The Queen’s and King’s South Africa medals

The Second Boer War of 1899–1902 — the South African War — drew soldiers from across the British Empire to the Transvaal and the Free State. Two campaign medals recorded their service: the Queen’s South Africa Medal and the King’s South Africa Medal. Because so many were named to the recipient and clasped to their specific battles, they remain a collector’s field where a single medal can be traced to one man and one campaign.

The Queen’s South Africa Medal

The QSA was instituted by Queen Victoria in 1900 for British, Indian and Colonial military personnel — and civilians in official capacity — who served in South Africa between 11 October 1899 and 31 May 1902. Colonial contingents from Australia, Canada, New Zealand, India and South Africa all qualified, and roughly 178,000 were awarded. It was struck mainly in silver, with bronze examples (without clasps) to certain Indian and non-enlisted recipients, and hangs from a ribbon with a broad central orange stripe flanked by dark blue and scarlet. Hard-won against a skilled guerrilla enemy, it is the medal that defines the war for the Imperial side.

The ghost dates

Here is the QSA’s most famous quirk. The war was expected to be over quickly, so the first medals were struck with the dates “1899” and “1900” in relief on the reverse. Only about fifty of these dated medals were issued — chiefly to Canada’s Lord Strathcona’s Horse — before it became obvious the war would drag on. The dates were then machined off the dies and the remaining medals, leaving a faint impression collectors call the “ghost dates”; later medals were struck cleanly without them. The original raised-date QSA is one of the great rarities of the series, and the ghost-date version a prized intermediate — a printing accident turned into a collecting hierarchy.

Reading the clasps

Twenty-six clasps were authorised for the QSA, and they are read from the suspender upward. They divide into battle clasps (Tugela Heights, Relief of Ladysmith, Paardeberg, Diamond Hill and the rest) and state clasps (Cape Colony, Natal, Orange Free State, Transvaal). The rules are strict and tell a story: a recipient could not hold both a state clasp and a battle clasp for an action within that same state, and could not hold both the “Defence” and “Relief” clasps for Mafeking, Kimberley or Ladysmith. So the exact run of clasps on a medal pins down precisely where its man was — and where he was not.

The King’s South Africa Medal

Victoria died in January 1901, and the later phase of the war was recorded under her successor. The KSA was instituted by King Edward VII in 1902, its obverse bearing his effigy and the legend EDWARDVS VII REX IMPERATOR, its reverse the same as the dateless QSA. Its eligibility was deliberately narrow: a recipient had to be in the theatre on or after 1 January 1902 and to have completed 18 months’ service before 1 June 1902. It was authorised under Army Order 232 of October 1902 and was issued with two fixed clasps — “South Africa 1901” and “South Africa 1902” — though nurses’ medals came without clasps. Its ribbon is three equal stripes of green, white and orange.

Why the KSA is the scarcer half

The crucial rule is this: the KSA could never be awarded on its own. It was always a second medal, granted only to a man who already held the Queen’s — never instead of it. And because the 18-month qualification meant a soldier had to have served continuously from around December 1900 to reach the threshold before the war ended, relatively few men qualified. The majority of participants received the QSA alone. That is what makes the matched QSA-and-KSA pair the desirable object: it marks a soldier who was there for the long war, start to finish. Those who earned the 1901 and 1902 clasps but fell short of the KSA received those clasps on their QSA instead.

The other side — the Boer awards

The QSA and KSA were Imperial medals; the men of the two Boer republics were recognised separately, and only long afterwards. In 1920 the South African authorities instituted retrospective awards for Boer veterans — the Anglo-Boere Oorlog medal (about 13,800 awarded) for those who fought, and the Lint voor Wonden, a wound riband (about 1,060) for those wounded in action. For a South African collection, the two sides of the same war can sit in the same cabinet — the Imperial campaign medals and the republics’ own belated recognition of the commando who opposed them.

Collecting them

What sets these medals apart is that most are named — impressed or engraved with the recipient’s number, rank, name and unit around the rim — so a medal can be researched back to a real soldier and, often, to surviving service records. Value turns on the recipient and the unit, the exact clasp combination, the rarity of the issue (a raised-date or ghost-date QSA above all), and condition and the integrity of the naming. A correctly named QSA-and-KSA pair to a traceable man is worth far more than the sum of two anonymous discs. (This is background for collecting, not investment advice; for valuable named groups, expert verification of the naming is essential.)