How do we get the boer states to survive?

[GauchoBadger]

Precisely?
The boer states often suffered issues, such as the burghers (white british settlers who migrated to the states and often enticed unrest due to being denied the franchise), more unrest from the native black african populace, and the two wars that happened against the british, the latter of which led to their final demise.

 

[JonasResende]

Precisely?
The boer states often suffered issues, such as the burghers (white british settlers who migrated to the states and often enticed unrest due to being denied the franchise), more unrest from the native black african populace, and the two wars that happened against the british, the latter of which led to their final demise.

You need the Boer States to opt for a different war strategy in the Second Anglo-Boer war. OTL, they were convinced that a defensive war would be better (and more godly), as long as they were just defending their own land and not emulating the British by seizing British-controlled territories. So, if President Reitz or President Kruger are convinced by someone (Kruger was sick at the time if I remember my school history correctly, so maybe he dies in office or is forced to resign due to health concerns, and someone with a more Hawk-like mentality takes over) that they not only have to defend themselves against the rooinekke/khakis but if they defeat them, and the can take territory from them so much the better. (Kimberley and Natal are two places that I could think of being quite lucrative. Kimberley was close to the OVS border, and there were raids into Natal OTL IIRC).

 

[Burton K Wheeler]

You need the Boer States to opt for a different war strategy in the Second Anglo-Boer war. OTL, they were convinced that a defensive war would be better (and more godly), as long as they were just defending their own land and not emulating the British by seizing British-controlled territories. So, if President Reitz or President Kruger are convinced by someone (Kruger was sick at the time if I remember my school history correctly, so maybe he dies in office or is forced to resign due to health concerns, and someone with a more Hawk-like mentality takes over) that they not only have to defend themselves against the rooinekke/khakis but if they defeat them, and the can take territory from them so much the better. (Kimberley and Natal are two places that I could think of being quite lucrative. Kimberley was close to the OVS border, and there were raids into Natal OTL IIRC).

Could they really have won the war if they'd done that? I thought that by the point the war broke out, Afrikaner independence was a dead letter and their only hope was to use European allies for diplomatic pressure.

 

[606jae]

I know very little about this but would not discovering diamonds help

 

[SenatorChickpea]

The problem was that the Colonial Office felt that the British hold on South Africa was slipping by the late 1890s. Once gold had been discovered the entire economic center of gravity shifted its balance north from the Cape Colony to the Transvaal.
Lord Selborne's memorandum of 1896 is quite explicit:

"The key to the future of South Africa is in the Transvaal… the richest spot on earth… [it] is going to be the natural capital state and centre of South African commercial, social and political life…. [the loss of rail revenues would drive the Cape and Natal] to the verge of bankruptcy, so dependent are they upon their rail revenue. It needs no words to prove what a powerful use could be made of this instrument in squeezing the British South African Colonies into joining a United South African Republic."


The historian Ian Phimister has pointed out that the fear here isn't actually of the Boers uniting South Africa. So many Uitlanders had poured into the ZAR that it seemed demographically destined to become an English-speaking republic- and once that happens, instead of a Dominion of South Africa acting as a new Canada, you've got a second United States.

So the survival of the states is a real problem. The British have to get them into the Imperial orbit if they want to keep influence in South Africa, but if the Boers stay independent then eventually they'll lose control of the ZAR. The Orange Free State probably can survive longer.
Simply avoiding the discovery of gold is unlikely- the Witwatersrand is ridiculously big. Perhaps if you delay the discovery for a few years so that by the time tensions come to a head the resulting conflict is a minor sideshow in the wider imperial wars and Kruger's more practical successors can get a better settlement?
Bearing in mind, of course, that the Boers also need the gold if they want to become a modern independent state. It's tricky.

 

[JonasResende]

I know very little about this but would not discovering diamonds help

My recollection of my own country's history is rather vague (since I was taught this half a lifetime ago at school), but the diamonds were discovered by the British in territory that belonged to the Afrikaners. Of course, the British then marched in and seized it. Same happened when gold was found at the Witwatersrand. President Reitz/Kruger, or Abraham Fischer commented to Lord Kitchener('s representatives) IIRC "you don't want South Africa for it's people. You want us out for our gold". Which was the reason that the world (while not getting involved) generally sided against Britain - you only need to go to the War Memorial in the city where I currently live to see the plaques up of how many "non Boer" soldiers (i.e. non South Africans) died in the war, fightign the British (there's Americans, Frenchmen, Spaniards (mostly from South America though), more than a few Germans, even a Serbian/Bosnian, to give you an idea).

Could they really have won the war if they'd done that? I thought that by the point the war broke out, Afrikaner independence was a dead letter and their only hope was to use European allies for diplomatic pressure.

I want to say that it's British-fielded propaganda, but it is essentially true. However, Lord Kitchener/or someone, wrote to London that the war would be over in a few weeks, the Boers made the British fight on for nearly three years to get control of the republics. And more than that, while the Boer situation was desperate - women and children in concentration camps, farms burnt to ash by the farmers to stop the British from using them - in the previous altercation against the British, the Boers had managed to win a victory against what was theoretically the most powerful empire of the day.

 

[Burton K Wheeler]

My recollection of my own country's history is rather vague (since I was taught this half a lifetime ago at school), but the diamonds were discovered by the British in territory that belonged to the Afrikaners. Of course, the British then marched in and seized it. Same happened when gold was found at the Witwatersrand. President Reitz/Kruger, or Abraham Fischer commented to Lord Kitchener('s representatives) IIRC "you don't want South Africa for it's people. You want us out for our gold". Which was the reason that the world (while not getting involved) generally sided against Britain - you only need to go to the War Memorial in the city where I currently live to see the plaques up of how many "non Boer" soldiers (i.e. non South Africans) died in the war, fightign the British (there's Americans, Frenchmen, Spaniards (mostly from South America though), more than a few Germans, even a Serbian/Bosnian, to give you an idea).

@SenatorChickpea made the point above that if you have a British Cape and Natal, the Transvaal and Free State are likely to have more English-speaking whites than Afrikaners upon discovery of gold. Maybe have a German or other European prospector discover the gold in the Witwatersrand and have the Boer states ban immigration from the Cape and allow it from Germany, the Netherlands, and Scandinavia? I'm not sure how practical that would actually be.

I want to say that it's British-fielded propaganda, but it is essentially true. However, Lord Kitchener/or someone, wrote to London that the war would be over in a few weeks, the Boers made the British fight on for nearly three years to get control of the republics. And more than that, while the Boer situation was desperate - women and children in concentration camps, farms burnt to ash by the farmers to stop the British from using them - in the previous altercation against the British, the Boers had managed to win a victory against what was theoretically the most powerful empire of the day.

I'm far from an expert on British colonial policy, but I don't think more battlefield success would change their attitude that much. The first Boer War was fought to keep the Afrikaner states subordinated to the British Cape, the second was a war of annexation. It would run counter to most of what Britain did in the late 19th Century to reverse a plan for annexation just because of a battlefield defeat. Contemporaneously with the first Boer War, the Zulus annihilated a British expeditionary force and brought down a government, and still only succeeded in delaying their annexation for a year.

 

[JonasResende]

@SenatorChickpea made the point above that if you have a British Cape and Natal, the Transvaal and Free State are likely to have more English-speaking whites than Afrikaners upon discovery of gold. Maybe have a German or other European prospector discover the gold in the Witwatersrand and have the Boer states ban immigration from the Cape and allow it from Germany, the Netherlands, and Scandinavia? I'm not sure how practical that would actually be.





I'm far from an expert on British colonial policy, but I don't think more battlefield success would change their attitude that much. The first Boer War was fought to keep the Afrikaner states subordinated to the British Cape, the second was a war of annexation. It would run counter to most of what Britain did in the late 19th Century to reverse a plan for annexation just because of a battlefield defeat. Contemporaneously with the first Boer War, the Zulus annihilated a British expeditionary force and brought down a government, and still only succeeded in delaying their annexation for a year.

How are the Boer republieke going to go about allowing immigration from anywhere not British if neither has a coastline and the two main entry points in South Africa at the time, Cape Town and Durban (three if we count Port Elizabeth), are both in British hands? A German prospector discovers it, for instance, and maybe a German firm decides to buy up the claims, then if Britain gets involved, the kaiser (always sabre-rattling in public, not so much in private) can say that he'll back the Boers in defense of German interests. The Netherlands and Scandinavia aren't really in a position to fight the British (they can, it just might be more a one-sided fight than anything else).

It wasn't so much the battlefield success of the first Boer War, it was the fact that the treaty signed in 1881 was a Boer victory, showing the world that they, against the might of the British Empire, had given the British a bloody nose. So Britain's going to be wanting revenge for her humiliation. The gold (IMHO) was simply a convenient excuse. And Kruger and Reitz both drafted acts limiting the British incursion into their respective republics. It pissed off the British being told "no", and this was one of the things that Lord Milner's reps came to the negotiating table about. But the terms they gave the Boers were so steep that it prompted Fischer's response mentioned in my previous post.

Milner reached the Cape in May 1897 and by August, after the difficulties with President Kruger over the Aliens' Law had been patched up, he was free to make himself personally acquainted with the country and peoples before deciding on the lines of policy to be adopted. Between August 1897 and May 1898 he travelled through Cape Colony, the Bechuanaland Protectorate, Rhodesia, and Basutoland. To better understand the point of view of the Cape Dutch and the burghers of the Transvaal and Orange Free State, Milner also during this period learned both Dutch and the South African "Taal". He came to the conclusion that there could be no hope of peace and progress in South Africa while there remained the "permanent subjection of British to Dutch in one of the Republics".[7]

Milner was referring to the situation in the Transvaal where, in the aftermath of the discovery of gold, thousands of fortune seekers had flocked from all over Europe, but mostly Britain. This influx of foreigners, referred to as "Uitlanders", threatened their republic, and Transvaal's President Kruger refused to give the "Uitlanders" the right to vote. The Afrikaner farmers, known as Boers, had established the Transvaal as their promised land, after their Great Trek out of Cape Colony, a trek whose purpose was to remove themselves as far as possible from British rule. They had already successfully defended the Transvaal's annexation by the British Empire during the first Anglo-Boer War, a conflict that had emboldened them and resulted in a peace treaty which, lacking a highly convincing pretext, made it very difficult for Britain to justify diplomatically another annexation of the Transvaal.

So, simply put, by removing Miler (maybe he dies en route or is simply never appointed), you might have a good chance. And just btw, the Aliens Law, was that any foreigner (not just British) had to be resident for 14 years in the ZAR, and/or be over forty-years old. Piet Joubert was the opposition to Kruger and claimed that the elections of '93 had been fixed (probably true, since Kruger basically banned many opposition members from taking their seat in the Volksraad), but by the time he stood again in '97, the Jameson Raid as well as his [Joubert's] own championing of the uitlander cause, led to Joubert's decreasing popularity.

 

[SenatorChickpea]

It really wasn't about revenge. That certainly helped. Like I said, however, we have many, many documents that show us the British government's thinking before the South African War- and they're worried about losing control of the region, not getting justice for Majuba.

Milner helped precipitate the war, but by 1898 he and Chamberlain were looking for a catalyst. The actual cause of the war, and the reason for their concern, was that the Cape and Natal were losing wealth and influence at a rate that was going to drive them into the orbit of whoever ran Johannesburg.

 

[Burton K Wheeler]

How are the Boer republieke going to go about allowing immigration from anywhere not British if neither has a coastline and the two main entry points in South Africa at the time, Cape Town and Durban (three if we count Port Elizabeth), are both in British hands? A German prospector discovers it, for instance, and maybe a German firm decides to buy up the claims, then if Britain gets involved, the kaiser (always sabre-rattling in public, not so much in private) can say that he'll back the Boers in defense of German interests. The Netherlands and Scandinavia aren't really in a position to fight the British (they can, it just might be more a one-sided fight than anything else).

Delagoa?

Yeah, I know. It's a stretch. And requires a POD well before the actual first Boer War. And I didn't mean Dutch or Scandinavian state-sponsored emigration, but a lot of people from those countries moved to North American in the late 19th century, so they could theoretically be attracted to Africa.

 

[Marius]

I want to say that it's British-fielded propaganda, but it is essentially true. However, Lord Kitchener/or someone, wrote to London that the war would be over in a few weeks, the Boers made the British fight on for nearly three years to get control of the republics. And more than that, while the Boer situation was desperate - women and children in concentration camps, farms burnt to ash by the farmers to stop the British from using them - in the previous altercation against the British, the Boers had managed to win a victory against what was theoretically the most powerful empire of the day.

The scorched earth policy was a British one, not a Boer one.

 

[Marius]

You need the Boer States to opt for a different war strategy in the Second Anglo-Boer war. OTL, they were convinced that a defensive war would be better (and more godly), as long as they were just defending their own land and not emulating the British by seizing British-controlled territories. So, if President Reitz or President Kruger are convinced by someone (Kruger was sick at the time if I remember my school history correctly, so maybe he dies in office or is forced to resign due to health concerns, and someone with a more Hawk-like mentality takes over) that they not only have to defend themselves against the rooinekke/khakis but if they defeat them, and the can take territory from them so much the better. (Kimberley and Natal are two places that I could think of being quite lucrative. Kimberley was close to the OVS border, and there were raids into Natal OTL IIRC).

Are you sure? Beseiging towns in British territory seems quite a strange tactic for people who are undertaking a defensive war.

 

[Fabius Maximus]

You need the Boer States to opt for a different war strategy in the Second Anglo-Boer war. OTL, they were convinced that a defensive war would be better (and more godly), as long as they were just defending their own land and not emulating the British by seizing British-controlled territories. So, if President Reitz or President Kruger are convinced by someone (Kruger was sick at the time if I remember my school history correctly, so maybe he dies in office or is forced to resign due to health concerns, and someone with a more Hawk-like mentality takes over) that they not only have to defend themselves against the rooinekke/khakis but if they defeat them, and the can take territory from them so much the better. (Kimberley and Natal are two places that I could think of being quite lucrative. Kimberley was close to the OVS border, and there were raids into Natal OTL IIRC).

I don't think they'd be able to. IOTL the regular phase of the Boer War was over relatively quickly (war declared, October 1899; fall of Pretoria, June 1900), and whilst a more vigorous Boer offensive might knock the British off-balance initially, I don't think they had the manpower or resources to consistently win the kind of field battles that would be necessary to force the British to the negotiating table.

 

[JonasResende]

The scorched earth policy was a British one, not a Boer one.

The farmers often set fire to their own farms, killed their own livestock etc, in order to prevent it from falling into British hands. Why there were so many poor white Afrikaners at the end of the war: they'd cut their own throats in order to prevent the British from doing it for them.

 

[Marius]

The farmers often set fire to their own farms, killed their own livestock etc, in order to prevent it from falling into British hands. Why there were so many poor white Afrikaners at the end of the war: they'd cut their own throats in order to prevent the British from doing it for them.

Do you have a source for that? Never heard that myself.

 

[JonasResende]

Do you have a source for that? Never heard that myself.

Can't think of the titles of any, ATM. But it should be in at least some histories of the period that aren't pro-British. I know it's what gets told at the War Memorial, and what was taught in schools post-1994 (whether it still is, IDK). And also, it gets referenced in the one Afrikaans song, "my huis en my plaas tot kole gebrand so dat hul' ons kan vang" (my house and my farm burnt to ashes so that they [the British] can't catch us [the Afrikaners])

 

[Marius]

Can't think of the titles of any, ATM. But it should be in at least some histories of the period that aren't pro-British. I know it's what gets told at the War Memorial, and what was taught in schools post-1994 (whether it still is, IDK). And also, it gets referenced in the one Afrikaans song, "my huis en my plaas tot kole gebrand so dat hul' ons kan vang" (my house and my farm burnt to ashes so that they [the British] can't catch us [the Afrikaners])

What you said in Afrikaans is exactly the opposite from what you translated.

 

[ben0628]

You need the Boer States to opt for a different war strategy in the Second Anglo-Boer war. OTL, they were convinced that a defensive war would be better (and more godly), as long as they were just defending their own land and not emulating the British by seizing British-controlled territories. So, if President Reitz or President Kruger are convinced by someone (Kruger was sick at the time if I remember my school history correctly, so maybe he dies in office or is forced to resign due to health concerns, and someone with a more Hawk-like mentality takes over) that they not only have to defend themselves against the rooinekke/khakis but if they defeat them, and the can take territory from them so much the better. (Kimberley and Natal are two places that I could think of being quite lucrative. Kimberley was close to the OVS border, and there were raids into Natal OTL IIRC).

The Afrikaners did go on the offensive. They launched several major raids with large Kommando forces into the Cape Colony early in the war. The Afrikaners did the best they could. They lost because they were heavily outnumbered, heavily outgunned, and the British fought dirty to force them to come to the negotiating table (put soldier's families in concentration camps).

 

[Petros >Peter Fergus<]

Could they set themselves up, like Lesotho or Botswana, as part of the colony but also independent? Or is the territory they would control too valuable?

 

[Spartasman]

You know, I've had cause to think on this question before, and really it comes down to only two possibilities. Either the Boers manage to inflict enough defeats on the British that it causes public opinion to turn against the war effort in Britain, or it somehow manages to bring in another power to negotiate on their behalf.

Possibility one might be achieved by better armaments, or better leadership. Most of the Boer generals were older gentlemen during the opening stage of the war, and displayed an almost comical lack of leadership. According to one account from the Boer side the invasion of Natal might have gone as far as Durban in the first few weeks, except General Joubert cancelled further offensives in Natal past Ladysmith because two soldiers were struck by lightning, saying that this was god telling them to advance no further (Probably an excuse for strategic timidity). General Cronje surrendered most of his army after refusing to retreat from his camp in the face of overwhelming British superiority after the battle of Paarderburg, apparently in a fit of stubbornness. Pretty much all of the available British troop strength in SA was besieged during the first 2-3 months of the war, but the elderly Boer leadership displayed a severe lack of initiative and will, believing that their cause was just and that God and foreign intervention would bring them victory. When the war moved into the guerilla phase and younger men took command the Boers did much better. Having that earlier might have been enough.

The Boers might also have done better if they had not launched a pre-emptive attack. If it had been purely a war of aggression on behalf of Britain opinion in the Empire would probably have soured very quickly.

Possibility two is less likely, unless provoked by possibility one. Public opinion in other countries was firmly behind the Boers, but no nation was willing to act. The US was too dependent on British support for it's imperialist project against Spain and in the Phillipines, and the Netherlands and Germany didin't have a snowballs chance in hell of challenging Britain at sea. Kaiser Willy gave an account following WW1 about how France and Russia had proposed a joint military intervention, but this seems to have been a pathetic fabrication by the Kaiser-in-exile.