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The Boer War
(with Keith Surridge)

The Boer War of 1899-1902 symbolized Britain's towering Imperial status and at the same time exposed potentially crippling weaknesses in her military machine. It marked both the apotheosis of her late-nineteenth-century Imperial expansion, and also its collapse. Like all wars, it promoted legends and convenient national myths and paid scant for the truth.

In Britain, reaction to Joseph Chamberlain's campaign to annexe one last piece of Africa for the Empire was an ambivalent mixture of jingoistic elation and mounting hostility. The first few months of the war saw battle after battle and thousands of lives lost to the Boers, under the unfortunate leadership of Sir Redvers Buller. Only after the monumental sieges of Ladysmith, Kimberley and Mafeking (which turned Baden-Powell into a national hero) were relieved and Kruger's republic and the Orange Free State fell like a pack of cards to Lord Roberts' army, did the London Stock Exchange, delighted by the conquest of Johannesburg, dance for joy.

In his sensitive and scholarly account, Denis Judd is not concerned with partisanship. He recognizes the extraordinary courage and resourcefulness of the stoic Afrikaner farming community who, against all odds, carried on an eighteen-month guerrilla campaign after the war seemed to be over. Judd above all deals clearly and vividly with the complex issues, stirring events and varied personalities that go make up the Boer War.

Reviews

"This immensely readable book ... provides a fine panoramic vision. The deeper meaning of the war is now clear."
- Robert Giddings, Tribune

"Judd and Surridge add a new angle ... they conclude that the war acted a as a kind of boil-lancing which enabled the two white races to march forward hand-in-hand on the road to Apartheid."
- Jane Ridley, The Spectator

"An impressive history ... written to a high standard with undoubted scholarship."
- Andrew Roberts, Sunday Telegraph