Overview

An Open Access edition of this book is available on the Liverpool University Press website and the OAPEN library. The experience of the South African War sharpened the desire to commemorate for a number of reasons. An increasingly literate public, a burgeoning populist press, an army reinforced by waves of volunteers and, to contemporaries at least, a shockingly high death toll embedded the war firmly in the national consciousness. In addition, with the fallen buried far from home those left behind required other forms of commemoration. For these reasons, the South African War was an important moment of transition in commemorative practice and foreshadowed the rituals of remembrance that engulfed Britain in the aftermath of the Great War. This work provides the first comprehensive survey of the memorialisation process in Britain in the aftermath of the South African War. The approach goes beyond the simple deconstruction of memorial iconography and, instead, looks at the often tortuous and lengthy gestation of remembrance sites, from the formation of committees to the raising of finance and debates over form. In the process both Edwardian Britain’s sense of self and the contested memory of the conflict in South Africa are thrown into relief. In the concluding sections of the book the focus falls on other forms of remembrance sites, namely the multi-volume histories produced by the War Office and The Times, and the seminal television documentaries of Kenneth Griffith. Once again the approach goes beyond simple textual deconstruction to place the sources firmly in their wider context by exploring both production and reception. By uncovering the themes and myths that underpinned these interpretations of the war, shifting patterns in how the war was represented and conceived are revealed.

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An impressive work written with exemplary clarity and based on exhaustive research from an established and highly reputable historical scholar. A splendid read. -- Professor Bill Nasson, Stellenbosch University, South Africa Lord Rosebery, the former Liberal prime minister, wrote with some asperity of the hurricane season of monument building that followed the GreatWar. As we stand poised on the brink of a new commemorative deluge marking that conflict's centenary, Peter Donaldson's book is a compelling reminder that it was an earlier war that provided the template for the turning of private grief into public mourning and national mobilization. There is of course great poignancy that within a decade the scale of commemoration had shifted from carefully crafted tributes to neighbors and comrades to emotionally charged remembrance on a mass scale. Donaldson's work is impressive both in its carefully crafted research and in the clarity of its writing and analysis. It has two further great strengths. The first is its consistent grasp of the nature of the Second BoerWar as a transitional conflict, not only in terms of tactics, but also in its impact on the relationship between the army and civil society. With this in mind, the author impressively documents the ways in which the pervasive appeal of popular militarism and the reduction of the distance between the home front and the fighting front helped shape memorialization. A further achievement is the book's inclusive and systematic coverage. This is important because the sheer scale and variety of Boer War commemoration has frequently been overlooked in the historiography. Donaldson begins with consideration of the most accessible and public of memorials, those raised by local communities and military units. These had more in common than might be assumed. In both cases, memorialization constituted a process rather than a single event and often contained competing notions of belonging and identity. Indeed, there is much fascinating detail on the practical business of financing and organizing monument construction across Britain. The democratization of commemoration is a major theme of this book, and the author ably demonstrates the ways in which this tendency was evident in the depiction of the ordinary fighting soldier, as well as in the increasing pressure faced by the military authorities to take account of civilian sentiments. As in the Great War, aesthetic memorials and traditional idioms predominated, but iconographical symbolism could be controversial, as Lord Kitchener's well-intentioned attempt in 1902 to use recycled Boer bronzes to embellish the Royal Engineer's monument vividly demonstrates. More specific attention to the creation of functional memorials might also have been useful at this point-in Scotland, at least, undertakings like the Queen Victoria School, founded in 1908 as a memorial to the dead of the South African War, were on a significant scale. Crucially, however, the work goes beyond familiar memorial forms to analyze often more recondite commemorative activity in a range of contexts, including workplaces and places of worship. These chapters contain much that is fresh and original, with significant insights on the malleability of memory and the intersection of self-representation and national identity. Here, too, memorialization was not without tensions. For the public schools, for example, the priority became to restate the ideal of chivalrous and gentlemanly military conduct threatened by the grinding brutality of the guerrilla phase of the war. Monuments to heroic individuals as well as to heroic values also continued to multiply in the first decade of the twentieth century, and even tarnished heroes like Sir Redvers Buller were able to claim their (equestrian) place of honor, buoyed on a wave of local pride. Again anticipating the Great War, the dynamics of grieving at a familial, parish, or workplace level were more searing and intimate, but even in these contexts Donaldson provides powerful evidence that collective identities and national pride in a shared redemptive sacrifice were decisive commemoration. The author's very comprehensive approach is cemented in the final chapters of the work, which deal with literary and screen representations of the South African War. Appropriately for a war fought in newspaper columns, Donaldson underlines the influence of Leo Amery's Times History of the South AfricanWar (1899-1909) in embedding the image of a gentlemanly war, albeit often incompetently conducted, in the popular memory. Indeed, this paradigm survived until the war became subject to the histrionic attentions of the documentary-maker Kenneth Griffiths, whose films from the 1960s onward refashioned the conflict in line with prevailing antiheroic, liberal sensibilities. In short, Peter Donaldson has provided a pathbreaking survey. The author should be commended not only for the breadth of his empirical research but also for his willingness to avoid arcane deconstruction techniques in favor of getting to the heart of the practical production and reception of memory. -- Elaine McFarland Journal of British Studies, Volume 53 / Issue 02 201404 Peter Donaldson has provided a pathbreaking survey. The author should be commended not only for the breadth of his empirical research but also for his willingness to avoid arcane deconstruction techniques in favor of getting to the heart of the practical production and reception of memory. Journal of British Studies, Volume 53 / Issue 02 201404

An impressive work written with exemplary clarity and based on exhaustive research from an established and highly reputable historical scholar. A splendid read. Lord Rosebery, the former Liberal prime minister, wrote with some asperity of the hurricane season of monument building that followed the GreatWar. As we stand poised on the brink of a new commemorative deluge marking that conflict's centenary, Peter Donaldson's book is a compelling reminder that it was an earlier war that provided the template for the turning of private grief into public mourning and national mobilization. There is of course great poignancy that within a decade the scale of commemoration had shifted from carefully crafted tributes to neighbors and comrades to emotionally charged remembrance on a mass scale. Donaldson's work is impressive both in its carefully crafted research and in the clarity of its writing and analysis. It has two further great strengths. The first is its consistent grasp of the nature of the Second BoerWar as a transitional conflict, not only in terms of tactics, but also in its impact on the relationship between the army and civil society. With this in mind, the author impressively documents the ways in which the pervasive appeal of popular militarism and the reduction of the distance between the home front and the fighting front helped shape memorialization. A further achievement is the book's inclusive and systematic coverage. This is important because the sheer scale and variety of Boer War commemoration has frequently been overlooked in the historiography. Donaldson begins with consideration of the most accessible and public of memorials, those raised by local communities and military units. These had more in common than might be assumed. In both cases, memorialization constituted a process rather than a single event and often contained competing notions of belonging and identity. Indeed, there is much fascinating detail on the practical business of financing and organizing monument construction across Britain. The democratization of commemoration is a major theme of this book, and the author ably demonstrates the ways in which this tendency was evident in the depiction of the ordinary fighting soldier, as well as in the increasing pressure faced by the military authorities to take account of civilian sentiments. As in the Great War, aesthetic memorials and traditional idioms predominated, but iconographical symbolism could be controversial, as Lord Kitchener's well-intentioned attempt in 1902 to use recycled Boer bronzes to embellish the Royal Engineer's monument vividly demonstrates. More specific attention to the creation of functional memorials might also have been useful at this point-in Scotland, at least, undertakings like the Queen Victoria School, founded in 1908 as a memorial to the dead of the South African War, were on a significant scale. Crucially, however, the work goes beyond familiar memorial forms to analyze often more recondite commemorative activity in a range of contexts, including workplaces and places of worship. These chapters contain much that is fresh and original, with significant insights on the malleability of memory and the intersection of self-representation and national identity. Here, too, memorialization was not without tensions. For the public schools, for example, the priority became to restate the ideal of chivalrous and gentlemanly military conduct threatened by the grinding brutality of the guerrilla phase of the war. Monuments to heroic individuals as well as to heroic values also continued to multiply in the first decade of the twentieth century, and even tarnished heroes like Sir Redvers Buller were able to claim their (equestrian) place of honor, buoyed on a wave of local pride. Again anticipating the Great War, the dynamics of grieving at a familial, parish, or workplace level were more searing and intimate, but even in these contexts Donaldson provides powerful evidence that collective identities and national pride in a shared redemptive sacrifice were decisive commemoration. The author's very comprehensive approach is cemented in the final chapters of the work, which deal with literary and screen representations of the South African War. Appropriately for a war fought in newspaper columns, Donaldson underlines the influence of Leo Amery's Times History of the South AfricanWar (1899-1909) in embedding the image of a gentlemanly war, albeit often incompetently conducted, in the popular memory. Indeed, this paradigm survived until the war became subject to the histrionic attentions of the documentary-maker Kenneth Griffiths, whose films from the 1960s onward refashioned the conflict in line with prevailing antiheroic, liberal sensibilities. In short, Peter Donaldson has provided a pathbreaking survey. The author should be commended not only for the breadth of his empirical research but also for his willingness to avoid arcane deconstruction techniques in favor of getting to the heart of the practical production and reception of memory. Peter Donaldson has provided a pathbreaking survey. The author should be commended not only for the breadth of his empirical research but also for his willingness to avoid arcane deconstruction techniques in favor of getting to the heart of the practical production and reception of memory. The centenary of the South African War of 1899-1902 produced a fine crop of monographs and edited collections which amply demonstrated the significance of this devastating conflict for South African and British society alike. In South Africa, the conflict was effectively a civil war whose resolution laid the basis for the modern, racially segregated, South African nation-state. In Britain, the conflict aroused national self-questioning and doubt, ranging from enquiries into the adequacy of the army to alarms about endemic racial decline and degeneration within the working classes. The war drew attention to the power of modern propaganda, the power of the populist press, and the potential of new mass media like photography and film. It also signalled important constitutional shifts in the British empire as a measure of power devolved away from Westminster to the white dominions. In this book, Peter Donaldson successfully explores a new niche by showing how British memory and memorialization of the South African War foreshadowed representations of the Great War. In Donaldson's view, the South African War significantly reshaped British attitudes towards the ordinary British Tommy, from Wellington's 'scum of the earth' to Kipling's 'salt of the earth'. It also precipitated important shifts in civil-military relations, spurred in particular by a new assertiveness among the British middle and working classes. For the middle class in particular, memorialization of the war was an opportunity for large scale civic engagement and displays of proud respectability. Provincial towns and cities competed to erect outsize memorials to the war. These were motivated by the desire to honour fallen soldier heroes, as well as a desire to assert civic pride and prestige. As an experienced local historian, who has dug deep into city and regional newspapers and archives, Donaldson is alert to the many rivalries that attended fund-raising campaigns and subscription-based memorials. The upper-middle classes and established ruling elites were by no means entirely overshadowed by the industry of local dignitaries. Leading public schools competed to raise monuments, buildings, and facilities in the name of their own fallen scholars. Some 40 per cent of officers serving in South Africa were drawn from only 10 schools. Old Etonians comprised no less than 10 per cent of the officer class in South Africa; 129 Etonians died there as a result of enemy action or disease. Donaldson records in rather more detail than is strictly necessary the public controversy caused by Eton's decision to construct an expensive memorial building to the war: at issue was whether the memorial was designed to flatter the school or honour its dead. The larger point that Donaldson is making here is that, as in the case of cities and towns, public schools sought to appropriate the spirit of sacrifice for their own purposes in ways that sometimes outweighed loyalty to the more abstract idea of the nation. Churches offered sites of mourning and memory for parishioners. Ornate tablets, plaques, and panels were commissioned to honour individuals as well as communities. In the case of Britain's Jewish communal leadership, the war offered an opportunity to demonstrate loyalty to the state and to challenge pervasive anti-Semitic charges of rootless cosmopolitanism and self-interest. The final two chapters of the book shift from contemporary representations of the war to historic and filmic interpretations. Donaldson's analysis of Leo Amery's and Frederick Maurice's semi-official accounts of the war is a useful addition to the existing historiographic literature. He highlights shifts in Edwardian attitudes to the conflict as awareness grew about the British army's failings. Maurice's monumental enterprise was motivated by the author's desire to pour calumny on the Boers, Kruger in particular, and to vindicate the case for imperial intervention. But attitudes were changing in favour of reconciliation and the withdrawal of direct imperial control. These were expressed with incomparable force by Campbell-Bannerman's striking admission about the 'methods of barbarism' employed by the British military. An unrepentant Joseph Chamberlain was left to fulminate that pressure on Maurice to excise his politically motivated commentary demonstrated that officialdom was 'so fearful of offending our enemies that they are unable to defend ourselves'. If Edwardian self-doubts and anxieties were expressed in the immediate aftermath of the South African War, postcolonial doubt and guilt was pervasive in post-Suez, decolonizing Britain. This angle is explored in Donaldson's final chapter, which considers the work of the actor and television documentary maker, Kenneth Griffith. His BBC television histories 'Soldiers of the Widow' (1967) and 'Sons of the Blood' (1972) were coruscating attacks on the British officer class and the politicians responsible for provoking the war. Although controversial, not least within the BBC, Griffith's work was nevertheless mostly well received by a public newly alert to the iniquities of imperialism, whether practised by Britain or the USA. Griffith's devotion to representing the experience of ordinary combatants, and his claims that stoic British soldiers were betrayed by their arrogant superiors, were also validated by the developing critique of myths surrounding the Great War. In the view of one contemporary critic, Christopher Dunkey, Griffith demonstrated that the South African War was a precursor to the World War One and that it had done much to usher in the modern age. Most historians today would subscribe to that view. Remembering the South African War largely circumvents the South African historiography since its focus is entirely on the metropole. It does, however, contribute significant new evidence in support of those who insist, contra Bernard Porter, that imperialism was fundamentally constitutive of British society and societal attitudes. Donaldson's book is also a significant intervention because it shows that many of the tropes and styles of memorialization that emerged after the Great War were foreshadowed in commemorations of the South African War. Although self-contained and at times inward-looking this nicely realized, albeit modest, study is expansively suggestive. Donaldson's book is also a significant intervention because it shows that many of the tropes and styles of memorialization that emerged after the Great War were foreshadowed in commemorations of the South African War. Although self-contained and at times inward-looking this nicely realized, albeit modest, study is expansively suggestive. In Remembering the South African War Peter Donaldson does the important work of tracing the development of commemoration projects after the 1899-1902 war... this study is as much about process as it is about changing social contexts.

An impressive work written with exemplary clarity and based on exhaustive research from an established and highly reputable historical scholar. A splendid read. -- Professor Bill Nasson, Stellenbosch University, South Africa

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Dr Peter Donaldson is Lecturer in Modern British History at the University of Kent.

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