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The Bechuanaland Pioneers and Gunners. By Deborah Ann Schmitt. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2005. ISBN 0-275-97905-9. Tables. Notes. Select bibliography. Index. Pp. 265. #99.95.
Given the rather unusual circumstances connecting this author to the work under review, a brief biographical diversion might be excused. In 1993 I chose to write a doctoral thesis on the Bechuanaland Protectorate during the Second World War because I believed that it would be interesting and, just as importantly, under-researched and attracting little attention in the world of African scholarship. No competition, in short, and a green light to an uncontested thesis. Imagine my surprise, therefore, when, shortly after arriving in Gaborone, the capital of Botswana, to spend a year in the archives and interviewing Batswana ex-servicemen, I was nonchalantly informed that there was a female American air force officer in the archives at that very moment writing exactly the same thesis. "Of all the archives in all the world . . .", &c.
Given this background, it was a memory lane experience reading...