Surrealpolitik

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There were 2 results from your search for keyword(s): 'Ruthlessness'.

  1. Set up as part of Kitchener's attempt to win the war, the concentration camps were by any standard abominable. From November 1900, the British Army had introduced new tactics in an attempt to break the Boers' guerrilla campaign. Kitchener initiated plans to flush out guerrillas in a series of systematic drives, organized like a sporting shoot, with success defined in a weekly 'bag' of killed, captured and wounded. The country was swept bare of everything that could give sustenance to the guerrillas, including women and children. Some 30,000 Boer farms were burned to the ground and their animals slaughtered. It was the clearance of civilians, virtually ethnic cleansing, uprooting a whole nation, that would come to dominate the public's perception of the last phase of the war.

    A total of 45 camps were built for Boer internees and 64 for native Africans. Of 28,000 Boer men captured as prisoners of war, almost all were set overseas. The vast majority in the camps were women and children. Inadequate shelter, poor diet, total lack of hygiene and overcrowding led to malnutrition and endemic contagious diseases such as measles, typhoid and dysentery. Coupled with a shortage of medical facilities, over 26,000 women and children were to perish in the British concentration camps.

    Source: Hidden History: The Secret Origins of the First World War, p. 47
  2. The problem for Milner was that he underestimated the impact that allegations of slavery and reports of vicious floggings would have on even his trusted Liberal friends like Asquith. Indeed, Milner was at times such a driven man that he failed to take account of the weight of opposition ranged against him. He warned his friend, Richard Haldane: 'If we are to build up anything in South Africa, we must disregard, and absolutely disregard, the screamers.'

    Source: Hidden History: The Secret Origins of the First World War, p. 53