Second Boer War

October 11, 1899

Paul Kruger's Transvaal issued an ultimatum; the British ignored it; war began that evening. What London expected to be a short campaign became a three-year slog involving 450,000 imperial troops, Boer commandos, concentration camps, and a quarter-million dead. British imperial confidence did not quite survive it. Emily Hobhouse's reports on concentration camp conditions shocked liberal opinion and foreshadowed the humanitarian interventionism of the next century.