First Boer War
George Pomeroy Colley at the Battle of Majuba Hill just before he was killed
| date | December 16, 1880 to March 23, 1881 |
|---|---|
| place | South Africa |
| output | Boer victory |
| consequences | Transvaal self-government under formal British rule |
| Peace treaty | March 23, 1881 |
| Parties to the conflict | |
|---|---|
| Commander | |
| losses | |
|
408 dead, 315 wounded |
41 dead, 47 wounded |
| Civilians (mostly Boers) : unknown | |
The First Boer War took place between December 16, 1880 and March 23, 1881 in the Transvaal in what is now South Africa . It was the first clash between Great Britain and the South African Republic (CAR).
prehistory
After the Cape Colony , which had been Dutch until then, was ceded to Great Britain in 1806, the Boers living there became increasingly a minority. With the abolition of slavery in 1833, they found themselves robbed of their economic basis. In order to preserve their identity and not to have to bow to British laws, around 12,000 Boers avoided the so-called Great Trek from 1835–1841 into the hinterland. In 1853, north of the river Vaal , they founded the South African Republic in the Transvaal, with Pretoria as its capital .
In 1877 the British annexed the Transvaal by Theophilus Shepstone . Great Britain was consolidating at that time, u. a. also with the Zulu War won two years later with Boer soldiers , his position of power in southern Africa. General Garnet Wolseley , the High Commissioner in the Transvaal, subjugated the Pedi under Sekhukhune at the end of 1879 , whose successful resistance against the Boers had been a main reason for the British annexation.
At the same time, the Boers' displeasure with the British administration grew. More and more of them refused to pay taxes and signed a petition to restore the Boer Republic. A delegation headed by Paul Kruger had left for England to reverse the annexation, but returned empty-handed. In the general elections in Great Britain in the spring of 1880, the Liberals under Gladstone returned to the government, from whom the Boers promised to lift the annexation. However, these hopes were bitterly disappointed. Instead of the promised self-government, the British set up a legislative chamber in Pretoria, in which only the British community was represented. Eventually the British started to collect the outstanding tax debts through confiscations. The Boers revolted against it and in December 1880 the conflict broke out openly after a meeting on the Paardekraal farm (now Krugersdorp ) voted for the proclamation of the republic. A triumvirate , consisting of Kruger, Petrus Jacobus Joubert, and Marthinus Wessel Pretorius , took over the government and issued an ultimatum to the British to withdraw their troops. They declared the centrally located Heidelberg to be their capital.
Fighting
On December 16, 1880, the first shots were fired in Potchefstroom when a group of Boers wanted to announce the declaration of independence there. Four days later there was a battle near Bronkhorstspruit , in which the Boers attacked and destroyed a British army convoy on the way from Lydenburg to Pretoria. From December 22nd to January 6th, 1881, the siege of all British garrisons in the Transvaal began.
These sieges led to the Battle of Laing's Nek on January 28th , when the Natal Field Force , which had broken out from Newcastle under George Pomeroy Colley, tried to drive the Boers from the Drakensberg and come to the aid of the besieged. However, the Boers under Joubert easily repulsed the British cavalry and infantry attacks. After the Battle of Schuinshoogte on February 8, 1881, where another British unit narrowly escaped being destroyed by a Boer patrol unit, the British government decided to enter into negotiations for an armistice.
However, Colley did not want to accept such a humiliating outcome of the campaign and forged a plan to defeat the Boers after all. To this end, he had Majuba Hill, which overlooks the Boer positions at Laing's Nek, occupied by some of his troops in order to drive the Boers away from here with the help of his artillery. However, realizing the impending danger, the Boers stormed the hill in the battle of Majuba Hill , which ended in a humiliating defeat for the British. Colley was killed in the process. His successor, Sir Evelyn Wood , advocated teaching the Boers a lesson, but Kruger's conciliatory response to the truce offer had now arrived.
Peace treaty
Because of these successes, Boer also a riot of Kapburen and thus the loss of all South Africa's threatened, the government Gladstone was no longer willing to further continue the long-lost war, and so it was on March 6, first to a ceasefire . Finally, on March 23, both sides signed a peace treaty that granted the Boers in the Transvaal self-government under formal British rule. The exact relationship between the Republic and Great Britain was set out in the Pretoria Convention on August 3rd . In 1884 the South African Republic achieved its extensive independence as part of the London Convention .
Comparison of armies
While the Boers wore their mostly khaki- colored everyday clothing in battle , the British wore scarlet uniforms (" red coats ") and white helmets, which were in stark contrast to the African landscape. This made it possible for the Boer snipers to hit British soldiers with great precision, even over long distances. The Boers benefited from their unconventional tactics, which were based more on camouflage and speed than on discipline and formation. The British army consisted of professional soldiers , while that of the Boers consisted of volunteers defending their own homeland.
See also
literature
- John Laband : The Transvaal Rebellion. The First Boer War 1880-1881. Pearson Longman History, 2005, ISBN 978-0-582-77261-8 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Christoph Marx : In the sign of the ox wagon: the radical Afrikaaner nationalism in South Africa and the history of the Ossewabrandwag. LIT, Münster 1998, ISBN 3825839079 , p. 1. Excerpts from books.google.de