Anglo Boer War

An analysis of data from various sources, both Russian and international, helps to evaluate the contribution of the Russian corps to the republican cause and to understand the ambiguities of its brief existence. Despite the founders’ intentions, the unit failed to ‘set an example of proper organisation for the Boers’. Yet the Russian corps was not an embarrassment but a missed opportunity.
‘The Russian corps in the Anglo-Boer War: two months of misfortune’, Military History Journal (South African Military History Society), 2020, vol 19, no 1, pp 10–17 (ISSN 0026-4016).
"Русский отряд на англо-бурской войне: два злополучных месяца".

In his contribution to a public conversation held at University Church, Oxford, in December 2014, Sir Diarmaid MacCulloch mentioned a case of an African homosexual being “brutally attacked” by a mob of men and rushed to hospital for medical attention. Bishops from the Anglican communion, he claimed, are encouraging this “work of hatred” and are “soft pedalling on the homophobic alliance” of conservative African Christians. It is time, he contends, for Bishops to be liberated from their “unthinking conservatism”. This column for The English Churchman (31/05/2019), attempts to answer MacCulloch by reflecting on probably the greatest Victorian Coloniser, Cecil Rhodes.

An Aggregation of Lion Hunters:
The Boer Way of War in the Second Anglo-Boer War.

Few expected the inconsequential Boer Republics to survive let alone to overwhelm the might of the British Empire when war broke out on the 11 October 1899. It started well enough for the Boers who enjoying a significant numerical advantage and fielding 33 000 highly mobile mounted infantry faced a British frontline strength of 13 000 soldiers. Jan Smuts, President Kruger’s right-hand-man and one of the few Boer leaders with an inspired grasp of strategy, devised a bold war-winning plan. Boer forces would seize the slight window of opportunity and taking advantage of British unpreparedness, and their significant numerical advantage would conduct a lightning campaign.  Smuts boldly proposed the invasion of Natal coupled with a daring strike to grab the Port of Durban. Occupying Natal would cut the British railway to Rhodesia and place the entire empire in jeopardy. Boer audaciousness was sure to attract the attention of foreign powers and rouse inert Cape Afrikaners looking for an opportunity to pounce on a weakened British Empire. It was masterful if perhaps somewhat fanciful, but it offered the Boers a glimmer of hope to defeat the enemy.

The friction of inept Boer generalship whittled away Smuts’s daring plan. Generals Joubert and Cronje were satisfied to lay siege to Mafeking, Kimberly and Ladysmith and repeat the same strategy of the First Anglo-Boer War. The strategic offensive coupled with the tactical defence yielded magnificent victories in the First Anglo-Boer War. Now the momentum was lost through uninspired strategy and lacklustre leadership. The much hoped-for Cape Afrikaner rising evaporated as the British grew stronger by the day.  Transports landed thousands of troops and supplies in Durban and Cape Town and swiftly redressed the numerical imbalance. Initial and brilliant Boer successes on the tactical level were not fundamental enough to swing a strategic victory, and the chance of winning the conventional war lay in tatters.

This paper examines Boer military doctrine at the three levels of war and explores why superior mobility and exceptional tactical abilities ultimately failed to deliver a strategic victory.

This describes St Helena during the first dozen years of the 20th century. A boost was given to the economy by the landing of an international telegraph cable and the island's role in confining Boer War prisoners. However, these prisoners brought infections with them that were likely to spread amongst the general population. The island government embarked on a programme to improve the hygiene of Jamestown's water supplies, its drainage system and waste disposal. New water supplies and sanitaryware were forcibly installed in private houses at a cost that was sometimes greater than the value of houses. Householders who could barely scratch a living were then obliged to refund the cost of these improvements. All this happened at a time when the War Office removed the last source of income on the island by withdrawing its garrison of soldiers.

The Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902), also known as the South African War, had many Hungarian connections in the areas of economy, politics, and culture. Great Britain and the Boer Republics attempted to purchase agricultural products (especially horses and flour) in Hungary, to be used during the war. Hungarian journals and newspapers published a large number of articles and other features on the war, and outstanding Hungarian poets and novelists, as well as politicians and other public figures reflected on the conflict and expressed their pro-Boer, pro-British, or neutral opinions. Hungarians who served in the Boer commandos or who fought under the Union Jack in South Africa constitute the closest connection between the Carpathian Basin and the Anglo-Boer War. Seventeen Hungarians have been identified who took an active part in the war, the majority of them (twelve people), on the Boer side, while only five supported the British war effort. This article focuses on three of the Hungarian...

During the Anglo-Boer War (1899 - 1902) there were two separate concentration
camps in Irene. The location of the main camp is well known, but the exact position
of the smaller camp, or Camp no 2 as it was known, is described for the first time.
The Irene orphanage was erected after the war in 1902 to accommodate Afrikaansspeaking
war orphans. This orphanage was one of three built in the former Transvaal
colony. The remaining stone foundations of the orphanage and nearby school building
were documented. The government decided to amalgamate the three Afrikaans
orphanages in the Transvaal colony, and the Irene orphanage and school closed down
in September 1907 when all the orphans were transferred to the Potchefstroom
orphanage.

On 11 October 1899, the South African War commenced between the British Empire and the South African Republic and Orange Free State Republic. This conflict saw the targeting of civilians by all sides throughout the conflict and a harbinger of 20 th century "Total War", when civilians and their resources were harnessed to support military objectives. Set against the prior use of concentration camps in Cuba and the Philippines, the war was followed by a genocidal campaign undertaken by Imperial Germany against the Herero people in German South West Africa in 1906. Although civilian internment in South Africa was not genocidal by design and purpose, it caused a high loss of life and lasting bitterness amongst Boer descendants. Black concentration camps, however, were far more lethal to their internees and designed along a completely different model. Their role was to coerce labour while supporting the British war effort in defeating the Republican forces. Through a work or starve policy, combined with withholding food, medical support and shelter, many perished from systemic neglect. Yet the memory of this experience of the black concentration camps has entered historical discourse only recently, in the last three decades. The area of study, examined by this article, is those black concentration camps established during 1901 to 1902, at Klip River Station, Witkop, Meyerton and Vereeniging, in the former South African Republic (ZAR). Contemporary tangible evidence of these camps remains fleeting. However, this article identifies where these camps existed and how they were integrated into the British military's counter-guerrilla warfare strategy. This in turn enables further research into these camps that may conclusively establish their historic locations.

History and Archaeology are two related disciplines that both attempt to understand the human past. A case study involving three sites in Irene (Centurion), namely (concentration) Camp no. 2, the Irene Orphanage and the Irene School is presented here. All three sites are linked and have been subjected to both independent historical and archaeological investigations since the mid 1960s. This article attempts to illustrate, by using a case study, how Archaeology can contribute to historical studies, and vise versa.

Chubut Province, in Patagonia, Argentina, is home to a group of Afrikaans-speaking Boers, descendants of those who–starting in 1902–came to Argentina from the region of present-day South Africa. Although little Afrikaans is spoken among fourth- and fifth-generation community members, many in the third generation (60 years and older) still maintain the language. According to Joshua Fishman’s model of generational language shift, the Boers’ Afrikaans should have been largely diluted by the third generation; older community members today should have little functional knowledge of the language, and their children and grandchildren none. The goal of this paper is to explore the persistence of bilingualism in the Argentine Boer community and explain why the changes normally associated with the third generation of immigrants are only now being seen in the fourth and fifth generations. On the basis of bilingual interviews with living community members, we argue that the community’s attitude...

The establishment of an international legion by General Georges de Villebois-Mareuil in March 1900 was the most ambitious attempt to coordinate the activities of foreign volunteer units within a single formation during the South African War. On the general’s death (5 April 1900), De Villebois’s Russian deputy and successor, Lieutenant Colonel Yevgeny Maximov, lost control of the legion. As a hierarchical formation, it survived De Villebois by only two weeks. Given Maximov’s ample experience in conventional and unconventional warfare, and the accolades that he later won from the republican political and military leadership, including the rank of general, the legionnaires’ opposition to him appears to be unjustified. Accounting for the discrepancy between historians’ perceptions of Maximov and his lack of success in controlling the legion is based on a premise that legionnaires had compelling reasons to reject his authority. Maximov had come to Africa ostensibly as a journalist. He was yet to earn the respect of his subordinates because he had not seen action in the South African War. In subsequent weeks, having resigned from his post in the legion, he distinguished himself in the engagement at Tobaberg as the leader of the Dutch corps. By then, Maximov had the ‘moral authority’ to command an international unit, but his poor health prevented him from carrying on fighting. Unlike De Villebois, who was supported by like-minded French lieutenants, Maximov could not rely on his compatriots. Instead of endorsing his claim to leadership, the Russian corps refused to join the legion while he was in charge, and intentionally discredited him. In the power vacuum after De Villebois’s death, the legion collapsed, and a chance to transform the emerging alliance of foreign volunteer units into a formidable force was missed.

The Anglo-Boer War of 1899–1902 was a significant conflict in the recent history of South Africa, but the military geography of this conflict has not been subject to systematic analysis. This chapter explores the relationship between the strategies of military engagement during this conflict and the nature of the physical landscape in which these engagements took place. An overview of the broad types of geomorphological and geological settings for some 43 major engagements of the conflict is followed by a detailed case study of the landscape contexts of engagements around Colenso (former province of Natal). The relatively limited degree of post-conflict land use and geomorphological change in these parts of South Africa also renders many of these battlefield sites readily appreciated in the landscape, and is reflected in an increasing interest in battlefield heritage tourism.

... Randy on the Rand: Portuguese African Labor and the Discourse on "Unnatural Vice" in the Transvaal in the Early Twentieth Century. ... 2 It connects these attitudes both to the internal concerns of South Africa in the aftermath of the Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902 and to external ...

The South AfricanWar is unambiguously associated with men. Their conflicts, politics and war-time activities are well known and dominate research trends. More recently, however, there has been a shift in focus to specifically deal with black and white women and children, exposing their lifeways during the conflict period. Telperion Shelter in western Mpumalanga Province affords us an archaeological insight into a South African War refuge camp. The site was occupied by both Boer women and children, who were imprisoned in the Balmoral and Middelburg concentration camps in 1902, and by black Africans of whom little is known. Either while living in Telperion or after the war, it appears that both groups inscribed the shelter's wall, writing their names and producing depictions of life as a refugee. Through these records it is possible to develop a historiography of Telperion's war-time use and consider the antagonistic, defiant, and rebellious nature of veld-life seen through th...

In 2007, a song about the Anglo-Boer War hero, De la Rey, became an anthem for people who self-identify with the term ‘Afrikaner’ and caused such a stir that even the government issued a statement about it. In the debate amongst social commentators, the point was made that the white Afrikaners in post-Apartheid South Africa were experiencing an identity crisis and were searching for a hero to lead them. It seemed to be a fertile ground to search for one amongst the Anglo- Boer War, also known as the South African War (1899-1902), an era seen by many as the ‘age of innocence’. However, when the Afrikaans feature film "Verraaiers" (Traitors) was released in 2013, it failed at the box office. It is interesting to note that the writer and producer of the film told the story from the point of view of a ‘tragic hero’, instead of from the perspective of a more traditional ‘willing’ hero. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to compare the film "Verraaiers" to another film set during the Anglo-Boer War, "Die Kavaliers" (The Cavaliers, 1966), in terms of how they portray the mythological hero and how this influences the narrative and audience’s identification with the film. In "Die Kavaliers" the plot focuses on the cavalier deeds of a group of Boer soldiers, whilst "Verraaiers" tells the story of a  few Boer men who decided to forsake the war to return to their farms and protect their families. The opposing controlling ideas reveal the change in dominant ideology in the years between the construction of the two different narratives. "Verraaiers" has been described as a reaction to the position of white Afrikaners, the descendants of the Boers, in contemporary post-Apartheid South Africa. The author of this paper argues that the current white Afrikaans cinema going audience did not want to watch a tragic Boer hero that would lead them to introspection. They were searching for a willing, mythological hero, to lead them out of their identity crisis.

Chubut Province, in Patagonia, Argentina, is home to a group of Afrikaans-speaking Boers, descendants of those who-starting in 1902-came to Argentina from the region of present-day South Africa. Although little Afrikaans is spoken among fourth-and fifth-generation community members, many in the third generation (60 years and older) still maintain the language. The goal of this paper is to explore the persistence of bilingualism in the Argentine Boer community and explain why the changes normally associated with the third generation of immigrants are only now being seen in the fourth and fifth generations. On the basis of bilingual interviews with living community members, we argue that the community's attitude toward Afrikaans as a language of group identity, as well as the relative isolation of the community in rural Patagonia in the first half of the 20th century, were both decisive factors in delaying the process of linguistic assimilation. Only in the middle of the 20th cent...