First Boer War
The First Boer War, was fought from 16 December 1880 until 23 March 1881 between the United Kingdom and Boers of the Transvaal. The war resulted in a Boer victory and eventual independence of the South African Republic. The war is also known as the First Anglo–Boer War, the Transvaal War or the ''Transvaal Rebellion.''
Background
In the 19th century, Britain at some times attempted to set up a single unified state in southern Africa, and at other times wanted to control less territory. The British Empire's expansion in South Africa was accelerated due to the desire to control trade routes between India via the Cape of Good Hope, the discovery of diamonds in Kimberley in 1867, and the race against other European powers to control as much of Africa as possible.The British annexation of the Transvaal in 1877 represented one of their biggest incursions into Southern Africa, but other expansions also occurred. In 1868 the United Kingdom annexed Basutoland, following an appeal from Moshoeshoe, the leader of a mixed group of mostly Sotho-speaking refugees from the Difaqane who sought British protection from both the Boers and the Zulus. In the 1880s, the Tswana country became an object of dispute between the Germans to the west, the Boers to the east, and the British in the Cape Colony to the south. Although the Tswana country had at the time almost no economic value, the "Missionaries Road" passed through it toward territory farther north. After the Germans annexed Damaraland and Namaqualand in 1884, the British annexed Bechuanaland in two parts in 1885: the Bechuanaland Protectorate and British Bechuanaland.
Following the Battle of Blaauwberg Britain had formally acquired the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa from the Dutch in 1814 after the Napoleonic Wars. Certain groups of Dutch-speaking settler farmers resented British rule, even though British control brought some economic benefits. Successive waves of migrations of Boer farmers, probed first east along the coast away from the Cape toward Natal, and thereafter north toward the interior, eventually establishing the republics that came to be known as the Orange Free State and the Transvaal.
The British did not try to stop the Trekboers from moving away from the Cape. The Trekboers functioned as pioneers, opening up the interior for those who followed, and Britain gradually extended control outwards from the Cape along the coast toward the east, eventually annexing Natal in 1843.
The Trekboers were farmers, gradually extending their range and territory with no overall agenda. The formal abolition of slavery in the British Empire in 1834 led to more organised groups of Boer settlers attempting to escape British rule, some travelling as far north as modern-day Mozambique. This became known as the Great Trek, and those who took part in it are called Voortrekkers.
Indeed, the British subsequently acknowledged two new Boer Republics in a pair of treaties: the Sand River Convention of 1852 recognised the independence of the Transvaal Republic, and the Orange River Convention of 1854 recognised the independence of the Orange Free State. However, British colonial expansion, from the 1830s, featured skirmishes and wars against both Boers and native African tribes for most of the remainder of the century.
The discovery of diamonds in 1867 near the Vaal River, some northeast of Cape Town, ended the isolation of the Boers in the interior and changed South African history. The discovery triggered a diamond rush that attracted people from all over the world, turning Kimberley into a town of 50,000 within five years and drawing the attention of British imperial interests. In the 1870s the British annexed Griqualand West, site of the Kimberley diamond discoveries.
In 1875 Henry Herbert, 4th Earl of Carnarvon, the British Secretary of State for the Colonies, in an attempt to extend British influence, approached the Orange Free State and the Transvaal Republic and tried to organise a federation of the British and Boer territories modelled on the 1867 federation of the French and English speaking provinces of Canada. However the cultural and historical context differed entirely, and the Boer leaders turned him down. Successive British annexations, and in particular the annexation of West Griqualand, caused a climate of simmering unease in the Boer republics. The president of the Transvaal Republic from 1872 to 1877 was T. F. Burgers. The Transvaal Republic was in serious financial trouble because of problems with tax collection and a war with the Pedi under the leadership of Sekhukhune in the North-East Transvaal. In 1877, the British annexed the Transvaal, which was bankrupt, and under threat from the Zulu.
Sir Theophilus Shepstone was sent by Lord Carnarvon as a special commissioner to the Transvaal. Shepstone did not initially disclose his true intentions to the Transvaal government, but at the end of January 1877 Shepstone admitted to Burgers that Britain was going to annex the Transvaal Republic. Burgers' response was to convince the Transvaal government to act in a more serious manner, but the Transvaal government refused to see the urgency of their predicament. Lord Carnarvon thought that the annexation of the Transvaal would be the first step in creating a confederation under British authority.
On 12 April 1877, a proclamation of the annexation of the Transvaal Republic was made in Church Square, Pretoria, the capital city of the Transvaal. The Transvaal Republic was now known as the British Colony of the Transvaal. A Transvaal government delegation comprising Paul Kruger and E. J. P. Jorrisen went to London in 1877 to present their case on behalf of the Transvaal to Lord Carnarvon, but their efforts were unsuccessful. The Transvaal Volksraad asked Transvaal citizens not to commit acts of violence, as this would create a negative image of the Transvaal in Britain. In April 1880, the Liberal Party was elected as the new government in Britain, and the feeling in the Transvaal was that this would lead to the return of sovereignty to the Transvaal. However, the new British prime minister, W.E. Gladstone, reiterated British control. In October 1880, a newspaper from Paarl in the Cape Colony reported: "Passive resistance is now becoming futile".
Outbreak of war
With the defeat of the Zulus, and the Pedi, the Transvaal Boers were able to give voice to the growing resentment against the 1877 British annexation of the Transvaal and complained that it had been a violation of the Sand River Convention of 1852, and the Bloemfontein Convention of 1854.Major-General Sir George Pomeroy Colley, after returning briefly to India, finally took over as Governor of Natal, Transvaal and Military Commander in July 1880. Multiple commitments prevented Colley from visiting the Transvaal where he knew many of the senior Boers. Instead he relied on reports from the Administrator, Sir Owen Lanyon, who had no understanding of the Boer mood or capability. Belatedly Lanyon asked for troop reinforcements in December 1880 but was overtaken by events.
The Boers revolted on 16 December 1880 and took action at Bronkhorstspruit against a British column of the 94th Foot who were returning to reinforce Pretoria.
1880–1881 war
The trigger for the war came when a Boer named Piet Bezuidenhout refused to pay an illegally inflated tax. Government officials seized his wagon and attempted to auction it off to pay the tax on 11 November 1880, but a hundred armed Boers disrupted the auction, assaulted the presiding sheriff, and reclaimed the wagon. The first shots of the war were fired when this group fought back against government troops who were sent after them.After the Transvaal formally declared independence from the United Kingdom, the war began on 16 December 1880 with shots fired by Transvaal Boers at Potchefstroom. During this skirmish, the Boer "commando" was led by General Piet Cronjé. This led to the action at Bronkhorstspruit on 20 December 1880, where the Boers ambushed and destroyed a British Army convoy. From 22 December 1880 to 6 January 1881, British Army garrisons all over the Transvaal became besieged.
Although generally called a war, the actual engagements were of a relatively minor nature considering the few men involved on both sides and the short duration of the combat, lasting some ten weeks.
The fiercely independent Boers had no regular army; when danger threatened, all the men in a district would form a militia organised into military units called commandos and would elect officers. Commandos being civilian militia, each man wore what he wished, usually everyday dark-grey, neutral-coloured, or earthtone khaki farming clothes such as a jacket, trousers and slouch hat. Each man brought his own weapon, usually a hunting rifle, and his own horses. The average Boer citizens who made up their commandos were farmers who had spent almost all their working lives in the saddle, and, because they had to depend on both their horses and their rifles for almost all of their meat, they were skilled hunters and expert marksmen.
Most of the Boers had single-shot breech-loading rifle, primarily the.450 Westley Richards, a falling-block, single-action, breech-loading rifle, with accuracy up to 600 yards.
J. Lehmann's The First Boer War, 1972, comments "Employing chiefly the very fine breech-loading Westley Richards - calibre 45; paper cartridge; percussion-cap replaced on the nipple manually - they made it exceedingly dangerous for the British to expose themselves on the skyline". Other rifles included the Martini-Henry and the Snider–Enfield. Only a few had repeaters like the Winchester or the Swiss Vetterli. As hunters they had learned to fire from cover, from a prone position and to make the first shot count, knowing that if they missed, in the time it took to reload, the game would be long gone. At community gatherings, they often held target shooting competitions using targets such as hens' eggs perched on posts over 100 yards away. The Boer commandos made for expert light cavalry, able to use every scrap of cover from which they could pour accurate and destructive fire at the British.
The British infantry uniforms at that date were red jackets, dark blue trousers with red piping on the side, white pith helmets and pipe clayed equipment, a stark contrast to the African landscape. The Highlanders wore the kilt, and khaki uniforms. The standard infantry weapon was the Martini-Henry single-shot breech-loading rifle with a long sword bayonet. Gunners of the Royal Artillery wore blue jackets. The Boer marksmen could easily snipe at British troops from a distance. The Boers carried no bayonets, leaving them at a substantial disadvantage in close combat, which they avoided as often as possible. Drawing on years of experience of fighting frontier skirmishes with numerous and indigenous African tribes, they relied more on mobility, stealth, marksmanship and initiative while the British emphasised the traditional military values of command, discipline, formation and synchronised firepower. The average British soldier was not trained to be a marksman and got little target practice. What shooting training British soldiers had was mainly as a unit firing in volleys on command.