‘Jingo Dingo insanity’ and Mafeking Day: articulating madness in Federation-era Australia

Abstract

In 1899, the Australian colonies sent military contingents to South Africa to support the British in fighting the Boer enemy. While some questioned the justice of the conflict, the public reaction to the war was akin to a ‘national insanity’. British victories in the first half of the war, particularly the relief of Mafeking in May 1900, saw noisy jingo crowds filling the streets of capital cities in celebration, resulting in public drunkenness and damage to property, behaviour typically deemed ‘mad’. Colonial society, faced with increases in lunacy rates, was not only in the process of comprehending madness, but also ideas about Australian nationalism in the period approaching Federation of 1901. These factors, added to popular involvement in a British war in South Africa, shaped political, police and press responses to the new manifestation of jingoism. The press, a site of both the production and advancement of public conceptions of insanity, drew upon the social language of madness to communicate the acceptability or unacceptability of specific jingoistic behaviour. This paper examines the metaphorical use of mad vocabularies by the colonial press during this period to explore the ‘arbitrary boundary’ between madness and sanity in Federation era Australia.