50 Fun Facts About Boer War

Which future prime minister, captured while working as a war reporter, escaped from a Boer prison in 1899?

Winston Churchill was taken prisoner when Boers ambushed an armoured train. He escaped within a month, came home a hero and was elected to Parliament the following year.

What does the word 'Boer' mean?

Farmer: it is the Dutch word for one, a cousin of the German 'Bauer'. The same old root, meaning a dweller, hides in the last syllable of the English word 'neighbour'.

Which author volunteered as a field-hospital doctor in the Boer War and was knighted in 1902 for his services?

Arthur Conan Doyle, a trained doctor as well as the creator of Sherlock Holmes, served at a field hospital in 1900. He published a history, The Great Boer War, that same year.

What term did the Boers use for the mostly British foreigners drawn to the gold fields?

Uitlanders, Afrikaans for 'foreigners', could vote only after 14 years' residence. On the eve of war Kruger offered to halve that to seven, but the British rejected the offer as too little.

On which ridge in the Transvaal was gold struck in 1886, giving rise to Johannesburg?

Witwatersrand: fortune-seekers streamed in from all over the world and Johannesburg grew up beside the mines. South Africa's currency, the rand, is named after the ridge.

Which migration, begun in the mid-1830s, took thousands of Boers out of the British-ruled Cape?

The Great Trek was a rejection of British rule at the Cape. Britain recognised the trekkers' two republics in 1852 and 1854, the same two it would go to war with half a century later.

Who led the failed 1895 raid that a Boer leader later called 'the real declaration of war'?

Leander Starr Jameson and his 600 men were surrounded near Krugersdorp and forced to surrender. He was jailed for the raid, yet later became Prime Minister of the Cape Colony.

Which Cape prime minister was forced to resign after a failed 1895–96 raid on the Transvaal exposed his involvement?

Cecil Rhodes had plotted the raid to topple Kruger's government, and its failure cost him the premiership. His will left most of his fortune to found the Rhodes scholarships.

Who sent the 'Kruger telegram' congratulating the Transvaal on defeating a British raid in 1896?

The German Kaiser, Wilhelm II, sent it the day after the raiders surrendered. The telegram caused outrage in Britain and soured relations between the two countries.

A state monopoly on which mining explosive was a major grievance of the Transvaal's gold-mine owners?

Dynamite was needed in vast quantities because the gold reefs lay so deep. Kruger's government taxed it and handed its manufacture to a monopoly, which the mine owners bitterly resented.

Kruger re-armed the Transvaal with tens of thousands of which rifle?

The Mauser Model 1895 fired smokeless powder, so no puff of smoke betrayed a hidden rifleman. Boer marksmen could pick off British infantry from long range and then slip away.

What nickname did soldiers give the Boers' quick-firing Maxim gun, which fired a stream of small explosive shells?

Pom Pom: the soldiers' slang simply copied the thumping sound the gun made as it fired. 'Long Tom' was the name given to the Boers' Le Creusot siege guns.

Which city hosted the failed 1899 talks between Milner and Kruger?

Bloemfontein: President Steyn of the neighbouring republic hosted the talks in a last effort to prevent war. Milner judged Kruger's concessions too small and broke the talks off.

Which Colonial Secretary led Britain's dealings with Kruger before the Boer War?

Joseph Chamberlain, the father of Neville, was confident that the Boers could be quickly beaten. The war that began in October 1899 lasted for more than two and a half years.

What was the name of the local militia unit that Boer citizens formed when danger loomed?

Commando: both republics required every male citizen aged 16 to 60 to turn out when called. The Afrikaans word passed into English, where it now means a soldier trained for special raids.

Apart from the police, which Boer unit wore a uniform rather than everyday clothes?

The State Artillery's French-made Long Toms shelled the besieged towns. To answer them, a Royal Navy captain improvised field carriages so that heavy naval guns could fight on land.

What gift did Queen Victoria send her troops in South Africa for New Year 1900, packed in a special tin?

Chocolate: she ordered the tins from Cadbury, Fry and Rowntree. All three firms were run by pacifist Quakers, who refused to profit from the war and would not take payment.

Who commanded the 217-day defence of Mafeking?

Robert Baden-Powell came home a national hero and later founded the Boy Scouts. The riotous street parties at the town's relief gave English a new verb, 'to maffick'.

Which town was besieged for four months in 1899–1900, with a famous magnate inside it?

Kimberley's mining engineers built the town its own heavy gun in the De Beers workshops during the siege. A cavalry dash under John French finally broke through in February 1900.

In besieged Mafeking, diarist Sol Plaatje saw which animal's flesh 'for the first time being treated as a human foodstuff'?

Horse: Plaatje was working in the town as a court interpreter. He went on to become the first secretary-general of the movement now known as the ANC.

The three British defeats of 10–15 December 1899 are remembered as what?

Black Week: Stormberg, Magersfontein and Colenso were all lost within six days. Britain answered by changing its commander and sending out far more men.

At Magersfontein, which formation was pinned down for nine hours in the heat before breaking?

The Highland Brigade marched up shoulder to shoulder in the dark, straight onto a trench the Boers had dug on the flat in front of the hills, not on them. Its commander was among the dead.

At Colenso in 1899, the only son of a famous field marshal won a posthumous Victoria Cross trying to rescue what?

Abandoned guns: Buller called for volunteers to haul them away under heavy fire. Two were saved, but the young lieutenant was mortally wounded and ten guns were left to the Boers.

Which summit did British troops seize on 24 January 1900, only to be overlooked by Boer guns?

Spion Kop gave football a word. In 1906 Liverpool's steep new terrace at Anfield was named after the hill, where many local soldiers had died, and it became known simply as the Kop.

What nickname did General Sir Redvers Buller earn after his repeated withdrawals?

'Sir Reverse' punned on his first name, Redvers. It was a hard fall for a man who had won the Victoria Cross in the Zulu War, though he stayed popular with the public even after his dismissal in 1901.

Which veteran soldier replaced Buller as British commander-in-chief in South Africa?

Lord Roberts, 'Bobs' to the public, was given the command days after his only son was mortally wounded at Colenso. Father and son both won the Victoria Cross, the son's awarded after his death.

Which poet wrote 'The Absent-Minded Beggar' in 1899 to raise money for British soldiers' families?

Rudyard Kipling's verses ran in the Daily Mail and Sir Arthur Sullivan set them to music. The appeal raised about a quarter of a million pounds, and the poem was printed on handkerchiefs and teapots.

Piet Cronjé surrendered with 4,000 men in February 1900 after being bombarded at which battle?

Paardeberg: Cronjé gave up on 27 February, the anniversary of Majuba, where the Boers had routed a British force in 1881. A fortnight later the British marched into the Free State's capital.

Which Natal town, under siege for nearly four months, did Buller's troops finally relieve on 28 February 1900?

Ladysmith takes its name from the Spanish wife of a Cape governor, Sir Harry Smith. Buller broke through to the town only after a string of failed attempts.

Which Boer guerrilla leader went on to help create Britain's Royal Air Force during the First World War?

Jan Smuts took to guerrilla tactics and raided deep into the Cape Colony. By 1917 he was in London helping to direct Britain's war effort, and his report on the air services led to the Royal Air Force.

After annexation in May 1900, the smaller Boer republic was renamed what?

Orange River Colony was the name Britain gave the republic when it annexed it. The name lasted only a decade, after which the colony became the Orange Free State Province of the new Union of South Africa.

Which city fell to the British on 5 June 1900?

Pretoria was the second Boer capital to fall, and Britain annexed the Transvaal later that year. Yet the war was far from over: the Boers turned to guerrilla raids and fought on for almost two more years.

Christiaan de Wet's ambush at Sanna's Post targeted which utility of the Free State capital?

The waterworks fell to de Wet, along with hundreds of prisoners. One British battery fought so bravely that day that its four Victoria Cross winners were elected by their own comrades.

President Kruger left Africa in October 1900 aboard a warship sent by which country's queen?

The Netherlands: Queen Wilhelmina sent the warship Gelderland to carry the old president to Europe. He died in exile in Switzerland in 1904, and only then came home, to be buried in his former capital.

Which South Atlantic island received the first overseas camps for Boer prisoners of war?

Saint Helena is so remote that Britain had exiled Napoleon there, and from 1900 it held thousands of Boers. General Cronjé spent the rest of the war on the island with his wife.

Which small forts, linked by barbed wire, did the British build across the countryside to hem in Boer guerrillas?

Blockhouses began as guards for the railways, then spread in wired lines that cut the open veld into sections. Columns could sweep one section at a time, leaving the guerrillas ever less room to run.

Boers who took British parole and tried to stay neutral were derided by their countrymen as what?

Hands-uppers, 'hensoppers' in Afrikaans, were scorned by the 'bitter-enders' still in the field. Some went further and fought for the British, among them Piet de Wet, brother of the guerrilla leader Christiaan.

What killed about two-thirds of the 22,000 British and imperial soldiers who died in the Boer War?

Disease, above all typhoid, killed far more soldiers than the fighting did. An epidemic swept the army during its advance in early 1900, when the troops were drinking polluted water.

Tens of thousands of Boer women and children died in which kind of British camp?

Concentration camps held families cleared from the countryside. Campaigner Emily Hobhouse exposed the death rate, and criticism at home and abroad pushed the government into improving conditions.

Which future Indian leader organised a corps of stretcher-bearers for the British in Natal during the Boer War?

Mahatma Gandhi, then a lawyer in Natal, raised about 1,100 volunteers. He argued that Indians who claimed the full rights of British subjects had a duty to defend the Empire.

Which bush poet was shot by a British firing squad for killing Boer prisoners?

Breaker Morant signed his ballads in the Sydney Bulletin 'the Breaker', after his skill with wild horses. His lawyer pleaded that there were orders to take no prisoners, and a 1980 film retold the case.

Which colony's premier, Richard Seddon, offered Britain troops for the Boer War two weeks before the fighting began?

New Zealand's premier was eager to show the colony's loyalty, and spoke in Parliament of the 'crimson tie' of Empire. About 6,500 men went in the end, in ten contingents.

The Boer War was the first war fought by which newly federated nation?

The Commonwealth of Australia was born in 1901, mid-war. Most Australians had gone as soldiers of six separate colonies, and the new federal government raised contingents of its own only close to the war's end.

Which artillery officer in the Boer War later wrote the First World War poem 'In Flanders Fields'?

John McCrae was a newly qualified Canadian doctor, yet he went to South Africa as a gunner, not a medic. He wrote the poem in 1915, the day after a close friend was killed near Ypres.

The 1900 UK general election, called on the back of British victories, is known as what?

The khaki election was named for the dust-coloured uniform the army had adopted in South Africa; 'khaki' comes from the Urdu for 'dusty'. The label stuck, and is used of any election fought in the shadow of a war.

Which agreement, signed on 31 May 1902, ended the Boer War?

The Treaty of Vereeniging is named for the town where the Boer delegates argued over the terms and voted to accept them. The signing itself took place somewhere else entirely.

Britain's 1902 peace terms gave the Boers £3 million for what?

Rebuilding the country: British columns had burnt thousands of homesteads and destroyed crops and livestock to starve out the guerrillas. In the end the victor paid to repair damage it had done itself.

Which Boer general became South Africa's first prime minister?

Louis Botha had commanded the Transvaal's forces against the British. As prime minister he took South Africa into the First World War on Britain's side and personally led the conquest of German South West Africa.

From which US port did Britain ship American horses and mules to South Africa throughout the Boer War?

New Orleans: British steamers made 166 voyages from the port with American horses and mules. A memorial in Port Elizabeth to the horses killed says a nation's greatness lies in 'the extent and justice of its compassion'.

Which Boer War commander fronted the 'Your Country Needs You' poster?

Lord Kitchener was war minister in 1914, and his appeal for volunteers put his face on the poster. Two years later he drowned when the ship taking him to Russia struck a mine off Orkney.