Arthur Conan Doyle

2020 ◽  
pp. 281-304
Author(s):  
Sarah LeFanu
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Later Life ◽  
Preventive Health ◽  
Military Reform ◽  
Health Measures ◽  
South African War ◽  
Arthur Conan Doyle ◽  
Congo Reform Association

This chapter traces the experience of the South African War on the later life and work of Arthur Conan Doyle, charting his agitation for military reform and for preventive health measures, especially for typhoid inoculation to be mandatory in the armed forces. It shows him defending the behavior and actions of the British troops in South Africa, and follows his involvement in various causes: the miscarriage of justice in the Edalji case; the Congo Reform Association, for which he wrote The Crime of the Congo; and his increasing proselytizing for spiritualism, in which he was encouraged by his second wife. This chapter argues that Doyle’s real achievements, as well as what he hoped to be remembered for, are overshadowed by the extraordinary vitality and adaptability of his fictional creation Sherlock Holmes.

scholarly journals ‘We are having a very enjoyable game’: Britain, sport and the South African War, 1899–1902

2017 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 4-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Donaldson
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Military Personnel ◽  
Press Coverage ◽  
The South ◽  
South African War ◽  
The Military ◽  
War Stories ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Military Tradition

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.

scholarly journals Putting it into Practice: Using Feminist Fractured Foundationalism in Researching Children in the Concentration Camps of the South African War

2006 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 14-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liz Stanley ◽  
Sue Wise
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Writing Process ◽  
Concentration Camps ◽  
The South ◽  
Research Project ◽  
Joint Research ◽  
South African War ◽  
Joint Research Project ◽  
Official Records

Feminist fractured foundationalism has been developed over a series of collaborative writings as a combined epistemology and methodology, although it has mainly been discussed in epistemological terms. It was operationalised as a methodology in a joint research project in South Africa concerned with investigating two important ways that the experiences of children in the South African War 1899-1902, in particular in the concentration camps established during its commando and ‘scorched earth’ phase, were represented contemporaneously: in the official records, and in photography. The details of the research and writing process involved are provided around discussion of the nine strategies that compose feminist fractured foundationalism and its strengths and limitations in methodological terms are reviewed.

Conclusion

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Boje
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
South African ◽  
Military Occupation ◽  
Primary Concern ◽  
Racial Oppression ◽  
The South ◽  
South African War

This book concludes with a discussion of three critical variables that determine the success of any military occupation and whether they were all met in the case of Winsburg after the end of the South African War: the total devastation of a country that compels it to acknowledge its need for help in reconstruction; the perception of a common threat to both parties; and credible guarantees of the occupying power’s intention to withdraw. If an occupying power adds an ideological element to its primary concern of establishing a dispensation that poses no threat to its interests, occupation is prolonged and nationalism is stimulated. This conclusion also shows that blacks continued to suffer after the war, with the Boers and British both blocking any suggestion of advance. Finally, it considers the evolution of a system of racial oppression in South Africa that was to bedevil the country for much of the twentieth century, lending credence to the notion that Britain’s occupation of Winsburg was an imperfect one.

scholarly journals THE STRAIGHT LEFT: SPORT AND THE NATION IN ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE

2010 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 187-206
Author(s):  
Douglas Kerr
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
South African ◽  
Victorian Britain ◽  
South African War ◽  
Sporting Culture ◽  
Arthur Conan Doyle ◽  
National Life ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Formative Testing

In the last years of the nineteenth century, Arthur Conan Doyle, a prolific writer with a global reputation and readership, was settled with his family at Hindhead in Surrey. In hisMemories and Adventures(M&A) he was to recall this period as an interlude of peace: “The country was lovely. My life was filled with alternate work and sport. As with me so with the nation” (151). This last sentence refers chiefly to the apparent placidity of the time, soon to be rudely spoilt by the outbreak of the South African war, which was to prove a critical and formative testing-ground for Great Britain and for Conan Doyle personally. But the sentence can also refer to the plenitude of a life divided between work and sport, and I will argue that Conan Doyle would be right to claim his experience here as representative of the national life. At the end of the century which invented modern sport, Conan Doyle's enthusiastic participation in sports, his writing about the subject, and his understanding of sporting culture have a great deal to tell us about Victorian Britain. As with him, so with the nation.

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