The Boer War

by Thomas Pakenham

The war declared by the Boers of South Africa on October 11, 1899, gave the British, as Kipling said, "no end of a lesson." The public expected it to be over by Christmas. It proved to be the longest (thirty-three months), the costliest (almost half a billion dollars), the bloodiest (at least 22,000 British lives, 25,000 Boer and 12,000 African lives), and most humiliating war that Great Britain fought between 1815 and 1914.

Thomas Pakenham, whose narrative is based on firsthand but largely unpublished sources, has written the first full-scale documentary history of the war to be attempted since 1910. He has combed the original British documents in the Public Record Office and the material in South African archives, and has traced the private papers of most of the principals (for example, he found the letters of Sir Redvers Buller—the British commander-in-chief in 1899—hidden under the billiard table at Buller's house in Devon). He also unearthed new material from the trunkloads of Lord Roberts's papers, discovered a massive secret journal of the war compiled by the War Office Intelligence Department, and found the private letters from the War Minister, Lord Lansdowne, and other members of the Cabinet. In addition, through research and by advertising in newspapers, he read several hundred sets of letters and diaries written by the men who fought in the war. Finally, he tape-recorded the memories of nearly sixty survivors from both sides—most of them enlisted men, the youngest of whom was eighty-six years old.

Out of this historical gold mine, Mr. Pakenham has constructed a narrative as vivid and fast-moving as a novel. In many ways he challenges the accepted view of historians. He exposes the crucial role of the two "gold bugs"—the richest of the South African millionaires—in precipitating the war. He throws new light on the blunders of the British generals, Sir Redvers Buller and Lord Roberts, revealing the personal feud between the men comparable to the one between Lords Lucan and Cardigan that led to the Charge of the Light Brigade. He writes movingly of the plight of the 100,000 black Africans who served both armies, and explains how the final political victory of the Boers—who lost the war but won the peace—had far reaching consequences, not only for Europe and South Africa, but for the world today.

In scope, scholarship, breadth and impact, The Boer War is a work that will not be superseded for many years.

Genres: History, Africa, Nonfiction, Military History, War, South Africa, Military Fiction

718 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1900

About the author

Thomas Francis Dermot Pakenham, 8th Earl of Longford, is known simply as Thomas Pakenham. He is an Anglo-Irish historian and arborist who has written several prize-winning books on the diverse subjects of Victorian and post-Victorian British history and trees. He is the son of Frank Pakenham, 7th Earl of Longford, a Labour minister and human rights campaigner, and Elizabeth Longford. The well known English historian Antonia Fraser is his sister.

After graduating from Belvedere College and Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1955, Thomas Pakenham traveled to Ethiopia, a trip which is described in his first book The Mountains of Rasselas. On returning to Britain, he worked on the editorial staff of the Times Educational Supplement and later for ,i>The Sunday Telegraph and The Observer. He divides his time between London and County Westmeath, Ireland, where he is the chairman of the Irish Tree Society and honorary custodian of Tullynally Castle.

Thomas Pakenham does not use his title and did not use his courtesy title before succeeding his father. However, he has not disclaimed his British titles under the Peerage Act 1963, and the Irish peerages cannot be disclaimed as they are not covered by the Act. He is unable to sit in the House of Lords as a hereditary peer as his father had, due to the House of Lords Act 1999 (though his father was created a life peer in addition to his hereditary title in order to be able to retain his seat).

Reviews

[Brett C · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a densely researched and scholarly presented narrative on the Boer War. This absolutely was not a pleasure read—this was heavy and could benefit someone needing in-depth information for research. Having said that, Pakenham clearly presented the political and historical context leading to this violent confrontation. This war was a costly war with maximum carnage, the institution of concentration camps, unknown numbers in the loss of life, political restructuring, and other ripple effects. This was extensively researched and loaded with details to deliver the full-scale account of this overlooked conflict. I would highly recommend this to anyone interested in military, European, and African history. Thanks!

[Checkman · Rating 5 out of 5]

A well done narrative of the Boer War. Mr. Pakenham has written a book which resists the easy path of political correctness and doesn't engage in simple minded ideology. He has attempted to show both sides as truthfully as possible. His one very daring act is the effort to show General Buller in a sympathetic light - going against decades of historians that have written him off as nothing, but an incompetent. It's become accepted that General Buller is just another example of the idiots that were in charge of the British military in the nineteenth century. As if competence in the British Army ceased to exist after Wellington died.Mr. Pakenham goes against the grain. It is a bold attempt and one which I believe is done very well. One may not agree with Mr. Pakenham, but you have to respect his courage. Good historians are supposed to challenge the popular mindset.

Mr. Pakenham also excels in his effort to show how very difficult it is to maintain control of troops on the battlefield. Garbled communications, faulty intelligence,monumental egos,poor morale, unexpected effects of new weapons meeting up with outdated tactics - all of these and more are detailed beautifully.

I was somewhat surprised that the Boers are shown as not being all conquering. They often had even more problems then the British. Their troops were wildly undisciplined and were better at partisan warfare or serving in defensive actions. When it came to offensive action, against disciplined troops, the Boers were actually miserable failures. This is a common trait found in what is now know as "irregular forces". It's always refreshing to see a myth punctured.

On the political side Pakenham looks at both sides and shows that war could have been avoided at almost every step, but personal/national egos and ambition kept getting in the way. Naturally there are the inevitable comparisons to World War One and they are very clear.

All in all this is a balanced and very readable work. When I first picked it up I was unsure of what I would find. In the past I've found many of the modern African historians to be extremely left wing and lacking in perspective. Pakenham is an exception to the rule and for that I give him five stars. Well done!

[John Farebrother · Rating 5 out of 5]

The definitive history of the Boer War. I bought this book in South Africa, and read it over the course of a few weeks while working in neighbouring Mozambique. The author already provides an excellent summary of the war in his book The Scramble for Africa: The White Man's Conquest of the Dark Continent from 1876 to 1912, but real students of the South African war must read this. The detail is exhaustive, but never tedious - whether of the political wrangling or the actual fighting. The author travelled to the country and spent an extended period there in order to have the most complete possible picture. And rightly, he does not ignore the role and the suffering of the non-whites in his history. An absolute must for anyone who wants to understand the beginning of the end of the British Empire, and the beginning of a new era in southern Africa that is still playing out today. Not to forget the first official "concentration camps", borrowed by Lord "I want you" Kitchener from the Spanish in Cuba. A fitting start to perhaps the most bloody century yet (although this one is definitely a contender).

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ever since its initial publication in 1979, Thomas Pakenham’s history of the second Anglo-Boer War has been the go-to source for anyone seeking to learn about the conflict. And reading it makes it easy to see why it enjoys such a distinction, as the author spent nearly a decade assiduously researching archives, ferreting out private papers, and interviewing the aged veterans of the conflict. All of this painstaking work is on display in an account that is remarkable for its thoroughness and its incorporation of a diverse range of perspectives. Such labors are only part of what made Pakenham’s book such an enduring work on its subject, however, as he employs that information to provide an engrossing narrative, complete with a definable overarching villain and a noble, if tragic, hero.

The villain of Pakenham’s tale is Alfred Milner. Though far from the only figure seeking to annex the Afrikaner republics of Transvaal and the Orange Free State to the British empire, as High Commissioner for South Africa and governor of Cape Colony he enjoyed enormous influence over imperial policy in the region. This he employed in pursuit of his goal of strengthening Britain’s power in the white settler territories, which was part of his vision of a federal Greater Britain stretching across the globe. Inheriting a policy of drift when he took office in 1897, Milner pushed both his superiors in London and public opinion in Great Britain to support annexation, the justification for which was premised on the Boers’ discrimination against British settlers, or “Uitlanders,” in their territories.

The Uitlanders posed a growing problem for the Transvaal Republic, thanks to the dramatic influx of immigrants drawn to the discovery of diamonds and gold in their territory. Terrified of being swamped by the numbers and losing control of their country – a fear underscored by the Jameson Raid just a few years earlier – the burghers moved to deny the franchise to these recent arrivals. Defending the rights of British subjects gave Milner the excuse he sought to intervene, with the cause for war handed to him when a boilermaker from Lancashire was shot and killed by a Transvaal police officer. After weeks of fanning the flames both in the South African colonies and in Great Britain, an unanswered ultimatum in October 1899 gave Milner the war he sought, with Boers crossing the border into the British territories of Cape Colony and Natal to besiege nearby towns.

Milner expected a short war ending in an easy victory, but others knew better. Among them was Redvers Buller, the newly-named commander of British forces in South Africa. Depicted as a soldier admired by his men and one who appreciated the challenges his command faced, Pakenham makes him the hero of his tale. Buller’s initial plans for a broad advance on the Boer republics were thwarted by the necessity of rescuing subordinates who had allowed themselves and their forces to be trapped at Kimberly and Ladysmith. His unexpected defeat at Colenso on December 15 – one of a trio of defeats in quick succession in the region – reflected the changing nature of warfare, as the longer-ranged high-velocity rifles and artillery the Boers had purchased with their mining revenues used a smokeless powder that made them nearly impossible to locate on the battlefield. Accustomed to winning their colonial wars quickly and cheaply, the British public was shocked by the reverses of the “Black Week.”

Though Buller adapted quickly to the difficulties he faced, his subsequent battlefield successes did not spare him from the blame he suffered for these defeats. Now aware that the war against the Afrikaner republics was going to be a far more formidable undertaking, the British launched a much larger mobilization effort. Troops from throughout the empire poured into South Africa in an ironic realization of Milner’s vision. While he remained the head of the British forces in Natal, Buller was succeeded as commander in the region by Earl Roberts, the empire’s foremost soldier. Despite earning that reputation through service in nearly a half-dozen colonial wars, Roberts encountered many of the same problems as had his predecessor, and proved less capable of adapting. Ultimately, it was the sheer weight of the British army in the field that proved decisive in liberating the besieged towns and conquering the Boer republics by the end of 1900.

Having defeated the Boer armies and marched triumphantly into the capital of the Transvaal Republic, Roberts eased up on his pursuit of their remnants in the assumption that the war was all but over. Instead, it entered a new phase, as the defiant Boer leaders shifted to guerrilla warfare in the hopes of maintaining their independence by exhausting the British will. Here Pakenham moves away from his detailed account of the campaign to a broader summary of the Boer operations and the British pacification efforts. The latter evolved over the next two years from an initial practice of leniency to a “sweep and scour” approach that sought to trap the elusive Boer columns. This included the erection of numerous blockhouses across the veldt connected by barbed wire, which were designed to impede the mobility of the mounted Boers. To further isolate the guerrillas from their supplies, Boer families were rounded up and placed in camps, which the crowded conditions and limited rations soon turned into a humanitarian horror.

The revelation of the miseries of the concentration camps in the British media only increased the desire of the government to end the conflict. With Boer resistance ground down and ominous stirrings of opposition from the formerly quiescent population of Black natives, their leaders were ready to end the conflict as well. Among the few disappointed by the resulting peace was Milner, who though now governor of Transvaal and the “Orange River Colony” was denied the total victory he believed was necessary to realize his vision of an anglicized South Africa. Just eight years after the Boers’ surrender, self-government in the form of Dominion status was restored to a majority-Afrikaner nation. That Pakenham’s revisionist account can leave the reader with a sense of the waste of it all is understandable, and reflects his ability as a writer. His narrative verve conveys the war with a drama and clarity that few writers can emulate, which, when coupled with his extensive research, will likely ensure that his book remains the standard account of the second Anglo-Boer war for many years to come.

[Czarny Pies · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thomas Pakenham's "Boer War" easily merits five stars for the reader interested in the Boer War of which there are precious few outside the British Commonwealth and South Africa. Published in 1979, Thomas Pakenham's book was the first since "Times History of the War in South Africa" (1900-1909) (Leo Amery, editor) and the British Army's official "History of the War in South Africa" (1901) (Major General Sir Frederick Maurice, edit. Pakenham conducted a thorough review of the archives of the British War Office. He found new sources including the private papers of Generals Redvers Buller, General Frederick Roberts, and War Minister Lord Lansdowne. Finally, he conducted interviews with 52 surviving veterans of the war and consulted some sources in Afrikaans. Very thoroughly researched Pakenham's work is still regarded as definitive more than forty years later.
Pakenham's book largely supports Lenin's thesis that the Boer War had been fought at the behest of the mining companies who wanted a British government that would tax them lightly rather than continue to pay the high taxes of the Afrikaaners. Pakenham shows Sir Alfred Milner, the governor of the Cape Colony, working in concert with the leaders of the mining companies (most notably Alfred Beit) to agitate and protest so as to create the impression that the rights of British residents and other foreigners (Uitlanders)working in the Transvaal gold fields were being abused. This campaign succeed brilliantly and the British cabinet ordered Milner to seek redress from the Transvaal state.
The Transvaal government was prepared to grant the British Cabinet all that it desired but Milner, conducted the negotiations in such a manner to ensure that they failed because he wanted the Transvaal and the Orange Free State to be unilaterally annexed by the British Crown an event which could only result from War. The result was a conflict in which roughly 80,000 civilians and combatants died. The peace that resulted ensured that the Boers would control the new South African electorally while the Kaffir (i.e. Black African) majority would be denied citizenship.
Most of the book is devoted to descriptions of the battles and military campaigns. Pakenham disagrees with earlier assessments that Buller was not as good a general as Roberts and Kitchener. Pakenham strongly argues that the leadership of Buller had been underrated by previous historians. Three times in the book Pakenham cites Napoleon's dictum that victory goes to the general makes the fewest mistakes. Pakenham endeavors to show that at different times all the British and Boer Generals even the best ones made errors. Sometimes it cost them dearly. On other occasions it did not as their adversaries made more even more mistakes.
Pakenham's big thesis is that the traditional British practices of advances in columns were ill- suited to modern weaponry in particular the smokeless Mauser rifles of the Boers. The Boer practices of hiding in trenches and charging by rushes were simply more effective. Once the British adopted the Boer practices the tide turned in their favour. The trench warfare of the Boer War became the standard in WWI.
Kitchener's decision to place Boer women and children as well as their African servants in concentration camp where 46,000 would die has often been cited as the worst outrage of the Boer War. Pakenham, however, is relatively forgiving. He noted that Kitchener generally took very little interest in the issues of sanitation and medical care. Thus, the British army hospitals also had very high death rates.
Pakenham argues that the Kaffirs (Black Africans) got the worst treatment of any group in South Africa during the war. During the sieges, they were given much smaller rations than the whites or were expelled outright from the cities.
Pakenhem's "Boer War" is a very solid effort. Most readers will feel comfortable with Pakenham's values and judgements. If there is a weakness with the book it is that Pakenham assumes that the reader is interested in the Boer War and makes no effort to persuade the reader that the subject is important.

[Evan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Inasmuch as we might say all wars are dumb, The Boer War seems to me to have been one of the dumbest. Two natural allies, the Dutch-Germanic Boer settlers of South Africa and their British colonial cousins going to war over mineral weath and territory when both were already sharing same in an (admittedly) unsteady truce. Both white powers cutting out the native conquered black Africans from their lands and a fair share of the action. And it seems simplistic to say the war was about gold and diamonds, though, at its root it was. But, politics, racism, national pride, cultural and legal differences -- these and more accumulated to set the powderkeg of one of the most fascinating wars ever fought.

As a single-volume account of this titanic struggle that took place on the horn of Africa from 1899 to 1902, Thomas Pakenham's 1979, The Boer War likely has no rivals. It was the only fulsome account of the war published for most of the 20th century and one intended to correct some of the biases of the earlier "official" account. Pakenham's arguments in setting the record straight, as he saw it, are well laid out and persuasive, fair and balanced. It is a monumental achievement in scholarship and popular history.

Pakenham was clearly interested in the political currents and personnages who set this tragic event in motion and also in the men who fought it and their famous engagements: Spione Kop, Mafeking and the rest. Pakenham was not so interested, it seems, in many of the things that current documentaries on the war emphasize: the concentration camps and the intrepid humanitarian women who exposed them, the plight of the black Africans, the participation of young lawyer Mahatma Gandhi in the Brit medic service, or the famous case of Harry "Breaker" Morant and his contingent of Aussie volunteers sacrificed on the pyre of justice for murdering prisoners during a time when top-down directives about same were contradictory and confusing. Breaker Morant is a great Australian movie from 1979 that I highly recommend. Pakenham does cover these issues but not with heavy emphasis; the infamous concentration camps only take up 27 pages in this 600-plus monster tome, for instance. It does seem short shrift, but what Pakenham DOES cover, he covers with masterly detail and insight.

The Boer War has been called many things -- "the first modern war," "the birthplace of the concentration camp," but these are all disputable, partly true and partly not. There were already precedents for these aspects in previous wars. The earlier Spanish concentration camps for Cubans in the Spanish-American War were far worse in death toll, and the POW camp at Andersonville in the US Civil War arguably fit the bill. Trench warfare, a prominent feature of many of the Boer battles, also had precedents in the Crimean War, the US Civil War and others. Smokeless powder lays the biggest claim as an innovation of the Boer War, but even here it had been used in previous recent conflicts. The inability to see enemies in their positions because of smokeless gunfire made The Boer War especially lethal, and the Boers were masters of their terrain, and how to hide in it. Enemies were often cloaked until you were right on top of them, by which time it was too late. This was no mean feat, given the often sparse brown featureless geography of much of the South African veldt.

One of my favorite movies of all time is The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, a 1943 British masterpiece with many references to the Boer War, and reading this gave me an even greater appreciation of that one-of-a-kind film.

This is a one-of-a-kind book. A masterpiece in the war literature. I had taken tons of very specific notes with an intention of writing about far more. But, in the interest of dispatch (very British) I am posting this "first draft" and may amend it over the next few days. Finally relieved to have this thick boy notched after having it on my shelf for 20 years.


c. 2025 e/k

[Nerine Dorman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Granted, I started reading this book because I wanted a better idea of the Anglo Boer War for my Afrikaans module during my first level at Unisa for my BA, so this was pretty much supplementary reading – which means I was more consistent about finishing what I started. Plainly put, The Boer War by Thomas Pakenham (which is apparently considered a “go to” for the subject) is very, very dry. And that’s putting it mildly.

Informative, yes, but I had to do my reading in bursts.

That Pakenham did his research is clear, because he’s sifted through a daunting pile of primary sources to put together a fine tome that definitely succeeds in giving me a better idea of the entire debacle. Also, I feel that he succeeds in a degree of objectivity on such a contentious topic because when it comes to exposing the foibles of those involved in the conflict, he doesn’t pick sides. Both the British and the Boers are revealed as perpetrators (and most certainly not very nice people), and both sides have their heroes and villains, depending the perspective of the viewer.

Pakenham also examines the outcomes of the war, and it’s incredibly high cost in lives and material possessions; South Africa’s indigenous populations suffered the most. If one has to look from where the roots of the later oppressive apartheid system grew, they clearly lay deeply entrenched in this time, especially in the attitudes shared by colonial powers in Africa. Thank you, Rhodes, Kruger. You’re both scoundrels, and not the nice kind of scoundrel either (like Han Solo).

As an overview, I feel this book is a good starting point, but as stated earlier, I simply didn’t gel with Pakenham, who failed to engage me. What made reading this bearable is that I have an illustrated hardcover edition that had many wonderful images (yay for pictures) – but if and when I do decide to read further on the topic, I’d like to find an author whose writing style doesn’t make me unintentionally skip pages.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

A destructive, pointless, costly war. A wholly unnecessary war contrived by Alfred Milner and handful of mining magnates for their own ends and personal gain. It seems that all parties on all sides committed horrendous atrocities, not the least of which was the birth of the concentration camp, courtesy of Lord Kitchener, along with his devastating sweep-and-scour methods of countering the Boer guerrillas.

"Today, Kitchener is not remembered in South Africa for his military victories. His monument is the camp--'concentration camp', as it came to be called. The camps have left a gigantic scar across the minds of the Afrikaners: a symbol of deliberate genocide. In fact, Kitchener no more desired the death of women and children in the camps than of the wounded Dervishes after Omdurman, or of his own soldiers in the typhoid-stricken hospital of Bloemfontein. He was simply not interested. What possessed him was a passion to win the war quickly, and to that he was prepared to sacrifice most things, and most people, other than his own small 'band of boys', to whom he was invariably loyal, whatever their blunders."

And, of course, before, during, and after the war, the most severe losses were borne by the native Africans and by other people of color brought to the colony. I think that if a history of the Boer War were to be written and published today, it would (and should) include far more details about these atrocities.

"...It will always be remembered that this is the way British rule started there, and this is the method by which it was brought about."

Pakenham presents this chapter of history in an engaging, balanced fashion and includes interesting personal details about the people involved. This volume is highly detailed, but not tedious. Pakenham keeps momentum going throughout the book and builds suspense for the reader as events unfold.

[Clare O'Beara · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read the full length original edition.

The author has to be commended for not only revisiting many documents and parliamentary records, but interviewing over 50 Boer War survivors, including Boers and people from the native community. I learnt a great deal from this book, but had previously read Giles Foden on Ladysmith, and I think it helps to have a bit of background so you are not trying to learn everything at once. This was not a topic my school history course covered, except in a couple of sentences.

To start with, we learn about the gold and diamonds, Rhodes and Beit profiting. If the ground contained only rocks, who would want it but hardy farmers. We move on to battles and equipment. Mafeking, which was in the middle of vast nowhere, is revealed to have been deliberately established to be besieged, in order that this would split the Boer forces. The details of various sieges and marches are not pleasant reading, and conduct on all sides could today be called war crimes.

What I found riveting was the latter part of the story in which the same tactics that had been employed against Native Americans were used against Boers; destroying the support system and beasts of burden, killing or taking horses and livestock, burning crops and homes; and imprisoning women and children in concentration camps with inadequate food, water or sanitation. A lady called Emily Hobhouse went out from England to investigate, and her written reports on the appalling camp conditions and spread of diseases like cholera, typhoid and measles finally jolted the conscience of British families and politicians. The author notes that Ms Hobhouse did not even visit the many camps for native people who were Boer servants. He doesn't say why, just disapproves - maybe the lady felt that their plight would not move the British people, or she needed to get home quickly to publicise her findings. A second group of women arrived to make further reports and recommendations, and they again forced the warmongers to look at the results of their actions. By this time, the death rate had risen sharply; consciences were stirred.

Horses, donkeys, mules and oxen were the general means of transport, especially over rough ground with weight to carry. The author doesn't look at the horses as fully as I would have liked; we get the appalling figures of a rider with 23 horses dying under him in two days, or 1500 horses lost during one battle.
He says "Horses too, horses by the thousand, Indian horses, Burmese horses, Argentinian horses, had to come up the same railway line, battered and bruised after travelling half-way across the world. Roberts's grand army swallowed horses as a modern army swallows petrol."
He left out the relatively close and major source, Australia, which supplied India and Burma too, and he moves right on to discuss typhoid. Horses have no immunity to the diseases carried by tsetse fly, so oxen had to be used anywhere at a lower latitude than the Cape area; another reason why the large influx of horses for war did not survive very long. No mention of tsetse fly in the index (although we were told near the end of a politician dying from tsetse fly).

Overall a good exploration of the war, with the clarity of hindsight, personal accounts, personal touches and clear maps and photos. This is an unbiased review.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

I first read this book as the beginning of my autodidactic project of reading one book about each of the wars fought in the 20th Century. (This was foiled by my failure to find a good book on the Russo-Japanese War of 1905. Any suggestions will be welcome.) At the time, I found it a thrilling account of a war about which I knew virtually nothing, and I did gain a certain insight into the changes from 19th-century colonial warfare to the 20th-century variety. On reviewing it today, however, now that I've had some graduate training in history, I see it as rather flawed. Pakenham likes to add literary flourishes to the data he has gleaned from his sources, describing events more like a novelist than a historian, and at times it is very hard to know how much of the truth he stretches to be entertaining. I can believe, for example, that he was able to reconstruct the "burning topic" of gossip at a Christmas party in Hohenheim, 1898, but does he really know every idle comment that Joseph Chamberlain's secretary made at the office on a random day in November?
That aside, the datedness of this book is apparent, although it was the first undertaking of its scale on the Boer War at the time. Given that it came out in 1979, we should not be overly surprised at the degree to which the war is paralleled to that in Vietnam. A mighty power gets entangled in what should be a short conflict in a far-off land it doesn't really understand, to the cost of many lives and considerable materiel. It is more to be regretted that Pakenham was unable to draw more valuable conclusions regarding de-colonization history and contemporary developments in South Africa. Historians are notoriously bad prophets, of course, but it would be nice if his analysis informed us a bit more than to say that war between whites and blacks is likely, and "this time no one expects the war to be over by Christmas."
In all, this remains an entertaining read for amateurs, but will leave professional historians wanting more.

[Richard Swan · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best history books I've ever read.

[Colin Mitchell · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the best book of the Boer War period that I have come across which project a more balanced picture of the generals, particularly Buller v Roberts than the definitive work edited by L.S Amery The Times History of the War in South Africa as Amery was very much part of Lord Roberts Indian set.

The main battles are all well portrayed and there are some good maps in this edition which helps to show both the remoteness and size of the territory. The generals who had little thought for anything other than their own advancement and cared little for the troops fighting, who often went without food or clothing as between Roberts and Kitchener the transport system was virtually destroyed. There is also the background of the politicians who seem to have been hoodwinked by the High Commissioner Milner who wanted there to be war and then did not want any peace settlement. The gold and diamond mine owners all had to be appeased and when peace was made suffered little from their vast profits.

This was the period when the indigenous population had been left with no rights what ever and the Boer women and children where herded into what became known as the first concentration camps set up by Kitchener and then left without sufficient food, medicines or clothing.

Eventually the railway system and the very weight of numbers eventually pushed the Boer leaders to agree a settlement.

A very readable history of the period.

[Elwood D Pennypacker · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating history of competition over material wealth between paternalistic racists (and somewhat ferocious anti-Semites)with chipper dispositions vs. angry, frothing at the mouth puritan racists (with a strange involvement of Semites, not to be repeated by their Germanic forefathers up north in a couple of generations). Funny hats, funny names, serious murders. Written when apartheid seemed almost invincible but sensing a change was about to come, there is a great post-colonial perspective to this British colonial conflict ("Blimey Charley we were bastards but look at our enemies - bigger bastards than us"). In the end, I'd think I'd name my fruit stand the Orange Free State if I didn't think it would offend anyone. Which it would.

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

The definitive history of the second Boer War. this work is written in the grand tradition of narrative history - in prose that is lucid, witty, and dramatic.

The author's scholarship is deep, comprehensive, and objective. The political and economic factors that led to the war and that continued to influence both its conduct and its final settlement are fully developed. This background information is particularly essential in understanding the thinking of the Boer political and military leadership. This side of the conflict has too often been slighted in works written in English, but understanding the Boers is essential to a fully balanced account of the war. The author seems to have read everything - even learned Afrikaans just to be able to read for himself the archives of the Boer republics, the officials reports, the Afrikaans newspapers. And this research has enabled him to fully incorporate the Boer perspective here - has enabled him to fully develop the personalities of the Boer leadership, political and military.

And the author has a real talent for biography. The book is peopled by a Dickensian host of fascinating individuals: some famous (Churchill, Kitchener, Allenby, French); others that should be (De Wet, Smuts, Botha); and others whose bones are surely burning in hell (Milner, Rhodes, Chamberlain). All are deftly drawn, fully characterized, brought to life with all their idiosyncratic quirks - and all placed in a vividly recreated world, the world of London and of southern Africa as the century turned.

However, the true strength of the work is the author's ability to describe combat - to vicariously place the reader in the middle of a battle - to place him there as omniscient observer, one who completely understands the situation, the strategy, one to whom the sights and the smells and the fear real but the outcome of the struggle unknown - to place the reader alongside a 'Tommy' in a long, hot march across the Veldt or place him on the seat of a Boer oxcart or inside the Springfontein concentration camp or lying on the bare earth in a British military hospital. These passages are as vividly written, are as dramatic as fiction. To achieve this realism, the author has incorporated numerous vivid eye-witness accounts of actual participants (for some of these, he personally interviewed ancient combatants; for others, he exhaustively combed the written reports, memoirs, letters). These graphic memories,these 'war stories', make that 'long ago - long forgotten' war very real.

Although there was much that was noble in the actions of individual soldiers, the war itself was far from noble. Was basically a grab for the Transvaal gold fields by Britain, only lightly veiled as imperial expansion 'in the service of civilization'. While the Boer's fight to maintain their republics, their independence, is certainly understandable, justifiable, their treatment of the native Africans under their control lessens whatever sympathy one might otherwise feel for their cause. Still, they were the 'underdogs', facing incredible odds, two small countries battling the entire British Empire, fighting troops from Canada, India, Australia as well as those from Great Britain, and doing so successfully for years. They were fighting for their homes, their way of life, while the British leaders were fighting for gold and diamonds, their officers for 'glory', and the rank and file for 'love of country', for a misplaced patriotism that was cynically exploited.

The only possible weakness of this work is that it is a very British - with the emphasis overwhelming on the Empire and on the Boer Republics that would soon to be part of it. It slights events in the wider world. The wide spread support for the Boer cause throughout Europe is ignored - even the interference, the 'kibitzing', of the German Kaiser is only briefly mentioned. And an American reader might be surprised that the author, in recounting the final guerilla phase of the war, completely ignores the contemporaneous insurrection in the Philippines that the United States was then fighting - surprising because there were significant similarities. Both arose in opposition to imperial expansion and in both the native populations were forced into concentration camps - in the Boer republics, this was done after burning the farms, poisoning the wells, and killing all the livestock, or, in the Philippines after destroying the native villages and crops - resulting in both cases in a high death toll and a devastated countryside - with the mortality in the concentration camps, due to starvation and disease, particularly high among children. And, in both cases, the war continued long after the generals had declared it 'won', long after the public 'back home' had turned against it. But the author draws no comparisons to the American experience in the Philippines.

The photographs illustrating this book, all contemporary, are superb, evocative of both the time and the war, and are great examples of early war photography. They are worth the price of the book.

[Jonnie Enloe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Overlooked war in overlooked period in time. Needs to be read just after "Washing of the Spears" a narrative of the British wars in sub-Saharan Africa in second half of the 19th century.

[Adrian Buck · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are two interesting discussions in this book: the interaction of landscape and military technology, and relationship between racism and imperialism.

The first is easier to summarise, the use of rifles with magazines massively increased the rate of fire. This in turn massively increased the rate of casualties suffered from a frontal attack on entrenched positions. It became necessary to attack sporadically, making shorter movements forward between cover. This forced the boers to aim, rather than just discharging their weapons into a charging body of attackers. One myth Pakenham wants to bust is that the Boers were superior shots. But another ability of the Boers did present a challenge to the British, and that was their mobility on the battlefield. Once a trench was going to be overwhelmed the Boers would quickly retreat to one further back. If there were no defensive positions left the Boers would leave the field, rather than surrender. The British developed the artillery barrage to pin them down.

Ultimately the Boers left battlefields all together and used their mobility and knowledge of the landscape to conduct a guerilla war. Kitchener's solution to this firstly to deplete the landscape, burning farms and moving Boer civilians into concentration camps (the idea was Spanish not British, and used in Cuba) making it impossible for the Commandos to live off the land. When this failed to expedite defeat, Kitchener broke the landscape up extending chains of blockhouses and barbed wire across the veldt. A parallel was drawn to the task the British faced in the American war of Independence. "It was no good capturing capitals, unless they could subdue the territory between" (page 378). At this point the relationship between landscape and warfare is no longer limited to Military tactics, generals have to consider the political organisation of their enemy.

The biggest problem the British faced in South Africa was adjusting an imperial war machine to fighting a national war. For the last fifty years The British army had fought local despots, the Boer Republics represented a people who were strongly committed to their ideals of national independence. Indeed the last time the British had fought such an enemy was in the American war of Independence, and they lost. For most of the 19th and 20th century the idea of the nation seemed stronger than that of the Empire, the nationalist seemed more prepared to die for his cause than the imperialist.

To the Boers the African was a mortal but defeated enemy, British soldiers complained that the Boers would shoot them like dogs, and Boers in turn regarded the British arming of small numbers of Africans as the worst atrocity of the war. The Boer Republics were ethnic nation states where only 'the volk' had the franchise. Indeed the refusal of the Boers to extend the franchise to the thousands of white 'uitlanders' who had flooded the Transvaal following the Rand gold rush, was Britain's original causus belli. The peace negotiations hinged on the future enfranchisement of the African population in the Boer colonies. So the relationship between ethnicity and citizenship circumscribed the whole conflict.

One of the more developed portraits in this book is of Alfred Milner, Britain's high commissioner for South Africa both before and after the war. Pakenham claims he had a distinct conception of the British Empire, that of a 'greater Britain' in which, despite its geographic spread, the ethnic homogeneity of the British people would enable it to become a political union. The presence of the Boer republics was a threat to this ideal, both ethnically and politically. Milner hoped, however, that once they had been brought into the fold politically, they could be brought into the fold ethnically too. "Cape loyalists, Natal loyalists, Uitlanders from Johannesburg and Rhodesians would be cast into imperial steel, fusing with the stronger metals from the mother country"(page 158) .

The means of achieving this was the sacrifice of the African population, Milner 'You only have to sacrifice "the [n****r]" absolutely, and the game is easy"(pg 418). The British population and the Boer population of South Africa would be brought together through their common exploitation of the African labour in the mines. Being brought up on a sanitized version of the British Imperial mission this was the most shocking part of the book. Not only that there were imperial administrators like Milner whose conception of the Empire was little different to Lebensraum, but there was evidence that they were putting their vision into effect: ""It was a shocking fact, as Chamberlain admitted in public, that the great majority of the black colonies which Britain was directly responsible for had still, after a century, received no real benefit from imperial membership" (pg 27).

The section of the book that really drives this point home is chapter 33 'The Whiteman's War' which discusses Baden-Powell's conduct of the siege of Mafeking (yes, I was - briefly - a boy scout). Many Africans were besieged alongside the white population of Mafeking, and the allocation of rations and labour was strictly administered on racial lines. If food resources became tight the African ration was restricted but not the white. In anycase the Africans had to work for their ration by digging defensive positions. Once these positions were completed, the British had no further use for the Africans and drove them out of Mafeking, either through starvation or main force. Outside of the town, safe territory was 70 miles away. You can't avoid making comparisons with the Gulag and Nazi labour camps.

Having read this book, I find it most shocking that Boer and Briton ever managed to form the Union of South Africa, and share that country of seventy years. The near destruction the British inflicted on the Boers should surely have forbade it. But unite they did, not only that, 5,000 Boers actually ended the war fighting on the British side. Milner was right, once the African was sacrificed, politically in the constitution, and economically in the mines, the game was easy.

[Jared Babcock · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very in-depth book on an under-represented topic with a wide variety of sources. Pakenham does a good job making it readable even with the dense subject matter.

[Jesse · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tremendous amount to unpack here. There is a lot to recommend this volume. Generally, the work eschews argument in favor of narrative. Certainly, this approach has its strengths. Nonetheless, by the end the author’s views in several key respects are clear. First, Pakenham does have a clear view on the causus belli. Essentially, he views the role of Milner as instrumental in bringing about the conflict. Pakenham clearly thinks that absent Milner’s desire for war, a negotiated resolution could have been reached without bloodshed. In a larger sense, he presents the goldbugs as being instrumental. Not being an expert in the subject matter, I cannot say how well this accords with the views of other historians. As a reader, I ended the volume more persuaded on the first point than the second. There may be a lesson here about the practical power of on-the-ground mid-level officials worth thinking about further.

Also of interest is Pakenham’s views on the camps. While I have often heard it claimed that the British invented this modern evil during this conflict, Pakenham points out that concentration camps were actually first used by the Spanish in Cuba. It’s overall unclear to me where Pakenham lands on these camps. He clearly deplores the initial conditions (which he ascribes entirely to neglect rather than malice), but points out that conditions in the camps improved substantially over time. He also argues that the Boer commandos preferred that their civilian population be in the camps rather than left to starve on the veld.

One also is struck by the fact that Britain was running an empire on a shoestring budget. The Colonial Office appears to have been a small backwater in Whitehall, while the apparent resources of the army were hardly more impressive. As a state, one gets a the impression of a nation with fierce electoral politics balanced out by the presence of a culturally cohesive cross-partisan elite. Though Britain is a constitutional monarchy by this point, Pakenham’s portrayal makes it seem like a constitutional monarchy “plus”; where the sovereign possesses a kind of real authority that seems absent today.

Though Pakenham does nod to the experience of black South Africans, I believe much more could be said about the subject. Pakenham’s own figures presented at the end of the book show that the “white man’s war” appellation was far from accurate. On the whole, this is not quite “great man history”, but it is certainly closer to that than to a sociological history of the war.

Overall this was a very illuminating work. I glazed over occasionally while reading some of the specifics of battle passages ( although others were quite interesting), but mostly it is quite engaging.

[Tony · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Boer War was a weird war. Passionate and angry on all sides, today it is largely forgotten, with successors to all combatants looking on with disdain. In many ways, the Boer republics and their struggle agains the British empire looked strategically similar to the American War of Independence--largely ignored colonies with British commercial interests revolt after the empire tries to actively incorporate them. Similar to the Americans of 1776, the Boers could fight, and fight well, but for their independence to be secured, they would need foreign intervention on their side--and, remote, in the center of South Africa, they got none.

The Boers and their British adversaries were united in their mutual animosity to the native African population--while they might have fought each other over their political differences, both sides committed widespread atrocities against Africans. Ultimately, it was a savage war, but the political differences were resolved. Much like the North acquiescing after 10 years of Reconstruction after the American Civil War, ultimately the British colonial authorities were reconciled with Boer leaders and birthed the Union of South Africa and the road to the Apartheid regime.

The war itself introduced new tactics--the Boers' reliance on entreatments of strategic positions forewarned the British armies of the trench warfare of World War I. The general who adapted--Buller--was more successfully militarily, but ended politically marginalized as more traditionalist generals such as Roberts and Kitchener pursued bloody conventional military campaigns. The war was also noteworthy for the British innovation of the concentration camp, which imposed untold suffering and death on the Boer civilian population.

The war also launched the careers of Lord Baden-Powell, defender of Mafeking, and Winston Churchill, newspaper correspondent turned POW escapee. Baden-Powell's exaggerated exploits made him a British national hero and gave him the platform to start the Boy Scouts. Winston Churchill's exploits also made the papers and helped him win his first parliamentary election.

[Peter Card · Rating 5 out of 5]

Many of the things that everybody knows about the 2nd Boer War turn out to be more complicated than that. The Boer militia were not expert marksmen, but European troops in the open were just as vulnerable to massed fire from magazine fed rifles firing smokeless ammunition as anybody else. The key military blunders by the British commanders were not the initial failures to relieve Kimberly and Ladysmith, probably inevitable with insufficient numbers against entrenched defenders, but Robert's failure to target the Boer armies in the field rather than the capital cities. In particular, the ceasefire that allowed the Boers to withdraw from Johannesburg with gold reserves and artillery before embarking on a campaign of guerrilla warfare for another two years, with all the death and destruction that followed.

He makes a pretty good fist of repairing Buller's reputation. After his relief as CinC by Roberts, Buller and the Natal army negotiated the steep learning curve of 20th century combined arms tactics and winkled the Boers out of one fortified position after another in mountainous terrain, relieving Ladysmith and pushing on to combine forces with Roberts. On his return home , Buller fell foul of his political enemies, who engineered a coup that resulted in his dismissal from the army.

[Danielle Baum]

Finally finished commuting with this tome. The bigger battle than the actual Boer War was me getting through all small typed 659 pages of Thomas Pakenham's astounding work of research. Published in 1979, it's not the most recent account, but it might be the most thorough. Pakenham recounts the war (fought in modern day S. Africa, 1899-1902, between the British Empire and the Boer States) from its jingoist beginnings to the demise of its biggest players, including Kruger, Milner, Buller, and the gold mine magnates...who helped with funding. As most wars go, it was bloody and costly, and hardly served any real purpose. The greatest victims were Boer women and children who were forced into concentration camps and the native Africans who were pretty much screwed whatever they did. One of the reasons given to the British public for going to war was to secure better rights for the native Africans...I think we all know how that turned out. A book not recommended for those who bore easily when reading pages and pages of turn of the century military tactics.

[Ray · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Boer War is a long book, clocking in at just under 600 pages with about another 250 pages of end notes, bibliography, and index. It is well worth the read. When Thomas Pakenham wrote the book in the 1980s, he interviewed some of the remaining survivors of the Boer and performed heroic research with primary sources. With these approaches, Pakenham successfully conveys what the Boer War remains an important historical subject. He shows how the prosecution and the conclusion of the Boer War led to the environment that made apartheid inevitable. Some historians flippantly contend that the British won the Boer War and the Afrikaners won the peace, a cursory look at the outcomes of the Boer War support that. 600 pages later, though, takes the reader on much more thoughtful view of this war.

The Boer War need never happened. The Boers (the non-British whites living in Southern Africa) created two successful, independent republics: the South African Republic (also called the Transvaal or the ZAR) and the Orange Free State. Most of the citizens came from the families who made the “great trek” to leave British Southern Africa and create their own culturally distinct country. They did this in a remarkably short time; creating a modern government, infrastructure, and economy in a period of a little more that 50 years. Politically, the republics espoused a conservative philosophy of self-reliance and grit, buttressed with a regressive racism that matched the United States’ contemporaneous views on its own native populations. Further contributing to the republic’s political views were many of its citizens’ religious conviction (encouraged by a fundamentalist version of the Dutch Reformed Church) that a form of Manifest Destiny gave them these lands and justified their efforts to keep and develop them at the expense of the native Africans.

Gold and diamond mines provided the republics with a great deal of cash to build infrastructure and militaries. Gold and diamonds also attracted greater interest from the British. Politically, powerful nations could threaten British domination of southern Africa. Economically, British industrial elements wanted to run the mining operations of southern Africa without interference from the republics. After a previous war (that Britain lost), the republics’ independence became an acknowledged fact that continued to rankle British officialdom. From the 1890s on, elements of the British government began to gin up the cause for war, eventually leading the state of war that began in 1899. Pakenham carefully tells the story of how the chief British administrator in the Cape Colony (Sir Alfred Milner) and the secretary of the British Colonial Office (Joseph Chamberlain) colluded to give the impression that war with the republics was inevitable.

Were Chamberlain and Milner trying this stunt today, one would like to think they might find themselves hauled before the World Court for war crimes. Chamberlain today enjoys a reputation as a liberal thinker and thoughtful reformer of stodgy, class-based Britain. This book provides a little balance about “Pushful Joe.” He and Milner have much to answer for. The war started off badly for the British: poor logistics, poor generalship, and poor hygiene dogged the British army throughout the war. The Boers owned newer weapons (Mauser rifles, and Krupp weaponry), more creative military leaders (to a point), and better mobility for traveling the wide distances of southern Africa. Like the U.S. Civil War, this war became known as one of the first “modern” wars. The Boer War introduced effective trench warfare, concentration camps, and retribution against civilians; modern indeed. Unlike the U.S. Civil War, the African terrain could not support massive armies the Union and Confederate sides put to the field. Nonetheless, battle casualties staggered 19th century minds, and the number of defeats the British armies suffered became something of political crisis. Eventually, the British industrial might created a military machine that slowly began to grind the Boer republics’ land and armies into the maw of the machine. At first, the republics tried guerrilla military tactics, with some success; but the British began to methodically deny the guerrilla fighters land to feed themselves and their horses. The British put tens of thousands of Afrikaner and African civilians in concentration camps (who daily died by scores from disease and malnutrition) and the army put many farm houses and farms to fire to deprive the guerrillas of forage and support. The war ended in 1902. The republics became British colonies, though they eventually became self-ruling colonies. The British won the war, but they allowed the Afrikaners to keep their political arrangements. This led to the creation of the Union of South Africa and to the continuation of the racial policies they used, which became the basis for modern apartheid. The real losers of this war were the black Africans who were not allowed to sit on the sidelines of this “white man’s war.” They died by the hundreds as cattle drivers, trench diggers, and war works laborers. They died without any visible concern from both the British and the Afrikaners in concentration camps. After the war, their sacrifices remained unmentioned, unappreciated, and unrewarded.

Besides serving as an excellent primer for how South Africa came to its modern state (before the election of President Nelson Mandela), the book also serves another educational purpose. Had Bush, Blair, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell, and Wolfowitz bothered to read this book, they might have avoided many of the mistakes and idiotic assumptions they used to justify the war to Iraq. It more likely is better to hope that an informed public, instead, learn the lessons this book offers. First, if a government tells the world war is inevitable, it more likely means that the government wants the war it is talking about. Second, do not underestimate the ability of powerful interests to drive governments to war. Third, military genius comes only from the comfort of an armchair: real war happens in hazy conditions. Fourth, starting a bad war leads to a bad peace. Someone asked me if there was any point to learning more about the Boer War, and Pakenham’s book clearly answers the question in the affirmative.

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very readable and well researched. His pov is that the technological advances of smokeless rifle ammunition and magazine fed rifles, coupled with the Boer use of the trench had more to do with holding off for years of the vastly numerically superior British army (which included significant contingents of colonials from places like Canada and Australia). This contradicts popular (and not wholly incorrect) notions of the "crass stupidity of British generals".

Although the idea is well demonstrated that technological innovation gave the Boers an advantage, it is rather surprising that he also demonstrates that the Boers were also aided in their resistance by tactical innovations besides use of entrenchment, such as their mobility and the use of guerilla warfare, but does not credit these factors in the epilogue.

Much time is spent in the exploration of the political machinations of the British Imperial government in the war
and it's preamble. But he also writes something about the experience of the indigenous population, not only detailing their experience as labourers in the gold mines, and the oppressive reality of life for those workers, but also as armed soldiers, concentration camp internees, and labourers during the war. A good start in presenting a more contextual view of the war.

All in all this book was a good read. Not only to is it factual and philosophically material in its approach to the subject, a benefit for those searching for perspective, despite its limitations, but it is not dry, an unusual thing for a history book.

[Hannah · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you look at my reading dates, you can see that I took a LONG time to get this book done. It was very dense. Thomas Pakenham did a fantastic job with this one. It is well-researched and thought provoking. I really learned a lot. I picked it up because this is one of those wars that I had heard about and knew the barest of bare minimums.

Now, I know so much more. Pakenham read diaries and journals, he interviewed old soldiers, and he just plain researched the crap out of his subject. I really enjoyed it, but this isn't a book for light reading.

[William Barlow · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an excellent book. Pakenham writes history like a novel, at least in his description of battles. A few of his idioms got repetitive, but that is probably a product of him being an Englishman who wrote this book before I was born.

Perhaps I was most impressed by the first-hand accounts Pakenham got from survivors of the war in the 1970s. Their testimony brought these events from over a century ago to life.

[Jeremy Hunter · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Boer War was a British war in South Africa over control of gold mines during the 1900s. Pakenham dives into how the British army were fighting a 20th century war with a 19th century tactics. Pakenham was able to strengthen the narrative by pulling interviews from veterans and official reports. The result is Parkenham telling the history of this tragic war.

[John Ward · Rating 4 out of 5]

Prelude to WW1 military tactics, creation of apartheid South Africa. Could have used more commentary on outcomes, results, and current situation.

[Morgan Lupton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Didn’t think that a 600 page book on a single conflict could keep me this well-engaged. This book is very comprehensive and also has a lot of interesting facts related to the early political history of Winston Churchill and (surprisingly) Mahatma Gandhi.

[Cropredy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I reread this book after 20+ years given that I was going to South Africa and needed something vaguely topical.

What did I know about the Boer War before I read this? Not much - the antagonists, that the Brits showed military incompetence, the Boers waged guerilla warfare, there were concentration camps, the Brits eventually "won", and a good movie was made that I saw decades ago, Breaker Morant .

Pakenham's book, written in 1979 is apparently the best overall book and "rewrote" some of the accepted history after he uncovered previously undiscovered papers amongst various members of the British government.

A question I had before reading this book was - if the Brits won, why did South Africa become Afrikaner-dominated up until the handover to Nelson Mandela in 1994? Pakenham traces the machinations of the Colonial Office who attempted to engineer "regime change" to replace the Boer republics of Transvaal (where Johannesburg, Pretoria and the gold mines are) and the Orange Free State with British crown colonies. Such machinations involved diplomatic ultimatums to force the Boers into unacceptable submission or war. The Brits felt that the war would be a "walkover".

Oops.

Some initial blunders of positioning the understrength British troops on-site in the Cape Colony and Natal meant that the highly mobile Boers were able to besiege the key towns almost immediately (Ladysmith, Kimberly , and Mafeking). This put the Brits on the back foot and caused massive reinforcements shipped to faraway southern Africa. British generals were at best stolid and at worst cowering idiots. None were prepared for war against an enemy armed with field guns, smokeless magazine rifles, and the knowledge of how to dig trenches. British casualties were high, including to the officers who vainly led charges over open ground against concealed trenches (fox hunting skills not being particularly useful). The Brits were tied down to the two main railroad lines and had very limited ability to maintain themselves for flanking maneuvers. The sieges lasted for months.

The war stretches on and on and eventually superior British and dominion resources win out. Some ruthless treatment of Boer civilians in an attempt to pacify the countryside led to many deaths and a scandal in the UK (It was one thing to wage colonial wars for the last 50 years against tribespeople and another to cause needless white Boer women and children typhus deaths).

Future generals and field marshals of World War I rise to success in the war (Douglas Haig for one). British grand strategy was undermined by the internal politics between the Army's Indian and African (i.e. Egypt/Sudan) factions . Each faction could be more concerned about undermining the other rather than winning the war.

As popular history, the book is pretty good and quite readable, especially once the Boers invade Natal. The preliminary chapters on the lead-up to the conflict are complicated as would be expected about 1898-99 Boer and British politics with their own set of hardliners and moderates. Since the Transvaal was home to an extremely profitable set of gold mines, the gold financiers play a big role in the war's origins.

Once the war draws to a close, the peace treaty wrangling begins and here the reader learns how the Brits sold out the native Africans, Indians, and Coloreds (mixed race) towards getting the franchise (something they partially had in the Cape Colony before the war). From all this yielded apartheid.

Excellent maps, some nice photos. Many firsthand accounts pepper the narrative from the British and Boer side (more British than Boer). It would be nice to see this war dealt with by a modern historian who could blend in more of the various home fronts and economic/logistic imperatives rather than the "great man" and battle story lens used by Pakenham.

p.s. And yes, you do get an answer as to why the up until 1994, the Afrikaners (i.e. Boer) dominated South Africa rather than the victorious Brits. You'll have to read straight up to the last chapter.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

An amazing book. Enjoyed the analytical insights as well as the descriptive components, which are necessary to understand the terrain
the British were fighting. Illustrates the toughness and resourcefulness of the Boers and sheds light on the not-so-brilliant
British army, yet shows there potential for shrewdness and all out visciousness to win the war. The use of the 'concentration camps' (possibly the first ever used) to separate the Boers from their families came as a surprise to me. I did not expect the British to
use such 'low' tactics. Excellent read.