Читать книгу The War at Home - Helen Bradford - Страница 11

In addition to managing the surrendered burghers, the British began to apply drastic war measures as Boer leaders turned to guerrilla warfare. As early as March 1900, Lord Roberts had ordered that Boer farmhouses could be burnt as a punitive measure for continued resistance. The intention had been to burn farmhouses that the commandos used to hide in and launch attacks on the British.

Under Kitchener’s command, homesteads were destroyed indiscriminately from January 1901 – no attempt was made to determine whether they had been used for military purposes. Kitchener’s subordinates were randomly destructive. Approximately 30 000 homesteads were burnt and almost 40 towns destroyed. The underlying strategy was to ensure that there was no refuge for burghers who were still in the field.

One of the hundreds of farm houses that were destroyed by scorched-earth warfare.

Far left: The wrecked church in Lindley in the Orange Free State Left: British soldiers depart from a farm left in ruins

Far left: a dwelling reduced to a shell Left: grain bags are set ablaze

In general, the policy was carried out ruthlessly by soldiers who considered it their professional duty to do so and sometimes even derived sadistic pleasure from the task. A British soldier wrote: ‘You should have seen the Royal Irish on the loot. They helped the people out with their stuff by heaving heavy bureaus bodily through the windows, putting pickaxes through melodeons and such like wantonness. I heard one yell, “Begory Jim, here is a nice carpet ... Oi’ll take it home for the ould woman. Lend a hand here!” R-r-r-rip! Up came a handsome pole carpet in strips. And so the work went on, the officers standing by laughing at the costly fun their men were having.’[4]

This vandalism left a deep impression on the Boer women who witnessed it. One of them declared, ‘There I stood, surrounded by my little children, while the cruel soldiers plundered my property. Furniture, clothes, food, everything was thrown in a heap and set alight ... No matter how much I pleaded with them to save a few heirlooms, they refused to listen.’[5] Incidences like this occurred regularly in the two republics, and the humiliation that these experiences engendered would, in later years, provide a fertile breeding ground among Afrikaners for collective agonising and resentment towards ‘the English’.

The British side has argued that the change in the war after the Boers began using guerrilla warfare forced the supreme command to take the women into their care on humanitarian grounds, rather than leaving them defenceless in the veld. But this argument is misleading. The British forces used arson as a military measure because they could not conquer the commandos in the field. The establishment of concentration camps made it possible for the British authorities to remove white and black civilians (mainly women and children) from the farms for military reasons. In this way, the centre of gravity of the war, which had lain solely in the conduct of military operations, shifted to include civilians as well. Therefore it was British war tactics, not humanitarian considerations, that necessitated the camps.

Men for whom the fight is over join women and children in enduring a war that continues. The Bloemfontein camp contained comparatively younger men who might have surrendered to British forces or taken the oath of allegiance. The aim of the first concentration camps was the protection through confinement of such surrendered burghers.

Another contributing factor was the British perception of the relationships between the Boers and their wives. The British authorities hoped that the internment of the women in the camps would persuade burghers to desert their commandos to join their wives. Some British imperialists believed that, as well as being strongly attached to their families, the Boers were also unsophisticated, sensual creatures who found it difficult to abstain from sex. They believed that indigenous population groups – for them this included the Boers – had exceptionally high libidos and assumed that retaining the women in the camps would engender vigorous lust in their husbands. There is an example of a homesick Boer early in the war who subtly described how his wife became ‘more beautiful’ to him every day but, in reality, the Boers’ lustfulness was not as great as the presumptuousness of some Britons.[6]

This form of sexual politics did not have its intended effect and the internment of their wives and children did not entice the Boers to leave their commandos. On the contrary, the Boers’ farms had already been destroyed and they believed that the British forces were caring for their families. Therefore, they were encouraged to continue fighting; after all, they had less to lose. In this respect, the camps had the effect of prolonging the war rather than shortening it.

Although Kitchener was not responsible for the establishment of the first camps, he played a large part in the expansion of the camp system during 1901. Many historical accounts accurately associate Kitchener with the concentration-camp policy. The motivation for this policy lay in the military situation, but Kitchener’s personality also played a role. In general he had a low opinion of the Boer population, describing them as ‘savages with only a thin white veneer’.[7] He saw bittereinder women, who adopted a defiant and recalcitrant attitude towards military authorities, as further proof of backwardness and barbarism. He believed Boers led an isolated rural lifestyle far from the reach of civilising influences. At times he blamed the deaths of Boer children in the camps on what he perceived to be the unhygienic practices of their mothers. He even threatened to charge some of them with manslaughter.

This mindset was characteristic of many British imperialists, and it reveals Kitchener’s indifference towards women in general. After his young fiancée had died in 1885, he had little interest in women. He allowed only unmarried men in his inner circle and seldom agreed to see women. In fact, he even thought that the absence of women in his life had helped to advance his military career. These personal traits, which were not rare among hardened British militarists of the time, provide an explanation as to why the plight of Boer women was of little importance to Kitchener. His only concern (and that of those like him) was that policy needed to be carried out. He was not sympathetic towards women and their fate; he considered them to be an alien and inferior species, who merely hindered the execution of his duties.

Casualties of war: a mourning woman with children at the grave of a family member in the Bethulie camp.

Many British officers had extreme views on how civilians should be treated during the war. As one officer put it bluntly, ‘war is war and humanity is rot’.[8] This viewpoint creates the impression that any measures or actions were deemed acceptable. In Britain, however, the opposition Liberal Party did not agree and became increasingly uncomfortable with the situation. In 1901 it was said in the British Parliament, ‘When is a war not a war? When it is carried on by methods of barbarism in South Africa.’[9]

Were excessively cruel measures used in this conflict? In order to answer this question, one needs to look at international standards for the conduct of war established at the time. At the end of July 1899, about two months before the outbreak of the war, representatives of 24 countries signed the First Hague Convention. The purpose of this convention was to regulate the conduct of war in accordance with certain legal principles. Britain did not sign all the provisions of the Hague Convention, and neither of the Boer republics attended the discussions. Therefore, technically, the Hague Convention did not have a bearing on the Anglo-Boer War because it stipulated that both parties to a war had to be signatories before it could be applied to them. However, this did not prevent both parties from invoking the convention in an effort to justify their respective customs of war.

The fearsome engine of total war in the twentieth century: under the cover of tents and sheets, Boers are transported in railway trucks to the Pinetown camp in Natal.

The Hague Convention was a framework of standards against which war practices could be measured. Of particular relevance to the Anglo-Boer War is the question of whether the transportation of civilian women complied with the existing rules of war. Article 23 of the Hague Convention prohibited the destruction or seizure of an enemy’s personal property ‘unless such destruction or seizure be imperatively demanded by the necessities of war’. To justify their scorched-earth policy, the British argued that farms were used as military hideouts. But they often burnt farms without proof that they were used for military purposes or that the women who lived there acted as spies. In such cases the actions of the British forces were a violation of the Hague Convention. What followed – the internment of women and children in concentration camps – was a transgression of another order that would have catastrophic consequences.