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The invasion by the Boers of Natal set a process in motion that changed the lives of Natal Afrikaners forever. As a group which shared family, cultural, and other ties with the invaders, but were British subjects by citizenship, they had to make a difficult decision: join the Republican forces or remain loyal to the crown. Factors which influenced this decision, amongst others, were the pre-war suspicion of all Natal Afrikaners by the Natal authorities and the prevalence of a general anti-Republican sentiment. Despite the above-mentioned, and the sympathy which existed for the plight of the Republics, very few Natal Afrikaners joined the commandos. Doing that would have meant economic annihilation. This the Natal Afrikaners understood and the majority remained neutral. Matters were complicated when the British Army and the colonial authorities withdrew south, leaving especially the Afrikaners of the Klip River county unprotected. When occupation did not convince the Afrikaners of the area to join, a well-thought out strategy based upon fear and misinformation, brought most into the fray. Duty on these commandoes was generally slack, subversive in nature, and as much as one can expect from people forced into military combat. A small group, however, managed, despite the pressures placed upon them, to remain loyal to Britain. For these loyalists the greatest rewards were in terms of economics and power. In stark contrasts were the economic experiences of the Natal Afrikaners who were somehow, either directly or indirectly, guilty of high treason. All their possessions were systematically looted or destroyed, leaving most of them in an impoverished state. Secondly, through a range of court cases 409 Natal Afrikaners or associated people were convicted of treason, mostly by the purposefully introduced Special Court and special magistrate. The outlined experiences coincided with victimization on socio-political and cultural levels under Martial Law. Afrikaners resident in the southern part of Natal, and especially in Umvoti county, did not suffer directly because of the war but experienced a different kind of war namely a pseudo war in which they were spied upon, viewed with suspicion and under Martial Law harassed. However, these Afrikaners managed to maintain some political power while economically they carried on as before the war. They attempted to use these assets to assist the Afrikaners who had to endure desertion by their own government and Boer occupation. Natal Afrikaners also experienced other aspects of the war normally associated with the Republics. Some were arrested as POWs, while others were deported to concentration camps within the Colony. Furthermore, as a result of the war, relations between Natal Afrikaners and English colonists and Africans suffered. The collective impact and legacy of the war, as well as the shared experiences of suffering under the British, with their Republican brothers and sisters, eventually helped to bring Natal Afrikaners into the broader Afrikaner fold. / Thesis (DPhil)--University of Pretoria, 2007. / Historical and Heritage Studies / unrestricted

130 ABSTRACT This Master's degree thesis deals with the problematics of the military criminal law in the Czechoslovak Republic between 1918 and 1938. I have chosen this theme for several reasons. First of these reasons is, that this subject mingles two legal disciplines - legal history and criminal law. Concurrently it is a topic, that has not yet been widely written up. The reason is that in both law disciplines combined in the theme of interwar criminal law, it is a marginal area of interest. Existing works in most cases focus only on a constituent parts of the problematics. In the second group of works the topic was chosen too widely and the character of resulting outputs was enumeratives, withnout providing context. The purpose of this tesis is to provide a global view on the matter of our military criminal law in the begining of 20th century and within this view then further focus on its dominant elements. The work is based mainly on the legislation effective in the given period, and the commented wordings. Another valuable source for the elaboration of the thesis were historical publications, although recent papers were not excluded. On several occasions the work marginally mentiones the comparison with the interwar general criminal law. In the topics of the military criminal law, whose legislation or...