Second Boer War

The Second Boer War was fought from 1899 to 1902 between the British Empire and the two independent Boer republics of southern Africa, the South African Republic (Transvaal) and the Orange Free State, over British ambitions to bring the gold-rich Boer states under imperial control. After early Boer battlefield successes against British forces besieged at towns including Mafeking and Ladysmith, Britain committed hundreds of thousands of additional troops and gradually captured the main Boer cities, but Boer commandos then shifted to a prolonged guerrilla campaign that the British countered with a scorched-earth policy and the internment of Boer civilians, overwhelmingly women and children, in camps where tens of thousands died of disease and malnutrition, an episode that drew significant international and domestic British criticism. The war ended with the Treaty of Vereeniging in 1902, under which the Boer republics accepted British sovereignty in exchange for a promised path toward eventual self-government, later realized in the 1910 formation of the Union of South Africa. The conflict's scale, cost and the controversy over the camps significantly damaged Britain's international reputation and prompted major reforms within the British Army.