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Essay on Strategy of the Boer War
The first Boer War scarcely more than a battle, was achieved by the Boers (Dutch-origin South African farmers) after triumph over a British might at Majuba . That awarded the Boer states of the Transvaal and Orange Free State the freedom they desired except in foreign policy. Britain approbated this while they were deprived and backward. That misrepresented, though, when the vast Witwatersrand goldfield was revealed in the Transvaal in 1886. In 1899 Britain went to war again against the Boers, and got it back. Britain had other reasons for noticing the Boers' new wealth. If it made them too powerful, they could threaten her supremacy in the rest of South Africa, possibly in league with Germany. (Steyn, M. (2001)The aftermath of the Jameson Raid fuelled that fear.
The kaiser sent a telegram congratulating the Boer president on repelling the raid. There were also complaints of mistreatment of immigrant diggers (‘uitlanders’) in the goldfields, though these were mostly exaggerated. Britain negotiated to ease these grievances, but possibly not genuinely, since her main agent in South Africa, Milner, Seems to have wanted war. In the end, on 10 October 1899, it was the Boers who issued the ultimatum. Most foreign opinion saw Britain as the aggressor, Goliath against David. David did well initially. The first months of the war went disastrously against Britain, with the Boers advancing deep into Natal. Only in May 1900 did the tide begin to turn, mainly through the numbers Britain could deploy. By October the Transvaal had been largely reconquered, Kruger, its president, had fled, and both republics were annexed to the British flag. But the war was not over.
The Boers continued a ‘guerrilla’ warfare, which was only crushed in the end by methodical land-razing, farm-burning, and herding non-combatant Boers—mainly women—into unhealthy ‘concentration camps’. In June 1901 Campbell-Bannerman, the Liberal leader, publicly attacked this as ‘methods of barbarism......
