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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:'Fighting a Worse Imperialism': White South African Loyalism and the Army Education Services (AES) during the Second World War
Author:Cardo, MichaelISNI
Year:2002
Periodical:South African Historical Journal
Issue:46
Period:May
Pages:141-174
Language:English
Geographic term:South Africa
Subjects:Afrikaners
armed forces
military education
citizenship education
World War II
History and Exploration
Military, Defense and Arms
Education and Oral Traditions
External link:https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02582470208671422
Abstract:On 10 September 1940, an unofficial committee meeting was held at the University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa) to discuss the possibility of assisting the Union Defence Force in providing an educational service for South African troops. This led to the foundation of the Army Education Services (AES), which operated from 1941 to 1945. The AES was by no means explicitly concerned with defending British imperial ideas. Nor did it intentionally seek to promote a sense of colonial nationalist identity rooted within an imperial world view. AES sought to educate the fighting force against Nazism and its local manifestations rather than for British imperialism; the universalist aspirations of South Africanism were satisfied by discursive grounding in education for world citizenship rather than imperial citizenship per se. AES was underpinned by a conscious desire to open the channels of communication and cooperation between English speakers and Afrikaners. Through AES, traditional South Africanist concerns - chiefly the cultivation of a white national identity based on bilingualism and mutual understanding and appreciation of each other's cultural contributions to South African nationhood - came to shape, and were shaped by, the vision of a liberal-democratic society. Notes, ref. [ASC Leiden abstract]
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