Remembering the South African War

Fostered by an increasingly literate public and burgeoning populist press, the South African War—which ended the lives of many volunteer British soldiers—would catalyze a transition in British commemorative practice, foreshadowing the rituals of remembrance that engulfed Britain in the aftermath of the First World War. In this book, Peter Donaldson provides the first comprehensive look at how the British remembered the South African War and its fighters. He situates memorialization within larger Edwardian Britain, examining everything from the committees who managed memorials to the financing that supported them to the aesthetic debates that determined their forms. Through his comprehensive study of the remembrance of this single war, Donaldson illuminates the ways Britain has gone about managing history—and its sense of self within it—ever since.