The Boer War: Nationalism, Imperialism and Identity in Late Victorian Culture

The Boer War was one of the great tests of Imperial Britain. And through literature and popular culture, it helped to shape ideas about nationhood in the late Victorian era.
In The Boer War: Nationalism, Imperialism and Identity in Late Victorian Culture Steve Attridge casts fresh light on those ideas.
In a series of essays, Attridge offers the reader a scholarly assessment of the debate about the war and looks at how the ‘new media’ that emerged at the same time begun to call into question existing cultural attitudes.
Attridge uses specific images, narratives and motifs as a starting point from which to assess differing attitudes towards both the British nation itself and her Empire as a whole. A particular focus is given to how the motif of ‘the soldier’ was represented both at home and abroad, and how the trauma of the Boer War may have altered these representations.
Attridge concludes that this conflict presented a crucial turning point for national and imperial identity in Britain.
The Boer War is a seminal work for anyone aiming to more fully understand the late Victorian ‘crisis of Imperialism’, and how changes in the Empire forced ordinary people to turn inwards and re-examine their national culture.