What is your impression, if any, of the Boer War? Just curious, even if you know very little

[HamdenRice]

[Hawkowl]

1. Impressions

My impressions are that it was two white European cultures fighting over who was going to get to exploit the natives and pillage Southern Africa.

[HamdenRice]

6. I'm sure that's what a lot of people think also

Interesting note: the Tswana of the western part of the Transvaal Republic and modern Botswana joined the war on the side of the British, as did thousands of blacks from the Cape and other parts of the subcontinent. There were also many Coloured Afrikaners on the Boer side.

It definitely was not a white man's war -- although both the Brits and Afrikaners would try to paint it that way later, in order not to keep alive the memory of blacks revolting against Afrikaner rule.

[Javaman]

23. Meh, slaves fought for the south too. nt

[HamdenRice]

28. American slaves didn't have the vote or representation in southern legislatures. See post 27.

Africans felt they were fighting for their vote, getting their land back and liberty from oppressive Boer farm life.

[Javaman]

34. Yeah, tell that to the Native Africans. nt

[HamdenRice]

35. Change of subject. You might find the contradictions of SAn history interesting

For strategic reasons, mostly to hem in the Boers, the British Empire provided protection to several African kingdoms resulting in present day Lesotho, Botswana and Swaziland, and gave Africans the vote in the Cape.

They were way ahead of the US in the late 1800s.

[Javaman]

37. They also (the Brits) banned slavery in 1833. nt

[hayu_lol]

7. The Brits handled it very badly...

particularly the starvation and epidemics allowed to kill thousands of Boer women and children in the camps.

This has not been forgotten by the descendants of the Boer survivors.

[YOY]

2. A combination of the movies "Shaka Zulu" and "Zulu"

n/t

[HamdenRice]

9. People seem to know more about those wars than the Boer war -- those were 2 Zulu wars

The first involving Shaka was the "mfecane" or "difaqane" -- the wars mostly between African chiefdoms as a result of the rise of the Zulu kingdom and its displacement of dozens of other communities.

The second, told in the movie Zulu, was about the Anglo-Zulu war some 70 years later.

[YOY]

11. Dammit...you just had to ruin it for me.

n.t.

[vadawg]

39. to not quote michael caine "stop throwing those bloody spears at me" :)

[The Straight Story]

3. Hmmm boar's vs pigs vs turkeys....I'll take the ham

:)

[treestar]

4. Breakor Morant

Contains the entire sum of my knowledge. More British imperialism. (And I may be wrong, since I know so little)

[HamdenRice]

13. One of my favorite movies of all time!

Unfortunately, it explains almost nothing about the context and is mainly about the hypocrisy of the British army -- encouraging British soldiers to engage in atrocities against the Boers, but then as peace negotiations began, sacrificing those soldiers in "trials" for "murder."

[The Magistrate]

5. A Most Interesting Episode, Sir

You may force me to raid my shelves for books not re-read for some years....

Pretty much a grab for gold, greatly simplified by ignoring or repudiating agreements with various native tribes, would be the shortest summary.

[HamdenRice]

14. Grab for gold pretty much sums up the basic geo-strategy

although the "tribe" living over the gold by that time was the Afrikaners or Boers.

[The Magistrate]

22. Very True, Sir

And the English were still smarting somewhat from the earlier passage at arms against them that left Gen. Colley dead on Majuba Hill.

But the line which has always stuck in my mind is Milner's "You have only to sacrifice 'the n****r' absolutely and the game is easy".

[HamdenRice]

27. The odd thing is that people like Milner didn't really get their way until later

One of the oddities of SA history is that around this time, the liberal "humanitarians" had a lot of influence over South Africa policy (at the time, British South Africa was just the Cape).

The British, especially the missionaries, humanitarians and anti-slavery lobbies, wanted to encourage Africans to become "Black Englishmen." If an African became a Christian, acquired land and made a certain amount of money, he could vote, and several districts of parliament became black majority districts represented by liberal white politicians.

So the irony is that contrary to the popular picture of SA history, blacks had the vote from the 1870s, and it was systematically reduced, limited and finally taken away in the 20th century.

It was a big issue and was called the "Cape African Vote" issue.

That's why Africans actually sided enthusiastically with the British Empire during the 2nd Boer War. They thought the Cape African vote would be extended to the whole country if Britain won.

It's amazing that South Africa flirted with something like majority rule in 1902 -- and history would have been remarkably different.

[The Magistrate]

33. Not Too Dissimilar To Our History Here, Sir

In the early days of the United States, several states, on grounds of property qualifications, had on their voting rolls numbers of Blacks, and women, as well. This was edged out even as the franchise was extended more widely to white men. Taney's reasoning in 'Dredd Scott' would have drawn blank stares from many a lawyer sixty years earlier.

To be fair to Milner, that emblematic statement is not the whole of his views, but certainly an indication of what he was willing to do for gold in the interests of Empire. Earlier comments by the man on the situation contrasted most unfavorably the 'racial feudalism' of the Boer state with the situation in Cape Colony, and his initial view seems to have been the latter should be extended to the Boer areas when they became English, and that this would be a great benefit all around. It became obvious this would add tremendously to the difficulties of securing the gold, however....

By the way, Sir, the depth of your knowledge on African history continually amazes me, and I have learned over the years here a good deal on the subject from you.

[HamdenRice]

36. Well, thanks!

I enjoy your measured, well thought out posts as well.

[Johonny]

8. The only thing I remember hearing is the concentration camps

that apparently were rather horrific.

[HamdenRice]

15. Very important -- reminds me of Israel & Rwanda: People subjected to genocide become over protective

of security.

I think it's fair to say the Boer women were subjected to genocide -- which is what made the Afrikaners kind of crazy and paranoid in the 20th century.

Less well known is that thousands of Africans were also interned in camps and also died of disease and starvation. This of course made no sense because the Africans were overwhelming supportive of the British Empire during the war.

[Johonny]

32. I found it interesting that the Movie Life and Death of Colonel Blimp

the movie is set in motion by defense from accusation of concentration camps that were probably true. I wondered if the writers of the movie did or didn't know this.

[Buzz Clik]

10. It was all about the oil and the pipeline.

It always is.

[HamdenRice]

21. If you replace "oil" with "gold" and "pipeline" with wagon trade route to Zimbabwe ...

That's pretty accurate. The pipeline was called "the road to the north" and was where the products of big game hunting had to go through.

[Gruenemann]

12. It was when the British used concentration camps

"Britain introduced concentration camps on a massive scale during the Boer War from 1899 to 1902. To deny the Boer guerrillas food and intelligence, Gen. Lord Kitchener ordered the British Army to sweep the Transvaal and Orange River territories of South Africa “clean.” Civilians—women, children, the elderly, and some men of fighting age—were herded from their homes and concentrated in camps along railway lines, with a view to their eventual removal from the territory. The Boers, to whom these camps became a symbol of genocide, called them laagers."

http://www.crimesofwar.org/thebook/concentration-camps.html

[HamdenRice]

18. Yup - see post 15

[petronius]

16. My impression of the 2nd Boer War is that it was brutal and ultimately pointless.

My ill-informed impression of the first is that it was your average badly-planned attempt to grab some land that fizzled. In both cases, I think the underlying motives were resources (gold and diamonds) primarily with national pride as a secondary motive.

Of course, Breaker Morant is visual...

[HamdenRice]

17. First Boer War - diamonds. Second Boer War - gold

The main gold deposits had not been discovered at the time of the First Boer War. That one was kind of inexplicable even to modern historians. The British Empire in South Africa was pretty disorganized and seized the Boer republics pretty much because on soldier on the spot decided to do so.

[petronius]

24. That's interesting - I had thought it was one resource in each of the Republics,

diamonds in the Transvaal and gold in the Orange Free State (I'm sure I'm mixing things up here, but I'm avoiding Google since you asked about impressions), from the get-go. Basically setting off a rush of British settlers encroaching into the Boer territory...

[HamdenRice]

26. The basic principle is right

Diamonds -- Orange Free State
Gold -- Transvaal (ie Johannesburg).

Actually the people living over the diamond fields were initially the Tswana. Then they were nominally controlled by a Coloured frontier republic that has been written out of a lot of mainstream history, who called themselves "The Bastards" until a missionary convinced them to use the more traditional name, Griqua. When diamonds were discovered, the Free State Boers and British competed over "annexing" what came to be known as "Griqualand West." The British annexed the entire Free State a few years later.

The South African frontier was, btw, surreal. Someone can make an awesome movie about it if they get over the Boer-worship/great trek cliches.

The gold rush started about 15 years after the diamond rush in the Transvaal around present day Jo'burg.

[conscious evolution]

19. Boy Scouts started as a result of the Boer war

IIRC,Lord Baden-Powell was shocked at how ill prepared british soldiers were for living in the wild and started Scouting to train youth in the ways of camping and living off the land.
Other than that I know very little about the war.

[HamdenRice]

20. Coincidence. Was just browsing a street map of Cape Town I'm giving a friend

She is off to SA on Saturday, to Cape Town so I dug out an atlas, and right there was Baden Powell Drive, or some such.

[A HERETIC I AM]

25. Sir Frederick Treves, the Doctor friend of Joseph Merrick (the Elephant Man) served

during the second Boer war in a field hospital.

A fact I just learned this AM after watching "The Elephant Man" on Hulu.com and reading up on him.

BTW, Merrick is often and incorrectly referred to as "John Merrick" but his name was apparently Joseph.

Treves was an interesting character, having been instrumental in bringing about the surgical treatment of appendicitis.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Frederick_Treves,_1st_Baronet

[HamdenRice]

29. Interesting guy, thanks! Love the movie. nt

[A HERETIC I AM]

30. Hamden, I'm fifty years old. From ten to noon this AM I was on the verge of tears..

and at a few points, they rolled down my cheek watching that movie. My throat is still a little sore from the lump that was present.

This was probably the third time I've watched it all the way through. Although it is not an entirely accurate historical account of Merrick's life, it is hard to imagine what that man went through.

Sir Treves was indeed a remarkable man. He was well traveled in the days of steam and sail, having visited the West Indies, much of Europe as well as serving in the war in Africa. He lived and practiced in a time when surgical procedures were rapidly developing but 100% sanitary conditions were not commonplace.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

31. My grandfather fought as a Brit soldier in the Boer war.

He also spent some time in Pakistan fighting Afghan tribesmen. Unfortunately, he was long dead by the time I came around. Got some old photos of him in uniform. Handlebar mustaches and all.

[libodem]

38. Pretty pointless

I'm still reading, The Covenant, and just finished that part. The Dutch had Africa first, then lost it to the English, then fought to get it back. Both sides used and discarded Blacks and Colored when they needed them. The English maintained control and the Dutch who became the 'Africaners' hated them for it.

[HamdenRice]

40. Be Careful with the Covenant. It's very innacurate and was written at the height of apartheid by

an American who was sympathetic to the apartheid regime. By no means were the Dutch, "there first."

The apartheid government was engaged in wholesale falsification of South African history, and Michener bought right into almost all of it.

There is much, much better material to read on South Africa than that novel.

[libodem]

42. I'll keep that in mind

I'm finally up to 1030. Mitchener might be biased but he has drawn Detleef as a survivor of a death camp at Crissy Meer under English occupation to a Goon in a'Race-Relations' office writing legislation to strip the 'coloreds' from having the vote, homes inside the city limits, any higher education, and any meaningful employment. Detleef is seriously misguided, believing that mixed marriages bring about, 'colored' people marked with 'sin'. (And this is 1951)

Of course this is harsh and stupid, but it is a character study of how someone could possibly learn to think so wrongly.

[HamdenRice]

43. I think the main thing is that Mitchener was duped about SA frontier history

Iirc, he says that black or Bantu Africans arrived around the same time as the Dutch. This was an idea the apartheid government promoted to claim that the Afrikaners and Dutch had equal claim to the land.

In fact, the Bantu Africans had arrived 2000 years before.

This myth was so important that SA banned radio carbon dating, which would have proven the dates of African archaeological sites.

Check out this thread and my post 15:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x6914930#6915125

[Odin2005]

41. One word: Diamonds.

[HamdenRice]

44. Actually it was gold

It was really initially fought over the rights of British miners and mine owners in Johannesburg to not be taxed or oppressed by the Boer government that controlled the territory where Johannesburg was, which was where the gold was.

The reason the conflict wasn't as serious over diamonds is because of the then existing technology and capital needs for diamond and gold mining.

A lot of diamond mining was just men going to "diamond fields," getting a claim and digging or panning as individuals.

Gold mining required millions of pounds sterling in fixed investment because of the way SA's gold deposits were distributed -- namely in a steeply slanted plane that went very, very deep underground. The mine magnates did not want to invest those millions under an Afrikaner/Boer government run by people who believed the earth was flat (yup, president Kruger of the Transvaal was literally a religious "flat earther" or dopper).

The best description of SA Joburg gold deposits I ever heard was: Imagine a very large book buried in the ground at a 45 degree angle, with only its edge exposed. The pages are the layers of the gold bearing reef. The gold is found in pockets, so imagine the gold deposits are the periods in the sentences of that book. They got the periods near the surface quickly, but then had to follow the pages deep into the earth to find the rest of them.

[alfredo]

45. They shouldn't have been there in the first place.