Introduction

by Boris Gorelik

The war between the British Empire and the two Boer republics (the Transvaal, or South African Republic, and the Orange Free State) is possibly the best-researched armed conflict in sub-Saharan Africa. Long seen as a 'white man's war', the conflict is now understood as a battle between the British Empire and a South African community that comprised Afrikaner men and women, their black and coloured scouts, servants, labourers and tenants, and their families.1

Apart from the combatants, civilians of various nationalities were involved in the hostilities and suffered from the scorched-earth and mass-internment policies of the British forces. While the South African War, also known as the Anglo-Boer War, has been ideologically important for Afrikaner nationalism and for the development of Afrikaner identity, modern historians have shown that this destructive conflict affected other South African peoples, the majority of the population.2

But it would be wrong to assert that most inhabitants of South Africa were actively involved in that war or allied with either of the adversaries. Black people usually preferred to shun the confrontation and observe neutrality, though they could use the situation to their political or economic advantage. Editors of a book on social aspects of that conflict admit that, although they did their best to explore and emphasise the multiracial character of the war, 'it nevertheless remains a pre-eminently Afrikaner struggle against British imperialism'.3

The military historian Ian van der Waag suggests that future generations may regard this conflict as a war of South African unification.4 There is no sign of this yet. As Bill Nasson remarks, 'the legacy of the war remains a sectional business' in South Africa.5 For example, African nationalist historians tend to see it primarily as a colonial war waged by Europeans on appropriated African land over matters that had no relevance to Africans but led to their further dispossession and disenfranchisement. From this point of view, it was just 'a domestic quarrel between the Boers and the British government and its two southern colonies of Natal and the Cape'.6 Moreover, the war is nearly absent in the collective memory of black South Africans.7

Now that the political and ideological significance of the war in the deeply divided South African society has declined, its historical importance is no longer evident. That conflict is too often seen in South Africa as an internal matter, something that concerns only South Africans and possibly the British. But the South African War matters in global history. It was one of the few times when the world was closely watching developments in South Africa, and when its local events could have lasting consequences overseas. 'From the American Civil War to the First World War, no conflict achieved greater attention in international opinion than the South African War,' states Donal Lowry.8

The United States and continental Europe rooted for the two small nations in Africa that challenged the largest empire in the world and defied it for three years. To overpower the burghers, the British carried out their biggest military mobilisation since the Napoleonic Wars both at home and in the colonies.9

For the outside world, 'the South African War was much more than a colonial war writ large'.10 It was the beginning of the end of British imperialism, and the first modern war. It demonstrated the emerging power of international mass media. It excited the imagination of millions of people in Europe and North America, kindled their Anglophobia and inspired mass pro-Boer movements and war volunteering.11 Imperialists projected onto the Boers their own desire to confront their British rivals. Nationalists and anti-imperialists saw in the Boer republics an example of valiant resistance to foreign domination. Anti-capitalists praised the Boers' 'indifference to gold'.

The conflict captured the attention of people on several continents, not least in countries with no colonial interests in Africa. The burgher resistance impressed Jawaharlal Nehru, the future first prime minister of independent India, and Sun Yat-sen, the future leader of the anti-monarchist revolution in China.12 Military agents from abroad hurried to South Africa to learn about new methods of warfare. Young foreign officers volunteered for the burgher armies to see action for the first time in their lives. Men and women of letters discussed the South African War in the context of the situation in their home countries. People outside South Africa followed the war for reasons that often had no direct relation to the future of the Boer republics or British colonialism.

Fraternity Cup, encrusted with precious stones, a Russian gift to the Boers.

Fraternity Cup (detail).

Boers become Russian heroes

Before the outbreak of the South African War, the Russian public had shown no particular interest in South Africa. Russian trade with the Cape, Natal and the Boer republics was negligible; Russian goods usually reached South Africa through European intermediaries. Most immigrants from the Russian Empire were Jewish, not ethnic Russian, and the government in Saint Petersburg had little time for them. Besides, Russia had no plans to acquire colonial possessions in southern Africa.

Russian people's ideas of the Cape Colony and the Boer republics had been formed mostly by tales of discovery and derring-do, such as in novels by Henry Rider Haggard or Thomas Mayne Reid, or Jules Verne's The Adventures of Three Englishmen and Three Russians in South Africa. As a visitor from Russia had noted half a century earlier, South Africa was 'an entirely different world'.13

However, the South African War agitated the public in Russia, as it did people across Europe. As Donal Lowry notes, there had not been 'such international interest in the "moral" issues of a distant war since Garibaldi's South American campaigns and the American Civil War'.14

Most European countries had their pro-Boer movements, and Russia was no exception.15 At the turn of the 20th century, European perceptions of the Boers were romanticised and deeply emotional.16 Even monarchists and Pan-Slavists found much to love about the two republics: they admired Boer conservatism and religiosity, and also liked the burghers' tendency towards collective decision-making, which reminded them of the similar tradition in Russian villages. Russian journalists closely observed the events of the war and portrayed the Boers as modest, devout and patriotic peasants confronting a greedy, cynical and aggressive capitalist power.

Valentin Katayev, a prominent Russian novelist who was a boy during the war, recounted that the affection of his compatriots for the burghers was irrational. As a child, he hated the British and loved the residents of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State 'because the Boers were simple hardworking people of modest means who loved their African country, the Transvaal. And the rich and cruel English wanted to capture their country and to turn it into their colony and the Boers into their slaves, or something like that.'17

Russians, unlike the Dutch, the French or the Germans, had no links of kinship with the Boers, so the foundation of Boer-mania in Russia was mostly political and ideological. To international audiences, the burghers embodied nationalism and anti-imperialism.18 In the expansionist Russian Empire, which was vying with the British Empire for domination in Central Asia, the anti-British kind of anti-imperialism was welcomed. The Russian public believed that Britain was their country's most insidious rival. They admired the two small nations in a little-known (to Russians) part of the world who stood up against 'perfidious Albion' as Russians might also do some day.

A Russian poster containing the lyrics of the song 'Transvaal, Transvaal' (1900s).

In Russia, streets were renamed after Boer generals. Services in honour of President Kruger were held in Russian churches. Orchestras played the national anthem of the Transvaal. In pubs and restaurants, patrons had heated arguments about the war. Circuses capitalised on the popularity of the Boers by launching special revues. Writings by burgher leaders were published in Russian, and dozens of pro-Boer pamphlets, articles, essays and brochures came out in various cities. A pro-Boer folk song, 'Transvaal, Transvaal, my country', emerged in those years. Russian churches raised funds for burgher civilians. Expensive presents, such as an enormous porphyry vase dedicated to General Piet Cronjé, subscribed to by 70 000 donors, were sent to Pretoria. Some of the foremost Russian writers, philosophers and public figures, such as Leo Tolstoy, Alexander Kuprin and Vasily Rozanov, spoke out in support of the Boer resistance.