Second Boer War concentration camps

{{Multiple issues|{{Copy edit|date=September 2024}}

{{Citations needed|date=February 2025}}}}

{{Short description|Internment of civilians by the British in the 1899–1902 African conflict}}

{{Redirect|British concentration camps|detention camps during the Mau Mau Uprising|List of British Detention Camps during the Mau Mau Uprising}}

{{Infobox civilian attack

| title = Second Boer War concentration camps

| partof = Second Boer War

| image = The National Archives UK - CO 1069-215-94-Derivative01.jpg

| image_size = 250

| caption = Tents in the Bloemfontein concentration camp

| alt =

| map =

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| motive =

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| date = 1899–1902

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| type = Internment

| fatalities = Over 47,900 deaths:

27,927 Boers
20,000 or more native Africans {{Cite web|title=Black Concentration Camps during the Anglo–Boer War 2, 1900–1902 {{!}} South African History Online|url=https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/black-concentration-camps-during-anglo-boer-war-2-1900-1902|access-date=2021-09-01|website=www.sahistory.org.za}}{{Cite web|title=To fully reconcile The Boer War is to fully understand the 'Black' Concentration Camps by Peter Dickens (The Observation Post), {{!}} South African History Online|url=https://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/fully-reconcile-boer-war-fully-understand-black-concentration-camps-peter-dickens|access-date=2021-09-01|website=www.sahistory.org.za}}

| victims = 154,000 interned in British concentration camps

| perps = British Empire, particularly Lord Kitchener

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}}

File:Boercamp1.jpg women and children in a concentration camp]]

During the Second Anglo-Boer War (1899–1902), the British operated concentration camps in the South African Republic, Orange Free State, the Colony of Natal, and the Cape Colony. In February 1900, Lord Kitchener took command of the British forces and implemented controversial tactics that contributed to a British victory.{{Cite web |title=Herbert Kitchener: The taskmaster {{!}} National Army Museum |url=https://www.nam.ac.uk/explore/herbert-kitchener-taskmaster#:~:text=Rewarded%20with%20a%20peerage%2C%20Kitchener,1902)%20and%20ensure%20British%20victory. |website=National Army Museum}}

Using a guerrilla warfare strategy, the Boers lived off the land and used their farms as a source of food, thus making their farms a key item in their many successes at the beginning of the war. When Kitchener realized that a conventional warfare style would not work against the Boers, he began initiating plans to destroy their farms and detain them, which would later cause much controversy among the British public.{{Citation |title=Methods of Barbarism |date=2003-12-31 |url=http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv1220psq.85 |work=Archives of Empire |pages=683–685 |access-date=2023-12-28 |publisher=Duke University Press|doi=10.2307/j.ctv1220psq.85 |url-access=subscription }}{{Cite book |last=Hobhouse |first=Emily |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=bb9c7Vce0iAC |title=The Brunt of the War, and where it Fell |date=1902 |publisher=Methuen & Company |language=en}}

Scorched-earth policy

In early March 1901, Lord Kitchener initiated a series of systematic drives aimed at killing, capturing, or wounding Boers, organized similarly to a hunting expedition, with success measured by a weekly "bag" of casualties. Kitchener also sought to sweep the country bare of everything that could give sustenance to the guerrillas, such as livestock, women, and children. Historian Thomas Pakenham describes the last phases of the war as being dominated by "the clearance of civilians—uprooting a whole nation."{{sfn|Pakenham|1979|p=493}}File:LizzieVanZyl.jpg, a Boer child, visited by Emily Hobhouse in a British concentration camp]]

File:Bonkerspruit, c.1901. (22472262974).jpg

Boer farms were destroyed by the British under their "Scorched Earth" policy, including the systematic destruction of crops, the slaughtering or removal of livestock, and the burning down of homesteads and farms in order to prevent the Boers from resupplying themselves from a home base.{{Cite web |title=British Concentration Camps of the South African War 1900–1902 |url=https://www2.lib.uct.ac.za/mss/bccd/ |access-date=2024-11-19 |website=www2.lib.uct.ac.za}}{{Page needed|date=February 2025}} As this happened, many tens of thousands of men, women, and children were forcibly moved into camps.{{Cite web|url=https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/women-and-children-white-concentration-camps-during-anglo-boer-war-1900-1902|title=Women and Children in White Concentration Camps during the Anglo-Boer War, 1900–1902 | South African History Online|website=www.sahistory.org.za}}Marks, S. (2015). The Concentration Camps of the Anglo-Boer War: A Social History. Journal of Southern African Studies, (5), 1133. Eventually, authorities built a total of 45 tented camps for Boer internees and 64 additional camps for Black Africans. The vast majority of Boers who remained in the local camps were women and children. Between 18,000 and 26,000 Boers perished in these concentration camps due to diseases.{{sfn|Wessels|2010|p=32}}

The camps were very poorly administered from the outset, and they became increasingly overcrowded when Lord Kitchener's troops implemented the internment strategy on a vast scale. Conditions were terrible for the health of the internees, mainly due to neglect, poor hygiene, and bad sanitation.{{Cite book |last=Hobhouse |first=Emily |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=bb9c7Vce0iAC |title=The Brunt of the War, and where it Fell |date=1902 |publisher=Methuen & Company |language=en}} The supply of all items was unreliable, partly because of the constant disruption of communication lines by the Boers. The food rations were meager, and there was a two-tier allocation policy, whereby families of men still fighting were routinely given smaller rations than others.{{sfn|Pakenham|1979|p=505}} The inadequate shelter, poor diet, bad hygiene, and overcrowding led to malnutrition and endemic contagious diseases such as measles, typhoid, and dysentery, to which the children were particularly vulnerable.{{sfn|Judd|Surridge|2013|p=195}} Many internees died due to a shortage of up-to-date medical facilities and medical mistreatment.{{Cite web |title=Women and Children in White Concentration Camps during the Anglo-Boer War, 1900–1902 {{!}} South African History Online |url=https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/women-and-children-white-concentration-camps-during-anglo-boer-war-1900-1902 |access-date=2023-10-07 |website=www.sahistory.org.za}}

UK public opinion and political opposition

Although the 1900 UK general election, also known as the "Khaki election", had resulted in a victory for the Conservative government on the back of recent British victories against the Boers, public support quickly waned as it became apparent that the war would not be easy.{{According to whom|date=February 2025}} Further unease developed following reports filtering back to Britain concerning the treatment of Boer civilians by the British. Public and political opposition to government policies in South Africa regarding Boer civilians was first expressed in Parliament in February 1901 in the form of an attack on the government by the Liberal Party MP David Lloyd George.{{Cite journal |last=Rintala |first=Marvin |date=Spring 1988 |title=Made in Birmingham: Lloyd George, Chamberlain, and the Boer War |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/23539369 |journal=Biography |publisher=University of Hawai'i Press |volume=11 |issue=2 |pages=124–139 |doi=10.1353/bio.2010.0580 |jstor=23539369 |s2cid=154239858 |url-access=subscription }}

File:Hobhouse.jpg campaigned for improvement to the conditions of the concentration camps and worked to alter public opinion, resulting in the Fawcett Commission.]]

Emily Hobhouse, a delegate of the South African Women and Children's Distress Fund, visited some of the camps in the Orange Free State in January 1901. In May 1901, she returned to England on a ship known as the Saxon. Alfred Milner, High Commissioner in South Africa, also boarded the Saxon for holiday in England, but he dismissed Hobhouse, regarding her as a Boer sympathizer and "trouble maker".{{Harvnb|Pakenham|1979|pp=531–32, 536+}} On her return, Hobhouse worked to publicize the distress of the camp inmates. She managed to speak to the Liberal opposition Party leader, Henry Campbell-Bannerman, who professed to be outraged but disinclined to press the matter, as his party was split between the imperialists and the pro-Boer factions.{{Cite journal |last1=Crangle |first1=John V |last2=Baylen |first2=Joseph O |title=Emily Hobhouse's Peace Mission, 1916 |url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/260184 |journal=Journal of Contemporary History|date=1979 |volume=14 |issue=4 |pages=731–744 |doi=10.1177/002200947901400409 |jstor=260184 |s2cid=159719565 |url-access=subscription }}

St John Brodrick, the Conservative Secretary of State for War, first defended the government's policy by arguing that the camps were purely "voluntary" and that the interned Boers were "contented and comfortable". Lacking firm statistical evidence to support this assertion, he later argued that all measures being taken were "military necessities" and that everything possible was being done to ensure satisfactory conditions in the camps.{{Citation needed|date=February 2025}}

Hobhouse published a report in June 1901{{cite web| author=Guardian Research Department| title= From the archive blog: 19 June 1901: The South African concentration camps| url= https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/from-the-archive-blog/2011/may/19/guardian190-south-africa-concentration-camps | work= The Guardian| date= 19 May 2011| accessdate= 5 May 2021 }} that contradicted Brodrick's claim, and Lloyd George then openly accused the government of "a policy of extermination" directed against the Boer population. The same month, Campbell-Bannerman gave a speech criticizing British war methods, including the policy of the camps, stating "When is a war, not a war? When it is carried on by methods of barbarism in South Africa".{{Cite book |last=Hattersley |first=Roy |title=Campbell-Bannerman |publisher=Haus Publishing |year=2006 |isbn=1-904950-56-6 |pages=79–80}} The Hobhouse Report caused an uproar both domestically and internationally.{{Cite web |last=Rettenmaier |first=David |date=2017-12-22 |title=Hobhouse report on Second Boer War |url=https://editions.covecollective.org/chronologies/hobhouse-report-second-boer-war |access-date=2023-10-07 |website=editions.covecollective.org |language=en}}

The Fawcett Commission

Although the government had comfortably won the parliamentary debate by a margin of 252 to 149, it was made concerned by the escalating public outcry, calling on Kitchener for a detailed report. Complete statistical returns from camps were sent out in July 1901. By August 1901, it was clear to government and opposition alike that Hobhouse's claims were being confirmed – 93,940 Boers and 24,457 black Africans were reported to be in "camps of refuge" and the crisis was becoming a catastrophe as the death rates appeared very high, especially among the children.

File:Millicent Fawcett.jpg

The government responded to the growing clamour by appointing a commission to investigate the conditions.{{efn|A personal copy of Millicent Fawcett's report, together with extensive photographs and inserts, is available for consultation at [http://www.thewomenslibrary.ac.uk The Women's Library], Old Castle Street, London E1 7NT, archive reference 7MGF/E/1}} The Fawcett Commission, as it became known, was, uniquely for its time, an all-woman affair headed by Millicent Fawcett. Despite being the leader of the women's suffrage movement, she was a Liberal Unionist and thus a government supporter who was considered a safe pair of hands that would help fend off criticism. Between August and December 1901, the Fawcett Commission conducted its own tour of the camps in South Africa. In the end, it confirmed everything that Hobhouse had said and made even further recommendations; the Commission insisted that rations should be increased and that additional nurses be sent out immediately, along with a long list of other practical measures designed to improve conditions in the camp. Millicent Fawcett expressed that much of the catastrophe was owed to a simple failure to observe elementary rules of hygiene.

In November 1901, Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain ordered Alfred Milner to ensure that "all possible steps are being taken to reduce the rate of mortality". The civil authority took over the camps from Kitchener and the British command, and by February 1902, the annual death rate in the concentration camps for white inmates dropped to 6.9 percent and eventually to 2 percent. However, by then the damage had been done. A report after the war concluded that 27,927 Boers, of whom 24,074 were children under 16 (50 percent of the Boer child population), had died in the camps. In all, about one in four of the Boer inmates died, most of them children.

Improvements were much slower in coming to the black camps.{{sfn|Ferguson|2002|p=235}} It is thought that about 12 percent of black African inmates died (about 14,154), but the precise number of deaths of black Africans in concentration camps is unknown as little attempt was made to keep any records of the 107,000 black Africans who were interned.

{{quote|The main decisions (or their absence) had been left to the soldiers, to whom the life or death of the 154,000 Boer and African civilians in the camps rated as an abysmally low priority. ... Ten months after the subject had first been raised in Parliament ... the terrible mortality figures were at last declining. In the interval, at least twenty thousand whites and twelve thousand coloured people had died in the concentration camps, the majority from epidemics of measles and typhoid that could have been avoided.{{Harvnb|Pakenham|1979|p=549}}{{efn|Somewhat higher figures for total deaths in the concentration camps are given some historians.{{sfn|Spies|1977|p=265}}}}}}

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had served as a volunteer doctor in the Langman Field Hospital at Bloemfontein between March and June 1900. In his widely distributed and translated pamphlet "The War in South Africa: Its Cause and Conduct", he justified both the reasoning behind the war and handling of the conflict itself. He also pointed out that over 14,000 British soldiers had died of disease during the conflict (as opposed to 8,000 killed in combat), and that at the height of epidemics, he was seeing 50–60 British soldiers dying each day in a single ill-equipped and overwhelmed military hospital.

Kitchener's policy change

Scottish historian Niall Ferguson has argued that "this was not a deliberately genocidal policy; rather it was the result of [a] disastrous lack of foresight and rank incompetence on [the] part of the [British] military".{{sfn|Ferguson|2002|p=250}} He further stated that "Kitchener no more desired the deaths of women and children in the camps than of the wounded Dervishes after Omdurman, or of his own soldiers in the typhoid-stricken hospitals of Bloemfontein."{{Harvnb|Pakenham|1979|p=524}}

File:Horatio Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener - Project Gutenberg eText 15306.jpg, as he then was styled, was one of the most controversial British generals in the war. Lord Kitchener took over control of British forces from Field Marshal The 1st Baron Roberts and was responsible for expanding the British response to the Boers' guerrilla tactics.]]

File:Robert Cecil - 3rd Marquess of Salisbury.jpg, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, under whom Lord Kitchener served.]]

To Lord Kitchener and British High Command, "the life or death of the 154,000 Boer and African civilians in the camps rated as an abysmally low priority" against military objectives.{{citation needed|date=February 2019}} As the Fawcett Commission was delivering its recommendations, Kitchener wrote to St John Brodrick defending his policy of sweeps, and emphasised that no new Boer families were being brought in unless they were in danger of facing starvation. However, the countryside had by then been devastated under the "Scorched Earth" policy, meaning the refusal to allow Boer families into camps would leave them without sustenance. The Fawcett Commission's recommendations stated that "to turn 100,000 people now being held in the concentration camps out on the field to take care of themselves would be cruelty".{{citation needed|date=December 2023}} Now that the New Model counter-insurgency tactics were in full swing, it made little sense to leave Boer families by themselves in desperate conditions in the countryside.{{According to whom|date=February 2025}}

According to one historian,{{who|date=December 2023}} "at [the Vereeniging negotiations in May 1902] Boer leader Louis Botha asserted that he had tried to send [Boer] families to the British, but they had refused to receive them"{{citation needed|date=March 2020}}. A Boer commandant, referring to refugees from the "Scorched Earth" policy, was quoted {{By whom|date=March 2025}} as saying, "Our families are in a pitiable condition and the enemy uses those families to force us to surrender .. and there is little doubt that that was indeed the intention of Kitchener when he had issued instructions that no more families were to be brought into the concentration camps{{citation needed|date=December 2023}}{{Verify quote|date=December 2023|text=unclear if ending quotation mark has been correctly placed}}". Thomas Pakenham writes of Kitchener's policy change:

{{blockquote|No doubt the continued 'hullabaloo' at the death-rate in these concentration camps, and Milner's belated agreement to take over their administration, helped change Kitchener's mind [some time at the end of 1901]. ... By mid-December at any rate, Kitchener was already circulating all column commanders with instructions not to bring in women and children when they cleared the country, but to leave them with the guerrillas. ... Viewed as a gesture to Liberals, on the eve of the new session of Parliament at Westminster, it was a shrewd political move. It also made excellent military sense, as it greatly handicapped the guerrillas, now that the drives were in full swing. ... It was effective precisely because, contrary to the Liberals' convictions, it was less humane than bringing them into camps, though this was of no great concern to Kitchener.{{Harvnb|Pakenham|1979|pp=461–572}}}}

List of concentration camps

=Afrikaner concentration camps=

The exact number of incarcerated victims of the concentration camps for Afrikaners is estimated to number around 40,000 by May 1902, the majority of which were women and children.{{cite web | url=https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/women-and-children-white-concentration-camps-during-anglo-boer-war-1900-1902 | title=Women and Children in White Concentration Camps during the Anglo-Boer War, 1900–1902 | South African History Online }}{{cite web | url=https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/second-anglo-boer-war-1899-1902 | title=Second Anglo-Boer War – 1899–1902 | South African History Online }}

The total deaths in camps are officially calculated at 27,927 deaths.{{cite web | url=https://bertvanvondel.nl/engelse-concentratiekampen-1899-1902/ | title=Engelse Concentratiekampen 1899–1902 | date=28 April 2015 }}{{cite web | url=https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/women-and-children-white-concentration-camps-during-anglo-boer-war-1900-1902 | title=Women and Children in White Concentration Camps during the Anglo-Boer War, 1900–1902 | South African History Online }}

class="wikitable sortable"
colspan=4 \| White concentration camps
Name !Location !Dates !Deaths (total)
Aliwal North \|Cape Colony \|January 1901 – November 1902 \|712
Balmoral \|Transvaal Republic \|July 1901 – December 1902 \|427
Barberton \|Transvaal Republic \|February 1901 – December 1902 \|216
Belfast \|Transvaal Republic \|February 1901 – December 1902 \|247
Bethulie \|Orange Free State \|April 1901 – January 1902 \|1737
Bloemfontein \|Orange Free State \|August 1900 – January 1903 \|1695
Brandfort \|Orange Free State \|January 1901 – March 1903 \|1263
Bronkhorstspruit \|Transvaal Republic \|c. 1901 \|undisclosed
Colenso \|Natal Colony \|January 1902 – April 1902 \|undisclosed
De Jagersdrift \|Natal Colony \|May 1901 – ? \|undisclosed
Douglas \|Cape Colony \|October 1901 \|undisclosed
East London \|Cape Colony \|March 1902 – August 1902 \|undisclosed
Edenburg \|Orange Free State \|December 1900 – ? \|undisclosed
Elandsfontein \|Orange Free State \|January 1901 – June 1901 \|undisclosed
Ermelo \|Transvaal Republic \|undisclosed \|undisclosed
Eshowe \|Natal Colony \|October 1901 – April 1902 \|undisclosed
Harrismith \|Orange Free State \|November 1900 – May 1902 \|130
Heidelberg \|Transvaal Republic \|January 1901 – December 1902 \|499
Heilbron \|Orange Free State \|February 1901 – January 1903 \|602
Howick \|Natal Colony \|January 1901 – October 1902 \|145
Irene (PTA) \|Transvaal Republic \|December 1900 – February 1903 \|1179
Isipingo (DBN) \|Natal Colony \|undisclosed \|22
Jacobs Siding (DBN) \|Natal Colony \|February 1902 – January 1903 \|65
Turffontein (JHB) \|Transvaal Republic \|December 1900 – October 1902 \|716
Kabusi \|Cape Colony \|May 1902 – December 1902 \|undisclosed
Kimberley \|Cape Colony \|January 1901 – January 1903 \|531
Klerksdorp \|Transvaal Republic \|January 1901 – January 1903 \|786
Kromellenboog \|Natal Colony \|February 1901 – December 1901 \|undisclosed
Kroonstad \|Orange Free State \|September 1900 – January 1903 \|2000
Krugersdorp \|Transvaal Republic \|May 1901 – December 1902 \|766
Ladybrand \|Orange Free State \|April 1901 – June? 1902 \|undisclosed
Ladysmith \|Natal Colony \|February 1902 – September 1902 \|undisclosed
Lydenburg \|Transvaal Republic \|1900 – 1902 \|undisclosed
Mafeking \|Cape Colony \|July 1901 – December 1902 \|undisclosed
Matjiesfontein \|Cape Colony \|October 1901 – ? \|undisclosed
Merebank (DBN) \|Natal Colony \|September 1901 – December 1902 \|471
Middelburg \|Transvaal Republic \|February 1901 – January 1903 \|1621
Modder River \|Cape Colony \|June 1901 – ? \|undisclosed
Mooi River \|Natal Colony \|Never occupied \|N/A
Norvalspont \|Orange Free State \|February 1901 – October 1902 \|366
Nylstroom \|Transvaal Republic \|May 1901 – March 1902 \|525
Orange River Station (Hopetown/Doornbult) \|Orange Free State \|April 1901 – November 1902 \|209
Pietermaritzburg \|Natal Colony \|August 1900 – December 1902 \|213
Pietersburg \|Transvaal Republic \|May 1901 – January 1903 \|undisclosed
Pinetown (DBN) \|Natal Colony \|April 1902 – August 1902 \|undisclosed
Port Elizabeth \|Cape Colony \|November 1900 – November 1902 \|14
Potchefstroom \|Transvaal Republic \|September 1900 – March 1903 \|1085
Meintjieskop (PTA) \|Transvaal Republic \|January 1902 – December 1902 \|undisclosed
Pretoria Rest Camp (PTA) \|Transvaal Republic \|April 1901 – 1902 \|undisclosed
Reitz \|Orange Free State \|March 1901 – May 1901 \|undisclosed
Springfontein \|Orange Free State \|February 1900 – January 1903 \|undisclosed
Standerton \|Transvaal Republic \|December 1900 – January 1903 \|857
Platrand (Standerton) \|Transvaal Republic \|February 1901 \|undisclosed
Uitenhage \|Cape Colony \|April 1902 – October 1902 \|9
Vereeniging \|Transvaal Republic \|September 1900 – November 1902 \|156
Viljoensdrif \|Orange Free State \|January 1901 – February 1901 \|undisclosed
Volksrust \|Transvaal Republic \|February 1901 – January 1903 \|1009
Vredefortweg \|Orange Free State \|February 1901 – September 1902 \|800
Vryburg \|Cape Colony \|July 1901 – December 1902 \|251
Vryheid \|Natal Colony \|July 1901 – 1902 \|undisclosed
Warrenton \|Cape Colony \|March 1901 – July 1902 \|undisclosed
Walerval Noord \|Orange Free State \|January 1901 – August 1901 \|undisclosed
Wentworth (DBN) \|Natal Colony \|March 1902 – September 1902 \|undisclosed
Winburg \|Orange Free State \|January 1901 – January 1903 \|487

class="wikitable sortable"

colspan=4 | White concentration camps

Name

!Location

!Dates

!Deaths (total)

Aliwal North

|Cape Colony

|January 1901 – November 1902

|712