Download or read book Ordinary Springboks written by Neil Roos and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-02-06 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Springbok' was a term used to describe the 200,000 white South African men who volunteered to serve during the Second World War. Volunteers developed bonds of comradeship, and rites of passage were expressed in the idiom of 'the front'. Without exception, volunteers nurtured hopes for some form of post-war 'social justice'. Neil Roos provides a fresh approach in considering comradeship and social justice ethnographically, as a way of focusing on ordinary Springboks' expectations and experiences during and after the war. As troops were demobilized, the contradictions of social justice in a colonial society were exposed. The majority of white veterans used the memory of service to stake their claim as white men who had served their country, and to negotiate a better position for themselves within the context of segregated colonial society. However, social justice amongst white veterans did not necessarily assume a racist character. A small group of radical white veterans invoked their war experience and traditions of anti-fascism to challenge the very precepts of racialized South African society. These veterans featured in the struggle against apartheid during the 1950s, and were especially prominent in the shift towards armed resistance to apartheid in 1961. Drawing heavily on the testimony of veterans, the book includes previously unreferenced documentary and visual material on the history of white servicemen, including official responses such as military intelligence reports on the political mood of serving soldiers, as well as material produced by veterans' organisations, such as the Springbok Legion, the War Veterans' Torch Commando and the Memorable Order of Tin Hats (MOTH). Roos offers a new framework for examining the social, cultural and political history of whites (and whiteness) in South Africa. The book will appeal to those interested in the elaboration of apartheid society and the types of acceptance and resistance that it engendered, and will also co
Download or read book Ordinary Whites in Apartheid Society written by Neil Roos and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2024-02-06 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How were whites implicated in and shaped by apartheid culture and society, and how did they contribute to it? In Ordinary Whites in Apartheid Society, historian Neil Roos traces the lives of ordinary white people in South Africa during the apartheid years, beginning in 1948 when the National Party swept into power on the back of its catchall apartheid slogan. Drawing on his own family's story and others, Roos explores how working-class whites frequently defied particular aspects of the apartheid state but seldom opposed or even acknowledged the idea of racial supremacy, which lay at the heart of the apartheid society. This cognitive dissonance afforded them a way to simultaneously accommodate and oppose apartheid and allowed them to later claim they never supported the apartheid system. Ordinary Whites in Apartheid Society offers a telling reminder that the politics and practice of race, in this case apartheid-era whiteness, derive not only from the top, but also from the bottom.
Download or read book Sights Sounds Memories written by Ian van der Waag and published by African Sun Media. This book was released on 2020-12-15 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Second World War involved most of the countries of the world and left so many millions dead and maimed, disorganised and devastated through personal and communal loss. This book recovers some of South Africa’s soldiers’ experiences from the physical and mental debris of the war. Individuals are important; their lives – used as lenses – give us colour and texture, and their voices tell the stories of ordinary soldiers. Using their memoirs and diaries, the vitality of their endeavours is reasserted, their successes and failures, victories and indecencies are re-examined, and their magnanimity and the general triumph of the human spirit are celebrated.
Download or read book A Military History of Modern South Africa written by Ian van der Waag and published by Casemate Publishers. This book was released on 2018-03-14 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of a century of conflict and change—from the Second Boer War to the anti-apartheid movement and the many battles in between. Twentieth-century South Africa saw continuous, often rapid, and fundamental socioeconomic and political change. The century started with a brief but total war. Less than ten years later, Britain brought the conquered Boer republics and the Cape and Natal colonies together into the Union of South Africa. The Union Defence Force, later the SADF, was deployed during most of the major wars of the century, as well as a number of internal and regional struggles: the two world wars, Korea, uprising and rebellion on the part of Afrikaner and black nationalists, and industrial unrest. The century ended as it started, with another war. This was a flash point of the Cold War, which embraced more than just the subcontinent and lasted a long thirty years. The outcome included the final withdrawal of foreign troops from southern Africa, the withdrawal of South African forces from Angola and Namibia, and the transfer of political power away from a white elite to a broad-based democracy. This book is the first study of the South African armed forces as an institution and of the complex roles that these forces played in the wars, rebellions, uprisings, and protests of the period. It deals in the first instance with the evolution of South African defense policy, the development of the armed forces, and the people who served in and commanded them. It also places the narrative within the broader national past, to produce a fascinating study of a century in which South Africa was uniquely embroiled in three total wars.
Download or read book Fighting the People s War written by Jonathan Fennell and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-01-24 with total page 967 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jonathan Fennell captures for the first time the true wartime experience of the ordinary soldiers from across the empire who made up the British and Commonwealth armies. He analyses why the great battles were won and lost and how the men that fought went on to change the world.
Download or read book History beyond apartheid written by Thula Simpson and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2023-04-18 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edited volume encompasses a range of themes and approaches relevant to the field of South African history today, as viewed from the perspective of practicing historians at the cutting edge of research in the discipline. The collection features the historians offering critical reflection on the theoretical and methodological aspects of their work. This involves them both looking back at the inherited historiographical tradition in the respective areas of their research, while also pointing forwards to possible future directions for scholarly engagement.
Download or read book Modern South Africa in World History written by Rob Skinner and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2017-05-04 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book assesses South African history within imperial and global networks of power, trade and communication. South African modernity is understood in terms of the interplay between internal and external forces. Key historical themes, including the emergence of an industrialised economy, the development of systematic racial discrimination and popular resistance against racial power, and the influence of national and ethnic identities on political and social organisation, are set out in relation to imperial and global influences. This book is central to our understanding of South Africa in the context of world history.
Download or read book Military Education and the British Empire 1815 1949 written by Douglas E. Delaney and published by UBC Press. This book was released on 2018-12-14 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Common military education was the lifeblood of the armies, navies, and air forces of the British Empire. It permeated every aspect of the profession of arms and was an essential ingredient for success in both war and peace. Military Education and Empire is the first major scholarly work to address the role of military education in maintaining the empire throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Bringing together the world’s top scholars on the subject, this book places distinct national narratives – Canadian, Australian, South African, British, and Indian – within a comparative context. The contributors examine military education within the British Empire as a generator of institutional knowledge, as a socializing agent, and as an enhancer of interoperability. This volume is the first to examine military education from a transnational perspective, which allows readers the opportunity to consider the connections between education and empire.
Download or read book Rethinking White Societies in Southern Africa written by Duncan Money and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-02-12 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book showcases new research by emerging and established scholars on white workers and the white poor in Southern Africa. Rethinking White Societies in Southern Africa challenges the geographical and chronological limitations of existing scholarship by presenting case studies from Angola, Mozambique, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe that track the fortunes of nonhegemonic whites during the era of white minority rule. Arguing against prevalent understandings of white society as uniformly wealthy or culturally homogeneous during this period, it demonstrates that social class remained a salient element throughout the twentieth century, how Southern Africa’s white societies were often divided and riven with tension and how the resulting social, political and economic complexities animated white minority regimes in the region. Addressing themes such as the class-based disruption of racial norms and practices, state surveillance and interventions – and their failures – towards nonhegemonic whites, and the opportunities and limitations of physical and social mobility, the book mounts a forceful argument for the regional consideration of white societies in this historical context. Centrally, it extends the path-breaking insights emanating from scholarship on racialized class identities from North America to the African context to argue that race and class cannot be considered independently in Southern Africa. This book will be of interest to scholars and students of southern African studies, African history, and the history of race.
Download or read book Dictionary of Labour Biography written by K. Gildart and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-04-30 with total page 446 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Volume XIII of the Dictionary of Labour Biography maintains the standard of original and thorough scholarship for which the series has earned its outstanding reputation. A unique study of nineteenth and twentieth century British history, each entry is written by a specialist and engages with recent developments in the field of labour history.
Download or read book Fighting for Britain written by David Killingray and published by Boydell & Brewer Ltd. This book was released on 2012-04 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based mainly on oral evidence and soldiers' letters, tells the story of over half-a-million African troops who served with the British Army in campaigns in the Horn of Africa, the Middle East, Italy, and Burma. Looks at the impact of army life and travel on the men and their families, and the role of ex-servicemen in post-war nationalist politics.
Download or read book History of South Africa written by Thula Simpson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2022-09-01 with total page 667 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: South Africa was born in war, has been cursed by crises and ruptures, and today stands on a precipice once again. This book explores the country's tumultuous journey from the Second Anglo-Boer War to 2021. Drawing on diaries, letters, oral testimony and diplomatic reports, Thula Simpson follows the South African people through the battles, elections, repression, resistance, strikes, insurrections, massacres, crashes and epidemics that have shaped the nation. Tracking South Africa's path from colony to Union and from apartheid to democracy, Simpson documents the influence of key figures including Jan Smuts, Nelson Mandela, Steve Biko, P.W. Botha, Thabo Mbeki and Cyril Ramaphosa. He offers detailed accounts of watershed events like the 1922 Rand Revolt, the Defiance Campaign, Sharpeville, the Soweto uprising and the Marikana massacre. He sheds light on the roles of Gandhi, Churchill, Castro and Thatcher, and explores the impact of the World Wars, the armed struggle and the Border War. Simpson's history charts the post-apartheid transition and the phases of ANC rule, from Rainbow Nation to transformation; state capture to 'New Dawn'. Along the way, it reveals the divisions and solidarities of sport; the nation's economic travails; and painful pandemics, from the Spanish flu to AIDS and Covid-19.
Download or read book The Fires Beneath written by Seán Morrow and published by Penguin Random House South Africa. This book was released on 2016-06-01 with total page 748 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The life of Monica Wilson is a story of groundbreaking scholarship, passionate creativity and personal tragedy during South Africa’s bitter and divided twentieth century. As a young anthropologist in the 1930s, Monica immersed herself in the lives, work and beliefs of African communities in southern and East Africa, while carefully observing the effects of historical change. At the core of her existence was her intellectual collaboration and intense personal relationship with her husband, the brilliant but clinically depressive Godfrey Wilson, who took his own life in 1944. After Godfrey’s death, Monica raised their two children and built a career as a leading academic, at Fort Hare, Rhodes University College and the University of Cape Town. In a political environment where black academics were under constant threat and ideas were censored, she outspokenly advocated racial equality and freedom of speech, her publications emphasising a common South African identity and implicitly challenging apartheid ‘separate development’. This fascinating biography moves between the Eastern Cape, Cambridge, Tanganyika, Nyasaland, Northern Rhodesia and Cape Town. It explores the relationship between anthropology and history, and the tensions between liberalism, Christianity, Marxism and apartheid ideology. Drawing on the letters and diaries left by Monica and Godfrey Wilson, this is a powerful story about politics, race, war, faith, love and loss.
Download or read book Everyday Communists in South Africa s Liberation Struggle written by Alan Kirkaldy and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-11-10 with total page 397 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the role of social movements in the Southern African liberation struggle, through the lens of two ‘everyday communists’. Focusing on the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA), the author explores the lives of Ivan and Lesley Schermbrucker, whose contribution to the party was more clandestine than that of leaders such as Bram Fischer and Joe Slovo. They represent how ‘ordinary’ people could play significant roles based on stances more rooted in common decency and morality than in Marxist theory. The book also sheds light on the interplay between transnational and national tendencies during the liberation movement, particularly between the 1940s and the 1960s. The Schermbruckers changed their views in response to the shifting national and international political landscape, the rise of Stalinism, and the flight of South African activists into exile from the 1960s. Both fluent in African languages, they were able to create relationships of trust with African members of the CPSA. Examining tensions and conflicts during the liberation struggle, this book provides fresh insights into ‘underground’ activism.
Download or read book Untied Kingdom written by Stuart Ward and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2023-02-16 with total page 703 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A panoramic history uncovering the demise of Britishness as a global civic idea since the Second World War.
Download or read book Waste of a White Skin written by Tiffany Willoughby-Herard and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2015-01-06 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A pathbreaking history of the development of scientific racism, white nationalism, and segregationist philanthropy in the U.S. and South Africa in the early twentieth century, Waste of a White Skin focuses on the American Carnegie Corporation’s study of race in South Africa, the Poor White Study, and its influence on the creation of apartheid. This book demonstrates the ways in which U.S. elites supported apartheid and Afrikaner Nationalism in the critical period prior to 1948 through philanthropic interventions and shaping scholarly knowledge production. Rather than comparing racial democracies and their engagement with scientific racism, Willoughby-Herard outlines the ways in which a racial regime of global whiteness constitutes domestic racial policies and in part animates black consciousness in seemingly disparate and discontinuous racial democracies. This book uses key paradigms in black political thought—black feminism, black internationalism, and the black radical tradition—to provide a rich account of poverty and work. Much of the scholarship on whiteness in South Africa overlooks the complex politics of white poverty and what they mean for the making of black political action and black people’s presence in the economic system. Ideal for students, scholars, and interested readers in areas related to U.S. History, African History, World History, Diaspora Studies, Race and Ethnicity, Sociology, Anthropology, and Political Science.
Download or read book The British Commonwealth and Victory in the Second World War written by Iain E. Johnston-White and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-12-28 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the first comprehensive study of the British Commonwealth in the Second World War. Britain and its Dominions, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, formed the most durable, cooperative and interchangeable alliance of the war. Iain E. Johnston-White looks in depth at how the Commonwealth war effort was financed, the training of airmen for the air war, the problems of seaborne supply and the battles fought in North Africa. Fully one third of the ‘British’ effort originated in the Dominions, a contribution that was only possible through the symbiotic relationship that Britain maintained with its former settler-colonies. This cooperation was based upon a mutual self-interest that was largely maintained throughout the war. In this book, Johnston-White offers a fundamental reorientation in our understanding of British grand strategy in the Second World War.
