Sergeant Frederick Bettle kept this postcard from the mayor of Cape Town as a memento of his Boer War service. [New Brunswick Museum/1963.16.3.1; New Brunswick Musuem/FE-F4-2; ]

Capetown joins with the Empire in feelings of heartfelt thanks,” reads the postcard gifted to Canadian Mounted Rifles (later Royal Canadian Dragoons) Sergeant Frederick Bettle, “for the signal services which Her Majesty’s citizen soldiers have rendered in upholding the Imperial authority in South Africa.”

The Boer War was not yet over, a colonial conflict that “Her Majesty” Queen Victoria never saw the end of and instead concluded under her son, King Edward VII. Nevertheless, the battles emblazoned on Bettle’s memento suggested that “Imperial authority” was indeed being upheld against the South African Republic (Transvaal) and Orange Free State.

“There are two general phases of the Boer War: everything before the Battle of Paardeberg and everything after Paardeberg,” explained the New Brunswick Military History Museum’s executive director, retired captain David Hughes. “That victory became a turning point in no small part attributed to Canadian efforts.”

This, however, was not Bettle’s battle, although his broader service in bringing the Afrikaans-speaking Boers, descended from Dutch settlers, under the British Empire’s control evidently warranted the gratitude of Cape Town’s citizens.

Patriotic postcards were very common during that period. Today we frame imperialism differently, but it’s important that history is contextualized.

“Cape Town was in Cape Colony, itself a British colony, on the southern tip of Africa,” noted Hughes. “Unlike the Boer Republics, the people of Cape Town were largely patriotic to the British cause. They were the loyal home team.”

It was the same loyalty that extended to Bettle of Saint John, N.B., replicated by many New Brunswickers. After the war’s outbreak on Oct. 11, 1899, the province’s volunteers enlisted in droves, regularly filling the quotas and supplementing other contingents experiencing a shortage of recruits.

The nature of the conflict was changing when Bettle arrived with Canada’s second contingent. The lessons learned at Paardeberg prompted the Boers to avoid set-piece battles, favouring guerrilla warfare that could frustrate British inroads. It was a strategy best countered by mounted troops like him.

Boer prisoners of war after the decisive Imperial victory at the Battle of Paardeberg, in which Canadian troops played a crucial role [New Brunswick Museum/X 12029]

Bettle’s precise role in the most controversial aspects of the Boer War, from engaging in Britain’s scorched earth policy to imprisoning the local civilian populace, is unknown. Likely, he fought for the same ideals of imperialism prevalent across much of the Anglosphere—ideals encapsulated in the thank-you card congratulating him on a service to the “Mother Country” that contributed toward the “consolidation of the Empire.”

Signed by Cape Town Mayor Thomas O’Reilly, the 11.6 x 17-centimetre keepsake oozes with overt romanticism. Its artistic depiction of South Africa’s Table Bay speaks to a perceived righteous fight on distant shores, its ornate typography and banner a far cry from death and disease on the veldt.

And, yet it was, acknowledges Hughes, a product of its time—and Bettle’s artifact, along with the Boer War in its entirety, can perhaps be better understood through that lens.

“Patriotic postcards were very common during that period. Obviously, times change, and today, we frame imperialism differently, but I still think it’s important that history is contextualized.”

The relic boasts a complex duality: it’s a snapshot of early Canada’s role in a genocidal colonial conflict, but also offers an opportunity to reflect on the moral evolution that has occurred in the century since.