南非战争，应该说的是这段：
The Second Boer War (or Second South African War) (1899–1902)[edit]
Main article:
Second Boer War
The exact causes of the Second Anglo-Boer War in 1899 have been disputed ever since the events took place. Fault for the war has been placed on both sides, for different reasons. The Boers felt that the British intention was to again annexe the Transvaal. Some feel that the British were coerced into war by the mining magnates; others that the British government manipulated the magnates into creating conditions that allowed the war to ignite. It appears that the British did not begin with the intention of annexation. They simply wanted to ensure that British strength and the regional economic and political stability of the British Empire remained unchanged.
[21] The British worried about popular support for the war and wanted to push the Boers to make the first move toward actual hostilities. This occurred when the Transvaal issued an ultimatum on 9 October for the British to withdraw all troops from their borders and recall their reinforcements, or they would “regard the action as a formal declaration of war.”
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Over time, the war has come to be viewed as a "White Man’s War." Recent scholarship has exposed this as untrue. Black people were used on both sides, primarily in non-combat roles, as labourers. The British employed armed black men as scouts or dispatch riders, and were going to employ unarmed black scouts, but decided to continue arming them when the Boers began shooting at the scouts and dispatch riders as spies. The Boers also employed black men during the war, who mostly helped with digging defensive emplacements and roads for the transport of weaponry. They served in this capacity primarily during the initial conventional phase of the war.
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The Second Boer War consisted of three phases. It began with a Boer offensive to besiege the garrisons at
Ladysmith,
Mafeking, and
Kimberley, after a quick mobilisation of their commando units from each district, drawing up to 30–40,000 men. The Boers used a quick-hitting mobile style of war, based on their experiences fighting the British in the first Boer War, along with lessons learned from studying the
American Civil War. Early British attempts to relieve these besieged garrisons met with mixed results. The British felt that the war would be ended quickly. They were ill-prepared to face the well-equipped Boers, losing a large number of men in their first attempts to push into places such as
Magersfontein,
Stormberg, and
Colenso.
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The second phase began with Britain re-elling from defeats and deploying the largest British force ever sent overseas to South Africa. The British commander, Sir
Redvers Buller, and his subordinate Major General Charles Warren, began the British offensive with an attack on the hill of
Spion Kop. While the British won this battle, they belatedly realised that the hill was over-watched by Boer gun emplacements and suffered heavy casualties. Buller suffered another defeat at Vaal Krantz and was relieved as commander of British forces over questions of his management of the war. His replacement was Field Marshal Lord
Frederick Roberts. Roberts managed to win a series of battles by committing overwhelming numbers of British forces against the Boers. He pushed into and captured the
Orange Free State in May 1900 and then pushed into the Transvaal to capture Johannesburg on 31 May. Roberts declared the war over after the capture of the Orange Free State and
Johannesburg, announcing the formation of the
Transvaal Colony and the
Orange River Colony, incorporated in 1902. It was at this point that the Boers, initially demoralised by the overwhelming numbers of British troops, began the third phase of the Second Boer War: the guerilla campaign.
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After regrouping into smaller units, the Boer commanders started using guerrilla tactics, destroying railways, bridges, and telegraph wires. Their leaders included
Louis Botha in the eastern Transvaal;
Koos de la Rey and
Jan Smuts in western Transvaal; and
Christian de Wet in the Orange Free State. The British were not prepared for this type of tactic, having an insufficient number of mounted troops and no intelligence personnel. They moved against the civilian population that supported the Boers, burning their houses and barns. Nonetheless, support for the Boers remained strong. To deal with families wandering across the countryside without shelter, the British decided to set up what they considered to be refugee camps, in September 1900. In December 1900
Herbert Kitchener of Khartoum took over command of the British army, continuing the scorched-earth policy. He believed that women served as a source of intelligence for the Boers, so he put them in
concentration camps. Additionally, he set up blockhouses and barbed wire fences to restrict the Boers to a certain area. In January 1901, Kitchener raided the countryside, putting Africans and Boer civilians into concentration camps. When he learned that Louis Botha was interested in peace, he jumped at the opportunity, using Botha's wife and an intermediary. Nothing came of the talks, for Sir
Alfred Milner insisted that nothing but full surrender would be acceptable to the British. The Boers wanted independence, and in June 1901, Boer leaders came together and stated that no proposal would be considered unless it included their independence. Conditions in the concentration camps worsened, and the problem was not brought to public attention until an Englishwoman
Emily Hobhouse did her own investigation and sailed back to England with the intention of exposing Kitchener for what he was permitting. The war minister, Brodick, dismissed the complaints of Hobhouse and her supporters in parliament, stating that it was Boer guerilla tactics that had led to the methods currently in use. The military situation for the troops of De Wet, Botha, and De la Rey had worsened, for Kitchener's blockhouses and fences were posing a serious problem. Additionally, three-quarters of the Boer's cattle had been killed and taken away and they were struggling just to survive. Though De la Rey (in March 1902) captured General Lord
Paul Methuen and 600 troops, he had to let them go because he had no place to keep them. At this time there were many that decided that it would be best to simply accept British rule, some of them serving as guides. These "joiners," as they were called, disagreed with those Boers who continued fighting at great risk, though they knew there would never be a military success.
By this time Kitchener had built an army of 250,000 troops, built 8000 blockhouses, and had 3,700 miles (6,000 km) of commandos(???). He also changed his tactics towards women and children. Rather than packing them off to concentration camps, he told his troops to leave them where they found them, so that the burden of taking care of them fell on the Boers. This further pushed the Boers towards negotiations.
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Negotiations for ending the war began in April 1902. Proposals were sent back and forth and rejected by both sides as being unreasonable. At times it looked as if the negotiations would fail and the war would continue. The Boers were granted some concessions on the treatment of Cape Afrikaner rebels and the rights of the black Africans. Perhaps the most surprising thing to come out of the negotiations was that the Transvaal and Orange Free State would have to recognise
King Edward VII as sovereign over their land. Many of the people of the Orange Free State and Transvaal considered this a betrayal of one of their key tenets for fighting in the first place.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_African_Wars_(1879–1915)
South African Wars (1879–1915)
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Ethnic, political and social tensions among European
colonial powers, indigenous Africans, and English and Dutch settlers led to open conflict in a series of wars and revolts between 1879 and 1915 that would have lasting repercussions on the entire region of southern Africa. Pursuit of commercial empire as well as individual aspirations, especially after the discovery of gold (1886) and diamonds (1867), were key factors driving these developments.
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