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This article examines the British Government's decision to establish the Royal Commission on the War in South Africa and how the Edwardian press presented its findings to the public. It will discuss how the Conservative media attempted to downplay the significance of the report and how the Liberal and Radical presses attempted to use it to raise questions about the Government's ability to manage crises and, by linking the failures of military planning to new Conservative economic and education policies, challenge the competency of the Colonial Secretary and powerful Unionist leader, Joseph Chamberlain. Finally, it will show how the press, regardless of political leaning, remained supportive of the military leadership which conducted the war effort despite it playing a significant role in the faulty planning and operational failures of 1899. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Historia is the property of Historical Association of South Africa and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of South African Journal of Cultural History is the property of South African Society for Cultural History and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Australian troops travelling to South Africa in 1899 to join Britain in fighting the Boers left behind communities consumed with the conflict. The colonies that would form the Australian nation in 1901 organised parades, concerts and eagerly awaited news from the battlefield. This article analyses these cultural responses to the South African War alongside the experiences of institutionalised delusional men. It traces ways the conflict penetrated the walls of Australian asylums, and the minds of the insane within them, as well as the sane existing in society. Delusions based on the conflict appeared not only in the words of men who had travelled to South Africa, but also those who were evidently deeply affected by Australian involvement in the war, following the fervour within the societies from which they came. The resulting analysis of the words and experiences of the insane expands the historiography of the conflict in new ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of South African Journal of Cultural History is the property of South African Society for Cultural History and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of South African Journal of Cultural History is the property of South African Society for Cultural History and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This study investigates the role played by General Louis Botha in the South African War of 1899 to 1902 and assesses his military skills in his encounters with the British forces in both the set-piece battle phase in the first months of the war and the guerrilla phase in the last two years of the war. It also analyses his attitude to peace and his participation in the peace process since the successive British commanders-in-chief Lord Roberts and Lord Kitchener had in this respect both direct and indirect contact with him as commandant-general of the South African Republic (the Transvaal) in the last two years of the war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dark tourism involves tourists visiting sites of death, disaster and depravity. Well known dark tourism sites include Chernobyl in the Ukraine, the 9/11 Memorial in New York, and the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland. Battlefields of World War I and II are also excellent examples of dark tourism sites. Dark tourism has become a niche tourism sector with great potential for future tourism growth. In South Africa, the FSGLTA acting as the marketing arm of the Free State, targets to increase its tourism numbers and therefore are looking for means of growing the tourism arrivals towards the province. Dark tourism has been identified as one of their ways to grow tourism. The main objective of the paper is to reveal the niche tourism potential of the Free State by focusing on the South African War (1899–1902). The broader aim is to establish the typical profile of South African War enthusiasts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1899, the Australian colonies sent military contingents to South Africa to support the British in fighting the Boer enemy. While some questioned the justice of the conflict, the public reaction to the war was akin to a 'national insanity'. British victories in the first half of the war, particularly the relief of Mafeking in May 1900, saw noisy jingo crowds filling the streets of capital cities in celebration, resulting in public drunkenness and damage to property, behaviour typically deemed 'mad'. Colonial society, faced with increases in lunacy rates, was not only in the process of comprehending madness, but also ideas about Australian nationalism in the period approaching Federation of 1901. These factors, added to popular involvement in a British war in South Africa, shaped political, police and press responses to the new manifestation of jingoism. The press, a site of both the production and advancement of public conceptions of insanity, drew upon the social language of madness to communicate the acceptability or unacceptability of specific jingoistic behaviour. This paper examines the metaphorical use of mad vocabularies by the colonial press during this period to explore the 'arbitrary boundary' between madness and sanity in Federation era Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of South African Journal of Cultural History is the property of South African Society for Cultural History and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In this article, the spirituality and the memorialisation of the dead of the Durban Concentration Camps during the South African War (1899-1902) are analysed diachronically. As a study in micro-history, primary and secondary sources were used. Four clear memorialisation events were recognised: external British Imperial memorisation by means of obelisks that spiritually honoured Empire; Afrikaner Christian Nationalist memorisation that celebrated symbolic victory over the British Empire; rededication of the memorials in the inclusive spirit of the 'new' South Africa; and the partial abandonment of physical memorisation for remembering and honouring the dead in a virtual world. Each of these events offered its own seen and unseen forms of spirituality and understanding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Camps that interned black civilians during the South African War (1899-1902) are known as concentration camps, yet this is an inaccurate and misrepresentative picture of what actually transpired during the conflict. Rather, the concentration camps established for black civilians in South Africa late in 1900 and early 1901 were, by mid-1901, incorporated into the newly formed Native Refugee Department which fell under direct command of the British Army. At this point, the camps were mostly closed down and the internees relocated to Boer farms cleared of civilians. There, camps were established by the Native Refugee Department with a completely different function to that of the concentration camp system. These camps operated as forced labour camps in which women, children and elderly men were compelled into the labour of growing crops for the British military in exchange for food. If they refused, they were starved to death under the 'let die' policy. The Dry Harts Forced Labour Camp forms the focus of this article. A combination of sources was used to reconstruct its history: archaeological surveys, the fragmentary written archive, and through accessing local oral history and memory at the site, from 2001-2008. A narrative emerges from this research of the fight for land, the implementation of forced labour, civilian displacement, and the horror of total war, which are not, as some scholars claim, a shared experience with the Boer population at the hands of a common enemy, commensurate with mutual suffering, or even of black participation in the war. The experience of black civilians inside Dry Harts Forced Labour Camp was fundamentally different: theirs was not so-called participation but rather a separate experience of land loss, forced labour, war and displacement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of South African Journal of Cultural History is the property of South African Society for Cultural History and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of South African Journal of Cultural History is the property of South African Society for Cultural History and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The authors deal with six unpublished communications from Olive Schreiner to James Butler, Editor of the Cradock newspaper The Midland News and Karroo farmer between March 1893 and October 1905, as well as a reply from Butler to Schreiner. These documents are housed in the Cory Library for Historical Research at Rhodes University. Transcriptions by J. Fogg are appended. The heart of the article deals with Butler's refusal to publish Schreiner's "letter to the Women of Somerset East" which she had sent as a contribution to the protest meeting held in Somerset East on 12 October 1900 to mark the first anniversary of the declaration of the South African War. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tourism and tourism development have the potential to make a positive impact on a region's economic development and sustainability. In this sense, the central Karoo has a great deal to offer heritage tourists. As there are numerous battlefield sites associated with the South African War (1899–1902) (previously the Anglo-Boer War) the central Karoo offers a unique development opportunity to demarcate a designated battlefield route dedicated to the war. This study investigated the potential for the development of the proposed route by involving potential stakeholders (specifically product owners and government officials) on the route. The study was qualitative, and 33 interviews were conducted. Thematic content analysis was used to analyse the data. The main findings indicate a need for the development of the route and the establishment of a South African War Battlefields Route Destination Marketing Organisation (DMO). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The First World War is often held to be a watershed in the memorialisation of war in Britain. Through an exploration of the Royal Engineers' commemorative space at their headquarters in Chatham, this article argues that the post–1918 war memorial boom displays not only divergences from, but also continuities with, Victorian and Edwardian practices. Thus, although the mass volunteerism and conscription of 1914–1918 resulted in both the rank and file and the bereaved being drawn into the memorialisation process for the first time, memorial forms and messages, nonetheless, retained firm links with commemorative rituals of the late nineteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Australians who enlisted in the South African War were representatives of the bushman ideal popularised in the late 19th century, and were thus associated with the masculine model connected to this ideal. Most men were literal bushmen, rural labourers unemployed due to widespread drought in the decade preceding the conflict. However, this model of masculinity created difficulties for soldiers who developed psychiatric disorders during their military service, as society's feminisation of mental illness meant that it was deemed a loss of manhood. This article examines the application of the masculine bushman ideal to Australians who developed war trauma during the South African War (1899–1902), initially arguing that the conflict served as a testing ground for the larger-scale militarisation of the ideal from the First World War. It explores the role of military doctors in shaping diagnoses of combat breakdown while operating within limited psychological understanding and their attempts to avoid the demasculinisation—and thus stigmatisation—of the traumatised soldier. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over 2,000 foreign volunteers fought in the South African War of 1899–1902. They supported the 60,000-strong Boer force against a British army numbering 500,000 men. Some foreigners were integrated into the commando forces of the two Boer republics, the Zuid Afrikaansche Republiek (Transvaal) and the Orange Free State. But most fought in separate foreign corps or performed non-combat roles. Their presence signals that, instead of a distant colonial skirmish, the South African War should be understood as a modern war with an international history. This article examines the different pathways volunteers took to join the conflict. It examines the battlefield experiences of foreign volunteers during the first phase of conventional warfare and the second guerrilla phase after mid-1900. It explores how nascent international humanitarian convention and internal military doctrines influenced these experiences. Ultimately, it reveals how conflicting conceptualizations of the war, as both a national struggle and a colonial campaign, presented serious dilemmas to foreign participants that eventually drove many from the fight. Despite these effects, European military observers came to view South Africa's battlefields as the archetypal modern warzone, one in which, despite the increasing 'nationalization' of warfare, the foreign volunteer was 'the recognized adjunct of modern armies.' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The defence of West Australia Hill was a day-long encounter between 30 West Australians and 300-400 Boers during the South African War (1899-1902). An archaeological survey to test the applicability of Battlefield Patterning Analysis (PBA: as used on the Battle of Little Big Horn site, Montana, USA) was conducted to determine how the West Australians maintained tactical superiority throughout the encounter. The locations of fired cartridges, artillery artefacts and archival evidence showed that the successful all-day defence was due to good tactical positioning on West Australia Hill and fire discipline, aided by accurate British artillery. Dynamic Patterning, a component of PBA, was developed further by the use of two innovative methods of recording spent ammunition characteristics: off-centredness of firing pin indentations, and marks within firing pin indentations of the fired cartridges. The ammunition finds for both Australian and Boers soldiers demonstrated the application of BPA on 20th century battlefields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

IN PARENTHESIS is a practice-based essay which takes shape, parasitically, amidst the "found text" of an existing book, British author Thomas Pakenham's The Boer War (1979, Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball). The "author-reader" interjects into the found text of this authoritative history book, inserting her words amongst those of Pakenham's. What becomes apparent, however, is that the text into which she interjects is not The Boer War verbatim, but a dramatically abridged version. The book's primary content has been edited out. What remains is The Boer War whittled down to a litany of Pakenham's parentheses (the history book distilled into an essence of the seemingly non-essential). Into this stream of bracketed matter, the author-reader writes, ruminating on the parenthesis as ethos (as prison and portal, barricade and breach, enclave and embrace). In turn, her ruminations invite reflection on the conundrum of writing history, of writing this history (and, indeed, of writing per se). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on primary research, this article examines more than 1000 cases of surrender in the British Army during the South African War, 1899–1902. It concludes that the majority of surrenders were caused by five conditions: faulty leadership, the removal of effective leadership through injury or death, lack of necessary supplies, decisive disadvantage in terms of numbers and the use of questionable tactics by the enemy. An examination of surrender gives insight into morale, resource allocation, discipline, decision-making and military law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the genesis, scope, and significance of the 1899 Hague Convention's prohibition against pillage. It analyses how it intersected with the moral contours of pillage as revealed in the actions and attitudes of British soldiers, British commanders, and Boer civilians during the South African War. In doing so, it crosses from ideal moral theory to international law, to shared and disputed moral beliefs among participants in the South African War. Drawing from pillage in the South African War, it concludes that the motives, policing, and moral and political context of pillage are vital to understanding its historical significance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Historia is the property of Historical Association of South Africa and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Australians volunteered to fight in the South African War at a time when transnational constructions of whiteness determined policy within the British Empire and its colonies towards non-whites. However, the commencement of war in 1899 necessitated a shift in the definition of ‘other’ to justify combat against the white Boer enemy. This article analyses late nineteenth-century settler colonialism in Australia alongside the letters and diaries of Australian South African War soldiers to demonstrate the effect of both affinities with the Boers as inhabitants of a ‘white man’s country’ and conventional perceptions of blackness on their reactions to the South African ‘other’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the end of the nineteenth century, the actions of belligerents were constrained by the Hague Convention of 1899 and the Geneva Convention of 1864. The Hague Convention differentiated between combatants and non-combatants, but both the British implementation of a scorched earth policy and the Boer execution of blacks violated this convention. The Geneva Convention centred on medical immunity, which presupposes medical neutrality. The British opposed the voluntarism fundamental to the Red Cross movement and all British medical personnel in the field were subservient to the military establishment. Imperial patriotism, the shortcomings of the army and the insistent claims of military necessity subverted best medical practice, producing dilemmas that doctors had to negotiate. On the Boer side too, there was the moral complexity of doctors who were not only medical professionals but also social agents with personal commitments. This article considers the dilemmas that confronted doctors involved in the South African War in the Free State and concludes that trends in dealing with ethical challenges in this war became normative in subsequent conflicts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the relationship between sport and war in Britain during the South African War, 1899–1902. Through extensive press coverage, as well as a spate of memoirs and novels, the British public was fed a regular diet of war stories and reportage in which athletic endeavour and organized games featured prominently. This contemporary literary material sheds light on the role sport was perceived to have played in the lives and work of the military personnel deployed in South Africa. It also, however, reveals a growing unease over an amateur-military tradition which equated sporting achievement with military prowess. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article pieces together the activism of the British welfare worker and feminist-pacifist Emily Hobhouse (1860–1926) during two largely unrecorded episodes of transnational activism: firstly, her ministry of Cornish miners in Virginia, Minnesota, in the United States; and secondly, her interventions during the period of reconstruction following the South African War (1899–1902). The article endeavors to contextualize Hobhouse’s activism and offer a broader understanding of the limitations and restraints on her actions. Ultimately, her activism required a platform that was in the gift of political actors and establishment figures, and dependent on fluctuations within specific political and bureaucratic situations. Based on close inspection of undocumented material in both South African and British archives, the article investigates Hobhouse’s repertoire of missionary and philanthropic roles within a wider context of humanitarian politics. It demonstrates how women’s activism and their behind-the-scenes politicking informed political decision-making in modern imperial and international affairs. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Several cattle horns engraved with scenes inspired by the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879 are attributed to an unnamed Zulu artist from the Newcastle district of the Colony of Natal, South Africa. The pair of engraved horns illustrated and described here are attributed to a "native" artist in the Bedford district of the eastern Cape Colony, South Africa. They are decorated with scenes from the South African War (1899-1902). The Bedford horns depart from the ordered design of the nineteenth-century exemplars with their flowing pattern, and their use of colour. Whereas the work of the Artist of Newcastle involved repetitive depictions framed within small panels and often related to the formal flaunting of power, the Artist of Bedford described chaotic and organically linked scenes of interpersonal combat in a mode more akin to landscape. Working in different contexts, the two artists produced different expressions of a common artistic genre for an early craft market within a spreading cash-economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper concerns eight women's testimonies produced over a period of some 50 years, which describe a protest about meat rations at Brandfort concentration camp in November 1901, during the 1899–1902 South African War. The focus here is not the ‘event itself’, which cannot now be recovered except in its archival or documentary forms, but on the subsequent re/telling of this incident, and on the politicised, (proto-) nationalist content and tone of the Brandfort protest testimonies. While proto-nationalism is present from the earliest extant testimony, the development of this is traced over time, showing how the later testimonies evince a strongly triumphalist nationalist tone. The retrospectively inscribed testimonies of the protest are examined to show how, over time, the story of the Brandfort protest became universalised, retold well away from specificities of time and place. If nationalism depends on the creation of ‘stories that find their place’, then it was partly through the construction and repetition of what Van Heyningen has called ‘costly mythologies’ about women's concentration camp experiences that Afrikaner national unity was achieved. This also supports Bradford’s important claim that the 1899–1902 war regendered Afrikaner nationalism. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In investigating the reading practices of Boer combatants during the South African War, diaries, letters, and reminiscences were consulted. The state of literacy reveals a picture of a small number of highly literate men, a larger group of adequately literate men, a still larger group of semi-literates, and the illiterate. Reading matter included the Bible, newspapers, and books. Issues raised are: Did literacy (or illiteracy) influence military decision-making or troop morale? Were certain works making some impact on the battlefield? Was the practical experience the Boers had gained before the war more successful in planning strategy and tactics than literacy? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of South African Journal of Cultural History is the property of South African Society for Cultural History and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of South African Journal of Cultural History is the property of South African Society for Cultural History and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The recent publication of an Afrikaans novel about a young woman who was viciously raped and left for dead by two British officers has excited much attention and pertinently raises the issue of sexual relations between British soldiers and Boer women. A number of sources documenting the sexual behaviour of British soldiers towards Boer women are assessed in terms of the traditional historical methodology of empirical evidence and logical inference. On this basis, the facticity of most of these sources is accepted, while two are discounted by virtue of provenance and internal evidence. Next, two further sources that are not amenable to this methodology are interpreted using the postmodern deconstructive rejection of history as an epistemology and Alun Munslow's speculative expressionist history. However, these anti-empirical strategies are ideologically determined and therefore ethically questionable and the resultant relativity vitiates the historian's craft. On this basis, the historical status of these sources is rejected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The South African War is unambiguously associated with men. Their conflicts, politics and war-time activities are well known and dominate research trends. More recently, however, there has been a shift in focus to specifically deal with black and white women and children, exposing their lifeways during the conflict period. Telperion Shelter in western Mpumalanga Province affords us an archaeological insight into a South African War refuge camp. The site was occupied by both Boer women and children, who were imprisoned in the Balmoral and Middelburg concentration camps in 1902, and by black Africans of whom little is known. Either while living in Telperion or after the war, it appears that both groups inscribed the shelter's wall, writing their names and producing depictions of life as a refugee. Through these records it is possible to develop a historiography of Telperion's war-time use and consider the antagonistic, defiant, and rebellious nature of veld-life seen through the site's 'graffiti'. The art further functions as an identity marker and artefact of memorialisation. These testimonies are unlike those written in diary entries and provide us with an unusual narrative about the difficulties faced by the women and children who took to the veld to avoid capture by the British and to assist Boer commandos. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the South African War was a colonial war, it aroused great interest abroad as a test of international morality. Both the Boer republics were signatories to the Geneva Convention of 1864, as was Britain, but the resources of these small countries were limited, for their populations were small and, before the discovery of gold in 1884, government revenues were trifling. It was some time before they could put even the most rudimentary organization in place. In Europe, public support from pro-Boers enabled National Red Cross Societies from such countries as the Netherlands, France, Germany, Russia and Belgium to send ambulances and medical aid to the Boers. The British military spurned such aid, but the tide of public opinion and the hospitals that the aid provided laid the foundations for similar voluntary aid in the First World War. Until the fall of Pretoria in June 1900, the war had taken the conventional course of pitched battles and sieges. Although the capitals of both the Boer republics had fallen to the British by June 1900, the Boer leaders decided to continue the conflict. The Boer military system, based on locally recruited, compulsory commando service, was ideally suited to guerrilla warfare, and it was another two years before the Boers finally surrendered. During this period of conflict, about 30,000 farms were burnt and the country was reduced to a wasteland. Women and children, black and white, were installed in camps which were initially ill-conceived and badly managed, giving rise to high mortality, especially of the children. As the scandal of the camps became known, European humanitarian aid shifted to the provision of comforts for women and children. While the more formal aid organizations, initiated by men, preferred to raise funds for post-war reconstruction, charitable relief for the camps was often provided by informal women's organizations. These ranged from church groups to personal friends of the Boers, to women who wished to be associated with the work of their menfolk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of South African Journal of Cultural History is the property of South African Society for Cultural History and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This articles analyses the establishment of state forestry programs in the Orange Free State and Transvaal following the end of the South African War/Second Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902). British imperial administrators, led by Alfred Milner, sought to reconstruct the economy of the Transvaal and Orange Free State by using personnel who had worked previously in India and Egypt rather than by drawing on local experts in the Cape Colony or Natal Colony. Colonial foresters from the Cape Colony used the opportunities provided by reconstruction to export Cape-centric ideas about forest management to the Transvaal and Orange Free State. Ultimately, Milner's desire to bring in a top-rate forester from India failed, although his program of reconstruction instead brought in foresters from the Cape Colony who helped to harmonise South African forestry practices before Union in 1910. The interpretation put forward in this article helps to explain how Cape foresters exported ideas about climatic comparison and afforestation from the Cape into the rest of South Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article places remembrance in the context of the development of an English-speaking South African identity until 1939. It looks at the interconnectedness between identity and memory and traces the emergence of a group memory common to the majority of English-speakers and linking them to other members of the British diaspora, particularly in the other dominions. The way in which English-speakers commemorated and memorialised the wars in which they fought is the main focus, beginning with the Cape eastern frontier wars, the Anglo-Zulu War and the South African War. The article then concentrates on the commemoration and memorialisation of the First World War until 1939, examining the role of organisations such as the South African Legion of the British Empire Service League and the MOTHS and touching on the role of the patriotic associations, schools and churches. The emphasis is on the memorialisation of the battle of Delville Wood and the commemorations associated with Delville Wood and Armistice Days and the way in which the First World War reflected the continuing British identity of English-speakers as well as the growth of a South Africanist identity. The way in which honouring the fallen was linked to service and duty is examined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the wartime cartoons of the News of the World’s J.M.Staniforth, whose work reached substantial audiences at the time and in republications. The cartoons tell us about the cartoonist’s views and also suggest the attitudes of his readership, particularly in respect of the approach and outbreak of war; responses to British military reverses; the welfare of servicemen and their families; the controversy surrounding the ‘scorched earth’ policy. Even patriotic supporters of imperial expansion were unable to conceal their doubts and unease over both the causes of the war and the methods by which it was pursued. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Coverage of the South African War by the Toronto daily press at its outbreak in late 1899 was implicitly gendered. Placed within the context of nineteenth-century connections between manhood and war, claims of ineffective soldiering, poor shooting ability, and indecisive political action were also implicit attacks on the manhood and character of Canadian politicians at home and the Boer enemy in South Africa. Representations of soldiers, enemies, and politicians in the press also expose connections between war and gender and allow historians to question how war is sold and characterized to the nation through ideas about masculinity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The internment of Boer civilians in concentration camps by the British military authorities during the South African War of 1899–1902 was a highly controversial policy, not least because around 26,000 women and children were estimated to have died as a result of epidemics in the camps. Both supporters and opponents of the camps addressed the policy using gendered language rooted in ideas about British standards of ‘civilization’. Apologists defined the camps as one of the protective measures of the chivalrous British authorities, and downplayed the significance of the mortality rates by blaming infant deaths on the maternal shortcomings of Boer women. Opponents, however, stressed similarities between the British and Boer peoples, and invoked gendered language to attack what were held to be barbaric policies towards defenceless members of the community. At the heart of both discourses was a belief in British aspirations to embody an ideal ‘civilization’, underpinned by traditional gender ideologies. The association of this concept of ‘civilization’ with not merely cultural but racial difference led to the development of a racialized image of the enemy, rooted perhaps more strongly in perceptions of the female Boer civilian than of the male soldier. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Copyright of Historia is the property of Historical Association of South Africa and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In Belgium, France and the Netherlands, state-induced punishments were inflicted on collaborators with the German occupation. In this article, Boer collaboration with the British is explored by recounting the careers of three high-profile officers of the Winburg commando, Commandants Harry Theunissen, Fanie Vilonel and Gerrie van der Merwe. There were hundreds of ordinary men and women in the district who also collaborated, but after the war there was no Boer state to bring them to book and the Dutch Reformed Church, as the only coherent social structure to survive the war was, unsurprisingly, more inclined to reconciliation than to retribution. Within post-war Afrikaner society there were furthermore social and political pressures for not settling accounts with those who had been disloyal. Consequently, collaborators were speedily reintegrated into society and the mythology of a united and heroic struggle against British imperialism could be sustained. Today the individualistic and pragmatic way in which Boers responded to occupation helps us to see the past and therefore also the present and the future in a different light. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article contends that new cultures of military professionalism were crucial to the emergence of the concentration camp as a social phenomenon in the late 1890s and the first decade of the twentieth century. It uses an analysis of the interaction between professional military culture and the process of war-fighting to provide a better understanding of the origins of the camp. Military professionalism, despite important national differences, took instrumental rationality as a core value. This produced a willingness by soldiers to take responsibility for organizing civilian populations on a macro-social scale. In each of four case studies, clearing the population from the rural areas in a 'scorched earth' response to guerilla activity led to the development of the camps. The article argues that this approach has more explanatory adequacy than those based on theories of genocide, biopower, exceptional states, racial ideology, or rational choice. The paper suggests that a major way in which the camps of 1896-1907 were linked to mid 20th century camps was through a global diffusion of the concept, via new forms of print media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Charles Van Onselen's Masked Raiders is reviewed comparatively to suggest that Irish identities are always contested; that during early capitalist competition, like that in the Old Transvaal before Union, amateur 'primitive rebels' or 'outlaw heroes' cannot match harder professional accumulators, like Cecil John Rhodes; that murder is not heroic; that subaltern history is inevitably about subalterns, who cannot rationally be promoted to 'lead the parade'; and that Rhodes and his ilk made a major contribution to the long run project, begun in the 17th century, which culminated in English's dominating the world by the 21st century; whereas the primitive bandits in question, whether hanged, shot dead, jailed or escaped, were largely irrelevant to history, despite the fascination with which humans approach the murderous criminal mind. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As practitioners of the imperial sport of the Victorian age, cricketers rallied whenever war descended upon England and its colonies. The South African War of 1899-1902 was no different. Adding to existing work on cricket's imperial development within South Africa, this study marks a significant contribution to research on the link between masculinity, war and sport during the Victorian era. A concept emerging from the English public schools of the mid- to late nineteenth century, the masculine ethos of sport and military honour had reached colonial South Africa by the outbreak of war in 1899. In its analysis of cricket and masculinity, this essay examines the events surrounding the war in South Africa and provides an example of the distinct relationship that existed between the military and the masculinity of sport and its organisation during this era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In September 1899 an association football team from Bloemfontein in the Orange Free State, South Africa, arrived in the United Kingdom. The team comprised 16 black South Africans who played under the auspices of the whites-only Orange Free State Football Association and was the first ever South African football team to tour abroad. In a four-month tour the team played 49 matches against opposition in England, France, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. A small but growing body of work focuses on black sport and football in particular and the 1899 tour is referred to in passing in a few publications, although none have attempted to uncover details of the team or the matches that were played in Europe. This article attempts to do this by drawing on a range of sources in South Africa and the United Kingdom and argues the case for the significance of this team for football history in general and South African sports history in particular. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This essay discusses the role of horses in war through the lens of their mortality in the South African War (1899-1902). This conflict was the biggest and most modern of the numerous precolonial and colonial wars that raged across the southern African subcontinent in the late nineteenth century. Aside from the human cost, the theater of war carried a heavy environmental toll, with the scorched-earth policy shattering the rural economy. The environmental charge extended to animals. Both sides relied on mounted troops, and the casualties suffered by these animals were on a massive scale. This is widely regarded as proportionally the most devastating waste of horseflesh in military history up until that time. This paper looks at the material context of-and reasons for-equine casualties and discusses the cultural dimension of equine mortality and how combatants on both sides were affected by this intimate loss. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]