This is a path-breaking discussion of the camps of the Anglo-Boer (or South African War) of 1899–1902, focusing particularly on their medical record. Within South Africa's contested history these concentration camps have provoked the most passionate and rancorous debate, where testimony on the sufferings of Afrikaner women and children under the allegedly brutal treatment by the British is constantly refreshed in popular memory.
The author takes a closely focused view, assuming that the reader is informed about the wider context in which the camps operated – a political divide between the two Afrikaner republics of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State and the British territories of the Cape and Natal which had led to military conflict between the distinctive commando organisation of the Afrikaners and the conventional armed force of the British. Perhaps the readership is conceived of as South African, because there is also a need for consistent (rather than occasional) translation of Afrikaans words and quotations. These two features are regrettable because this is an important historiographical contribution which merits an international readership.
War involved the burning of Boer farms by British forces, resulting in the expedient formation of camps for displaced, destitute Afrikaners and Africans. In this ad hoc creation, disputes between external military and civilian authorities, as well as internally between superintendents and medical officers, occurred as each attempted to achieve bureaucratic efficiency, sanitary hygiene, or financial economy. Despite constant tensions over expenditures, in reality the camps cost a trivial 1·73 per cent of the vast British war expenditures. The book shows that these concentration camps were much less totalitarian structures than porous institutions where inmates had contact with outside communities. And rather than the historical stereotype of camps filled with Afrikaner women, children, and the elderly, about a third of the adult inmates were men who were essential in providing labour for necessary camp tasks. The 42 white camps are shown to have been increasingly organised, complex structures that grew to include schools, hospitals, and shops.
The 25 African refugee camps are analysed here for the first time. They were unplanned, but became systematised into labour camps serving the needs of the British army. Influenced both by the deterrent philosophy of the English poor laws and by the prior experience of Indian famine camps, both expenditure and treatment were less than adequate. Whilst the camps varied in detail, their generally miserable conditions and minimal access to doctors resulted in undesirably high morbidity and mortality. The contemporary view of Africans as ‘hewers of wood and drawers of water’ meant that there were also black workers in the white camps performing the more unpleasant work there. But in contrast to the inmates of the white camps, the testimony of these African inmates is unfortunately lacking in the historical record.
The author treats dispassionately the activities of a contemporary, vociferous pro-Boer lobby. Prominent in publicising the overcrowding, material shortages, and disorder of early camp conditions was a British woman, Emily Hobhouse. Described as ‘an arch-propagandist with a lively pen’ (p. 121) her revelations – together with those of other lady reformers – had shocked international public opinion. Controversy centred on whether high morbidity and mortality was due to the allegedly unhygienic habits of the Afrikaners, resulting from their cultural refusal to abandon their traditional loyalty to preindustrial household care centred on Dutch (patent) medicines, herbal remedies, and on an absence of fresh air. Elizabeth van Heyningen cautiously concludes that the evidence indicates that ‘at least some of the British indictments of Boer hygiene were valid’ (p. 191).
The British imperial mission required the agency of a modern public health regime together with an organised medical profession, hospitals for curative medicine, and qualified nurses. British trained nurses and Afrikaner probationers were the spearhead of the camp's medical mission, where long hours of careful nursing together with a comparatively generous diet saved patients' lives. Sadly, the rigid routines and restrictive access of these hospitals had also alienated Afrikaner mothers. Despite fairly advanced medical care in the camps, a prolonged measles epidemic in 1901 proved lethal (particularly for children) whilst other fatal camp diseases included respiratory diseases, typhoid, diarrhoea, and dysentery.
The subject of the South African concentration camps is one where a powerful mythology has hitherto held sway, in which Boer women's painful memories served to assist in forging an Afrikaner identity. This book is an excellent antidote to historiographical neglect of the topic, characterised as it is by systematic research, informed analysis, abundant quantitative data, and illuminating photographs. Van Heyningen has produced an excellent social history: readable, challenging, and convincing.
