. As a consequence of the botched raid, the Transvaal government began to buy foreign arms and signed a treaty with Germany, much to Britain's horror, since a German involvement in Southern Africa could jeopardise British interests and dominance across the entire region.
Alfred Milner, the British High Commissioner in South Africa between 1897 and 1905, was a key figure responsible for the hostile British attitude toward the Boers. As the historian S. C. Smith notes, by "manipulating the press in both South Africa and Britain, Milner created a climate of opinion which made compromise difficult" (90). The situation was not helped by Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany (reign 1888-1918) sending a well-publicised telegram message to Kruger congratulating him on his successful rebuttal of the Jameson Raid. It seemed that British imperialism and Boer nationalism could not coexist; one must give way to the other.
The British colonial authorities in Cape Colony and Natal certainly did not agree with Kruger's discrimination against White immigrants, and a conference was set up to discuss the issue: the Bloemfontein Conference of June 1889. When the British – specifically Milner – cut this conference short, the Boers had one more gripe against their rivals in Southern Africa. The Transvaal government's suspicion of British imperialism is reflected in the fact that it had already quadrupled its military budget and signed a defensive alliance with the Orange Free State. In the four years after the Jameson Raid, Kruger equipped his Boers with 80,000 of the latest German Mauser rifles and 80 million rounds of ammunition.
The Jameson Raid had united the two Boer republics, but British colonials would not give up on their dream of a federation of South Africa. With the British mobilising reserve troops, Kruger issued a 48-hour ultimatum to the British government on 9 October 1899, demanding that British troops be withdrawn from Transvaal's borders. The British refused to comply, and war was declared on 11 October. However, as the future prime minister of South Africa, Jan Smuts, stated: "The Jameson Raid was the real declaration of war in the Anglo-Boer conflict" (Fremont-Barnes, 22).
British Victory
Early Boer successes in the war were ultimately offset by the British government sending professional British troops in massive numbers to reinforce those already in the colonies. In this way, the British force, which included 30,000 colonial troops from Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, soon rocketed from 25,000 to 250,000 men. This numerical advantage helped the British seize the major Boer towns of Pretoria, Bloemfontein, and Johannesburg. The Boers also made the mistake of tying down their own troops in sieges such as at Ladysmith, Kimberley, and the siege of Mafeking.
In response to an increasing number of military reversals, the Boers adopted guerrilla tactics, to which the British responded with an effective but controversial scorched-earth tactic, where crops were destroyed and livestock confiscated. Thousands of civilian farms and homes were burned to the ground during the campaign. The British commander-in-chief, Herbert Kitchener, restricted the Boers' movement by dividing "both the ex-republics into a huge steel chequerboard made of barbed wire fence lines, guarded by concrete blockhouses" (Pakenham, 577). Kitchener also had thousands of civilians interred in concentration camps to prevent them from supplying the Boer fighters in the field.
The Second Boer War came to an end in May 1902 with the Treaty of Vereeniging. Britain took over Transvaal and the Orange Free State, and in 1910, both states, along with Cape Colony and Natal, as well as several former African kingdoms, were unified into a single colony: the Union of South Africa.
