Fri 22 Aug: When is a war a war, where is it war, for whom, and for how long?

In the case of the War of Mlanjeni, aka the Eight Frontier War of (supposedly) 1849-1851, depending on what and who one is reading, this is a war, not a war, three wars, the continuation of something earlier (which also was or wasn’t a war). These assessments in part depended on who lived where, for there are repeated mutterings in the Pringle letters and other documents about those further away not assisting those living on the frontier in their troubles. There are also questions involved about where is a war, for in the book on the Eight Frontier War I’m currently reading there is no Baviaans River/frontier hotspot to the fighting, but which is something that comes through strongly in the letters written in the moment in the Pringle collection, including by grandees such as Somerset. In this history book, William Dods Pringle makes an entrance, but in a different place and as a subsidiary to Bowker as the overall Commandant of local forces – whereas it was clearly the other way round in the sources I’m working on, for in them Pringle was appointed Commandant, the Baviaans area is recognised as important, and in a letter General Seymour also comments on Bowker as a reliable and discrete second in command. [nb. Like the Pringles, there are myriad Bowkers, so this is likely to be a case of, spot the particular Bowker in question.]

And as for not/war in Baviaans River in these years, so with other ‘big events’ and ‘history’. Who says what they ‘are’, in the sense of their import or their lack of war-ness or peace-ness in days when war was less than total? Who says precisely where they occurred and when this was? And what about those people and circumstances that exceed these parameters, but experienced a something that was out of the ordinary? The Pringles and Bowkers between 1849 (or earlier) to 1852 (or later) are in historiographical terms beyond the intellectual boundaries as well as on the geographical frontier. E.H. Carr wrote many years ago concerning a man killed at a Stalybridge Fair for selling bread made of adulterated flour, this was a happening but not history. Well yes, it isn’t what has appeared in mainstream historiography, but it’s precisely the kind of thing that feminist, social and cultural historians and fellow-travellers have spent the last thirty or forty years rescuing from the enormous condescension of mainstream historians.

Last updated: 22 August 2014