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"By Any Means, Fair Or Foul": The Tactics Of Britain And Germany In Colonial Southern Africa, David James Moore

Wayne State University Theses

This thesis investigates the use of noncombatant-focused tactics by European colonial powers through the comparison of two specific instances of colonial conflict in southern Africa at the turn of the twentieth century: the Anglo-Boer War in South Africa and the series of conflicts commonly referred to as the Herero Wars in German Southwest Africa. It maintains that the propensity for meaningful shifts in the treatment of noncombatants depended greatly on the nature of the victims (i.e., whites of European descent, as opposed to native Africans) and the prevailing viewpoints on their roles in the respective colonial societies. Moreover, it argues …