The Boer War

An analysis of data from various sources, both Russian and international, helps to evaluate the contribution of the Russian corps to the republican cause and to understand the ambiguities of its brief existence. Despite the founders’ intentions, the unit failed to ‘set an example of proper organisation for the Boers’. Yet the Russian corps was not an embarrassment but a missed opportunity.
‘The Russian corps in the Anglo-Boer War: two months of misfortune’, Military History Journal (South African Military History Society), 2020, vol 19, no 1, pp 10–17 (ISSN 0026-4016).
"Русский отряд на англо-бурской войне: два злополучных месяца".

It is tempting to compare the South African frontier to the North American frontier. Both were explored about the same time—North America in 1492 by Genoese navigator Christopher Columbus and South Africa in 1497 by the Portuguese Vasco da Gama. Both were looking for a trade route to Asia. Both frontiers were celebrated as shaping the national character of the respective countries. In America, the historian Frederick Jackson Turner celebrated the frontier as fostering individualism and democracy. Although his “frontier thesis” is no longer universally accepted, it still shapes American popular culture. I have argued that ethnic diversity could equally be considered the defining characteristic of America.

But there are considerable differences between the two frontiers. North America is in the northern hemisphere and has a varied climate ranging from semi-tropical to temperate. South America is in the southern hemisphere and has a Mediterranean climate with some arid zones. Thus, North America was more suitable for agricultural and stock raising expansion into the interior as far as the 100th meridian and along the Pacific coast, but the western three fifths of South Africa was not suitable for agriculture except for stock-raising.

North America had a wide range of Native-American language groups including the Algonquian, Iroquian, Siouan, Moskhogean, Caddo, Penutian, Nadene, and Aztec. They were also divided into different culture areas, such as the Eastern Woodland, the Southeast, the Plains, the Southwest, the Plateau, California, and the Pacific Northwest. In South Africa there were two major linguistic families: the Khoe and the Bantu. The Khoe has two major subgroups: the San (or Bushmen) and the Koikhoi (known to Europeans as the Hottentot). The Bantu-speaking population in South Africa was divided into two major linguistic groups: the Sotho and the Nguni. The Nguni comprise almost two-thirds of the Bantu-speaking people in South Africa today. The two largest Nguni groups are the Xhosa and the Zulu.

North America being more accessible to European immigration, there were a great variety of ethnic groups that settled the North American frontier, beginning with the Spaniards, the French, the Dutch, the Swedes, and the English and later in the nineteenth century the Irish, Germans, Norwegians, Chinese, and others. In South America there were mainly two major groups: the Dutch (actually mixed with some Germans, Poles, and others) who later became known as the Boers, and the English. But the most important difference between the populations of the two countries. By 1890 the population Native-American population was reduced by disease and genocide to only 248,000 in a total population of 63 million (i.e, 0.4 percent). Whereas in South Africa Black Africans today constitute 76.4 percent, whites only 9.1 percent and so-called “coloureds” (mixed racial) 8.9 percent.

One of the major differences between the two was the issue of slavery in both countries. While slavery was gradually abolished in most Northern States, it remained dominant in the South. American slavery was fully abolished that year by the 13th amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The expansion of slavery into the American West was temporarily solved by a series of compromises between 1820 and 1864, but finally resulted in the American Civil War (1861 to 1865). Britain abolished slavery throughout its empire in 1833. The abolition of slavery was one of the reasons the Boer family embarked upon their Great Trek into the interior, where they founded their own republics first in Natal (which was annexed by South Africa in 1843) and then in the Orange Free State in 1854 and the Transvaal (1858). It was only after the Boer War (1899 to 1902) that South Africa annex the two Boer republics, which then were incorporated in 1910 into the Union of South Africa as a member of the British Commonwealth.

Ann Hyland's book The WarHorse in the Modern Era: The Boer War to the Second Millennium is the third and last in a series that together cover the role of horses in military history from the Medieval period to the present century.

https://wordpress.com/read/blogs/135529867/posts/1062

An Aggregation of Lion Hunters:
The Boer Way of War in the Second Anglo-Boer War.

Few expected the inconsequential Boer Republics to survive let alone to overwhelm the might of the British Empire when war broke out on the 11 October 1899. It started well enough for the Boers who enjoying a significant numerical advantage and fielding 33 000 highly mobile mounted infantry faced a British frontline strength of 13 000 soldiers. Jan Smuts, President Kruger’s right-hand-man and one of the few Boer leaders with an inspired grasp of strategy, devised a bold war-winning plan. Boer forces would seize the slight window of opportunity and taking advantage of British unpreparedness, and their significant numerical advantage would conduct a lightning campaign.  Smuts boldly proposed the invasion of Natal coupled with a daring strike to grab the Port of Durban. Occupying Natal would cut the British railway to Rhodesia and place the entire empire in jeopardy. Boer audaciousness was sure to attract the attention of foreign powers and rouse inert Cape Afrikaners looking for an opportunity to pounce on a weakened British Empire. It was masterful if perhaps somewhat fanciful, but it offered the Boers a glimmer of hope to defeat the enemy.

The friction of inept Boer generalship whittled away Smuts’s daring plan. Generals Joubert and Cronje were satisfied to lay siege to Mafeking, Kimberly and Ladysmith and repeat the same strategy of the First Anglo-Boer War. The strategic offensive coupled with the tactical defence yielded magnificent victories in the First Anglo-Boer War. Now the momentum was lost through uninspired strategy and lacklustre leadership. The much hoped-for Cape Afrikaner rising evaporated as the British grew stronger by the day.  Transports landed thousands of troops and supplies in Durban and Cape Town and swiftly redressed the numerical imbalance. Initial and brilliant Boer successes on the tactical level were not fundamental enough to swing a strategic victory, and the chance of winning the conventional war lay in tatters.

This paper examines Boer military doctrine at the three levels of war and explores why superior mobility and exceptional tactical abilities ultimately failed to deliver a strategic victory.

The establishment of an international legion by General Georges de Villebois-Mareuil in March 1900 was the most ambitious attempt to coordinate the activities of foreign volunteer units within a single formation during the South African War. On the general’s death (5 April 1900), De Villebois’s Russian deputy and successor, Lieutenant Colonel Yevgeny Maximov, lost control of the legion. As a hierarchical formation, it survived De Villebois by only two weeks. Given Maximov’s ample experience in conventional and unconventional warfare, and the accolades that he later won from the republican political and military leadership, including the rank of general, the legionnaires’ opposition to him appears to be unjustified. Accounting for the discrepancy between historians’ perceptions of Maximov and his lack of success in controlling the legion is based on a premise that legionnaires had compelling reasons to reject his authority. Maximov had come to Africa ostensibly as a journalist. He was yet to earn the respect of his subordinates because he had not seen action in the South African War. In subsequent weeks, having resigned from his post in the legion, he distinguished himself in the engagement at Tobaberg as the leader of the Dutch corps. By then, Maximov had the ‘moral authority’ to command an international unit, but his poor health prevented him from carrying on fighting. Unlike De Villebois, who was supported by like-minded French lieutenants, Maximov could not rely on his compatriots. Instead of endorsing his claim to leadership, the Russian corps refused to join the legion while he was in charge, and intentionally discredited him. In the power vacuum after De Villebois’s death, the legion collapsed, and a chance to transform the emerging alliance of foreign volunteer units into a formidable force was missed.