Discussion Post: The Blanched Soldier
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sherlock60This week, the canon story we’re looking at is The Blanched Soldier and the chosen topic is The Boer War.
Well, this was a barrel of laughs… It’s a complex subject of course, so best to treat this post just as a starting point. And best to be aware it can be a pretty distressing subject, especially with regard to children dying in the concentration camps.
A few facts:
• For a British audience, the Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902 must be one of the best-known events in South African history. In a bitterly fought and costly war almost a million British soldiers were deployed against a Boer force of between 60 and 65,000. There were some 22,000 British casualties; the small Afrikaner population lost some 14,000 in combat while a further devastating 28,000, mainly women and children, died in the notorious concentration camps established by the British. [Shula Marks]
• South African War, also called Boer War, Second Boer War, or Anglo-Boer War; to Afrikaners, also known as the Second War of Independence, war fought from Oct. 11, 1899, to May 31, 1902, between Great Britain and the two Boer (Afrikaner) republics—the South African Republic (Transvaal) and the Orange Free State—resulting in British victory.
Although it was the largest and most costly war in which the British engaged between the Napoleonic Wars and World War I (spending more than £200 million), it was fought between wholly unequal protagonists. The total British military strength in Southern Africa reached nearly 500,000 men, whereas the Boers could muster no more than about 88,000. But the British were fighting in a hostile country over difficult terrain, with long lines of communications, while the Boers, mainly on the defensive, were able to use modern rifle fire to good effect at a time when attacking forces had no means of overcoming it. The conflict provided a foretaste of warfare fought with breach-loading rifles and machine guns, with the advantage to the defenders, that was to characterize World War I.
The causes of the war have provoked intense debates among historians and remain as unresolved today as during the war itself. British politicians claimed they were defending their “suzerainty” over the South African Republic (SAR) enshrined in the Pretoria and (disputably) London conventions of 1881 and 1884, respectively. Many historians stress that in reality the contest was for control of the rich Witwatersrand gold-mining complex located in the SAR. It was the largest gold-mining complex in the world at a time when the world’s monetary systems, preeminently the British, were increasingly dependent upon gold. Although there were many Uitlanders (foreigners; i.e., non-Dutch/Boer and in this case primarily British) working in the Witwatersrand gold-mining industry, the complex itself was beyond direct British control. Also, the discovery of gold on the Witwatersrand in 1886 allowed the SAR to make progress with modernization efforts and vie with Britain for domination in Southern Africa...
In terms of human life, nearly 100,000 lives were lost, including those of more than 20,000 British troops and 14,000 Boer troops. Noncombatant deaths include the more than 26,000 Boer women and children estimated to have died in the concentration camps from malnutrition and disease; the total number of African deaths in the concentration camps was not recorded, but estimates range from 13,000 to 20,000.
On both sides the war produced heights of national enthusiasm of a type that marked the era and culminated in frenetic British celebrations after the relief of the Siege of Mafeking in May 1900. (The word mafficking, meaning wild rejoicing, originated from these celebrations.) Despite attempts at rapid healing of the wounds after 1902 and a willingness to cooperate for the purpose of uniting against black Africans, relations between Boers (or Afrikaners, as they became known) and English-speaking South Africans were to remain frigid for many decades. Internationally, the war helped poison the atmosphere between Europe’s great powers, as Britain found that most countries sympathized with the Boers. [Encyclopaedia Britannica]
• There were two Boer wars, one ran from 16 December 1880 - 23 March 1881 and the second from 9 October 1899 - 31 May 1902 both between the British and the settlers of Dutch origin (called Boere, Afrikaners or Voortrekkers) who lived in South Africa. These wars put an end to the two independent republics that they had founded...
The Second Boer War
9 October 1899 - 31 May 1902
...following the discovery of gold in the Transvaal in 1885 at Witwatersrand Reef there was a rush of non-Boer settlers, uitlanders. The new settlers were poorly regarded by the Boers and in return there was pressure to remove their government. In 1896 Cecil Rhodes sponsored the ineffective coup d'etat of the Jameson Raid and the failure to gain improved rights for Britons was used as an excuse to justify a major military buildup in the Cape. There was another reason for the British intention to take control of the Boer Republics: there was at the time an attempt made by the Transvaal Republic to link up with German South West Africa, a possibility which the British, with an eye to the coming clash with the Empire of the Germans, determined to thwart.
The Boers, under Paul Kruger, struck first. The Boers attacked into Cape Colony and Natal between October 1899 and January 1900. The Boers were able to successfully besiege the British garrisons in the towns of Ladysmith, Mafeking (defended by troops headed by Robert Baden-Powell) and Kimberley and inflicted three separate defeats on the British in one week, December 10 to 15, 1899. It was not until reinforcements arrived on February 14, 1900 that British troops commanded by Lord Roberts could launch counter-offences to relieve the garrisons (the relief of Mafeking on May 18, 1900 provoked riotous celebrations in England) and enabled the British to take Bloemfontein on March 13 and the Boer capital, Pretoria, on June 5. Boer units fought for two more years as guerrillas, the British, now under the command of Lord Kitchener, responded by constructing blockhouses, destroying farms and confiscating food to prevent them from falling into Boer hands and placing Boer civilians in concentration camps.
The last of the Boers surrendered in May 1902 and the war ended with the Treaty of Vereeniging in the same month. 22,000 British troops had died and over 25,000 Boer civilians. The treaty ended the existence of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State as Boer republics and placed them within the British Empire. But the Boers were given £3m in compensation and were promised self-government in time (the Union of South Africa was established in 1910). [The Boer Wars]
• In a disastrous week, dubbed Black Week, from 10–17 December 1899, the British Army suffered three devastating defeats by the Boer Republics at the battles of Stormberg, Magersfontein and Colenso, with a total of 2,776 men killed, wounded and captured. The events were an eye opener for the government and troops, who had thought that the war could be won very easily. [Wikipedia]
• Boer women, children and men unfit for service were herded together in concentration camps by the British forces during Anglo-Boer War 2 (1899-1902). The first two of these camps (refugee camps) were established to house the families of burghers who had surrendered voluntarily, but very soon, with families of combatant burgers driven forcibly into camps established all over the country, the camps ceased to be refugee camps and became concentration camps. The abhorrent conditions in these camps caused the death of 4 177 women, 22 074 children under sixteen and 1 676 men, mainly those too old to be on commando, notwithstanding the efforts of an English lady, Emily Hobhouse, who tried her best to make the British authorities aware of the plight of especially the women and children in the camps. [South African History Online]
• Emily Hobhouse (9 April 1860 – 8 June 1926) was a British welfare campaigner, who is primarily remembered for bringing to the attention of the British public, and working to change, the deprived conditions inside the British administered concentration camps in South Africa built to incarcerate Boer women and children during the Second Boer War. [Wikipedia]
• From the outset, the conflict on both sides was portrayed as a 'white man's war'. Yet despite the rhetoric, the reality was, as Peter Warwick shows in his scholarly and readable account [Black People and the South African War 1899-1902], rather different. Making use of the voluminous documentation on the war, the author shows blacks were neither passive victims nor innocent bystanders in the conflict which consumed South Africa at the turn of the century. Both Boer and Briton were determined that whatever the differences between them, white supremacy over blacks would be maintained. Nevertheless, blacks were directly involved on both sides, suffered considerable casualties and were dramatically affected by the nature of the South African state established by the British after the war.
Everywhere, blacks provided labour, accompanying the troops as transport riders, cattle guards and baggage carriers, while on the Rand they were drafted into service on the railways and gold mines under martial law and at minimal rates of pay. In some areas they played a more active role as armed combatants, spies and scouts, despite declarations to the contrary by both sides. In Bechuanaland, Basutoland and Swaziland chiefly, groups actively assisted the British, using the situation to settle old scores and to increase their power; in the eastern Cape black levies prevented the entry of Commandos and manned town garrisons. They played a notable part in the sieges of Ladysmith, Kimberley and Mafeking.
In the British concentration camps, blacks were forced to work for their upkeep, and by the end of the war their percentage mortality there was even higher than that of whites. Afrikaner commandos plundered peasant supplies and assaulted blacks in an assertion of Republican overrule, and shot blacks suspected of being in the employ of the British army on sight. African resistance to this violence was on occasion as desperate and direct, whether it took the form of massed attack as at Holkrantz in 1901, or of individual acts of desertion, the poisoning of wells and the maiming of Boer cattle…
Yet blacks gained little if anything from the war. Their hopes of a new order were soon shattered as Boer and Briton rapidly united to restore black-white property relationships... [Shula Marks]
• In theory the British as well as the Afrikaners rejected the idea that Africans or even Coloureds or Indians would play in role in their dispute. The Cape government maintained that arming Africans would create an unfavourable effect on the African population; a stand endorsed by the British government. This did not exclude the use of labourers or transport employees, but Africans were not meant to be armed and used in conflict.
When the going got tough, however, it was a very different story. In April-May 1900, during the siege of Mafeking, Colonel Baden Powell, who was leading the defence, ran out of troops. He had little option but to turn to Africans, who had been recruited to dig trenches and act as spies. The Colonel armed three hundred Africans; called them the ‘Black Watch’ and set them the task of manning sections of the perimeter. When his opposite number, General Cronje discovered what had happened, he was furious. “It is understood that you have armed Bastards, Fingoes and Barolong against us,” he wrote in a letter to Baden-Powell. “In this you have committed an enormous act of wickedness…reconsider the matter, even if it costs you the loss of Mafeking…disarm your blacks and thereby act the part of a white man in a white man’s war.”
Some estimates put the total number of Africans who fought for the British as high as 30,000...
If the British had, somewhat reluctantly, turned to black soldiers to bolster their army, so had the Boers. Lieutenant Charles Massey, an intelligence officer with the Grenadier Guards, accumulated “evidence of both armed and unarmed natives among our adversaries in the [Cape] colony.” Boer Commandos had been observed and “all had some natives armed, and on horseback, wearing slouch hats and other Boer clothes…I have always believed what was said of the Boers and their abhorrence of blacks, but now I know better...”
The death toll in the war was terrible. Some 22,000 British and colonial troops were buried in South Africa. The Boers lost around 7,000 at the front and perhaps as many as 28,000 women and children in the concentration camps. But, as Thomas Pakenham points out in assessing the conflict, the most severe losses were suffered by Africans. No-one bothered to keep accurate records of the ‘black Boers’ who were swept up into the concentration camps – the farm workers and their families who had been captured during the burning of Boer farms, but recent research suggests that some 18,000 Africans perished in the camps.
There is evidence the Boers executed large numbers of Africans for helping the British either as despatch riders or armed scouts… There is no an authoritative toll of the numbers of Africans or Coloureds who died serving either the British or the Boers in battle...
The suffering of the black community during the war was immense, but the anticipated benefits of a British victory soon evaporated. Africans had welcomed the British as they advanced through the Transvaal and Orange Free State as liberators. They believed that at last they would be treated as British subjects, equal to the Boers in the eyes of their new masters, but they misjudged the intentions of the conquering British… Transvaal Africans who had moved onto deserted former Afrikaner farms, believing they could recover the land taken from them during and after the Great Trek, were soon disabused of this notion. British troops and police evicted them... [Martin Plaut]
• Many Black people were held in concentration camps around the country. The British created camps for Blacks from the start of the war. Entire townships and even mission stations were transferred into concentration camps. The men were forced into labour service and by the end of the war there were some 115 000 Blacks in 66 camps around the country.
Maintenance spent on white camps were a lot higher than that spent on the Black camps due to the fact that Blacks had to build their own huts and even encouraged to grow their own food. Less than a third of Black interns were provided with rations. Black people were practically being starved to death in these camps.
Blacks in the concentration camps were not given adequate food and did not have proper medical care, which resulted in many deaths. Those in employment were forced to pay for their food. Water supplies were often contaminated, and the conditions under which they were housed were appalling, resulting in thousands of deaths from dysentery, typhoid and diarrhea.
The death toll at the end of the war in the Black concentration camps was recorded as 14154, but it is believed that the actual number was considerably higher. Most of the fatalities occurred amongst the children.
After the war the Black camps remained under military control even after the white camps had been transferred to civilian control. [South African History Online]
• Field-Marshal Lord Roberts had an ulterior motive in putting Blacks into camps, namely to make them work, either to grow crops for the troops or to dig trenches, be wagon drivers or work as miners once the gold mines became partly operational again. They did not receive rations, hardly any medical support or shelter and were expected to grow their own crops. The able-bodied who could work, could exchange labour for food or buy mealie meal at a cheaper price. The British along racial lines separated the White and Black camps. The inmates of the Black camps, situated along railway lines and on the border, became the eyes and ears of the British army. They formed an early warning system against Boer attacks on the British military's primary logistic artery - the railway lines and acted as scouts for British forces. This strategy alienated Whites and Blacks from each other by furthering distrust between the two population groups and was detrimental to racial harmony in South Africa after the war…
The total Black deaths in camps are officially calculated at a minimum of 14 154 (more than 1 in 10), though G. Benneyworth estimates it as at least 20 000, after examining actual graveyards. According to him incomplete and in many cases non-existent British records and the fact that many civilians died outside of the camps, caused the final death toll to be higher . The average official death rate, caused by medical neglect, exposure, infectious diseases and malnutrition inside the camps was 350 per thousand per annum, peaking at 436 per thousand per annum in certain Free State camps. Eighty-one percent of the fatalities were children. [South African History Online]
• The Second Boer War lasted three years and the British needed to enlist more recruits. Many British men volunteered.
During the war, the British army experienced great difficulty in finding fit young men to recruit as soldiers. Before men could join the army, they had to pass a medical inspection.
It was discovered, through these medical inspections, that one third of volunteers was unfit for military service. It appeared that the physical condition of the working class male prevented him from fighting, as well as working effectively in his job.
There was growing concern for national security (the safety of Britain). Many believed that the British army was not powerful enough. If there was difficulty recruiting for a small-scale war, then it would be even more difficult to enlist a large number of able soldiers for a large-scale war.
This meant that Britain may be easily defeated by a strong, industrialised nation with a large army. Germany was such a nation which seemed to be challenging Britain for international supremacy.
Government reports published in 1904 stated that free school meals and medical examinations should be introduced in Britain. This would help combat the poor physical condition of many British citizens.
The reports emphasised that diet should be improved and overcrowding reduced, as the worst cases were found in the industrial cities. Pressure was mounting on the Government to act, to ensure basic health levels were met in Britain. [BBC]
• Opposition to the Second Boer War (1899-1902) was a factor in the war. Inside Britain and the British Empire, there was strong opposition to the Boers and a minority in favour of them. Outside the situation was reversed and indeed condemnation of Britain was often intense from many sources, left, right and centre. Inside Britain influential groups, especially based in the opposition Liberal Party formed immediately. They fought ineffectually against the British war policies, which were supported by the Conservative Party of Prime Minister Salisbury.
After the Boers switched to guerrilla warfare in 1900 and the British imposed very harsh controls on Boer civilians, the intensity of opposition rhetoric escalated. However, at all times supporters of the war controlled the British government, recruited soldiers in large numbers, and represented a majority of public opinion. Outside the British Empire the Boer cause won far more support as the British were reviled. However, all governments remained neutral.
At the start of the war, some Liberal groups mobilized committees to protest the war, including the South African Conciliation Committee and W. T. Stead's Stop the War Committee. A common theme was that this capitalistic greed for the gold and diamonds that motivated the British seizure of two independent countries. Angry crowds often broke up anti-war meetings. The British press was overwhelmingly in support of the government, with only the Manchester Guardian and the Westminister Gazette outspoken in opposition. With the press against them, anti-war elements relied heavily on streetcorner distribution of their many pamphlets. Nevertheless a tide of young men volunteered for the war, as many as 100,000 a month at the peak. Liberals split, with many top leaders following Lord Rosebery in support of the war. Many nonconformists, the backbone of the Liberal Party, likewise supported the war.
The 1900 UK general election, was a "Khaki election" where the government waved the flag and rallied patriotic voters. It resulted in a victory for the Conservative government on the back of recent British victories against the Boers. However, public support waned as it became apparent that the war would not be easy and unease developed following reports about the treatment by the British army's of the Boer civilians such as concentration camps and farm burning. Public and political opposition was expressed by repeated attacks on the policy and the government by the Liberal M.P. David Lloyd-George...
Opposition to the war was strongest among the Irish Catholics in Ireland and Britain. Many Irish nationalists sympathised with the Boers as a kindred people being oppressed by British tyranny. Though many Irishmen fought in the British army, some fought for the Boers too. Irish miners working in the Transvaal when the war began formed the nucleus of two tiny Irish commandos...
Having taken the country into a prolonged war, the electorate delivered a harsh verdict at the first general election after the war was over. Arthur Balfour, succeeding his uncle Lord Salisbury in 1903 immediately after the war, took over a Conservative party that had won two successive landslide majorities but led it to a landslide defeat in 1906. [Wikipedia]
• During the Boer war, 22,000 [British] troops were treated for wounds inflicted during battle. The surgical facilities provided by the British Army were vastly more effective than in previous campaigns. The Medical Department of the army mobilised 151 staff and regimental units. Twenty eight field ambulances, five stationary hospitals and 16 general hospitals were established to deal with casualties. Numerous voluntary organizations set up additional hospitals, medical units and first aid posts. Around one thousand Indians from Natal were shipped to South Africa to help in the recovery effort by transporting the wounded off the battlefields.Even Mahatma Gandhi, who was practising as a lawyer at the time in Durban, was a volunteer, helping recovery efforts in the Battles of Colenso and Spionkop. A second unit was established by Johannesburg and Cape Town Jews and aided both armies…
Of the 22,000 that were treated for wounds during the Second Boer War, the majority survived, largely due to the efficiency of the medical teams which cared for the affected. The Royal Army Medical Corps, which had formed after the redundancies of the Crimean War, played a key role in the treatment of the wounded in the Boer War… Surgery had made considerable advancement in the late nineteenth century, and the army surgery facilities were considered state of the art at the time.... field dressings consisting of a sterile gauze pad stitched to the bandage and covered with waterproofing… Later they would be taken to ambulances or stationary hospitals where the complex recovery by the surgeons could be carried out. However, given the number of casualties in relation to staff, it was often days before a wounded soldier could see a doctor for full treatment, increasing the extent of the infection of the wounds. As a result, primary surgical care was often conducted in ambulances. Many wounds were open fractures and often involved damage to bones. In such cases, the wounds were treated by debridement and the wound packed. The limb would then be immobilised with a splint made of canvas with strips of bamboo sewn in to support it. Plaster of Paris was also used during the Boer War after the bone had been set. The treatment of wounds was greatly enhanced by the invention of X-rays and some 9 machines were taken to South Africa during the campaign.
There was also some success with the treatment of head injuries. However, the medical operations in the Boer War were considerably less successful in treating wounds inflicted in the chest. Conducting abdominal surgery at the side of the battlefields was often ineffective given the seriousness of the location of the bullet wound and the limited facilities in the temporary tents for treating such advanced complications. Deaths from chest wounds were of a far greater number than other wounds.
Some atrocities towards wounded Boer soldiers which fell into British hands have been reported. Extracts from British soldiers and generals private letters and documents have revealed some evidence of inhumane activity by the British in encountering the wounded enemy. [Wikipedia]
• Although [Arthur Conan] Doyle is best known for his writing of the Sherlock Holmes crime novel series, he also spent time in South Africa during the Second Anglo Boer War.
Doyle was a trained medical doctor, who had graduated from Edinburgh University in 1881. Thanks to his qualifications, Doyle was sent to South Africa in 1900 to serve as a medic for the British troops during the Second Anglo Boer War.
In 1902, Doyle wrote a pamphlet on the war called The War in South Africa: Its Causes and Conduct, which responded to all the charges levelled against the British for their conduct during the war. Doyle defended the British position in the pamphlet, and this work became so popular that he was knighted in October, 1902.
Doyle also wrote a book called The Great Boer War, which he compiled from information he obtained from personal interaction with both British and Boer soldiers. Although the accuracy of this work has been questioned, Doyle attempted to table all those wounded or killed in the war before he left South Africa, which no doubt serves as a valuable reference point for history researchers.[South African History Online]
• Arthur Conan Doyle was knighted not for his literary achievements, but for his pamphlet defending British actions in South Africa during the Boer War of 1899 to 1902.
...Conan Doyle was too old (at age 41) to enlist as a soldier. So, instead he served for three months in 1900 as a doctor in a private military hospital in Bloemfontein, South Africa.
On his return to England he wrote The Great Boer War, an accurate and impartial history of the conflict up to that time. The book remains highly respected; but its final chapter advocating the modernization of the British army -- an argument he had earlier presented in the Cornhill -- predictably earned him the scorn of the military establishment (Interestingly, all the reforms he proposed were subsequently adopted).
Later, angered by charges that the British committed atrocities during the Boer War, Conan Doyle wrote in one week a sixty-thousand-word pamphlet in rebuttal. Published in January, 1902, The War in South Africa: Its Cause and Conduct sold for six pence per copy in Britain; thousands of translations were given away in France, Russia, Germany, and other countries. All profits from the sale of the book were donated to charity. For the book's successful production and reception, ACD was knighted on August 9, 1902. Interestingly he had considered not accepting the honour, because he said he wrote the work out of conviction, not to gain at title. However, friends and relatives convinced him that he should accept it and it was a suitable way to honour his patriotism. [Thomson Gale]
Some useful resources:
Second Anglo-Boer War 1899 - 1902 On South African History Online.
Women & Children in White Concentration Camps during the Anglo-Boer War, 1900-1902 On South African History Online.
Emily Hobhouse On Wikipedia.
Role of Black people in the South African War On South African History Online.
Black People and the South African War 1899-1902 By Shula Marks, on History Today.
Black involvement in the Anglo-Boer War, 1899-1902 By Nosipho Nkuna, on The South African Military History Society.
African troops in the Boer War – the forgotten story By Martin Plaut, on his blog.
Black victims in a white man's war By Chris McGreal, on The Guardian website.
Black Concentration Camps during the Anglo-Boer War 2, 1900-1902 On South African History Online.
South African War On Encyclopædia Britannica.
The Boer Wars
AngloBoerWar.com Owned by David Biggins.
Boer War 1899 - 1902 On Anglo Boer War.
The Boer Wars By Professor Fransjohan Pretorius, on the BBC website.
What were the Boer Wars and who fought in them? On The Telegraph website.
Second Boer War By John Brown, on HistoryNet.
1902: The Boer War ends On This Day in History.
The Boer War, 1899-1902 Part of The Somerset Light Infantry: A History.
The Boer War By John Simkin, on Spartacus Educational.
The war diary of a Boer family, September 1901 On The Guardian website.
The British Army and the Second Boer War
Black Week On Wikipedia.
Medical treatment during the Second Boer War On Wikipedia.
The second Boer war The British Red Cross’ role - on their own website.
The Medical Aspect of the Anglo Boer War, 1899 - 1902: Part 1 By Professor J.C. de Villiers, MD, FRCS, on The South African Military History Society.
The Medical Aspect of the Anglo-Boer War, 1899-1902 Part II By Professor J.C. de Villiers, MD FRCS, on The South African Military History Society.
Hospitals - The Wounded & Disease Various articles on Boer Wars.
[Australian] Nurses in the Boer War By Max Chamberlain, on Boer War Memorial.
Nursing On Anglo Boer War. Photographs of nurses.
The Boer War 1899-1902: Reasons why the Liberal Government passed reforms On the BBC website.
How were British children affected by the Second Boer War? By Vicky Crewe, on the University of Leeds website.
Opposition to the Second Boer War On Wikipedia.
Boer Prisoners (1900-1902) On Saint Helena Island Info.
Second Boer War records database goes online On the BBC website. The article talks about numbers of deaths, and how people died.
Memorabilia On the Anglo-Boer War Philatelic Society website.
Boer Wars Short films on British Pathé website.
Second Anglo Boer War Pictures and Images On Getty Images.
The Second Boer War, 1899-1902: Anti-Imperialism and European Visual Culture By Jo Briggs, on Branch.
Manliness and the English Soldier in the Anglo-Boer War 1899-1902: the more things change, the more they stay the same A thesis by Sheila J. Bannerman.
Collections listing for "THE BRITISH ARMY DURING THE BOER WAR" On Imperial War Museums.
The Boer War as a lantern performance On The University of Sheffield website.
'Spin' on Boer atrocities By Paul Harris, on the Guardian website.
Early military ballooning: The Boer War On the Royal Air Force Museum website.
Horses and Horseflesh Losses in the Boer War On The Museum of The Royal Dragoon Guards website.
Arthur Conan Doyle: Military On the Westminster Libraries website.
Arthur Conan Doyle, medic during the Second Anglo On South African History Online.
Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle On The Boer Wars.
The War in South Africa, Its Cause and Conduct by Arthur Conan Doyle On Internet Archive. Can be read online or there are various ways to download.
The War in South Africa, Its Cause and Conduct by Arthur Conan Doyle Part of Project Gutenberg. Can be read online or there are various ways to download.
The Great Boer War by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle On Internet Archive. Can be read online or there are various ways to download.
The Great Boer War by Arthur Conan Doyle Part of Project Gutenberg. Can be read online or there are various ways to download.
Please feel free to discuss this topic in the comments.
Please also feel free to comment about the canon story itself or any related aspects outside this week’s theme. For example, any reactions, thoughts, theories, fic recs, favourite adaptations of the canon story… Or any other contribution you wish to make. And if you have any suggestions for fic prompts springing from this week's story, please feel free to share those in the comments as well.
Well, this was a barrel of laughs… It’s a complex subject of course, so best to treat this post just as a starting point. And best to be aware it can be a pretty distressing subject, especially with regard to children dying in the concentration camps.
A few facts:
• For a British audience, the Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902 must be one of the best-known events in South African history. In a bitterly fought and costly war almost a million British soldiers were deployed against a Boer force of between 60 and 65,000. There were some 22,000 British casualties; the small Afrikaner population lost some 14,000 in combat while a further devastating 28,000, mainly women and children, died in the notorious concentration camps established by the British. [Shula Marks]
• South African War, also called Boer War, Second Boer War, or Anglo-Boer War; to Afrikaners, also known as the Second War of Independence, war fought from Oct. 11, 1899, to May 31, 1902, between Great Britain and the two Boer (Afrikaner) republics—the South African Republic (Transvaal) and the Orange Free State—resulting in British victory.
Although it was the largest and most costly war in which the British engaged between the Napoleonic Wars and World War I (spending more than £200 million), it was fought between wholly unequal protagonists. The total British military strength in Southern Africa reached nearly 500,000 men, whereas the Boers could muster no more than about 88,000. But the British were fighting in a hostile country over difficult terrain, with long lines of communications, while the Boers, mainly on the defensive, were able to use modern rifle fire to good effect at a time when attacking forces had no means of overcoming it. The conflict provided a foretaste of warfare fought with breach-loading rifles and machine guns, with the advantage to the defenders, that was to characterize World War I.
The causes of the war have provoked intense debates among historians and remain as unresolved today as during the war itself. British politicians claimed they were defending their “suzerainty” over the South African Republic (SAR) enshrined in the Pretoria and (disputably) London conventions of 1881 and 1884, respectively. Many historians stress that in reality the contest was for control of the rich Witwatersrand gold-mining complex located in the SAR. It was the largest gold-mining complex in the world at a time when the world’s monetary systems, preeminently the British, were increasingly dependent upon gold. Although there were many Uitlanders (foreigners; i.e., non-Dutch/Boer and in this case primarily British) working in the Witwatersrand gold-mining industry, the complex itself was beyond direct British control. Also, the discovery of gold on the Witwatersrand in 1886 allowed the SAR to make progress with modernization efforts and vie with Britain for domination in Southern Africa...
In terms of human life, nearly 100,000 lives were lost, including those of more than 20,000 British troops and 14,000 Boer troops. Noncombatant deaths include the more than 26,000 Boer women and children estimated to have died in the concentration camps from malnutrition and disease; the total number of African deaths in the concentration camps was not recorded, but estimates range from 13,000 to 20,000.
On both sides the war produced heights of national enthusiasm of a type that marked the era and culminated in frenetic British celebrations after the relief of the Siege of Mafeking in May 1900. (The word mafficking, meaning wild rejoicing, originated from these celebrations.) Despite attempts at rapid healing of the wounds after 1902 and a willingness to cooperate for the purpose of uniting against black Africans, relations between Boers (or Afrikaners, as they became known) and English-speaking South Africans were to remain frigid for many decades. Internationally, the war helped poison the atmosphere between Europe’s great powers, as Britain found that most countries sympathized with the Boers. [Encyclopaedia Britannica]
• There were two Boer wars, one ran from 16 December 1880 - 23 March 1881 and the second from 9 October 1899 - 31 May 1902 both between the British and the settlers of Dutch origin (called Boere, Afrikaners or Voortrekkers) who lived in South Africa. These wars put an end to the two independent republics that they had founded...
The Second Boer War
9 October 1899 - 31 May 1902
...following the discovery of gold in the Transvaal in 1885 at Witwatersrand Reef there was a rush of non-Boer settlers, uitlanders. The new settlers were poorly regarded by the Boers and in return there was pressure to remove their government. In 1896 Cecil Rhodes sponsored the ineffective coup d'etat of the Jameson Raid and the failure to gain improved rights for Britons was used as an excuse to justify a major military buildup in the Cape. There was another reason for the British intention to take control of the Boer Republics: there was at the time an attempt made by the Transvaal Republic to link up with German South West Africa, a possibility which the British, with an eye to the coming clash with the Empire of the Germans, determined to thwart.
The Boers, under Paul Kruger, struck first. The Boers attacked into Cape Colony and Natal between October 1899 and January 1900. The Boers were able to successfully besiege the British garrisons in the towns of Ladysmith, Mafeking (defended by troops headed by Robert Baden-Powell) and Kimberley and inflicted three separate defeats on the British in one week, December 10 to 15, 1899. It was not until reinforcements arrived on February 14, 1900 that British troops commanded by Lord Roberts could launch counter-offences to relieve the garrisons (the relief of Mafeking on May 18, 1900 provoked riotous celebrations in England) and enabled the British to take Bloemfontein on March 13 and the Boer capital, Pretoria, on June 5. Boer units fought for two more years as guerrillas, the British, now under the command of Lord Kitchener, responded by constructing blockhouses, destroying farms and confiscating food to prevent them from falling into Boer hands and placing Boer civilians in concentration camps.
The last of the Boers surrendered in May 1902 and the war ended with the Treaty of Vereeniging in the same month. 22,000 British troops had died and over 25,000 Boer civilians. The treaty ended the existence of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State as Boer republics and placed them within the British Empire. But the Boers were given £3m in compensation and were promised self-government in time (the Union of South Africa was established in 1910). [The Boer Wars]
• In a disastrous week, dubbed Black Week, from 10–17 December 1899, the British Army suffered three devastating defeats by the Boer Republics at the battles of Stormberg, Magersfontein and Colenso, with a total of 2,776 men killed, wounded and captured. The events were an eye opener for the government and troops, who had thought that the war could be won very easily. [Wikipedia]
• Boer women, children and men unfit for service were herded together in concentration camps by the British forces during Anglo-Boer War 2 (1899-1902). The first two of these camps (refugee camps) were established to house the families of burghers who had surrendered voluntarily, but very soon, with families of combatant burgers driven forcibly into camps established all over the country, the camps ceased to be refugee camps and became concentration camps. The abhorrent conditions in these camps caused the death of 4 177 women, 22 074 children under sixteen and 1 676 men, mainly those too old to be on commando, notwithstanding the efforts of an English lady, Emily Hobhouse, who tried her best to make the British authorities aware of the plight of especially the women and children in the camps. [South African History Online]
• Emily Hobhouse (9 April 1860 – 8 June 1926) was a British welfare campaigner, who is primarily remembered for bringing to the attention of the British public, and working to change, the deprived conditions inside the British administered concentration camps in South Africa built to incarcerate Boer women and children during the Second Boer War. [Wikipedia]
• From the outset, the conflict on both sides was portrayed as a 'white man's war'. Yet despite the rhetoric, the reality was, as Peter Warwick shows in his scholarly and readable account [Black People and the South African War 1899-1902], rather different. Making use of the voluminous documentation on the war, the author shows blacks were neither passive victims nor innocent bystanders in the conflict which consumed South Africa at the turn of the century. Both Boer and Briton were determined that whatever the differences between them, white supremacy over blacks would be maintained. Nevertheless, blacks were directly involved on both sides, suffered considerable casualties and were dramatically affected by the nature of the South African state established by the British after the war.
Everywhere, blacks provided labour, accompanying the troops as transport riders, cattle guards and baggage carriers, while on the Rand they were drafted into service on the railways and gold mines under martial law and at minimal rates of pay. In some areas they played a more active role as armed combatants, spies and scouts, despite declarations to the contrary by both sides. In Bechuanaland, Basutoland and Swaziland chiefly, groups actively assisted the British, using the situation to settle old scores and to increase their power; in the eastern Cape black levies prevented the entry of Commandos and manned town garrisons. They played a notable part in the sieges of Ladysmith, Kimberley and Mafeking.
In the British concentration camps, blacks were forced to work for their upkeep, and by the end of the war their percentage mortality there was even higher than that of whites. Afrikaner commandos plundered peasant supplies and assaulted blacks in an assertion of Republican overrule, and shot blacks suspected of being in the employ of the British army on sight. African resistance to this violence was on occasion as desperate and direct, whether it took the form of massed attack as at Holkrantz in 1901, or of individual acts of desertion, the poisoning of wells and the maiming of Boer cattle…
Yet blacks gained little if anything from the war. Their hopes of a new order were soon shattered as Boer and Briton rapidly united to restore black-white property relationships... [Shula Marks]
• In theory the British as well as the Afrikaners rejected the idea that Africans or even Coloureds or Indians would play in role in their dispute. The Cape government maintained that arming Africans would create an unfavourable effect on the African population; a stand endorsed by the British government. This did not exclude the use of labourers or transport employees, but Africans were not meant to be armed and used in conflict.
When the going got tough, however, it was a very different story. In April-May 1900, during the siege of Mafeking, Colonel Baden Powell, who was leading the defence, ran out of troops. He had little option but to turn to Africans, who had been recruited to dig trenches and act as spies. The Colonel armed three hundred Africans; called them the ‘Black Watch’ and set them the task of manning sections of the perimeter. When his opposite number, General Cronje discovered what had happened, he was furious. “It is understood that you have armed Bastards, Fingoes and Barolong against us,” he wrote in a letter to Baden-Powell. “In this you have committed an enormous act of wickedness…reconsider the matter, even if it costs you the loss of Mafeking…disarm your blacks and thereby act the part of a white man in a white man’s war.”
Some estimates put the total number of Africans who fought for the British as high as 30,000...
If the British had, somewhat reluctantly, turned to black soldiers to bolster their army, so had the Boers. Lieutenant Charles Massey, an intelligence officer with the Grenadier Guards, accumulated “evidence of both armed and unarmed natives among our adversaries in the [Cape] colony.” Boer Commandos had been observed and “all had some natives armed, and on horseback, wearing slouch hats and other Boer clothes…I have always believed what was said of the Boers and their abhorrence of blacks, but now I know better...”
The death toll in the war was terrible. Some 22,000 British and colonial troops were buried in South Africa. The Boers lost around 7,000 at the front and perhaps as many as 28,000 women and children in the concentration camps. But, as Thomas Pakenham points out in assessing the conflict, the most severe losses were suffered by Africans. No-one bothered to keep accurate records of the ‘black Boers’ who were swept up into the concentration camps – the farm workers and their families who had been captured during the burning of Boer farms, but recent research suggests that some 18,000 Africans perished in the camps.
There is evidence the Boers executed large numbers of Africans for helping the British either as despatch riders or armed scouts… There is no an authoritative toll of the numbers of Africans or Coloureds who died serving either the British or the Boers in battle...
The suffering of the black community during the war was immense, but the anticipated benefits of a British victory soon evaporated. Africans had welcomed the British as they advanced through the Transvaal and Orange Free State as liberators. They believed that at last they would be treated as British subjects, equal to the Boers in the eyes of their new masters, but they misjudged the intentions of the conquering British… Transvaal Africans who had moved onto deserted former Afrikaner farms, believing they could recover the land taken from them during and after the Great Trek, were soon disabused of this notion. British troops and police evicted them... [Martin Plaut]
• Many Black people were held in concentration camps around the country. The British created camps for Blacks from the start of the war. Entire townships and even mission stations were transferred into concentration camps. The men were forced into labour service and by the end of the war there were some 115 000 Blacks in 66 camps around the country.
Maintenance spent on white camps were a lot higher than that spent on the Black camps due to the fact that Blacks had to build their own huts and even encouraged to grow their own food. Less than a third of Black interns were provided with rations. Black people were practically being starved to death in these camps.
Blacks in the concentration camps were not given adequate food and did not have proper medical care, which resulted in many deaths. Those in employment were forced to pay for their food. Water supplies were often contaminated, and the conditions under which they were housed were appalling, resulting in thousands of deaths from dysentery, typhoid and diarrhea.
The death toll at the end of the war in the Black concentration camps was recorded as 14154, but it is believed that the actual number was considerably higher. Most of the fatalities occurred amongst the children.
After the war the Black camps remained under military control even after the white camps had been transferred to civilian control. [South African History Online]
• Field-Marshal Lord Roberts had an ulterior motive in putting Blacks into camps, namely to make them work, either to grow crops for the troops or to dig trenches, be wagon drivers or work as miners once the gold mines became partly operational again. They did not receive rations, hardly any medical support or shelter and were expected to grow their own crops. The able-bodied who could work, could exchange labour for food or buy mealie meal at a cheaper price. The British along racial lines separated the White and Black camps. The inmates of the Black camps, situated along railway lines and on the border, became the eyes and ears of the British army. They formed an early warning system against Boer attacks on the British military's primary logistic artery - the railway lines and acted as scouts for British forces. This strategy alienated Whites and Blacks from each other by furthering distrust between the two population groups and was detrimental to racial harmony in South Africa after the war…
The total Black deaths in camps are officially calculated at a minimum of 14 154 (more than 1 in 10), though G. Benneyworth estimates it as at least 20 000, after examining actual graveyards. According to him incomplete and in many cases non-existent British records and the fact that many civilians died outside of the camps, caused the final death toll to be higher . The average official death rate, caused by medical neglect, exposure, infectious diseases and malnutrition inside the camps was 350 per thousand per annum, peaking at 436 per thousand per annum in certain Free State camps. Eighty-one percent of the fatalities were children. [South African History Online]
• The Second Boer War lasted three years and the British needed to enlist more recruits. Many British men volunteered.
During the war, the British army experienced great difficulty in finding fit young men to recruit as soldiers. Before men could join the army, they had to pass a medical inspection.
It was discovered, through these medical inspections, that one third of volunteers was unfit for military service. It appeared that the physical condition of the working class male prevented him from fighting, as well as working effectively in his job.
There was growing concern for national security (the safety of Britain). Many believed that the British army was not powerful enough. If there was difficulty recruiting for a small-scale war, then it would be even more difficult to enlist a large number of able soldiers for a large-scale war.
This meant that Britain may be easily defeated by a strong, industrialised nation with a large army. Germany was such a nation which seemed to be challenging Britain for international supremacy.
Government reports published in 1904 stated that free school meals and medical examinations should be introduced in Britain. This would help combat the poor physical condition of many British citizens.
The reports emphasised that diet should be improved and overcrowding reduced, as the worst cases were found in the industrial cities. Pressure was mounting on the Government to act, to ensure basic health levels were met in Britain. [BBC]
• Opposition to the Second Boer War (1899-1902) was a factor in the war. Inside Britain and the British Empire, there was strong opposition to the Boers and a minority in favour of them. Outside the situation was reversed and indeed condemnation of Britain was often intense from many sources, left, right and centre. Inside Britain influential groups, especially based in the opposition Liberal Party formed immediately. They fought ineffectually against the British war policies, which were supported by the Conservative Party of Prime Minister Salisbury.
After the Boers switched to guerrilla warfare in 1900 and the British imposed very harsh controls on Boer civilians, the intensity of opposition rhetoric escalated. However, at all times supporters of the war controlled the British government, recruited soldiers in large numbers, and represented a majority of public opinion. Outside the British Empire the Boer cause won far more support as the British were reviled. However, all governments remained neutral.
At the start of the war, some Liberal groups mobilized committees to protest the war, including the South African Conciliation Committee and W. T. Stead's Stop the War Committee. A common theme was that this capitalistic greed for the gold and diamonds that motivated the British seizure of two independent countries. Angry crowds often broke up anti-war meetings. The British press was overwhelmingly in support of the government, with only the Manchester Guardian and the Westminister Gazette outspoken in opposition. With the press against them, anti-war elements relied heavily on streetcorner distribution of their many pamphlets. Nevertheless a tide of young men volunteered for the war, as many as 100,000 a month at the peak. Liberals split, with many top leaders following Lord Rosebery in support of the war. Many nonconformists, the backbone of the Liberal Party, likewise supported the war.
The 1900 UK general election, was a "Khaki election" where the government waved the flag and rallied patriotic voters. It resulted in a victory for the Conservative government on the back of recent British victories against the Boers. However, public support waned as it became apparent that the war would not be easy and unease developed following reports about the treatment by the British army's of the Boer civilians such as concentration camps and farm burning. Public and political opposition was expressed by repeated attacks on the policy and the government by the Liberal M.P. David Lloyd-George...
Opposition to the war was strongest among the Irish Catholics in Ireland and Britain. Many Irish nationalists sympathised with the Boers as a kindred people being oppressed by British tyranny. Though many Irishmen fought in the British army, some fought for the Boers too. Irish miners working in the Transvaal when the war began formed the nucleus of two tiny Irish commandos...
Having taken the country into a prolonged war, the electorate delivered a harsh verdict at the first general election after the war was over. Arthur Balfour, succeeding his uncle Lord Salisbury in 1903 immediately after the war, took over a Conservative party that had won two successive landslide majorities but led it to a landslide defeat in 1906. [Wikipedia]
• During the Boer war, 22,000 [British] troops were treated for wounds inflicted during battle. The surgical facilities provided by the British Army were vastly more effective than in previous campaigns. The Medical Department of the army mobilised 151 staff and regimental units. Twenty eight field ambulances, five stationary hospitals and 16 general hospitals were established to deal with casualties. Numerous voluntary organizations set up additional hospitals, medical units and first aid posts. Around one thousand Indians from Natal were shipped to South Africa to help in the recovery effort by transporting the wounded off the battlefields.Even Mahatma Gandhi, who was practising as a lawyer at the time in Durban, was a volunteer, helping recovery efforts in the Battles of Colenso and Spionkop. A second unit was established by Johannesburg and Cape Town Jews and aided both armies…
Of the 22,000 that were treated for wounds during the Second Boer War, the majority survived, largely due to the efficiency of the medical teams which cared for the affected. The Royal Army Medical Corps, which had formed after the redundancies of the Crimean War, played a key role in the treatment of the wounded in the Boer War… Surgery had made considerable advancement in the late nineteenth century, and the army surgery facilities were considered state of the art at the time.... field dressings consisting of a sterile gauze pad stitched to the bandage and covered with waterproofing… Later they would be taken to ambulances or stationary hospitals where the complex recovery by the surgeons could be carried out. However, given the number of casualties in relation to staff, it was often days before a wounded soldier could see a doctor for full treatment, increasing the extent of the infection of the wounds. As a result, primary surgical care was often conducted in ambulances. Many wounds were open fractures and often involved damage to bones. In such cases, the wounds were treated by debridement and the wound packed. The limb would then be immobilised with a splint made of canvas with strips of bamboo sewn in to support it. Plaster of Paris was also used during the Boer War after the bone had been set. The treatment of wounds was greatly enhanced by the invention of X-rays and some 9 machines were taken to South Africa during the campaign.
There was also some success with the treatment of head injuries. However, the medical operations in the Boer War were considerably less successful in treating wounds inflicted in the chest. Conducting abdominal surgery at the side of the battlefields was often ineffective given the seriousness of the location of the bullet wound and the limited facilities in the temporary tents for treating such advanced complications. Deaths from chest wounds were of a far greater number than other wounds.
Some atrocities towards wounded Boer soldiers which fell into British hands have been reported. Extracts from British soldiers and generals private letters and documents have revealed some evidence of inhumane activity by the British in encountering the wounded enemy. [Wikipedia]
• Although [Arthur Conan] Doyle is best known for his writing of the Sherlock Holmes crime novel series, he also spent time in South Africa during the Second Anglo Boer War.
Doyle was a trained medical doctor, who had graduated from Edinburgh University in 1881. Thanks to his qualifications, Doyle was sent to South Africa in 1900 to serve as a medic for the British troops during the Second Anglo Boer War.
In 1902, Doyle wrote a pamphlet on the war called The War in South Africa: Its Causes and Conduct, which responded to all the charges levelled against the British for their conduct during the war. Doyle defended the British position in the pamphlet, and this work became so popular that he was knighted in October, 1902.
Doyle also wrote a book called The Great Boer War, which he compiled from information he obtained from personal interaction with both British and Boer soldiers. Although the accuracy of this work has been questioned, Doyle attempted to table all those wounded or killed in the war before he left South Africa, which no doubt serves as a valuable reference point for history researchers.[South African History Online]
• Arthur Conan Doyle was knighted not for his literary achievements, but for his pamphlet defending British actions in South Africa during the Boer War of 1899 to 1902.
...Conan Doyle was too old (at age 41) to enlist as a soldier. So, instead he served for three months in 1900 as a doctor in a private military hospital in Bloemfontein, South Africa.
On his return to England he wrote The Great Boer War, an accurate and impartial history of the conflict up to that time. The book remains highly respected; but its final chapter advocating the modernization of the British army -- an argument he had earlier presented in the Cornhill -- predictably earned him the scorn of the military establishment (Interestingly, all the reforms he proposed were subsequently adopted).
Later, angered by charges that the British committed atrocities during the Boer War, Conan Doyle wrote in one week a sixty-thousand-word pamphlet in rebuttal. Published in January, 1902, The War in South Africa: Its Cause and Conduct sold for six pence per copy in Britain; thousands of translations were given away in France, Russia, Germany, and other countries. All profits from the sale of the book were donated to charity. For the book's successful production and reception, ACD was knighted on August 9, 1902. Interestingly he had considered not accepting the honour, because he said he wrote the work out of conviction, not to gain at title. However, friends and relatives convinced him that he should accept it and it was a suitable way to honour his patriotism. [Thomson Gale]
Some useful resources:
Second Anglo-Boer War 1899 - 1902 On South African History Online.
Women & Children in White Concentration Camps during the Anglo-Boer War, 1900-1902 On South African History Online.
Emily Hobhouse On Wikipedia.
Role of Black people in the South African War On South African History Online.
Black People and the South African War 1899-1902 By Shula Marks, on History Today.
Black involvement in the Anglo-Boer War, 1899-1902 By Nosipho Nkuna, on The South African Military History Society.
African troops in the Boer War – the forgotten story By Martin Plaut, on his blog.
Black victims in a white man's war By Chris McGreal, on The Guardian website.
Black Concentration Camps during the Anglo-Boer War 2, 1900-1902 On South African History Online.
South African War On Encyclopædia Britannica.
The Boer Wars
AngloBoerWar.com Owned by David Biggins.
Boer War 1899 - 1902 On Anglo Boer War.
The Boer Wars By Professor Fransjohan Pretorius, on the BBC website.
What were the Boer Wars and who fought in them? On The Telegraph website.
Second Boer War By John Brown, on HistoryNet.
1902: The Boer War ends On This Day in History.
The Boer War, 1899-1902 Part of The Somerset Light Infantry: A History.
The Boer War By John Simkin, on Spartacus Educational.
The war diary of a Boer family, September 1901 On The Guardian website.
The British Army and the Second Boer War
Black Week On Wikipedia.
Medical treatment during the Second Boer War On Wikipedia.
The second Boer war The British Red Cross’ role - on their own website.
The Medical Aspect of the Anglo Boer War, 1899 - 1902: Part 1 By Professor J.C. de Villiers, MD, FRCS, on The South African Military History Society.
The Medical Aspect of the Anglo-Boer War, 1899-1902 Part II By Professor J.C. de Villiers, MD FRCS, on The South African Military History Society.
Hospitals - The Wounded & Disease Various articles on Boer Wars.
[Australian] Nurses in the Boer War By Max Chamberlain, on Boer War Memorial.
Nursing On Anglo Boer War. Photographs of nurses.
The Boer War 1899-1902: Reasons why the Liberal Government passed reforms On the BBC website.
How were British children affected by the Second Boer War? By Vicky Crewe, on the University of Leeds website.
Opposition to the Second Boer War On Wikipedia.
Boer Prisoners (1900-1902) On Saint Helena Island Info.
Second Boer War records database goes online On the BBC website. The article talks about numbers of deaths, and how people died.
Memorabilia On the Anglo-Boer War Philatelic Society website.
Boer Wars Short films on British Pathé website.
Second Anglo Boer War Pictures and Images On Getty Images.
The Second Boer War, 1899-1902: Anti-Imperialism and European Visual Culture By Jo Briggs, on Branch.
Manliness and the English Soldier in the Anglo-Boer War 1899-1902: the more things change, the more they stay the same A thesis by Sheila J. Bannerman.
Collections listing for "THE BRITISH ARMY DURING THE BOER WAR" On Imperial War Museums.
The Boer War as a lantern performance On The University of Sheffield website.
'Spin' on Boer atrocities By Paul Harris, on the Guardian website.
Early military ballooning: The Boer War On the Royal Air Force Museum website.
Horses and Horseflesh Losses in the Boer War On The Museum of The Royal Dragoon Guards website.
Arthur Conan Doyle: Military On the Westminster Libraries website.
Arthur Conan Doyle, medic during the Second Anglo On South African History Online.
Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle On The Boer Wars.
The War in South Africa, Its Cause and Conduct by Arthur Conan Doyle On Internet Archive. Can be read online or there are various ways to download.
The War in South Africa, Its Cause and Conduct by Arthur Conan Doyle Part of Project Gutenberg. Can be read online or there are various ways to download.
The Great Boer War by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle On Internet Archive. Can be read online or there are various ways to download.
The Great Boer War by Arthur Conan Doyle Part of Project Gutenberg. Can be read online or there are various ways to download.
Please feel free to discuss this topic in the comments.
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no subject
Date: 2017-07-09 03:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-07-09 04:46 pm (UTC)Next week is dogs and other domesticated animals so, Mr. Holmes allowing, that post should hopefully be a bit more lighthearted ^^
no subject
Date: 2017-07-28 02:44 am (UTC)The causes of the war have provoked intense debates among historians and remain as unresolved today... It's horrifying to me that you can have that many people dead at the end, and yet no real consensus on what the point had been. That's more typical than not of these things, I know, and I even know the reasons why that's typical. And yet... It is still horrifying to me. :-/
It was discovered, through these medical inspections, that one third of volunteers was unfit for military service... Pressure was mounting on the Government to act, to ensure basic health levels were met in Britain. At the risk of being super cynical, the WWI casualty numbers suddenly make a lot more sense: the whole point of implementing health and welfare reforms in the first place (at least for some) was so that the military could have an unlimited supply of able bodies...
From the Vicky Crewe article: Finally, a well-known outcome of the Boer War, and one which directly impacted upon children, was the establishment of the Boy Scout Movement. This was not a thing I knew, actually? I had understood that the Scouting Movement sprung out of U.S. faux-Indian stuff. *googles* Ah, I see: among other things, there was a two-way collaboration between Seton (the American who founded the Woodcraft Indians) and Baden-Powell (the British Boer War veteran).
I read a chunk of ACD's Causes and Conduct, mostly because I wanted to know if he defended the concentration camps. (Spoiler: he did. It was the Boers' fault they were formed, the Boers' fault that inmates were ever hungry, the inmates' fault that they died of sanitation diseases, and the incarcerated mothers' fault that their children died of measles. Also, Boer-run concentration camps were much worse than British-run ones, but you don't hear anything about them because the British inmates aren't a bunch of whiners.) The earlier chapters had some interesting stuff, rhetorically speaking (although the parts aimed at Americans landed badly for me), and I learned some stuff along the way, like that the Hague conventions were pre-WWI, not post-WWI.
However, overall, if this was what he was knighted for... Well, at the risk of quoting myself, I can't think much of how a Sir comes to be clapped at the front of a man's name. :-/
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Date: 2017-08-06 05:32 pm (UTC)What sticks most in my mind is the fate of the little girl Lizzie Van Zyl - seeing the photograph of her shortly before she died where she's a living skeleton.
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Date: 2017-08-06 06:04 pm (UTC)*goes and finds the link about Lizzie*
That's a painful, painful photo.
I suggest not reading Doyle's defense of the concentration camps, not if you wish to retain any respect for him. The correspondence between the info in that caption and what he tries to defend (or worse, advocate) is... ugly.