The Boers And Britain

Contemporary Review, Dec, 1999 by Edward Bradbury

The Boer War 1899-1902. David Smurthwaite. Hamlyn Books. 208 pages. [pounds]20.00. ISBN 0-600-59652-4 and The National Army Musuem Book of the Boer War. Lord Carver, F.M. Sidgwick and Jackson. [pounds]25.00. 301 pages. ISBN 0-283-06333-5.

The Boer War has been for many years submerged in public memory by the Great War and after that, by the Second World War. If remembered, it was remembered as the longest and most bloody of Queen Victoria's 'colonial wars'. It was, of course, the war that led to the British control over Southern Africa and then to the creation of the Union of South Africa, later the Republic of South Africa.

The ultimate triumph of the Boers over the British, despite British victory in 1902, was due largely to the stupidity of the Liberal governments of 1902 to 1914 which granted self-government before a British majority could be established. This in turn made the British victory at arms over those same Boers somewhat hollow. The Boer's triumph led in the 1940s to apartheid and to the South African U.D.I. against the British Crown. It also meant that from the 1950s to the 1980s South Africa was, on and off, a staple ingredient in the 'white man's burden' of 'guilt' over 'racism.'

With the ending of Boer rule and the rise of Mandela, interest in South Africa waned in the British media. The extraordinary rise in crime and violence and the emigration of whites were not supposed to happen under democratic rule and were therefore other reasons for a benign neglect. Then this year, television, the radio and publishers realised that we had a centenary on our hands and a number of programmers and new books were the result.

The quality varied enormously from one BBC television series that was simply ludicrous to another television series that tackled the South African war with intelligence. A 'spin off' of this second series is David Smurthwaite's book. He is the Assistant Director at the National Army Museum in London and in his book concentrates on photographs -- over 200 of them both in colour and black and white -- to bring the war to life. The photographs are interspersed by a well selected sampling of original documents, mainly letters, diaries and reminiscences of those who took part.

All together the photographs and textual selections show how bitter a war it was in which the might of the British Army was placed against Boer guerrillas. Rather amusingly the blurb, for which the author, like other authors, is in no way responsible, claims that the war 'heralded the end of the Empire'. It actually did more to expand the Empire than anything between the conquering of India and the defeat of the Ottoman Empire.

A different, and complimentary approach is Field Marshal Lord Carver's study. Just as Mr Smurthwaite makes use of the Army Museum's photographs, Lord Carver uses its unparalleled collection of archival material. The author seeks to explain how this was one of the first 'modern' wars of the twentieth century, in which a regular army fought a committed collection of guerrilla gangs. (The pattern would be repeated in Palestine and also would be faced by the Nazis in France and the Balkans, by the French and Americans in Vietnam and by the Russians in Afghanistan.)

As one would expect of a military man, Lord Carver's writing is clear and direct. He believes that the Boer war was 'an expensive failure... in financial terms it cost the British Government [pounds]210,000,000'. Of 448,895 white soldiers (from the Empire) some 7,582 were killed in action or died from wounds and 13,139 from disease. The later figure was a damning review of the new Army Medical Corps' performance. This does not include those Boers who were killed or died in captivity (some 27,000) or the native Africans (from 7,000 to 12,000). It was a war, he concludes, 'which should never have taken place'. The greatest sadness was that South Africa did not remain one of the great Dominions alongside New Zealand, Australia and Canada but this was the politicians' fault, not the soldiers.