The British Army and the Lessons of the Boer War

In January 2024, British Chief of the General Staff Gen. Sir Patrick Sanders warned that British youth were now part of a “pre-war” generation. Pointing to the threat from Russia, he drew a direct comparison to 1914 when Britain’s politicians failed to recognize the international tensions that would lead to World War I.

The parallels become even more visible when we compare the British Army of 2024 with the British Army of 1914. In 2024 the British Army stands at its smallest peacetime strength since the 1700s. Although it prides itself on its high standards of training and professionalism, it is hampered by budget constraints, failed procurement programs (most notably the disastrous Ajax armored fighting vehicle saga), problems with recruitment, and uncertainty as to its role within British defense policy. Is it to be an agile force focusing on hybrid warfare? Should it put its energies towards establishing genuine expeditionary capabilities? Or should it prepare Itself for a larger-scale conventional war against a peer opponent? Settling on a clear role has been hampered by lack of direction from the government, which has been suffering an exceptionally unstable period beginning with the Brexit referendum in 2016. Rishi Sunak is Britain’s fifth prime minister in eight years and neither he nor his predecessors have shown much interest in setting a clear policy direction.

This leaves the army to make its own decisions on how to reform and develop. This is complicated by the confusing and often contradictory lessons that it has derived from recent wars. Contrasting information from the army’s own experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan mingles with observation of other conflicts, especially the French Operation Serval in Mali, and the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian conflict. How to draw and implement the right lessons to prepare the British Army for the 2020s and beyond has proved taxing, with some commentators despairing of the ability to implement meaningful reform.

But the British Army has been here before. Consider the army’s position in 1914. Then, as now, the army was a small professional force that prided itself on its high standards of training and leadership. Yet it was also grappling with a range of problems. It was still processing the lessons of the Boer War (1899–1902), a prolonged and bitter conflict characterized by years of guerrilla warfare. At the same time, it was attempting to analyze the often contradictory information drawn from observation of the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905), with some commentators arguing that this conventional war was a better model for the future than the army’s own experiences against the Boers. In the early 1900s, Britain’s political parties were determined to keep costs low and reduced the army’s budget to a bare minimum. The situation was worsened by frequent political upheaval, including two deeply controversial elections in 1910 and growing unrest in Ireland, which made it difficult for the government to set a clear and consistent policy for the army. Meanwhile, rising wages in Britain made army life less attractive for young men, which posed problems for recruitment. There were constant complaints that the recruits of the 1900s were not as fit, strong, or determined as the men of earlier generations. Similar problems bedevil the British Army in the present era.

Those troubled by the problems of the British Army today can take inspiration from its experience between 1902 and 1914. During this period, the British Army was able to achieve something rare in its history: lasting peacetime reform of training and tactics that would serve it well in major conflicts to come.

Several key lessons emerge. Some were specific to the period, including the need for heavier artillery weapons and cavalry that could fight from horseback and dismount. Others were more enduring, such as the need for superior individual training and, most importantly, the need for officers, non-commissioned officers, and men to be trained to show greater initiative in battle. At this moment of transition, the British Army also discovered the value of providing a platform for veterans to share their experiences and insights from earlier conflicts. Western armies would do well to foster such platforms today.

The Boer Experience

The British Army suffered a bloody and bruising experience in the Boer War. The war erupted in South Africa in October 1899 when the Boer republics of Orange Free State and Transvaal, infuriated by years of British political pressure and military threats, launched a pre-emptive war to secure their independence. Most of the British press greeted this with jingoistic glee and some journalists confidently predicted that the war would be “over by Christmas.”

But the war confounded expectations. Much of this was down to the nature of the Boer military. Although the Boers lacked a standing army, they possessed an effective militia system that mustered white citizens into units based on their local district. These men had no formal training but came from a frontier culture that produced tough individuals, many of whom were skilled marksmen and experienced riders. Most Boers went to war with their own rifles and horses, and the government provided equipment and mounts if required. These rugged frontiersmen would prove hardy and highly mobile fighters. It is little surprise that Winston Churchill, a veteran of the war himself, would later choose to name Britain’s first special forces Commandos, taking the word from the Boer term for military units.

The Boer War would break down into three distinct phases. The Boers dominated the period of conventional warfare between October and December 1899, winning a string of battlefield victories over the British. Yet the very success of the Boers may have doomed their cause, for it prompted the British to redouble their commitment to the war. The second phase of the war began in February 1900 when the reinforced British were ready to strike. The Boers could do little to slow the advance of the British juggernaut. Boer forces were scattered, and the British felt confident enough to proclaim complete victory on Sept. 1, 1900.

But the war was about to enter its third phase. Starting in March, Boer units began carrying out guerrilla attacks on British rear areas, targeting the railways that were crucial for supplying the invasion forces. The success of guerrilla operations convinced many Boer commanders that the way to continue the war was by mounting a prolonged insurgency to make South Africa ungovernable. The Boers used their mobility and knowledge of the terrain to strike the British wherever they were weakest. British attempts to eliminate the Boers through large-scale sweeps of the countryside proved costly failures. Frustrated British forces turned instead to a brutal scorched earth campaign, destroying Boer farms and villages and herding the displaced civilians into concentration camps, where more than 50,000 Boer and African civilians ultimately perished.

Eventually it was military solutions that broke the back of Boer resistance. From mid-1901 the British adopted a new approach that focused on securing urban areas and restoring normalcy. British forces then slowly spread their control from town to town, creating a series of connected urban centers where civilian life was returned to normal. At the same time, British engineers constructed an enormous chain of blockhouses — small, improvised pillboxes capable of holding a garrison of six men — that protected the railway lines and the secured urban areas. In combination these methods reduced Boer mobility and access to resources, and slowly drove the guerrillas into the unforgiving South African wilderness. By May 1902 Boer resistance was exhausted and the remaining fighters finally agreed to lay down their arms.

The cost of victory had been immense. The army had suffered 120,000 casualties including 22,000 dead, making it Britain’s bloodiest conflict since the Napoleonic Wars. Aside from the human cost, the army’s reputation had been badly damaged. The press was quick to condemn its poor combat performance. Influential journalist Leo Amery delivered a particularly savage barb when he wrote that army was “largely a sham” when it came to real fighting against determined opponents. A Royal Commission was swiftly assembled to probe the reasons behind the poor performance, leading to uncomfortable questions for senior British officers.

Learning Lessons

Crucially, the army emerged from this unhappy period determined to learn from its mistakes. The mood was captured in typical fashion by Rudyard Kipling’s poem The Lesson, which opened with:

Let us admit it fairly, as a business people should,

We have had no end of a lesson: it will do us no end of good.

The difficulty lay in determining which lessons were relevant for future conflicts and which were unique to the recently ended war. This process was complicated by the fact that the British Army was a global force that had to be prepared for conflict in a variety of locations, whilst also planning to face the looming threat of a major land war in Europe.

Nevertheless, the army had several advantages as it began its reforms. The first was the sheer scale of the experience. Most of the army’s officer corps had fought in the Boer War. It was an unforgiving school where the casualty rate for junior officers was more than double that of their men. Those who survived the sniper-infested veldt had to prove themselves to senior commanders who, stung by press criticism, were intolerant of any hint of incompetence or inefficiency. More British officers were dismissed during the three years of the Boer War than in the previous 50 years combined. Individuals who suffered this fate were exiled to the town of Stellenbosch in the Western Cape. The practice was so prevalent that the phrase “to be Stellenbosched” entered the English language as a slang term for being fired.

Officers who emerged from this crucible with their reputations intact had proved themselves in action. The army now actively sought their opinions. The “lessons learned” process was informal by the standards of the 21st century, with officers sent short surveys asking for their opinion on a variety of tactical and technical questions. The results were assembled into “blue books” that included overall recommendations based on the responses. This work was supported by the burgeoning military periodical industry. Officers of all ranks were encouraged to write articles for publications and did so with enthusiasm. The readership of military periodicals grew significantly in the years after the Boer War and editors found themselves inundated with submissions. Fierce debates played out on the pages of major publications such as the Journal of the Royal United Services Institute. Officers of all ranks were encouraged to contribute, with generous prizes offered for the best essays.

A combination of lessons learned documents, internal discussion, and ongoing debate allowed several key lessons to be extracted from the experience of the Boer War. The most influential was the need for initiative. The British Army had marched to war largely wedded to Victorian principles that emphasized close control, strict and often unthinking obedience, and a cult of rank in which junior officers were not expected or encouraged to make decisions. This system had proved completely inadequate for the conditions of the Boer War. In the vast plains of South Africa young officers found that they had no-one to ask for instructions — a theme captured brilliantly in Ernest Swinton’s Defence of Duffer’s Drift — and had to solve problems on the spot.

It was noted that senior command had not fully appreciated the challenges faced by units operating in the wilderness, far from support. Young officers were often unjustly dismissed for local setbacks, which meant that the survivors preferred to play safe rather than making a decision that might get them into trouble. This was the root cause of many of the defeats and missed opportunities that plagued British counter-insurgency operations.

The army had no choice but to recognize that initiative was essential in any form of warfare, whether it was counter-insurgency in South Africa or a peer conflict in Europe. Training was soon revised to encourage officers to show initiative, with mistakes in training to be treated as learning exercises rather than an opportunity to embarrass or discipline the offender.

It was not only officers who were expected to show initiative. The army noted that non-commissioned officers had been crucial in South Africa and that the best sergeants and corporals had become local leaders who could continue an action when officers became casualties. As a result, for the first time in its history, the British Army founded a Non-Commissioned Officer School to disseminate these lessons. The school did “excellent work” but ultimately fell foul of budget cuts. The army has not had a dedicated peacetime non-commissioned officer school since — although the British Army Non-Commissioned Officer Academy, due to open in 2024, is set to address this absence.

The push to encourage individual initiative culminated with the publication of Field Service Regulations in 1909 that codified the authority of the “man on the spot” to make decisions even if this meant disobeying an order. This was a revolution in British military thought. Such doctrine would have been unthinkable before the Boer War. The doctrine endured. Updated editions of Field Service Regulations served as the army’s doctrine in World Wars I and II.

The importance of initiative became a self-reinforcing concept. Officer training encouraged creative problem-solving and the immense popularity of military journals led to the sharing of ideas. As a result, the army thought deeply about tactics and about how the experience of counter-insurgency operations would translate into a potential peer conflict. Although there were fierce debates, the army proved good at determining what was universal for modern war and what was peculiar for the Boer War. For example, several tactical concepts that had emerged from combat in the wilderness were ultimately abandoned. These included the use of so-called “sniper” artillery pieces and excessively dispersed infantry formations. Both tactics had value when fighting small groups of guerrillas in the undergrowth, but it was recognized that they were not appropriate for peer warfare.

Lessons Unlearned

Nevertheless, the army was not without its weaknesses. As well as being dogged by budget cuts and perennial problems with recruitment, the emphasis on tactical skills and individual initiative meant that larger-scale operations received comparatively little thought. Army maneuvers were characterized by notable differences in how divisions operated. Concerns were raised at the highest level about these inconsistencies but were brushed aside with a casual assumption that in the event of a major war the commander-in-chief would impose unity on his subordinates.

The lack of clear operational concepts meant that the army possessed mobilization plans but had no plan of campaign in the event of European war. Even the mobilization plan was treated as an option rather than a definitive concept. At the outbreak of World War I the British government was forced to convene an emergency meeting where Prime Minister Herbert Asquith asked his assembled experts what should be done. Ultimately a modified version of the mobilization plan was implemented, but the army went to war uncertain of its objectives and burdened by a confusing set of contradictory orders from the government.

The 1914 campaign would be bloody and desperately hard-fought. The German invasion of Belgium and France drove the British and French armies to the gates of Paris before the incredible counter-attack at the Battle of the Marne in September turned the tide. The British Army endured the longest fighting retreat in its history to that point (only exceeded by the retreat from Burma in 1942), covering over 200 miles in conditions of acute danger. Higher command was often absent, and it was testament to the training, tactics, and tenacity of the army that it was able to fight so effectively. A lesser army would not have survived such trials. It is no surprise that one veteran later recalled that Paul Kruger, the president of Transvaal who has declared war on the British in 1899, “was the best friend the British Army ever had.”

But there is also a warning here that Sanders hinted at in his recent speech. In August 1914 the British Army could deploy approximately 120,000 soldiers. By the end of the same year, it had suffered 95,000 casualties and had effectively been destroyed. Its place would be taken by the courageous but inexperienced volunteer New Army, who would endure a bloody learning curve until the Allies were finally victorious. Sanders may have had these men in mind when he noted that “regular armies start wars, citizen armies win them.”

The echoes of 1914 for the British Army of 2024 are stark. The army has emerged from a prolonged period of counter-insurgency operations and is now faced with the threat of a major land war in Europe. Its budget and numbers have been shrunk by a government that still demands global capability. It would do well to look to the example of its forebears a century ago for how it might make the most of its experience in counter-insurgency warfare. Whilst not all lessons will be relevant to a future conventional conflict, discussion creates an opportunity to synthesize useful lessons. This process in the post-Boer War era highlighted the importance of not merely encouraging initiative, but actively training to inculcate it. Whatever challenge the British Army faces in the 21st century, it will require its officers, non-commissioned officers, and men to show the same quick-thinking and problem-solving approach that their forebears did so well in 1914.

Dr Spencer Jones is senior lecturer in Armed Forces and War Studies at the University of Wolverhampton and serves as the regimental historian for the Royal Artillery. His key works include From Boer War to World War: Tactical Reform of the British Army and Stemming the Tide: Officers and Leadership in the British Expeditionary Force 1914.

Image: Photograph Q 72200 comes from the collections of the Imperial War Museums