April 21, 2019
The British army built forts for protection against small-arms fire called “blockhouses” for pretty obvious reasons. This one is protecting a railway bridge against attacks by boer rebels in their one-time Cape Colony. The reasons for the exodus of many Afrikaners from the province and the establishment of the ‘Boer’ republics are pretty distasteful. But as distasteful were the British machinations to seize those republics the moment the first whiff of gold carried from the Witwatersrand to the noses of the powers in Cape Town and Durban. ...