Here's two links for you to consider on earlier concentration camps:

http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v02/v02p137_Weber.html - http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v02/v02p137_Weber.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valeriano_Weyler,_1st_Duke_of_Rub%C3%AD#Cuba - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valeriano_Weyler,_1st_Duke_of_Rub%C3%AD#Cuba

Defeats are usually 'humiliating', so not sure why the need to sensationalise it. Were the many defeats the Boers suffered during the war 'humiliating' too?

Many also seem to forget that:

a) the Boers started the war by invading the British territories of Natal and Cape Colony.
b) the first farm buring and lootings were done by the Boers - read 'The Boer Invasion of Natal' for further information

c) the Boers heavily outnumbered the Imperial forces at the start of the war - by about 2:1.

The suggestion that the British planned the concentration camps for a sinister purpose is far fetched and offensive. People died in the camps from measles, for heavens sake - not in gas chambers. 15000 British troops died of disease during the war - was that sinister too?

The Boer War must be one of the most misunderstood wars in history - mainly thanks to the revisonist history of the Apartheid government, and the nonsense spread by self-loathing liberals in the UK.

Far from being some sort of benign, peace-loving liberal nation, the Boer republics were unstable, expansionist, enormously racist (in the Boer republics - unlike in the British colonies of South Africa - non-whites had no political rights at all, and slavery was still practiced under the code name of 'apprenticeships') and picked fights with all the neighbouring tribes.
Picking a fight with the British Empire at its height was probably not the cleverest thing they ever did.

The Boers were tough frontiersmen, crack shots and excellent horsemen. They were well equipped - far better equipped than the British army - and, despite what you claim, they did indeed have professional units: the ZARPS and the Staats Artillerie.

The bulk of their forces were, of course, made up of Commandoes - part time soldiers rather like the yeomanry of the British Army - the big difference being that the Boers of the Commandoes had spent the last 15 - 20 years in non-stop battles against their African neighbours, so they were very experienced. Bear in mind that the Boer republics had been won and constantly expanded by battle and bloodshed (despite what the opening post claims) - among others, the Boers had fought the Zulus, the Basutos and  the Ndebele - the latter having been the primary tribe in the Transvaal before the Boers invaded and drove them out in the 1830s.

That said, the Boers proved no match for the British in terms of discipline or courage - they only ever took one fortified British settlement (the town of Kuruman) in the whole war - a somewhat 'humiliating' record, wouldn't you say? - and only very rarely would they hang around to taste British cold steel - usually, they would snipe away until the glinting bayonets got a bit too close for comfort, then would break and run.

You should also be aware that large numbers of the Imperial forces were not 'professional soldiers' as you claim. Units like the aforementioned Yeomanry were like the modern day TA, whereas the Boer invasion took the British so much by surprise that they had no choice but to hastily raise units from civilians: some of the famous examples are the City Imperial Volunteers (CIV) and the Imperial Light Horse (ILH) - you are perhaps even aware that the ILH were raised by English speaking refugees who had been forced to flee Johannesburg by the Boers before they attacked Natal?

Also, there is a huge difference between a concentration camp and a death camp. The term concentration camp was coined by the Spanish and was used by them in their war in Cuba a few years before the Boer War. The practice was subsequently used by the Americans - also in Cuba, and also prior to the Boer War.  

The Boer women and children died of measles - are you seriously suggesting they wouldn't have died anyway? Surely you are aware that there was a measles epidemic in South Africa during the war? Surely you know that (as well as thousands of Imperial servicemen) many British doctors and nurses based in the camps also died as a result?

Do you have any idea of what peacetime infant mortality rates were at the time? Whereas today, infant mortality rates are in the order of about 6/1000, in South Africa during the Victorian era, they were often (depending on the town / area / climate / epidemics etc) around 500/1000. Basically, you could expect about 1 child in 2 not to make it to one-year-old.

In one town in the Cape the year before the war broke out, the infant mortlity rate was actually OVER 1000 - which sounds impossible if you don't understand how the figures are calculated (they count deaths of all children up to the age of 1 against births over the period). Thanks entirely to the efforts of the British, however. in many of the concentration camps, the infant mortality rates dropped to lower than those in some British cities.
If the British had a sinister motive behind the camps, why did they permit people like Emily Hobhouse (and many others) free access to visit and report on the conditions? Why were there churches, hospitals, schools and shops in the camps? If the British wanted to exterminate the people in camps, why did they (other than a night-time curfew) allow them to come and go as they please? Why did they encourage them to find work in neighbouring communities? Why did the British, where possible, seek to place the refugees with families in the towns near the camps, rather than in the camps themselves? If the British were trying to kill the inmates, why was it that people became healthier (ie. the death rate dropped) the longer they stayed in the camps?

 

What of the 15000 British / Imperial servicemen who died of disease? Who is to blame for that?

So Churchill was a 'racist bigot' was he? Do you also consider the Boers to have been racist bigots? And if not, why not? You are surely aware that Boer hero, Jan Smuts, burned down an African village during the guerrilla war / terrorist campaign and slaughted all the inhabitants? Why do you not feel that to be worthy of comment?

I also note you have not addressed any of the other questions I raised.

How about your claim that the Boers were 'invited' to settle in South Africa by a Zulu king? Are you even aware that the two Boer Repubics (The ZAR and the Orange Free State) were not actualy in Zulu land? Have you ever been to South Africa?

How about your claim that Kitchener was the first user of the concentration camp? That was a lie which you obviously thought you'd get away with but haven't.
How about your continual attempts to confuse the concentration camps of the British with the death camps of other, much less benign, regimes? Why did you not comment on some of the details I gave you of the concentration camps in my last post? Did they sound like 'death camps' to you?
How about your latest insane suggestion that the British started the measles epidemic? Do you have ANY evidence to support this latest nonsense? Can you explain why, if the British wanted to exterminate the Boers, infant mortality rates dropped in the camps? Why people's chances of survival INCREASED the longer they stayed in the camps? Why they let independent observers examine the camps? Why thousands upon thousands of British troops died of disease too? 

Why, if the British had some wicked scheme to wipe out the Boers and steal their country, did the British give self-rule to the Transvaal just 4 years after the war? Why did they give independence to the newly formed Union of South Africa in 1910, just 8 years after the war? In both cases, whites of Dutch extraction formed a majority of the electorate, and therefore the elections were bound to return a pro-Afrikaans government? Why - if the British were so evil - did they let this happen?

You cannot just make up any old rubbish you want and pretend you have uncovered some dastardly conspiracy. Is this really a site to discuss history on, or some sort of teenage fantasy / conspiracy site?
 

 

Having been caught out lying about Kitchener setting up the first concentration camps, you then came up with the idea that the measles epidemic was spread by British doctors. I have never heard anyone else suggest this, so naturally assumed it was something you had dreamed up. I am glad you now admit it was a truly farcical theory.

Again, you throw out another wild theory - 'the Brits wanted the Boer's gold but not their country'. What are you basing this latest claim on?

Let me remind you (once again) that the Boers were the ones who attacked the British - NOT the other way round. The British were so unprepared by this attack that they were caught with their pants down well and truly. The British were outnumbered, out of position, had only 2 weeks worth of coal reserves in Natal, and only 8 weeks' worth of .303 ammo stocks in the Empire. Did you know that, so ill-prepared were the British by the surprise attack, that in 1901, the British armanents industry was still behind in orders to the War Office?

Also, you are very wrong in your statements on the British 'now owning the gold' in the wake of the war. Please, please do some research on this. You will find that the gold mines were overwhelmingly owned by foreign (mainly British, some German - including lots of Jewish of both nationality) investors prior to the war, and continued to be thereafter. The gold owning capitalists actually did very badly out of the war as many years' worth of production were lost.

Are you suggesting British companies and investors didn't own the mines before the war? Who do you think did? Do you think the Boers developed the gold mines? If so, who were the Gold Bugs and Uitlanders? Why were they there? Why was (and still is) Johannesburg a predominantly English speaking city whereas Pretoria is predominantly Afrikaans speaking?

However, one thing we can agree on is that you are no expert on African history (in another thread you claimed that the Royal Navy had a base in Rhodesia...) so why are you continuing to make outrageous arguments about a subject you admit to know little or nothing about? If you are interested in the subject, then that's great - lets discuss things. But instead you simply adopt a position and then desperately try to defend it with no justification at all.  

 

For example, let's take the link you provided in your last post: http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/cgi-bin/paperspast?a=d&d=PBH19011026.2.3 - http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/cgi-bin/paperspast?a=d&d=PBH19011026.2.3  
You claimed this was the tragic tale of a man who was "executed for treason for giving details of deaths in concentration camps to neutrals".

A damning claim indeed, but actually the link made no mention whatsoever of the concentration camps. Instead, the newspaper cutting explained how this unpleasant individual was charged with offences relating to encouraging surrendered Boers to break the oaths of neutrality they had made to the British Crown (the British were certainly fighting a Gentleman's War in this respect, and accepted this oath without question). He also advocated the killing of any Boers in British service - sounds like a really nice guy.
However, in your haste to blame the British for everything, not only did you get his crime completely wrong, but you also failed to let us know that the newspaper story only reported that the trial had started - not that he had been executed.
 

Here is a quote which will give you an idea why Kitchener had no choice but to set up the refugee camps in the first place. Due  to the savage Boer actions taken against hands-uppers (ie. those Boers who didn't want to carry on the pointless war):

 

 (The Concentration Camps in South Africa, p.8)

 

To base your whole wild conspiracy theory on the concentration camps on some photographs is illogical. Let's think for a moment about them. There were no 'camera phones' in those days - to take a photo was a long and elaborate process and hardly something that could be done in secret or without attracting attention. So it stands to reason therefore that the British authorities permitted the photos to be taken.
Why would this have been the case? It was because this was the state that Boers were ARRIVING in the British refugee camps in - ie. the state they were in BEFORE the British managed to feed them and give them medical attention. As I earlier stated, life expectancy improved the longer people were in the camps.
Photos might be dramatic and emotive, but they are largely irrelevant when compared to statistics - and you seem to have little interest in the latter.

What a strange debating style.

In the 2nd link you provide, the author says Broeksma was executed for breaking his oath of neutrality, treason and incitement (all of which he pleaded guilty to), not for 'embarrassing the British' - which I don't think is a crime. If it were, I imagine Emily Hobhouse could have been charged with it too, but she wasn't. 
As Broeksma took an oath of neutrality and freely admitted that he broke it, then it is hard to feel any sympathy for him and I really don't see the issue.

 

Incidentally, 'Innocent Blood' must be one of the worst books I have read on the Boer War. The author uses such rock-solid references as: something he once heard on the radio and another page in his own book.
The author claims every single Boer who was shot was the victim of a miscarriage of justice, giving 'evidence' like: 'he was such a nice religious man' to 'prove' his point.

My personal favourite was the case of the Boer who Jooste claims was 'shot while trying to surrender' in the middle of a battle. The British troops who shot him did it because he was waving a rifle at them. Incredibly, Jooste claims he was trying to use his rifle as a flag-pole to wave a white flag from. Even in the highly unlikely event this were true, a rifle must be the stupidest thing he could possibly have chosen as a flag pole.
What Jooste is unable to explain is why the same party of British soldiers didn't shoot some other Boers who surrendered to them - presumably because they weren't waving rifles about and were approaching with their hands up.

It is also worth remembering the Boer's penchant for violating the white flag - they did it in virtually every engagement.

 

The inhabitants and garrison of Ladysmith actually took the Boer shelling very well (bombarding and starving civilians into submission - any reason why this is not considered worthy of criticism by any one? Or is it only a 'war crime' when the British do it?). One soccer match between the ILH and the Gordons (my old Regiment) was disrupted when the Boers managed to land a shell in the centre of the pitch. In the resulting confusion, the Gordons scored a sneaky goal which so incensed the ILH, that a message was sent to the FA in London to decide on whether the goal should stand. I am unsure of the result of this appeal.

The raids on the Boer Guns (there were actually two - they happened a few nights apart) were magnificent stuff, worthy of the modern-day SAS. The first was done by the various corps of local troops (ie. English speaking South Africans), primarily the Imperial Light Horse and Natal Carbineers. They blew up a Long Tom and a 4.5" howitzer, and captured 7-lb piece which was dragged back to Ladysmith. 'Karri' Davies brought back the breach block of the Long Tom which - years later - he presented to Jan Smuts.
Three nights later, the Rifle Brigade sallied forth an blew up another howiter.

Despite Pakenham meanly describing him as having taken a 'feeble part' in the defence of Ladysmith, Dr Leander Starr Jameson accompanied the ILH on the raid in his capacity as a medical doctor - which strikes me as gallant and admirable, rather than feeble.

Ladysmith is well worth a visit now - the Royal Hotel (which housed the likes of Jameson and Colonel Frank Rhodes, and which was thus subject to unrelenting bombardment) is still there, though the dining room is now a theme pub called 'The Tipsy Trooper'. Does an excellent Sunday Roast.

Not only did he escape from Boer captivity after the Armoured Train incident, but he also served at Spion Kop and was later one of the very first men into Ladysmith after the siege was lifted - he was by then a Lt. in the SALH.
Apparently the day before the siege was lifted, he announced to the officers mess that he planned to win the DSO 'as it would splendid on my robes when I am chancellor of the exchequer'. The padre of the Regiment gently reproached him, telling him that he would have to get people to vote for him first - a rebuke which apparently young Churchill took very well.

Of course, Churchill had also seen action the year before at Omdurman, charging with the 21st Lancers to whom he had attached himself.

Even more remarkable than the Long Tom was the 'Long Cecil' which the defenders of Kimberley built. This field piece was constructed by Rhodes' chief engineer from a length of pipe and worked reasonably well.

 

You can read more about it here:

 

http://samilitaryhistory.org/vol041dp.html - http://samilitaryhistory.org/vol041dp.html

 

Pakenham doesn't just ignore the heavy German involvement, but also dismisses the role played by the 'Afrikaaner Bond' - this extremist group openly vowed that Southern Africa belonged to the Afrikaaners (rather than the blacks or British) and their stated aim was an Afrikaans empire, stretching from the Zambezi to the Cape. Quite why Pakenham doesn't feel that this is worthy of mention as one of the causes of the war is anyone's guess.

 

Speaking of bells, the Ship's bell from HMS Terrible (which supplied many of the naval guns used in the Natal campaign) still hangs in a tree in Zululand on a farm fairly near Eshowe - I was taken to see it by a local historian, but have no idea why it was hung there.

Though the Long Toms gained the infamy, the Ladysmith inhabitants actually considered them to be 'gentlemanly monsters' as their slow muzzle velocity meant that the report was heard - and thus warning given - before the shell arrived in town. The 4.5" howitzers were a different matter altogether, sending shells plunging into the town without any sort of warning and these were greatly feared.

 

Joubert was certainly a gentleman, and was described thus by Sir George White on his death. But even still, his forces brought untold misery and death on the civilian inhabitants of Ladysmith. Indeed, the Boer invasion of Natal is one of the great untold stories of the war - Joubert seems to have had little or no control over his troops, and they looted and pillaged as they saw fit. Several villages and town were burned to the ground and many Boers arrived with extra horses or a cart in readiness to carry off their ill-gotten gains. And yet their modern day apologists only ever speak about the farm-burning done by the British.

 

Far from being the innocent victim of British aggression, it is worth noting that the part of Natal (including the coal fields around Newcastle) that the Boers had invaded was annexed to the Transvaal. If - as their latter day apologists bizarely claim - the invasion of Natal was only intended to sieze strategic defensive positions, why didn't they merely occupy the high ground around Majuba / Laing's Nek and blow up the railway tunnel thereabouts?

 

A sizeable minority in Natal favoured the Boers (being of Afrikaans stock themselves) and these traitors took full advantage of the invasion to plunder from their English-speaking neighbours. One such traitor was found to have stolen no less than five pianos from neighbouring farmers who had fled to safety. Another offered his English-speaking neighbour a mere GBP10 for his vast farm, pointing out that when the Boers won, it would be taken from him anyway.

Botha was another interesting and impressive man. It is also worth noting that at the end of the war - far from bleating on and on about the Concentration Camps like many modern day commentators - Botha thanked the British for taking care of the Boer women and children. The fate of the English-speaking refugees from Johannesburg and northern Natal is another untold story - many of these unfortunate wretches were housed in terrible conditions by authorities who struggled to cope with the numbers. There was actually an outcry over the 'good conditions' the Boer women and children were kept in, compared to those afforded to these loyalists.

Re. Churchill - yes, an amazing young man. There is no doubting his utter fearlessness and also his incredible ability to pop up in the right place at the right time. The bar at Spion Kop Lodge is dedicated to him, and there are many stunning contemporary photographs of him from the war. As my fiancee remarked: how did he manage to get himself photographed so often!?

 

There is also a 'revisionist' view that the Boer War was NOT a white man's war - but this is to vastly over-simplify matters. Compared to every other colonial war, the Boer War most certainly was fought as a white-man's war. In (eg) the Zulu War or Sudan Campaign, the British deployed a small number of British troops, with the majority of Imperial troops being 'natives'. Similarly, during his punative raid on Abyssinia, the better part of Napier's force were Indian, not British, and during the Matabele Wars, loyal 'native' forces outnumbered the white Rhodesian forces.
This is not to say that blacks did not serve the British in the Boer War, but their role was vastly smaller than in all other colonial wars. Of course, it is politically incorrect to point out this reality in these enlightened times. 

It seems that people at the time were well aware of it - when Boer prisoners taken at Elandslaagte were marched into Ladysmith, the towns people shouted that they were 'German dogs'.

 

I received your emails and have replied - please let me know if you get it.

Like most revisionist history, this is based more on modern attitudes and efforts to appease certain political groups than any sort of historical reality. Those who claim it was not fought as a 'white man's war' use a couple of photos showing Africans in uniform, wearing bandoliers and holding rifles and seem to think this is enough. No one has ever denied that Africans served as scouts and such like throughout the war and on both sides, but the fact is that the two Boer Wars were fought very differently to every other colonial war. In the Zulu War and the Sudan Campaign, for example, the Imperial forces were largely locally raised regiments with just a core of British units - at Omdurman, eg, only a third of the 'British' forces were indeed 'British'. In the Boer War, no such large scale raising of non-white troops happened and no battle saw non-white regiments play a leading role.
If one looks at the British ORBATs at any of the major battles of the Second Boer War (Colenso, Spion Kop, Paardeberg, Belmont, Talana Hill, Elandslaagte, Wagon Hill etc etc), one will not see a single non-white regiment there. Compare this to the ORBATs at other British colonial battles such as Magdala, Omdurman, Isandlwana, Khartoum or whatever.

 

Also, the British turned down repeated offers of assistance from both the Basutho and the Zulus.

 
Similarly, General Napier's raid on Abyssinia saw large numbers of (non-white) Indian Army troops deployed. Indeed, the majority of Napier's forces were Indian, not British. This quite simply didn't happen during the Boer War and the Indian units of the Indian Army (it had British units too) were not deployed to South Africa. One imagines the magnificent Sikh and Gurkha regiments would have been splendidly suited to serve in the Boer War, but this did not occur.

Equally, during the dozens of wars the Boers fought prior to the Boer War, the Boers made lots of use of Swazi and other African warriors, with these black allied units often outnumbering the Boers themselves.

So even though thousands of Africans played an important role during the war, there was certainly a determined and consistant effort by both sides to fight the war in a very different way from other colonial conflicts.

Also in the Cape is an even more interesting fortification. Near Montagu, one will see signs for the 'Old English Fort 1899'. The setting for this is incredible, as it is perched on top of a knife-like ridge of rocks which blocks a valley. There is a tunnel through this obstacle (not sure if it pre-date the fort or not, but I would assume so) and the fort utterly dominates this. It is built of local stone and cement, with rifle loop-holes and an amazing vantage point. It is small - about the size of a single garage, with no roof (though there was probably one back in the day - probably housed a section.

 

This link contains a photo and map info:
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/1537320 - http://www.panoramio.com/photo/1537320