Slightly alternative Boer War

[Sea Skimmer]

So, what do people think happens if the Boers sent flying columns to rampage as deep as possible into the Cape Colony instead of becoming bogged down in multiple siege operations for which they were ill equipped? Its been a long time since I read books on the war but I recall that certain Boer leaders wanted to do exactly this on the western front, aware that time would be against them in a war. For bonus changes, lets say the Boers didn't spend a small fortune building forts around Pretoria and bought even more modern machine guns, equipment and horses instead to help facilitate this sort of plan.

[Spoonist]

More concentration camps. More atrocities versus civilian boer population.

Where would they buy the machine guns etc? Wasn't one issue that they had problem getting stuff imported due to the brits controlling the seas?

[Simon_Jester]

I think he's talking about the prewar period in terms of weapon shipments- the conscious choice to rely on soldiers rather than forts to protect the capital, when money was available and arms could legally be purchased and shipped to the Boer republics.

[Sea Skimmer]

Prewar is what I meant. Also I forget details exactly, but the Boers basically had an idiot in charge of buying guns, and in the 1890s managed to buy a large stock of several tens of thousands of brand new single shot rifles which were obsolete even when they were ordered, and were then hastily replaced with magazine fed Mausers. That wasted a huge amount of money in its own right that easily could have been put to better use. What happens if every Boer company has two machine guns? The Boers were already pretty forward thinking on automatic weapons, but they primarily bought 1pdr pom poms which were effective at long ranges but much more clumsy.