Worlds at War: The Local and the Global in New Histories of the South African War

Abstract

All modern wars are global in reach, drawing in international actors as active participants or concerned observers no matter how peripheral the conflict might at first appear. With this in mind, it is received wisdom among historians that the South African War “was not simply a small colonial war of local significance, but was rather a conflict with global ramifications.” The war was global in that it shaped worldwide opinion on British conduct, relied on precedent elsewhere, and informed the development of wartime strategies beyond southern Africa.1 But there is value in studying social worlds and local experiences of the 1899–1902 conflict as much as its global impact, especially when we consider the almost civil-war characteristics which pitted neighbour against