I agree with David G's comments about the "wider South African picture".
I recently posted on two of the new sections introduced by David B, and the lack of responses suggests disinterest and perhaps even disapproval of these posts. I had reasons for the choice of subject matter even though both may have seemed irrelevant to the main focus of this forum..
In the Frontier Wars section I posted depictions of British soldiers who fought in these wars. These soldiers were part of the first large-scale build-up of the British army in South Africa. The Cape of Good Hope had been occupied by the British in 1806 because of its strategic significance during the Napoleonic Wars. By doing so, the British became responsible for maintaining security on the northern borders of the Cape Colony. The main security threat came from the Xhosa tribes in the north-east, and the Frontier Wars of the 1840's and 1850's were fought against them. Incidentally, the British also crossed swords with the ancestors of the Boers, who had moved from the Cape into what later became the Orange Free State, Transvaal and Natal. These clashes involved the British hastening troops to relieve a siege at Port Natal in 1842, and the more serious clash between Boers and Brits at the Battle of Boomplaats in the Free State in 1848. The 1842 clash resulted in the British proclamation of Natal as a Colony and its occupation by a British garrison in 1843. This destroyed the Boer dream of an independent republic in Natal and certainly did not do Boer-Brit relations any good at all. The Natal garrison would remain an uninterrupted presence there until 1914. The regiments garrisoned in Natal in 1899, the Royal Dublin Fusiliers and Leicestershire Regiment, were in action very soon after the Boers invaded Natal in 1899. The Boomplaats battle was followed by the temporary occupation of Bloemfontein, and also did nothing good for Boer-Brit relations. These events involving the British army in the 1840's and 1850's foreshadowed the events of 1899, when once again there were Boer sieges to be relieved, and the British army was involved on two fronts, one in Natal towards the Transvaal, and the other through the Free State towards the Transvaal.
The second of my posts in the new sections related to the Zulu War. It was intended to show that by 1879 the British on active service in South Africa could rely on the Colonists themselves to provide assistance. Significantly, the most useful of this assistance came from mounted troops who fought as infantry (i.e. mounted infantry or light horse), rather than traditional cavalry. The British high command were slow to appreciate the merits of mounted infantry during conflicts in the second half of the 19th Century, and persisted with the use of cavalry when it was no longer appropriate. The blunder of a cavalryman, Colonel Moller, at Talana in 1899 saw both his regiment and unfortunate attached mounted infantry companies come to grief. The supposed gallant charge of the British cavalry on the already defeated Boers at Elandslaagte did nothing to enhance their reputation, and served no useful purpose. The realisation by the British that the defeat of the Boers would come only if their commandos, which were simply a form of mounted infantry, were matched by Britain's own mounted infantry. This was something that had been patently obvious to some middle-ranking British officers with relevant experience, the South African Colonists, and even the reinforcements that came from elsewhere in the Empire (e.g. Australia).
I believe we can look before and after to enhance our interest in, and understanding of the 1899-1902 Boer War without detracting from the integrity of this forum.
Brett
