The British-Boer War 1899-1902 - First Modern War?

War has broken out in South Africa and British commanders are confident that they will soon crush the upstart Boer republics that have dared to challenge them. General White's troops facing wild boar positions at The High Ground near Ladysmith grew nervous as the British and poor artillery dueled overhead, but neighboring British units have remained silent. and the order comes to retreat, they fired artillery and riflemen fired on the exposed British troops and they retreated in panic on this day, the Empire has been defeated but there is a long and bloody war ahead, it is the second Boer War, thank you.

In the late 19th century conflict was brewing in southern Africa, the Dutch had colonized the region since the mid-17th century and settlers arrived in what became the Cape Colony. They called themselves Africanus and spoke their own Dutch dialect known as Africans, but were often known simply as Boers, the Dutch word for farmer, most of these settlers planned farms which they confiscated from the local native population, many of the which Africans enslaved in 1806. Britain captured Cape Town during the Napoleonic Wars and maintained permanent control of the Cape Colony. after 1815, but problems soon arose between the British administration and the poor population due to language, cultural outlook, and legal systems.

The turning point came when Britain banned slavery in 1834. This angered the Boers who relied on slave labor to work their farms between 1835 and 1840. The Boers emigrated from British territory on what they called the Great Voyage to find new independent lands in eastern South Africa. There they founded two new Bora republics, the Orange Free State and the South African Republic. The new boring states maintained some forms of slavery. and expropriated their lands from the native Africans, but the British struggle continued. The British Empire slowly expanded its control of South Africa by seizing more native African territories and in the 1840s it shared a border with the Boer republics.

Frequent border skirmishes broke out in the First War of 1880-1881. The poor won the war and forced the British government to formally recognize the independence of the Boor and then came the Transfila gold rush. Prospectors discovered huge deposits of gold between 1884 and 1886. Immigrants from across the British Empire flooded South Africa to seek their fortune, and Transphal's new mineral wealth attracted the interest of British statesmen and businessmen, including the Prime Minister of the Cape Colony and mining magnate Cecil Rhodes, who led the campaign to bring the poor republics under British rule to secure their natural resources for the Empire, but his plan to overthrow the poor governments using a mercenary force in the Jamison Raid of 1895 ended into a fiasco and alerted the Boers to the threat of British annexation despite the failure of Jameson's raid.

Britain relentlessly pressured the Boer republics to make territorial and legal concessions in

1899

, British troops were massing in their colony of Natal and the Boers feared that an invasion was imminent, so rather than wait for the inevitable, The Boers decided to attack

first

on October 11,

1899

, the second Boer War began, thus the Boar's desire for independence and the British. Imperial expansion had come to a head with the outbreak of war in 1899. So let's take a look at the fighting forces each side brought to the battlefield. The Boers did not possess a standing army and instead relied on a malicious system.

The government would round up all able-bodied men between the ages of 16 and 60. Citizens were expected to arrive with their own rifle and horse, but the government also purchased and distributed thousands of German Mauser rifles. At the beginning of the war, the Boers had no formal military training, but were formidable fighters noted for their excellent marksmanship in peacetime. Poor citizens developed their skill through hunting and through target shooting competitions, a practice noted by American journalist Howard Hillegas. Target shooting was the main entertainment in Transfal. The demand for rifle ammunition was constant and shooting brands could almost be said to have taken the place of billiards in Europe.

Each wild boar fighter was a mounted rifleman. They could move quickly and seize key terrain before dismounting and unleashing a hail of accurate rifle fire decades later. Winston Churchill appointed Britain's Special Forces. after the African word for military unit Commando The riflemen were supported by a small professional artillery branch that fielded a mix of

modern

French and German guns, including four 155-millimeter Kurzo guns that the British nicknamed Long Tong. The Boers were motivated, well armed and determined to attack. To defend their independence, they had around 60,000 men available to fight, but their weakness was their ability to sustain a long war.

Wild boars were dependent on military imports from Europe. Their small population meant they could not afford a war of attrition and feared an African uprising. Faced with the attack of the Zulu Kingdom, they had to attack quickly and obtain a clear victory. The British Army had immense experience in colonial warfare and with 250,000 soldiers could field more men than the Africanus. One of them, in fact, would be my great-grandfather, the second. The Boer War would be the 226th of 230 wars fought during the reign of Queen Victoria. The British won almost all of these conflicts thanks to the Army's advantages in discipline and technology and tactics based on close formations and overwhelming fire, but the Army had very little experience in facing

modern

firepower, since the colonial enemies it had defeated they deployed little more than a handful of second-hand rifles.

The Imperial troops would face a nasty surprise under Boer artillery and rifle fire; Even so, the British army in South Africa was confident and seemed to have forgotten its defeat. at the hands of the Boers in 1880-81. British military thinkers calculated that victory would be swift and decisive against a fragile boar. Strength lacking discipline. Native black Africans also played a role in the war. Officially, both sides declared that the conflict was a white man's war and that black African neutrality would be In reality, respected black Africans played a variety of roles for both belligerents. The Boers used African forced labor to provide transportation and dig trenches, while the British hired thousands of Africans for logistical work, as well as native scouts and trackers, some of whom fought in uniform against the poor.

The militias and the British army were about to clash and when war broke out in October 1899, the Boers attempted to make the most of their window of opportunity. At the start of the war, the Boers outnumbered British forces in South Africa by between 40,000 and 20,000. the British were sure to send reinforcements the poor plan emphasized speed and aggression they would sweep through South Africa and crush the British garrisons before new UK troops arrived the Boor invasion had four main axes in the west the poor forces besieged the railway town of Mafiking to prevent British forces from advancing from the direction of Bichwana land in the southwest the drillers surrounded the diamond mining center of Kimberly and in the south the poor forces advanced towards the Cape Midland region to disrupt transportation The British had the bulk of their army here, some fifteen thousand men, and had planned to use the colony as a base to invade Boer territory until the Boers beat them to it, but British forces were poorly deployed and Lieutenant General William Penn Simon's four-thousand-strong detachment carried the burden.

The worst part of the Boor attack on 20 October 1899, the

first

battle of the war took place when the Boers brought their artillery to Talana Hill and bombarded Simon's camp below. The British were surprised, but quickly recovered and launched an assault that drove the Boers from the High Ground. The attack was a costly success. Simons was mortally wounded and 10 percent of his force became casualties. The nature of the fighting surprised even To veteran British officers like Captain Nugent of the 1st King's Royal Rifle Corps the ground in front of me was literally rising The dust of bullets and the roar echoing between the hill and the forest below and between the rocks of the incessant fire The noise of the Mausers seemed to blend with all the other sounds in one long, terrifying roar.

I looked around over my shoulder, all over the floor. which we had already covered was full of bodies at that moment they hit me on the knee the real shock was as if someone had hit me with all their strength with a club, I turned and fell my gun flying in one direction and the helmet in another despite Victory. At Talana Hill the British were in danger, mobile columns of wild boars threatened to encircle the isolated Force, which endured a harrowing retreat to join the main British garrison at Ladysmith. British forces moved north to clear the retreat route and on 21 October a British column attacked the advancing holes in The Battle of Elan's Lachten, a skilful British combined arms attack, drove the Wild Boars from their positions before for British cavalry to enter from the flank and complete the route, but the Wild Boar advance towards Natal continued into late October.

British commander George White had two options he could. retreat south and wait for reinforcements from Britain, this would preserve his army but would cause political problems if public opinion saw him as too passive or he could attack the Boers and try to achieve a decisive victory to defeat the invasion. This could turn the tide of the war, but also risked a disastrous defeat, the Whites decided to gamble on October 30, threw their forces into action at the Battle of Ladysmith, but the British attacks were poorly coordinated and the Boers They won a significant victory. The whites retreated to Ladysmith and the Boers.

They laid siege to the town during the first weeks of the war and had been a success story for the Boers: they had defeated the main British army in South Africa and trapped it at Ladysmith. If the city fell, the Boers could win the war in November 1899. A new British army was on the way to help relieve the besieged Imperial troops at Ladysmith. His 45,000 men had left the United Kingdom at the beginning of the war under the command of General Red Buller. Buller had planned to join with White's forces and invade the boor. republics, but the siege of Ladysmith forced him to discard the idea.

Instead, Buller divided his force into three. Fifteen thousand men would head west to relieve Kimberly. Five thousand soldiers would secure the Cape Midland area and Puller himself would lead 20,000 men into Natal and break through. After the siege of Ladysmith and the British were in a hurry to rescue the garrisons as Buller could not be sure how long they could hold out as the British had to operate along the railway lines, surprise was impossible, the Boers had time to prepare defensive positions and were ready and waiting on December 10, the British troops at Cape Midlands attempted a complicated night march to surprise the Boers at dawn, but the British column became lost in the darkness and when dawn broke they found themselves in middle of the poor position rather than on On their flank, the desperate British launched a doomed frontal assault and carried a rifleman, shot them down and won the Battle of Stormberg on the road to Kimberly.

Lord Methuen initially drove back the Boers, but the tables turned at the Battle of Maher's Fontaine on 11 December. Again the British wanted to advance at night, but a storm slowed them down and they were reached in the open at dawn. The wild boars pinned them down under fire and the British retreated in disarray. On December 15, Buller's main army attacked the boar positions on the Tugaila River. On the road to Ladysmith, the British artillery advanced too far and the boars quickly knocked out two batteries. The British infantry assault fared no better and, as they advanced in close order, the wild boars ambushed them and attacked the Imperial troops from three sides.

A rude fighter denies it and writes, who later served in the British Army in the First World War, recalled the battle, we hear a British voice shoutbayonets, bayonets, and they came at us like a wall, we launched volley after volley into their tightly packed ranks, we delivered such a volume. of fire that the column veered to the left, any soldier who came between us was shot or taken prisoner by mid-morning, the Battle of Kalenso ended, the British suffered over 1000 casualties and lost 10 field guns, while that only 38 poor fighters died. or wounded in just one week, the Boers had defeated the mighty British Empire three times, shocking public opinion in the United Kingdom and causing the Times newspaper to refer to the black week of Christmas 1899.

Many in the Boer republics thought that the war was practically won even though the Boers had defeated the powerful British Empire three times. The sieges continued, but the shock and humiliation of weak blacks had galvanized the imperial government in London after a series of defeats in December 1899. London sent its most famous soldier to South Africa. Lord Roberts arrived in January 1900 along with tens of thousands of reinforcements from all sides. over the Empire, including Canada, New Zealand, Australia and one Mohandas Gandhi, who served in the Indian Ambulance Corps at the Battle of Spionkop, Roberts began to reorganize the army, including transport to free it from railways and new tactics to counter the firepower of the ruders, the British launched a new offensive on 10 February 1900. 50,000 men advanced into Kimberly and the British cavalry caught the Boers off guard by storming through their siege lines and threatening their line of retreat.

A British officer described how the action evolved. At first, the Enterprise seemed pretty desperate to us. We believed that only a few of us could get out of this alive and if we had made a similar attack in training we would surely have all been knocked out and considered idiots when we galloped about a quarter of a mile and received a head-on fire and very hot flank and I looked along the ranks expecting to see the men falling en masse, but I saw no one coming down, although the rifle fire crackled around us, the feeling was wonderfully exciting, like a good run towards House.

The Boars lifted the siege and attempted to retreat but with carts and artillery and towing they could not outrun the British, so the Boars recklessly barricaded themselves in Pardeber, allowing Imperial troops to surround them after a 10-day siege. . Four thousand boar fighters surrendered on February 27, which was a crushing blow for such a small army. Natal Buller continued his efforts to relieve Ladysmith. The Boers were able to repel British attacks at Spionkop in January and fall at Kranz in February, but another British attack on Tegela Heights in late February broke the Boer defences. The British artillery and infantry launched methodically step by step. staggered attacks that resembled the fighting of the First World War and Ladysmith was relieved on 27 February the poor army was severely weakened and the British capitalized on their victories by invading the Orange Free State and transferring they occupied Bloomfontaine in March and Pretoria fell in June Poor efforts to stop the relentless events were overwhelmed by British numbers and firepower.

The last battle of the war took place at Bergendal in Transfal in late August 1900 as the Boers struggled to hold their last defensive line, after several days of fierce fighting the British cleared the position and it looked like the war had ended in September 1900, the British had occupied the Boer republics and dispersed their armies. Lord Roberts proclaimed that the war had been won and he returned to England as a conquering hero, but the Boers refused to give in and went on a rampage. a guerrilla war in the early 1900s the situation for the Boers was changing rapidly some were commanders, in particular Christian David argued that the Boers should adopt guerrilla warfare against Britain's numerical advantage there had already been successful ambushes by wild boars such as the attack on an armored train carrying war correspondent Winston Churchill, who made a remark that would play a crucial role in the next phase of the war, nothing seems more formidable and impressive than an armored train, but in reality nothing is more vulnerable and helpless;

It was only necessary to blow up a bridge or a culvert to leave the monster stranded far from home and help him at the mercy of the enemy. Debate. Put his ideas into practice with a spectacular gorilla attack on Santa's Post on March 31, 1900. His commandos ambushed an unsuspecting British column, causing more than 500 casualties and capturing seven artillery pieces. Due to the loss of only eight men, the debate would continue its guerrilla campaign with great success in 1900, ambushing isolated British columns and destroying the railway on which the British depended for supplies, taking advantage of the mobility of the wild boars and the knowledge of the terrain, the debate could emerge from the field to attack without warning and the British attempts to pursue their commandos, which they easily eluded, after the defeat at the Battle of Bergendal in August, the remaining Wild Boar commanders decided that conventional warfare was futile and also resorted to to guerrilla warfare.

Instead, the wild boar campaign began at Earnest in October under general command. Commando leaders Louis Botha attacked British columns and supply depots, but targeted the railway lines. Most lines were frequently sabotaged and unattended trains were hijacked. During one such kidnapping, a surprised American businessman was robbed at gunpoint by poor fighters. One of them was Johannes Stain the. The American was stunned and as he handed over his wealth he said, but sir, I thought this war was over. I responded that he was misinformed. This war is just beginning. The British initially had no answer to the Boer gorilla tactics.

The speed of the command and the knowledge of the terrain did. they were too elusive for the slower British columns to catch them. The British carried out large sweeps of the countryside for commandos and relied on the so-called count of Boer prisoners they had captured, in reality most of the prisoners were just captured farmers or vagabonds. by a passing British column instead of royal boars. Fighters frustrated by the boars' continued resistance and their inability to counter it, the British responded with brutality in the mid-1900s. Lord Roberts ordered the destruction of farms thought to support the gorilla boars with food or ammunition.

Kitchener took this measure much further beginning in December 1900, when British troops burned all poor-owned farms, regardless of whether they supported gorillas or not. This relentless scorched earth campaign destroyed thousands of wild boar farms and left some 150,000 civilians homeless. Kitchener also introduced the Blockhouse. system to limit Bohr's mobility The block houses were small, easily constructed pillboxes manned by eight soldiers. The British built 8,000 block houses along railway lines and in front of river crossings. Each blockhouse was connected to its neighbors with wire obstacles creating a permanent defended barrier that greatly hindered Bohr. As in all guerrilla wars, the fighting was prolonged and brutal, with both sides inflicting cruelty on the civilian population.

Commandos looted African villages and pro-British farms for supplies and the British burned wild boar farms. Combat between poor gorillas and British columns usually took the form of ambushes and was often short range and exceptionally violent. The Boers looted dead or captured British soldiers for equipment and the British responded by summarily executing any poor fighters found using British team Kitchener's ruthless scorched earth policy created thousands of Boer refugees and their treatment The British had first considered a system of refugee camps for displaced Boers in May 1900 and had established several ad hoc camps. Kitchener made the system official in December 1900, when his scorched Earth policy created thousands of additional concentration camps. refugees and the concentration camp system was born, the British initially intended the camps to be refugee centers providing shelter, food and medical care, but problems soon arose with the system, the camps were understaffed as the army argued that they were a civilian problem and refused to provide officers, while civil authorities felt they were a low priority and struggled to find suitable administrative and medical staff.

As a result, many of the camps were poorly organized, under-resourced and poorly managed, which made the situation worse. Many camps were built in places without proper sanitation. but the most critical problem was chronic overcrowding. In March 1901 there were about 44,000 civilian wild boars in the fields, but that number had increased to 110,000 by December of the same year. These conditions led to terrible outbreaks of diseases such as measles and diphtheria that killed many wild boars. including the children I was seven years old at the time the camp was infested with lice my aunt had to cut off all my hair thousands of newcomers came to the camp the hudrids got sick the tents at Marquee Hospital were always full the doctors worked day and night People died like rats.

Carts went down the rows of tents to collect the dead. There were funerals every day. The shocking state of the concentration camps was exposed by British aid worker Emily Hobhouse in May 1901. Her damning report caused global outrage against Britain. She puts more pressure on the children. They collapse under the terrible heat and without enough inadequate food whatever you do whatever the authorities do and I think they are doing the best they can with very limited means everything is just a miserable stain on a great evil that the British government named suffragist Millicent Faucet to lead An official inquiry, her report confirmed Hobhouse's conclusions and recommended major reforms From November 1901, the camps came under formal civilian control and conditions steadily improved by the end of the war in May

1902

, the monthly mortality rate in the camps was lower than before. -Republics bored by war, but these British measures came too late for tens of thousands of poor civilians.

The British also created a parallel camp system for black civilians. These camps were intended to be self-sufficient and had even fewer resources than the Boer camps. House never had the opportunity to visit these fields and the gryphon commission completely ignored them. In total, 27,000 civilian wild boars were killed, of which 22,000 were children under 16 years of age. At least 25,000 black civilians also died in the camps, raising the death toll. to a minimum of 52,000. The brutal Guerrilla War took a terrible toll on South Africa. Both sides had suffered thousands of military casualties. Much of the country had been destroyed and more than a hundred thousand civilians were interned in camps.

In

1902

, he finally reached At the beginning of 1902, the remaining boar fighters were exhausted. British scorched earth tactics denied them supplies and the Blockhouse system limited their movements. The commandos were also struggling to accommodate some ten thousand poor civilians who were taking refuge in the desert to avoid falling into British hands. Civilians lacked food, shelter, and medical supplies and suffered so much that in some cases wild boars carried them to the gates of the concentration camps and left them for the British to take aboard. The commandos calculated that there was no longer any prospect of victory and continued fighting. it would only prolong the suffering of the poor population, in fact it had been a bloody fight, the British army suffered more than 100,000 casualties including 22,000 dead and the military casualties are estimated at around 30,000 with 9,000 dead in the face of this grim reality. , the poor open negotiations with the British leading to peace in May 1902 the Boers would surrender but be granted amnesty the British promised to protect the Dutch language the poor republics were absorbed into the Empire but would gain self-government in due time and discussion of black African voting rights would be delayed until self-government.

The Second Boer War shocked Britain, which reformed its army and soon found new allies in Japan, France and Russia. It was also a baptism of fire for many officers who would later play an important role during the Boer War. FirstWorld War II, the conflict foreshadowed many of the horrors of the battlefields of the 20th century and was a dark premonition of the horrors of modern warfare for civilians. We would like to thank Spencer Jones, the author of the book from Boer War to World War, for his help with this. episode and we would like to thank Tanya for helping me struggle with the Afrikaans pronunciation as usual.

You can find all of our sources for this episode in the video description. I'm Jesse Alexander and this is The Great War, a real-time history production and the only historical YouTube channel that still thinks armored trains are really cool, even if Winston Churchill disagrees, thanks foreigner foreigner