Summary
For generations, South Africa witnessed conflict between
Europeans and white settlers, both of whom wanted political and
economic control of the region. Most particularly, conflict developed between
Britain and Afrikaners, mostly Dutch descendants of white settlers
who had emigrated to South Africa throughout the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries. Britain wanted total dominion over the region
of South Africa, and the Afrikaners constituted a significant roadblock.
In the 1830s Britain began to assert control. From 1837 to 1844
the British forced the Afrikaner population onto the Great Trek,
a resettlement plan that moved the Afrikaners from the coastal
colonial settlement to the interior lands of Transvaal and Orange
Free State. In 1884, Germany, Britain's archrival in Europe, established
itself in neighboring Namibia. Then, in 1886, huge gold deposits
were found in the Transvaal territory of South Africa. Faced with
the prospect of immense economic gain and the sudden possibility
of German political intervention in regard to that financial windfall,
the British, under capitalist entrepreneur Cecil Rhodes, took action.
Very quickly, the British came to the conclusion that
their interests were not fully served under the political regime
of the Afrikaner government in Transvaal. The Afrikaner policies
on tariffs and trade did not square with British imperial aims.
In 1895, Rhodes and his chief lieutenant, Dr. L. S. Jameson, took
advantage of the unrest of British settlers in the Transvaal region
to launch an unauthorized overthrow attempt. Jamesone himself led
a contingent of British South African police into Transvaal. The
invasion proved to be premature and a complete failure. Jameson
was captured, turned over to the British and imprisoned for his
unauthorized attack. Rhode's was forced to resign his position.
New British leadership did nothing to ease tensions.
In 1899, angered over what they perceived as the harsh treatment
of British settlers in the Transvaal and still motivated by the
prospect of gold, the British began a massive build up of British
forces in the area. In October 1899, the Afrikaner President Paul
Kruger demanded the withdrawal of these troops and threatened war
if his demands went unmet. The British did not comply, and on
October 12 the Transvaal and Orange Free State declared war.
The war progressed rather poorly for the better-equipped,
better-trained, and larger British army. Under inept leadership
and harassed by effective Afrikaner guerrilla tactics, the British
were forced to fight the war for three years. By the time the
war was over--a war, by the way, that saw the British introduce
and effectively use concentration camps as a means of controlling
captured populations--over sixty thousand people had died. The
British lost almost 30,000 fighting men, while Afrikaner forces
lost some 5000. More than 20,000 Afrikaner civilians died in the
concentration camps. Numbers of deaths of black Africans placed
in the camps went uncounted, though the numbers certainly reached
into the thousands. In 1902, after massive effort and expense,
and the brutal tactics of the English commander Herbert Horatio
Kitchener, the British exhausted the Boer's into submission.
On May 31 the two sides signed the Treaty of Vereeniging,
under which the British accepted the conditional surrender of the
Afrikaners. The Transvaal and Orange Free State were promised
limited future autonomy as British colonies. The British in turn
promised to pay three million pounds and promised the Afrikaners
that no decision to include the black majority in government would
be made before rule was returned to the Afrikaners. This, unfortunately,
made twentieth-century apartheid an eventuality.
When discussing the Boer War, one cannot skip over the
brutality the British used against its white enemies in South Africa.
Concentration camps were havens for disease, malnutrition, and
persecution. Individual rights did not exist in these territories
and women and children were raped, abused, and forced into labor
for the British government. No one knows the extent of the abuse,
though it is clear they did not compare to those perpetrated by
Hitler or Stalin in scope or atrocity. However, it is important
to note that concentration camps developed under British auspices
and were used against fellow whites, fellow Europeans, and fellow
imperialists.
