Boer Propaganda During the South African War of 1899–1902

This article examines Boer propaganda on commando during the South African War by analysing how the two Boer governments and the military leadership endeavoured to inspire a citizen army and to keep the men in the field. In the South African War a commando was a Boer fighting unit, more or less the equivalent of a British regiment, and ‘on commando’ meant ‘in the field’. For the first seven months of the conflict, two important pro-Boer newspapers, De Volksstem and The Standard & Diggers' News were distributed on commando; carefully used, they exercised a significant impact on the combatants' morale. Later, in the guerrilla phase of the war, local newspapers, notably De Bazuin and De Zoutpansberg Wachter, often published under trying conditions, took their place. Furthermore, Boer officers played an important role by fanning patriotism in the ranks with their inspirational rhetoric. The Boer perception that his military and political cause was both just and noble before God was a useful propaganda tool, as were official war reports; they could, in addition to truths, include carefully selected half-truths and flagrant untruths.     

The Imperialism of Internment: Boer Prisoners of War in India and Civic Reconstruction in Southern Africa, 1899–1905

During the course of the Anglo-Boer War of 1899–1902, over 9,000 captured Boers were sent abroad to India as prisoners of war. Using hitherto unexamined sources, this article explores how, during their internment and repatriation, British officials and administrators across the empire collaborated in a concerted attempt to transform the imperial enemy into colonial collaborator. This involved a necessarily intercolonial effort to conduct a successful programme of ‘re-education’ capable of cultivating ‘white’ British virtues in preparing Boer POWs for their future rights and duties in reconstructing Southern Africa upon their repatriation. In so doing, the government of India and other colonial officials across the empire thus recapitulated their ideal of Britain’s imperial project in the Boer POW camps. Highlighting the intercoloniality of this process, India’s viceroy, Lord George Curzon, played as prominent a role as did the War Office, or South Africa’s soon-to-be pro-consul, Lord Alfred Milner. The microcosmic imperialism of Boer internment thus reveals a great deal about the nature and structure of power within the British Empire, and emphasises the value of an intercolonial or transcolonial perspective in examining the complex, global consequences of the Anglo-Boer War.     

The Boer War and the Media (1899-1902)

The South African War that broke out in October 1899 was bothvery old and very new. It was a traditional war, the last ofthe old-fashioned British imperial wars, with cavalry playinga significant part. But it was also a very modern war, for instancein the British Army's use of railways to subdue the Boers inthe early months of 1900, or the use of trench warfare by theBoers along the Modder river. It was disturbingly new in theway that it changed in the autumn of 1900 from a war betweenarmies to a guerrilla war against a civilian population, mostdistastefully so in the British concentration camps set up tohouse Boer women and children. Above all, it was a distinctlycontemporary war in its impact on the media, especially thenewspapers, and in the interaction between the media and thoseparticipating in the fighting. It was a significant war, farbigger than originally expected, and was therefore big news.The British Army, ill-prepared for the original Boer invasionof Natal, at first numbered 75,000 troops. In the end, the Britishand imperial forces totalled 450,000 with contingents from Canada,Australia, New Zealand, and India. The British lost 22,000 men,13,000 of them from disease. The Boers lost about 7,000 in thefield, while another 27,000 (many of them very young children)are estimated to have died in the concentration camps. Therewere also about 20,000 black and ‘coloured’ Africanswho died in concentration camps, though this was little reportedat the time. So it was a major episode in British military history.The impact on British opinion of the relief of Ladysmith andespecially of Mafeking in 1900 was quite overwhelming. In afrenzy of ‘jingo’ celebration, the verb ‘mafficking’entered the language. In these circumstances, the consequencesof the Boer War on the media and its representation of war wereinevitably massive.     

The Gender Dynamics of Dress Gifts from Elizabethan Men at the Court of Elizabeth I

This article explores the gender dynamics of giving dress gifts at the Elizabethan court (1558–1603). Current scholarship considers the role of elite women and the ‘favourite’ in giving dress gifts. In contrast, this article seeks to understand the significant but largely overlooked role of merchant and courtier men as both givers of dress to Elizabeth I and holders of vital information that others relied upon in giving dress gifts to her. Drawing on New Year's gift lists, correspondence and records of progresses this article shows how an approach informed by material culture and situated in a gendered framework actually complicates our understanding of the Elizabethan court's culture of dress gifts. A gendered analysis highlights that merchant and courtier male subjects, sometimes in tandem with their wives, played a vital role in shaping the fashion and economy of early modern England by providing innovative and tasteful offerings to their queen. Dress gifts from male subjects strongly influenced Elizabeth's image of magnificence and made the English court one of the most fashionable in Europe.     

‘Our Boys With the Maple Leaf on Their Shoulders and Straps’: Masculinity,the Toronto Press,and the Outbreak of the South African War, 1899

Abstract

Coverage of the South African War by the Toronto daily press at its outbreak in late 1899 was implicitly gendered. Placed within the context of nineteenth-century connections between manhood and war, claims of ineffective soldiering, poor shooting ability, and indecisive political action were also implicit attacks on the manhood and character of Canadian politicians at home and the Boer enemy in South Africa. Representations of soldiers, enemies, and politicians in the press also expose connections between war and gender and allow historians to question how war is sold and characterized to the nation through ideas about masculinity.     

The Mongol invasions of Europe

ABSTRACT

This article argues that Zionist Christianity emerged in South Africa out of the peasant revolt that occurred in the Boer Republics during and after the South African War. Using the experiences of early Zionist leaders Daniel Nkonyane and Engenas Lekganyane, the article demonstrates the continuity of their theology with the ideology of the ‘Rebellion From Below’ first described by Jeremy Krikler. The early Zionists, like their predecessors, were primarily interested in recreating a world based on communal politics and land ownership – a world without rents, landlords, or white supervision.     

Practising the British way of famine: technologies of relief, 1770–1985

In the past 200 years Britons have responded to famines in particular ways. This article explores these particularities by focusing not simply on the remarkably unchanging humanitarian representation of the victims of famine but on the changing technologies through which relief was collected and distributed. It shows how technologies of famine relief were created from the need to govern colonial populations rather than from the development of new sentimentality and ethics. The authors seek to demonstrate that, despite the changing nature of these technologies, the forms of expertise that sustained them, a set of routines and practices developed that allowed the performance of a British way with famine that slowly extended from the empire to the world. In the wake of two world wars these forms of expertise were extended to Europe and became internationalised through the work of voluntary organisations. After the formal end of Empire, these technologies were retooled and used to assist places in postcolonial Africa. They also helped create a new type of global citizen, informed of technologies of relief and invested in the Global South through the rise of a humanitarian culture.     

‘The Indian Gift’: A critical debate

In 1986 Jonathan Parry’s ‘The Gift, the Indian Gift and the “Indian Gift”’ claimed to overturn conventional understandings of Marcel Mauss, by arguing that market societies most idealize the distinction between gifts and commodities, and gift giving need not entail reciprocity. Based on an analysis of Hindu religious gifts, Parry proposed a broad framework for understanding how ideologies of exchange function in different economic and cosmological contexts. Thirty years later, this symposium considers the intellectual milieu in which The Indian Gift was written, and interrogates whether or not the work remains relevant to contemporary research and analysis. The symposium opens with a short introduction that provides some background to Parry’s essay and incorporates material from a recent interview with him. This is followed by critical comments on it by five influential thinkers on gift exchange: James Carrier, Chris Gregory, James Laidlaw, Marilyn Strathern and Yunxiang Yan. It ends with a short ‘revisionist’ note by Parry in which he tries to identify some of the limits of the Maussian approach for contemporary anthropology.     

Delineating the nation: South African censuses 1865–2007

The census plays a significant role in delineating the nation in statistical terms. The decisions as to whom to enumerate, what questions are to be asked and how the results are presented all modify the view of the population offered to contemporary observers and to posterity. Although census officials tend to be conservative in retaining a large body of questions in similar form from one enumeration to the next in order to promote inter-census comparisons, those concerned with identity have tended to shift with the political evolution of the state and nation. Nowhere has this been more in evidence than in South Africa where the state and nation have been redefined several times since the commencement of modern scientific censuses in 1865. Administrations run by the British Empire, Boer republics, Union of South Africa, apartheid republic, African ‘bantustans’ and now democratic republic have each brought their own concepts to national identification and the framing of the questions of national identity in the census. As a result the set of nearly forty censuses present an often contradictory and complex image of the South African population, ranging from comprehensive inclusive censuses to narrowly restrictive enumerations of a single ethnic group. There was thus little of the continuity in census taking between the colonial and post-colonial states noted elsewhere. South African censuses therefore offer an insight into how the nation was viewed at the time the census was undertaken.     

Falling off the Map: South Africa,Antarctica and Empire,c. 1919–59

During the first half of the twentieth century, despatches about the coldest corner of the British Empire were circulated to three, sometimes four, of its southern neighbours under the British crown: Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and the Falklands. Of these four, South Africa seemed the least interested in Antarctica, despite the keen interest of some influential individuals and a strategy of bringing Antarctica into the imperial fold through British dominions that were proximate to Antarctica. In this context, we ask how South Africa viewed itself in relation to the Antarctic to the south and the British metropole to the north. We discuss the key activities that connected South Africa to Antarctica—whaling and weather forecasting. Moreover, we consider some of the enterprising plans for a South African National Antarctic expedition, and what these plans reveal of South Africa's perception of itself as a southern country. This article interlinks with a growing scholarship that is critical of treating Antarctic history as politically and culturally isolated, including showing how the relatively simple natural and political ecology of the Antarctic can throw into relief multiple national and international concerns.     

張之洞的别敬、禮物與貢品

本文全面介紹"張之洞檔案"中有關别敬、禮單與貢摺等材料,具體說明張之洞支付别敬、贈送禮物與進呈貢品的情況,並由此觀察晚清上層社會的日常生活,觀察晚清上層社會的腐敗速度與程度。本文以極大的篇幅介紹張之洞向慈禧太后進貢,尤其是慈禧太后、光緒帝逃亡西安時期的情況。張之洞雖是清流出身,但到了此時,仍不免須花費很大精力和財力來辦理送禮與進貢;而他的禮物與貢品中,竟有相當部分是書籍與文具,依舊顯露出其書生本色。     

Living with Hollywood: British film policy and the definition of ‘nationality’

Focusing upon how a ‘national’ film has been historically defined in Britain, this article traces the history of legal definitions of a ‘British’ film and identifies some of the issues around nationality that these have raised. The article begins with a discussion of the introduction of quotas for ‘British’ films in the 1920s and the adoption of the Eady levy as a means of providing production finance to ‘British’ films in the post-war period. It then goes on to examine the introduction, in response to EU regulations governing the film industry, of a ‘Cultural Test’ for ‘British film’ in 2007 and to consider the way in which eligibility for tax reliefs has depended upon a film qualifying as ‘British’. In assessing whether the Cultural Test may be regarded as constituting a ‘break’ in British film policy in terms of a shift from economic to cultural objectives, the article not only indicates the manner in which cultural and economic objectives have been brought into alignment but also identifies how the definition of the ‘national’ for the purposes of tax relief has been designed to encourage ‘transnational’ Hollywood production within the UK. In doing so, the article also indicates how ‘national’ discourses and practices have continued to inform and structure the economic and cultural dynamics of contemporary ‘British’ cinema as well as engaging with, rather than necessarily standing in opposition to, ‘transnational’ and globalising trends.     

Afrikaner Nationalism in Action: F. C. Erasmus and South Africa's Defence Forces 1948–1959

Abstract. F. C. Erasmus became South Africa's defence minister in 1948 after two decades as the leading political organiser for the National Party. Although an architect of the Nationalists' post‐war victory, he was not considered a minister of the first rank. Erasmus initiated a process of ridding the defence force of officers who he believed were associated with the government of the Anglophile Jan Smuts and replacing them with party supporters. As a result, the military often lost experienced and talented officers, many with combat exposure. Erasmus felt that the armed services had been too British in ethos and appearance. He inaugurated tighter regulations on bilingualism, introduced Boer rank titles, launched new uniforms and original medals and decorations, to the acclaim of the Afrikaner Volk. His purpose was to have a defence force which was uniquely ‘South African’.     

Performing postcolonial identities at the United Nations’ climate negotiations

This study aims to understand how postcolonial identities were performed in the negotiations that led to the new climate agreement signed in Paris in December 2015. Based on interviews, the analysis of documents and participant observation of the negotiations it was possible to identify the legal, economic and scientific discourses mobilised by both global North and South countries. In all three discourses, it was possible to identify a systematic effort of the Northern parties to unmake the identity of Southern parties as ‘developing countries’ as a way to erase the ontological difference between emerging and established industrialised economies. At the same time, in the context of the convention Southern parties reaffirmed their identities as ‘developing countries’ and demanded from the North a strong commitment to tackle climate change and the transfer of more financial resources to the South. In this process, it was also possible to identify an inversion of the position usually taken by mainstream and critical postcolonial scholars that see the deconstruction of categories such as ‘developing countries’ as key for the emancipation of the global South. Finally, this invites postocolonial scholars to look more closely at how postcolonial identities are being instrumentalised, discursively and politically.     

Negotiating Authority between UNHCR and ‘The People’

Refugee camps are exceptional places that are left to the benevolent governing of international humanitarian agencies, and offer unique opportunities to explore the making and un‐making of public authority. This article examines how certain groups of young men in a refugee camp in Tanzania manage to establish public authority by relating to ideas of a Burundian moral order, while at the same time relating to the ‘development‐speak’ of international relief operations. The refugees' attempts to establish public authority are highly contested and highly politicized, clashing with the relief agencies' vision of the camp as non‐political. Ironically, the young men who engage in politics in the camp are also closely linked to these relief agencies in their role as brokers between the agencies and the ‘small people’. Public authority is partly produced by the powers that are delegated to them by the agencies and partly formed in the ‘gaps' in the agencies’ system. Similarly, authority rests in part on the respect that these brokers gain from other refugees — a respect that is earned in numerous ways, including outwitting the international organizations — and in part on the recognition that they get from the very same organizations. In other words, public authority rests on complex relations between legitimacy and recognition and between sovereignty and governmentality.     

Passports,Citizenship, Residency and Asylum: The Meanings of Decolonisation in Lesotho

In late colonial Basutoland and early independence Lesotho, the issue of who could access citizenship rights and passports became increasingly important. Political refugees fleeing apartheid South Africa took up passports on offer in the territory to further their political work. Basotho residents also took up passports in increasing numbers as a way of safeguarding their economic, social and political rights on both sides of the border. The lure of a Citizens of the United Kingdom and Colonies (CUKC) passport drew refugees to Basutoland in the early 1960s, but it was South Africa’s decision to leave the Commonwealth in 1961 that spurred many in Lesotho to formalise their imperial citizenship as well, even as independence for Lesotho became increasingly likely. The stories of those taking up papers illuminate how citizenship became a space for contestation between individuals and governments. The stories also show how the concept of the transfer of power does not accurately reflect the ways in which the sovereignty of newly independent African states, apartheid South Africa and the United Kingdom were all limited by a series of decisions made in the late colonial period. Tracing these stories helps us better understand the limitations of the term ‘decolonisation’ for reflecting the understandings and complications of citizenship in 1960s and 1970s southern Africa.     

Dialectical movements with the Toba people in the Argentine Chaco

Since 1998, I have undertaken fieldwork with the Indigenous peoples of the Argentine Chaco, focusing initially on their dances and embodied practices. After this ethnographic research, I began to think more deeply about the relationships between fieldwork and reflexivity and the possibilities of redefining analytical categories in the global South. The purpose of this article is to revisit my emphasis on a ‘dialectical approach to embodiment’ as a starting point for analysing cultural transformation in Latin America. I argue that this methodological approach has been closely linked to the interweaving of conflicting embodied experiences and peripheral geopolitical locations. In this regard I analyse how the contradictory experiences identified in my fieldwork with the Toba people, and also in my intersubjective and geopolitical positions as a Latin American academic woman, led me to a critical re-examination of dialectics. Further, I describe how this methodological approach, while well received among Latin American scholars has to some degree been resisted by (North) American and British scholars, and I explore the geopolitical implications of these disparate academic positions. Through these critical movements, I hope to contribute to rethinking dialectics in postcolonial contexts, adding some embodied voices from the Latin American South.     

Everyday articulations of prostitution: how some Filipina migrants in rural Japan describe sexual–economic relationships

This article draws attention to ‘everyday articulations of prostitution’: the diverse, performative ways that people reproduce and rework meanings of ‘prostitution’ as they mobilize the term in their day-to-day lives. The article offers an ethnographic illustration of this process by exploring why and to what ends a group of Filipina wives of rural Japanese men referred to the behavior of another Filipina woman in their community as ‘prostitution.’ It demonstrates that when mobilizing this term, these Filipina women were not categorizing sexual–economic relationships (like ‘prostitution’) in terms of payment systems, as other scholars have assumed. Rather, geographical and cultural factors, such as the stigma associated with these women's migration histories and their long-term residence as wives and mothers in the small rural communities where they had worked in bars, led Filipina women in Central Kiso to describe such relationships according to the sentiments motivating them, the ways one utilized gifts or money from a sexual partner, and whether or not one demonstrated appreciation of this financial support. The article maintains that attention to everyday articulations of prostitution such as these expands our understandings of the situated meanings people can invest in this term. It illustrates how culture and geography shape the ways discourses of prostitution are mobilized to stigmatize some intimate-economic behaviors and, thereby, legitimize others.