This review is available in full in Africa Trends.
From the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian West Bank to Ethiopia’s occupation of Eritrean Badme, territorial disputes are still a source of tension for many nations. There is a strong body of literature that discusses the different economic and diplomatic implications of occupation like Azoulay Adi Ophir Ariella’s The One State Condition Occupation and Democracy in Israel/Palestine, Walter M. Hudson’s Army Diplomacy: American Military Occupation and Foreign Policy After World War II (2015), and Margaret Pawley’s Watch on the Rhine: The Military Occupation of the Rhineland (2007). Some other works, like Keat Gin Ooi’s The Japanese Occupation of Borneo, 1941-1945 (2011) and Peter M. R. Stirk’s The Politics of Military Occupation (2009) provide excellent insights into the logistics of military occupations. One gap in the current dialogue, however, is regarding the consequence of long-term military occupation on local civilian populations.
Graham A. Dominy’s Last Outpost on the Zulu Frontier: Fort Napier and the British Imperial Garrison (2016) addresses this gap through a thorough case study of Fort Napier’s social influences on South Africa. Fort Napier overlooked the colonial capital of Pietermaritzburg, South Africa from 1843 to 1914. The original intent of this garrison was to “bolster the prestige of the colonial state” (p. 44) to mask British weakness in South Africa rather than actually securing the region strategically. During the fort’s seventy-one year history, the garrison “took part in active campaigning on four occasions, totalling less than four years” (p. 2). The fort’s history expands beyond the garrison’s involvement in the campaigns. Dominy argues that “(G)arrison activities were integral to the wider social and cultural life of settler society, but they also played a noteworthy role in the refashioning of African society during the mid to late nineteenth century and the early twentieth century” (p. 108). Dominy particularly emphasises the importation of Victorian ideals into South Africa.
