Van Hartesveldt, Fred

PERSONAL: Education: Maryville College, B.A., 1967; Auburn University, M.A., 1969, Ph.D., 1975.

ADDRESSES: Office— Fort Valley State University, 135 Horace Mann Bond Bldg., 1005 State University Dr., Fort Valley, GA 31030-4313. E-mail— hartesvf@fvsu.edu.

CAREER: Educator, writer. Fort Valley State University, Fort Valley, GA, professor of history.

MEMBER: North American Conference on British Studies, Southern Historical Association, Victorian Military Society, Nineteenth Century Studies Association, Southern Conference on British Studies (secretary-treasurer, 1986—), Georgia Association of Historians.

AWARDS, HONORS: Governor’s Teaching Fellow, 1999-2000.

WRITINGS

NONFICTION

(Editor) The 1918-1919 Pandemic of Influenza: The Urban Impact in the Western World, E. Mellen Press (Lewiston, NY), 1992.

(Compiler) The Battles of the Somme, 1916: Historiography and Annotated Bibliography, Greenwood Press (Westport, CT), 1996.

(Compiler) The Dardanelles Campaign, 1915: Historiography and Annotated Bibliography, Greenwood Press (Westport, CT), 1997.

The Boer War: Historiography and Annotated Bibliography, Greenwood Press (Westport, CT), 2000.

The Battles of the British Expeditionary Forces, 1914-1915: Historiography and Annotated Bibliography, Praeger (Westport, CT), 2005.

Contributor of articles to professional journals and periodicals, including Maryland Historian, Teaching History, and Proceedings and Papers of the Georgia Association of Historians. Editor, British Studies Mercury, 1986—.

SIDELIGHTS: Professor Fred van Hartesveldt focuses his work on studying the history of the early twentieth century, concentrating particularly on the wars. Works such as The Battles of the Somme, 1916: Historiography and Annotated Bibliography, The Dardanelles Campaign, 1915: Historiography and Annotated Bibliography, and The Battles of the British Expeditionary Forces, 1914-1915: Historiography and Annotated Bibliography catalogue and describe, not the events themselves, but the ways in which historians have written about British military campaigns in World War I. The Dardanelles Campaign, for instance, looks at one of the great early fiascoes of the war: the attempted invasion of Turkey (an ally of Austro-Hungary and Germany) at the straits between Asia Minor and Europe. British, New Zealand, and Australian forces tried for months to seize control of the strategic waterway, but failed and were forced to withdraw, humiliated. The Battles of the Somme—a series of Allied attacks against the German lines in France lasting for four and a half months—explores the historiography of one of the bloodiest struggles in military history. “A turning point in the war,” explained Antulio J. Echevarria II on H-Net Reviews Online, “the Somme battles marked the beginning of greater British influence in Entente strategy, saw the introduction of new technologies, especially the tank, and tipped the strategic initiative away from the Central Powers.” “Overall, this annotated bibliography is a welcome and useful addition to any personal and institutional library,” Echevarria concluded. “Undergraduate and graduate students alike will find that it saves them a great deal of time. Even experienced professors will be grateful for the convenient way that it compiles over 700 books and articles.”

Van Hartesveldt is also the author of The Boer War: Historiography and Annotated Bibliography, an examination of the writings about the twentieth century’s first colonial war. One of the most controversial conflicts of the era, the Boer War pitted a great colonial power (Great Britain) against a much smaller group of Africans descended from Dutch settlers (the Afrikaaners or Boers). Following the discovery of gold in the Boer-controlled Transvaal in 1885, large numbers of British citizens streamed out of South Africa into the Boers’ territory. The war began in 1899, supposedly because the rights of the British emigrants were being abused. For the Boers, however, the war was a fight for their political independence. The Boer War prefigured in many ways some of the characteristics of later twentieth-century wars; for instance, during the war the British introduced “concentration camps” to hold Boer women and children. Conditions in the camps were horrendous, rivaling those in the concentration camps of World War II. “To anyone who already knows the significance of the war,” wrote Bill Nasson on H-Net Reviews Online, “this volume is renewed confirmation; to anyone who has never happened to give the conflict much thought, it may well come as some sort of literary revelation.” “Van Hartesveldt’s book is an indispensable guide to works on the war,” Dylan Craig concluded in the Journal of African History, “particularly with respect of those—such as the writings of many Afrikaans authors—which exist outside the international main stream.”

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES

PERIODICALS

Journal of African History, July, 2002, Dylan Craig, review of The Boer War: Historiography and Annotated Bibliography, p. 371.

Reference & Research Book News, February, 2006, review of The Battles of the British Expeditionary Forces, 1914-1915: Historiography and Annotated Bibliography.

ONLINE

H-Net Reviews Online, http://www.h-net.msu.edu/ (January 28, 2007), Bill Nasson, review of The Boer War, Antulio J. Echevarria II, review of The Battles of the Somme: Historiography and Annotated Bibliography.