The Anglo-Boer War (also known as the South African War or Boer War) was fought by the two Boer Republics (the Orange Free State and the South African Republic) against the British Empire, from October 1899 until May 1902. When the war broke out, South Africa was, as far as large-scale mapping was concerned, still unmapped. Prior to the war, the War Office dispatched officers to Natal and the Cape Colony to do reconnaissance mapping, and during the war, two survey and three mapping sections were sent to South Africa to provide the need for reliable maps.

The military surveyors who served in the British Army as Royal Engineers, and the non-commissioned officers making up the mapping sections, worked closely with the existing Offices of the Surveyors-General to produce two types of maps: one from existing sources, called a compilation map, and the other a conventional topographic map based on a topographic survey.
The local survey departments acquired valuable expertise in surveying and mapping during these exercises and the maps thus produced would be the only maps of large parts of the country for many years. With the cessation of hostilities, Britain realized that if it wanted to sustain its imperial influence in Southern Africa, it would have to make provision for the topographic mapping of the colonies. As a result, survey sections were dispatched to South Africa to undertake accurate topographic mapping in the Orange River Colony, the southern Transvaal and the north-western Cape Colony.

IDWO 1367
The first map produced as a result of these endeavors was IDWO 1367, Transvaal and the Orange Free State, at a scale of 1:250,000 (1 inch per 3.94 miles). This series consisted of 28 black-and-white sheets and was compiled from existing maps, information contained in reports and reconnaissance sketches of officers who had been sent to South Africa six months before the war, plans supplied by local surveyors, and the oral accounts of transport riders and commercial travelers. The maps were naturally not very accurate, and it is questionable whether they were ever used for strategic purposes.

They were, however, the only maps available when the British Army started its advance on Pretoria from Cape Town in January 1900 and they did show the drifts over the rivers, the roads, some important placenames and the most important watering places. The relief features were merely sketched in.
Charles Close, looking back on that period, called them "... rough, inaccurate and clumsy," and Major SCN Grant, who supervised their production at the War Office and became Director-General of the Ordnance Survey in 1908, referred to them as follows after the war: "... if you have no money to make a survey, what are you to do? It is either that or have no maps at all. We had all the existing material in our possession, and we compiled it as best we could."

The maps were on a scale of 1:250,000 and 45 x 58 cm.

The full set of the Intelligence Division, War Office N° 1367 are:
Bethulie revised February 3, 1900
Bloemfontein
Bloemhof
Boshof
Ermelo 1900
Harrismith
Heidelberg
Hopetown
Kimberley
Komatipoort  1900
Kroonstad revised March 20, 1900
Ladybrand
Ladysmith revised 1900
Lichtenburg revised March 2, 1900
Lydenburg
Mafeking
Nylstroom
Philipstown
Pietermaritzburg
Potchefstroom
Pretoria Reised March 27, 1900
Rouxville Rustenburg
Taungs
Vrede
Vryburg
Wakkerstroom
Winburg. Revised March 7, 1900