Soldier Sojourners and Cityscapes: Anzac Impressions of the Port Cities of Durban, Cape Town, and Freetown During the First World War and the Significance of the Built Environment

Abstract

Between 1916 and 1919, thousands of Anzac troops visited the port cities of Durban, Cape Town and, to a lesser extent, Freetown on their way to Europe during the First World War. Their impressions were recorded in diaries or letters back home, and published in local papers. Identity formation, race, and the colonial encounter have thus far taken centre stage for understanding Anzac experiences as ‘soldier tourists.’ This paper argues that ideas about ‘modernity,’ progress,’ and the built environment were equally part of the colonial encounter for these soldier sojourners as they visited these African ports cities. With details on urban sanitation, housing, architecture, infrastructure, transport and population, Anzac assessments of these urban spaces were informed not only by travel writing conventions and literary tropes of Africa, but by city guide books and hegemonic trans-empire discourses about the ‘ideal’ modern city.’ The latter however, was not independent of ideas of race, but rather interacted with, and was often shaped by, a sense of white, Anglophone, superiority.