Further Regional Studies

War Epidemics ◽  
2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Smallman-Raynor ◽  
Andrew Cliff
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
South African ◽  
Geographical Location ◽  
Prisoners Of War ◽  
World War ◽  
The South ◽  
South African War ◽  
Forced Labour ◽  
Study Sites

In Chapters 7 to 11, we have examined a series of recurring themes in the geography of war and disease since 1850 through regional lenses. In this chapter, we conclude our regional–thematic survey by illustrating further prominent themes which, either because of their subject-matter or because of their geographical location, were beyond the immediate scope of the foregoing chapters. In selecting regional case studies for this chapter, we concentrate on wars which have not been examined in depth to this point (the South African War and the Cuban Insurrection) or which, on account of their magnitude and extent, merit examination beyond that afforded in previous sections (World War I and World War II). Four principal issues are addressed: (1) Africa: population reconcentration and disease (Section 12.2), illustrated with reference to civilian concentration camps in the South African War, 1899–1902; (2) Americas: peace, war, and epidemiological integration (Section 12.3), illustrated with reference to the civil settlement system of Cuba, 1888–1902; (3) Asia: prisoners of war, forced labour, and disease (Section 12.4), illustrated with reference to Allied prisoners on the line of the Burma–Thailand Railway, 1942–4; (4) Europe: civilian epidemics and the world wars (Section 12.5), illustrated with reference to the spread of a series of diseases in the civil population of Europe during, and after, the hostilities of 1914–18 and 1939–45. As before, the study sites in (1) to (4) span a broad range of epidemiological environments, from the cool temperate latitudes of northern Europe, through the tropical island and jungle environments of the Caribbean and Southeast Asia, to the warm temperate and subtropical savannah lands of the South African Veld. Diseases have been sampled to reflect this epidemiological range. The South African War (1899–1902) has been described as the last of the ‘typhoid campaigns’ (Curtin, 1998)—a closing chapter on the predominance of disease over battle as a cause of death among soldiers (Pakenham, 1979: 382). From the military perspective, typhoid was indeed the major health issue of the war, accounting for a reported 8,020 deaths in the British Army (Simpson, 1911: 57).

“Fire by Night, Cloud by Day”: Exile and Refuge in Postwar London

2020 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-31
Author(s):  
Susan Pennybacker
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
South African ◽  
Global Politics ◽  
World War ◽  
The South ◽  
Group A ◽  
Monitoring Group ◽  
Ruth First ◽  
New Treatments

AbstractSusan Pennybacker's presidential plenary to the 2017 North American Conference on British Studies in Denver, Colorado, explores the lives of four of the subjects of her book (in progress) of the same title. It identifies the kinds of archival and ethnographic sources that allow new treatments of the exile, émigré, and expatriate communities of London after the close of World War II and of those who contributed in various ways to the ethos of metropolitan political culture in the “late empire” and Cold War era. The essay focuses on the South African Ruth First, the Indian diplomat Mrs. Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, the Indian academician Achin Vanaik, and the South Asian Londoner Suresh Grover, a member of the Monitoring Group, a legal assistance and anti-discrimination organization in the capital. It suggests the importance of scholarship that reckons with known and notable activist persons who led and represented many others in their challenges to global politics from a base in the “mammoth crossroads, the secure and unsafe haven that is London.”

Agriculture and Rural Life in the South, 1900–1945

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Thomas Okie
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
World War ◽  
The South ◽  
Urban Centers ◽  
Black And White ◽  
Crop Agriculture

The period from 1900 to 1945 was characterized by both surprising continuity and dramatic change in southern agriculture. Unlike the rest of the nation, which urbanized and industrialized at a rapid pace in the late nineteenth century, the South remained overwhelmingly rural and poor, from the 1880s through the 1930s. But by 1945, the region was beginning to urbanize and industrialize into a recognizably modern South, with a population concentrated in urban centers, industries taking hold, and agriculture following the larger-scale, mechanized trend common in other farming regions of the country. Three overlapping factors explain this long lag followed by rapid transformation. First, the cumulative effects of two centuries of land-extensive, staple crop agriculture and white supremacy had sapped the region of much of its fertility and limited its options for prosperity. Second, in response to this “problem South,” generations of reformers sought to modernize the South, along with other rural areas around the world. These piecemeal efforts became the foundation for the South’s dramatic transformation by federal policy known as the New Deal. Third, poor rural southerners, both black and white, left the countryside in increasing numbers. Coupled with the labor demands created by two major military conflicts, World War I and World War II, this movement aided and abetted the mechanization of agriculture and the depopulation of the rural South.

Cavaliers and Crackers, Tara and Tobacco Road: The Myth of a Two-Class White South

Prospects ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 30 ◽  
pp. 505-517
Author(s):  
Emily Wright
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
World War ◽  
The South ◽  
George Washington ◽  
Early 19Th Century ◽  
Poor Whites ◽  
Thomas Nelson Page ◽  
Poor White

In Tell About the South: The Southern Rage to Explain, eminent southernist Y(stet)Fred Hobson argues that since the early 19th century, southern discourse has been dominated by a desire to explain the South to a nation critical of its practices. This “rage to explain” was particularly apparent in the era known as the Southern Renaissance — the period roughly between World War I and World War II that saw a flowering of southern letters and intellectual life. During this period, southern poets, novelists, essayists, historians, and sociologists participated in a comprehensive enactment of the southern “rage to explain” the South, both to itself and to the rest of the world. Within this outbreak of explanation, a significant pattern emerges: a pattern of resistance to what I shall call the myth of a two-class white South.Throughout American history, northerners and southerners alike have colluded to create the impression that the antebellum white South consisted of only two classes: aristocratic planters on one extreme and debased poor whites on the other. This impression was initiated in the 18th century, when William Byrd's histories of the dividing line introduced the image of the poor white in the form of the laughable “Lubberlander.” The stereotype of the comic and/or degraded poor white can be traced from Byrd through George Washington Harris's tales of Sut Lovingood (1867) to William Alexander Percy's diatribes against poor whites in Lantern on the Levee (1941) and William Faulkner's unflattering portrayal of the Snopeses (1940–59). Meanwhile, the images of the courteous, kindly planter and of the plantation as pastoral idyll can be traced from John Pendleton Kennedy's Swallow Barn (1832) through the postbellum plantation fiction of Thomas Nelson Page to Stark Young's Civil War romance, So Red the Rose (1934).

THE KING'S AFRIKANERS? ENLISTMENT AND ETHNIC IDENTITY IN THE UNION OF SOUTH AFRICA'S DEFENCE FORCE DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR, 1939–45

1999 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 351-365 ◽  
Author(s):  
ALBERT GRUNDLINGH
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Common Denominator ◽  
World War ◽  
The South ◽  
Race And Class ◽  
Societal Issues ◽  
South African War ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Second World

In contrast to the situation in Commonwealth countries such as Canada and Australia, South Africa's participation in the Second World War has not been accorded a particularly significant place in the country's historiography. In part at least, this is the result of historiographical traditions which, although divergent in many ways, have a common denominator in that their various compelling imperatives have despatched the Second World War to the periphery of their respective scholarly discourses.Afrikaner historians have concentrated on wars on their ‘own’ soil – the South African War of 1899–1902 in particular – and beyond that through detailed analyses of white politics have been at pains to demonstrate the inexorable march of Afrikanerdom to power. The Second World War only featured insofar as it related to internal Afrikaner political developments. Neither was the war per se of much concern to English-speaking academic historians, either of the so-called liberal or radical persuasion. For more than two decades, the interests of English-speaking professional historians have been dominated by issues of race and class, social structure, consciousness and the social effects of capitalism. While the South African War did receive some attention in terms of capitalist imperialist expansion, the Second World War was left mostly to historians of the ‘drum-and-trumpet’ variety. In general, the First and Second World Wars did not appear a likely context in which to investigate wider societal issues in South Africa.

In Captivity

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Boje
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Medical Staff ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Prisoners Of War ◽  
Concentration Camp ◽  
Concentration Camps ◽  
The South ◽  
Group Solidarity ◽  
South African War ◽  
In Captivity

This chapter examines the life of Boers held captive by the British during the South African War, with particular emphasis on inmates’ grievances relating to water, meat, clothing, work, and lack of freedom. It first provides an overview of the captives’ lifestyle at the Winburg concentration camp as well as camp personnel and medical staff before discussing the issue of disease and death in the camp. It then considers the freedom that prisoners of war (POWs) had to make existential choices, with reference to the suborning of prisoners by the British and the prisoners’ efforts to maintain group solidarity. It also discusses defiance and compliance by the inmates and concludes with an assessment of daily life in the POW concentration camps.

International Bank for Reconstruction and Development

1959 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 635-639
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
New York ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
South African ◽  
Public Investment ◽  
World War ◽  
The South ◽  
International Bank ◽  
National Bank ◽  
Trust Company

The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development announced on June 10, 1959, a loan equivalent to $11.6 million to the Union of South Africa. The funds were to help carry out a railway expansion program, executed by the South African Railways and Harbors Administration, that had been one of the chief objects of public investment in the Union since the end of World War II. Twelve banks participated in the loan for a total amount of $2,484,000, representing the first three maturities and parts of the fourth and fifth maturities which were to fall due between December 1961 and December 1963. Among the participating banks were: the Bank of America, Continental Illinois National Bank and Trust Company, The Philadelphia National Bank, The New York Trust Company, Morgan Guaranty Trust Company of New York, National Shawmut Bank of Boston, The First National Bank of Chicago, The Chase Manhattan Bank, First National City Bank of New York, The Northern Trust Company, and the Swiss Bank Corporation (Basle). Amortization of the loan, which was for a term of ten years and bore interest of 6 percent, was to begin in December 1961.

Testing for Aptitude and Motivation in South African Industry: The Work of the National Institute for Personnel Research, 1946–1973

1996 ◽  
Vol 70 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-68 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stuart Coupe
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
South African ◽  
Personnel Management ◽  
Trade Union ◽  
African State ◽  
World War ◽  
Industrial Psychology ◽  
The South ◽  
Union Activity

The South African state maintained vigorous repressive legislation to destroy trade union activity among African workers after World War II. The genesis of industrial psychology, personnel research and personnel management is examined in this context. In particular, the article reveals tension between the recommendations of the National Institute for Personnel Research and the imperatives of apartheid.

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