 |
 |
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
||||||
|
||||||
|
||||||
|
||||||
|
Book Reviews To commemorate the one-hundredth anniversary of the beginning of the Boer War, in October 1999, sixteen distinguished historians from Australia, South Africa, Britain, New Zealand and Canada delivered papers at this conference. Described as “The Forgotten War” in 1979, as Chief of Army, Lieutenant-General Frank Hickling pointed out in the Introduction, this war was one which (unlike the other wars of this century), seemed to have escaped detailed academic analysis — despite the best efforts of the likes of Thomas Pakenham and L.M. Field. This criticism scarcely applies today, however, through the more recent contributions of historians such as Bill Nasson, Carman Miller, Ian Beckett, Edward M. Spiers, Brian Bond and John Gooch et al, some of whom were among the speakers who presented this digest of the latest thinking on the subject. The impact of this conflict, culturally and militarily, upon the various societies involved, were dominant themes explored. For South Africa, according to Bill Nasson, the war was a disaster, with the mortality rates in the British concentration camps depleting the tiny Boer republican populations by as much as 20 per cent (more than 43,000 people perished in the camps). This represented “a form of historical trauma for Afrikaner society, the depth of which imperial and other English-speaking historians have perhaps rarely fully recognised”. As was to be expected, a diversity of new insights emerged from these papers. Craig Wilcox, Canadian Carman Miller and New Zealander Stephen Clarke brought a variety of new scholarship to bear to challenge the “manufactured spontaneity” orthodoxy of the 1970s. An alternative to Leo Amery’s influential view of the British Army in South Africa, that “as a fighting machine it was largely a sham”, was offered by Ian Beckett. Craig Wilcox stripped away any surviving glamour surrounding the Breaker Morant myth, at the same time revealing the Bushveldt Carbineers as a kind of “prototype Black and Tans” force, devoid of both military discipline and professional training. Licensed murderers, as some of them became, they were renounced by British and Australian soldiers alike. Peter Stanley looked at Australia’s cultural response to the war as it was reflected in Banjo Paterson’s South African verse; that is, initially from the stance of a jingoistic imperialist, thence, by degrees to that of a disillusioned nationalist. David Horner took issue with Charles Bean’s disregard for the influence of the Boer War on Australia’s subsequent commanders in the First World War. Horner’s paper demonstrates the timeless value of personal experience in the field in developing leadership qualities. Fifteen of the AIF’s twenty generals and thirty-three of its seventy-six brigadiers fought in South Africa. Stephen Badsey, Jena Bou, Peter Burness, John Hirst, Bobbie Oliver, Melanie Oppenheimer, Iain Spence, Luke Trainor and Ivan van der Waag also presented papers. If there are any weaknesses in this book they are difficult to detect. Extensively footnoted, from a fascinating variety of sources, and though clearly aimed at a scholarly audience the engrossing mix of material presented could well reach a broader readership. This excellent compilation constitutes a memorable anniversary addition to the Boer War literature.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
