‘A Newspaper War’?: Dutch Information Networks during the South African War (1899-1902)

Abstract

The South African War (1899-1902) caused a stir in the Netherlands. The Dutch public overwhelmingly supported the Boers in their struggle against the British. To support the ‘kinsmen’ in South Africa several organisations in the Netherlands embarked on an international propaganda campaign. This article considers the involvement of Dutch journalists in the pro-Boer agitation. They were confronted with a dilemma because as a small country the Netherlands officially was neutral and did not possess strong international lines of communications, which made it difficult to distribute information in other countries. This problem raised moral and practical questions about the Dutch press and its position in the world. Using concepts from the historiography on the media of the British Empire, Kuitenbrouwer analyses the Dutch press system around 1900.