The Commemoration of the South African War (1899-1902) in British Public Schools

Mass public commemoration of war dead in Britain is often held to be a twentieth-century phenomenon, with its genesis in the Great War. However, the war memorial movement in the aftermath of the South African War (1899-1902) foreshadowed that of the Great War and acted as a blueprint for later commemorative activity. At the forefront of this movement were the nation's great public schools. The memorialization process provided these institutions with the opportunity to mold the memory of their alumni's war service to reaffirm the validity of their underlying principles and ethos.