Home > assh > kunapipi > Vol. 21 (1999) > Iss. 3
Abstract
While the Boer War has been much chronicled for its famous battlefields such as Spion Kop, for its besieged towns from Ladysmith to Kimberley and Mafeking, and for its battle tactics of conventional and guerrilla warfare, there is as well the rather less recounted story of the 'barbarities' practiced by the various parties to the conflict, and of the British anti-war movement that the contest inspired. The beginning of the fighting in October 1899 came but a few months following the signing of the Hague Conventions I and II on the 'conduct of war', documents which heralded the twentieth century's subsequent compendium of international law, and the latter part of this century's emphases on 'human rights' and 'humanitarian intervention' in the protection of those rights. Campaigners in England at the time, therefore, such as Emily Hobhouse and W.T. Stead, and delegates from South Africa to Britain following the war, such as Sol Plaatje, suggest historical models for later political organizing, from the sanctions campaign of the British Anti-Apartheid Movement, or the work of Amnesty International, to Jubilee 2000 and the argument against debt extraction from impoverished 'Third World' countries.
Recommended Citation
Harlow, Barbara, Boers and Bores: International Delegations and Internal Debates, Kunapipi, 21(3), 1999.
Available at:https://ro.uow.edu.au/kunapipi/vol21/iss3/14
