‘Botha Cake’ and ‘Belgian Onion Soup:’ Gendered Patriotism Through Three South African, First World War, Community Cookbooks

ABSTRACT

This article considers three South African community cookbooks – including The Overseas Contingent Fund Recipe Book (Turffontein, 1915) and the Paarl Cookery Book in Aid of War Funds (Paarl, 1918) alongside Wartime Cookery (Cape Town, 1915) – as expressions of gendered patriotism. These community-created cookbooks enabled contributors to participate meaningfully in the First World War by drawing together two established gendered practices: philanthropic fundraising and food and household management. This ‘domesticity in action’ enabled participants to contribute to, and feel connected to, both local and trans-empire causes. These values of philanthropy, economy and patriotism are revealed in the constitutive components of the texts – the titles, aims, prefaces and even the recipes themselves. Apart from supporting specific funds, the call for economy in the cookbooks reflected both experiences and perceptions of wartime material hardship in South Africa. A further consideration of the contributors involved with the books’ compilations highlights the intersection of local and trans-empire networks, and wartime (white) identity politics within urban South Africa. The networks suggest locally-grounded loyalisms, many marked by personal connections to men serving, as well as friend and family networks with overseas reach. Lastly, the article is a reminder of the importance of cookbooks as neglected sources in the writing of history.

KEYWORDS:

• First World War
• women
• South Africa
• cookbook
• food history
• empire
• networks

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful feedback and suggestions. She particularly expresses her gratitude for the support of the International Studies Group of the University of the Free State in their support of her research. Her thanks also go out to Melanie Geustyn of the National Library of South Africa, Cape Town branch, for their assistance with navigating the archival holdings of Special Collections.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 ‘Preface’, Wartime Cookery.

2 As such community cookbooks can be considered ‘collective statements’. Black, "Community Cookbooks," 157. In relation to the Spanish Civil War, Maria Paz Moreno unpacks the ‘ideological discourses’ that cookbooks – their recipes, prefaces, titles – are grounded in, as well the challenging circumstances that necessitated creative cooking solutions to feeding families when food was scarce. Moreno, "Food Fight," 276–85.

3 The collection otherwise includes a few postcards, a pamphlet from the city's Peace and Arbitration Committee, and the committee notes from the Women's Hospital Ship Fund (Cape Town was an important port in the empire's network).

4 See, Nasson, World War One; Nasson, "South Africa’s Memory, " 156–60; Vahed, "‘Give Till it Hurts,'” 41–61; van der Waag, A Military History; Grundlingh, "Pleading Patriots," 29–47; Grundlingh, Fighting Their Own War; Sampson, East African Campaign; Sampson "South Africa," 113–36; Thompson, "The Natal Homefront," 101–37; Garson, "South Africa," 68–85; Digby, Pyramids and Poppies; Lambert, "Munition Factories," 67–86.

5 Appadurai, "Cookbooks in Contemporary India," 22; DiMeo and Pennell, eds. Reading and Writing Recipe Books.

6 The use of recipe books in historical inquiry have become increasingly important to 'Food History,' a relatively recent phenomenon, which grew out of cross-disciplinary interest in all things food, from anthropology, to history, gender studies and sociology. For the development of Food History, see, Kirby and Luckins, eds. Dining on Turtles, 3–9; Pilcher (ed.), The Oxford Handbook, 1–16; Avakian and Haber, "Feminist food studies," 2–7.

7 ‘Cape Malay’ as a South African creole food arose out of the Dutch, and later, British settler colonial contexts. It reflected the legacy of slavery and indentured labour, and drew upon locally-available ingredients, the spice trade of the Dutch East India Company and later the British empire, and the influences of indigenous, Asian and European peoples. Baderoon, "Catch with the eye," 115. Baderoon shows that the framing of this creole food as ‘exotic’, yet ‘benign’, ‘has the effect of domesticating images of slavery in South Africa … while denying the brutality of slavery’. Baderoon, Regarding Muslims, 52. Vahed and Waetjen, Indian Delights. Other exceptions include Oppelt, "C. Louis Leipoldt," 51–68 and De Beer, "Spicing South Africa." For the ‘cauldron’ of the early Cape see, Ward, Networks of Empire.

8 See also Albala, "Cookbooks as Historical Documents," 227–40.

9 Zlotnick argues that Victorian women could tame the ‘colonial “other”’ by ‘naturalising the products of foreign lands’. Zlotnick, "Domesticating Imperialism," 52–53. In a similar light, Nupur Chaudhuri has written of ‘memsahibs’ as ‘agents of cultural exchange between coloniser and colonised’. Chaudhuri, "Memsahibs and Motherhood," 517–35. Such work also builds on the argument that European women were integral to implementing and re-enforcing racial stratification and the colonial system more broadly. See, for example, Stoler, “Making Empire Respectable,” 355. Other authors looking at colonial food histories include: Bickham, "Eating the Empire," 71–109; Collingham, Curry; Laudan, Cuisine and Empire; Leong-Sabir, A Taste of Empire; Procida, "Feeding the Imperial Appetite," 123–49; McCann, Stirring the Pot; Mintz, Tasting Food, Tasting Freedom.

10 de Beer, "Spicing South Africa," 30–31.

11 This point is made by Mitchell, '"A Scottish Case Study," 13.

12 Moreno, "Food Fight," 276–85.

13 Buckley, "Recipe for Reform."

14 Ward, "Empire and the Everyday," 267–84.

15 Theophano, Eat My Words, 2. For more on community cookbooks, gender and society, see, Leonardi, "Recipes for Reading," 340–7; Anne Bower, Community Cookbooks, Stories, Histories; Driver, Culinary landmarks; Pilcher, Que vivan los tamales!; Black, "Community Cookbooks," 154–70. It must be noted that the social and structural racism within the South African colonial context meant that white women were more likely to be educated, literate and in positions of power than most persons of colour. If the lives and thoughts of white women, and particularly those of the working classes in South Africa, are difficult to trace in written historical sources, those relating to women of colour are almost entirely absent.

16 Whilst Afrikaans (a semi-creole of Dutch) was widely spoken (and, importantly, not only by white South Africans – Afrikaans was written in Arabic script by Malay Capetonians – see, for example, Davids, “Arabic Afrikaans”) Dutch was still used in formal, and particularly older, gentile circles. The Second Language Movement, however, linked Afrikaans as a language to a white Afrikaner nationalism. The nationalist paper De Burger, established in Cape Town during the war, was first published in Dutch, but by the end of the war had transitioned to Afrikaans. The terms ‘Afrikaner’ and ‘South African’ were not fixed, and often shifted according to who was using them. This reflected greater debates within Afrikaans/Dutch circles regarding Afrikaner unity and how this was imagined in relation to Britain, and, accordingly white English speakers. See, for example, Koorts, D.F. Malan; Dubow, A Commonwealth of Knowledge; Lambert, ‘British South Africanness’; Giliomee, Afrikaners.

17 Nasson, "War Opinion in South Africa," 248–49.

18 Including, by the early twentieth century, various indigenous peoples, as well as the descendants of trafficked slaves and indentured labourers.

19 Saunders, "Britishness in South Africa," 66.

20 Dubow, Racial Segregation, 1–45; 123–4.

21 Nasson, “War Opinion,” 4.

22 The rebellion, whereby almost 11,000 men followed a handful of revered old Boer leaders, was further fuelled by the decision of the Botha Government to invade German South West Africa on behalf of Britain in late 1914 (where many German and Afrikaner kin resided) and by big, blustery talk of re-establishing the independent Afrikaner Republics of the Orange Free State and the Transvaal. The rebellion was, partially, a result of the Anglo-Boer War and subsequent years or drought and hardship, but more generally related to South Africa’s uneven, but increasing, capitalisation of agriculture. Swart, "'Desperate Men,'" 161–175.

23 For an elaboration of wartime responses see: Nasson, World War One; Nasson, "War Opinion in South Africa."

24 Dubow, A Commonwealth of Knowledge, 22, 47; Bickford-Smith, Ethnic Pride and Racial Prejudice, 61, Saunders, "Britishness in South Africa," 65.

25 Bickford-Smith, Emergence of the South African Metropolis, 43, 67–69.

26 Nasson, “War Opinion,” 8.

27 As Kent Federowich shows, loyalty to Botha and Smuts often involved revere for their actions, but could also reflect kinship, family and friendship networks, as well as opportunism. Fedorowich, “Sleeping with the Lion?,” 90–95.

28 Beaumont, “Whatever happened to Patriotic Women,” 275.

29 In Britain, white-collar positions (far more than munition factories) became the key area representing a shift in women’s work, with roughly two million taking up office jobs by 1918. The complicated nature of loyalisms in South Africa, and the fact that there was no conscription, meant that, in national terms at least, there was not the same movement of men out of work as in Britain. Reid, “World War I,” 18.

30 Walton, “Motherhood, Morality and Materiality”, 14; Department of Mines and Industries, Industrial Development, 1; Union of South Africa, 1921 Census, 342–4; Berger, Threads of Solidarity, 34–35; Nicol, “Garment and Tailoring Workers,” 54, 36–59.

31 The objections that did emerge centred around the consequences of factory work on mothering and childcare, or concerns that inadequate wages might lead women towards prostitution. Walton, “Motherhood, Morality and Materiality”, 14–16; Berger, Threads of Solidarity, 34.

32 Susan Grayzel has demonstrated, in the context of Britain, ‘the powerful set of ways in which appropriate feminine behaviour was defined along … the most traditional of lines’. Grayzel, Women’s Identity at War, 2.

33 Even South Africa’s white suffragettes, largely conservative and divided racially and linguistically, prioritised the war effort over their enfranchisement work. Wartime charity and work, it was suggested, might demonstrate their administrative and organisational prowess, and their worthiness of voting rights. Campaigning for the enfranchisement did continue in part, and women were granted the ability to be town councillors in the Cape Province, in 1918. The discourses surrounding this, however, again were about the perceived insights women could bring to matters of child welfare, education and health. This was not a break from ‘traditional’ gender roles. White women eventually received the vote in 1930, as part of a strategic move to increase the white electorate (at the same time people of colour lost the vote to right in the Cape Province). Women’s Outlook, April 1915, 3; Walker, “The Women’s Suffrage Movement,” 331; Gaitskell, “The Imperial Tie,” 5, 13.

34 In the context of white minority rule in South Africa, and popular understandings of eugenics in the early twentieth century, motherhood was viewed as particularly vital in the creation and maintenance of white power. Walton, “Motherhood, Morality, Materiality,” 12–16.

35 The APO saw itself as representing all coloured people in the Union but more accurately reflected the aspirations of a Coloured elite. Adhikari, “Protest and Accommodation,” 94.

36 “Patriotic Moslems.” Cape Times, October 6, 1914.

37 Rommelspracher, “White South African Housewives,” 25.

38 According to Janet Theopano, the idea of a community cookbook as a means of women’s fundraising dates to ‘at least the 1600s’. The deeply ingrained connection between a woman’s ‘domestic’ realm and food made cookbooks for fundraising an obvious choice for women, who would often call upon pre-existing social connections. Theopano, Reading Women’s Lives, 12. In contrast, Cobley and Black date community cookbooks to the American Civil War. Colbey, "Recipes, Armistice and Remembrance," 23; Black, ‘Community Cookbooks’, 151. For Australia, see, Cobley, "Recipes, Armistice and Remembrance."

39 Hughes, St Andrews Church Tested Recipes; Wesleyan and Bazaar: Gems of Thought; Wesleyan Methodist Church, Coronation Recipes.

40 Walton, “Motherhood, Morality and Materiality,” 9.

41 Women’s Hospital Ship Fund, “Interim Report,” 19 January 1915.

42 Mitchell, '"A Scottish Case Study," 13.

43 “The Brave Belgians.” Cape Times, November 16, 1914.

44 Grayzel, Women's Identities at War, 2; Pickles, Female Imperialism and National Identity, 9–10, 39–42; Walton, "Motherhood, Morality and Materiality," 54–70. For South Africa’s child welfare movement see, Duff, "Babies of Empire," 59–73.

45 Black, "Community Cookbooks," 157.

46 Paul Ward has similarly argued, in the case of the British Empire, that ‘everyday’ acts of patriotism, (such as practising food economy, fund-raising and knitting) incorporated women ‘into the nation’ and empire during the war. This sense of participating in a trans-empire effort enhanced an ‘Imperial Britishness’ even in the Dominions where local nationalisms were developing. Ward, “Empire and the Everyday,” 269–70.

47 Wartime Cookery, preface.

48 See, for example, Gordon, "Onward Kitchen Soldiers," 61–88; Mosby, Food Will Win the War; Bentley, Eating for Victory; Monger “Tangible Patriotism.”

49 Buckley, "Recipe for Reform,"65.

50 Ibid, 67–75.

51 Monger, "Tangible Patriotism," 249.

52 St Cyprian’s School Magazine no. 64, April 1915, 8.

53 St Cyprian’s School Magazine, no 68, May 1917, 3.

54 Newman and Davis, ‘Introduction’, The Wartime Cookbook.

55 Cost of Living Commission, 33; Nasson, “‘Messing with Coloured People,’” 307.

56 "Statistics of Wages and Industrial Matters," 6. The Union Government eventually fixed the price of some commodities including sugar, matches, paraffin and petrol and warned merchants and grocers against war profiteering. Cost of Living Commission, 8.

57 White, Zeppelin Nights, 226; Winter, The Great War and the British People, 105. For Cape Town also see: Nasson, World War One, 174–5. The diverging infant mortality rates for Cape Town’s municipal wards during the war suggest that the benefits of full employment were not uniform across the city. "Reports of the Medical Officer of Health," 1914–1919.

58 Van der Waag, Wyndhams, “Wyndhams, Parktown,” 275–6.

59 Ibid.

60 Cape Town’s Mayor’s Minutes for 1914, records the Governor General’s Fund as ‘an all-South African fund, thanks to Mrs Botha’. Its objectives were ‘to relieve distress more directly caused by the war, to relieve the sick and wounded, and to help wives and families of those who have been or may be called out to fight in the defence of our Empire’. Mayor’s Minutes. Cape Town, 1914.

61 As reported in the Cape Times, September 01, 1917.

62 In a letter to the editor, for example, A. Wilmot wrote of ‘rental and cost of living’ being ‘above means’. Cape Times, July 27, 1916; J.H. Hartley, as late president of the Cape Peninsula Grocers’ Association, responded to allegations of profiteering in the face of wartime inflation. Cape Times, May 25, 1916.

63 Such as the public meeting called in August 1914 by the Mayor of Cape Town. Mayor’s Minutes, 1914.

64 St Cyprian’s School Magazine no. 66, May 1916, 5.

65 As found in the Wartime Cookery Book, npn.

66 The Welcome Trust, The Midwives Roll, 1904-1959.

67 South Africa, Marriage Index, 1807-2007.

68 Ibid.

69 van Niekerk, “South African Military Chaplaincy,” 5, 318.

70 Ibid, 69.

71 “Offley Charles Wycliffe Thompson.” Ancestry.com. https://www.ancestry.com/genealogy/records/offley-charles-wycliffe-thompson-24-1s4vj7q.

72 West Sussex Record Office; Sussex Parish Registers; Census Returns of England and Wales, 1891.

73 Bickford-Smith, Emergence of the South African Metropolis, 31–32.

74 Harrison and Zack, “The Wrong Side of the Mining Belt?”

75 van der Waag, “Hugh Archibald Wyndham,” 261–2.

76 Koorts, D.F. Malan, 9.

77 Korf, “D.F. Malan,” 89–96.

78 Tamarkin, “Nationalism or ‘Tribalism,” 230.

79 Langham-Carter, “The Early British Families of Paarl.”

80 Korf, “D.F. Malan,” 175.

81 Baderoon, Regarding Muslims, 52.

82 Green, Beyond the City Lights, 34–40.

83 South African Women’s ‘Who’s Who’, 325.

84 van der Waag, “Hugh Archibald Wyndham,” 260.

85 Dubow, A Commonwealth of Knowledge, vi, 27–64. For the compatibility of Britishness, as a civic identity, within the South African context, see Bickford-Smith, Emergence of the South African Metropolis, 18–19.

86 Cape Town Citizens’ Meeting Booklet, January, 7, 1917, 3. Similarly, Rondebosch Boys’ School in Cape Town boasted of the number of both English and Afrikaans names present on its register of ex-pupils who volunteered for war service. Rondebosch Boys High School 1897–1947, 46–47. Fedorowich, “Sleeping with the Lion?”, 90–95.

87 Cruise, Louis Botha’s War, 186–7.

88 Molteno Family Papers, Alice Green to Eppy, November 20, 1914.

89 Botha only used Dutch/Afrikaans troops to face the rebels in order to minimise anti-British sentiments. van der Waag, 'Military History,' 99–100.