Overview

This is the first general history of the concentration camps of the Anglo-Boer or South African War in over fifty years, and the first to use in depth the very rich and extensive official documents in South African and British archives. It provides a fresh perspective on a topic that has understandably aroused huge emotions because of the great numbers of Afrikaners, especially women and children, who died in the camps. This fascinating social history overturns many of the previously held assumptions and conclusions on all sides, and is sure to stimulate debate. Rather than viewing the camps simply as the product of the scorched-earth policies of the war, the author sets them in the larger context of colonialism at the end of the 19th century, arguing that British views on poverty, poor relief and the management of colonial societies all shaped their administration. The book also attempts to explain why the camps were so badly administered in the first place, and why reform was so slow, suggesting that divided responsibility, ignorance, political opportunism and a failure to understand the needs of such institutions all played their part. Since the original research arose from a project on the medical history of the camps, funded by the Wellcome Trust, there is a particularly strong focus on health and medicine, looking not only at the causes of mortality in the camps, but at the ideas which shaped the culture of the doctors and nurses ministering to the Boers. The author has also used material derived from a database of the camp registers to argue, somewhat controversially, that the camp inmates were primarily landless bywoners, rather members of the middle classes, as people like Emily Hobhouse implied, and that the rather numerous men in the camps were young and able-bodied rather than the old men suggested in the conventional literature.

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9781431405428

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Reviews

A masterly exercise in the writing of social history, extremely wellinformed, utilising all the recent research - Professor Iain Smith, formerly of the University of Warwick

A masterly exercise in the writing of social history, extremely well informed, utilizing all the recent research. --Iain Smith, former professor of history, University of Warwick

Author Information

Dr Elizabeth van Heyningen taught in the Department of Historical Studies at the University of Cape Town for many years. Her main research interests are the history of Cape Town, the social history of medicine and the history of colonial women. Previous publications include a two-volume social history of Cape Town (with N. Worden and V. Bickford-Smith) and a history of the Cape medical profession in the nineteenth century (with H. Deacon and H. Phillips).

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