The Boer War
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: No dust jacket
Pages: Good
Markings: Previous owner
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image
At the dawn of the twentieth century, the British Empire launched what its commanders promised would be a swift, triumphant campaign against two small Dutch republics in southern Africa — and instead stumbled into the longest, costliest, and most humiliating war it had fought in nearly a century. Thomas Pakenham's The Boer War chronicles this catastrophic conflict with extraordinary narrative power, tracing the arc of battle from the disastrous British reverses of Black Week in 1899 through the brutal guerrilla campaigns that scarred the South African veld and culminated in the controversial peace of Vereeniging in 1902. Drawing on previously untapped archival sources, personal diaries, and interviews with survivors, Pakenham presents a panoramic account that is as much a study of imperial hubris as it is a military history. His prose is vigorous and cinematic, balancing the grand strategic failures of generals like Buller and Roberts against the intimate human cost borne by Boer families interned in concentration camps — a dark chapter of British colonial history brought into unflinching relief. Widely regarded as the definitive account of the conflict, The Boer War raises urgent questions about empire, nationalism, and the morality of war that continue to resonate long after the guns fell silent.
Author: Thomas Pakenham
Format: Paperback
Published: 1982, Macdonald & Co
Genre: Military history
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: No dust jacket
Pages: Good
Markings: Previous owner
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image
At the dawn of the twentieth century, the British Empire launched what its commanders promised would be a swift, triumphant campaign against two small Dutch republics in southern Africa — and instead stumbled into the longest, costliest, and most humiliating war it had fought in nearly a century. Thomas Pakenham's The Boer War chronicles this catastrophic conflict with extraordinary narrative power, tracing the arc of battle from the disastrous British reverses of Black Week in 1899 through the brutal guerrilla campaigns that scarred the South African veld and culminated in the controversial peace of Vereeniging in 1902. Drawing on previously untapped archival sources, personal diaries, and interviews with survivors, Pakenham presents a panoramic account that is as much a study of imperial hubris as it is a military history. His prose is vigorous and cinematic, balancing the grand strategic failures of generals like Buller and Roberts against the intimate human cost borne by Boer families interned in concentration camps — a dark chapter of British colonial history brought into unflinching relief. Widely regarded as the definitive account of the conflict, The Boer War raises urgent questions about empire, nationalism, and the morality of war that continue to resonate long after the guns fell silent.