ABSTRACT
Over 2,000 foreign volunteers fought in the South African War of 1899–1902. They supported the 60,000-strong Boer force against a British army numbering 500,000 men. Some foreigners were integrated into the commando forces of the two Boer republics, the Zuid Afrikaansche Republiek (Transvaal) and the Orange Free State. But most fought in separate foreign corps or performed non-combat roles. Their presence signals that, instead of a distant colonial skirmish, the South African War should be understood as a modern war with an international history. This article examines the different pathways volunteers took to join the conflict. It examines the battlefield experiences of foreign volunteers during the first phase of conventional warfare and the second guerrilla phase after mid-1900. It explores how nascent international humanitarian convention and internal military doctrines influenced these experiences. Ultimately, it reveals how conflicting conceptualizations of the war, as both a national struggle and a colonial campaign, presented serious dilemmas to foreign participants that eventually drove many from the fight. Despite these effects, European military observers came to view South Africa’s battlefields as the archetypal modern warzone, one in which, despite the increasing ‘nationalization’ of warfare, the foreign volunteer was ‘the recognized adjunct of modern armies.’
