War and Union, 1899–1910

doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521869836.006

4 - War and Union, 1899–1910

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 July 2011

Edited by

Anne Kelk Mager and

Shula Marks: Affiliation:
School of Oriental and African Studies, London
Robert Ross: Affiliation:
Universiteit Leiden
Anne Kelk Mager: Affiliation:
University of Cape Town
Bill Nasson: Affiliation:
University of Stellenbosch, South Africa

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Summary

The conflict that broke out on 10 October 1899, with the expiry of President Kruger's ultimatum to the British government, was South Africa's ‘Great War’, as important to the shaping of modern South Africa as was the American Civil War in the history of the United States. South African union, on the imperial agenda since the failure of confederation in the 1870s, was born in its ashes, as whites on both sides joined hands to shore up white supremacy against the background of rumours of revolt by restive Africans. If, at one level, it was a war about colonial self-determination – however limited – at another, it was also a war for the survival of a settler society, and about the credibility and international reputation of the British Empire, raising major moral issues of global importance. As the ‘biggest ever “small war” of late Victorian “new Imperialism”, the 1899–1902 conflagration has a recognised significance in world history’, not least because of the way it touched the fin de siècle European and American imagination.

Type: Chapter
Information: The Cambridge History of South Africa , pp. 157 - 210

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521869836.006 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2011

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4 - War and Union, 1899–1910

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