Stephen M. Miller
Stephen M. Miller, Ph.D., FRHistS
Colonel James C. McBride Distinguished Professor, University of Maine
Professor Miller is on administrative leave AY25-26
Education:
Ph.D., University of Connecticut, 1996
M.A., New York University, 1989
B.A., Tufts University, 1987
Courses regularly taught:
HTY 106: Modern Europe
HTY 279: European Military History
HTY 449: History of South Africa
HTY 450: History of the British Empire
HTY 456: History of Great Britain II
HTY 498: Senior Seminar: European History
HTY 519: Modern Britain and Empire
HTY 550: Readings on British Military History
HTY 550: Readings on Modern Britain and Empire
HTY 611: Research Seminar – Military History
My research focuses on the British Army and the South African War. I have finished a volume for the Army Records Society entitled, The Military Papers of Field Marshal Sir George White 1885-1900: Upper Burma, India, and South Africa. I hope to see this come out later this year. It’s a companion piece of sorts to George White and the Victorian Army in India and Africa published by Palgrave-Macmillan in 2020.
My latest book research project is tentatively entitled, “Understanding the Victorian Soldier: Feelings and Emotions in the South African War,” and will explore the experience of British and Imperial troops in that conflict.
For an old UMaine story about what I research, see click here.
Publications:
o Queen Victoria’s Wars: British Military Campaigns, 1857-1902, ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021).
o George White and the Victorian Army in India and Africa (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2020).
o “Politics, the Press, and the Royal Commission on the War in South Africa,” International Journal of Military History and Historiography, 44 (2024): 42-70.
o “Edgar Wallace’s War: Reporting and Making the News in South Africa, 1898-1902,” South African Historical Journal 71 1(2019): 21-40.
o “British Surrenders and the South African War, 1899-1902,” War and Society 38 2(2019): 98-114.
o “Moral and Legal Prohibitions Against Pillage in the Context of the 1899 Hague Convention and the South African War,” co-authored with Jessica P. Miller, War in History 26 2(2019): 185-203.
o “Boer Wars,” Oxford Bibliographies in Military History, ed. Dennis Showalter (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016; Revised in 2019).
o “The British Way of War: Cultural Assumptions and Practices in the South African War, 1899-1902,” Journal of Military History 77 4 (October 2013): 1329-1347.
o “The South African War,” in I.F.W. Beckett, ed., Citizen Soldiers and Empire: The Amateur Military Tradition in the British Empire, 1837-1902 (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2012).
o “British and Imperial Volunteers in the South African War,” in Sonja Levsen and Christine Krueger, eds., War Volunteering in Modern Times (London: Palgrave, 2011).
o “Duty or Crime? Defining Acceptable Behavior in the British Army in South Africa, 1899-1902,” Journal of British Studies 49 2 (April 2010): 311-331.
o Soldiers and Settlers in Africa, 1850-1918, ed. (Leiden: Brill, 2009).
o “Sir Redvers Buller,” in Steven Corvi and I.F.W. Beckett, eds., Victoria’s Generals (London: Pen and Sword Books, 2009).
o Volunteers on the Veld: Britain’s Citizen-Soldiers and the South African War 1899-1902 (Norman OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2007).
o “Fighting the Other Enemy: Boredom, Drudgery, and Restlessness on the South African Veld, 1900-1902,” Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research, Special Pub. No. 16 (2007): 75-88.
o “Slogging Across the Veld: British Volunteers and the Guerrilla Phase of the South African War,” Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research 84 (2006): 158-174.
o “In Support of the ‘Imperial Mission’? Volunteering for the South African War,” Journal of Military History 69 3 (2005): 691-713.
o Lord Methuen and the British Army: Failure and Redemption in South Africa (London: Frank Cass & Co., 1999).
o “Lord Methuen and the British Advance to the Modder River,” Military History Journal (Johannesburg) 10, no. 4 (1996): 121-36. (Awarded the Roderick Murchison Memorial Prize by the South African Military Historical Society).
Interviews:
“The South African War,” Supplemental Video to Criterion’s production of Bruce Beresford’s Breaker Morant, 2015.
Recent Book Reviews:
o “War and Society in Colonial Zambia, 1939-1953,” by Alfred Tembo, Journal of Military History 86:3 (2022): 734-5.
o “General Lord Rawlinson: From Tragedy to Triumph,” by Rodney Atwood, Journal of Military History 84: 1 (2020): 301-2.
o “Last Outpost on the Zulu Frontiers: Fort Napier and the British Imperial Garrison” by Graham Dominy, American Historical Review 122:2 (2017): 617-618.
o “Four-War Boer: The Century and Life of Pieter Arnoldus Krueler” by Colin D. Heaton and Anne-Marie Lewis, Journal of African History 57:1 (2016): 157-158.
o “Charlie’s First War: South Africa, 1899-1900” by C.H. Tweddell, ed. by Carman Miller, Journal of Military History 79:2 (2015): 501-502.
o “Zulu Warriors: The Battle for the South African Frontier” by John Laband, The American Historical Review 120:3 (2015): 1156-1157.
Recent Presentations:
o “Edgar Wallace’s War: Reporting the Battle of Vlakfontein,” Re-imagining the Anglo-Boer (South African) War: New perspectives 120 years down the line, War Museum of the Boer Republics, Bloemfontein, October 2019.
o “British Surrendering and the South African War, 1899-1902,” Britain and the World Conference, University of Exeter, June 2018.
o “The Hague Convention and the South African War,” with Jessica P. Miller, Britain and the World Conference, London, June 2016.
o Chair, The Society for Military History’s Presidential Panel hosted by the Society for Army Historical Research, “Setting New Borders in British Army History,” Society for Military History, Annual Meeting, Ottawa, April 2016.
