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.

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.

The Great Pacifist, 1894–1912

W. T. Stead ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 165-208
Author(s):  
Stewart J. Brown
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Christian Faith ◽  
World Federation ◽  
Scientific Racism ◽  
Leading Role ◽  
South African War ◽  
Western Imperialism ◽  
Peace Activism ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
The Hague

From the mid-1890s, W. T. Stead fervently took up the cause of world peace; the peace campaign, inspired by his Christian faith, became his most prominent public activity of his final years. His peace activism included a leading role in opposing the South African War of 1899–1902, a role that made him for a time arguably the most hated person in Britain. He also took a prominent role in promoting the international peace conferences at The Hague in 1899 and 1907. Through his peace commitments Stead become an increasingly international figure, who from about 1903 moved beyond his former belief in the divine mission of the ‘English-speaking race’—now to denounce ‘pseudo-scientific’ racism, to call for justice for victims of Western imperialism in Africa and India, and to promote ideas of world federation.

“Because we are white men”

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce Nelson
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
South African ◽  
British Empire ◽  
White Men ◽  
Rapid Expansion ◽  
Military Leader ◽  
Irish Nationalism ◽  
South African War ◽  
White Settler ◽  
British Military

This chapter examines Irish nationalism in the context of the British Empire and its rapid expansion in the second half of the nineteenth century. It focuses on Erskine Childers who participated in the South African War as a volunteer member of an artillery company that augmented the regular British military forces. The son of an English father and an Irish mother, he entered the war as a British patriot but in its aftermath became a pro-Boer and, soon thereafter, an Irish nationalist. He had much in common with the white South African Jan Christian Smuts, who was also a participant in the war as a political and military leader of the Boer republics. Both men were deeply concerned with the place of the white settler colonies, or dominions, in the emerging British Empire–Commonwealth, but ultimately they went in markedly different directions.

Last Outpost on the Zulu Frontiers

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Graham Dominy
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Reference Point ◽  
Pivotal Role ◽  
Consumer Market ◽  
Economic Methods ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Settler Society

Small and isolated in the Colony of Natal, Fort Napier was long treated like a temporary outpost of the expanding British Empire. Yet British troops manned this South African garrison for over seventy years. Tasked with protecting colonists, the fort became even more significant as an influence on, and reference point for, settler society. This book reveals the unexamined but pivotal role of Fort Napier in the peacetime public dramas of the colony. Its triumphalist colonial-themed pageantry belied colonists' worries about their own vulnerability. As the book shows, the cultural, political, and economic methods used by the garrison compensated for this perceived weakness. Settler elites married their daughters to soldiers to create and preserve an English-speaking oligarchy. At the same time, garrison troops formed the backbone of a consumer market that allowed colonists to form banking and property interests that consolidated their control.

The Boer War (1899–1902)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
George Micajah Phillips
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Southern Africa ◽  
Urban Poor ◽  
Gold Deposits ◽  
Ford Madox Ford ◽  
Boer War ◽  
South African War ◽  
Peace Settlement ◽  
The Great War

The British Empire waged two wars in southern Africa at the close of the nineteenth century. In the First Boer War (or Transvaal War) of 1880–81, Boer soldiers repelled Britain’s attempt to annex the diamond-rich Transvaal. The tense peace that followed was broken by the outbreak of the Second Boer War (or South African War, or Anglo-Boer War) of 1899–1902, the largest and most significant war the British Empire waged between the 1857 Indian Rebellion and the Great War of 1914–18. Fighting began when Britain sought to declare sovereignty over the Transvaal and Orange Free State, where huge gold deposits had recently been discovered. This provoked anti-British sentiment in southern Africa and among Britain’s colonial rivals, inspiring volunteer soldiers from the Netherlands and Germany to fight alongside the ethnically Dutch and German Boers. In the end, Britain lost millions of pounds and thousands of lives before reaching a peace settlement that would recognize British control over the Boer republics while offering a path to self-government (laying the foundations for both the Union of South Africa in 1910 and that dominion’s white separatist rule). In England, the war also exacerbated concerns over national degeneration when more than one-half of recruits failed military fitness exams (owing to the deprived living conditions of the urban poor), raising fresh questions about Britain’s imperial ambitions at the turn of the century. Though initially a popular war among Britons, the war’s grim aftermath had a deeper impact on modernism. ‘Since that period,’ Ford Madox Ford (né Hueffer) reflected, ‘the whole tone of England appears to me to have entirely changed’ (171).

scholarly journals ‘Great and lasting service to this country’: Sir Leander Starr Jameson, conciliation and the Unionist Party, 1910-1912

2011 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
F A Mouton
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
South African ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
African Nation ◽  
African Identity ◽  
South African War ◽  
Political Studies

The Jameson Raid of December 1895 estranged the two white groups in South Africa and contributed to the outbreak of the South African War of 1899-1902. With the rise of Afrikaner nationalism in the twentieth century the perception that L.S. Jameson (1853-1917) was the cause of all tension and rivalry between the two white groups became entrenched. And yet, Jameson as leader of the Unionist Party between 1910 and 1912 did his utmost to atone for the damage done by his reckless Raid. He publicly lauded Botha’s ability and integrity and this played a crucial role in diluting the anti-Afrikaner attitude of many English-speakers, convincing them to accept an Afrikaner dominated government. In addition his encouragement of a South African identity within the Empire, and his restraint on the anger and opposition to bilingualism by English-speakers supported Botha’s conciliation and nation building policies. Jameson helped to lay the foundation of a South African nation within the British Empire.Keywords: L.S. Jameson (1853-1917), Unionist Party, Jameson Raid, conciliation. Union of South Africa, South African War, British Empire, South AfricanismDisciplines: History, Political Studies

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