The battle had begun when a force of between 2, 000 and 3, 000 Boers had surrounded a force of 500 Australians, Rhodesians, Canadians and British soldiers at a supply dump at Brakfontein Drift.

Many Boers had German ancestry and many members of the government were themselves former Boer military leaders who had fought with the Maritz rebels against the British in the Second Boer War, which had ended only twelve years earlier.

The Boers had cut their ties to Europe as they emerged from the Trekboer group.

The Boers of the frontier were known for their independent spirit, resourcefulness, hardiness, and self-sufficiency, whose political notions verged on anarchy but had begun to be influenced by republicanism.

British settler colonies included British East Africa ( now Kenya ), Northern and Southern Rhodesia, ( Zambia and Zimbabwe, respectively ), and South Africa, which already had a significant population of European settlers, the Boers.

During Moshoeshoe's reign ( 1823-1870 ), a series of wars ( 1856-68 ) were fought with the Boers who had settled in traditional Basotho lands.

These lands protected by the British, however, had a much smaller capacity to generate income and wealth than the " lost territory " had, which had been granted to the Boers.

One of the Sotho-Tswana chiefs, Chief Moroko of the Barolong people, who had earlier fled the Difaqane to the south to create the settlement of Thaba Nchu, sent fresh livestock to Potgieter to draw his party's wagons back to the safety of the Rolong stronghold of Thaba Nchu, where the Sotho-Tswana chief offered the Boers food and protection.

In reviewing an incident so important in the history of the Transvaal as the appointment of the Potchefstroom assembly it is of interest to note the gist of the complaint among the Boers which led to this revolution in the government of the country as it had previously existed.

The executive council, which had been appointed by the Potchefstroom assembly, with Pretorius as president, now took up a bolder attitude: they deposed Schoeman from all authority, declared Zoutpansberg in a state of blockade, and denounced the Boers of the two northern districts as rebels.

It was also in accord with the desire of the Transvaal Boers to obtain a seaport, a desire which had led them as early as 1860 to negotiate with the Zulus for the possession of St Lucia Bay.

The Boers had captured some British radios, and, since the British were the only people transmitting at the time, no special interpretation of the signals was necessary.

The Natalia Republic was set up in 1839 but was annexed by Britain in 1843 whereupon most of the local Boers trekked further north joining other Voortrekkers who had established themselves in the region.

* June 4 – In South Africa, hunter Dick King rides into a British military base in Grahamstown to warn that the Boers have besieged Durban ( he had left 11 days earlier ).

In the First Boer War of 1880 – 81 the Boers of the Transvaal Republic had proved skilful fighters in resisting the British attempt at annexation, in causing in a series of British defeats.

Yet he led Britain into war for three main reasons: because he believed the British government had an obligation to British South Africans ; because he thought that the Transvaal, the Orange Free State, and the Cape Boers aspired to a Dutch South Africa, and that the achievement of such a state would damage Britain's imperial prestige around the world ; and because of the Boers ' treatment of black South Africans.

The Boers spoke Afrikaans, a language or dialect derived from Dutch, and no longer called themselves Boers but Afrikaner.

Other than a single attempt to storm Ladysmith, the Boers made no attempt to capture the besieged towns.

The fiercely independent Boers had no regular army ; when danger threatened, all the men in a district would form a militia organised into military units called commandos and would elect officers.

The Boers carried no bayonets leaving them at a substantial disadvantage in close combat, which they avoided as far as possible.

Here the Boers occupied several koppies, but with no better luck, as they were similarly forced off by artillery and infantry charges.

General Colley had brought no artillery up to the summit, nor did he order his men to dig in against the advice of several of his subordinates, expecting that the Boers would retreat when they saw their position on the Nek was untenable.

Colley was in his tent when he was informed of the advancing Boers but took no immediate action until after he had been warned by several subordinates of the seriousness of the attack.

The Boers had once again entrenched a new position on the reverse slopes of the plateau, and Clery's attack made no progress.

The British Lee-Metford and Lee-Enfield rifles were no less deadly than the Boer Mauser rifles however as both sides exchanged fire at close range, as well as engaged in hand-to-hand combat with the British wielding fixed bayonets and the Boers wielding hunting knives and their own rifles which they used as bludgeons.

Witton's main assertion, as indicated by the book's provocative title, is that he, Morant, and Handcock were made scapegoats by the British authorities in South Africa — that they were made to take the blame for widespread British war crimes against the Boers, and that the trial and executions were carried out by the British for political reasons, partly to cover up a controversial and secret " no prisoners " policy promulgated by Lord Kitchener, and partly to appease the Boer government over the killing of Boer prisoners, in order to facilitate a peace treaty ; the Treaty of Vereeniging was signed on 31 May 1902.

In 1795, the heavily taxed Boers of the frontier districts, who received no protection against the Africans, expelled the officials of the Dutch East India Company, and established independent governments at Swellendam and at Graaff Reinet.

The 1903 report of His Majesty's Commission on the war commented: " On the whole, the Imperial Yeomanry seem to have done very good service in the war, but to have suffered from the mistake which was made in not organising a system of drafts to maintain the strength of the force, a mistake due, in no doubt, like others, to the under-rating of the resisting power of the Boers, and the belief in the speedy termination of the war.

During recent times, mainly during the apartheid reform and post-1994 eras, many more white Afrikaans-speaking people, mainly with " conservative " political views and of Trekboer and Voortrekker descent, have preferred to be called " Boers " or Boere-Afrikaners, rather than " Afrikaners ".

Territorial conflicts with both British and Boer settlers arose periodically, including Moshoeshoe's notable victory over the Boers in the Free State-Basotho War, but the final war in 1867 with an appeal to Queen Victoria, who agreed to make Basutoland a British protectorate.

In 1869, the British signed a treaty at Aliwal with the Boers that defined the boundaries of Basutoland and later Lesotho, which by ceding the western territories effectively reduced Moshoeshoe's kingdom to half its previous size.

The departure of the Boers and later removal of the remaining garrison in 1906 ( with the disbandment of the St Helena Volunteers, this was the first time the island was left without a garrison ) both impacted on the island economy, which was only slightly offset by growing philatelic sales.

In 1842, however, Potgieter's party declined to go to the help of the Natal Boers, then involved in conflict with the British.

The boundary on the east was settled by a treaty with Portugal in 1869, the Boers abandoning their claim to Delagoa Bay ; that on the west was dealt with in 1871.

Among the many fascinating cases of the Mfecane is that of Mzilikazi of the Khumalo who was a ' general ' of Shaka's, who fled Shaka's employ, and in turn conquered an empire in Zimbabwe, after clashing with European groups like the Boers.

* March 7 – Second Boer War: South African Boers win their last battle over British forces, with the capture of a British general and 200 of his men.

Many Boers who were dissatisfied with aspects of the British administration, in particular with Britain's abolition of slavery on 1 December 1834, elected to migrate away from British rule in what became known as the Great Trek.

The Boers, for their part, recognised that the more concessions they made to the uitlanders the greater the likelihood – with approximately 30, 000 white male Boer voters and potentially 60, 000 white male uitlanders – that their independent control of the Transvaal would be lost and the territory absorbed into the British Empire.

As with the First Boer War, since the Boers were civilian militia, each man wore what he wished, usually his everyday dark-grey, light-grey, neutral-coloured, or earthtone khaki farming clothes — often a jacket, trousers and slouch hat.

As Boers surrounded Ladysmith and opened fire on the town with siege guns, White ordered a major sortie against the Boer artillery positions.

But this quickly subsided into a desultory affair with the Boers prepared to starve the stronghold into submission, and so, on 13 October, began the 217-day Siege of Mafeking.

Roberts then advanced into the Orange Free State from the west, putting the Boers to flight at the Battle of Poplar Grove and capturing Bloemfontein, the capital, unopposed on 13 March with the Boer defenders escaping and scattering.

4, 500 Boers surrendered and much equipment was captured but as with Roberts's drive against Kruger at the same time, these losses were of relatively little consequence, as the hardcore of the Boer armies and their most determined and active leaders remained at large.