X-Nico

19 unusual facts about Second Boer War


Arthur Charles Jeston Richardson

Richardson later moved to South Africa, where he served three years with the South Australian militia before joining the 3rd (Bushmen's) Contingent, Victorian Mounted Rifle Regiment of Western Australia, destined for the Boer War.

Boer Republics

However, later developments, including the discovery of diamonds and gold in these states, led to the Second Boer War.

C. Louis Leipoldt

His early education was largely at home and for a while, during the Second Boer War, he was a reporter.

Carruthers Beattie

During the Anglo-Boer War in February 1899, he and others demonstrated the application of wireless telegraphy by transmitting signals over a distance of 120 metres on Cape Town's Grand Parade using equipment imported from Britain.

Charles Ward-Jackson

Educated at Eton, Ward-Jackson served in the 3d Yorkshire Regiment and then the Yorkshire Hussars from 1891 to 1907; as an officer during the Boer War he was twice mentioned in dispatches.

Christopher Robert Ingham Brooke

He was also a Brigadier-General who fought in the Second Boer War and the First World War, and received the DSO.

Edmund Beale Sargant

Edmund Beale Sargant (1855-1938) was a colonial administrator in the British Empire, particularly notable for his policy of introducing English in the South African educational system in the first years of the twentieth century, as Director of Education for the Transvaal and Orange River Colony under Alfred Milner, and in the aftermath of the war.

Henry Burk

During the time that Burk served in Congress, the Boer War was raging in South Africa.

Henry Pomeroy Miller

He was among six lower division students to win a University Prize for excellence in declamation (summer, 1901) and took part in the Freshman Sophomore debate on whether England was right in the Second Boer War (March 15, 1902).

Johannesburg Reform Committee

Leander Starr Jameson had been in charge of Matabeleland when he overstepped his authority and invaded Transvaal with 1 500 troops, greatly exacerbating the many adverse conditions that would lead to both the Second Matabele War and the Second Boer War.

LTI – Lingua Tertii Imperii

Klemperer speaks about the British "concentration camps" in Africa during the Second Boer War, which were internment camps, and bore "a taste of vacation camp", according to him.

Lucy Deane Streatfeild

In 1901 Deane was appointed to the Fawcett Commission, the committee of inquiry into the concentration camps created following the Second Boer War, where she ensured that the committee's report included criticism of the camps system.

McClellan saddle

At least some were sold to the Dominion forces in the Boer War, and the North-West Mounted Police in Canada obtained at least a few for test purposes.

Milner's Kindergarten

Milner's Kindergarten is an informal reference to a group of Britons who served in the South African Civil Service under High Commissioner Alfred, Lord Milner, between the Second Boer War and the founding of the Union of South Africa.

Redvers Kyle

Kyle was born in South Africa and was named after General Sir Redvers Buller, the British military commander in the early stages of the Anglo-Boer War.

Rein Boomsma

The match was the first charity game in the Netherlands, held to support the Boer cause in the Second Boer War.

United Kingdom general election, 1900

Also known as the khaki election (the first of several elections to bear this sobriquet), it was held at a time when it was widely believed that the Second Boer War had effectively been won (though in fact it was to continue for a further two years).

William G. Sebold

Duquesne had been a spy for Germany since World War I; before that, he had been a Boer spy in the Second Boer War.

William Nicholas Willis

He had become a supplier of horses and fodder to the British Army in South Africa and he recruited Australian bushmen as scouts and sharpshooters during the Boer War.


155 mm Creusot Long Tom

The 155 mm Creusot Long Tom was a French field gun (artillery piece) manufactured by Schneider et Cie in Le Creusot, France and used by the Boers in the Second Boer War.

Afrikaanderwijk

The name comes from the pattern of street names in the neighborhood, which are based on South African geography in general (e.g., the Bloemfonteinstraat and the Pretorialaan) and on Afrikaner leaders from the Second Boer War (e.g., the Paul Krugerstraat).

Alexander Forrest

Forrest died on 20 June 1901, survived by four of his five children (his son Anthony Alexander Forrest having been killed the month before in the Second Boer War), and was buried at Karrakatta Cemetery.

Alexander Guchkov

He became known for his hazardous acts, which also included volunteering for the Boer army in the Second Boer War under General Smuts, where he was wounded and taken prisoner.

Battle of Driefontein

The Battle of Driefontein on 10 March 1900 followed on the Battle of Poplar Grove in the Second Boer War between the British Empire and the Boer republics, in what is now South Africa.

Beltline, Calgary

It was named after Queen Victoria, who is celebrated in a monument to the Second Boer War located in Central Memorial Park.

Bloemfontein railway station

Centrally located in both the city and the nation, in March 1900 at the Battle of Paardeberg during the Second Boer War, the station became a major point of strategic fighting between the Boers and the British Army, led by General Roberts.

Boer foreign volunteers

Boer foreign volunteers were participants who volunteered their military services to the Boers in the Second Boer War.

David Ogilvy, 11th Earl of Airlie

In 1900 he fought in the Second Boer War, and was mentioned in despatches for gallantry at Modder River, he was again wounded near Brandfort.

Diana Wynyard

As the noble wife and mother she aged gracefully against a background of the Boer War, the sinking of the Titanic, the First World War, and the arrival of the Jazz Age.

Donald Alaster Macdonald

Macdonald was first Australian war correspondent at the South African War; during the war he was besieged at Ladysmith.

Elizabeth of Ladymead

It charts the life of a British family between 1854 and 1945 and their involvement in four wars - the Crimean War, Boer War, First World War and Second World War.

Frederick Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, 3rd Marquess of Dufferin and Ava

He served with the 9th Lancers during the Second Boer War from 1899 to 1901 and was present at the engagements at Belmont, Enslin, Modder River, Magersfonstein, the relief of Kimberley, the advance to Bloemfontein and Pretoria and the subsequent fighting in the Transvaal, Orange River Colony and Cape Colony, where he was badly wounded on Christmas Eve 1900.

Herman Albrecht

Albrecht was about 24 years old, and a Trooper in the Imperial Light Horse (Natal), South African Forces during the Second Boer War when the following deed took place for which he was awarded the Victoria Cross.

Joseph Maria Gordon

Major General Joseph Maria Gordon CB (18 March 1856 – 6 September 1929), was an officer in the British Army, later holding the position of Commandant of the South Australian Military Forces and serving in the Second Boer War in South Africa.

Land Force Atlantic Area Training Centre Aldershot

During the 1890s and the lead up to the Boer War, the British Army, which was responsible for Canada's defence until 1906, established Military Camp Aldershot (also shortened to Camp Aldershot) as a training area on land in the western part of Kings County between the villages of Aylesford and Kingston.

Leonard Courtney, 1st Baron Courtney of Penwith

He continued to represent the borough, and Bodmin into which it was merged by the Reform Act of 1885, until 1900, when his attitude towards the South African War (he and his wife Catherine were one of the foremost of the so-called Pro-Boer Party) compelled his retirement.

Limelight Department

Some of the most notable of these were films showing the royal visit of the Duke and Duchess of York for the opening of the first sitting of the Parliament of Australia (the session itself could not be filmed due to poor lighting), the visit of America's Great White Fleet and the Victoria's Second Boer War Contingent leaving South Africa.

Norman Frederick Hastings

After serving with British military units during the Second Anglo-Boer War in South Africa, he worked as an engineering fitter with the New Zealand Railways Department workshops at Petone.

Piet Cronjé

He was in command of the force that rounded up Jameson at Doornkop at the conclusion of the Jameson Raid on 2 January 1896, which is traditionally seen as a precursor to the Second Boer War.

Robert Brand, 1st Baron Brand

From 1902, during the period of reconstruction following the Second Boer War, Brand joined Alfred Milner's Civil Service in South Africa, where he was appointed "Secretary of the Intercolonial Council of the Transvaal and Orange River Colony", and was thus seen as a member of Milner's Kindergarten, which, according to Carroll Quigley, he led from 1955 to 1963.

Robert Climie

Despite previously being a Volunteer Sergeant in the Royal Scots Fusiliers, when he became involved in socialist politics he opposed the Boer War and spoke out regularly against it at the ILP's outdoor meetings from 1899 - 1902.

Royal Warwickshire Regiment

In 1898 the regiment fought at Atbara and Omdurman during Lord Kitchener's reconquest of the Sudan and saw service in the Second Boer War at Johannesburg, Diamond Hill and Belfast.

Siege of Kimberley

The Siege of Kimberley took place during the Second Boer War at Kimberley, Cape Colony (present-day South Africa), when Boer forces from the Orange Free State and the Transvaal besieged the diamond mining town.

Ventersburg

The Dutch Reform Church was built in Ventersburg in 1891 but it was burnt down in 1900 by the British forces during the Boer War.

Vlakfontein

During the Second Boer War it was the site of a guerrilla action against the British forces where a Victoria Cross was awarded to William John English of the Scottish Horse for conspicuous gallantry.

Waler horse

In Australia's two wars of the early 20th century—the Second Boer War and World War I—the Waler was the backbone of the Australian Light Horse mounted forces.

West Felton

Boer War Victoria Cross winner General Sir Walter Congreve had his home at West Felton Grange from 1903 to 1924, with his son William, who was killed in World War I when he also, posthumously, received the VC.

Will Longstaff

Born in Ballarat, Victoria, Longstaff studied art privately before joining the military and serving in the Boer War as a member of the South African Light Horse.

Yerba mate

In the tiny hamlet of Groot Marico in the northwest province, mate was introduced to the local tourism office by the returning descendants of the Boers, who in 1902 had emigrated to Patagonia in Argentina after losing the Anglo Boer War.