Boer Propaganda During the South African War of 1899–1902
This article examines Boer propaganda on commando during the South African War by analysing how the two Boer governments and the military leadership endeavoured to inspire a citizen army and to keep the men in the field. In the South African War a commando was a Boer fighting unit, more or less the equivalent of a British regiment, and ‘on commando’ meant ‘in the field’. For the first seven months of the conflict, two important pro-Boer newspapers, De Volksstem and The Standard & Diggers' News were distributed on commando; carefully used, they exercised a significant impact on the combatants' morale. Later, in the guerrilla phase of the war, local newspapers, notably De Bazuin and De Zoutpansberg Wachter, often published under trying conditions, took their place. Furthermore, Boer officers played an important role by fanning patriotism in the ranks with their inspirational rhetoric. The Boer perception that his military and political cause was both just and noble before God was a useful propaganda tool, as were official war reports; they could, in addition to truths, include carefully selected half-truths and flagrant untruths.
‘What the Boers Did Australia Can Do, and Do Ten Times Better’: The Impact of the Boers on Australian Defence Policy
Abstract The Boer Republics of the South African Republic (Transvaal) and Orange Free State influenced Australian defence policy before the First World War. Despite the demise of the Boer Republics at the hands of the British Empire, and the participation of Australia in their defeat, Australian parliamentarians explicitly advocated replicating Boer-style concept of citizen-soldiers to counter an attack on the Commonwealth. The Second Anglo-Boer War (1899–1902) has received limited scholarly attention in Australia and the legislative legacy left by the Boers on early Australian defence policy has been near-entirely unmentioned. Impacted by the romanticised image of Boer society that permeated globally in the nineteenth Century and Australia’s experiences fighting in the Second Anglo-Boer War, Australian legislators used the Boers as inspiration for constructing defence policy. Deeply impressed by the manner in which the Boer Republics resisted British annexation, particularly in the context of Australian fears regarding Japanese expansionism, there was a sustained attempt to legislate a Boer-style military system in Australia.
The Military Specialist: Skilled Manpower for the Armed Forces
This book represents another in the long list of publications by Eli Ginzberg, the undisputed doyen of contemporary manpower researchers in the United States. For thirty years Ginzberg and his colleagues in the Conservation of Human Resources Project at Columbia University have been concerned with the problems of manpower in all its dimensions. The objective of the book, as stated in the preface, is "to present a series of analyses of contemporary problems that challenge both the student of ideas and the citizen looking for remedies to urgent social and economic problems." The Foreword attempts to answer the question, What is manpower? It contains a very informative discussion of the evolution of terminology in the field of manpower. In Part I the author discusses the evolution of manpower policy in the United States. He attempts to place it in perspective by discussing the impact of technology on contemporary manpower problems and the larger developments in the economy. Part II is an attempt "to identify the many barriers that block the escape of people from poverty, that transmit the evils of unemployment from one generation to another, that confound the search for simple cures for juvenile delinquency." Part III, with its chapters on the draft, the shortage of physicians and paramedical manpower, looks at some of the compelling manpower issues currently facing the nation. The chapter on the conservation of talent and the chapter on womanpower set forth some of the policy implications gained from two previous research projects designed to investigate the career patterns of high-talent manpower. The remaining chapters of the book serve as a vantage point from which to survey the contemporary manpower scene. Chapter 18, "Psychology and Manpower Policy," is an interesting attempt to explore the psychological theories which underpin current public policies dealing with the development of human resources. It also illustrates very well the urgent need to consider the interdisciplinary dimensions in the study of manpower. The final chapter on "New Manpower Programs" provides a brief but useful summary of manpower programs initiated in the 1960's. It can serve as an introduction to the penetrating evaluation studies of federal manpower programs recently completed by Garth Mangum and Sar Levitan. The book concludes with an "Afterword," which discusses the philosophical question of individual freedom versus manpower planning in a democratic society.