Throughout all of military history, there are few instances in which rifle marksmanship has played such a significant role as it did in the Second Anglo-Boer War at the turn of the 20th century. The prowess of the Boer burghers (“citizens”) at long-range shooting stopped the juggernaut of the British Empire in its tracks (at least for a time) and astonished observers around the world. While the majority of the unpaid Boer militiamen, serving in small mounted units (“commandos”), were armed with the most modern of repeating bolt-action rifles, and firing smokeless powder cartridges, quite a few of the burghers were also armed with an interesting array of obsolescent firearms.
In order to put these arms in context, it is necessary to take just a moment to delve into the causes of the conflict and to give a very brief overview of the course of the war. Strict, God-fearing Calvinists, the Boers (“farmers”) traced their roots back to an outpost of Dutch (and later also French Huguenot) settlers established at the southern tip of Africa in the 17th century to resupply Dutch ships on their voyages to and from the Dutch East Indies. The British seized the Cape Colony (named for the Cape of Good Hope) during the Napoleonic Wars, and shortly thereafter, tensions rose between the British and the fiercely independent Boers. By the 1830s and 1840s, groups of Boers were moving northward into the interior of Africa by ox-drawn wagon trains (much the same as was seen in the American West at that same time), in order to live their lives as they saw fit. After defeating hostile native tribes, they eventually established two independent republics—the Orange Free State and the Transvaal (also known by its official title of the South African Republic)—finally out of the reach (or so they thought) of the British.
Read Full Article »
