Wars always generate stories and everybody loves a story. Rob Milne has compiled this selection of Anglo-Boer War stories from all over South Africa and recounts them in a book that saddens, mystifies, but most of all entertains. There's the devotion of the English fiancee who for 60 years sent a sprig of heather to the Chrissiesmeer Post Office for her beloved's grave; the tale of the lone Boer sniper who held off the entire Guards Brigade for more than a day after the battle of Bergendal; the story of the soldier who, caught illegally bayoneting a sheep, looked severely at the prostrate beast and remarked, "That'll teach you to try and bite a British soldier!" Read about Sergeant Woodward's two graves in Heidelberg, and the ghosts of the British officers that still haunt the Elands river valley. During the past 12 years since the publication of the first edition of this book, Milne has relentlessly followed up on his stories and sometimes the stories have followed him ... with unexpected results! There's a photo of the ghosts of the Bergendal farm girl and her British soldier lover who appeared in broad daylight on the battlefield while Milne was investigating the story in 2011. There's the unnamed Welshman who found the long-lost British paymaster's gold 60 years after the military train was ambushed and looted near Greylingstad. Learn the truth of how Churchill and his fellow officers received the daily war news in Morse code while they were prisoners of war in the State Model School in Pretoria; why Prime Minister Botha was sued after the war for stealing the 'Kruger Millions' when entrusted to his care as Commandant-General during the retreat to the Mozambican border. And there's the love story, 'The Legend of the Flowers', about Martha, a Boer girl, and a British soldier, George, which unfolded in Ventersdorp and how Martha involved the author in her story from beyond the grave. A unique and delightfully refreshing read.

In this publication, the author firstly supplies the reader with a concise review of the main events that took place in the course of the war, including all the most important military clashes of the four main phases. In the second part of the book, the role played by black people, brown (so-called "coloured") people and people of Asian origin during the war – both in a combatant and non-combatant capacity – is discussed.

The British Army was shocked by three military defeats in a week in South Africa in late 1899. The commanding General Sir Redvers Buller lost his nerve. 'Something must be done' was the cry across the Empire. Britain sent forth not one, but two military heroes. Field Marshal Lord Roberts and Major General Lord Kitchener spent their first five weeks in South Africa restoring morale, reorganising their forces and deceiving the enemy as to their intentions. In the next four weeks their offensive transformed the war: Kimberley and Ladysmith were relieved from Boer sieges and an enemy force of 4000 under General Cronje was captured on the Modder River. A long and bitter guerrilla war ensured in a terrain ideally suited to fast-moving Boer commandoes. On the dark side, deeds were committed of which no civilised empire priding itself on justice and fair play could be proud. The comradeship-in-arms of Roberts and Kitchener, their differing yet complementary personalities, their strategic and tactical decisions are described and assessed using a wide variety of sources including, personal papers and official correspondence. By these men's resourcefulness the British Army, despite its unpreparedness and poor leadership at many levels, won a remarkable victory in the first of the twentieth century 'People's Wars'.

Edward Spiers, a leading authority on the Victorian British army, presents here a select edition of letters from the siege of Ladysmith (1899-1900) that have not been seen since their original publication in metropolitan and provincial newspapers. The 250 letters were published in different British newspapers and provide crucial insights into contemporary perceptions of the battles that preceded the siege, the onset of the siege itself, and the desperate and bloody attempts to relieve the town.

Subsequent efforts to defend Ladysmith - and to march to its relief - became the great dramatic saga of the early phase of the Anglo-Boer War, providing the context for a series of dramatic battles that embarrassed the Empire and destroyed established reputations. Much has been written about the failings of the British commanders but it is clear that in no other theater in the war were the practical difficulties so real - or the stakes so high.

These letters reflect vividly the feelings of junior officers and other ranks as they struggled to cope with the demands of modern warfare. Their eyewitness testimonies provide firsthand commentary upon the events in Natal that shattered the prewar confidence in Britain.

The only account of this seminal trial, written by Mandela's defence lawyer and with a new foreword by Denis Goldberg, accused alongside Mandela and sentenced to life imprisonment. On 11 July 1963, police raided Liliesleaf Farm in Rivonia near Johannesburg, arresting alleged members of the high command of the armed wing of the African National Congress (ANC). Together with the already imprisoned Nelson Mandela, they were put on trial and charged with conspiring to overthrow the apartheid government by violent revolution. Their expected punishment was death. In this compelling book, their defence attorney, Joel Joffe, gives a blow-by-blow account of the most important trial in South Africa's history, vividly portraying the characters of those involved, and exposing the astonishing bigotry and rampant discrimination faced by the accused, as well as showing their incredible courage under fire.

Thoroughly updated to reflect recent events and trends - including Africa and the war on terror, progress and problems in democratization, advances by women in politics, developments in the fight against AIDS, the growing influence of China, the establishment of the African Union, and much more - this new edition of "Understanding Contemporary Africa" treats the range of issues facing the continent in the first decade of the twenty-first century. The authors provide current, thorough analyses not only of history, politics, and economics, but also geography, environmental concerns, population shifts, family and kinship, the role of women, religious beliefs, and literature. Each topic is covered in an accessible style, but with reference to the latest scholarship. Maps, photographs, and a table of basic political data enhance the text, which has made its place as the best available introduction to this diverse and complex continent.

Hunter-Gault attempts to answer the question, "What is Africa to Me?" as she explores the transformation of post-apartheid South Africa and the continent as a whole as it struggles towards democracy and towards a more stable position within global community. The book will emphasize Hunter-Gault's ideas about journalism, the challenges and responsibilities of reporting on Africa, the foreign media's role in representing Africa, and her reflection of what dangers her African collegaues face in their countries to report news from their homelands.

On the streets of Bez Valley Tony grew up hard and he grew up fast. In the cosmopolitan working-class suburbs of Johannesburg, he mixed with, and mixed it with, Jews, Greeks, Italians, Lebanese, blacks, Afrikaners and occasionally Anglo-Saxons. His first rite of passage is to subdue the ruthless Agnee gang, a bunch of Afrikaans school bullies. Learning tactics from his Uncle Mick, a professional wrestler who wears a large Star of David on his back to incite the anti-Jewish crowds of the East Rand, Tony starts on his life-journey of opportunism, petty crime, street-fighting and questionable business practices, driven always by his never-ending quest "to make money lots of it." Wide boy will take the reader directly into the balmy streets of a summer day in 1946 Bez Valley; to the street-brawls of the 1950s' Hillbrow and Yeoville; to the post-war euphoric boom days of Southern Rhodesia, the ensuing bush war, sanctions-busting and, finally, to return full-circle to the sometimes murky otherworld of 'big business' in Johannesburg.

April 2004 sees the tenth anniversary of the Rwanda genocide, an event generally acknowledged to be one of the most appalling of the twentieth century and potentially avoidable. Linda Melvern's new book, the result of a decade of investigative work, is a damning indictment of almost all the key figures and the institutions involved. It reveals how the French military trained the killers, how the US is still withholding wiretap and satellite evidence that the genocide was about to begin, how the John Major government ignored vital warnings that the genocide was planned, how much Boutros Boutros-Ghali and the French government knew prior to the genocide and how the Security Council's shameful decision to evacuate the peacekeepers came about. In addition to these official sources, the author draws on dozens of witness statements yet to be heard at the International Criminal Tribunal, at which she will be an expert witness, and a sixty-hour confession from the prime minister in the government that presided over the genocide never before made publicly available and currently locked in the safe of the chief prosecutors at the ICT court.

East Africa affects our imagination like few other places: The sight of a charging rhino goes directly to the heart; the limitless landscape of bony highlands, desert, and mountain is, as Isak Dinesen wrote, of "unequalled nobility." White Hunters is the story of seventy years of African adventure, danger, and romance. It re-creates the legary big-game safaris led by Selous and Bell and the daring ventures of early hunters into unexplored territories, and brings to life such romantic figures as Cape-to-Cairo Grogan, who walked 4,000 miles for the love of a woman, and Dinesen's dashing lover, Denys Finch. Witnesses to the richest wildlife spectacle on the earth, these hunters were the first conservationists. Hard-drinking, infatuated with risk, and careless in love, they inspired Hemingway's stories and movies with Clark Gable and Gregory Peck.

Colenso! The very name is evocative of military disaster, particularly for the British Army, and primarily the British Artillery. With the opening engagements of the Anglo-Boer war at the Battles of Talana, Elandslaagte and Ladysmith still resounding in his ears, General Sir Redvers Buller attempts to force a crossing of the Tugela River at Colenso. At the outset, Buller's plans are beset with problems and everything begins to go wrong. In this account, renowned historian Darrell Hall closely examines the details of the Battle of Colenso, the bloody battle that left scores of British dead on the field, destroyed several military careers and left the British Army with the bitter taste of ignominious defeat.

South Africa is consistently headline news, for positive as well as negative reasons. Its unique history this century has brought the names of its most famous political activists not only to our television sets, but more permanently to names of streets and buildings throughout the West. This book examines the social and economic history underlying the political upheavals, and the establishment and fitful but dramatic dismantling of apartheid. Beginning with the final colonial conquests at the end of the 19th century, it ends with a prognosis for democracy and redistribution of resources in the 1990s.

With the end of the Cold War, the United States has an unprecedented opportunity to create a new policy toward Africa freed from the constraints of East-West geopolitics.

In "Free at Last?," Michael Claugh provides a comprehensive overview of U.S.-Africa relations from World War II to the present: he surveys past American initiatives to illustrate how U.S. policy, intent on containing Soviet expansion, benefited African rulers at the expense of African civil society. He also discusses the declining importance of U.S. strategic and economic interests in Africa and how this is counterbalanced by the growing interest of American constituencies focused on such issues as humanitarian relief, human rights, and the environment.

Clough proposes abandoning traditional, government-to- government diplomatic approaches in favor of a radical new strategy modeled on the successes achieved in combating famine in Ethiopia and ending apartheid in South Africa. Offering an unconventional look at U.S. policy, "Free at Last?" is absorbing and essential reading for anyone concerned with both U.S.- Africa relations and the future of U.S. policy toward the Third World.

Herbert Gladstone (1854-1930) was the only one of the sons of the renowned nineteenth-century Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone to enjoy a significant political career in his own right. Yet he has been generally relegated to the wings of history's stage, destined, it seems, to remain permanently in the shadow of his illustrious parent. Such an outcome would not have troubled him unduly, for his whole life was shaped by deep affection and respect for his father while as a political actor he was happiest operating in the political shadows rather than in the limelight - serving for 30 years as a Liberal MP for Leeds with short periods as Home Secretary (1905-1910) and, as Viscount Gladstone, Governor-General of South Africa (1910-1914). In exploring the intimate connection between Herbert Gladstone's public and private lives this new biography, the first for eighty years, reveals an unambitious, self-effacing man of faith and throws new light not only on his own career but also on significant episodes in British Victorian and early-twentieth century history.

'Thrilling, tremendously enjoyable' The New York Times 'A nail-biting escape story' Financial Times At the age of twenty-four, Winston Churchill already believed he was destined for greatness. This is the incredible story of how one incredible year in Churchill's life - an adventure involving war in South Africa, imprisonment, endurance and escape - would be the making of one of the most extraordinary men in history. 'Few can match the originality and narrative power of Candice Millard's elegantly written and surprisingly revealing account of the young Churchill's exploits' Saul David, Daily Telegraph 'A thrilling account ... This book is an awesome nail-biter and top-notch character study rolled into one' Jennifer Senior, The New York Times, Books of the Year Gripping ... thrilling ... Millard tells it with gusto ... casts an interestingly oblique light on Churchill's personality, and on a traumatic war' Lucy Hughes-Hallett, Observer, Books of the Year 'Completely engrossing' Andrew Roberts

Even though the Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902 ended more than 110 years ago, no extensive study on the sites of remembrance of this war that covers the country as a whole and is based on methodological research has thus far been published.

This book is aimed at filling that void. This is a study of commemorative sites with a difference. The text guides the reader in two ways simultaneously. In the first place it provides information on the vast number (more than 1 200) and wide range of Anglo-Boer War places of remembrance in South Africa. These include monuments, memorials such as plaques and tablets, historical sites such as battlefields and concentration camp locations, buildings that have a specific connection with the war, statues, busts and bas-relief sculptures, historical paintings, museum collections and, of course, since it has to do with a war, cemeteries and graves.

Secondly, the book places all the sites that are included in their historical context. To simply indicate the approximate location of a war site, without providing a proper indication on how the site fits into the broad history of the event that it commemorates, is of limited value. For that reason the places of remembrance are introduced to the reader against the background of the history which they mirror. This means in effect that the reader acquires, together with information on the places of remembrance, a concise history of the war as a whole. As a result the book will not only be useful to readers who travel to the sites, but also to readers and users who are not actually travelling (virtual tourists).

Following on an introduction on the nature and scope of the commemorative places of the Anglo-Boer War, the sites are introduced in a thematic-chronological manner. The book is based on extensive research and field work. The author himself visited and photographed more than 90% of the sites that are included. A large number of sources were consulted to ensure the correctness of the information that is provided.

Even though the book is research-based, and will be useful to both scholars on the war and the general public, ideological issues are not discussed. The focus is on the physical places of remembrance as such. The book is written from a neutral point of departure – it is neither pro-Briton nor pro-Boer. Approximately 60% of the places of remembrance that are included in the book commemorate the British forces and 40% the Republican forces.

The Women's Royal Naval Service (WRNS) was created in 1917, re-formed in 1938 and maintained after 1945. This book determines for the first time the reasons for the expansion and contraction of the service and the impact key individuals had on it and in turn the influence it had on its members. Hannah Roberts offers new insights into a previously little studied British military institution, which celebrates its centenary in 2017. She shows how political and military decision-making within the fluctuating national security situation, coupled with a growing cultural acceptability of women taking on military roles, allowed for the growth of the service in World War II into realms never expected of women. Although it shared a similar pattern in its formation to the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) and had a similar ethos to its Air Force counterpart, the WAAF, the WRNS took on a wider-ranging role in the war, in part due to the latitude afforded to the service because of its uniquely independent origins. From 1941 onward the WRNS spread internationally and subverted the combat taboo by adopting semi-combatant roles. Using twenty-one new oral histories and a multitude of archived personal documents, this book demonstrates the pivotal importance of the Women's Royal Naval Service in both the world wars.

A spellbinding new book by the much-acclaimed writer, a journey to South Africa in search of the lost people called the /Xam - a haunting book about the brutality of colonial frontiers and the fate of those they dispossess. In spring 2020, Julia Blackburn travelled to the Karoo region of South Africa to see for herself the ancestral lands that had once belonged to an indigenous group called the /Xam. Throughout the nineteenth century the /Xam were persecuted and denied the right to live in their own territories. In the 1870s, facing cultural extinction, several /Xam individuals agreed to teach their intricate language to a German philologist and his indomitable English sister-in-law. The result was the Bleek-Lloyd Archive: 60,000 notebook pages in which their dreams, memories and beliefs, alongside the traumas of their more recent history, were meticulously recorded word for word. It is an extraordinary document which gives voice to a way of living in the world which we have all but lost. 'All things were once people', the /Xam said. Blackburn's journey to the Karoo was cut short by the outbreak of the global pandemic, but she had gathered enough from reading the archive, seeing the /Xam lands and from talking to anyone and everyone she met along the way, to be able to write this haunting and powerful book, while living her own precarious lockdown life. Dreaming the Karoo is a spellbinding new masterpiece by one of our greatest and most original non-fiction writers.

It is virtually impossible to understand the phenomenon of genocide without a clear understanding of the complexities of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (UNCG). This brief but cogent book provides an introduction to the unique wording, legal terminology, and key components of the convention, which was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948. Providing clarity on the distinctions between genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and ethnic cleansing, this book is designed to be an entry into further study of genocide in its legal, historical, political, and philosophical dimensions. Key terms, such as intent and motive, are explained, case studies are included, and a detailed bibliography at the conclusion of the book offers suggested avenues for more advanced study of the UNCG.

As the South African War reached its grueling end in 1902, colonial interests at the highest levels of the British Empire hand-picked teachers from across the Commonwealth to teach the thousands of Boer children living in concentration camps. Highly educated, hard working, and often opinionated, E. Maud Graham joined the Canadian contingent of forty teachers. Her eyewitness account reveals the complexity of relations and tensions at a controversial period in the histories of both Britain and South Africa. Graham presents a lively historical travel memoir, and the editors have provided rich political and historical context to her narrative in the Introduction and generous annotations. This is a rare primary source for experts in Colonial Studies, Women's Studies, and Canadian, South African, and British Imperial History. Readers with an interest in the South African War will be intrigued by Graham's observations on South African society at the end of the Victorian era.

Edmund Allenby, Viscount Allenby of Megiddo and Felixstowe, as he became later, was the principal British military figure in the Middle East from 1917 to 1919. He fulfilled a similar proconsular role in Egypt from the latter year until 1925. In these two roles Allenby's eight years in the Middle East were of great impact, and in probing his life an especially revealing window can be found through which to observe closely and understand more fully the history that has resulted in the terminal roil afflicting the Middle East and international affairs today. In this biography Brad Faught explores the events and actions of Allenby's life, examining his thinking on both the British Empire and the post-World War I international order. Faught brings clarity to Allenby's decisive impact on British imperial policy in the making of the modern Middle East, and thereby on the long arc of the region's continuing and controversial place in world affairs.

When the Boer Republics invaded Natal on the north-east coast of what is now South Africa in 1899, they could have been driven out with nominal casualties. Instead, Britain was to lose nearly 9,000 men killed in action, more than 13,000 to disease and a further 75,000 wounded and sick invalided back to Britain. The war ended in 1902 with an unsatisfactory Peace Treaty. The Boer commandoes represented a new challenge to the British Army, practising a mobile form of warfare equipped with smokeless Mauser rifles and modern European field and siege artillery. The British forces did not have the training to deal with this new form of warfare. Perhaps the greatest blunder was the failure in the beginning to take advantage of local advice and capability. The organisation of locally raised Volunteers was designed to meet the threat. They soon demonstrated how the Boers might be defeated and when finally given their heads, they chased the invaders out of Natal at the gallop, while suffering only nominal casualties. When the Siege of Ladysmith was finally raised, the relieving force found the garrison and civilian population suffering from malnutrition and disease. This book uses primary source material to chronicle the experiences of the people of Natal - soldiers and civilians, black and white, men, women and children - during the Natal Campaign.

World War I is one of the iconic conflicts of the modern era. For many years the war at sea has been largely overlooked; yet, at the outbreak of that war, the British Government had expected and intended its military contribution to be largely naval. This was a war of ideologies fought by and for empires. Britain was not defending simply an island; it was defending a far flung empire. Without the navy such an undertaking would have been impossible. In many respects the Royal Navy fought along the longest 'front' of any fighting force of the Great War, and it acted as the leader of a large alliance of navies. The Royal Navy fought in the North and South Atlantic, in the North and South Pacific, its ships traversed the globe from Australia to England, and its presence extended the war to every continent except Antarctica. Because of the Royal Navy, Britain could finance and resource not only its own war effort, but that of its allies. Following the naval arms race in the early 20th century, both Britain and Germany were equipped with the latest naval technology, including revolutionary new vessels such as dreadnoughts and diesel-powered submarines. Although the Royal Navy's operations in World War I were global, a significant proportion of the fleet's strength was concentrated in the Grand Fleet, which confronted the German High Seas Fleet across the North Sea. At the Battle of Jutland in 1916 the Royal Navy, under the command of Admiral Jellicoe, fought an iconic, if inconclusive battle for control of shipping routes. The navy might not have been able to win the war, but, as Winston Churchill put it, she 'could lose it in an afternoon'. The Royal Navy was British power and prestige. 43,244 British navy personnel would lose their lives fighting on the seas in World War I. This book tells their story and places the Royal Navy back at the heart of the British war effort, showing that without the naval dimension the First World War would not have been a truly global conflict

Willie Steyn, the author, was one of six hundred Boer prisoners sent by ship to the island of Ceylon to be interned in the Diyatalawa prisoner-of-war camp during the Anglo-Boer War. While their ship was anchored in Colombo harbour on a dark, moonless night, Steyn and four of his fellow prisoners lowered themselves into the sea, each waiting until his predecessor had got away undetected by the guards on board and in vessels patrolling around the ship.

The charm of Steyn’s personal account of his adventures lies in its understatement and its matter-of-fact simplicity. He does not portray himself as a hero, nor does he lay any claim to fame, but his account gathers intensity and force as the story progresses. Willie Steyn was intent on escape from the moment he was taken into captivity, and the reader experiences a corresponding intensity, encountering Willie as a free spirit throughout his captivity and his protracted journey home.

Deneys Reitz – author of Commando and well known for his own bravery – called Steyn ‘one of our bravest men’, and described Steyn’s escape as ''a deed that is in my opinion without equal in the history of escape.''

In a time of rampant imperialism, feisty Judith Armstrong is determined to fight for the rights of impoverished women in a masculine world - that is until a demonstration deteriorates into a riot, bringing her into conflict with Ralph Gilchrist, a well-born officer in Her Majesty’s Dragoon Guards. Judith’s spirited approach to Women’s Rights and freedom inevitably clashes with Ralph’s decidedly conservative and typically Victorian views. Sparks fly, but despite their mutual attraction, scandal forces her to leave Britain for a mission station in the British colony of Natal. Britain is struggling to maintain its empire in the face of the demands of a growing democracy at home and the rising powers of Germany, America and Russia abroad. These tensions are set to play out in southern Africa, where diamonds have been discovered and it has suddenly become that much more important to cement the Empire’s hold on the territory. In the fledgling colony of Natal, a power struggle between the British and the Zulu Kingdom grows, and it is here that Judith and Ralph are destined to meet again - but this time on the blood-soaked battlefields of Zululand at the fateful Battle of Isandlwana. This then is their story... a story of young South Africa and of the clash between an aging empire and the mighty Zulu tribe. A story of adventure, glorious bravery, earth-shattering defeat and a love that could never be.