In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

The Journal of Military History 68.2 (2004) 616-617



[Access article in PDF]
Abraham Esau's War: A Black South African War in the Cape, 1899- 1902. By Bill Nasson. West Nyack, N.Y.: Cambridge University Press, 2003. ISBN 0-521-53059-8. Maps. Photographs. Tables. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. xxvi, 245. $28.00.

The release of the paperback edition of Bill Nasson's Abraham Esau's War is welcome news. And although the text is now more than ten years old, it, along with Peter Warwick's Black People and the South African War, 1899-1902 (Cambridge, 1983), remains requisite reading on the subject of Black participation in the Anglo-Boer War.

Nasson's book is a work of social history. It examines how the rural African and Coloured population of the Cape experienced the South African War. Its primary goal is to assess the meaning of the war for participants who traditionally have been neglected by scholars. To accomplish this task, it focuses on the daily lives of these subjects and their struggles and anxieties. It looks at issues such as labor, patriotism, identity, martyrdom, and resistance.

Nasson claims that war is different depending on whose war one examines. Military historians should find this message particularly resonant in relation to the overall debate on the direction in which their field is moving. Abraham Esau's war is not the well-documented and oft-discussed Anglo-Boer War. It is the domestic struggle of a people and a class for identity and meaning within the context of the broader international crisis. Through Nasson's critical analysis of the actors and the sources, colonial administrative records, newspapers and journals, police and intelligence files, as well as oral interviews, we can better understand the demands that war places on society.

Perhaps the most interesting chapter of the book tells the story of Abraham Esau. Esau, a "Coloured Englishman" living in Calvinia, in the Western Cape, collaborated with the British by organizing a group of "spies, snoops and informers" who kept tabs on the actions of all suspect Boers in the vicinity. In January 1901, Calvinia fell to an Orange Free State Commando. Although the British were able to regain control of the town in early February, under a declaration of martial law the Boers had ample time to seek retribution. Esau was among those arrested, beaten, and executed. Nasson uses this story to do more than just put a face on Black participation in the war. He uses it to explore Coloured identity and patriotism, the importance of memory and myth making, and class and race relations in colonial South [End Page 616] Africa. Abraham Esau's story is about how war shapes a community and how a community shapes a war.

Bill Nasson's Abraham Esau's War is a significant work and holds much appeal for historians of South Africa and the South African War. The paperback edition is particularly useful for the classroom setting. (Unfortunately, Cambridge University Press has done a particularly poor job of reproducing the book's illustrations.) General readers of military history, however, who lack a sufficient background in the history of the South African War and who may desire a more traditional approach, will probably find Nasson's The South African War, 1899-1902 (Arnold, 1999) more to their liking.



Stephen M. Miller
University of Maine
Orono, Maine


...

pdf

Share