Exploring British India: South African prisoners of war as imperial travel writers, 1899–1902

During the second South African War (1899–1902), also known as the Anglo-Boer War, the British War Office supervised the transportation of approximately 24,000 South African prisoners of war to Bermuda, St. Helena, and British India. Examining previously unstudied memoirs published immediately following the war by war prisoners held in camps in India and Ceylon, I argue that these texts read not, as one would expect, as prison or war writing, but as travel literature. These authors do not see a conflict between enjoying the benefits of empire abroad while fighting an anti-imperial war at home. The descriptions of landscapes and events in these memoirs suggest a cultural imaginary built on travelling and cultural exchange, as opposed to the insular and nativist Afrikaner nationalism that would follow empire. This article thus contributes to a larger project of examining the precursors of postcolonial nationalism, as well as historical and imaginative links between imperial peripheries.