Can the OFS and Transvaal win the 2nd Boer War?

ben0628

Banned
As the title says, what is necessary for the Afrikaners from the Orange Free State and Transvaal to win the Second Boer War? Keep in mind they were able to defeat the British in the first war, so I don't think its impossible. Perhaps they could have more success in the early stages of the war, or maybe they could get all of the Cape Colony Afrikaners to rise up against the British (they got some)? Could Germany join the war on the side of the Afrikaners?
 
As we discussed in a pre-1900 Zeppelin wank .....

Introduce zeppelins a few years earlier. Officially Getmans only use them to communicate between their colonies on the east and west coasts of Arica. Zeppelin hangars are built in Tanganika, Namibia, Cameron and Togo. Eventually tropical thunderstorms force them to build an additional station in the Orange Free State.
Unofficially, Trans-African zeppelins pause to buy gems and gold from Afrikaners, while "losing" the latest models of firearms made by Krupp and Spandau and Mauser.
 
The short answer is not likely. It all depends on how much the British want to win. Germany is unlikely to support the Boers to the extent that they have a shot at a purely military victory. The economic and industrial power of the British Empire is so much greater than the Boer states as to be ridiculous - the Boers make almost nothing of military use, and certainly not in quantity. The population of the British Empire (and I only include the white population as using African or Indian troops in any numbers would cause problems here) is many, many times that of the Boers. OTL the Boers did about as well as they could militarily, and ran a very good partisan war. Didn't work.

Either for some reason the UK decides that fighting this war is not worth it, or some outside power like Germany jumps in and widens the war. Both are pretty unlikely. YThe Boers winning on their own if the UK stays in - no way.
 

ben0628

Banned
The short answer is not likely. It all depends on how much the British want to win. Germany is unlikely to support the Boers to the extent that they have a shot at a purely military victory. The economic and industrial power of the British Empire is so much greater than the Boer states as to be ridiculous - the Boers make almost nothing of military use, and certainly not in quantity. The population of the British Empire (and I only include the white population as using African or Indian troops in any numbers would cause problems here) is many, many times that of the Boers. OTL the Boers did about as well as they could militarily, and ran a very good partisan war. Didn't work.

Either for some reason the UK decides that fighting this war is not worth it, or some outside power like Germany jumps in and widens the war. Both are pretty unlikely. YThe Boers winning on their own if the UK stays in - no way.

What's the difference in GB then that allowed the Afrikaners to win the 1st Boer War but not the second one?
 
What's the difference in GB then that allowed the Afrikaners to win the 1st Boer War but not the second one?

The first war wasn't really a military victory. As I recall the British didn't want to expand their territory at the time do didn't commit fully and the victory was a pyrrhic one, with a number of conditions being attached to Transvaal independence.
 
What's the difference in GB then that allowed the Afrikaners to win the 1st Boer War but not the second one?

The British were barely trying the first time. They sent only a couple thousand troops into Boer territory and were outnumbered several times over. The second war, they had hundreds of thousands of troops.
 
It's something of a Pacific War problem- the only way to neuter British power is to inflict a crippling defeat fast, but the psychological blow of that probably fires up the Empire to hang in no matter what.

Still: If the Boers were to win, they needed to seize control of the lines into their own territory, dig in and hope that the British lose interest.

That means some combination of
A: Seize the major railheads. That means not laying siege to Kimberley, Mafeking and Ladysmith but riding straight in. That'll be bloody, but every day that the commandos sit around a British strongpoint is a day that they're not sitting atop the line that reinforcements will take.
B: Commit to a serious invasion of the Cape, early on, as Smuts proposed. Now, IOTL the Cape Afrikaners never rose against the British apart from a few volunteers. But major incursions only really took place during the guerrilla phase when it was hard to convince people the war was winnable. It is just possible that if the ZAR forces seem to be carrying all before them there'll be a wave of nationalism. It's probably impossible for the Boers to take the Cape colony- but they have a chance of setting the northern reaches alike, and completely cutting off Bechuanaland and Rhodesia.
C: Push for Durban hard. Natal is a softer target than the Cape, but only in as much that the chance of taking the major ports is slim rather than non-existent. But if the Boers drive "Reverse" Bullers before them back towards the sea, before British reinforcements have arrived and while the Treasury screams that the first month of the war has been more expensive than the entire allocated budget for the campaign... well, it helps the chance for an armistice. I doubt they can take Durban. But they can threaten it.

I want to stress that any one of these would be hard for a small, militia based army. Any two would be extremely difficult, and all three together probably impossible.

However, there is a fourth possibility that is not in the Boer control:

D: A Great Power flare up elsewhere. If we delay Fashoda by a year or so, that might do it. I'm not talking about actual military intervention- but the cabinet was always concerned about focusing so much on South Africa when there was a chance their rivals might make mischief. If we can arrange so that there's some kind of crisis that requires an international conference (formal or otherwise) the British might agree to recognise Boer independence in exchange for some symbolic concessions- a limited franchise for the Uitlanders perhaps, or possibly even the sale of Delagoa Bay to the UK.
 
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