The Concentration Camps Of The Anglo-Boer War: A Social History – Elizabeth Van Heyningen

Description

The Concentration Camps of the Anglo-Boer War: A Social History is a landmark work providing the first comprehensive general history of the Anglo-Boer War concentration camps in over fifty years. Drawing on extensive official documents from South African and British archives, the book presents a fresh perspective on a deeply emotional and historically significant topic. Rather than viewing the camps solely as a product of wartime scorched-earth policies, the work places them in the broader context of late-19th-century colonialism, exploring how British attitudes toward poverty, relief, and colonial administration shaped their management.

The book examines why the camps were poorly administered and why reforms were slow, highlighting issues such as divided responsibility, ignorance, political opportunism, and a lack of understanding of institutional needs. A particular focus is placed on health and medicine, investigating both the causes of mortality and the culture of the medical staff caring for the Boer internees. Using camp registers and original research, the author challenges conventional assumptions, suggesting that most inmates were landless bywoners and that many men in the camps were young and able-bodied rather than elderly, as previously thought.

Insightful, meticulously researched, and challenging, The Concentration Camps of the Anglo-Boer War: A Social History is essential reading for anyone interested in South African history, colonial studies, or the social and medical aspects of wartime internment.