Teaching and Learning

Memorandum

Module: Anthropology 2B (HCGE232-1)

Week number (Date): 3 (14 March 2024)
Unit covered: Unit 3 - Chapters 3 & 4.

Instructions:
Last week’s activity (Activity 3: Week 3) was based on Unit 3 of the prescribed courseware
for this module.

Below are the suggested solutions for that activity.

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1.1. Drawing from the content of your prescribed textbook, describe how the Anglo-
War Boer became an ‘international event’. (12 Marks)
Model Answer: Unit 3, Chapter 3, Page 56-57

The Anglo-Boer War was an international event. This statement may seem unstartling
given the way global events, such as the invasion of Iraq or the attacks on New York
and Washington DC on 11 September 2001, keep occurring today. The distinction of
this war is that it is one of the first events of this kind. Symbolically straddling the last
two centuries (1899–1902), as if it were foreshadowing the contemporary moment of
our modernity, the war was notable, among other things, for actively involving people
from five continents and for provoking debates in separate political circles, many of
them located in countries that had no direct stake in its outcome. ✓✓

It was also international in the simple sense of providing a serious spectacle that was
closely covered by newspapers of different countries. The course of the war was
sensational. The British – the world imperial power, for whom the Boers seemed no
match – surprisingly faced a series of reversals at the outset, a trend that culminated
in the ‘Black Week’ of December 1899, when British forces were defeated in three
important battles. They recovered, but after having defeated the Boer conventional
armies by June 1901 they found the guerrilla tactics of the Boer commandos too
difficult to handle by conventional means. British frustration inspired their deployment
of catastrophic technologies of violence that included scorched earth policies and the
use of concentration camps for Boer children and women, as well as African families.
✓✓

In small or large measure, the Anglo-Boer War changed lives and histories in different
parts of the world. Debates occurred among European socialists on the nature and
implications of capitalist colonial transformation of pre-capitalist systems. What effect
did colonialism have on capitalism? Was it ‘progressive’? (Kaarsholm, 1988). More
immediate quarrels were enacted in countries that participated in the war. Troops were
sent from New Zealand, Canada, Australia, India and, of course, Britain, while a small
international contingent of volunteers from Europe joined the Boers out of solidarity
with their cause.15 This sharpened political lines in countries that sent the troops. In
Canada and Britain, for instance, it produced a gigantic wave of patriotism. ✓✓

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In Britain, the volunteer movement mobilised participation in the war among the middle
and working classes (Miller, 2005). On the other hand, many socialists and liberals
supported the other side. Bertrand Russell, who later became a leading pacifist,
recalled that he had supported the Boers (1991:136–38), while Keir Hardie, the
Scottish socialist and co-founder of the Labour Party, sympathised with the
‘unpolluted’, ‘pastoral’ Boer world (Kaarsholm, 1988:49). Dissident Christian sects
such as the Quakers, together with some socialists, however, mounted brave pacifist
campaigns. We know, for instance, the strangely evocative story of Martin Butler, an
artisan, pedlar, worker and newspaper editor operating in rural New Brunswick in
Canada. A man with Catholic and socialist sympathies, he became convinced of the
evils of imperialism after Canada had dispatched its troops and launched a newspaper
to pursue his pacifist campaign, at considerable personal cost (Stiles, 2004). In India,
British brutality inspired the angry poetry of Rabindranath Tagore that presaged, with
uncanny prescience, the apocalyptic conflicts that nationalism promised in the new
century. ✓✓

Indeed, there is sufficient material to write a global history of the AngloBoer War.
However, my intention is comparatively limited – and somewhat different. I wish to look
at the histories of South Africa and India and the ways in which these were shaped by
the war. This is not a history formed by encounters of travellers that can then be
explained by the framework of civilisational encounters. As a regional unit within the
international, South Africa/India acquires its coherence and interconnectedness from
being a part of the same empire. This is compounded by an inter-imbrication of large
populations that is the consequence of the migration of large numbers of people who
inhabit an international polity where population is increasingly equated with political
power and cultural threat. Indian migrants occupied ambiguous political and social
positions in South Africa and occasioned new initiatives in the war. ✓✓

In India, meanwhile, smaller numbers of politically dominant temporary migrants, i.e.

the British residents, provided more immediate intensity to the war effort. At the same
time, the South Africa/ India region was differentiated by the fact that while South Africa
was a settler colony, India was directly colonised. An interweaving thread to stitch
together my narrative is provided by the career of the barrister Mohandas Gandhi –
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later to become the Mahatma – who worked for and with people in both contexts. He
vigorously linked the war to the general conditions of the South African Indian migrant
indentured labourers and traders, and campaigned for them in an India that, for its
own reasons, was concerned with the outcome of the war. ✓✓

Additional
To further enhance your learning experience in Anthropology, access via Google
Scholar and read the following journal:

Pampallis, J. 1991. Foundations of the new South Africa. Ethnomathematics

Apartheid Education/Popular Struggle, School Integration Options, Trends
Transforming SA, 13(1): 98.

The following Learning Outcomes are assessed in this question:

• Unit 3, Chapter 3&4:

• Critically analyze the role the Anglo-Boer War played in shaping the history
of South Africa and India.

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