First Boer War - 1881 Peace

1881 Peace

The British government of William Gladstone was conciliatory as it realised that any further action would require substantial troop reinforcements, and it was likely that the war would be costly, messy and protracted. Unwilling to get bogged down in a distant war the British government ordered a truce.

Under instructions from the British government, Sir Evelyn Wood (who had replaced Colley upon his death on 27 February 1881) signed an armistice to end the war, and subsequently a peace treaty was signed with Kruger at O'Neil's Cottage on 6 March, bringing the war to an end on 23 March 1881. In the final peace treaty, the Pretoria Convention, negotiated by a three-man Royal Commission, the British agreed to complete Boer self-government in the Transvaal under British suzerainty, the Boers accepting the Queen's nominal rule and British control over external relations, African affairs and native districts. The Pretoria Convention was signed on 3 August 1881 and ratified on 25 October 1881 by the Transvaal Volksraad (parliament). This led to the withdrawal of the last British troops. The Pretoria Convention was superseded in 1884 by the London Convention which provided for similar complete self government though still with British control of foreign relations.

When in 1886 a second major mineral find was made at an outcrop on a large ridge some thirty miles south of the Boer capital at Pretoria, it reignited British imperial interests. The ridge, known locally as the "Witwatersrand" (literally "white water ridge" – a watershed) contained the world's largest deposit of gold-bearing ore. Although it was not as rich as gold finds in Canada and Australia, its consistency made it especially well-suited to industrial mining methods.

By 1899, when tensions erupted once more into the Second Boer War, the lure of gold made it worth committing the vast resources of the British Empire and incurring the huge costs required to win that war. The sharp lessons the British learned during the First Boer War which included Boer marksmanship, tactical flexibility, and good use of ground had largely been forgotten when the second war broke out 18 years later, which also led to heavy casualties as well as many setbacks for the ultimately victorious British.