The New Liberalism
Raphael Mokades - the winner of the 1996 Julia Wood Award - argues that military failure in the Boer War transformed political attitudes in Edwardian Britain.
Britain in 1899 was not only fin de siecle but also fin d’epoque. Queen Victoria and Salisbury, those ancient relics of a bygone age were still in power: Britain was unencumbered by alliances, still in glorious isolation. It would hardly be an exaggeration to claim that this period of calm which marked the very end of the long Victorian era, represented the hubris to the nemesis of 1900-1914.
The events of the Boer War dealt an unquestionable shock to the arrogant frame of mind into which Britain had slipped. Rudyard Kipling, writing in The Times, apparently summed up the national mood:
‘Let us admit it fairly as a business people should, We have had no end of a lesson: it will do us no end of good. It was our fault, our very great fault – and now we must turn it to use; We have forty million reasons for failure, but not a single excuse!'
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