162. Britain against the Boers, or how not to fight a war

Two depressingly similar men, unbending, old, bearded, entirely committed to the advantage of their own race, were glaring at each other between the Boer Republic of the Transavaal and the imperial heartland of Great Britain.

President Kruger of the Transvaal was determined to protect the way of life of his Boer people, at the expense of denying the other whites moving into his country any of the rights associated with democracy, while regarding its black inhabitants as entitled to still less consideration.

Lord Salisbury, Prime Minister of Great Britain, was determined to show that it was Britain that was boss in South Africa. He was also keen on avenging Britain’s humiliation in the First Boer War, when its army was beaten at the Battle of Majuba Hill.

When the two countries came to blows, however, things seemed to be going strongly the Boer Way. After a few months of fighting, at the end of 1899, complacency by the British authorities and some astonishingly bad generalship on the ground, had combined to make it look as though the Second Boer War might go the same way as the first, with another British defeat.

Illustration: Stephanus Johannes Paulus ('Paul') Kruger, President of the Transavaal, by Duffus Bros, 1890s

National Portrait Gallery x19163

Music: Bach Partita #2c by J Bu licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives (aka Music Sharing) 3.0 International License.