Air Power in South Africa, 1914-1939

Abstract

This article discusses three aspects of air power in South Africa during the period between the two world wars, each one intermeshing with debates about what kind of political and social space the Union could claim for itself beyond its borders on the continent. First, during the First World War and in its immediate aftermath the advance of air power raised the question of how the tense relations between Afrikaners and English speakers would be influenced by this new technology. Second, aviation offered new methods of control of the African majority and other recalcitrant groups. Third, the progress in aviation technology, compounded by the international tensions in the 1930s and European armed intervention in East Africa, alerted white South Africans to the perils of their diminished geographical isolation at the southern tip of the continent.