The Boer Wars - Redcoat to Khaki (Part 3: Scorched Earth) 

Not buying blaming the bitterenders for lack of supplies The Army had no idea how to house or supply the camps. Nobody was prepared for this or made a real effort to get a proper effort until outrage in Britain lit a fire under the military's 🍑 The camps vastly improved with time

⁠@@KonradvonHotzendorf You’re right. It was mostly a lack of preparation, poor administration and poor logistics which led to the shortages. However, I think the Bitter-enders were at least partly responsible… they were harassing British supply lines, which must have heightened the shortages for the army and those in the camps as well. I don’t see how the Bitter-enders actions would have had no impact at all on the situation in the camps, even if it was a negligible impact.

@@Weasel-vp8zk It sounds like British propaganda 🤗 The camps where close to logistics and by the end the effect the Boer commandos had was negligible I feel it was to alleviate British guilt and to get the bitterends a reason to quit, accept they had lost and return to civilian and now britsh subject🤢🤮 We want our diamonds back😋🇿🇦 Not all gave up. I went to school with a guy who get beaten by his father if he caught him speaking English Grandma and family didn't survive the camps

@@KonradvonHotzendorf My paternal grandfather and most of his siblings did survive the camps. His one brother, however, died as a POW on St Helena. For all that, my grandfather's sons fought for the Allies in World War Two. In my family there was very little bitterness towards the British, although the family's farms had been laid waste. My mother always said that some of the blame for the deaths in the concentration camps lay with the Boer women themselves, as they made very little effort with sanitation and other things that they could influence. As for the "bittereinders" and supply lines, I don't know enough to comment.

@@caeruleusvm7621 The bitterness varied, but Afrikaaners fighting in WW1 and 2 for the British Empire was pretty controversial to them given Germany had aided the boers In 1967 Vorster held a speech to call upon English and Afrikaaners to bury the hatchet You know what the term Soetpiel means In 1961 🇿🇦 narrowly voted to get rid of the British royalty as head of state (Yay)

I never called them 'peaceful'. It was a horrendous policy but they were not "death camps" or "extermination camps" (like the Nazis used to gas the Jews). The British simply were not trying to exterminate the Boers, though, of course, that does not excuse their barbaric actions. Your great grand mother, poor woman, resorted to eating flowers because of British negligence, poor administration and a shortage of supplies (which in part was caused by the Boer kommandos' harassment of supply lines, which was an important part of their guerrilla campaign). I said that the camps in South Africa bore 'more resemblance' to the strategic hamlets in Vietnam than Nazi death camps because the British established the camps to house Boer refugees and prevent them from aiding the kommandos. That is simply a fact. (In case you don't know... strategic hamlets were used by the Americans in the 1960s in an attempt to stop South Vietnamese civilians from aiding the Vietcong guerrillas, but I don't know if there was starvation or a high death toll in the hamlets). Genocide is the DELIBERATE killing of a large number of people from a particular national or ethnic group. Of course, British scorched earth policy in South Africa was deliberate but the high death toll in the camps was not by design. Of course, that doesn't make it any better. Are you implying the children were poisoned after eating British food? I find that quite unlikely and haven't found any evidence to suggest deliberate killings like that in the South African concentration camps. The food might have gone bad perhaps... and malnourished people can die if they eat a lot of food suddenly. I hope it didn't sound like I was understating or justifying the South African concentration camps in the video. They were appalling... and Britain's motive for conquering the Boer republics was simply greed.

@@Weasel-vp8zk The PVs (protected villages) that the Americans used in vietnam have been used by many armies fighting guerilla tactics. They were certainly used in Rhodesia and Namibia. They serve a dual role as they keep the civilians safe from different warring sides and factions, and keep the population housed and fed. They also (primarily) keep the civilians from providing support to the guerillas. Considering how many British troops died of disease rather than combat, it's easy to see why the concentration camps' death toll was also very high. The British camps in South Africa have nothing in common with the Nazi prison camps, labour camps, and extermination camps.

@@caeruleusvm7621 And of course, whenever food or medical supplies were scarce, the army would have taken priority over the Boers in the camps.

I decided that Churchill’s reporting job and capture by the Boers was relatively insignificant compared to other things which happened so I missed it out. For the same reason, I did not mention Ghandi’s role with the Indian ambulance corp during the Boer War. I couldn’t quite cram everything in.

They are given the correct English pronunciation

Sorry about that! You can tell I’m not an Afrikaner!!

@@Weasel-vp8zk Understandable. Even if you had an Afrikaans speaker to coach you, English just works completely different. Cronjé has no J sound and its a K like Kroot Afrikaaners can have a horrible accent in English and most English speakers of Afrikaans retain an accent

AI?

Well that’s good. Most people in Britain will also tell you the Boer War was unjust or immoral.