Review Of The Article“Loyalty, Patriotism And Resistance: Canada’s Response To The Anglo-Boer War, 1899-1902”

The article that is being reviewed is called “Loyalty, Patriotism and Resistance: Canada’s Response to the Anglo-Boer War, 1899-1902” and it was written by Carmen Miller of McGill University. The thesis of the article is that the South African War was one of the most substantial events of the 20th century, and it had a deep influence on Canadian life and politics. Carmen goes in detail about how the events played out between 1899 and 1902. Specifically, how Canada was divided in the issue of sending troops to South Africa, and how it had an impact on our nation.

The author, Carmen Miller highlighted key important pieces from the events that transpired from 1899-1902. For example, the article spoke upon the active prime minister at the time of war Sir Wilfrid Laurier and how he played a part in the weakening of Canada’s imperial tie to Great Britain. Canadians were divided into English Canada and French Canada. The imperialist English Canadians were in favour of sending troops to aid British forces in South Africa because they believed that Canada would help its allies. However French Canadians were against the war and believed that Canada should not participate in a war that is taking place across the world. Wilfrid Laurier was faced with intense pressure by imperialists and by the French society on both sides. He made a compromise and sent out over 1000 voluntary Canadians to South Africa. This compromise not only weakened Canada’s imperial tie to Great Britain, but it also strengthened French Canadian nationalism. Britain were not happy with Laurier’s decision because they believed they could rely on their colonies for sending out large groups of soldiers to aid them in the war, as Canada was a self-governing entity of the British Empire at the time. Miller went on to speak upon the 20th century French Canadian separatist movement, and how it was sparked by the Anglo-Boer War. French Canadian Liberal member of Parliament Henri Bourassa was a voice for the French-Canadian people, and constantly vocalized that Canada’s involvement in the South African War would be a step back in Canada’s development. Bourassa was opposed to Canada’s imperial ties to Great Britain and saw imperialism as evil. After the war, society had changed. The people of Canada were longer in favour of any sort of imperialist values in their nation. People would not be tolerable of any kind of English values and beliefs, the South African war served as a foundation to the French-Canadian separatist movement. Towards the end of the article, it states that Canadians who served in the War returned home feeling much more independent, insistent on being led by Canadian officers who were in Canadian units. Canada was developing into its own entity and moving further away from their imperial tie to Great Britain.

Overall, this article does a great job of proving its thesis which was the fact that the South African War was an important event and had a massive impact upon Canadian life and politics. The article was structured to have many arguments on why and how the War was significant, however it relied on a couple major points to solidify the article. Those points were how the War weakened Canada’s imperial tie to Great Britain, how it strengthened French-Canadian nationalism and how Wilfrid Laurier played a major role in the developments. The author provided convincing evidence to back these points up such as how Wilfrid Laurier was pressured by Britain to aid them in the War, and how he chose to only send out a small group of voluntary troops. Of course, this caused outrage in Britain, however it was accepted by French-Canadians.

The article does a great job to prove how Laurier’s actions went further as Canada pushed away from imperialism after the war and set itself as its own entity. However, there were a couple issues with this article when reading. The author begun the article with a cluster of points and it was a lot to process. I believe Carmen Miller did not do an adequate job of providing enough evidence for the other points such as how the South African War played a part in the conscription crisis and how the War stimulated militia reform. I would have liked to see more emphasis on those other points, however the major points of the article were properly linked to the thesis and were sufficiently proved. Finally, the writing style and format was not easy to read. The entire article seemed as it was one long paragraph, there was no separation in topics, and the paragraph indents were not visible at first read. All in all, it was a difficult but interesting article which proved its thesis but had some room for improvement.