MILITARY UNITS AGAINST THE BOER REPUBLICS



The main cause of the Anglo Boer War was Britains desire to remain the historical centre of the World finance and banking. For this, Britain needed gold and the obvious source of this metal was Transvaal. With Britain already having a foothold with its occupation of the Cape Colony in 1795 and again in 1806 and also with its occupation of Natal, it had a base to land its troops. With Britain also "ruling the waves" the British fleet effectively isolated the two republics from receiving outside war-material and troops from sympathetic countries through available ports. During the course of the war various British troops were landed in Durban and the Cape. Many of the below mentioned regiments still exist while other have been disbanded or were amalgamated with others. Already many of these mother-regiments have indicated that they would probably come to South Africa to revisit the sites where their forefathers were engaged in battle.

FOREIGN AID TO BRITISH FORCES

The British Army was aided by units from Canada, Australia and New Zealand. A list ofall the units participating on the side of the British is included here below in order to showthe magnitude of forces needed to gain a military upperhand over the two republican forces.

FOREIGN AID TO BOER FORCES

Due to the diplomatic stranglehold Britain had over the European governments, no othergovernment actively supported the Boer cause. There were, however, individuals from severalcountries who volunteered and formed Foreign Volunteer Units, These were usually rather smalland included the following:

Various Ambulances aided the Boers and these are two DutchAmbulances, a RussianBelgium Ambulance and a German Ambulance.

British Units