Canada's Little War: Fighting for the British Empire in South Africa

Sidney Allinson is Canadian news correspondent for Britain’s The Army
Quarterly and Defence. He is the author of The Bantams: The Untold Story
of World War I, Jeremy Kane, and Kruger’s Gold: A Novel of the
Anglo-Boer War.

Carman Miller is a professor of history at McGill University and a
leading expert on our country’s little-known role in the Boer War.
When I was writing Kruger’s Gold: A Novel of the Anglo-Boer War
(2002), I found that one of the best single sources of research
information was Miller’s Painting the Map Red (1993). In that volume,
he provided a comprehensive and brilliant overview of Canada’s
involvement in the South African War.

Now, with Canada’s Little War, he gives us a brief but thorough
coverage of the military, social, and political aspects. He explains
that while Canada had no problem raising and equipping more than 7000
enthusiastic volunteers to fight alongside Britain against the Boer
republics, there was also an anti-war faction of people at home who
strongly opposed our participation.

Miller well captures many colourful individuals among the contingents
we sent to South Africa, and the notable fighting abilities of Canadian
troops in important battles there. He describes their effective
anti-commando role in the brutal guerilla war that developed on the veld
after the defeat of Boer regular forces. He also briefly covers the
camps that were set up by Britain to “concentrate” dispossessed Boer
families, but that became a catastrophe. Though there was no deliberate
intention of genocide, diseases and malnutrition in these disgraceful
and ineptly run camps caused the deaths of over 24,000 Afrikaner women
and children.

The book is supplemented with a generous number of illustrations, many
of them in colour. Sad to say, the pictures are not well supported by
their captions; most are perfunctory and a couple are inaccurate. For
instance, vague labels like “Handgun,” “Men embarking,” and
“Distinctive uniforms,” tell us nothing, while a 12–pounder
artillery piece is wrongly identified as a “Gatling gun.”

Overall, though, Miller’s latest book is a valuable resource for
readers wishing for concise insights about “Canada’s Little War.”