Establishing Empire's State, Engineering Empire's Nation: The South African Constabulary, the Imperial Policing Network, and a Greater Britain, 1900-1918

British imperial policymakers created the paramilitary South African Constabulary (SAC) to provide security for the new British Transvaal and Orange River Colonies of interior southern Africa following the defeat of the Dutch-descended Boers in the South African War (1899-1902). Raised in 1900 before the war disintegrated into guerrilla raids and reprisals, the ten thousand men of the SAC fought under Army command until peace in 1902 and then served as civilian constables until disbandment in 1908. Purposely recruited from throughout "Greater Britain" (the British Isles and white settler colonies), the men introduced British ideas, mores, and law-and-order as the new administration gradually expanded its presence. As the states' initial agents, they physically represented the British Empire. Following disbandment ex-SAC men found new positions in metropolitan and colonial administrations throughout the British Isles and Empire. They came to dominate an imperial policing network of jobs, patronage, and information. Everywhere SAC veterans placed the stamp of their acquired "knowledge" on local constabularies as they spread state-building techniques while training the next generation of policemen. In regulating the Boer and African communities, the ex-SAC men came to recognize themselves as (Greater) Britons, with strong shares and equal opportunities in the British empire-state.