An eastern Cape newspaper announces the outbreak of war.
The South African War (Anglo-Boer War) of 1899–1902 remains the most terrible and destructive modern armed conflict South Africa has experienced. Its shock waves continued to be felt long after the conclusion of peace in May 1902, and it remains a powerful event in shaping the history of twentieth-century South Africa. One way to understand its significance is to view it, as some historians have done, as a conflict that was as important in the making of modern South Africa as the American Civil War was in the history of the United States. Provoked by imperial aggression, it marked the end of the long process of British conquest of South African societies, black and white.
