Search results for ""boer""

The Irish Boer Woman is the second volume of the Brigid O'Meara trilogy (the first part was England Wants Your Gold printed in 2015) that follows the life of an adventurous young Irish woman who is drawn into the intrigues and violence of the Jameson Raid of 1895, and later incarcerated in a British concentration camp during the Anglo Boer War for assisting active Boer commandos. As an Irish nationalist, Brigid finds herself in the midst of a clash of cultures and worldviews. She is drawn into the conflict of the Anglo Boer War by identifying and entering the struggle of the Boers of the Transvaal to retain their independence, putting her into direct conflict with British authorities representing an expanding global empire. Adding to her emotional turmoil is her romantic involvement with a British Uitlander, who is facing charges of high treason by the Transvaal Boer Government. Through the characters, the reader enters the harrowing realities of a war in which the two Boer Republics mobilized every man between 16 and 60 with no uniform, no money and no formal training to take on the might of the British Empire.

Read more less

This comprehensive military atlas covers every aspect of the Boer War in some 230 full-colour maps, diagrams and detailed ORBATs. Maps covering the conflict on a strategic, operational and tactical level guide the reader through each stage of the war, from Kruger’s invasions of Natal and Griqualand West, through the famous battles of the conventional period, to the vast ‘drives’ of the Guerrilla War phase which broke the back of the Bittereinders and brought the war to an end. By showing where every operation and battle fitted into the bigger picture, the reader is able to understand how and why any given action was fought, and how the war was ultimately won by Lord Kitchener’s men. Utilising standard NATO symbols to represent the various units involved, all the maps in this unique resource were drawn specially for the Atlas, and combine contemporary military maps with modern 1:50000 survey maps to ensure unprecedented levels of accuracy and detail. A detailed time line helps explain how the war unfolded, and the maps are organised into sections which cover the various fronts. The Atlas is also lavishly illustrated with contemporary photographs and drawings, as well as modern-day photographs to show how the battlefields look today, and to illustrate some of the many monuments erected to commemorate the men who fought and died. Though some of the battles covered are well known, this work also provides detail on many others which – though major actions – are almost forgotten today. The operations and smaller battles of the long and bitter Guerrilla War are also exhaustively covered. Other maps depict the details of the vast lines of blockhouses which were constructed across hundreds of miles of South Africa, and the critical role these played in the latter stages of the conflict. Whether you are new to the war, or a well-read enthusiast, The Boer War Atlas is an indispensable guide to understanding how this highly mis-understood war was fought.

Read more less

The Boer War of 1899-1902 was an epic of heroism and bungling, cunning and barbarism, with an extraordinary cast of characters - including Churchill, Rhodes, Conan Doyle, Smuts, Kipling, Gandhi, Kruger and Kitchener. The war revealed the ineptitude of the British military and unexpectedly exposed the corrupt underside of imperialism in the establishment of the first concentration camps, the shooting of Boer prisoners-of-war and the embezzlement of military supplies by British officers. This acclaimed book provides a complete history of the Boer War - from the first signs of unrest to the eventual peace. In the process, it debunks several of the myths which have grown up around the conflict and explores the deadly legacy it left for southern Africa.

Read more less

This complete chronological record of the Victoria Crosses awarded to British and Commonwealth soldiers during the Anglo-Zulu and Boer wars is an essential work of reference for everyone with a special interest in these major conflicts in southern Africa fought at the height of the British empire. The British army was severely tested in its battles against the Zulu kingdom and the Boer states, and the 107 Victoria Crosses that were awarded testify to the intensity of the fighting and the bravery and self-sacrifice of the soldiers concerned. The book celebrates their extraordinary exploits in action at famous locations like Isandlwana, Rorke's Drift, Ladysmith, Colenso and Mafeking where, under fire, they had to draw on exceptional reserves of courage. Each entry gives the name and rank of the VC holder and the date and location of the action in which the VC was earned. The episodes themselves are described, in vivid detail. Information is also provided on the subsequent career of the VC recipients, the location of their medals and their place of burial.

Read more less

This book describes how the Boer War became a domestic political issue in the 1900 election campaign and how this affected American diplomacy. It continues by demonstrating the critical role of the American government's Boer War policy in furthering rapprochement between the United States and Britain. Contents: American Diplomacy at the End of the 19th Century; The British in South Africa; The Diplomatic Setting; Britain Against the World; America Needs a Friend; Britain Needs a Friend; Public Opinion; The Boer War in American Politics; Boer Diplomacy in America; America's Distresses; Britain's Distresses; The Boer War in American Diplomacy; Bibliography; Index.

Read more less

This is a continuation of the love story begun in the author’s previous novel, The Tame Khaki, in which the twenty-year-old Jack Whitelaw set off from his home in Dorset to fight the Boers in the southern tip of Africa. Wounded, he’s taken to a Ladysmith hospital, where falls in love with a beautiful young nurse, Rachel du Toit, a boerenooi, whose father and brothers are all fighting in a Boer commando. The love affair flourishes during the siege`– until Rachel is forced to flee Ladysmith and ends up in a British concentration camp. It’s now March 1902 and the war is virtually over. Shortly before Jack sailed for home, Rachel forgave him for his part in Milner’s `scorched earth policy’ and he returns to Pietermaritzburg determined to win her hand in marriage. His blissful life with his lovely wife and two little children on a farm in the Natal Midlands begins to transform when Britain declares war against Germany and his deep sense of loyalty to his excolleagues and The Old Country kicks in. Rachel is at first fiercely opposed to him again donning a British uniform but eventually relents, knowing Jack will continue to feel powerful pangs of guilt if he doesn’t. You’ll become deeply engrossed – at times saddened – by what occurs next.

Read more less

In early 1900, the paths of three British writers—Rudyard Kipling, Mary Kingsley and Arthur Conan Doyle—crossed in South Africa, during what’s become known as Britain’s last imperial war. Each of the three had pressing personal reasons to leave England behind, but they were also motivated by notions of duty, service, patriotism and, in Kipling's case, jingoism. Sarah LeFanu compellingly opens an unexplored chapter of these writers’ lives, at a turning point for Britain and its imperial ambitions. Was the South African War, as Kipling claimed, a dress rehearsal for the Armageddon of World War One? Or did it instead foreshadow the anti-colonial guerrilla wars of the later twentieth century? Weaving a rich and varied narrative, LeFanu charts the writers’ paths in the theatre of war, and explores how this crucial period shaped their cultural legacies, their shifting reputations, and their influence on colonial policy.

Read more less

The Boer War took place between 1899 and 1902, just 15 years before the start of the First World War. Some 180,00 Britons, mainly volunteers, travelled 6,000 miles to fight and die in boiling conditions on the veld and atop 'kopjes'. Of the over 20,000 who died more than half suffered enteric, an illness consequent on insanitary water. This book will act as an informative research guide for those seeking to discover and uncover the stories of the men who fought and the families they left behind. It will look in particular at the kind of support the men received if they were war injured and that offered to the families of the bereaved. Some pensions were available to regular soldiers and the Patriotic Fund, a charitable organisation , had been resurrected at the beginning of the conflict. However for those who did not fit these categories the Poor Law was the only support available at the time.The book will explore a variety of research materials such as: contemporary national and local newspapers; military records via websites and directly through regimental archives; census, electoral, marriage and death records; records at the National Archives including the Book of Wounds from the Boer War, the Transvaal Widows' Fund and others.

Read more less

Waged across an inhospitable terrain which varied from open African savannah to broken mountain country and arid semi-desert, the Anglo-Boer wars of 1880–81 and 1899–1902 pitted the British Army and its allies against the Boers’ commandos. The nature of warfare across these campaigns was shaped by the realities of the terrain and by Boer fighting techniques. Independent and individualistic, the Boers were not professional soldiers but a civilian militia who were bound by the terms of the ‘Commando system’ to come together to protect their community against an outside threat. By contrast the British Army was a full-time professional body with an established military ethos, but its over-dependence on conventional infantry tactics led to a string of Boer victories. This fully illustrated study examines the evolving nature of Boer military techniques, and contrasts them with the British experience, charting the development of effective British mounted tactics from the first faltering steps of 1881 through to the final successes of 1902.

Read more less

This work begins in August 1900 during the war in South Africa, when mounted Boer commandos ranging across the veldt superseded pitched battles of massed armies and heavy weaponry. Thanks to his flair for organisation, Baden-Powell is asked to create a mounted force with a combined military and police role, and will be answerable to the Commander-in-Chief and the civil High Commissioner. Rejecting Army models of command, Baden-Powell creates the South African Constabulary (SAC) with a small number of officers, dividing it into Troops of 100 men, then sub-dividing again into sections and the key working unit - the squad of six men under a corporal. To get the calibre of recruit he wants, the SAC will be better paid than the Army and he expects the men to be motivated by a code of honour, to be self-reliant and handy men' able to tackle any kind of work. Most recruits come from the UK, but in Canada, however, the Governor General intervenes and botches selection. The SAC's effectiveness comes to light in this book - the first that deals with its creation and development; its wartime achievements and its peace-time transition into a community support helping local people returning to their homes. This work also highlights what Baden-Powell brought from the SAC and gave anew to the Scouts. Based on research using archive material in the UK, South Africa and Canada, it also includes images that have not previously appeared before in the public domain.

Read more less

A kaleidoscope of human-interest stories exposing long-kept secrets, mysteries and heroics for the first time. 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 Lake Chrissie 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 sighting of UFOs near Pretoria at the beginning of the war and the story of how an unfortunate British soldier ended up being buried under a toilet on a railway station. 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, Milne has relentlessly followed up on his stories; but 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 at 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.

Read more less

First published in 1916 and one of South Africa’s great political books, Native Life in South Africa was first and foremost a response to the Native’s Land Act of 1913, and was written by one of the most gifted and influential writers and journalists of his generation. Sol T. Plaatje provides an account of the origins of this crucially important piece of legislation and a devastating description of its immediate effects.

Read more less

From 17 trunks in a Lakeland attic comes this eyewitness account of a soldier’s life at a pivotal moment in the history of the British Empire. Allan Marriot Hutchins, handsome, quick-witted and adventurous, was one of thousands of young men from the shires who, in 1900, volunteered to fight determined, well-armed Boers in a war that foreshadowed the later carnage of the twentieth century, fought with maxim guns, heavy artillery and bitter reprisals against guerrillas and civilians. Allan served as a yeomanry trooper in South Africa and later as a commissioned officer in India where he distinguished himself in the Abor campaign to secure the little-explored frontier between Assam and China. His letters home and the letters he received from home and which still survive, his diaries and thoughts paint a picture of both the man and the wheels of history turning. ‘He cannot write’ said his schoolmaster but Allan can write and his writing brings to life the hardships and adventures of campaigning in hostile, alien terrain against an often invisible enemy. He describes the same modest aspirations, companionship and numbing routine encountered by today’s front-line soldiers.

Read more less

The epic story of the Boer War and Harry 'Breaker' Morant: drover, horseman, bush poet - murderer or hero?Most people have heard of the Boer War and of Harry 'Breaker' Morant, a figure who rivals Ned Kelly as an archetypal Australian folk hero. But Morant was a complicated man. Born in England and immigrating to Queensland in 1883, he established a reputation as a rider, polo player and poet who submitted ballads to The Bulletin and counted Banjo Paterson as a friend. Travelling on his wits and the goodwill of others, Morant was quick to act when appeals were made for horsemen to serve in the war in South Africa. He joined up, first with the South Australian Mounted Rifles and then with a South African irregular unit, the Bushveldt Carbineers.The adventure would not go as Breaker planned. In October 1901 Lieutenant Harry Morant and two other Australians, Lieutenants Peter Handcock and George Witton, were arrested for the murder of Boer prisoners. Morant and Handcock were court-martialled and executed in February 1902 as the Boer War was in its closing stages, but the debate over their convictions continues to this day.With his masterful command of story, Peter FitzSimons takes us to the harsh landscape of southern Africa and into the bloody action of war against an unpredictable force using modern commando tactics. The truths FitzSimons uncovers about 'the Breaker' and the part he played in the Boer War are astonishing - and finally we will know if the Breaker was a hero, a cad, a scapegoat or a criminal.

Read more less

This book, Malaboch; Or, Notes from My Diary On the Boer Campaign of 1894 Against the Chief Malaboch of Blaauwberg, District Zoutpansberg, South African . a Synopsis of the Johannesburg Crisis of 1896, by Colin Rae, is a replication. It has been restored by human beings, page by page, so that you may enjoy it in a form as close to the original as possible. This book was created using print-on-demand technology. Thank you for supporting classic literature.

Read more less

In The Briny South Nienke Boer examines the legal and literary narratives of enslaved, indentured, and imprisoned individuals crossing the Indian Ocean to analyze the formation of racialized identities in the imperial world. Drawing on court records, ledgers, pamphlets, censors’ reports, newsletters, folk songs, memoirs, and South African and South Asian works of fiction and autobiography, Boer theorizes the role of sentiment and the depiction of emotions in the construction of identities of displaced peoples across the Indian Ocean. From Dutch East India Company rule in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to early apartheid South Africa, Boer shows how colonial powers and settler states mediated and manipulated subaltern expressions of emotion as a way to silence racialized subjects and portray them as inarticulately suffering. In this way, sentiment operated in favor of the powerful rather than as an oppositional weapon of the subaltern. By tracing the entwinement of displacement, race, and sentiment, Boer frames the Indian Ocean as a site of subjectification with a long history of transnational connection—and exploitation.

Read more less

In this provocative and necessary work, Roland Boer, a leading biblical scholar and cultural theorist, develops a political myth for the Left: a powerful narrative to be harnessed in support of progressive policy. Boer focuses on foundational stories in the Hexateuch, the first six books of the Bible, from Genesis through Joshua. He contends that the “primal story” that runs from Creation, through the Exodus, and to the Promised Land is a complex political myth, one that has been appropriated recently by the Right to advance reactionary political agendas. To reclaim it in support of progressive political ends, Boer maintains, it is necessary to understand the dynamics of political myth.Boer elaborates a theory of political myth in dialogue with Ernst Bloch, Theodor Adorno, Alain Badiou, Jacques Lacan, and Slavoj Žižek. Through close readings of well-known biblical stories he then scrutinizes the nature of political myth in light of feminism, psychoanalysis, and Marxism. Turning to contemporary politics, he examines the statements of prominent American and Australian politicians to show how the stories of Creation, conquest, Paradise, and the Promised Land have been distorted into a fantasy of Israel as a perpetual state in the making and a land in need of protection. Boer explains how this fantasy of Israel shapes U.S. and Australian foreign and domestic policies, and he highlights the links between it and the fantasy of unfettered global capitalism. Contending that political myths have repressed dimensions which if exposed undermine the myths’ authority, Boer urges the Left to expose the weakness in the Right’s mythos. He suggests that the Left make clear what the world would look like were the dream of unconstrained capitalism to be realized.

Read more less

In The Briny South Nienke Boer examines the legal and literary narratives of enslaved, indentured, and imprisoned individuals crossing the Indian Ocean to analyze the formation of racialized identities in the imperial world. Drawing on court records, ledgers, pamphlets, censors’ reports, newsletters, folk songs, memoirs, and South African and South Asian works of fiction and autobiography, Boer theorizes the role of sentiment and the depiction of emotions in the construction of identities of displaced peoples across the Indian Ocean. From Dutch East India Company rule in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to early apartheid South Africa, Boer shows how colonial powers and settler states mediated and manipulated subaltern expressions of emotion as a way to silence racialized subjects and portray them as inarticulately suffering. In this way, sentiment operated in favor of the powerful rather than as an oppositional weapon of the subaltern. By tracing the entwinement of displacement, race, and sentiment, Boer frames the Indian Ocean as a site of subjectification with a long history of transnational connection—and exploitation.

Read more less

Ype de Boer invites you to rethink what you know about the philosophy of Giorgio Agamben.In a compelling and original argument, De Boer contends that, in the work of Agamben, ethics takes primacy over politics. Presenting a careful evaluation of Agamben's overlooked contribution to ethics, this book explores his enigmatic yet central concept of the happy life'.By reading Agamben's philosophy in terms of a poetico-philosophical experiment' a term coined by the Italian philosopher himself, and one through which he questions our very mode of existence De Boer assesses the variety of ethical paradigms that Agamben's work offers. This not only challenges the widespread misconception of Agamben as the dark prophet' known for his pessimistic, even nihilistic political critiques, but reveals how understanding the various facets of the happy life' allows for a better appreciation of his attacks on the ethico-political condition. Agamben''s Ethics and the Happy Lif

Read more less

The revolution will not take place indoors.Kenyan beekeeper-turned-farmer Jess de Boer embarks upon a decade-long journey to find purpose and potential in the explosive world of regenerative agriculture.From honey hunting in the last remaining pockets of rainforest in southern Ethiopia, to gardening in the depths of Kenya's largest slum, Jess takes you to the arid lands of Northern Kenya where a group of pioneering farmers have begun to connect the people with the dust beneath their feet.This is a journey into restorative action. Confronting the challenges of our stagnant education systems, unsustainable food production techniques and the growing disconnect of our youth, de Boer merges fact and science with hard-won wisdom in this inspiring and accessible tale of proactivity and hope.

Read more less

''Part memoir, part shoe leather investigative journalism, Mafiopoli is a vital exploration of how organised crime takes hold of a society from the bottom up and spreads around the world.'' -Miles Johnson, author of Chasing Shadows''Beautifully written, excellently researched.'' -Mick Van Wely''An exceptional investigation into the global muscle of the Calabrian mafia.'' -StrongWords book of the weekThe ''Ndrangheta mafia is one of the most powerful criminal organizations in the world. Bound together by blood ties, sworn to a code of silence and steeped in religious ritual, they are the force behind a litany of violence and corruption. In Mafiopoli, journalist Sanne De Boer takes us deep inside this extraordinary and ascendant criminal group.In 2006, de Boer moved from Amsterdam to coastal Calabria, won over by the region''s beauty and the warm village community. But when a car was set alight in

Read more less