By Benjamin Spacapan
For the same content in a prettier package, check out https://arrowsandolivebranchesblog.wordpress.com/blog/
Biographies
of Winston Churchill in his youth are always ripe with tales of the leadership,
valor, and brash self-promotion of the soldier / correspondent. Millard’s Hero of the Empire is no different. She
covers Churchill’s time as a correspondent, POW, and British officer in South
Africa with an engaging and energetic vigor. She fairly describes Churchill’s sometimes
off-putting tendencies for self-aggrandizement, but dedicates the bulk of Hero to exploring the desperately
ambitious character that drove Churchill into four separate wars and eventually
the Prime Minister’s office.
Millard’s work is most
interesting, however, in its discussion of the British war against the Boers in
South Africa. Millard’s illustration makes for easy comparison to modern
relations between developed and developing nations, between colonizers and
natives, and between invading foreign armies and local guerilla fighters. At
the turn of the 20th century in South Africa, the British dealt with
all three issues and largely bungled each of them.
English contempt for the Boers,
whom they dismissed as backward, was evident in their relationship. Few British
were more vehement in their criticism of the Boers than Winston’s own father,
Randolph Churchill. He upbraided the Boers for their treatment of native
Africans and wrote, “The Boer farmer…is perfectly uneducated. His simple
ignorance is unfathomable, and this in stolid composure he shares with his
wife, his sons, his daughters, being proud that his children should grow up as
ignorant, as uncultivated, as hopelessly unprogressive as himself” (Millard, p.
144). Unsurprisingly, this made for poor relations between the young Boer state
and the British Empire.
There were obvious areas in which the British could have, and
should have, worked with the Boers to become more progressive, particularly for
better rights and treatment of native Africans. Instead, there was no real cooperation
because the Boers constantly chafed under unequal treatment from the British. Similarly,
if developing nations are not made equal partners in their own development
today, there is little hope of true progress and cooperation. Western and Asian
states must be cognizant of the effects of their judgements on emerging
partners and work to move forward together.
By failing to change the power
dynamic between Boers and native Africans, the British not only neglected to right
a great human rights wrong but also failed to galvanize support for their rule
among the majority African population. Winston Churchill observed that Boer
opposition to British rule was grounded in fear that the British would upend
traditional Boer subjugation of African natives. He wrote, “British government
is associated in the Boer farmer’s mind with violent social revolution. Black
is to be proclaimed the same as white. The servant is to be raised against the
master” (Millard, p. 240). One can see why Boer farmers, who had long profited
from power over the natives, would be committed to the status quo, but the
British could have demanded a shift in the power structure at the close of the
war.
Instead, the British allowed their
new Boer subjects to further stratify society, passing the Native Land Act in
1913 which forced native Africans, 67% of South Africa’s population, onto 7% of
its land (Millard, p.311). Perhaps the British felt that they would not have
been able to bring an end to the vicious Boer guerilla war or that they would
have faced another insurrection if they had demanded the Boers extend broader
rights to the Africans. In either case, the British decision represents a
distinct lack of foresight. Had they elevated the Africans, keeping the Boers
from falling back on segregation to maintain power, the British might have
built a powerful allied group within South Africa. They would have made allies
out of men like Solomon Plaatje, first secretary-general of the African
National Congress (Millard, p. 311). Instead, the relationship between Britain
and its African and Afrikaner subjects remained cautious at best. Today,
Western and Asian nations cooperating with developing countries should also
work for greater human rights in their partner states. Even from a strictly
self-interested perspective, such progress can generate long-term friends in
strategically important regions among formerly subjugated and persecuted
peoples.
Finally, the British army
underestimated the relative warfighting abilities of their adversaries. Churchill
wrote that British officers traveling to the war in South Africa “could not
conceive how ‘irregular amateur’ forces like the Boers could make any
impression against disciplined professional soldiers” (Millard, p. 63). Like
many foreign invading armies, the British failed to acknowledge the strengths
of the Boer fighters, and to properly adjust to the terrain and climate. This
British dismissal of Boer fighting capabilities was shocking because recent
British wars in Afghanistan and in Sudan—against irregular amateur forces—had
been particularly bloody affairs and because the British had already lost a war
against the Boers at Majuba.
In the case of South Africa, the British were unprepared for three
key Boer advantages. First, the Boer army wielded modern Mauser rifles, which they
bought by the tens of thousands in the 1890s and were a significant upgrade
over those of the British (Millard, p. 68). Second, the Boers easily
outmaneuvered British forces, “with little more than men, horses and Mausers,”
whereas “the British army moved at a glacial pace, weighed down by the sheer
number of its possessions” (Millard, p. 81). Similarly, the British were unable
to cope with or learn from the Boers’ effective use of terrain. At Colenso, the
greatest Boer victory of the war, the British made a series of costly mistakes
because they refused to learn from Boer tactics. Millard writes, “Although in
the past week alone they had already lost two battles to an invisible and
devastatingly effective enemy, the British army had continued to fight in line
formation” (Millard, p. 257). While the Boers relied heavily on scouts, the
British, “who did not even have a reliable map of the area, had shown little
interest in reconnaissance” (Millard, p. 259). Additionally, the British
preoccupation with honor led to repeated battlefield blunders. The most
devastating was that of Colonel Long, who rushed his 18-gun artillery brigade
into the front of the British line and withering Boer crossfire, losing the
entire battery (Millard, p. 263). Similar mistakes plagued Western and Soviet
armies throughout the late 20th century. The rise of the helicopter
began to solve the problem of mobility, and invaders finally learned to be more
adaptive, but it took many bloody and potentially unnecessary conflicts to
engrain these lessons.
The British also made crucial errors when fighting Boer guerilla
at the close of the war. Lord Roberts, commander of the British forces in South
Africa, left long before the end of the guerilla conflict, declaring the war
over (Millard, p. 307). This particular decision mirrors the embarrassing
American mistake in Iraq almost 100 years later. Further, frustrated British
forces burned farms to deny Boer guerillas access to food and support and
gathered Boer and native civilians in concentration camps (Millard, p. 307).
Over 45,000 people, including tens of thousands of children, died in the poorly
provisioned British camps (Ibid.). While these tactics did actually hamper Boer
guerilla activities, the victory did not justify the human cost. In Vietnam,
American forces tried similar tactics to bring civilians into protected areas
and deny support to the Viet Cong. While the American strategy included much
improved civilian protections and provisions than that of the British in South
Africa, it still led to a number of well-documented excesses more than 70 years
after the Boer War.
The British campaign in South Africa, while ultimately victorious,
exemplified a number of the mistakes that plagued developed-developing world
relations throughout the 20th and into the 21st century. In
times of peace, established countries often treat their developing partners
with disrespect and fail to use their influence to improve support for human
rights. In times of war, invading developed forces often fail to adapt and
learn from their enemies. Most damagingly, armies of the developed world have
still not learned to effectively quell guerilla resistances. The same problems
chronicled by Millard and witnessed by Churchill at the turn of the 20th
century remain unsolved almost 120 years later.
