Gender, Race, and the Writing of Empire
Public Discourse and the Boer War

An examination of the impact of ideas of race and gender on late Victorian imperialism.

Paula M. Krebs (Author)

9780521607728, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 26 August 2004

220 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.3 cm, 0.33 kg

"...the book is unique in analyzing several genres, and should be relevant to those intersted in how discourse creates and mirrors public understanding of conflict in times of rapid cultural change." Victorian Periodicals Review

All of London exploded on the night of May 18, 1900, in the biggest West End party ever seen. The mix of media manipulation, patriotism, and class, race, and gender politics that produced the 'spontaneous' festivities of Mafeking Night begins this analysis of the cultural politics of late-Victorian imperialism. Paula M. Krebs examines 'the last of the gentlemen's wars' - the Boer War of 1899–1902 - and the struggles to maintain an imperialist hegemony in a twentieth-century world, through the war writings of Arthur Conan Doyle, Olive Schreiner, H. Rider Haggard, and Rudyard Kipling, as well as contemporary journalism, propaganda, and other forms of public discourse. Her feminist analysis of such matters as the sexual honor of the British soldier at war, the deaths of thousands of women and children in 'concentration camps', and new concepts of race in South Africa marks this book as a significant contribution to British imperial studies.

1. The war at home
2. The concentration camps controversy and the press
3. Gender ideology as military policy - the camps, continued
4. Cannibals or knights: sexual honor in the propaganda of Arthur Conan Doyle and W. T. Stead
5. Interpreting South Africa to Britain: Olive Schreiner, Boers, and Africans
6. The imperial imaginary: the press, empire, and the literary figure
Notes
Works cited.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: c 1800 to c 1900 [DSBF]