Abstract
Summary This article explores the construction and interpretation of the 1913–1914 Boer Rebellion in five popular romances by English white writers in South Africa. Inverting Frederic Jameson's conception of resistant form, a Utopian vision of a fully democratic South Africa is made to act as arbiter of these novelists’ insights/limitations. The wish to promote white unity is shown to be a common theme, developed mainly via a love plot, though with greatly varying degrees of sympathy for Afrikaners provided they are not rebels. Two of the novels exploit anti‐German contemporary sentiments. Links with the possibility of a black rebellion are, by and large, discreetly evaded. Although one writer has the courage to promote a blend of pacifism and feminism, and the satirical perspective of another reveals a capacity for larger vision, none of these novels comes anywhere near offering a radical challenge to the stock white conception of South African society.
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