The causes of the Boer War (aka Second Anglo-Boer War, South Africa War, and Second War of Freedom, 1899-1902) stretched back to the early 19th century and competition for land and resources between British and Boer settlers. The rivalry turned to animosity as the century progressed, accentuated by discoveries of diamonds and gold, and further fuelled by mutual suspicions of uncontrolled imperialism and nationalism. A brief war in 1880-81 and a failed coup d'etat in 1895 pushed the two sides even further apart until the coming of a second, much larger conflict proved unstoppable.
The varied causes of the conflict, commonly referred to at the time simply as the South Africa War and fought between the Boer republics of Transvaal and Orange Free State and the British colonies of Cape Colony and Natal, included:
Competition for agricultural land.
Competition to control valuable natural resources like diamonds and gold.
The British claim of suzerainty over the foreign policy of the Boer republics.
Boer dissatisfaction with Britain’s prohibition of the use of slaves in Southern Africa.
British dissatisfaction at the discriminatory treatment of non-Boers in the Boer republics.
Boer resentment at the increasing influence of Anglo-Saxon culture in the republics.
British resentment over the Boers’ continuing raids on neighbouring African peoples, which caused regional instability.
Boer suspicions aroused by the Jameson Raid, an unofficial British attempt to take over Transvaal.
British suspicion that the Boers wished to form an alliance with Germany, which would threaten Britain’s regional dominance.
Britain wanted to create a single union of Southern African states.
The Boers were settlers in Southern Africa with Dutch ancestry (and that of certain other European countries, notably Germany and France). The name Boer means “farmer.” They were also known as Afrikaners because they spoke Afrikaans. These settlers “were tough, independent-minded and Calvinist, and later developed a trenchant anti-Britishness” (Reid, 71). They had first arrived in the 17th century, and they eventually created two republics: Transvaal (1852) and Orange Free State (1854). These republics were created after the Great Trek of the 1830s, a Boer migration away from British control in the south. The Boers had not agreed with the British policy of abolishing slavery and resented the increasing influence of Anglo-Saxon culture on their own.
Meanwhile, British settlers, who had arrived later than the Boers, created the colonies of Cape Colony (1806) and Natal (1843), principally to safeguard the Cape of Good Hope, an important stopping point on shipping routes between Europe and Asia. Both the British and the Boers had acquired their land at the expense of African states.
Both the British and the Boers had acquired their land at the expense of African states, continuously expanding their territory in search of more land suitable for farming and to control trade routes. The British made Griqualand a crown colony in 1871 and merged it with Cape Colony in 1873. The British defeated the Zulu Kingdom in the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879. Zululand became a crown colony in 1887 and was absorbed into Natal in 1897. British expansion continued with the establishment of the Basutoland Protectorate (modern Lesotho, 1884), British Bechuanaland and the Bechuanaland Protectorate (modern Botswana, 1885), and Swaziland (1893). The acquisition of these territories backfired spectacularly since the Boers were released from fighting Africans and could now concentrate their fight for territorial expansion against the British.
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