Brooks Adams (1848-1927)
In The Law of Civilization and Decay (1895) this American historian, brother of Henry Adams, developed the theory that civilizations rose and fell according to the growth and decline of commerce.

(Major) Edmund Allenby (1861-1936)
He served in South Africa (1884-88) and fought in the Boer War (1889-1901). Went on to becme a prominent general in WW1.

Leo Amery (1873-1955)
Served under Milner during the Boer War. Editor and chief contributor to The Times History of the War in South Africa (7 volumes, 1900-1909).

John Black Atkins
War correspondent for the Manchester Guardian and author of The Relief of Ladysmith (London. Methuen. 1900).

Alfred Austin (1835-1913)
An admirer of Disraeli and a poet interested in foreign politics. Succeeded Tennyson as poet laureate in 1896. His ode celebrating the Jameson raid was published in The Times in January 1896.

Sir Robert Baden-Powell (1857-1941)
Founder of the Boy Scouts movement (1907), who made his mark during the 31-week seige of Mafeking.

Sir Herbert Baker (1862-1946)
English architect who lived in SA 1892-1912. He received commissions to remodel Rhodes' house, Groote Schurr, Government House in Pretoria, parts of the Anglican Cathedrals in Cape Town and Pretoria, the Rhodes' memorial and the Union buildings on Meintje's Kop, Pretoria.

Earl of Balfour (1848-1930)
Conservative statesman, who succeeded Salisbury as Prime Minister in 1902. His premiership saw the end of the Boer War, the establishment of the Committee of Imperial Defence, and the signing of the Entente Cordiale.

Alfred Beit (1853-1906)
Arriving in South Africa in 1875, he grew rich from the development of diamond mines, and became a friend of Cecil Rhodes. He founded a chair for colonial history at Oxford University.

"Douglas Blackburn"
A maverick British journalist who came to South Africa when the Transvaal was still a Boer republic, and stayed during the Anglo Boer War and beyond. In several newspapers, he denounced British colonial attitudes as well as satirising Boer corruption. He wrote two novels set in this world, Prinsloo of Prinsloosdorp (1899) and A Burgher Quixote (1903), capturing with a great deal of sly humour the personality and situation of the Boer at the time. His later novel Leaven (1908) is a moving denunciation of "blackbirding" and other iniquitous labour practices, and is one of the first South African novels to portray what life was really like for peasants forced into urban labour. Love Muti (1915) attacks British colonial attitudes.

Robert Blatchford (1856-1915)
Editor of the (Fabian) socialist newspaper The Clarion and author of the bestselling Merrie England (1893), Blatchford was pro-government as far as foreign policy was concerned.

Louis Botha (1862-1919)
After his victory at Spion Kop, Botha succeeded Joubert as commander-in-chief of the Boer forces during the war, and in 1907 became PM of the Transvaal. he attended Imperial conferences in London in 1907 and 1911 and in 1910 became the first premier of the Union of South Africa.

(Viscount) St. John Broderick (1830-1907)
Under secretary for war, 1895-1898,  under secretary for foreign affairs, 1898-1900. Secretary of state for war, 1900-1903 and secretary of state for India, 1903-1905.

John Buchan (1875-1940)
In 1901, Buchan was called to the Bar, but instead of embarking upon a legal career, he became private secretary to Lord Milner, the High Commissioner for South Africa. The Boer War had just ended and Buchan was involved in the work of reconstruction for the next two years. From this experience derived the African interest in some of his novels, notably Prestor John (1910), and the South African origins of his most famous fictional hero, Richard Hannay, of The Thirty-Nine Steps and its sequel novels.
John Buchan Society

Sir Redvers Buller (1839-1902)
In Africa he fought in the Kafir and Zulu wars (1878–79), against the Boers in the Transvaal (1881), and against the Mahdists in Sudan (1884–85).  He was made commander in chief of troops in the Boer War in 1899, but his initial failure to relieve the besieged town of Ladysmith led to his replacement by Lord Roberts.

(Lady) Josephine Butler (1828-1906)
Activist in the women's movement. Her pamphlet Native Races and the War argued for war against the Boers in order to abolish slavery in the Boer Republics.

Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman (1836-1908)
From 1899, leader of the Liberal Party, who managed to lead his party to the landslide election victory of 1906. His pro-Boer stance led to the granting of responsible government to the Boer republics.

Joseph Chamberlain (1836-1914)
Colonial Secretary 1895-1903 until he resigned over tariff reform. In 1902, after the war had ended, he made an official visit to SA to encourage speedy reconciliation.

Erskine Childers (1870-1922)
Best known for his spy novel The Riddle of the Sands (1903), Childers volunteered at the outbreak of the Boer War and afterwards wrote  In the Ranks of the C. I. V, a personal record of his experiences as a driver of horses. In 1907 he edited the fifth volume of The Times History of the War in South Africa.

Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
His early career combined military service with journalism. He served with the malakand field force in 1897, in the 1898 Nile Expeditionary Force and was present at the Battle of Omdurman. During the Boer War he was taken prisoner, but escaped. 1900-04 Unionist MP for Oldham, until his opposition to tariff reform drove him temporarily to join the Liberals. As Colonial Under-Secretary, he made an extensive tour of Africa, including a visit to pioneer settlements in Kenya.
The Churchill Society

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930)
British physician, novelist, and detective-story writer, creator of Sherlock Holmes, ran a field hospital, and on his return to England wrote 'The Great Boer War' (1900) and 'The War in South Africa: Its Causes and Conduct' (1902), justifying England's participation. For these works he was knighted in 1902.
The Arthur Conan Doyle Society

Joseph Conrad (1857-1924)
Conrad's experiences as the commander of a river steamer in the Congo Free State were the basis of his two short stories denouncing imperialism, "An Outpost of Progress" (1898) and "Heart of Darkness" (1899).

(General) Piet Arnoldus Cronje (1840-
At Magersfontein, early in. December 1899, Cronje held in check Buller's army and in the campaign of February 1900, he opposed Lord Roberts' army at Magersfontein, but he was unable to prevent the relief of Kimberley. Retreating westward, he was surrounded near Paardeberg, and, after a most obstinate resistance, was forced to surrender with the remnant of his army (Feb. 27, 1900). As a prisoner of war Cronje was sent with his wife to St Helena, where he remained until released in 1902.

Lionel Curtis (1872-1955)
A professional lawyer who spent the years 1899-1909 in South Africa, as town clerk in Johannesburg (1901-3) and Assistant Colonial Secretary in the Transvaal (1903-7). On his return to England he helped draft the Selbourne Memorandum (1907) and in 1910 founded the Round Table, a quarterly review of imperial questions. With Milner in South Africa was published in 1951.

Lord Curzon (1859-1925)
Having won respect for his travels in Asia, Curzon was appointed Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs 1895-8. Created a baron in 1898, he began a seven-year term as Viceroy of India.

Jacobus Hercules De La Rey (1847-
In 1893 he entered the Volksraad of the South African Republic, and was an active supporter of the policy of General Joubert. In 1899 De La Rey was made a general, and he was engaged in the western campaign against Lord Methuen and Lord Roberts and later distinguished himself in the guerilla campaign. After the war, he went to Europe and in 1903 to India, where he persuaded the Boer POWs in Ahmednagar to sign the oath of allegiance.

Christaan De Wet (1854-
He took part in the earlier battles of the Boer War of 1899 in Natal as a commandant and later, as a general, he went to serve under Cronje in the west. His first successful action. was the surprise of Sanna's Post near Bloemfontein,  followed by the victory of Reddersburg. Regarded as the most formidable leader of the Boers in their guerrilla warfare, he continued his successes to the end of the war and took an active part in the peace negotiations of 1902. After the war he visited Europe with the other Boer generals, and in November 1902 published Three Years of War.

Théophile Delclassé  (1852-1923)
Born in Pamiers, March 1, 1852. Educated in Paris, where he began his career as a journalist. He was elected to the chamber in 1889, for Foix. In 1893, became under-secretary for the colonies under Ribot and Dupuy, and colonial minister in the Dupuy cabinet of May, 1894. He was always a very consistent advocate of colonial expansion. When M. Brisson formed his ministry in 1898, he entrusted foreign affairs to M. Delcasse, and it fell to his lot to deal with the difficult position at Fashoda. He retained his portfolio in M. Dupuy's ministry, after the defeat of the Brisson administration. In 1899, he negotiated the agreement with Great Britain as to the Nile Valley and Central Africa, and still remained foreign minister when M. Waldeck-Rousseau succeeded M. Dupuy, and when M. Combes, in 1902, succeeded M. Waldeck-Rousseau. He brought about the rapprochement with Italy, visited England with the president in 1903, and with Lord Lansdowne prepared the Anglo-French Agreement, signed April 8, 1904. The difficulty with Germany over Morocco caused his retirement in 1905.

Edward VII (1841-1910)
Came to the throne in 1901, little interested in imperial affairs.

Edward Elgar (1857-1932)
19 June 1899 First perfomance of the Enigma Variations
3 Oct 1900 First performance of the oratorio The Dream of Gerontius

Dorothea Fairbridge (1862-1931)

Percy Fitzpatrick (1862-1931)
Prominant Uitlander, leader of the Reform Committee in Johannesberg. Later elected to the Union Parliament.

John Galsworthy (1867-1933)
In Chancery, the second volume of The Forsythe Saga,  is set against the background of the Boer War.

Gandhi (1869-1948)
1893-1914 practiced law in in Durban, then in Johannesburg. His voluntary work in a charitable hospital gave him the necessary medical skills to organize the Indian Ambulance Corps during the Boer war and the Zulu rebellion of 1906. Gandhi worked on the principle that to demand rights as a citizen of the British Empire implied defending that Empire when attacked, and he won a medal for his war effort.
cf. Brown Judith & Martin Prozesky, Gandhi in South Africa, Univ of Natal Press, 1996.

Sir Edward Grey (1862-1933)
Liberal Imperialist. Foreign Secretary 1905-1916.

Rider Haggard (1856-1925)
Best-selling author of imperial adventure stories, Rider Haggard visited SA on three occasions : as personal aide to the new Lieutenant-Governor of Natal 1875-9, in 1880-1, and as a companion to Sir Theophilus Shepstone during the annexation of the Boer Transvaal in 1877. His best-known novels are King Solomon's Mines (1885), She (1887) and Allan Quartermain (1887).

General Douglas Haig (1861-1928)
This controversial WW1 general was a staff officer at the time of the Boer War, with the acting rank of Lieutenant-Colonel, to General John French, in command of the cavalry. During the war he was mentioned in despatches four times, and was appointed to command the 17th Lancers.

Richard Burdon Haldane (1856-1928)
Liberal Imperialist politician, who supported the war. Best known for his term as Secretary of State for War (1905-12), during which time he founded the Territorial Army.

(James) Keir Hardie (1856-1915)

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)

"Beatrice Hastings" (1879-1943)
SA-born poet who defended the idea of home rule for South Africans in the New Age.

W.E. Henley (1849-1903)
A jingoistic poet, Henley edited Lyra Heroica (1892), an anthology of patriotic sentiment, and published his own poetry in For England's Sake (1900).

George Alfred Henty (1832-1902)
Writer of imperial adventure stories for boys, for example With Roberts to Pretoria (1902).

James Barry Hertzog (1866-1942)
Before commanding a division in the Boer War, he had been a judge in the Orange Free State. As minister of education in the Orange River Colony (1907–10), he insisted upon the teaching of Dutch as well as English in the schools. In the first cabinet of the Union of South Africa he was minister of justice (1910–12), but he later helped found the National party, opposed to imperialism and aiming at a state independent of the British Empire.

Emily Hobhouse (1860-1926)
Publicized the horrors of the concentration camps. Wrote The Brunt of War and Where It Fell (1902) and War without Gloves, or Women’s War Experiences Written by Themselves 1899-1902 (1924). She helped publish the translation of Abie of the Transvaal : her Diary 1880-1902 (1923). Her Boer War letters were published in 1984.
Brief account of her visits to SA.

John Atkinson Hobson (1858-1940)
British economist, writer and journalist. A Gladstonian Liberal until 1916, he joined the Labour party in 1924. His memoirs were fittingly entitled Confessions of an Economic Heretic. In the 1880s he visited the USA, where he became friends with Theodore Veblen. In 1899 the Manchester Guardian sent him to cover events in SA. His weekly commmenteries, written during a six-month stay, were published as The War in SA, its Causes and Effects (1900). Other writings on the war include "Capitalism and Imperialism in SA"(1900) and The Psychology of Jingoism (1901), but he is is best remembered for his ground-breaking Imperialism: a Study (1902, 1905, 1983).

Jan Hofmeyer (1845-1909)
Prominent in the Afrikaner Bond, he was a peacemaker during the war. He later took a federal approach to closer union.

A.E. Housman (1859-1936)
Professor of Latin at Cambridge and author of A Shrophire Lad (1896) and Last Poems (1922). The latter contains several poems about the Boer War, such as "Astronomy", "Grenadier", "Soldier from the wars returning" and "Lancer".

Henry James (1843-1916)
The story Owen Wingrave, a rejection of generations of military tradition by the educated Owen, projected by James in the early 1890s, throws light on British aristocratic and upper-middle class attitudes to those unimaginable horrors then in the future: the Boer War (1899-1902) and the Great War (1914-1918).

Leander Starr Jameson (1853-1917)
In 1895, Jameson led 430 of his countrymen 180 miles, from Bechuanaland to Johannesburg in support of an uprising by the Uitlanders which never materialized. Jameson was captured and served a brief prison sentence in England before returning to South Africa to become PM of Cape Colony 1904-8.  He was portrayed as a daring hero and inspired Kipling's best-known poem, "If".

Petrus Jacobus Joubert (1834-1900)
He was in command of the Boer forces at Laings Nek, Ingogo, and Majuba Hill, subsequently conducting the earlier peace negotiations that led to the conclusion of the Pretoria Convention. He reluctantly assumed command of the Boer forces in 1899, but died of peritonitis in Pretoria in March 1900.

Mary Kingsley (1862-1900)
The well-known African explorer and anthropologist worked in Cape Town as a nurse caring for Boer prisoners of war. She contracted typhoid fever and died at the age of 38.

Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)
From 1898-1906 the Kipling family spent English winters in Cape Town. The Five Nations (1902) contains all the poems composed during the Boer War. Four short stories in Traffics and Discoveries concern the Boer War : "The Captive", "A Sahib's War", "The Comprehension of Private Copper", and "The Army of a Dream" (in two parts).

Lord Kitchener (1850-1916)
Hero of Omdurman & Fashoda, then ordered to SA in 1899, assuming command of army in 1900. Went on to India.

Paul Kruger (1825-1904)
President of Transvaal from 1882. After the breakdown of negociations over the rights of Uitlanders, in October 1899 he ordered the pre-emptive strikes against GB in Cape Colony & Natal which precipitated the war. His Memoirs were published in 1902. He died in Switzerland.

Lord Lansdowne (1845-1927)
Secretary of State for War 1895-1900, Foreign Secretary 1900-1905.

David Lloyd-George (1863-1945)
Liberal politician who strongly opposed the war.
Online exhibition

Lord Lugard (1858-1945)
Commisioner, then High Commissioner in Northern Nigeria 1897-1907 and author of the doctrine of indirect rule.

(James) Ramsey Macdonald (1866-1937)

Samuel Marks (1844-1920)
Arrived in SA in 1868, soon joined by his cousin and later lifelong business partner, Isaac Lewis. Owned 1/4 diamond fields in Kimberley, later sold to buy coal mines in Vereeniging. lent his estate at Vereeniging for the peace negociations.

Alfred Milner (1854-1925)
1897-1905 High Commissioner in SA.
Milner’s kindergarten : Leo Amery, John Buchan, Lionel Curtis.

Sir Henry Newbolt (1862-1938)
A patriotic barrister-poet, who published Admirals All and Other Verses (1897), An Island Race (1898), and The Sailing of the Long-Ships (1902).

'Banjo' Paterson (1864-1941)
Australian nationalist poet who was sent to SA as the war corespondent of the Sydney Morning Herald.

Sol Plaatje (1876-1932)
Journalist and civil rights' militant, who kept a record of his experience during the siege of Makeking. He was later a founding member of the South African natives' National Congress (1912).

Cecil Rhodes (1853-1902)
1887 founded British South African  Company & advocated "Cape to Cairo" expansion. Founded & developed De Beers in Kimberley. PM of Cape Colony 1890-96, but had to give up political career after the Jameson Raid. Besieged in Kimberley Oct 1899-Feb 1900.

Marquess of Salisbury (1830-1903)
PM 23 June 1885-1 Feb 1886, 25 June 1895- 12 July 1902. Resigned as Foreign Secretary in 1900, but remained PM throughout the Boer War.

Olive Schreiner (1855-1920)
Her best-known book, The Story of an African Farm (1883) was written and published during the eight years she spent in England, but on her return to SA she did much political writing, including  prewar critiques of the British attitude towards the Boers The Political Situation (1896) and  An English South African's View of the Situation (1898). Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland (1897) is a powerful allegory about the treatment of black Africans by the British.

Lord Selbourne (1859-1942)
Under Secretary for the Colonies from 1895 to 1900, then  First Lord of the Admiralty. He came to South Africa to succeed Lord Milner as High Commissioner in  and Governor of the Transvaal and Orange River Colony in April 1905. He is chiefly remembered for the Sebourne Memorandum (1907), which laid the foundations for the Union of South Africa.

Jan Smuts (1870-1950)
Studied law at Cambridge and fought in the Boer War.

'Henry Morton Stanley' (1841-1904)
Journalist who became famous for his mmeting with Livingstone in 1872. A second African expedition was recorded in Through the Dark Continent (1878). He helped set up the Belgian king Leopold III's colony, the Congo Free State and became notorious for the cruelty of his leadership of the Emin Pasha Relief Expedition (1887).

W.T. Stead (149-1912)
Pacifist and journalist who consistently campaigned against the war in SA, both in and in the Review of Reviews.
The W.T. Stead Resource Site

Arthur Sullivan (1842-1900)
Sullivan liked to be associated in the public mind with patriotic objects, and his setting of Rudyard Kipling's " Absent-minded Beggar" song, at the opening of the Boer War in 1899, was, with the exception of "The Rose of Persia", the last of his compositions brought out in his lifetime.

Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909)
Wrote the belligerent sonnet "The Transvaal".

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892–1973)
The author of Lord of the Rings was born in Bloemfontein in 1892, but left with his mother and younger brother for England in 1895. His father, who had stayed behind, died the following year.

Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929)
American economist and social scientist, whose most famous work, The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899) argued that the leisure class was parasitic and therefore harmful to the economy.

Queen Victoria (1819-1901)
The longest-reigning English monarch, Victoria came to the throne in 1837. She went into exclusion after the death of her husband Albert in 1861, but was drawn out of it by imperial duties well-promoted by the governments of the time, in particular her proclamation as Empress of India, in 1876, the Golden Jubilee of 1887 and the Diamond Jubilee of 1897.

Edgar Wallace (1875–1932)
Journalist during the Boer War, Wallace went on to become an English novelist and playwright, author of more than 150 detective and adventure novels, as well as writer of the scenario for King Kong (1933).

Booker T. Washington (1856-1915)
Afro-American educator and organizer  of the National Negro Business League (1900), a group committed to black economic independence. Among his many published works are The Future of the American Negro (1899) and his autobiography, Up From Slavery (1901).

William Watson (1858-1935)
One of the few anti-imperialist poets during the Boer War.

H.G. Wells (1886-1946)
Already a full-time writer and author of such classics as The Island Of Dr. Moreau (1896), The Invisible Man (1897) and The War of the Worlds (1898), Wells was at this time an increasingly dissatisfied Fabian Socialist. During the war he published The First Men On The Moon (1901), a prophetic description of space flight, echoed in the later The War In The Air (1908) describing a catastrophic aerial war. Love And Mr. Lewisham appeared in 1900. Wells also published Anticipations (1901), a critical pamphlet attacking the Victorian social order. His memories of his undergraduate days, against the backcloth of the South African War, can be read in Chapter 4 of The New Machiavelli (1911).