Wars and Conflicts permalink
The Boer Wars
This discussion has been closed.
-
Message 1.Â
Posted by sisterrene (U14262211) on Wednesday, 30th December 2009
In researching family history - a great grandfather was called De Boer - I know the name means "farmer" - he was born in Hanover in 1838 (Lubbe or Louis first name) found him in the 1881 census living in London. I was just wondering if as his name was De Boer (Netherlands I presume) why was the war in South Africa called the Boer Wars - has it anything to do with the surname De Boer or simply "farmer". Thank you for your interest. \irene
-
Message 2
Posted by TimTrack (U1730472) on Wednesday, 30th December 2009
The Boer war is not, unfortunately, named after your family, but after the Boer (simply refering to farming) people of Southern Africa. These Boer were mostly of Dutch descent.
According to Wiki the Dutch don't actually call it the Boer war :
-
Message 3
Posted by sisterrene (U14262211) on Wednesday, 30th December 2009
Thanks Tim for taking the time to respond to my message - just as I thought! Irene
-
Message 4
Posted by Dirk (U14292879) on Tuesday, 12th January 2010
Do you actually think the boer war was a family matter? are you serious? come on people! get a grip!
Millions of innocent woman and children were killed by the (then) evil british empire. Then again, i see that the bbc calls it a "border dispute". This make me sick! and for the record, we are afrikaans, not Dutch! -
Message 5
Posted by JB on a slippery slope to the thin end ofdabiscuit (U13805036) on Tuesday, 12th January 2010
A Historian would call them the Anglo-Boer wars.
(See also the American War in Vietnam.) -
Message 6
Posted by cloudyj (U1773646) on Tuesday, 12th January 2010
Do you actually think the boer war was a family matter? are you serious? come on people! get a grip!Â
I don't think Irene suggested it was a family matter. Just whether a particular surname was involved in giving its name to the war.
Although not true in this case, other wars have been named after people involved. So it's not that unreasonable a question if one has little prior knowledge of the war. The Franco-Mexican war (1860s) is also named the Maximilian Affair. Napoleon had wars named after him as did Captain Robert Jenkins (War of Jenkins' Ear). And the war of Spanish Succession is sometimes called the Marburian Wars (despite the much wider theatre of war than Marlborough's campaigns).
Millions of innocent woman and children were killed by the (then) evil british empire.Â
Millions? -
Message 7
Posted by Stoggler (U1647829) on Tuesday, 12th January 2010
Do you actually think the boer war was a family matter? are you serious? come on people! get a grip!
Millions of innocent woman and children were killed by the (then) evil british empire. Then again, i see that the bbc calls it a "border dispute". This make me sick! and for the record, we are afrikaans, not Dutch! Â
Good grief! So not only unable to read the OP correctly and jumping to the wrong conclusion , but also gross exaggeration. I think we now who should get a grip!! -
Message 8
Posted by Stoggler (U1647829) on Tuesday, 12th January 2010
By the way Dirk, why do you say that the Â鶹ԼÅÄ calls it a border dispute?
Here's the link the Â鶹ԼÅÄ's section on the war on their History page, and it's a fairly good overview of the origins and course of the war. And if you'll look at the name of the author (Prof Fransjohan Pretorius), it's hardly written from a biased British point-of-view. In fact, Prof Pretorius is a Professor of history at the University of Pretoria.
Any chance of stepping back for a second and getting some facts right before spouting a load of poppycock? -
Message 9
Posted by Dirk (U14292879) on Tuesday, 12th January 2010
yes! 3.2 million woman and children to be exact
-
Message 10
Posted by Stoggler (U1647829) on Tuesday, 12th January 2010
yes! 3.2 million woman and children to be exactÂ
A slightly higher number of dead than Prof Pretorius' number of 28,000 Boer women and children and at least 20,000 black people, which is a number backed up by Wikipedia (which uses Davenport's and Saunders' "South Africa: A Modern History" (2000) as a source). -
Message 11
Posted by Stoggler (U1647829) on Tuesday, 12th January 2010
yes! 3.2 million woman and children to be exactÂ
A slightly higher number of dead than Prof Pretorius' number of 28,000 Boer women and children and at least 20,000 black people, which is a number backed up by Wikipedia (which uses Davenport's and Saunders' "South Africa: A Modern History" (2000) as a source).Â
A number of sources used on this website for numbers of total deaths in the Second Boer War (including British and Boer combatants) - none of which come even close to 100,000:
It has a total number of 75,000 +/- 5,000.
3.2 million? Rather an inflated figure, wouldn't you say? -
Message 12
Posted by Steelers708 (U1831340) on Tuesday, 12th January 2010
Rather Inflated!
I would say grossly exaggerated, the entire Boer population was only about 466,000 at that time.
Of that 466,000, the British held 116,572 in the Concentration Camps, of whom 27,927 died. -
Message 13
Posted by cloudyj (U1773646) on Tuesday, 12th January 2010
yes! 3.2 million woman and children to be exactÂ
Dirk, do you have a source for the 3.2 million? It's so very different from any I've seen that I'd be interested to check it out. -
Message 14
Posted by White Camry (U2321601) on Tuesday, 12th January 2010
Dirk,
yes! 3.2 million woman and children to be exactÂ
Were there that many whites in southern Africa at the time? -
Message 15
Posted by Steelers708 (U1831340) on Tuesday, 12th January 2010
The population of South Africa in 1900 was around 5 million, of whom the White(British & Boer) population numbered 1.1 million, the biggest racial group were the African tribes which numbered 3.5 million.
-
Message 16
Posted by sisterrene (U14262211) on Wednesday, 13th January 2010
Thank you cloudyj of course I did not think the Boer War was called after my ancestors - I was just curious to know if the name Boer meaning "farmer" was intergrated into this conflict. All wars are horrendous with the loss of life and having lost a grandfather in the Great War I am fully aware of its horrors. Finding our as a so-called "silver surfer" the name De Boer on my maternal side which in fact he changed to Webb after 1891 made me more aware of my own roots. Thank youagain. Irene
-
Message 17
Posted by TimTrack (U1730472) on Wednesday, 13th January 2010
I think Dirk, that your hyperbole really should slink off to another place, far, far away.
The British Empire was evil was it ? And the Dutch settlers were renowned for it magnanimity to the local black population, both before and after the 'evil' British departed. -
Message 18
Posted by giraffe47 (U4048491) on Wednesday, 13th January 2010
In those days we 'liberated' the oppressed who happened to be sitting on a goldmine, rather than those who happen to be sitting on an oilfield.
Who says politics hasn't progressed? -
Message 19
Posted by cloudyj (U1773646) on Wednesday, 13th January 2010
In those days we 'liberated' the oppressed who happened to be sitting on a goldmine, rather than those who happen to be sitting on an oilfield.
Who says politics hasn't progressed?Â
There was very little in the demands of the British government that was really a defensible cause for war. If 60 million Brazilans moved here tomorrow and demanded Britain became a province of Brazil, I doubt we'd look favourably on the proposal! -
Message 20
Posted by TimTrack (U1730472) on Thursday, 14th January 2010
true enough, Cloudy. But, then again, what right did the Boers have to be there ?
In truth, it was a different age. They did things differently back then. -
Message 21
Posted by cloudyj (U1773646) on Thursday, 14th January 2010
true enough, Cloudy. But, then again, what right did the Boers have to be there ?Â
Indeed. The Boers moved in and disposessed the indigenous population. So you're right that the British invasion was no worse than the Boer's previous colonization.
In truth, it was a different age. They did things differently back then.Â
As to attitudes of the time, the British government did go so far as to dress it up as a moral issue. At the time going to war against a white state was seen as different to conquering black states. In the racist attitudes of the day, conquering black Africans was seen as bringing civilization to savages. Conquering white settlers couldn't be seen in that light unless those whites were first cast as morally inferior (by their denial of rights to British settlers), whereas the racist views of 1899 already ascribed moral inferiority to the black population.
The war was controversial in Britain and might have lost the 1900 election for the Conservatives were it not for a couple of timely victories. -
Message 22
Posted by JB on a slippery slope to the thin end ofdabiscuit (U13805036) on Thursday, 14th January 2010
The Post 1815 Settlement placed a responsibility on the European Great Powers to maintain the peace and preserve the balance of power. Great Britian was thus fully entitled to impose itself on the Boer Republics who could never have maintined their independence and who were growing closer to an ever more unpredictable Imperial Germany.
Like all wars, it was motivated by genuine ethical concerns and big economic interests, and in its aftermath saw the first example of an election influenced by media manipulation; the notorious Chinese labourer poster produced by the Liberals, who some voters thought was a symbol of exploitation in the Transvaal goldfields, some at the prompting of Lloyd-George saw as an implicit threat to introduce similar bonded labour to take the jobs of Welsh miners, and others who thought the Chinese man depicted was Mr Balfour, on which basis they didn't want him as their Prime Minister. -
Message 23
Posted by laudian (U13735323) on Friday, 15th January 2010
Millions of innocent woman and children were killed by the (then) evil british empire. Then again, i see that the bbc calls it a "border dispute". This make me sick! and for the record, we are afrikaans, not DutchÂ
Your exageration, as to numbers has already been pointed out and whilst I personally would have put the Army generals on trial for genocide[Roberts and Kitchener,] I would say the Boers were as guilty of neglect as much as the average Briton! When it was obvious that the war was over and lost, the Boers didn't hesitate to leave their women and children at home on the Veldt,to the mercy of the British. Who put them in camps for safety! The families and their own.
They were off playing soldiers. They didn't hesitate to shoot Africans who got in their way and it was the attitude of the Boer to the African peoples that actually brought the war to an end. When the tribesmen took umbridge at Boer thieving and killing and started to play for themselves!
This is to say nothing regarding the treatment of Colonial homes , where everthing was either destroyed or looted i.e. Natal.1899/1900. -
Message 24
Posted by Caro (U1691443) on Sunday, 24th January 2010
This thread has been gone a few days, but I don't see them often. I read a book a little while ago from the letters of a young NZer who was in South Africa at the time of the Anglo-Boer War. He is quite a sensitive young man and war was a different thing from what it became later, I think. I wrote about this book once and quoted from it and it fits here. Naturally as he is fighting for the English his views on the Boers are rather strong. (And he didn't bother with the astericks):
"A couple of episodes in particular have him most upset. Boers had captured three of their scouts and a Queenslander and ‘one of our n****rs’. He then says: “That was not so bad, but the cold-blooded curs stood the poor n****r up and shot like a dog in cold blood. They also mortally wounded another n****r who tried to escape. I know this will be sickening news to you, but I tell you this so you can see what sort of demons we are fighting…The ambulance went out last night for the dead and wounded K****rs and I saw them they came back and if ever I felt bitter against the Boer race I did when I gazed down on the stiff and stark n****r who they had so cruelly and uselessly done to death. The wounded one they found walking into camp despite the fact that he had a bullet right through his head and another through his shoulder. He was awfully game but he died at 5o’clock this morning…
The Boers have absolutely no excuse for this kind of conduct, as the ns, as a whole, are practically a neutral people and in any numbers do not assist either side…â€
But he was just as sympathetic to the Boers when they were shot. “One [Boer] was dressed in our uniform and the law now is that such men be tried as spies and shot. He was Court Martialled, sentenced and shot the next day…It seems a cruel thing to stand a man up beside his own grave and shoot him but it’s just enough, for a man in our uniform is simply a murderer in the fighting. I don’t want to see another man so treated though, for it’s a sickener marching a man up to an open grave with his eyes open. As he marched up and saw the grave he asked if there was no mercy but a sorrowful shake of the head from the Sergt of the firing party was the only answer…I’ll never forget the silence, the crack of the volley and then the silence again. It would give anyone the creeps. ..There were no colonials in the firing party thank goodness or some of us might have funked it.â€
Kia Ora,
Caro.
About this Board
The History message boards are now closed. They remain visible as a matter of record but the opportunity to add new comments or open new threads is no longer available. Thank you all for your valued contributions over many years.
or  to take part in a discussion.
The message board is currently closed for posting.
The message board is closed for posting.
This messageboard is .
Find out more about this board's
Search this Board
Â鶹ԼÅÄ iD
Â鶹ԼÅÄ navigation
Â鶹ԼÅÄ links
Â鶹ԼÅÄ Â© 2014 The Â鶹ԼÅÄ is not responsible for the content of external sites. Read more.
This page is best viewed in an up-to-date web browser with style sheets (CSS) enabled. While you will be able to view the content of this page in your current browser, you will not be able to get the full visual experience. Please consider upgrading your browser software or enabling style sheets (CSS) if you are able to do so.