The first large-scale armed confrontation between British imperial forces and Afrikaners in a long series of British-Afrikaner conflicts, the First Boer War restored independence to the Transvaal’s South African Republic but left unresolved questions about the future of British-Afrikaner relations, while intensifying Afrikaner nationalism and increasing tensions that led to the bloody South African War of 1899-1902.
South Africa’s so-called First Boer War—known to Afrikaners as the First War of Freedom—resulted from Great Britain’s annexation of the Afrikaner-ruled South African Republic
The Afrikaner people, who were pejoratively called “Boers” (farmers) by the British, were descendants of Dutch, German, and French settlers who had begun immigrating to South Africa during the seventeenth century at the behest of the Dutch East India Company. The company built Cape Town as a victualling stop for ships sailing between Europe and Asia, and its administration was the only European government in what is now the Republic of South Africa until 1806, when Great Britain occupied its Cape Colony during the Napoleonic Wars in order to protect its own sea route to British India.
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In April, 1877, under orders from British colonial secretary Lord Carnarvon
British troops trying to recapture Majuba Hill in the face of Afrikaner guns.
The irate Afrikaners rallied under Paul Kruger, a veteran political leader who called for nothing short of restoring independence. Kruger and two other leading Transvaal politicians, M. W. Pretorius and Petrus Jacobus Joubert, formed a triumvirate government to counter the British administration. Over the next several years, the members of the triumvirate presided over mass rallies of their increasingly disgruntled fellow Afrikaners. However, it was not until after the British seized an Afrikaner’s wagon at Potchefstroom for sale in a public auction in November, 1880, that the first shots were fired in what became a war.
News of the wagon seizure was immediately transmitted through the countryside. On November 11, 1880, a one-hundred-man Afrikaner commando—which was something like a mounted militia unit—confronted British officials. One month later, at a mass meeting at Paardekraal, Kruger, Joubert, and Pretorius were formally elected as the triumvirate and proclaimed that the restoration of the Transvaal’s independence was vital.
Finally, on December 16, the first shots were fired between British troops and the local commando in Potchefstroom. The Afrikaners then rapidly organized and laid siege to several British garrisons in the Transvaal. A British relief column was ordered to Pretoria to assist the besieged garrison there. On December 20, the column of some 270 British troops and wagons was ordered to halt and go back by armed Afrikaners near the town of Bronkhorstspruit, about forty miles east of Pretoria. When the British commander refused to comply, about two hundred well-concealed Afrikaners opened fire. Within fifteen minutes, 156 British troops were killed or wounded. This battle demonstrated the tactics that the Afrikaners would use and foreshadowed the high casualties that the British would sustain throughout the ensuing war.
British forces under the command of Major-General Sir George Pomeroy Colley
Colley’s troops retreated to a small encampment named Mount Prospect to await reinforcements, while the Afrikaners stepped up their raids on British dispatch riders. Recognizing the threat to his supply and communications lines, Colley marched about four hundred of his troops south to the Ingogo River on February 8 to counter Afrikaner raiding parties. He deployed his troops on a slight rise near the river, where they were surrounded by Afrikaner riflemen posted on small rises. There, the British soldiers suffered from both the accurate rifle fire of their enemies and a lack of water. This action cost the British another fifty-eight dead and more than sixty wounded. During a heavy evening thunderstorm, the Afrikaners pulled back, and Colley seized his chance to escape with his men back to Mount Prospect. There he awaited reinforcements from Great Britain and India.
With the arrival of fresh British troops at Mount Prospect on February 23, Colley planned the occupation of Majuba Hill
On March 6, 1881, the British accepted the Afrikaner offer of an armistice at Mount Prospect. During a meeting at a farmhouse near the base of Majuba Hill on March 21-23, British officers and Afrikaners leaders agreed to terms that would restore nominal independence to the Transvaal and withdraw British forces from the Transvaal. This agreement was officially guaranteed by the Treaties of Pretoria (1883) and London (1884).
The First Boer War resulted from the developing strains between Britain’s colonial rulers and the emigrant Afrikaners and added to those strains. Although the Treaties of Pretoria and London guaranteed Afrikaner independence, the discovery of gold in the Transvaal in 1884 attracted a large-scale influx of British prospectors and settlers, as well as British investment in both the economic and political sectors of the Transvaal. The British desire for revenge against the Transvaal Afrikaners, the continued British planning for federating South Africa, and Transvaal’s informal alliance with Germany made for an uneasy peace between 1881 and 1899.
The war also demonstrated the prowess of highly mobile Afrikaner commando units against professional British soldiers in both guerrilla tactics and set-piece battles. Nevertheless, when the British fought the Afrikaners again in the South African War, they repeated many of the same military and political mistakes.
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Castle, Ian. Majuba 1881: Hill of Destiny. London: Osprey Press, 1996. Well-illustrated and detailed text covering the 1880-1881 war, with useful information on the leaders, regiments, equipment, and weapons used in the war. -
De Villiers, Marq. White Tribe Dreaming. London: Penguin Books, 1989. Part Afrikaner history and part genealogy, De Villier’s work describes the evolution of the Afrikaner community and nationalism from the seventeenth to twentieth centuries. -
Giliomee, Hermann. The Afrikaners: Biography of a People. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2003. Balanced study of the historical construction of Afrikaner identity. -
Le May, G. H. L. The Afrikaners: A Historical Interpretation. Oxford, England: Basil Blackwell, 1995. Analysis of changing concepts of Afrikaner identity through three centuries. -
Omer-Cooper, J. D. History of Southern Africa. 2d ed. London: James Currey, 1994. Solid general history of the numerous peoples of Southern Africa, their interactions and development. -
Paulin, Christopher M. White Men’s Dreams, Black Men’s Blood: African Labor and British Expansionism in Southern Africa, 1877-1895. Trenton, N.J.: Africa World Press, 2001. Examination of the exploitation of African workers that looks closely at competition between the British and the Afrikaners for control of the Transvaal.
South Africa’s Great Trek Begins
Basuto War
Battles of Isandlwana and Rorke’s Drift
Zulu War
Gold Is Discovered in the Transvaal
Rhodes Amalgamates Kimberley Diamondfields
Jameson Raid
South African War
Siege of Mafeking
Paul Kruger; Cecil Rhodes.