First Boer War

First Anglo-Boer War
Part of the Boer Wars
Majuba Hill seen from Laing's Nek
Date 20 December 1880 – 23 March 1881 (3 months and 3 days) Location Transvaal Colony Result Boer victory Pretoria Convention British recognition of South African Republic and Orange Free State
Belligerents
South African Republic Supported by:  Orange Free State	United Kingdom/British Empire Natal Colony  Transvaal Colony
Commanders and leaders
Piet Joubert Nicolaas J. Smit J.D. Weilbach Frans Joubert Piet Cronjé	George Pomeroy Colley  † Philip Anstruther  † W. Bellairs
Strength
3,000 (about 7,000 in total)	1,200 Natal Field Force (1,700 in Transvaal)
Casualties and losses
41 killed 47 wounded	408 killed 315 wounded

 United Kingdom/British Empire

The First Boer War (Afrikaans: Eerste Vryheidsoorlog, literally "First Freedom War"), also known as the First Anglo-Boer War, the Transvaal War or the Transvaal Rebellion, was a war fought from 16 December 1880 until 23 March 1881 between Great Britain and the South African Republic (also known as Transvaal Republic; not to be confused with the modern-day Republic of South Africa). The war resulted in defeat for the British and the second independence of the South African Republic.

The southern part of the African continent was dominated in the 19th century by a set of epic struggles to create within it a single unified state. British expansion into southern Africa was fueled by three prime factors: first, the desire to control the trade routes to India that passed around the Cape; second, the discovery in 1868 of huge mineral deposits of diamonds around Kimberley on the joint borders of the South African Republic (called the Transvaal by the British), the Orange Free State and the Cape Colony, and thereafter in 1886 in the Transvaal of a gold rush; and thirdly the race against other European colonial powers, as part of a general colonial expansion in Africa.

Other potential colonisers included the Portuguese Empire, which already controlled Portuguese Angola (modern day Angola) in West Africa and Portuguese Mozambique (modern day Mozambique) in East Africa, the German Empire, which controlled the area in Southern Africa which in 1884 would become German South West Africa (modern day Namibia), and further north, the Kingdom of Belgium, which controlled an area in Central Africa which in 1885 would become the Congo Free State (modern day Democratic Republic of the Congo), and the French Third Republic, which was in the process of conquering the Merina Kingdom (modern day Madagascar) and which was pursuing the areas which in 1895 and in 1910 would become French West Africa and French Equatorial Africa respectively.

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