Description
Title: Australia’s Boer War – The War in South Africa 1899-1902
Author: Wilcox, Craig
Condition: Very Good +
Edition: 1st Edition
Publication Date: 2002
ISBN: 0195516370
Cover: Hard Cover with Dust Jacket – 541 pages
Comments: The great war in South Africa fought a century ago between the British empire and the Boer republics was the first war fought by the people who called themselves Australians. It made many Australians proud of their military capacity – too proud, in fact – but it failed to draw them into helping to develop and police the British empire.
Australia’s Boer War: The War in South Africa, 1899-1902 is based on records held in Britain and South Africa as well as in Australia, and is profusely illustrated. It is the first history to encompass Australia’s experience of the war, from the formation of an ‘Australian Corps’ in Johannesburg in 1895 to the settlement of thousands of Australians in South Africa by 1914.
Harry ‘Breaker’ Morant – his crimes, his punishment, and his death – are seen in their context at last. He is joined by new and equally emblematic characters: Alexander Krygger, who deserted his wife and family to enlist and came back from South Africa a hero; Walter Karri Davies, the West Australian timber merchant who helped to raise and lead one of the war’s most famous regiments but refused all promotion and honours; and Arthur Lynch, the brilliant Ballarat-born journalist who fought for the Boers and was sentenced to death for treason.
Craig Wilcox’s impeccably scholarly yet compulsively readable narrative also describes the roles of Australian women, the thousands of Australians who fought in non-Australian units, and especially the everyday experience of being a soldier in the South African war.
