Overview

Soldiers and Bushmen: The Australian Army in South Africa, 1899–1902 examines the commitment to what was expected to be a short war. It presents a thematic, analytical history of the birth of the Australian Army in South Africa, while exploring the Army's evolution from colonial units into a consolidated federal force. Soldiers and Bushmen investigates the establishment of the 'bushmen experiment' – the belief that the unique qualities of rural Australians would solve tactical problems on the veldt. This, in turn, influenced ideals around leadership, loyalty and traditional combat that fed the mythology of the Australians as natural soldiers. The book also examines the conduct of the war itself: how the Army adapted to the challenges of a battlefield transformed by technology, and the moral questions posed by the transition to fighting a counterinsurgency campaign.

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9781009597814

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Author Information

Thomas Richardson is a historian at University of New South Wales, Canberra. He specialises in Australian military history, and histories of insurgency and counterinsurgency. His first book, Destroy and Build: Pacification in Phuoc Tuy 1966–72, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2017. He is working on a history of the Australian Army and limited war in Asia.

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