Sexual Relations between British Soldiers and Boer Women: A Methodological Approach

Abstract

A number of sources documenting the varied sexual relations between British soldiers and Boer women are assessed in terms of the traditional historical methodology of empirical evidence and logical inference. On this basis, the facticity of most of these sources is accepted, while two are discounted by virtue of provenance and internal evidence. Next two further sources that are not amenable to this methodology are interpreted using the postmodern deconstructive rejection of history as an epistemology and Alun Munslow's speculative expressionist history. However, these anti-empirical strategies are ideologically determined and therefore ethically questionable and the resultant relativity vitiates the historian's craft. On this basis, the historical status of these sources is rejected. KEYWORDS IntroductionThe recent publication of an Afrikaans novel about a young woman who was viciously raped and left for dead by two British officers 1 has excited much attention and pertinently raises the issue of sexual relations between British soldiers and Boer women. In this article the range of such relations from