Volunteers on the Veld
January 24, 2013
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4617351-volunteers-on-the-veld Volunteers on the Veld: Britain's Citizen-Soldiers and the South African War, 1899-1902 by Stephen M. Miller…
Stephen M. Miller
Stephen M. Miller research focuses on the British Army and the South African War. He is currently working on two projects. The first explores late Victorian cultural assumptions which effected British decision-making leading up to the South African War, the tactics employed on the battlefield, and soldiers’ interactions with combatants and non-combatants off the battlefield. Cultural assumptions about the Boers (Afrikaners), Black communities, and the South African landscape produced a unique Victorian response to this conflict. Strategy from the start was affected by how British officers predicted a white, rural, and so deemed inferior “race” would act in the war. Decisions of British soldiers, for example, whether to surrender in difficult circumstances were likewise determined by dilemmas informed by how the Boers were expected to react. Treatment of prisoners and women and children also had as much to do with Victorian culture as it had to do with Victorian perceptions of Boer culture. This work emphasizes that the numerous “small wars” fought by British armies in the late 19th century, of which the South African War was the largest, were each unique and worthy of study not just as political history but as cultural military history. The second project is a more generalized study, investigating the role of the military in the pursuit, sustenance, and development of the British Empire from 1850 to 1902. It explores the extent to which its leading generals, Lords Roberts and Wolseley, pursued policies of their own to both further their personal interests and their professional careers, and how their actions affected the “New Imperialism” of the late Victorian era. It also examines how these men through their manipulation of the British media shaped attitudes about race, class, and empire.
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