9 October 1899
2nd Boer War

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Britain continues to press the Transvaal to give the vote to uitlanders (outsiders). Knowing that this would create a huge non-Boer majority, President Paul Kruger refuses. Relations worsen in 1898, after a Boer policeman is acquitted of shooting an English worker.

On 9 October 1899, Kruger delivers an ultimatum to Britain to withdraw its troops from the Transvaal border. This is followed, on the 11th, by an ultimatum from the Orange Free State, and the next day, the 2nd Boer War begins. The Boers invade Natal and Cape Colony and besiege the British towns of Kimberley, Ladysmith and Mafeking. The British have too few troops and too little rifle power, even after the first batch of reinforcements arrives.

The British government changes the high command, sending in Lord Roberts and Lord Kitchener with thousands more troops and weapons. British troops relieve Kimberley, Ladysmith and Mafeking (where troops under Colonel Robert Baden-Powell, the future founder of the Boy Scouts, have for seven months been stubbornly resisting the Boer siege) and then march north, occupying and annexing Boer land.

By October 1900, Britain has defeated the Boers and annexed the Transvaal. However, Boer fighters launch guerrilla raids that British troops can't contain. Kitchener erects barbed wire fences and pillboxes all over the land, and institutes summary execution as a punishment for violent unrest. The high command burns the farms of Boers suspected of working with guerrillas, and forces thousands of Boer civilians into closed 'concentration camps' (so-called because they 'concentrate' the population in one place). Some 60 camps are built, and about 200,000 people are crammed into them. Conditions are dreadful and disease rages.

The war destroys much of the Boers' land, and costs many thousands of lives: 22,000 British soldiers, 7,000 Boer soldiers and guerrillas, more than 10,000 black Africans working for the British military, and between 20,000 and 40,000 men, women and children in the concentration camps. At home, the public grows uneasy about British losses, and the government is worried about the expense and the damage to Britain's reputation.

In 1902, the Peace of Vereeniging is signed. Britain annexes the Transvaal and Orange Free State. The Boers become British subjects, though the Afrikaans language is still taught in schools and used in courts. Black South Africans remain without political rights.

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