British don't use concentration camps to end the Boer War
- Thread starter Jerry Kraus
- Start date
Stellenbosch. mother from Cape Town, Maternal Grandfather's from the Karoo, and was a sheep farmer, and Cape Town. Father is from Stellenbosch, Paternal Grandfather's, were from Cape Town, and the other from the Transvaal. On the Transvaal side I am related to a Veldkornet who served in the war, we think his son-in-law, my great-grandfather, was actually in the Ossewabrandwag, which is semi-disturbing.
Jerry Kraus
Banned
Interesting. So, actually, the implications of the British policy of scorched earth and concentration camps are rather massive, actually, determining the entire course of South African history, at the very least. Probably, a good deal of British Imperial history, as well?
Hugely so, the First and Second Boer wars also inform how the Nationalists saw the world and their interactions with it. It was in part taped into in their language during the Cold War. Similarly it still features massively in Afrikaans Patriots/Nationalists imagination, and how they see the issues of language in South Africa.
To say it determined it entirely, might be too far, but that is likely my dislike for that word.
However, I am not entirely sure of it can be said to have effected British Imperialism. It certainly helped erode the moral authority of the Imperial project, and may have been a contributing factor to why the British were the most relaxed with decolonisation.
But certainly it was a defining conflict.
it was indeed interesting... and kinda bizarre. It always struck me as ironic how the Boers fought like hell to keep their two small republics free of British rule, but ultimately failed... and then Britain turned around later and gave the Boers the whole damn thing, their two republics, Natal, Zululand, all of it... which, in the long term, made the war not only rather pointless, but tragic too..
Jerry Kraus
Banned
Well, OK, everybody knows about the Schlieffen Plan, to deal expeditiously with France. And, in any case, Germany had already defeated France fairly quickly, in 1871, in the Franco-Prussian war. But, how did Germany plan to "deal with" Russia, after they defeated France, exactly? What was the plan in Russia, to parallel the Schlieffen Plan? How was Russia, as a whole, to be defeated expeditiously?
After all, Napoleon had tried for a knock-out blow against Russia, in 1812, and that didn't work out too well for him. Lost every man that went along, more or less a few, here and there.
So, I don't quite get how Imperial Germany was planning to launch a "knock-out" blow against Russia, before the British choose to get seriously involved. Any ideas?
Well, as they say the Afrikaners lost the war but won the peace.
Apparently part of the drive for union in 1910 was that the Transvaal thought they were getting a raw deal in the Customs Union and were looking to leave, leading to some pressure from Britain to form a Union.
Jerry Kraus
Banned
Thus, my point that the Boer War was a big factor in Imperial Germany underestimating the British in 1914. The Kaiser thought they were silly fools who were incapable of sustaining a major military conflict with Germany, because they behaved so bizarrely and ineffectively in South Africa. The Kaiser knew he could crush France quickly, and he thought he could crush the Russians eventually, and he thought that the British were paper tigers who were psychologically incapable of taking on a truly great military power like themselves, and wouldn't be a factor in 1914.
By dominating the government from 1910 to 1994 (especially after 1994), and basically ending up in control of the country after 1910.
Between 1910 and 1994 the only heads of state were white Afrikaners, despite English-speakers being about 40% of the white population.
How did Afrikaners become the majority of the electorate or did english speakers vote for Afrikaners? Afrikaners would benefit less from immigration most likely.
I've been waiting a few days for this, because of its depth of darkness.
There is a common Australian conspiracy theory set which puts Breaker Morant as a hanging boy for his higher ups.
What if this were correct and taken further.
Major Robert Lenahan issues rule .303. London was always less brutal and more legal than the colonies. Rule .303 extensifies and generalises until pro-British forces start to experience effects on "men's minds," the "Good Times" have ended as shooting Boers becomes a chore. Instead of concentration camps we get death camps.
yours,
Sam R.
Part of it was about how about the way the electorate was divided up. If I remember properly, at this point the non Afrikaner European population did not balance out between the sexes, with there being more men than women. The Afrikaner population being established was about equal. The Afrikaner politicians managed to get the number of MPs to reflect their total population, not just the males who could vote. So this gave them a disproportionate influence -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_South_Africans#Fertility_rates
If bolded has been a long standing trend and not something recent then overtime the white population of South Africa would become more Afrikaner. If this superior natural growth rate was big enough it might even lead to larger Afrikaner population growth than the english speakers even with immigration. How relevant has fertility rates and natural growth been for internal politics in RSA?
Rural seats also needed fewer voters to be a constituency, and Afrikaners were more rural than non-Afrikaners who were more urbanized. See 1948 and 1953 where the NP won fairly comfortable majorities with less votes than the UP.
Few points
1. Boers were hardly all blonde- widely accepted as having lot of mixed blood- I am very proud of my African and Asian slave ancestors
2. When English in SA before the WWII talked about "The Racial Question" it was about Afrikaners- Blacks, Coloureds and Indians dis not even count
3. All rural Africans in Boer Republics also put in concentration camps(Transvaal accepted tribal non poll-tax paying independence)
4. After the war those were transformed into "Native Locations " by colonial goverment as labour sources
5. The war was supposed to be about Uitlander rights, but non-British Uitlanders were deported after the war including Russian Jews subsequently killed in pogroms.
6. Citizenship were easier to obtain in Transvaal and OVS than Britain. The residence period was shorter and could be be immediately obtained if you joined a commando(a n legal obligation for Boers) The British did not accept Empire subjects who took Boer citizenship and prosecuted them for treason.
7. We know little about the story behind the Boer War because all the British Archives documents concerning it mysteriously varnished in 1955 before it was declassified.
8. The war was probably to change the Boer republics semi-feudal agrarian and free tribal societies into proletarian fodder for the mines- Scorched earth for the Boers, locations and poll-tax for the blacks.
9. The British biggest fear was that Transvaal would turn into anew USA- English speaking ,rich and free from British control. Concentration Camps- segregating Blacks and Boers, extreme scorched earth, removal of liberalizing European influence and enforced proletarianisation created the toxic brew that became Apartheid.
10. In retrospect maybe a war for access to black labor?
11. Afrikaners was known to be the poorest white ethnic group in the world before WWII- see Carnegie Report
1. Boers were hardly all blonde- widely accepted as having lot of mixed blood- I am very proud of my African and Asian slave ancestors
2. When English in SA before the WWII talked about "The Racial Question" it was about Afrikaners- Blacks, Coloureds and Indians dis not even count
3. All rural Africans in Boer Republics also put in concentration camps(Transvaal accepted tribal non poll-tax paying independence)
4. After the war those were transformed into "Native Locations " by colonial goverment as labour sources
5. The war was supposed to be about Uitlander rights, but non-British Uitlanders were deported after the war including Russian Jews subsequently killed in pogroms.
6. Citizenship were easier to obtain in Transvaal and OVS than Britain. The residence period was shorter and could be be immediately obtained if you joined a commando(a n legal obligation for Boers) The British did not accept Empire subjects who took Boer citizenship and prosecuted them for treason.
7. We know little about the story behind the Boer War because all the British Archives documents concerning it mysteriously varnished in 1955 before it was declassified.
8. The war was probably to change the Boer republics semi-feudal agrarian and free tribal societies into proletarian fodder for the mines- Scorched earth for the Boers, locations and poll-tax for the blacks.
9. The British biggest fear was that Transvaal would turn into anew USA- English speaking ,rich and free from British control. Concentration Camps- segregating Blacks and Boers, extreme scorched earth, removal of liberalizing European influence and enforced proletarianisation created the toxic brew that became Apartheid.
10. In retrospect maybe a war for access to black labor?
11. Afrikaners was known to be the poorest white ethnic group in the world before WWII- see Carnegie Report
Yup. So basically tweaking the rules a bit and building in an advantage.
Just checked, they had to form a coalition with the Afrikaner Party in '48 to govern and got about 20 000 votes more than the UP in 1953, out of more than a million cast. But i think the general point still stands.