Why there was soo much animosity between British colonists and the Boer?
- Thread starter Femto
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This is a very 21st century and American way of looking at racism and xenophobia. In the past and in other countries there was no clear dividing line of white good, black bad. Racism is far more complicated than that. Why didn't the Boers disliked the British? Because they were conquerers and occupiers of their country. and they were replacing them, flooding the Boer lands with new, non-Boer immigrants. The fact that those immigrants were white didn't matter. The immigrants weren't Boer and the immigrants were forced upon the Boer population by a non-Boer government.
Black and white didn't matter. It was Boer versus non-Boer.
This is based on a complete misunderstanding of the way white people in late 19th and early 20th century southern Africa (and Europe) saw things. The idea that the "natives" could rule the country seemed fantastic. The term "the racial question" referred to British-Boer relations; the "native problem" was something distinct and of far lesser urgency.
"My Lords, forty years ago I was sent to South Africa—my first ever diplomatic post—by the then Dominions Office, later the Commonwealth Relations Office. I was surprised to discover that to Smuts and his contemporaries the words "racial problem" meant the relationship between the British and the Boers. The reconciliation between them on which Smuts's rule as Prime Minister was based, was one of his major achievements; and the liberal Afrikaner element, to whom the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, referred, contributed notably to it. But would that Smuts had addressed himself with equal zeal to what he called "the native problem". It would have been an easier one to solve then than it is now..." https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/lords/1986/jul/04/south-Africa
To give you an idea of how distant black rule in South Africa seemed even to many "enlightened" British socialists: "Comrade Hyndman is probably right that the future of Africa is for the black. Unfortunately, however, that future is anywhere between one thousand and three thousand years to come, the nearest approach to their happiness being, therefore, good laws to guard their standard of comfort..." https://books.google.com/books?id=-gzMDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT92
As Beatrice Webb later put it, "no one in Great Britain or South Africa seems to have remembered that these various claimants to power, whether Boer or British, agriculturist or gold-miner, were only a minority, a million or so strong, amid a vast majority of Kaffirs, five or six millions in number, amid whom this variegated white minority had intruded itself..." https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.275455/page/n209/mode/2up
"My Lords, forty years ago I was sent to South Africa—my first ever diplomatic post—by the then Dominions Office, later the Commonwealth Relations Office. I was surprised to discover that to Smuts and his contemporaries the words "racial problem" meant the relationship between the British and the Boers. The reconciliation between them on which Smuts's rule as Prime Minister was based, was one of his major achievements; and the liberal Afrikaner element, to whom the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, referred, contributed notably to it. But would that Smuts had addressed himself with equal zeal to what he called "the native problem". It would have been an easier one to solve then than it is now..." https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/lords/1986/jul/04/south-Africa
To give you an idea of how distant black rule in South Africa seemed even to many "enlightened" British socialists: "Comrade Hyndman is probably right that the future of Africa is for the black. Unfortunately, however, that future is anywhere between one thousand and three thousand years to come, the nearest approach to their happiness being, therefore, good laws to guard their standard of comfort..." https://books.google.com/books?id=-gzMDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT92
As Beatrice Webb later put it, "no one in Great Britain or South Africa seems to have remembered that these various claimants to power, whether Boer or British, agriculturist or gold-miner, were only a minority, a million or so strong, amid a vast majority of Kaffirs, five or six millions in number, amid whom this variegated white minority had intruded itself..." https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.275455/page/n209/mode/2up
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BTW, on the sense in which the word "racial" was used well into the twentieth century, see Roy Campbell's satirical poem "A Veld Eclogue: The Pioneers" about two simple-minded shepherds, the English-speaking Johnny and the Afrikaans-speaking Piet:
Think not that I on racial questions touch
For one was British and the other Dutch.
https://archive.org/details/adamastorpoems00camp/page/26/mode/2up
Think not that I on racial questions touch
For one was British and the other Dutch.
https://archive.org/details/adamastorpoems00camp/page/26/mode/2up
The two wars between British and Boers, one of which was very bitter and bloody might have had something to do with it.
Orangecar
Banned
The Boers were mostly independent, poor and uneducated farmers, the majority of them barely living off subsistence farming, hence they relied on cattle theft from africans, taking in orphans(i.e. raiding African villages and demanding "orphans" for labour, when no orphans could be found they made them on the spot by killing all the adults) and land theft to sustain themselves. This obviously came into conflict with the more capatilistic and modern English classes. Boer society existed on the edge, where the only law was the bible and the gun, whereas the pompous British thought of themselves as "civilised". They both agreed that blacks and non white races needed to he kept down, its just that the British attemepted to hide it behind a veil of "civility" while the Boers were more blunt. Of course looking at Rhodesia we can tell that the differences between the two were almost non existent.
Orangecar
Banned
More? Well later on Afrikaans farmers were major benefactors of the Union of South Africa as many were poor and uneducated and could not compete with large land owning companies and their African tennats who had better knowledge of growing maize in local conditions(most succesful Afrikaaners were cattle farmers) this lead to an influx of poor Afrikaans farmers who fled to the towns and cities and many of them ended up living among the coloured and even black population in informal settlements. Many English South Africans arrogantly commeneted that Afrikaaners were at the same level as "Africans" and this became a major political issue going into the 1920's. Again compared to the more urban and capitilist minded british the Afrikaaners were more rural, had less formal education and tended to be far more poor. This inevitabily creates a chasm between the communities, speaking different languages helps too since very little formal education existed in South Africa in Afrikaans(unless it was Dutch and in the church ). The first major and most infomous piece of legislation was the 1913 land act which designated 93% of land to whites only(later Africans were given 13% of the land). This eas delibrately aimed at assisting Afrikaans farmers as well as taking aim at the large land owning companies and their African tennant farmers.
It's really simple. Nobody likes foreigners coming in and taking over. Some cultures are pricklier about it than others. It also depends on the power relationships people are used to. In very authoritarian societies, the lower classes are used to taking orders from Them, and it doesn't matter much if They are replaced by foreigners (the former Them will be very resentful, if not exterminated). Boer society was pretty much egalitarian. and also very distinct - the mere presence of a lot of Britons was irritating, And British authorities assumed political control, without bothering to ask - until the Boers defeated Britain in 1881 (the only war Britain lost between Waterloo and WW I).
Then the Rand gold mines were discovered, and immense numbers of mostly British Uitlanders swarmed into Transvaal to work them. The Boers hated that, but they liked the money. So they kept the Uitlanders disfranchised and taxed the daylights out of mining supplies such as dynamite. The British resented that. Eventually this escalated to actual war. (I don't know exactly how.)
Then the Rand gold mines were discovered, and immense numbers of mostly British Uitlanders swarmed into Transvaal to work them. The Boers hated that, but they liked the money. So they kept the Uitlanders disfranchised and taxed the daylights out of mining supplies such as dynamite. The British resented that. Eventually this escalated to actual war. (I don't know exactly how.)
Deleted member 94680
Going by wiki (which is accurate, IIRC) a heavily edited version of the buildup would be:
In 1895, a plan was hatched with the connivance of the Cape Prime Minister Cecil Rhodes and Johannesburg gold magnate Alfred Beit to take Johannesburg, ending the control of the Transvaal government. A column of 600 armed men (mainly made up of his Rhodesian and Bechuanaland British South Africa Policemen) was led by Dr. Leander Starr Jameson (the Administrator in Rhodesia of the British South Africa Company (or Chartered Company) of which Cecil Rhodes was the chairman) over the border from Bechuanaland towards Johannesburg.
The Jameson Raid alienated many Cape Afrikaners from Britain and united the Transvaal Boers behind President Kruger and his government. It also had the effect of drawing the Transvaal and the Orange Free State (led by President Martinus Theunis Steyn) together in opposition to perceived British imperialism. In 1897, a military pact was concluded between the two republics.
(British case for war) The failure to gain improved rights for uitlanders became a pretext for war and a justification for a big military buildup in Cape Colony.
President Steyn of the Orange Free State invited Milner and Kruger to attend a conference in Bloemfontein. The conference started on 30 May 1899 but negotiations quickly broke down, despite Kruger's offer of concessions. In September 1899, Chamberlain sent an ultimatum demanding full equality for British citizens resident in Transvaal. Kruger, seeing that war was inevitable, simultaneously issued his own ultimatum prior to receiving Chamberlain's.
Most editorials were similar to the Daily Telegraph, which declared: 'of course there can only be one answer to this grotesque challenge. Kruger has asked for war and war he must have!'
When war with the Boer Republics was imminent in September 1899, a Field Force, referred to as the Army Corps (sometimes 1st Army Corps) was mobilised and sent to Cape Town.
War was declared on 11 October 1899 with a Boer offensive into the British-held Natal and Cape Colony areas.