Charles van Onselen’s Masked Raiders is One of Eric Hobsbawm’s Books of the Year
Britain’s great historian Eric Hobsbawn has named Charles van Onselen’s latest work, Masked Raiders: Irish Banditry in Southern Africa, 1880–1899, one of his 2010 reads of the year. High praise indeed from the revered author – a real feather in van Onselen’s cap!
Two excellent books this year remind me of some of my own past researches: John A Davis’s The Jews of San Nicandro is about the Italian peasants who converted to Judaism; and Charles Van Onselen’s Masked Raiders: Irish Banditry in Southern Africa.
About the book
For two decades before a railway system linked southern Africa’s principal cities in the mid-1890s, the world’s richest supplies of diamonds and gold were transported by coach and horses to distant ports for export. For Irish soldiers based at Fort Napier, Pietermaritzburg, the temptation of this fabulous wealth proved irresistible: they deserted by the score and, as members of the criminal ‘Irish Brigade’, embarked on a spree of bank, safe and highway robberies.
Masked Raiders follows the wild exploits of legendary brigands like the McKeone brothers and ‘One-Armed Jack’ McLaughlin, who ravaged the subcontinent, from the mining towns of Barberton, Kimberley and Johannesburg to the borders of Basotholand, Bechuanaland, Mozambique and Rhodesia. With tales of heists, safe-cracking, illegal gold dealings, prison breaks and hidden roadside treasure, the book reveals the potency of the highveld’s ‘criminal heroes’, a force – until now – largely hidden from history. Startling new insights reveal how the hidden grammar of brigandage informed political actions of the day, such as the Jameson Raid, and how the movement of bandits across the interior helped shape the borders of what was to become modern South Africa. With inimitable storytelling flair, Charles van Onselen illuminates the intrigue and influence of a secretive, oath-bound brotherhood.
Book details
- Masked Raiders: Irish Banditry in Southern Africa, 1880–1899 by Charles van Onselen
Book homepage
EAN: 9781770220805
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