The South African War reappraised

Donal Lowry

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9780719052583
• eBook ISBN:
  9781526121523
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: African History
• Index: History

The neo-classical troopers' memorial of New Zealand, together with others around the former British Empire, illustrates the manner in which the South African War became a major imperial. This book explores how South Africa is negotiating its past in and through various modes of performance in contemporary theatre, public events and memorial spaces. Opinion on the war was as divided among white Afrikaners, Africans, 'Coloureds' and English-speaking white South Africans as these communities were from each other. The book analyses the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) as a live event and as an archive asking throughout how the TRC has affected the definition of identity and memory in contemporary South Africa, including disavowed memories. It surveys a century of controversy surrounding the origins of the war and in particular the argument that gold shaped British policy towards the Transvaal in the drift towards war. The remarkable South African career of Flora Shaw, the first woman to gain a professional position on The Times, is portrayed in the book. The book also examines the expensive operation mounted by The Times in order to cover the war. While acknowledging the need not to overstress the role of personality, the book echoes J. A. S. Grenville in describing the combination of Milner and Chamberlain as a 'fateful partnership'. Current renegotiations of popular repertoires, particularly songs and dances related to the struggle, revivals of classic European and South African protest plays, new history plays and specific racial and ethnic histories and identities, are analysed.

Table of contents

• Front matter
• Contents
• General editor's introduction
• Notes on contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: not just a ‘teatime war’: Donal Lowry
• A century of controversy over origins: Iain R. Smith
• Journalism as active politics: Flora Shaw, The Times and South Africa
• The Times at war, 1899–1902
• ‘Intermediate’ imperialism and the test of Empire: Milner’s ‘excentric’ High Commission in South Africa
• Boer attitudes to Africans in wartime
• The Cape Afrikaners and the British Empire from the Jameson Raid to the South African War
• African attitudes to Britain and the Empire before and after the South African War
• ‘Hamlet with the Prince of Denmark left out’?: the South African War, Empire and India
• Pricking the ‘non-conformist conscience’: religion against the South African War
• Kruger’s farmers, Strathcona’s Horse, Sir George Clarke’s camels and the Kaiser’s battleships: the impact of the South African War on imperial defence
• ‘The Boers were the beginning of the end’?: the wider impact of the South African War
• Index