Australia S Communities And The Boer War

This book explores an Australian regional community’s reaction to, and involvement with, the Boer War. It argues that after the initial year the war became an ‘occasional war’ in that it was assumed that the empire would triumph. But it also laid the foundations for reactions to the outbreak of the Great War in 1914. This is the first exploration of the place of the Boer War in Australian history at the community level. Indeed, even at the national level the literature is limited. It is often forgotten that, despite the claims that Australia became a federation via peaceful means, the colonies and the new nation were, in fact, at war. This study aims to bring back into focus a forgotten part of Australian and imperial history, and argues that the Australian experience of the Boer War was more than the execution of Morant and Hancock.

This book examines the Empire’s Patriotic Fund, established in Victoria, Australia, in 1901 to assist the dependants of the men serving in the Boer War and the men invalided home because of wounds or illness. Acting as an autonomous body and drawing on funds raised through a public appeal, its work marked one of the first attempts in Australia to deal with the consequences of Australian participation in a sustained war. This is the first full study of an Australian fund established to support those affected by a sustained war being fought for Empire by Australians. Rather than casting those affected by war as victims, John McQuilton examines how a body of middle class men attempted to come to grips with an experience that lay outside prevailing notions of social welfare. Based on applications submitted to the Empire’s Patriotic Fund where both class and gender played their roles, this book opens up further study of such funds and the question of antecedents in the history of repatriation in Australia in the early twentieth century.

Contains a guide to researching the records of those Australians who served in the Boer War, 1899-1902.

About three-quarters of a century has passed since the Australians faced Mauser and pom pom fire and suffered the ravages of disease in South Africa. Sadly the story of the Australian contribution in the Boer War is not well known. This is surprising because no less than 16,175 enlisted men embarked to fight in South Africa. It was the first significant force to leave Australia. There were also many who either worked or paid a passage to the front. The South African regiments raised in Natal and Cape Colony all contained them. Many Australian refugees from Paul Kruger's Republic also served in the colonial regiments. Altogether the number of fighting Australians must have been 20,000 or more. In fact Australians seem to have taken part in almost every major engagement, for some fought with British regular units. From the manner in which Australians bore themselves in a highly mobile campaign, in a country similar to their own, they earned a reputation second to none as mounted infantry and scouts. After such a lapse of time, any worthwhile account of their record in the campaign over the best part of three years would hardly be possible but for the preservation in the newspapers of the day of soldiers' letters from the front. The exploits and comments told in the words of the men who were there, on veldt and kopje, fitted into the story of a moving campaign, form the basis of this history.

The author has drawn on primary sources from Australia, South Africa and the United Kingdom to produce a book that encompasses not only Australia's experience of the war, but tells the stories of individuals including Breaker Morant, Alexander Krygger, and Arthur Lynch. A beautifully produced book,Australia's Boer War was commissioned by the Australian War Memorial, which has provided over 200 illustrations and maps, including 15 artwork reproductions in full color.

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1901 edition. Excerpt: ... chapter xxvi the "bushies" I Have known the Australian Bushman for years--as he exists on his native heath. He is not a "Bushranger" in our sense of the word; neither is he an aboriginal, as some people seem to imagine. The Sydney Daily Telegraph correspondent, who accompanied the first lot round by way of Beira, records his impression of them. He says: --"As an Englishman I have derived much pleasure from the study of the Bushman, and after two months' intercourse I have come to the conclusion that he is one of the best fellows in the world--and this after he had laughed me to scorn for drinking tea with milk, and had been unsympathetically mirthful over my ineffectual effort to make "damper," or the tasty "devils in the coals." He is a tall, raw-boned, good-natured beggar; he can make tea in a period an ordinary man would be striking a match; he can ride horses that tie themselves up into knots and buck with greatk suddenness and power; he can swear so that I have seen regular Tommies stand agape in awesome admiration. With a sick comrade he is tender as a child; he is the sort of stuff that heroes are cut from, and when a buck crosses his path within eyeshot he fears not God or the game laws." Unfortunately, there would appear to have been some difficulty with his officers, several of whom, in Rhodesia, were chosen by a committee. Colonel Carew, their Brigadier, in an interview on the subject, is thus represented: --"What do I think of the Bushmen?" he said, sweeping a pile of returns off a chair and motioning me to a seat. "They are great, aud I am just as proud of my command as I can possibly be. They want a little training, but they are wonderfully adaptable, and they can ride. Look at that fellow "--a mounted man of the Victorians...

This book explores how public commentary framed Australian involvement in the Waikato War (1863-64), the Sudan crisis (1885), and the South African War (1899-1902), a succession of conflicts that reverberated around the British Empire and which the newspaper press reported at length. It reconstructs the ways these conflicts were understood and reflected in the colonial and British press, and how commentators responded to the shifting circumstances that shaped the mood of their coverage. Studying each conflict in turn, the book explores the expressions of feeling that arose within and between the Australian colonies and Britain. It argues that settler and imperial narratives required constant defending and maintaining. This process led to tensions between Britain and the colonies, and also to vivid displays of mutual affection. The book examines how war narratives merged with ideas of territorial ownership and productivity, racial anxieties, self-governance, and foundational violence. In doing so it draws out the rationales and emotions that both fortified and unsettled settler societies.