Imperial firefighters: Roberts, Kitchener, and the Anglo-Boer War

The closing months of 1899 saw the British Empire embroiled in a grave military crisis in South Africa. Britain had become involved in war with the Boer republics of the Transvaal and Orange Free State, whose forces invaded British territory in October and made rapid progress against a poorly prepared opposition. They besieged the garrisons of Ladysmith, Kimberley, and Mafeking, and then, in ‘Black Week’ in mid-December, inflicted three successive defeats on British troops – at the battles of Stormberg, Magersfontein, and Colenso. This was a stunning series of reverses. British troops had been caught off guard by a nation of farmers whose skills they had seriously underestimated. I