Concentration camps
Tag Archive: Concentration camps
BRITISH COMPENSATION to BOERS was a PALTRY £9
BRITISH COMPENSATION to BOERS was a PALTRY £9 ……….
The Anglo-Boer War Concentration Camps – a new tread ………… After what that retarded British politician, Jacob Rees-Mogg said in a previous thread – where he claimed that the British Concentration camps were justified, and not so bad, and for their own good……
NOW, a NEW THREAD: ANYBODY who knows ANYTHING about the “Boer/Afrikaans” nation will KNOW that, DESPITE the fact that their husbands were away on Commando – Boer women were perfectly able and capable to run their farms, to use firearms, and to sustain and protect themselves ON THEIR FARMS. BUT, what these women could NOT DO, was to exist / subsist on their farms after the ROBERTS / KITCHENER “SCORCHED EARTH POLICY” took effect over the length and breadth of the Boer territories.
The BRITISH ARMY killed all Boer livestock and farm animals; they burnt all crops; they poisoned water wells; they set fire to the farm houses, homesteads and buildings, and burnt and destroyed all Boer furniture, belongings, heirlooms and antiques.
A British officer who witnessed the burning of a Boer farm homestead noted: “The women, in a little group, cling together, comforting each other or hiding their faces in each other’s laps”. A Boer woman declared: “There I stood, surrounded by my small children, while the cruel soldiers plundered my property. Furniture, clothing, food, everything was thrown in a heap and set alight……. Despite my pleas that I might be allowed to retain a few antiques and heirlooms, they refused to listen.”
“Over the length and breadth of our Republic they raised everything to the ground. Horses, cattle and sheep were bayoneted to death. The bellowing of the cattle, the sad bleating of the sheep and all the blood is something that we shall never forget”
THEN, as we have seen, as many of these Boer women and children as could be found and rounded up, were sent in cattle trucks, to the CONCENTRATION CAMPS – where, as we know, about 28,000 of them died. Not to mention a further 15,000 (approx. – figures vary) Blacks who ALSO died in their separate Camps. The “Scorched Earth” policy, first started by Lord Roberts, and later continued by General Kitchener, had caused the (by now) homeless Boer women and children, – i.e. those who had not yet been herded into concentration camps – to wander the open veld for the entire duration of the war, often seeking shelter in kloofs and caves, and even in the hills, without any support at all. In the Transvaal alone, by 1902, some 10,000 women and children suffered this pitiful existence. In October, 1902 Lord Alfred Milner admitted that 30,000 Boer houses had been destroyed during the war. But it was not only the farms which the British attacked. The British partially or completely destroyed at least 40 Boer towns in the two Boer republics.
AND NOW – whilst NOBODY can condone what the British did – in the name of getting their hands on the Transvaal goldfields, we must consider the BOER NATION AFTER the WAR. With most of their farms destroyed, many villages and towns damaged and destroyed, and their major cities and capitals occupied, WHAT DID THE BRITISH, as the all-conquering “victors”, DO FOR THE TWO BOER NATIONS ????? VIRTUALLY NOTHING !!!!!
After the war, the Boers made 63,000 separate claims for their losses. Britain granted the Boer Republics the sum of only £3 million as compensation for the three years of war waged against them. If one considers that the Boer population by June, 1902 was in the order of 330,000 people, then the ‘compensation’ which the British gave the Boers amounted to a paltry £9 for each man, woman and child (at least what was left of them) – hardly equitable considering their material losses, if not the total losses they suffered, as a nation. And this calculation does not even begin to have account for the Black population of the two Republics.
HOW CAN THIS BE JUSTIFIED AND EQUITABLE ?????????? NEVER !!!!!!
PS: This article and some of the figures are a small, partial extract from my research PAPER entitled: “The Anglo – Boer War, 1899 – 1902: In Numbers” by David R. Bennett © 2012. I am a South African, with 3/8th BOER Ancestry, and with a large Afrikaans family, well versed with the BOER nation, of which I am part. PHOTOS: Some photos of young VICTIMS at the hands of the British; Boer orphaned children just after the War, and the JACOBS, Durban Boer Concentration Camp Memorial – NOTE the AGES of most of the BOER CHILDREN who DIED in this camp – and it was the same for ALL the camps ……. Nothing more need be said.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/AngloBoerWar/permalink/10157070415499182/
Concentration camps in the South African War? Here are the real facts
More than a century after 48 000 people died in concentration camps in what’s known as the South African War between 1899 and 1902 – or the Anglo-Boer War – the events of that period are back in the headlines.
The camps were established by the British as part of their military campaign against two small Afrikaner republics: the ZAR (Transvaal) and the Orange Free State.
The scandalous campaign is back in the news following controversial comments by British Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg on a BBC television programme.
Rees-Mogg’s statements have caused consternation because they were riddled with inaccuracies. It’s time to set the record straight and to refute his inaccuracies one by one. I do this based on the historical research I’ve done on the South African War for the last 49 years.
Photos-reveal-plight-Afrikaners-concentration-camps
Inside Britain’s concentration camps: Harrowing photographs reveal the plight of thousands of Afrikaners detained in disease-ridden tents during the Second Boer War
- Most of the victims herded into the concentration camps in South Africa were women and children
- Unlike the Nazi camps in the Second World War, few executions took place at the British camps in South Africa
- Instead, what ended up killing most of the Afrikaners was disease and malnutrition from inside their tents
- Second Boer War was fought from 1899 to 1902 by Britain and her Empire against the Boers in South Africa
These are the harrowing photographs of Britain’s concentrations camps during the Second Boer War show the disease-ridden tents where more than 48,000 innocent people lost their lives.
Most of the victims were women and children who were herded into the camps where disease and hunger ran rampant.
The British concentration camps took the lives of almost ten per cent of the Boer population at the time although – unlike the Nazi camps during the Second World War – there were no executions of innocent people.
Instead, what ended up killing thousands, was malnutrition and disease. The Second Boer War was fought from 1899 to 1902 by Britain and her Empire against the Boers in South Africa.
The Boers comprised of the combined forces of the South African Republic and the Republic of the Orange Free State.
When the Boers refused to surrender to the Anglos in 1900, the British rounded-up thousands of Afrikaners (Boers) and forcibly took thousands of women and children from their farms and placed them in concentration camps.
A large group of children gathered for a Cocoa Party at the Nylstroom Camp, circa 1901. Between June 1901 and May 1902, 115,000 people were brought into the concentration camps
Native South Africans raising railway lines, singing as they lift each one. The exact date of the picture is unclear, but it is thought to have been taken around 1901. The Second Boer War (1899 – 1902) was fought by Britain and her Empire against the Boers. The Boers comprised of the combined forces of the South African Republic and the Republic of the Orange Free State
Boer men and women seated at the Nylstroom Camp for an open-air service, circa 1901. A total of 544 lives were lost at the camp.
Women and children sitting outside a grass-roofed hut at the native Klerksdorp Camp in 1901. When the Boers refused to surrender to the Anglos in 1900, the British rounded-up thousands of Afrikaners (Boers) and forcibly took thousands of women and children from their farms and placed them in concentration camps
Refugees at Merebank Station, near Durban, at around 1901. People’s entire belongings are seen piled up in bags on the side of the railway line as scores of refugees flee the war
The Barberton Camp in a picture taken in 1901. There were a total of 45 tented camps built for Boer internees and 64 camps for black Africans. Generally, they were poorly administered from the outset and thousands of people died due to the unspeakably terrible conditions
Civilians’ farms were burnt or ravaged by the British under their ‘Scorched Earth’ policy. Crops were destroyed and herds of livestock wiped out in a bid to undermine Boer survival.
Between June 1901 and May 1902, 115,000 people were brought into the concentration camps. There were a total of 45 tented camps built for Boer internees and 64 camps for black Africans.
The camps were poorly administered from the outset and thousands of people died due to the terrible conditions.
The internees received hardly any rations or medical support and were expected to grow their own crops.
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.
A boiling water tank and oven at the Johannesburg Camp. Children watch on as four men work on the giant contraption. One man, on the left, can be seen filling what looks like a pot or a kettle with water from a tap while another man carefully places something inside the water tank using a long pole. A third man, right, is seen poking another pole into the oven. Those contained in the camps were expected to grow their own crops
A tent camp in Johannesburg in a picture taken in around 1901. Dozens of rows of tents can be seen stretching back for hundreds of yards. Common in the camps were 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
Women and children pictured outside a tent in the Bloemfontein Camp in around 1901. Around 28,000 women and children and at least 20,000 black people died in the camps – the death toll represented almost 10 per cent of the Boer population
A family in the Johannesburg Camp. A turning point in the death rate in the Boers camp came about by November 1901, after Emily Hobhouse of the Fawcett Ladies Commision revealed the terrible conditions in the camps to the British public. The civil authority took over the running of 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 two percent, which was a lower rate than pertained in many British cities at the time
A refugee camp for native South Africans near Krugersdorp in a picture taken around 1901. Civilians’ farms were burnt or ravaged by the British under their ‘Scorched Earth’ policy. Crops were destroyed and herds of livestock wiped out in a bid to undermine Boer survival
Four women, wearing very basic clothing and headscarves fashioned from rags, sitting outside a grass-roofed hut at the Klerksdorp Camp
Around 28,000 women and children and at least 20,000 black people died in the camps – the death toll represented almost 10 per cent of the Boer population.
A turning point in the death rate in the Boers camp came about by November 1901, after Emily Hobhouse of the Fawcett Ladies Commision revealed the conditions in the camps to the British public.
The civil authority took over the running of 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 two percent, which was a lower rate than pertained in many British cities at the time.
concentration camp
The term “concentration camp” was used to describe camps operated by the British in South Africa during the Second Boer War from 11 October 1899 until 31 May 1902, and the term grew in prominence during this period.
The camps had originally been set up by the British Army as “refugee camps” to provide refuge for civilian families who had been forced to abandon their homes for whatever reason related to the war. However, when Kitchener succeeded Roberts as commander-in-chief in South Africa on 29 November 1900, the British Army introduced new tactics in an attempt to break the guerrilla campaign and the influx of civilians grew dramatically as a result. Kitchener initiated plans to
flush out guerrillas in a series of systematic drives, organised like a sporting shoot, with success defined in a weekly ‘bag’ of killed, captured and wounded, and to sweep the country bare of everything that could give sustenance to the guerrillas, including women and children … It was the clearance of civilians—uprooting a whole nation—that would come to dominate the last phase of the war.
Field Marshal Horatio Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener KG (24 June 1850 – 5 June 1916) was a senior British Army officer and colonial administrator who won fame for his imperial campaigns and later played a central role in the early part of the First World War, although he died halfway through it.
As Boer farms were destroyed by the British under their “Scorched Earth” policy—including the systematic destruction of crops and slaughtering of livestock, the burning down of homesteads and farms, and the poisoning of wells and salting of fields—to prevent the Boers from resupplying from a home base many tens of thousands of women and children were forcibly moved into the concentration camps. This was not the first appearance of internment camps. The Spanish had used internment in the Ten Years’ War that led to the Spanish–American War, and the United States had used them to devastate guerrilla forces during the Philippine–American War. But the Boer War concentration camp system was the first time that a whole nation had been systematically targeted, and the first in which some whole regions had been depopulated.
Eventually, there were a total of 45 tented camps built for Boer internees and 64 for black Africans. Of the 28,000 Boer men captured as prisoners of war, 25,630 were sent overseas. The vast majority of Boers remaining in the local camps were women and children. Over 26,000 women and children were to perish in these concentration camps.
The camps were poorly administered from the outset and became increasingly overcrowded when 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. 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 who were still fighting were routinely given smaller rations than others (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. An additional problem was the Boers’ use of traditional medicines like a cow-dung poultice for skin diseases and crushed insects for convulsions. Coupled with a shortage of modern medical facilities, many of the internees died.
As the war raged across their farms and their homes were destroyed, many Africans became refugees and they, like the Boers, moved to the towns where the British Army hastily created internment camps. Subsequently, the “Scorched Earth” policy was ruthlessly applied to both Boers and Africans. Although most black Africans were not considered by the British to be hostile, many tens of thousands were also forcibly removed from Boer areas and also placed in concentration camps.
Africans were held separately from Boer internees. Eventually there were a total of 64 tented camps for Africans. Conditions were as bad as in the camps for the Boers, but even though, after the Fawcett Commission report, conditions improved in the Boer camps, “improvements were much slower in coming to the black camps.”
For a long time, until the late 20th century, Afrikaners (Boers) didn’t like British (English) people, the United Kingdom and even the USA as an allie of the United Kingdom. They remembered the Brits destroying their farms, poisening their lands, and starving their women and children. Afrikaners (= Boers) call the Brits and white Anglo-Africans rooinek (Redneck). Probably a reference to the fact that Englishmen, being new to Africa, wore inadequate headgear (such as solar topees (pith helmets) or no hat at all) and thus sunburned more easily than Afrikaners. Other theories have it being a reference to the then red collars of British military uniforms, or to the red markings that British farmers put on their imported merino sheep.
Jaga, the British colonial regime was very tough in many African nations, in India, in Palestine and their Caribbean and South-American colonies. Nazi propaganda tended to glorify British institutions, and above all the British Empire. Adolf Hitler tried to court Britain into an alliance, his propaganda praised the British as proficient Aryan imperialists.
Typical of the Nazi admiration for the British Empire were a lengthy series of articles in various German newspapers throughout the mid-1930s praising various aspects of British imperial history, with the clear implication that there were positive parallels to be drawn between British empire-building in the past and German empire-building in the future.
A particular theme of praise was offered for British “ruthlessness” in building and defending their empire, which was held as a model for the Germans to follow. Above all, the British were admired as an “Aryan” people who had with typical “ruthlessness” subjected millions of brown- and black skinned people to their rule, and British rule in India was held up as a model for how the Germans would rule Russia, through as the historian Gerwin Strobl pointed out that this parallel between German rule in Russia and British rule in India was only made possible by the Nazis’ ignorance of how the British actually ruled India.
King Charles granted the The Stuart family and London merchants who owned the Royal African Company a monopoly of the trade to supply slaves to the British colonies of the Caribbean. From the outset, slavery was the basis of the British Empire in the West Indies. Until the abolition of the slave trade in 1807, Britain was responsible for the transportation of 3.5 million African slaves to the Americas, a third of all slaves transported across the Atlantic. To facilitate this trade, forts were established on the coast of West Africa, such as James Island, Accra and Bunce Island. In the British Caribbean, the percentage of the population of African descent rose from 25 percent in 1650 to around 80 percent in 1780, and in the 13 Colonies from 10 percent to 40 percent over the same period (the majority in the southern colonies). For the slave traders, the trade was extremely profitable, and became a major economic mainstay for such western British cities as Bristol and Liverpool, which formed the third corner of the so-called triangular trade with Africa and the Americas. For the transported, harsh and unhygienic conditions on the slaving ships and poor diets meant that the average mortality rate during the Middle Passage was one in seven.
concentration-camps
Today,1902- ABW2: Reported Black concentration camp population reaches 115,700. 523 deaths are recorded for May. 14 000 by end of war
Today,1902- ABW 2: Reported camp population of the White concentration camps is 116 572 and the deaths for May are 196. Would grow to 25 000
The Camp
The camp
White tents, white ant hills.
Strange, awkward stenches fills the war-torn air
Weak, but still proud, with no disinfectant
Sitting around in poverty: deprived!
Waiting for food. Waiting for water.
Humiliation. Disgrace. Filth.
Dead bodies carrying along white rows
They don’t care, they don’t think!
They can’t think. They kill.
The pain inside: it cuts deep, very deep.
No sound. No breath. No life.
No words. Only thoughts.
Blue vitriol, no food.
Children crying, children dying
Hunger screams, hunger wails
Endless waiting and timeless prayers.
Shock. Horror. Pain.
Forgotten lives.
Panic. Fright. Terror.
God! My child is dead!
Footsteps. No words.
Empty arms. Eyes watching.
Not my child!
Patience:
Another seepkissie will arrive soon
Silence…
Nikita 22/8/2013