Review The Boer War History Essay

Review The Boer War History EssayThe Boer War of 1899 was a dirty minute conflict. It started as a result of cultural exasperation between the Boers (Dutch settlers) and immigrating British. At first, the war was fought with the honor typically associated with the British, but, in the end, it move nasty. siework forces Africas Cape of Good Hope was colonized in the s even outteenth century by Dutch Boers (f tree branchers). The Boers employmentd African slaves on their farms. Britain in use(p) the Cape during the Napoleonic wars and took complete control after the Congress of Vienna. slavery was abolished passim the British Empire in 1833. mevery of the Boers then stubborn that they could no longer live down the stairs British rule. They began moving northward and soon established cardinal independent republics the Transvaal and the O cast set down State. in that respect was peace between British and Boers until the Boer republics were found to be rich in diamonds and gold. Fortune hunters, mostly British, poured in to stake claims. The Dutch farmers called these plurality uitlanders (outlanders) and bitterly resented their intrusion. In 1895 the outlanders in the Transvaal planned a revolt against the Boer regimen. The British Empire, sightedness their subjects mistreated, decided to get involved. Leander Jameson, with a downcast British force, invaded the Transvaal to aid the uprising. The Jameson break was a total failure. The angered Boers, led by their president, Paul Kruger, began to arm themselves.Militarily, the conflict between Boer and British forces can be divided into two phases first, a period of Boer commando successes, quickly reversed after the arrival of the main British force in January 1900, which captured the republican seat of governments between work on and June. Then came a guerrilla phase when the Boer forces regrouped after the fall of capital of South Africa and carried on the conflict for two years before reluc tantly pass judgment peace terms from the British in whitethorn 1902 in the conformity of Pretoria. Though often called a white mans war, this conflict involved the integral population of South Africa in one way or another. Boer women and children who were evicted from farms or villages put to the torch by the British, were either sent to concentration large numbers where many an(prenominal) died from disease, or went to endure the exposure of commando life in the field. African ex-miners and farm laborers were also concentrated in camps, and drawn into labor tasks by the British ground forces. Boers raided the African reserves for food. Africans reasserted control over land and livestock previously taken by Boers, and on rare occasions attacked Boer commandos. martial law was proclaimed step by step across the firm region, and the movements of people were drastically restricted. For African scouts on the British side, or Boers caught in captured British uniforms, punishment s were swift and final, while of the 10 000 Cape Afrikaner rebels convicted of treason, a small proportion of those sentenced to death by legions courts were indeed shot. beneath Gruger*s Republic, Natal and the Cape, two of Britains colonies, were invaded in October 1899 by the Boers. They besieged a British force at Ladysmith. Other troops were pinned down at Kimberley and Mafeking. The second war, which lasted until 1902, was underway. Between September 1900 and the peace of Pretoria in May 1902, Boer commandos fought a prolonged guerrilla war against the British, who responded by putting Boer civilians in concentration camps. Then reinforcements came to the British from Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. In March 1900 Frederick sleigh Roberts, the British commander who had been the hero of the Indian mutiny, captured Bloemfontein, capital of the Orange uninvolved State. In June British forces reached Pretoria, capital of the Transvaal. The greatly outnumbered Boers continued to fight under Louis some(prenominal)a, Christiaan de Wet, and Jan Smuts. Herbert Kitchener, the new British commander in chief, then decided and last proceeded to bring the war to an end. He advanced slowly, burning farms and establishing concentration camps for Boer civilians. The camps had a high death rate, repayable largely to lack of medical exam services.The agreement of Pretoria (May 31, 1902) ended the war. The Transvaal and the Orange Free State became British colonies. Both Dutch and English were made official languages. Britain then began to re throw in the devastated farms of the Boers. The mating of South Africa was established as a self-governing dominion in 1910. The Transvaal and the Orange Free State became provinces of the Union. The first prime minister was the Boer general Louis Botha. Having lost the war, the Boers, however, won the peace. British pro-Boers had undermined the moral complacency of the victors, who decided to break generous terms to the B oers, in smart set to ensure an enduring put to work in southern Africa. This was largely at the expense of Africans (who were excluded from political phalanx group and forced to give back much land retaken from Boers during the war years). Britain utilise this decision from 1906 to 1907, by granting constitutions which gave Afrikaners political of both ex-republics with perhaps more humanity than was intended. But they did not object in 1909 when the South African content Convention opted for a constitution which ensured the retention of political power in white (predominantly Afrikaner) hands.The first attempted use of wireless telegraph in war took place during the Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902, according to a paper to be presented by Brian Austin, University of Liverpool in England, at the conference 100 Years of piano tuner sponsored by the IEE in London Sept. 5-7. His account details the early efforts by the British Army and Navy to use the new technology, which had b een demonstrated by Guglielmo Marconi in 1896. The State Archives, located here, record that the Krugers Boer Republic placed an order for six wireless telegraphy sets from the firm Siemens and Halske on Aug. 24, 1899. The sets, which be 110 Pounds Sterling, were supposed to provide communication for the fortifications around Pretoria. They had a guaranteed range of nearly 15 kilometers and used antennas 36 meters high. However, the sets never reached Krugers forces because they were confiscated by customs duty in Cape Town. Later, British forces tried unsuccessfully to use the equipment supplied by Marconi on the arid inland plains of South Africa, possibly plagued by understanding conductivity and the lack of matching resonances of the prerequisitely quarter-wave antennas. The British Navy had more luck after installing five of the sets the army rejected in the Delagoa Bay Squadron. Successful experiments over a range of 85 kilometers were enter on April 13, 1900, and unsubst antiated claims were made for communication between Delagoa Bay and Durban, a distance of nearly 460 kilometers. Lynn Fordred, curator for the Corps of Signals Museum, said parts from the maestro equipment are in storage at the School of Signals in Heidelberg. Her look into for a book dealing with military communications in South Africa highlights the roles of personalities and the problems experienced in coming to grips with the new technology. While the British Army showed a surpassing lack of interest in wireless telegraphy after their initial failures, Fordred said the Boer forces were unexpectedly progressive in their use of telegraphy and telephone facilities, and even had a telephone exchange at a time when the British Army had none.The concentration camps were places where African and Boer women and children and Boer men unfit for service were herded together by the British army during the War. Many of these people had become homeless as a result of the annihilating tacti cs which the British army adopted in the Transvaal and Orange Free State after the last months of 1900 in order to deprive the Boer commandos the mover of subsistence and thus force their surrender. Attempts had been first made to burden the combatants with these dependents in the expect of breaking the morale of the commandos. When this proved unsuccessful, it was decided to house then on-combatants in camps. The first two of these were established, as a result of a military notice of 22 September, 1900, to protect the families of burghers who had surrendered voluntarily. As the families of combatant burghers were also dictated into these camps, they ceased to be refugee camps and acquired the concentration camp designation, as did other camps established later(prenominal) in the War. Eventually there were 50 camps, in which about 136 000 people were interned. The families were conveyed to the camps by ox-wagon, trolley or railway train usually in open coal- or cattle trucks w ithout any sanitary arrangements or they even marched on foot. No proper provision had been made for their housing. Numbers of them had at first to make shift in the open until tents were provided, or were held in the camps. Those who did not receive tents were, according to the report of the British commission of query placed, in every conceivable kind of dwelling, from a church vestry, hotel and store to a blacksmiths forge. In the opinion of the commission some of the places were hardly able for pigs. As there were insufficient blankets, clothes and other means of tax shelter, and sometimes not even beds or mattresses, the internees were exposed, especially on the Highveld of the Transvaal and the Orange F. State, to intense privations which undermined their strength, more especially in the case of the large numbers of small children. The food supplies in the camps, which were often established on badly elect sites and were dangerously overcrowded from the start, was wretche d. Not only was the food inadequate, but the quality, especially of the meat, simoleons and flour, was at first very poor, while vegetables, fruit and other essential foodstuffs were not supplied at all consequently, many of the inmates, especially children, wasted away to living skeletons within a few months. One British camp doctor felt compelled to report that, on account of the deficiency in diet the children especially become emaciated and have very little resisting power to disease. The sanitation, too, was very inefficient. No adequate provision was made for the temperament of garbage, and the latrines were so primitive that they became breeding-grounds for germs and areas of infection. So disease, particularly measles, broke out in the camps during 1901 and, as there were not enough doctors or other medical care, the death-rate became appallingly high. The climax was in October, 1901, when the figure was 326 per 1 000 per year for the Transvaal camps and 401 per 1 000 per year for those in the O.F.S. The reports of camp superintendents as well as those of Emily Hobhouse showed that this was due to the bad conditions, and there was an outcry from the whole world, including England itself. This forced the British government to order a full investigation by a deputation of prominent women, and sweeping changes were made in accordance with their recommendations. As a result of these changes, introduced toward the close of 1901, and which included great improvements in housing, sanitation, food-supply, medical attention, and protection against cold, the death-rate immediately dropped and by March 1902, was back to normal. Altogether, approximately 27 927 persons died in the camps 1 676 mainly elderly men, 4 177 women and 22 074 children under 16. An apart(p) Boer General wrote the following in his diary. The terrible prospectthat the continuation of the war would in that manner eradicate our whole generation, was one of the main reasons why the Boers ceased battle and acknowledged defeat. It left a deeper impression on the Afrikaners mind than any other event in their history, and strengthened their determination to strive for case self-preservation and the recovery of political independence.The five battles of Belmont (Nov 23, 1899), Modder River (Nov 28, 1899), Magersfontein (Dec 11, 1899), Colenso (Dec 15, 1899) and Spion Kop (Jan 24, 1990) respectively, were all fought on the soil of British South Africa. That this would be an advantage in terms of morale and military maneuver turned out to be a rather heedless expectation. The conventional military goals of the overthrow and occupation of the enemy capitals were not pursued, but rather the relief of Kimberley and Ladysmith became the modus operandi of the British forces. Kimberley, because it could have provided a sorely-needed source of capital for the strained coffers of the Boer Republics, and Ladysmith because it would have given the Boer forces a quick road to Durba n and more importantly, its seaport, dramatically increasing the chances of foreign intervention. The political ramifications for British prestige throughout the Empire, of the fall of either of these towns were not underestimated by those in Whitehall. On a basic military level, these campaigns were hardly successful. However, their impact on the war in terms of the subsequent change of official attitude was immense. The Boer forces were not tribesmen fleck on foot with antiquated weaponry. They were mounted and equipped with the latest rifles and munition from France, Germany and England. Many of the commandos were veterans of various wars against tribes throughout the region. The battles waged after these campaigns were fought with these hard lessons in mind. These pungent episodes introduced the British army to modern warfare and highlighted the weaknesses of the enemy the Boer forces.