Edward VII’s Forgotten Colonial Conflicts
The Edwardian era is often seen as a peaceful interlude between the violence of Victorian expansion and the First World War. In reality, Edward’s reign bore witness to dozens of conflicts across the Empire.
South Africa
The Election That Caused the Boer War
Cecil Rhodes was once described as the single biggest threat to peace in southern Africa. In 1898 a bitter election campaign did little to suggest otherwise.
Discovery of a Living Fossil
The coelacanth, believed to have been extinct for 70 million years, was rediscovered by Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer on 22 December 1938.
No More Windfalls
Uprisings, strikes, protests and massacres in South Africa, from the Boer War to the present day.
The Murder of Hintsa
The death and mutilation of the chief of the Xhosa in 1835 at the hands of the British was a ‘barbarous’ deed, concealed by the perpetrators in a web of lies.
The Death of Liberal South Africa
A series of betrayals, atrocities and trials in the 1960s changed opposition politics forever.
Livingstone’s Rhodesian Legacy
Many missionary hopes in Africa were disappointed, writes W.F. Rea, but Livingstone and his colleagues achieved some successes along the Zambezi river.
John Mackenzie and Southern Africa
Cecil Northcott describes how Mackenzie’s dream of a liberal empire south of the Zambezi met opposition from Cecil Rhodes and from the Boers.
Villebois-Mareuil and the Boers
The most distinguished of the three thousand foreign volunteers who fought against Britain during the Boer War, writes Roy Macnab, was a brilliantly gifted French soldier.
The Boer Rebellion of 1914
When Great Britain entered the First World War, writes N.G. Garson, memories of their struggle for independence were still fresh in the minds of many Afrikaners; rather than accept its decision to follow the Empire’s lead, they took up arms against their own government.