South Africa

Julian Symons describes how, in the year of South African crisis, 1899, Buller, once regarded as the ablest of British commanders, was stricken by a strange failure of nerve.

The inward movement of European peoples and the southward migration of Bantu tribes supply the key to South African history and, write Edna and Frank Bradlow, to the problems that confront the country today.

The Battle of Majuba Hill during the First Boer War, had immense political and military significance to British arms—and not only in South Africa. Its chief cause, writes Brian Bond, was a gross underestimation of the Boer’s tactical aptitude and courage.

“A game of bluff from start to finish,” said Robert Baden-Powell, British commander during the Second Boer War. Nicholas King describes the seven-months’ siege, that took place in present day South Africa.

Chinese labour in South African mines presented a problem to Liberal consciences, writes John Lehmann.

The Boers, writes R.F. Currey, made a paramount gain during the peace that followed the South African war.

In September 1939, writes J.V. Woolford, a British war in Europe seemed alien to many Dutch South Africans, but General Smuts changed the country’s mind.

Edna Bradlow writes that while Paul Kruger felt he had an obligation to protect his country's moral right on behalf of the Transvaal Republic, Chamberlain, speaking for his own countrymen, declared that the issue involved both “our supremacy in South Africa and our existence as a great power”.

George Grey was governor in succession of South Australia, New Zealand, Cape Colony and New Zealand again. Cyril Hamshere charts a most remarkable career in the Victorian Colonial service.

Among the English pioneers in Southern Africa must be honoured the name of John Gregory of Lyme Regis, writes W.F. Rea, who embarked for Mozambique from the Jesuit College at Goa during the reign of Charles II.