Bushmen's Contingents

The military history of Australia during the Boer War is complex, and includes a period of history in which the six formerly autonomous British Australian colonies federated to become the Commonwealth of Australia. At the outbreak of the Second Boer War, each of these separate colonies maintained their own, independent military forces, but by the cessation of hostilities, these six armies had come under a centralised command to form the Australian Army.

Towards the end of the nineteenth century, an escalating conflict between the British Empire and the Boer republics of southern Africa, led to the outbreak of the Second Boer War, which lasted from 11 October 1899, until 31 May 1902. In a show of support for the empire, the governments of the self-governing British colonies of Canada, New Zealand, Natal, Cape Colony and the six Australian colonies all offered men to participate in the conflict. The Australian contingents, numbering over 16,000 men, were the largest contribution from the Empire, and a further 7,000 Australian men served with other colonial or irregular units. At least 60 Australian women also served in the conflict as nurses.

Great Britain first gained control of the southern tip of Africa during the Napoleonic Wars. The Dutch East India Company built the first Cape settlement in 1652, bringing southern Africa into the Dutch Empire. In 1795 revolutionary France invaded and occupied the Dutch Republic, and established a puppet allied-state there, known as the Batavian Republic. All the former colonies of the Dutch Republic came under the control of the Batavian Republic, who were allied to France, Britain’s enemy in the French Revolutionary Wars.

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