There were two wars between the British and the Boers.

The first war took place at the end of 1880, and the current time and space is the end of 1865, which is about fifteen years away. On the Boer side was the Transvaal Republic, and the Orange Free State was not involved.

The causes of the war are roughly as follows:

The Transvaal couldn't make ends meet, and he was so poor that he couldn't live anymore, at this time, the British saw that it was cheap and took the opportunity to lobby: throw yourself into the arms of Her Majesty the Queen, and have milk to drink! The Boers looked at themselves, they ate the last meal and didn't eat the next meal, and they couldn't open the pot anymore, and after thinking about it, they still felt that the inside was more important than the face, so they went from the British.

The president resigned and went to Cape Town to receive a British pension; The military commanders were disarmed and returned to their farms; The Transvaal officially became a British colony, and the Transvaal Republic temporarily disappeared from the political map of South Africa.

But it didn't take long for the Boers to regret that the British had eaten like that, and it was better to have their own gangs! At this time, the British had just killed the Zulu Kingdom, and the Transvaal's biggest external threat disappeared, and they felt that there was no need to hug the British thighs anymore, so they turned their faces and announced the restoration of the country.

Of course, Britain did not do it, and raised an army to fight. But after being crushed by the Boers, the new government had no choice but to sign a peace treaty with the Boers, allowing the Transvaal to be "fully autonomous" and Britain retaining only nominal suzerainty. The Transvaal was successfully restored.

The First Boer War lasted for a short period of three months. The British responded to the Boer rebellion only with the army of the Cape colony. No troops were transferred from mainland China and other overseas territories. After a small setback. It was quickly admitted that the British Empire was so "weak" because the Transvaal was too poor at that time to be worth fighting for.

At that time, no one knew that there was an endless amount of wealth buried beneath the ground in Johannesburg.

The second war took place in 1899. The contradictions between the two sides are mainly concentrated between the Transvaal Republic and the British. But. This time, Boers from all over South Africa were involved, including the Orange Free State Republic, but also the Boers living in the Cape Colony.

The reasons that provoked the war, it seems that many are complicated:

What the Transvaal government imposed heavy taxes on the gold mining industry, which was dominated by British capital, and imposed all kinds of tyrannical extortions; Foreigners, mainly British businessmen, are deeply discriminated against, paying taxes in full, but not having the right to vote, not only cannot hold government office, but also cannot attend government-funded schools for their children; What the Transvaal Republic expanded to the east. If you want to get an outlet to the sea, the British always get in the way...... Wait a minute.

In fact. There is only one real reason: both Britain and Burkina do Brazzado want to be the bosses of South Africa. The British, of course, wanted to unify South Africa under Her Majesty's rule; The Boers, who had become rich because of gold, had thick waists and fat guts, and they were also dreaming of establishing a "Boer Federation of Greater South Africa" "from the Cape of Good Hope to the Zambezi River".

The contradictions are irreconcilable.

said a thousand ways and ten thousand, the root of this contradiction is still those two words: gold.

Without gold, the British would have had limited interest in unifying South Africa; By the same token, without the fattening and backing of gold, the Boers would not have been able to challenge Big Brother in England.

War was inevitable.

Before the start of the war, both sides were confident in themselves.

The British believed that it was a "war that could be solved with the use of a few thousand colonial troops"; The Boers, on the other hand, were impressed by the stupid and clumsy appearance of the British during the First Boer War, believing that this would be a replica of the war that broke out at the end of 1880.

Although the Boers are strong and strong, they have long been not Wuxia Amun; But the British attitude towards the war was also very different from that of the First Boer War.

The course and outcome of the war far exceeded the expectations of both sides.

Little did the Boers know that they would eventually lose the war, that the Transvaal Republic and the Orange Free State would disappear from the map of South Africa, and that all the Boers would be forced to become subjects of Her Majesty.

The British did not expect that this war would be fought for two and a half years; Before the war, it was thought that "the problem can be solved by using a few thousand colonial troops", but in fact, 450,000 troops were mobilized from the mainland, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, while the two Boer states of Transvaal and Orange together had a total population of only 440,000!

What is even more unimaginable is the ratio of war losses: the British Empire lost 22,000 men, while the Boers lost only 3,700 men!

The number of Boers who died unnaturally during the war was certainly far greater than that, but most of them died in concentration camps, not in military operations.

What the British did not expect was that the Boers of South Africa were very different from their mild-tempered European Dutch countrymen. The harsh living environment, more than 100 years of endless displacement, and countless bloody conflicts with the black natives have made the Boers strong, hardworking, tenacious, and even bloodthirsty; The long-term life of animal husbandry and hunting made the Boers superb in riding and archery. It can be said that an adult Boer man is an excellent fighter.

What the British also did not know was that although the navy of the British Empire was still in the best of the world, the technology and tactics of the army were far behind the times. It was already the end of the nineteenth century, and the British army was still in a dense formation similar to that of the American Civil War. For the Boers, it was nothing short of a shot for their accuracy, sending rows and rows of live targets in the shape of humanoids.

This tactic, by the time of the First Boer War in 1880, had already caused great suffering to the British.

For example, in the Battle of the Blomhorst River, of the 247 British troops, 77 were killed and 157 were wounded, while the Boers only had 2 killed and 4 wounded.

In the subsequent Battle of Mount Jubama, of the 650 British troops, 93 were killed, 153 were wounded, 54 were captured, and the commander was hung up; The Boers had only 1 killed and 5 wounded.

This kind of battle loss ratio gives people the illusion that "civilized countries" and "barbarian tribes" are fighting against each other. The most powerful British Empire in the world is unfortunately that "barbarian tribe".

Almost twenty years later, when the Second Boer War broke out in 1899, there was hardly any substantial improvement in the technical and tactical aspects of the army.

The British Empire is really old.

Britain was able to win the final victory in this war, Guan Zhuofan believes that it was entirely because Britain was strong at that time, and it could use absolute quantitative superiority to make up for the lack of quality. If the two armies were close in numbers, no matter how "strong industrial capacity" and "advanced weaponry" the British were, for example, possessing heavy artillery that the Boers lacked, no matter how much they played "bunker tactics", "scorched earth policy", and "death camps", it would be useless.

Britain got its way and got all of South Africa, but historians agree that the British Empire began to decline.

As for the reasons for Britain's decline, there is no unified statement. Many people believe that Britain was so demoralized in the Second Boer War that it had to make a strategic retrenchment; Guan Zhuofan thought that the second Boer War did cost Britain a lot, but it did not seem to have reached the point of shaking the country's foundation.

The point was that the Boer War made it clear to the British: the colonies had "grown", the cost of doing business was getting higher and higher, and the era of low-cost occupation and maintenance of colonies and super-profits was gone; It is no longer economically and militarily feasible to maintain a large number of overseas territories in the same way.

In a word, the British Empire can no longer "conquer the world".

But the British don't want to give up Her Majesty's overseas possessions, so what can they do?

There are two ways to do this.

First, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, which are overseas territories dominated by their Anglo-Saxon compatriots, give more autonomy to prevent a repeat of the American story.

Second, since they can no longer "conquer the world", they have no choice but to make excuses about the great powers, including the original competitors.

Britain had seriously considered the possibility of an alliance between Britain and Germany, but Kaiser Wilhelm II's ambitions could not be tolerated by a small Anglo-German alliance, and the British had no choice but to turn closer to their old enemies, France and Russia.

In a sense, the First World War was planted because of this.

*

(This chapter is about to avoid the ridicule of the water.) However, the South African strategy occupies a very important position in Guan Zhuofan's entire strategic layout. Whether or not the Boer War can be successfully detonated ahead of schedule will have a serious impact on Guan Zhuofan himself, China and the world. Therefore, the lion thinks that it is still necessary to make a more detailed analysis of the causes and consequences of the relevant events.

*(To be continued......)