Following the fall of Pretoria earlier in the year, British forces under Lord Roberts declared the Transvaal Republic annexed to the British Empire. Boer commandos, however, refused to accept defeat and shifted to guerrilla tactics that would prolong the war for nearly two more grinding years. Britain's eventual victory came at enormous cost, including the notorious concentration camps that killed tens of thousands of Boer civilians.
The formal annexation was as much a political statement as a military reality. British troops had captured Pretoria, the Transvaal's capital, back in June, and Kruger's government had already fled into exile. But Boer fighters like Louis Botha and Christiaan de Wet refused to surrender, dispersing into small, fast-moving commando units that harassed British supply lines and outposts across the veld.
Britain's response to this guerrilla campaign proved devastating for civilians. The army adopted a scorched-earth policy, burning Boer farms and herding women, children, and Black African laborers into concentration camps where disease and malnutrition killed tens of thousands, a death toll that scandalized British public opinion when journalist Emily Hobhouse exposed the conditions.
The war dragged on until 1902, when the Treaty of Vereeniging finally ended Boer resistance, incorporating the Transvaal and Orange Free State into the British Empire. The bitterness sown by the camps and the war's brutality lingered for generations, shaping Afrikaner nationalism that would eventually produce the apartheid state decades later.
Key people: Lord Roberts, Paul Kruger, Louis Botha