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The Boer Wars (known in Afrikaans as Vryheidsoorloeë ) were two wars fought between Britain and the two independent Boer republics, the Orange Free State and the South African Republic (Transvaal Republic). The first was fought from 1880 to 1881, and the second was fought from 1899 to 1902.

First Anglo-Boer War

The First Anglo-Boer War (1880–1881), also known as the "Transvaal War," was a relatively brief conflict in which Boer settlers successfully rebelled against British rule in the Transvaal, and re-established their independance, lost in 1877.

Second Anglo-Boer War

The Second Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902), by contrast, was a lengthy war - involving large numbers of troops from many British possessions - which ended with the conversion of the Boer republics into British colonies (with a promise of limited self-government). These colonies later formed part of the Union of South Africa. The Boer War lasted three years and was very bloody. The British fought directly against the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. The bloodshed that was seen during the war was alarming and many of the British soldiers faced unfit conditions.

Controversy and significance

During the Second Boer War, Britain pursued the policy of rounding up and isolating the Boer civilian population into concentration camps. The wives and children of Boer guerrillas were sent to these camps with poor hygiene and little food, although this was remedied to some extent as time went on. The death and suffering of the civilians, according to many scholars, is what broke the guerrillas' will. The "pacification" theory has been repeated many times in warfare since.

The Second Boer War was a major turning point in British history, due to world reaction over the anti-insurgency tactics the British army used in the region. This led to a change in approach to foreign policy from Britain who now set about looking for more allies. To this end, the 1902 treaty with Japan in particular was a sign that Britain feared attack on its Far Eastern empire and saw this alliance as an opportunity to strengthen its stance in the Far East. This war led to a change from "splendid isolation" policy to a policy that involved looking for allies and improving world relations. Later treaties with France ("Entente cordiale") and Russia, caused partially by the controversy surrounding the Boer War, were major factors in dictating how the battle lines were drawn during World War One.

The Boer War also had another significance. The Army Medical Corps discovered that 40% of men called up for duty were physically unfit to fight. This was the first time in which the government was forced to take notice of how unfit the British Army was. This led to individual investigations by Booth and Rowntree into the poverty in Britain, and ultimately gave the Liberals ideas on which to base their Welfare reforms, beginning in 1906.

See also

Biographical articles

• Lord Baden-Powell, the founder of the Boy Scouts, was a general, and achieved fame with his defence of Mafeking.
• Frederick Russell Burnham, the British Army Chief of Scouts, was twice captured and twice escaped. He was the highest decorated American to serve in the war
• Winston Churchill served in the British Army as a lieutenant along side Jasbir Sokhal, and was a prisoner of war and war correspondent, later Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
• Arthur Conan Doyle served as a doctor, and saw more soldiers die of fever than of actual war wounds. Better known now as a fiction writer, whose stories of Sherlock Holmes had already garnered him enduring international fame, he later became a historian as well; his history of the Boer Wars garnered him a knighthood from Edward VII.
• John French, Ian Hamilton and Horace Smith-Dorrien, later British commanders who were generals in World War I
• Mahatma Gandhi served in the Ambulance Corps, later leader of the Indian independence movement
• George Frederick Ives, a trooper in the Imperial Yeomanry.. He died in 1993, the last surviving veteran of the (Second) Boer War
• Horatio Herbert Kitchener was Secretary of State for War.
• Breaker Morant was a British born Australian poet
• Jan Smuts, a Boer guerrilla leader, was later Prime Minister of South Africa, a Field Marshal in the British Army and in the Imperial War Cabinet. The only man to sign the peace treaties ending both the First and Second World Wars, he was involved in the foundation of both the League of Nations and the United Nations.

Other articles

• Military history of South Africa
• South African Wars (1879-1915)
• Treaty of Vereeniging
• Boer

Bibliography

Books

• Beck, Roger B. (2000). The History of South Africa. Westport, CT: Greenwood. ISBN 031330730X.
• Davenport, T. R. H., and Christopher Saunders (2000). South Africa: A Modern History, 5th ed. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 0312233760.
• Doyle, A. Conan (1902). The Great Boer War. Toronto: George N. Morang & Company.
• Jackson, Tabitha (1999). The Boer War. Basingstoke, U.K.: Channel 4 Books/Macmillan. ISBN 075221702X.
• Judd, Denis, and Keith Surridge (2003). The Boer War. Basingstoke, U.K.: Palgrave Macmillan. ASIN B000OLSIXQ. ISBN 0719561698 (paperback).
• Pakenham, Thomas (1979). The Boer War. New York: Random House. ISBN 0394427424.
• Plaatje, Sol T. (1990). Mafeking Diary: A Black Man’s View of a White Man's War. Ohio University Press. ISBN 0821409441.
• Reitz, Deneys (1930). Commando: A Boer Journal of the Boer War. London: Faber and Faber. ASIN B00165A9Y0. ISBN 1432612239 (2005 reissue).
• Riall, Nicholas (2000) "Boer War: The Letters, Diaries and Photographs of Malcolm Riall from the War in South Africa.", ISBN 1-85753-266-X.
• van Hartesveldt, Fred R. (2000). The Boer War. Greenwood Press. ISBN 0313306273.
• Woods, Frederick (1972). Young Winston's Wars; The Original Despatches of Winston S. Churchill War Correspondent, 1897-1900. New York: The Viking Press, Inc. ISBN 9780670795154 (Published in 1973). Library of Congress catalog card number: 72-90478.

Journal articles

• Grad, Kenneth (2008). "Effective Leadership in Counter-Insurgency: The North-West Mounted Police in South Africa, 1899-1902". Canadian Military Journal. 9 (2). Retrieved 2009-02-23. {{cite journal}}: Cite has empty unknown parameters: |month= and |coauthors= (help)

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