Second Boer War - Background

Background

The southern part of the African continent was dominated in the 19th century by a set of struggles to create within it a single unified state. While the Berlin Conference of 1884–5 sought to draw boundaries between the European powers' African possessions, it also set the stage for further scrambles. The British attempted to annexe first the South African Republic in 1880, and then, in 1899, both the South African Republic and the Orange Free State. In 1868, the British annexed Basutoland in the Drakensberg Mountains following an appeal from Moshesh, the leader of a mixed group of African refugees from the Zulu wars, who sought British protection against the Boers.

In the 1880s, Bechuanaland (modern Botswana, located north of the Orange River) became the object of a dispute between the Germans to the west, the Boers to the east, and the British Cape Colony to the south. Although Bechuanaland had no economic value, the "Missionaries Road" passed through it towards territory farther north. After the Germans annexed Damaraland and Namaqualand (modern Namibia) in 1884, the British annexed Bechuanaland in 1885.

In the First Boer War of 1880–81 the Boers of the Transvaal Republic had proved skilful fighters in resisting the British attempt at annexation, in causing in a series of British defeats. The British government of William Ewart Gladstone had been unwilling to become bemired in a distant war, which required substantial troop reinforcement and expense, for what was at the time perceived to be a minimal return. An armistice followed, ending the war, and subsequently a peace treaty was signed with the Transvaal President Paul Kruger.

However, when, in 1886, a major gold field was discovered at an outcrop on a large ridge some sixty kilometres 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. With the 1886 discovery of gold in the Transvaal, the resulting gold rush brought thousands of British and other prospectors and settlers from across the globe and over the border from the Cape Colony (under British control since 1806).

The city of Johannesburg sprang up as a shanty town nearly overnight as the uitlanders ("foreigners," meaning non-Boer whites) poured in and settled around the mines. The influx was such that the uitlanders quickly outnumbered the Boers in Johannesburg and along the Rand, although they remained a minority in the Transvaal as a whole. The Boers, nervous and resentful of the uitlanders' growing presence, sought to contain their influence through requiring lengthy residential qualifying periods before voting rights could be obtained, by imposing taxes on the gold industry, and by introducing controls through licensing, tariffs and administrative requirements. Among the issues giving rise to tension between the Transvaal government on the one hand, and the Uitlanders and British interests on the other, were

(a) Established uitlanders, including the mining magnates, wanted political, social, and economic control over their lives. These rights included a stable constitution, a fair franchise law, an independent judiciary, and a better educational system. The Boers, for their part, recognised that the more concessions they made to the uitlanders the greater the likelihood–with approximately 30,000 white male Boer voters and potentially 60,000 white male uitlanders–that their independent control of the Transvaal would be lost and the territory absorbed into the British Empire.

(b) The uitlanders resented the taxes levied by the Transvaal government, particularly when this money was not spent on Johannesburg or uitlander interests, but diverted to projects elsewhere in the Transvaal. For example, as the gold-bearing ore sloped away from the outcrop underground to the south, more and more blasting was necessary for extraction, and mines consumed vast quantities of explosives. A box of dynamite costing five pounds included five shillings tax. Not only was this tax perceived as exorbitant, but British interests were offended when President Paul Kruger gave monopoly rights for the manufacture of the explosive to a non-British branch of the Nobel company, which infuriated the British. The so-called "dynamite monopoly" became a major pretext for war.

(c) British imperial interests were alarmed when in 1894–95 Kruger proposed building a railway through Portuguese East Africa to Delagoa Bay, bypassing British controlled ports in Natal and Cape Town and avoiding British tariffs. At the time the Prime Minister of the Cape Colony was Cecil Rhodes, a man driven by a vision of a British controlled Africa extending from Cape to Cairo.

Certain self-appointed uitlanders representatives and British mine owners became increasingly angered and frustrated by their dealings with the Transvaal government. A Reform Committee (Transvaal) was formed to represent the uitlanders.