Volunteers on the Veld: Britain’s Citizen-Soldiers and the South African War, 1899–1902 (review)

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Stephen Miller’s Lord Methuen and the British Army: Failure and Redemption in South Africa (London: Frank Cass, 1999) promised that here was a historian well worth taking notice of. Miller, since appointed Associate Professor of History at the University of Maine, has fulfilled that promise with his latest book on the British volunteers in the South African War of 1899–1902.

While the Regular British Army has received ample attention in the literature of late Victorian military and imperial history, Britain’s auxiliary forces or “citizen” army – the Yeomanry, Volunteers, and Militia – have been ignored almost completely. With this book Miller admirably fills this gap.

On the outbreak of the South African War in October 1899, most Britons were confident that the war would be over by Christmas. Neither the government nor the public believed it necessary to accept offers for the inclusion of auxiliary forces to complement the regular units in the field. It was simply believed that the Regular Army possessed more than enough resources to defeat a “bunch of farmers.”

However, “Black Week” – three crushing defeats within five days in mid-December 1899 – warmed the War Office to the idea of supplementing the Regular Army in South Africa with able-bodied volunteers. It accepted offers from Militia regiments, Volunteer corps, and irregular units raised by county notables, and also called for the establishment of the Imperial Yeomanry. As a result, more than 100,000 men voluntarily left Britain as part of these auxiliary forces to fight in South Africa, out of a total of 450,000 men who took up arms on the British side.

In Volunteers on the Veld, a socio-cultural history of the British volunteers in the South African War and an explanation of how and why the British war effort came to depend on their performance, unfold in seven exciting chapters.

The first chapter examines late Victorian society, taking a fresh look at militarism, patriotism, muscular Christianity, and the role of class in determining a particular outlook toward the military and volunteerism. Chapter 2 on the conflict from immediately prior to the outbreak of hostilities through the opening months of the war itself is followed by a chapter investigating the important issue of the motivation for enlistment. How the men expressed themselves about their military service is the subject of chapter 4. Chapters 5 and 6 follow the volunteers in respectively the conventional and guerrilla phases of the conflict, analyzing their attitudes towards the enemy, combatants and noncombatants alike. Chapter 7 weighs the pros and cons of using volunteers in the South African War, assessing their performance and looking at how the public and the government viewed their contribution to the war effort. Finally, the book concludes with an informative “Aftermath” chapter on Edwardian reform and the overhauling of the auxiliary forces.

The author has drawn upon a rich trove of letters, diaries, and official publications from an impressive number of archives and manuscript collections in Great Britain. Add to this the literary ability of the author and the fact that he has intimate knowledge of both the military events and social issues of the period, and one can conclude that we certainly have one of the most delightful and most important books to appear in the wake of the centenary of the South African War.