Mr Unkles, thanks for joining us. You obviously have studied the subject in some depth, so I’d like to ask you the question I posted above. Were there many other incidents of prisoners being shot? Enough anyway to justify claims that this was a widespread practice that was condoned by the high command.
Actually, I was coming back to ask exactly the same question that Little Nemo has raised above and at #13- was there any knowledge (proof) of prisoners being shot.
Also (and slightly different to Little Nemo) was the shooting of Boers before they became prisoners condoned? (The kitchener order).
And finally, what became of Taylor? He seems to have been a leading player yet he was acquitted and seemed to disappear.
Hello chaps. Am busy at the moment, but your questions are very relevant and I will post some details of such orders being followed and what happended to Capt Taylor (a British officer who the JAG recommended be charged with murder after the JAG concluded that he and Capt Hunt (Morant’s superior oficer) gave orders not to take prisoners! More details on my web site and I will post more information
Rrgards
James, if you could post here it would be great. I could go to your website (and will) but that doesn’t share the information with other members here.
And if I post from your site here, there could be copyright issues plus of course I could unknowingly put a spin on it.
Cicero, happy for you to link my web site, I own the site name breakermorant.com and the site is maintained by me. However, I will also include some material on this site. My site also has a blog and forum that discusses many of the issues about the case for pardons, obedience to orders etc. It also has an omn site petition and poll
Regards
James, I’ll drop you a PM but I would be interested in your opinion on this quote from wiki:
However, Hamish Paterson, a South African military historian and a member of the Military History Society, has pointed out that the Bushveldt Carbineers were a British Imperial unit, not an Australian one: technically, the two “Aussies” were British officers.
I think it is an ultimate clutching at straws. They were no more British Officers than I am a Martian- on that argument at least.
Really?
At that time Australia was certainly part of the Empire, no?
Weren’t Australians British citizens then?
Plus they served in a British unit. “Bushveldt Carabineers” doesn’t sound very australian to me.
I’m not sure what your point is to be honest.
Australia was still part of the Empire during the Great War, and Australians were not British Citizens (they did have certain rights of residency and citizenship of course). However, they were Australians.
Serving in a unit doesn’t change your Nationality Latro. I trust you understand the fragmented nature of the Bushveldt Carbineers- it may not sound Australian, but it sure doesn’t sound very much like “The Liverpool Lads” to me.
Guess I’m asking at what point in time Australian became a different nationality from British.
Not like in ‘a Brit from Wales or a Brit from the Falklands or a Brit from Australia’ but when did Australian become ‘not British’.
Guess a similar question would be when did the Boers stop being Dutch.
Though Transvaal et al never were part of Holland.
I think I get your point Latro. Plenty of Australians fought in irregular units (such as the Bushveldt Carbineers) and never considered themselves “British” as opposed to “Australian”. That didn’t mean that they didn’t consider themselves not fighting for the Empire, or Britain.
And I think the distinction may go back to this historian- he may indeed be techically correct that they were"British" officers but I have no doubts that in the eyes of Kitchener they were Australian ( I can’t prove that of course).
In any case the British Miltary never had a great reputation for fair trials. (My reference is Shot At Dawn).
No, I think you still don’t get the point, exactly.
I’m sure Kitchener would have regarded Highland troops as Scottish Brits and others as Welsh Brits and others as Australian Brits.
You clearly see Australians as a seperate nationality but was that view already that develloped around 1900?
Did Australians in 1900 consider themselves British?
No, Australian troops in RSA did not consider themselves as British.
I’m not sure I can get clearer than that.
The nature of the conflict was such that people were considering themselves fighting for Britain but they were Australian. (There were, of course other nationalities).
There were fighting men (soldiers) who arrived before the official units of Australia (which in this case wasn’t a nation). They never considered themselves British.
I would ask, if a soldier was born in Australia, to Australian born parents, and joined an irregular unit- why would that make him British?
I’m not asking about the Boer wars in particular.
(And RSA didn’t exist yet either)
Look.
At some point in time British people settled (or were settled) on the continent of Australia.
Right?
My question is at what point in time did the British inhabitants of Austalia stop being British?
Apparently some Australians today can’t even fathom the idea that they might even be considered as British and that they never have been British.
I don’t think your question, as you have put it, has much to do with the original question.
Whether or not the current population of Australia consider themselves as ever being British has little bearing on actions and attitudes a century ago.
Seriously.
Is my english that unintelligible??
Rerun:
You: Calling them British Officers is clutching at straws.
Me: But they were British Officers. Australia was part ot he Empire and the carabineers were a British army unit.
You: They were as British as I am a Martian.
Me: Did Australians around 1900 regard themselves or were they regarded as ‘British’.
You: Joining the British army doesn’t make you British.
Me: When did Australians stop being British then?
You: Modern Australian views have no bearing on the attitudes back then.
Me: What?!!?
I mean there must be a timeline from British to --> Australian British to —> ‘Commonwealthener’ to—> definitely not British.
Where on this line do we situate the Boer Wars?
I’m sorry if this is turning into a hijack. I thought I was asking a rather simple question.
That is impossible to say with perfect accuracy. Because there was never any independence movement, it isn’t a view that materialised fully formed over night the way that it did in the US or the Asian and African colonies.
The view that Australians were British didn’t in any sense vanish until the second half of the Twentieth century. Australians all traveled under a British Passport until 1950. Australians were literally British citizens. This fact caused some resentment amongst younger Australians and some of the more progressive left wing, but it was a total non-issue for the vast majority of the population. The Prime Minister in ~1950 famously declared that himself to be “British to my bootstraps but Australian through and through”. That caused some comment, mostly among younger Australian, but it didn’t cause the level of outright ridicule that would occur if the US President at the time had made such a comment… or the Australian PM today. The man was re-elected PM several times after he made that statement and most Australians agreed with his position.
It was really the Baby Boomers who grew up with a clear-cut, uniquely Australian identity and you can still find plenty of elderly Australians who are proudly part of the British Empire. So in a very real legal and emotional sense, Australian adults still considered themselves British into the 1960s.
OTOH, native born Australians also clearly had a distinctively Australian identity from the very first generation, mocking immigrants and claiming ownership of the country. However a lot of this seems to have been as much regional pride as any sense of actual nationalism. Certainly recruiting literature and speeches for WWI were very openly pro-British and all about helping the motherland in her time of need. These were prepared by PR experts, so we an safely say that the notion of Australians as British resonated with young Australians well into the 20th century. That’s not to say that they didn’t also consider themselves Australian, but as you note, it seems to have more akin to being British Scots than being a dist9inctively foreign nation as it is today.
The recruitment propagandafor the Boer war wasn’t just pro-British, it was focused almost exclusively on *being *British. It invariably portrayed Australia as being part of Britain and Australians as being British citizens fighting alongside the other British forces under the Union flag. No attempt was made to appeal to Australian nationalism that I have ever seen. Austrians went to the war as British citizens to defend British interests. British citizens from Australia, but no different to British citizens from Scotland.
So it would be a hell of a stretch to say that Australians in the Boer war were not British. That is not to say that they were not proudly Australian* as well*, but they certainly considered *themselves *British troops. Morant, especially, considered himself to be British and to be a British officer, something that he makes clear in his writings. He was born in England and never arrived in Australia until he was a grown man. His personal claim was that he was the illegitimate scion of British nobility, which probably isn’t true, but he certainly made that claim, and affected an upper class British accent, right up to the point that he died.
They most certainly were.
At that time there was no legal entity known as “a British Citizen”. The term was “British Subject”, and someone born in Australian to Australian parents was every bit as much a British subject as someone born in Manchester to Mancurian parents. Australians only ceased being British subjects with the full rights and responsibilities of all other British subjects in 1950.
So in the only possible way that it makes sense to refer to anyone in the Great war being a “British Citizen” Australians were fully and totally and utterly British Citizens. If Australians were not British citizens during the Great War then nobody was a British citizen.
I really enjoyed the movie, back in the day; it’s still one of my favorite films. I accept that Morant was not quite as heroic or admirable in real life as he was made to appear in the movie. But there were serious shortcomings to the court-martial, and even if Morant and Handcock were actually guilty and properly convicted, it seems clear that Lord Kitchener acted to keep them from obtaining a pardon, stay or commutation of the sentence, and they were perhaps executed over-hastily.
More recently, you may have read, the Attorney General of Australia has weighed in on the case. Our guest james unkles is mentioned in the story: http://www.smh.com.au/national/roxon-rejects-pardon-bid-for-breaker-morant-20120509-1yd4t.html