Some attitudes in Grahamstown towards the advent of the second Anglo-Boer War

Abstract

In October 1899 the Anglo-Boer War broke out. This article looks at how so quintessentially English speaking a community as late-Victorian Grahamstown (especially some of its local newspapers) reacted to the gathering crisis. Underlying the most obvious - but certainly not entirely representative - outburst of popular jingoistic feeling, was the sense that Grahamstown was in a state of limbo: it was no longer of commercial or military importance and it had not yet found its sense of identity as a university centre. In such circumstances, Grahamstonians looked essentially to their own interests. Theirs was a "tightfisted" response even to the plight of their own compatriots who fled the "Boer North".