The British Lust for African Wealth and Dominance

The war indeed became the longest and most expensive war, and incurred the most casualties, that the British fought in the century between 1815 and 1914.

The British War Machine mobilised over 450,000 men, only one-fifth of which were engaged in battle, which demonstrates the incredible logistic challenge that the British were confronted with in fighting a war far from home.

Approximately 22,000 British soldiers and 30,000 Boers (24,000 were children in concentration camps) lost their lives. The overall cost of the war added up to 230 million pounds, which equalled almost 15 per cent of Great Britain's GDP in 1902.

Between the The 2d Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902), known commonly as the Boer War, was Britain's (between 1815 to 1915):

• • • • longest (lasting over thirty-two months),
      • most expensive (costing over UK 200 million pounds), and
      • bloodiest war (with over 22,000 British, 30,000 Boers, and in excess of 20,000 Black Africans losing their lives).
      • fought from the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 to the outbreak of World War I in 1914.

Interestingly though, the above war lasted three months longer than the Crimean War (1853 - 1856) and subsequently resulted in higher British casualties, however more soldiers died from disease in the Crimean War.

One must ask why no lessons were learnt from the Crimean War with regard to the health and medical care of soldiers? This health and welfare ignorance and incompetence was further compounded in the genocidal deaths of the Boer civilians in British Concentration Camps.