By Eben van Tonder
A study of propaganda, perception, and historical confusion in the British Empire’s last great colonial conflict
Introduction
The Second Boer War (1899–1902) remains one of the most exhaustively documented wars of the late nineteenth century. Yet more than a century later, confusion still surrounds its origins. Many popular accounts continue to assert that the Boer republics, the South African Republic (Transvaal) and the Orange Free State, initiated the war by declaring hostilities against Britain.
This perception stands in stark contrast to the findings of historians such as J. S. Marais, F. S. Hensley, and Thomas Pakenham, who have demonstrated conclusively that Britain began the military build up and pursued a deliberate strategy of provocation. The Boers’ so-called “declaration of war” was, in reality, a defensive ultimatum delivered in response to an overwhelming British military presence on their borders.
How, then, did the historical record become inverted? How did Britain succeed in presenting an offensive campaign as a defensive necessity, and why has this distortion endured for generations? The answer lies in the machinery of perception: a coordinated system of propaganda that blurred fact and fiction, morality and power, until the aggressor appeared the victim.
1. The Prelude to War: Britain’s Strategic Build Up
The chronology of escalation
By August 1899, Britain’s political and military leadership had already accepted that war with the Boer republics was inevitable. Cabinet minutes from 7 August authorised the dispatch of ten thousand troops to South Africa “as a precautionary measure.” (PRO CAB 37/50/73).
On 28 August, Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain wrote privately to High Commissioner Alfred Milner: “We have taken steps to strengthen our position in South Africa should the Transvaal persist in its obstinacy.” (British Parliamentary Papers: South African Affairs, Cd.369, 1899).
A War Office memorandum of 5 September confirmed that “the dispatch of an Army Corps to South Africa has been sanctioned.” (WO 33/149). These movements took place nearly a month before the Boers mobilised their citizen commandos.
Historical interpretation
Thomas Pakenham, in The Boer War (1979, p. 58), summarised the sequence succinctly: “The British build up began in earnest in August 1899. The Boers watched as troopships arrived in Durban long before they themselves mobilised.”
South African historian J. S. Marais had reached the same conclusion two decades earlier: “British reinforcements were already on South African soil before the Boer governments declared mobilisation.” (The Fall of Kruger’s Republic, 1961, p. 265).
The evidence leaves little room for ambiguity. Britain moved first, politically, diplomatically, and militarily.
2. The Boer Response: Defensive Mobilisation and Desperation
A reluctant reaction
Faced with British troopships unloading in Durban and Cape Town, the Boer republics had little choice but to prepare. On 27 September 1899, the Transvaal Government Gazette announced: “General mobilisation of the burgher force is hereby proclaimed.”
Six days later, on 3 October, the Orange Free State followed suit: “In consequence of threatening military movements by Her Majesty’s Government, the State Council decrees mobilisation.”
President Paul Kruger’s speech to the Volksraad on 2 October captured the atmosphere of encirclement: “England is massing troops upon our borders. We are compelled to defend the independence which is ours by right.” (Volksraad Proceedings, 1899, Vol. III, p. 426).
These were not the words of a nation seeking conquest, but of a people bracing for invasion.
3. Milner’s Design: Forcing the Crisis
The policy of provocation
Sir Alfred Milner, Britain’s High Commissioner in South Africa, had concluded as early as May 1899 that negotiation was futile. His “Helot Dispatch” to Chamberlain stated bluntly: “There is no way out of the political situation except by British intervention.” (British Parliamentary Papers, Cd. 369, 1899).
In June, Milner confided to his ally Sir Percy Fitzpatrick: “The crisis cannot be postponed indefinitely. The Boers must be brought to their senses.” (Headlam, The Milner Papers: South Africa 1897–1899, Vol. II, 1931, p. 372).
By the end of May, he had already set the terms: “It is impossible to go back to the status quo ante. We must either fight or go under.”
When British troops were already deep in the Transvaal by mid-1900, Alfred Milner was no longer pretending that war had been thrust upon him. In a letter to Field Marshal Lord Roberts that June, he openly claimed responsibility for bringing the conflict to a head.
As historian Martin Meredith recounts in The State of Africa (2005, p. 535), Milner wrote:
> “I precipitated the crisis, which was inevitable, before it was too late. It is not a very agreeable, and in many eyes, not very creditable piece of business to have been largely instrumental in bringing about a big war.”
Milner’s words, preserved in private correspondence and later cited by contemporaries, reveal the mentality behind Britain’s policy in 1899. He did not view the outbreak of hostilities as a tragedy to be avoided but as a necessary act of timing. Better to start the war on British terms than risk a later confrontation under less favourable conditions.
This admission strips away the carefully constructed moral veneer of “reluctant self-defence.” It shows that, by his own reckoning, Milner engineered the confrontation. The idea that the Boers “started the war” cannot survive this statement. It is the confession of the very man who shaped British policy on the ground — a candid acknowledgment that the crisis was deliberate, not accidental
Historians’ verdict
Pakenham observed that “Milner had already made up his mind that a crisis was necessary. His policy was to provoke one which could be blamed on Kruger.” (1979, p. 79).
F. S. Hensley described the strategy even more starkly: “The British decision to reinforce and the subsequent ultimatum were stages in a deliberate process of coercion.” (The Origins of the South African War, 1899–1902, 1961, p. 221).
Milner’s correspondence makes clear that the British build up was not a defensive reaction but an act of deliberate pressure engineered to trigger a response that could later be portrayed as aggression.
The Evidence from Britain Itself
Before the rise of Afrikaner nationalism or later historical reinterpretations, there were already clear voices inside Britain acknowledging that the Anglo Boer War had been provoked by British policy. These were not distant reflections written decades later, but immediate reactions from within the British Parliament at the very start of the war.
Pakenham and Hensley later confirmed what was already known in Britain and perfectly clear at the time: that the Boer Republics had been pushed into a corner by deliberate imperial design.
The Evidence from Parliament
Sir Charles Dilke, a senior Liberal member of the British Parliament, gave a speach on 17 October 1899, only six days after Britain’s declaration of war against the South African Republic and the Orange Free State. His statement was made in the House of Commons and recorded in Hansard, volume 77, during a debate on the origins and justification of the conflict.
Speaking directly to the Leader of the House and addressing the wider government benches, Dilke questioned the moral and political wisdom of the imperial policy that had brought Britain to war.
“I freely admit that the war in its immediate inception has been forced upon us in circumstances which make it impossible for us not to pick up the gauntlet thrown down, but, without allusion to the annexation and the Raid, the question cannot now be discussed at all. These matters affect the whole question of Sir Alfred Milner’s policy, and the wisdom of the Government in actively taking it up and pressing it on the country. The Leader of the House tells us that, up to a very late moment indeed, he hoped for peace, and he repudiates with natural warmth the charge that this country was ‘bluffing a small State.’ Is it not the fact, however, that Sir A. Milner, in placing his policy before the Government, told them very frankly that a very probable result of that policy would be war, and war not only with the South African Republic, but with the Orange Free State as well? I cannot but think that the whole policy was open to grave doubts, and it seems to me that, in view of the annexation and the Raid, it was unwise to embark on that policy.”
Sir Charles Dilke, House of Commons, Hansard, 17 October 1899, vol. 77 cc 60–160
Sir Charles Dilke’s statement, made within days of the outbreak of hostilities, is evidence from within Britain itself of who was seen as the party who started agression. It shows that leading British politicians already recognised that their own government’s actions had made war inevitable.
His words reveal several key points.
- Britain forced the war’s inception. Dilke acknowledges that the situation created by London left no alternative for the Boer Republics. The admission that the war was “forced upon us” directly contradicts later portrayals of the Boers as reckless aggressors.
- Britain’s record already tainted the moral ground. The annexation of the Transvaal in 1877 and the Jameson Raid of 1895 are cited as events that undermined British credibility. By referring to them in the same breath as Milner’s policy, Dilke underscores that imperial ambition, not Boer obstinacy, lay at the heart of the crisis.
- Milner’s approach was known to be provocative. Dilke notes that Sir Alfred Milner himself warned that his policy could lead to war with both republics. Despite this, the Cabinet pressed ahead, showing that conflict was anticipated and accepted.
- Opposition within Britain was immediate and informed. Dilke’s words reflected a broad “pro Boer” movement within Britain that included members of Parliament, editors, clergy, and ordinary citizens. Their objections were grounded in moral outrage and political foresight, not sympathy for the Boers alone.
These points make it clear that the view of British responsibility for the outbreak of the war did not originate with Afrikaner nationalism or twentieth century reinterpretation. It was British contemporaries themselves who first articulated it. Later historians such as Pakenham and Hensley only confirmed what their predecessors had already recognised in 1899: that the British Empire provoked the conflict it later justified.
4. The Ultimatum and the Triumph of Propaganda
The turning point of narrative
On 9 October 1899, the Boer governments issued their ultimatum demanding that Britain halt troop movements within forty-eight hours. The text was diplomatic and conditional:
“Her Majesty’s Government must recall the troops massed on the borders of the Republic within forty-eight hours… Failing which, the South African Republic will regard the action as a formal declaration of war.” (British Parliamentary Papers, Cd.369, 1899).
Rather than being the cause of war, the ultimatum was an attempt to prevent it. But in the imperial press, it became the perfect pretext.
The rhetorical inversion
Eight days later, on 17 October, Chamberlain told the House of Commons: “The responsibility for this war rests wholly with the Boer Government, which has declared war upon Her Majesty’s dominions.” (Hansard, HC Deb 17 October 1899, vol. 77 cc677–725).
Within hours, the line echoed through the press. The Times announced, “The Boers Declare War – Attack on British Sovereignty.” The Daily Mail added the melodrama: “Kruger Strikes First!”
Through repetition, the press transmuted a defensive ultimatum into an act of aggression. The inversion was complete.
5. The Machinery of Perception
The alignment of power and narrative
The British government’s success lay in its ability to control both information and moral framing. The War Office and Colonial Office issued background notes describing the Boers as “backward pastoralists, hostile to progress and the franchise.” Fleet Street followed faithfully.
The Times provided authority, while the Daily Mail supplied excitement. Illustrated magazines spread the story to schoolrooms and parlours across the empire. The telegraph ensured synchronised headlines from London to Calcutta.
Even the tone of imperial morality was consistent. Chamberlain spoke of defending “peace and civilisation,” transforming a campaign of expansion into a moral crusade. Every dispatch framed Britain as a reluctant guardian forced into war by Boer obstinacy.
The endurance of the myth
After the war, the same phrases reappeared in school readers and patriotic histories. Our Empire: A Child’s History (London, 1905) assured its audience that “the Boers rashly declared war upon Britain, forcing us to defend our colonies.”
By 1901, as historian Richard Price later noted, “the press, schools and patriotic literature had successfully inverted causality: the Empire defended itself against Boer aggression.” (An Imperial War and the British Working Class, Routledge, 1972, p. 44).
Through education and ritual commemoration, propaganda became memory. The myth endured because it satisfied the moral logic of empire: that its wars were always defensive, its enemies always irrational.
6. Historians and the Reconstruction of Truth
Revisiting the record
When the generation of professional historians after 1945 reopened the archives, the evidence told a different story. J. S. Marais demonstrated that Britain’s troop deployments preceded Boer mobilisation. Hensley and Pakenham documented Milner’s correspondence proving deliberate provocation.
Their findings aligned with the surviving Volksraad records and Boer official papers, which show that both republics mobilised only after British soldiers were already positioned along their frontiers.
Why confusion persists
Yet despite this consensus, the older narrative continues to echo. It persists not because the evidence is disputed, but because propaganda had already reshaped collective perception. Once an interpretation is embedded in education and national pride, it becomes part of identity itself. The Boer War thus stands as an example of how narrative power can outlast factual correction.
Conclusion
The Second Boer War illustrates that the victors of a conflict are not only those who triumph on the battlefield but those who dominate the language through which the war will be remembered. Britain’s propaganda machine achieved more than the subjugation of two small republics; it rewrote causality itself.
The British build up of August 1899 triggered the Boer mobilisation of late September, yet through orchestrated rhetoric, the empire convinced its subjects that it had been attacked. Chamberlain’s speeches, Milner’s dispatches, and the compliant press together created a mythology of defence that entered textbooks and popular culture, shaping historical memory for generations.
For modern historians, the case offers a stark lesson. The distortion of the Boer War’s origins shows that propaganda does not merely justify war, it defines it. Once embedded in public consciousness, such narratives become resistant to evidence, perpetuating confusion long after the documents have been opened and the truth laid bare.
References
British Parliamentary Papers: South African Affairs, Cd.369 (1899).
Headlam, C. (Ed.). (1931). The Milner Papers: South Africa 1897–1899, Vol. II. London: Cassell.
Hensley, F. S. (1961). The Origins of the South African War, 1899–1902. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Marais, J. S. (1961). The Fall of Kruger’s Republic. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Pakenham, T. (1979). The Boer War. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
Pretorius, F. (Ed.). (2011). A History of South Africa: From the Distant Past to the Present Day. Pretoria: Protea.
Price, R. (1972). An Imperial War and the British Working Class. London: Routledge.
Hansard Parliamentary Debates, 17 October 1899.
The Times (London), 10 October 1899.
Daily Mail (London), 11 October 1899.
Our Empire: A Child’s History. London, 1905.
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