The Boer War, Fought between British forces and the Dutch descendents in South Africa from 1899 to 1902, was an epic war of heroism, but also one of bungling, cunning, and barbarism. It had an extraordinary cast of characters -- not only leading men like Churchill, Kruger, Rhodes, Smuts, Botha, and Kitchener, but also minor characters like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Rudyard Kipling, Gandhi, and Emily Hobhouse. The war revealed the ineptitude of the British military and widespread anti-Semitism. It exposed the corrupt underside of imperialism and brought into being the most dreaded of all war time creations, the concentration camp. Denis Judd and Keith Surridge's new history of the Boer War presents a fresh view of the conflict and debunks several myths. There was not, for instance, a straight-forward divide between Boers and British. Many Boers fought on the British side, and many British were pro-Boer, denouncing their own side's "methods of barbarism." In fact, in the history of the two communities, the war was an uncharacteristically violent collision. Although it led to some long-standing resentments, the overriding aim of both sides was to maintain European supremacy and to keep Africans and Indians "in their place." The sensitivity the British displayed to the Afrikaner volk in the peace treaty is evidence of this as was the continued division of power and spoils that lasted until the end of the Apartheid era. This new history of the Boer War is a gripping retelling of this military conflict. Even more importantly, it is the chronicle of a dispute with aftereffects that haunted the world throughout the entire twentieth century. Book jacket.