Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Sarah LeFanu
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Boer War ◽  
Public Figures ◽  
Personal Histories

The introduction provides a contextualizing synopsis of the involvement of the three protagonists, Kipling, Kingsley and Conan Doyle, in the Anglo-Boer War, and flags up the experiences that they would share – fatal in the case of Kingsley – of the typhoid that would account for over half of British fatalities. It places the war within the historical context of Queen Victoria’s long reign and the growth of the British Empire. It suggests that the motives of all three protagonists were mixed: that while they were all public figures in Britain, their personal histories nonetheless made them see themselves as social outsiders. It introduces the idea that all three had personal reasons for leaving England, as well as being drawn towards the war in South Africa by more abstract notions of duty, patriotism or imperialism.

Humanitarianism, Human Rights and Biopolitics in the British Empire, 1890–1902

2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 96-115 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Clark
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Concentration Camps ◽  
Boer War ◽  
Personal Rights

The 1890s were a key time for debates about imperial humanitarianism and human rights in India and South Africa. This article first argues that claims of humanitarianism can be understood as biopolitics when they involved the management and disciplining of populations. This article examines the historiography that analyses British efforts to contain the Bombay plague in 1897 and the Boer War concentration camps as forms of discipline extending control over colonized subjects. Secondly, human rights language could be used to oppose biopolitical management. While scholars have criticized liberal human rights language for its universalism, this article argues that nineteenth-century liberals did not believe that rights were universal; they had to be earned. It was radical activists who drew on notions of universal rights to oppose imperial intervention and criticize the camps in India and South Africa. These activists included two groups: the Personal Rights Association and the Humanitarian League; and the individuals Josephine Butler, Sol Plaatje, Narayan Meghaji Lokhande, and Bal Gandadhar Tilak. However, these critics also debated amongst themselves how far human rights should extend.

South Africa and the International Community

1966 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 297-313 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Dale
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
South African ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Nobel Laureate ◽  
Western World ◽  
Founding Father ◽  
Boer War ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of

Ever since the discovery there of gold and diamonds in the last half of the nineteenth century, South Africa has engaged the rapt attention of the Western world. The saga of the Anglo-Boer War of 1899–1902, perhaps the last of the “gentlemen's wars,” and now the refurbished accounts of the gallant defense of Rorke's Drift in the AngloZulu War of 1879 have been fascinating material for both novelists and film scriptwriters. In addition, the history of South Africa is replete with titanic figures who rank with, or perhaps even above, those from the rest of the continent: the aggressive architect of empire, Cecil J. Rhodes; the redoubtable Zulu warrior, Chaka; the dour, stern-willed President of the South African Republic, “Oom” (Uncle) Paul Kruger; the world-renowned statesman and philosopher, Field Marshal Jan C. Smuts; the founding father of Indian independence, Mohandas K. Gandhi; the compassionate and courageous writer, Alan S. Paton; and the dignified, modest Zulu Nobel Laureate, Albert J. Luthuli. By any standard, South Africa and its leaders of all races have made far-reaching and impressive contributions to the continent, the British Empire, and the world at large.

Women and Imperialism: The Colonial Office and Female Emigration to South Africa, 1901-1910

1981 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 131-149 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian L. Blakeley
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Preliminary Report ◽  
Single Women ◽  
The Other ◽  
Boer War ◽  
Limited Success ◽  
National Mood ◽  
Colonial Office

The emigration of women to South Africa and the other parts of the empire had been periodically promoted throughout the nineteenth century, but it was that great imperial crisis known as the Boer War which gave such emigration an immediate political and patriotic importance. The emigration of women, especially single women, was increasingly viewed not only as a means of assisting unfortunate, superfluous individuals but as a way of strengthening the empire—a matter of imperial urgency. By 1901 the issue of female emigration had become a part, and some argued the most important part, of the larger question of how to secure the South African colonies to the British Empire in more than name. An organized program for sending single women to South Africa was therefore jointly developed by the Colonial Office and the emigration societies which had long been interested in this work. This alliance between the hard-nosed bureaucrats of Downing Street and the amateurish gentlewomen who ran such organizations as the British Women's Emigration Association seldom, as events proved, operated smoothly, contributing in part to its limited success. This attempt to stimulate the settlement of women in South Africa is important, however, in illustrating the national mood in the aftermath of the victory in South Africa, the increased involvements of women in imperial affairs, and the difficulties facing the advocates of female emigration.The origins of Joseph Chamberlain's, and hence the Colonial Office's, interest in female emigration is difficult to pinpoint. The preliminary report of 1900 of the Lands Settlement Commission chaired by H.O. Arnold-Forster drew the attention of the office to the demographic weakness of the British position in South Africa.

Barbed-Wire Imperialism

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aidan Forth
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Public Works ◽  
Concentration Camps ◽  
Refugee Camps ◽  
Boer War ◽  
Cultural Discourses ◽  
Military Violence ◽  
Epidemic Diseases

Some of the world’s first refugee camps and concentration camps appeared in the British Empire in the late 19th century. Famine camps detained emaciated refugees and billeted relief applicants on public works projects; plague camps segregated populations suspected of harboring disease and accommodated those evacuated from unsanitary locales; concentration camps during the Anglo-Boer War, meanwhile, adapted a technology of colonial welfare in the context of war. Wartime camps in South Africa were simultaneously instruments of military violence and humanitarian care. While providing food and shelter to destitute refugees and disciplining and reforming a population cast as uncivilized and unhygienic, British officials in South Africa applied a developing set of imperial attitudes and approaches that also governed the development of plague and famine camps in India. More than the outcomes of military counterinsurgency, Boer War camps were registers of cultural discourses about civilization, class, gender, racial purity and sanitary pollution. Although British spokesmen regarded camps as hygienic enclaves, epidemic diseases decimated inmate populations creating a damaging political scandal. In order to curb mortality and introduce order, the British government mobilized a wide variety of disciplinary and sanitary lessons assembled at Indian plague and famine camps and at other kindred institutions like metropolitan workhouses. Authorities imported officials from India with experience managing plague and famine camps to systematize and rationalize South Africa’s wartime concentration camps. Ultimately, improvements to inmates’ health and well-being served to legitimize camps as technologies of liberal empire and biopolitical security.

The role of Constitutional Courts in Transitional Justice: Colombia and South Africa

2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (15) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nadiehezka Paola Palencia Tejedor
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Structural Analysis ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Constitutional Courts ◽  
Political Background ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
Peace And Reconciliation

This work focuses on a compared analysis of the South Afri- can decision related to the “peace and reconciliation act” of this country’s Parliament, and the Colombian decision regarding the amendment of the constitution called “The juridical framework for the peace.” Turning to the structure, it is developed in three major topics: 1. It provides a brief of the historical context, political background and an overview of the two decisions.2. It gives a structural analysis of the powers that each Court has and the nature of the constitutional mechanism through which both Courts decided the constitutionality of the said norms 3. It presents a critical analysis on the similarities and differences between the two systems and judgments. It presents some con- clusions. 

The Foreign Policy Mechanism of the Union Of South Africa and the Development of its Diplomatic Relations (1910–1948)

2020 ◽  
pp. 74-86
Author(s):  
Alexandra Arkhangelskaya
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
The Political ◽  
Diplomatic Relations ◽  
Economic Evolution ◽  
Local Elite ◽  
History Of

The history of the formation of South Africa as a single state is closely intertwined with events of international scale, which have accordingly influenced the definition and development of the main characteristics of the foreign policy of the emerging state. The Anglo-Boer wars and a number of other political and economic events led to the creation of the Union of South Africa under the protectorate of the British Empire in 1910. The political and economic evolution of the Union of South Africa has some specific features arising from specific historical conditions. The colonization of South Africa took place primarily due to the relocation of Dutch and English people who were mainly engaged in business activities (trade, mining, agriculture, etc.). Connected by many economic and financial threads with the elite of the countries from which the settlers left, the local elite began to develop production in the region at an accelerated pace. South Africa’s favorable climate and natural resources have made it a hub for foreign and local capital throughout the African continent. The geostrategic position is of particular importance for foreign policy in South Africa, which in many ways predetermined a great interest and was one of the fundamental factors of international involvement in the development of the region. The role of Jan Smuts, who served as Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa from 1919 to 1924 and from 1939 to 1948, was particularly prominent in the implementation of the foreign and domestic policy of the Union of South Africa in the focus period of this study. The main purpose of this article is to study the process of forming the mechanisms of the foreign policy of the Union of South Africa and the development of its diplomatic network in the period from 1910 to 1948.

The Imperial Army Project

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas E. Delaney
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Archival Research ◽  
Military Cooperation ◽  
High Point ◽  
The Military ◽  
Second World

How did British authorities manage to secure the commitment of large dominion and Indian armies that could plan, fight, shoot, communicate, and sustain themselves, in concert with the British Army and with each other, during the era of the two world wars? This is the primary line of inquiry for this study, which begs a couple of supporting questions. What did the British want from the dominion and Indian armies and how did they go about trying to get it? How successful were they in the end? Answering these questions requires a long-term perspective—one that begins with efforts to fix the armies of the British Empire in the aftermath of their desultory performance in South Africa (1899–1903) and follows through to the high point of imperial military cooperation during the Second World War. Based on multi-archival research conducted in six different countries on four continents, Douglas E. Delaney argues that the military compatibility of the British Empire armies was the product of a deliberate and enduring imperial army project, one that aimed at ‘Lego-piecing’ the armies of the empire, while, at the same time, accommodating the burgeoning autonomy of the dominions and even India. At its core, this book is really about how a military coalition worked.

W. T. Stead

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stewart J. Brown
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Religious Faith ◽  
Social Reformer ◽  
Child Prostitution ◽  
South African War ◽  
Public Figures ◽  
Participatory Journalism ◽  
Newspaper Editor ◽  
English Speaking

W. T. Stead (1849–1912), newspaper editor, author, social reformer, advocate for women’s rights, peace campaigner, spiritualist, was one of the best-known public figures in late Victorian and Edwardian Britain. This a religious biography of Stead, giving particular attention to Stead’s conception of journalism, in an age of growing mass literacy, as a means to communicate religious truth and morality, and his view of the editor’s desk as a modern pulpit from which the editor could preach to a congregation of tens of thousands. The book explores how his Nonconformist Conscience and sense of divine calling infused his newspaper crusades, most famously his ‘Maiden Tribute’ campaign against child prostitution, and it considers his efforts, through forms of participatory journalism, to create a ‘union of all who love in the service of all who suffer’ and a ‘Civic Church’. The book considers his growing interest in spiritualism and the occult as he searched for the evidence of an afterlife that might draw people of an increasingly secular age back to faith. It discusses his imperialism and his belief in the English-speaking peoples of the British Empire and American Republic as God’s new chosen people for the spread of civilization, and it considers how his growing understanding of other faiths and cultures, but more especially his moral revulsion over the South African War of 1899–1902, brought him to question those beliefs. Finally, it assesses the influence of religious faith on his campaigns for world peace and the arbitration of international disputes.

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