The Boer War

I will be honest. Research is at the same time the most boring and the most exciting part of writing.

Boring when you are flipping through topic after topic,  trying to dial in your facts and make sure you have all the right details in place.

Exciting… when all those details tell the story for you.

Like most Jane Austen-inspired authors, I have gotten pretty cozy with the 1800s and much of the drama we are familiar with, but there is SO much more. As many of our authors have been sharing lately, it is easy for us to stick in our ruts of what we think things were like, how we believe things were, and the attitudes we expect were prevalent at the time.

In writing Tempted, however, I had to step out of my usual routine and not rely on the tried and true historical facts I “knew” from circa 1811.  For one thing, in 1900 we had cars. We had steam engines, trams, and telegraph wires. Darcy and Mr. Gardiner even hold a long-distance telephone call in the book! But the real eye-opener, historically speaking, was the Boer War.

I’m going to be the first to admit here… I really didn’t know what the Boer War was all about. I paid attention in History class as a kid, but somehow I missed the fact that Things Happened in Europe between the Napoleonic Wars and WWI. To be quite honest, I actually thought the “Boers” were African. How little I knew.

So, a bit of history recap here–this took me personally right back to my research for Nefarious, exploring the history of the East India Company.  In a tragic oversimplification of the affair, here we go. The EIC was chartered on December 31, 1600, to exploit trade opportunities in the near and far East. Silk, opium, and tea were famous imports of the EIC. They were far more than just an independent enterprise, however. They became an active agent in England’s imperial dreams, bringing riches into English coffers from the Orient, India, and South Africa, to name a few.

However, it wasn’t just England that came up with this idea.  In March of 1602, several Dutch companies merged to create the Dutch East India Company, or the VOC, with an eye on Indian textiles.  Their hope was to remain competitive with the English, and over the next two hundred years, they did see some success. Their connections spread throughout Asia, the Near East, and yes, South Africa. However, by 1795, the Dutch had fallen to Napoleon, and they withdrew their interests in South Africa.

South Africa was important for a number of reasons. Take a look at a sailing route between England and Australia. And until the Suez Canal opened, the Cape Route was the best way to get to China. On such a long voyage, and in such treacherous waters as those around the Cape, it was important to have a port to restock supplies, repair ships, and… well… there may have been some other trading happening. Not all of it was awesome.

But back to the Boers. When the VOC withdrew from South Africa, many of its people remained. Among the original Dutch settlers were other European settlers, including Huguenots. They settled in the area as farmers,  called Boeren. England incorporated the Cape Colony territory in 1806.  Many of the original Dutch settlers and their descendants later moved north to the Orange Free State, the Natal, and the Transvaal to avoid British rule.

In 1868, mineral wealth was discovered nearby, which only added fuel to the British desire to control the area, particularly with other European powers showing a similar interest. However,   there were other people there. The  Zulu kingdom was right between the British territory and the Transvaal, and they fought several skirmishes over borders and territory in the 1870s.

The scenario was a powder keg. The Boers despised the English and didn’t trust the Zulus. The Zulus had no love for either one, but being sandwiched between the two, they didn’t want war on both fronts. As they were more afraid of the English, they tended to side with them.  As for Britain, she was engaged with some delicate affairs of her own in India, and wanted to avoid war with the Zulus at all costs.

Eventually, the affair boiled over and England marched on the Zulu kingdom. The Zulus were fierce and effective, visiting devastating losses on the British, even without modern rifles. However, after more than six months,  the British claimed the upper hand (this is a very nitty-gritty summary, my apologies). Pictured at left is the Zulu king, Cetshwayo.

The British pressed their advantage to take control of Boer territory as well, in direct violation of previous treaties. Landowner rights were ignored, the privilege of a voice in their own governance and taxation was disregarded. And this, my friends, is where I finally warm up to my point.  Another war broke out.

The Boer war was one of the turning points in modern warfare. That sounds so dispassionate when I just type it out. Let me rephrase that. Mankind invented lots of new ways of killing each other in these battles.  I’ve no doubt that the European-descended combatants learned some new tricks from their Zulu neighbors, but they had plenty of their own, as well.

Being familiar with the region, and not being a fraction so large or well-equipped as the British, the Boer soldiers resorted to guerilla tactics. They were excellent hunters and superior marksmen who relied on stealth. And, unlike the British soldiers, the Boers had grown up in the region and had the home advantage of being used to the climate.

The First Boer War lasted for about four months. However, eighteen years later, another war broke out that lasted two and a half years. Again, the Boer armies employed their guerilla tactics with magnificent success… for a time. They hid in kopjes, waited in ambush when necessary, and cut supply lines and telegraph wires. The British answered with a scorched earth policy that included burning settlers’ houses and forcing them into concentration camps.

Yes, you read that right, but let me explain. First of all,  obviously concentration camps were not an invention of WWII. Nor were they new by the Boer war. These concentration camps were not work camps, specifically, nor were they designed for extermination. Rations and allotments were assigned for each family, but if one reads the accounts of the survivors, it was a pretty dismal situation where they never had enough food or shelter. I will refrain from posting any photographs of the prisoners.  General Kitchener planned to exert pressure on the enemy soldiers by taking their communities and families captive. No doubt, he rationalized this by believing that the war would be over sooner, but it only enraged the Boers.

One of the most remarkable personalities of this story is  Louis Botha, a brilliant commander of the Boer forces.  Among his many claims to fame was that he met Winston Churchill. Twice. The first time, he was taking the future Prime Minister prisoner off a captured train at gunpoint. The second time, years later, he was a peace-time guest of the PM, who had no memory of their first meeting. Churchill, however, did not forget Botha.  In later life, Churchill described Botha as one of the three most famous generals he had ever met, none of whom had ever won a great battle. As an aside, if one were to be really geeky and look up the details, I hinted that the family Colonel Fitzwilliam rescued from the concentration camp in Tempted were Botha’s wife and children.

During this time, both British and Boer tried to avoid involving Africans and even Indians in their conflict.  On the face at least, the British had good relations with the non-whites in the region. As the demands for manpower escalated, both armies ended up employing thousands of non-whites as camp labor, scouts,  guides, and they even enlisted them as soldiers.

Eventually, some African villages fell just as much a victim to the Scorched Earth tactic as the Boers. And, yes, they too were shuffled off to camps. The conditions were no better than the Boers endured. By some accounts, when the conditions of the Boer camp were exposed and pressure exerted to improve the situation for the prisoners,  things got better for the Boer prisoners much faster than they did for the Africans.

The legacy of the Boer War is a complicated one. Obviously the politics and demographics of the region were wholly transformed, but even British policies underwent a metamorphosis. The war became unpopular at home, and some changes were in order. Foreign policy took a second look. The old way of winning battles with cavalry was not nearly so effective in the South African conditions, so new techniques came into play. In a way, the Boer conflicts prepared Britain for the first world war.

The list of casualties for these conflicts is staggering.  Over 29,000 soldiers died in battle or of their wounds. The British, though victorious, suffered nearly triple the casualties of the Boers, but the civilian cost is even more sobering.  Over 46,000 died in the camps, with 20,000 of them being African.

When I write numbers like this, I have to sit back and take a deep breath.  I don’t even have that many dollars to my name, so it’s hard to imagine those figures speaking about human lives.   I have no profound words of wisdom to tie this history up with a neat little bow–no sunny maxims about how “We’re all wiser now.”

No, all I can do is what every historical fiction author does. I keep reading, I keep learning, and I keep telling stories, hoping they will touch a string that needs to be played in tune, at the right time and in the right heart.

-NC