Historical Reenactment of the South African War at the 1904 St. Louis World Fair

This poster presentation is based on an interdisciplinary project at the intersection of African History, Museum Studies, Art History (History of Photography), and Critical Race Studies. I look substantively at the representation of the South African War in the United States at the beginning of the twentieth century, including the origins of US popular sympathy for the Boer cause. The South African War was an object, a visual object, of particular interest or particular curiosity for a global audience. The 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis included a re-enactment—a visual performance- of the South African War for which an American company recruited six hundred white South Africans (Afrikaner and British) including former Boer generals and soldiers rehearsing their historic defeat, and a small number of black South Africans, to travel to the United States to re-enact the war for a U.S. audience. The re-enactment of their struggle against a colonial power, and then vanquishment and defeat of white, Boer farmer-soldiers was the most popular exhibit at the fair: its run was extended and it generated the most profit. Photographs from the war itself circulated in association with this re-enactment and there is also a record of photographs of the re-enactment itself. The spectre of (white) colonists resisting colonial oppression also appealed to white Americans, including southerners still bitter over their historic loss to the Union army. It also generated sympathy for the Boer’s in the United States. This poster presentation will display stereoscopic photographs of the South African War from the Keystone-Mast collection alongside archival photographs of the historical re-enactment of the South African “Boer” War at the St. Louis Fair in order to probe racial performances that evoke resonances between U.S. and South African history.