Our First Foreign War

When war broke out between the British Empire and the Boer republics in 1899, New Zealand was among Britain’s most enthusiastic supporters. Many welcomed the opportunity to prove their nation’s military capabilities and its loyalty to the Empire.

Although the numbers sent to South Africa were small, the response at home was on a grander scale. Contributions to the war effort flooded in and New Zealanders closely followed the fortunes of their contingents in the field and the drama of the sieges of Mafeking, Kimberley and Ladysmith. Patriotic men, women and children packed fund-raising events and joined military volunteer and school cadet corps.

This is the first book to examine a phenomenon that has few parallels in New Zealand history. It offers a finely grained analysis of the nation’s response to the South African War, and the conflict’s enduring impact on New Zealand.

Nigel Robson is a senior historian at the Office of Maori Crown Relations ― Te Arawhiti. This, his first book, comes out of his master’s thesis (2013) supervised by Associate Professor James Watson, Massey University. Robson has contributed articles to journals, including ‘A Warrior Chief: Tuta Nihoniho, Porourangi and Maori in the Second Boer War 1899–1902’, The Volunteers: The Journal of the New Zealand Military Historical Society (2012), and presented conference papers, including ‘Chinaman and Trooper’, a paper examining the impact of the South African War on New Zealand’s Chinese community (2019 Dragon Tails ‘Transformation and Transformation’ conference held at Victoria University) and ‘What a Trophy for One Christian to Loot from Another!’, at the New Zealand Historians Association conference (2019), a paper which examined the looting of religious items by New Zealand soldiers in South Africa during the South African War.