Transcript The SOUTH african war 1899 – 1902

Resisting British Control
THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR
1899 – 1902
Introduction...
“The British public expected the war
against the Boers to be over by Christmas.
It proved to be the longest (two and threequarter years), the most expensive (over
200 million Pounds), the bloodiest (at least
22 000 British, 25 000 Boer and 12 000
African lives) and the most humiliating
war for Britain between 1815 and 1914”
Thomas Pakenham
1. Boer men, women and children,
mainly farmers who lived in the
Transvaal (SAR) and the Orange Free
State and spoke Afrikaans or Dutch
2. British soldiers who came from
Britain and its colonies, including the
Cape and Natal
3. African people from all over South
Africa
1. Revenge: Remember Majuba!
2. Control of gold mining interests
3. The Jameson Raid
 1877: British annexed Orange Free
State & Transvaal
 Boers were angry – went to war in 1890
 Defeated British at the Battle of Majuba
(27 February 1881)
 First Vryheidsoorlog (War of Liberation)
 The British wanted revenge: they were
humiliated
 Gold discovered in 1886 on the
Witwatersrand (in Transvaal)
 Made Transvaal wealthy
 Mostly British immigrants seeking
fortune (Called the Uitlanders)
 Not happy with having little political
power
 Demanded to have a voice in the affairs
of the Transvaal
 Cecil John Rhodes wanted to see all of South
Africa united under British control
 Did not like the fact that the Boer republics had
access to the rest of the world through the
Delagoa Bay harbour
 Jan 1896: plans to attack Johannesburg and
take over Transvaal with help from Uitlanders
 Terrible failure: Rhodes asked for
reinforcements that never came
 Boers saw the raid as declaration of war
though war only came in 1899
 Read p. 130 – 133
 Do Activity 6 in pairs (write answers on a
piece of paper) (p. 133)
 Report back