Boer Wars: A History From Beginning to End
5/5
()
About this ebook
As General Patton once said, "The Boers? Those sons of bitches fight for the hell of it."
The reputation of the Boer is not entirely unearned. At a time when South Africa was a place inhabited by the toughest of men, only those who lived in the saddle with a gun in their hands could possibly survive.
Inside you will read about...
✓ The Creation of the Boer
✓ Growing Tensions
✓ Colley Steps In
✓ The End of the First War
✓ The Jameson Raid
✓ Stage One: The Boer Offensive
✓ Stage Two: The Empire Strikes Back
✓ Stage Three: Scorched Earth
✓ The End of the Boer
Who were the Boers, and what was the conflict that would lead them into a fight to the death with England in the First and Second Anglo-Boer wars? Was this a colonial uprising? Or a freedom-fight gone horribly wrong?
Read more from Henry Freeman
Sumerians: A History From Beginning to End Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5World War 1: A History From Beginning to End Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Alexander The Great: A Life From Beginning To End Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5War of 1812: A History From Beginning to End Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Roman Britain: A History From Beginning to End Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Genghis Khan: A Life From Beginning to End Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mayan Civilization: A History From Beginning to End Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Siege of Yorktown: The Last Major Land Battle of the American Revolutionary War Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Nelson Mandela: A Life From Beginning to End Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related to Boer Wars
Related ebooks
Harry Smith's Last Throw: The Eight Cape Frontier War, 1850–1853 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Boer Wars: A Brief History Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Great Boer War Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Companion to the Anglo-Zulu War Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe African Wars: Warriors and Soldiers of the Colonial Campaigns Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Zulu Victory: The Epic of Isandlwana and the Cover-up Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Kruger, Kommandos & Kak: Debunking the Myths of The Boer War Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Springboks, Troepies and Cadres: Stories of the South African Army, 1912-2012 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Boer War, 1899–1902: Ladysmith, Megersfontein, Spion Kop, Kimberley and Mafeking Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Through the Dark Continent: Volume 1 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Brutal State of Affairs: The Rise and Fall of Rhodesia Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Empire's Violent End: Comparing Dutch, British, and French Wars of Decolonization, 1945–1962 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Rorke's Drift and Isandlwana: 22nd January 1897: Minute by Minute Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Britain at War with the Asante Nation, 1823–1900: "The White Man's Grave" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNelson Mandela: A Life From Beginning to End Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Rhodesian War: A Military History Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Boer War 1899–1902 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5World War 2: Great Wars of the World Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsInventing Africa: History, Archaeology and Ideas Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLike Wolves on the Fold: The Defence of Rorke's Drift Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The South African Story: 4th Edition Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Total Onslaught: War and Revolution in Southern Africa Since 1945 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Anglo Zulu War: Isandlwana: The Revelation of a Disaster Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Into the Jaws of Death: British Military Blunders, 1879–1900 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Boer War Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Short History of South Africa Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsKing Philip: War Chief of the Wampanoag People Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBattles of the Boer War Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Mussolini and Hitler: The Forging of the Fascist Alliance Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Black Death: A History from Beginning to End Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Wars & Military For You
The Art of War Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The God Delusion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mein Kampf: The Original, Accurate, and Complete English Translation Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsKilling the SS: The Hunt for the Worst War Criminals in History Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Daily Creativity Journal Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sun Tzu's The Art of War: Bilingual Edition Complete Chinese and English Text Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Art of War & Other Classics of Eastern Philosophy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Unit 731: Testimony Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Wager Disaster: Mayem, Mutiny and Murder in the South Seas Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Band of Brothers: E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne from Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Rise of the Fourth Reich: The Secret Societies That Threaten to Take Over America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Forgotten Highlander: An Incredible WWII Story of Survival in the Pacific Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Last Kingdom Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Art of War: The Definitive Interpretation of Sun Tzu's Classic Book of Strategy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Unacknowledged: An Expose of the World's Greatest Secret Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World--and Why Their Differences Matter Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5SEAL Survival Guide: A Navy SEAL's Secrets to Surviving Any Disaster Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Resistance: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Idaho Falls: The Untold Story of America's First Nuclear Accident Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Making of the Atomic Bomb Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5In Harm's Way: The Sinking of the USS Indianapolis and the Extraordinary Story of Its Survivors Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Boer Wars
1 rating0 reviews
Book preview
Boer Wars - Henry Freeman
Introduction
Because the victors write the history books, we’ve called the altercation in South Africa quite simply The Boer War
for generations – a British designation. But ask someone else and the answer might be different. To the Boers themselves, it was The Wars of Independence
, yet to the politically correct they were the Anglo-Boer Wars
, meant to designate the participants without taking sides. But even each specific conflict has its own name. The First Boer War is also referred to as The Transvaal War.
The Jameson Raid is even questioned whether it’s rightly part of the war at all, and the Second Boer War is also called the Second Anglo-Boer War
as well as the South African War.
How we name something defines how we look at it. Our goal is to look at all of these events collectively, in an unbiased presentation of facts. Hence this history is more properly titled The Anglo-Boer Wars: From Beginning to End
and we will refer to the wars themselves with the Anglo-Boer
designation from this point onward.
But no sooner has the naming conundrum been resolved that we have a new problem in deciding just where the war even began. The tensions between the parties involved go back more than a hundred years. The job of the historian can become muddled when it comes to weeding out the facts and how to present them properly.
Let’s start, then, with the founding of South Africa by the Dutch, and work from there.
Chapter One
The Creation of the Boer
…the Boers of South Africa, regarded themselves as a chosen people, elect of God, and their God was an awful Majesty, given to revenge upon His enemies
—James G. Leyburn, The Scotch-Irish: A Social History
The area of what is modern day South Africa wasn’t entirely unknown to the Europeans prior to colonization. The Portuguese were familiar with the Cape as far back as the 1480’s, though they’d named it Cabo das Tormentas, meaning Cape of Storms.
This might give a hint as to why the territory was left alone by traders putting in for supplies, by both Portuguese and later English and Dutch traders. This was probably just as well, as the natives of the region – the Xhosa and Zulu – weren’t necessarily welcoming to outsiders.
It wasn’t until 1647 that the Dutch became interested in the potential of a colony here, after two sailors from a Dutch East India Company shipwrecked there. While the most that shipwrecked sailors could usually ask was to survive such an experience, these two men actually thrived in the conditions, even able to cultivate their own crops in the months that followed. Their return home was filled with glowing reports of the land, and plans soon followed to place a colony at the Cape to serve passing company ships.
In 1652, under the direction of surgeon Jan Van Riebeek, the first fort was built at what would someday become Cape Town. Within five years, the settlement had grown considerably,