The World from the Veld

South Africa, although not outside the Anglosphere, does not lie neatly within it either. Indeed, Alfred Milner described it as “the weakest link in the Imperial chain” (p. 9). Thakur and Vale (2020) nevertheless focus on South Africa as a key place in the evolution of ideas that informed debates about British imperialism and international relations (IR). Their work claims an alternative, but complementary, origin story for IR—one rooted in the bloodshed of the Anglo–Boer War (1899–1902) and the formation of the colonial South African state, rather than the 1919 Paris Peace Conference alone. In their mind, racial oppression, administration informed by science, and imperial federation—all tested in South Africa—buttressed the theoretical foundations of IR; Johannesburg consequently joins Aberystwyth as the birthplace of the discipline. The book's core purpose is to show the “various, varied and, indeed, voluminous” origins of the IR discipline (p. 151). To explore this story, Thakur

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• Empires Without Imperialism

  Jeanne Morefield•Empires without imperialism•2014

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