By Arthur Conan-Doyle. This classic account of the Second Anglo-Boer War, originally published in 1901, remains the standard by which all other accounts of the conflict are measured. Compiled by the author while serving as a medical doctor in Bloemfontein, the book starts by covering the origin of the Boer republics, and their dealings with the British and other emigrants on the Rand which laid the foundation of the casus belli.
From there it moves onto a fast-moving and factual account of the various battles and campaigns which saw initial British defeats turned into rapid advances into the Boer heartlands. The expected Boer surrender then never materialised, and the conflict devolved into a hard-fought guerrilla war which saw nearly twice as many British troops deployed into the Boer republics as the latter’s entire population: men, women, and children combined.
A riveting story which has lost none of its drama in the past century, and whose reverberations can still be felt to the present day.
Doyle said of the Boers:
“Take a community of Dutchmen of the type of those who defended themselves for 50 years against all the power of Spain . . . intermix with them a strain of inflexible French Huguenots [and the] product must obviously be one of the most rugged, virile, unconquerable races ever seen upon Earth. Take this formidable people and train them for seven generations in constant warfare against savage men and ferocious beasts, in circumstances under which no weakling could survive, place them so that they acquire exceptional skill with weapons and in horsemanship, give them a country which is eminently suited to the tactics of the huntsman, the marksman, and the rider . . . and you have the modern Boer—the most formidable antagonist who ever crossed the path of Imperial Britain.”
Conan Doyle admits the Boers were better fighters than even the armies of Napoleon Bonaparte. Completely reset with two dozen unique and rare pictures from the conflict.
Softcover, 262 pages, # 744.
