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African Affairs 99:633-648 (2000)
© 2000 The Royal African Society

Article

THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR AND THE HISTORIANS

Andrew Porter

King's College, London

Historians' perceptions of the significance of the South African War (1899–1902) have changed considerably over a century. For a long time, its military magnitude, its importance in shaping a global capitalist system, and the stimulus it provided to theoretical understanding of imperialism, were felt to give the war an important role in the making of the modern world. Recent perspectives, both fed by and represented in the centenary commemorations, have replaced these grand sweeps with attention to the many and detailed South African wars experienced at first hand by different individuals and segments of Britain's and South Africa's populations. There is a case for suggesting that the place of the war in Britain's broader domestic and imperial history is now—and perhaps rightly—neglected, in part as a consequence of the fragmentation encouraged by historiographical specialization and also because an exaggerated importance was attributed to it for so long.


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