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The First World War (1914-18) saw the role of sport in British military and civil society closely dissected and widely discussed. Popular journalism, memoirs, novels, and poetry provided the British public with a regular diet of war stories and reportage in which athletic endeavor and organized games featured prominently. A study of this contemporary literary material sheds light on how far the image of the sporting warrior, and the association between games and combat, survived the horrors of industrialized killing between 1914 and 1918. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay explores the impact of late Victorian cultural assumptions on the conduct of the South African War of 1899-1902, both at home and on the battlefield. It contends that three cultural values, intrinsic to late Victorian culture--cosmopolitanism, political egalitarianism, and race--shaped British soldiers' sense of justice at the outset of the war and, as a result, influenced their actions on and off the battlefield. This article emphasizes that the numerous "small wars" fought by British armies in the late nineteenth century, of which the South African War was the largest, were each unique and worthy of study not just as political history but as cultural military history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The historical significance of the Second Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902) has traditionally suffered from the conflict's chronological proximity to the Great War. Compared to the industrial slaughter of 1914-1918, the military extremism employed in the South African conflict has gone largely unanalyzed. A close examination of British military policies during the Second Boer War shows that the resort to escalatory violence sprang from frustration at the elusiveness of decisive battle, deemed vital to shore up Britain's position as the world's sole superpower, and was sanctioned by a Western tradition of unrestricted violence towards peoples like the Boers who pursued unconventional battlefield strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Among the important British Army reforms following the Boer War (1899-1902) was the introduction of a longer-range rifle for the cavalry instead of a carbine, and a tactical doctrine including dismounted fire. It remains the view of most historians that the cavalry learned dismounted tactics from their Boer opponents, and that postwar reform of the cavalry was imposed from outside. Senior cavalry officers of the period are viewed as reactionary, and their performance in the First World War judged accordingly. This view is based on a partisan interpretation of the Boer War and the cavalry's role in it, fostered by its contemporary institutional critics. In fact, a cavalry reform movement was introducing dismounted tactics before the Boer War, both sides in the war used mounted and dismounted tactics, and the cavalry's problems were largely those of supply and not of their own making. This has much wider implications for the assessment of British military doctrines up to the end of the First World War. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In mid-December 1899, the British army suffered three consecutive defeats in the opening phase of the Second Anglo-Boer War in South Africa. The government responded to the events of "Black Week" by calling for able-bodied men willing to abandon their homes and families and risk their lives to serve their country. Although some men who answered the call joined the regular army, most who traveled overseas opted for a shorter term of enlistment in the Volunteers, Militia, and Imperial Yeomanry. This article examines the extent to which patriotism informed the decision-making process of these recruits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reviews several literature about the Anglo-Boer War from 1899 through 1902 in South Africa. 'The Last of the Gentleman's Wars,' by J.F.C. Fuller; 'Gender, Race, and the Writing of Empire,' by Paula Krebs; 'The Lady Who Fought,' by Sarah Raal.