Boer War Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
6correct to beat the crowd
50 free Boer War trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
The Second Boer War (1899–1902) pitted the British Empire against two small Boer republics, the Transvaal and the Orange Free State, over gold, the vote for Uitlanders and who would run southern Africa. It opened with Boer sieges of Ladysmith, Mafeking and Kimberley and a run of British defeats in Black Week, turned when Roberts and Kitchener arrived with the largest force Britain had ever sent overseas, and then dragged on for two years of guerrilla war, blockhouses, scorched earth and concentration camps in which tens of thousands of civilians died. This quiz covers the Jameson Raid and the Kruger telegram, the Mauser-armed commandos, Baden-Powell at Mafeking, Spion Kop, Paardeberg, the relief celebrations that gave English the word 'mafficking', Christiaan de Wet and Koos de la Rey, the khaki election, Gandhi's ambulance corps, the Breaker Morant court-martial, the volunteers from Australia, Canada and New Zealand, and the £3 million peace at Vereeniging that led to the Union of South Africa in 1910. Fifty questions, four options each, with a short explanation after every answer. Play on your phone or print it for a history quiz night.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which future prime minister, captured while working as a war reporter, escaped from a Boer prison in 1899?
Winston Churchill
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.
Q 02What does the word 'Boer' mean?
Farmer
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'.
Q 03Which author volunteered as a field-hospital doctor in the Boer War and was knighted in 1902 for his services?
Arthur Conan Doyle
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.
Q 04What term did the Boers use for the mostly British foreigners drawn to the gold fields?
Uitlanders
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.
Q 05On which ridge in the Transvaal was gold struck in 1886, giving rise to Johannesburg?
Witwatersrand
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.
Q 06Which migration, begun in the mid-1830s, took thousands of Boers out of the British-ruled Cape?
The Great Trek
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.
Q 07Who led the failed 1895 raid that a Boer leader later called 'the real declaration of war'?
Leander Starr Jameson
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.
Q 08Which Cape prime minister was forced to resign after a failed 1895–96 raid on the Transvaal exposed his involvement?
Cecil Rhodes
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.
Q 09Who sent the 'Kruger telegram' congratulating the Transvaal on defeating a British raid in 1896?
The German Kaiser
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.
Q 10A state monopoly on which mining explosive was a major grievance of the Transvaal's gold-mine owners?
Dynamite
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.
Q 11Kruger re-armed the Transvaal with tens of thousands of which rifle?
Mauser Model 1895
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.
Q 12What nickname did soldiers give the Boers' quick-firing Maxim gun, which fired a stream of small explosive shells?
Pom Pom
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.
Q 13Which city hosted the failed 1899 talks between Milner and Kruger?
Bloemfontein
Q 21The three British defeats of 10–15 December 1899 are remembered as what?
Black Week
Black Week: Stormberg, Magersfontein and Colenso were all lost within six days. Britain answered by changing its commander and sending out far more men.
Q 22At Magersfontein, which formation was pinned down for nine hours in the heat before breaking?
The Highland Brigade
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.
Q 23At Colenso in 1899, the only son of a famous field marshal won a posthumous Victoria Cross trying to rescue what?
Abandoned guns
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.
Q 14Which Colonial Secretary led Britain's dealings with Kruger before the Boer War?
Joseph Chamberlain
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.
Q 15What was the name of the local militia unit that Boer citizens formed when danger loomed?
Commando
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.
Q 16Apart from the police, which Boer unit wore a uniform rather than everyday clothes?
The State Artillery
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.
Q 17What gift did Queen Victoria send her troops in South Africa for New Year 1900, packed in a special tin?
Chocolate
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.
Q 18Who commanded the 217-day defence of Mafeking?
Robert Baden-Powell
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'.
Q 19Which town was besieged for four months in 1899–1900, with a famous magnate inside it?
Kimberley
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.
Q 20In besieged Mafeking, diarist Sol Plaatje saw which animal's flesh 'for the first time being treated as a human foodstuff'?
Horse
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.
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.
Q 24Which summit did British troops seize on 24 January 1900, only to be overlooked by Boer guns?
Spion Kop
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.
Q 25What nickname did General Sir Redvers Buller earn after his repeated withdrawals?
Sir Reverse
'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.
Q 26Which veteran soldier replaced Buller as British commander-in-chief in South Africa?
Lord Roberts
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.
Q 27Which poet wrote 'The Absent-Minded Beggar' in 1899 to raise money for British soldiers' families?
Rudyard Kipling
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.
Q 28Piet Cronjé surrendered with 4,000 men in February 1900 after being bombarded at which battle?
Paardeberg
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.
Q 29Which Natal town, under siege for nearly four months, did Buller's troops finally relieve on 28 February 1900?
Ladysmith
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.
Q 30Which Boer guerrilla leader went on to help create Britain's Royal Air Force during the First World War?
Jan Smuts
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.