Did the British army invent concentration camps?

Question

A friend in a pub told me the other night but did not go in any more detail!

Answer 1

Absolutely right your mate. We don't like to admit it, however it happened during the Boer War in South Africa.
Despite shocking fatality figures in the concentration camps, the English did nothing to improve the situation, and the English public remained deaf to the lamentations in the concentration camps as thousands of people, especially children, were carried to their graves.

The Welshman, Lloyd George, stated: "The fatality rate of our soldiers on the battlefields, who were exposed to all the risks of war, was 52 per thousand per year, while the fatalities of women and children in the camps were 450 per thousand per year. We have no right to put women and children into such a position."

An Irishman, Dillon, said: "I can produce and endless succession of confirmations that the conditions in most of the camps are appalling and brutal. To my opinion the fatality rate is nothing less than cold-blooded murder."

One European had the following comment on England's conduct with the concentration camps: "Great Britain cannot win her battles without resorting to the despicable cowardice of the most loathsome cure on earth - the act of striking at a brave man's heart through his wife's honour and his child's life."

The barbarousness of the English is strongly evidenced by the way in which they unceremoniously threw the corpses of children in heaps on mule carts to be transported to the cemeteries. The mourning mothers had to follow on foot. Due to illness or fatigue many of them could not follow fast enough and had to miss the funerals of their children.

According to PF Bruwer, author of Vir Volk en Vryheid, all the facts point out that the concentration camps, also known as the hell camps, were a calculated and deliberate effort by England to commit a holocaust on the Boerevolk

Ring any bells, bit like Nazi Germany.

Answer 2

The British Army in the Boer war had a policy of rounding up Boer families (wives, children and ostensibly non combatants) and keeping them inside camps - this was to stop these families providing support and supplies to Boer farmers attacking the British. Although the coditions were atrocious and many died through diseases and these camps were called concentration camps.

The Germans took the idea of the concentration camp but used in a different way. Germany used the camps a means of holding people they determined as undesirables (primarily Jews [but not exclusively, Gypsies, Homosexuals, Communists resistance fighters] ). The prime difference being that some of the concentration camps were also execution camps were the so called undesirables were murdered.

Answer 3

>Did the British army invent concentration camps?

No, but neo-Nazis and their dupes like to pretend we did.

It is not clear who invented the concentration camp - I think it was
probably the Romans; however, a more well-known example is the
"reconcentrados" of Imperial Spain, used to put down an uprising of the
Cubans in 1895 - 1898.

The British Army sent two observers to Cuba to evaluate the Spanish tactic.
One of these was Winston Churchill. Wonder if that's when he picked up
his fondness for cigars. So Kitchener was definitely aware of the tactic
and its use in Spain.

There's a description of the Spanish camps here, made by US Senator
Redfield Proctor. It appears in Clara Barton's THE RED CROSS,
entitled 'Concentration Camps of Cuba 1895-1898'.

http://www.amigospais-guaracabuya.org/oagld003.php

As you can see the Spanish reconcentrados (that means "reconcentrating place")
display the sinister morphology of the concentration camp - the barbed wire,
the watch towers, the location near rail junctions, interned civilians, guards,
ditches...

You can see the effect of the Spanish camps here:

http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/reconcentrado.htm

Since 1895 is definitely before 1899 it seems that the dishonour for
inventing concentration camps belongs to our Spanish cousins. The Spanish
camps killed far more people than the British camps; the Havana camp alone
killed 50,000 people; nearly twice as many victims as the 28,000 Boer
deaths. It is estimated the Spanish camps killed 100,000 - 300,000
people in total. Here is Castro addressing Pope John Paul on the subject:

"Under extremely difficult conditions, Cuba was able to
constitute a nation. It had to fight alone for its independence with
unsurmountable heroism and, exactly 100 years ago, it
suffered a real holocaust in the concentration camps were a
large part of its population perished, mostly old men, women
and children; a crime whose monstrosity is not diminished by
the fact that it has been forgotten by humanity's conscience.
As a son of Poland and a witness of Oswiecim, you can
understand this better than anyone."

Maybe Castro is upset because neo-Nazis and their dupes have
dismissed the death of 200,000 Cuban civvies as a non-event in order to
saddle the British with the discredit for inventing concentration
camps.

Answer 4

Concentration Camp, a detention site outside the normal prison system created for military or political purposes to confine, terrorize, and, in some cases, kill civilians.

The term was first used to describe prison camps used by the Spanish military during the Cuban insurrection (1868–78), those created by America in the Philippines (1898–1901), and, most widely, to refer to British camps built during the South African War (Boer War) to confine Afrikaners in the Transvaal and Cape Colony (1899—1902). The term soon took on much darker meanings. In the USSR, the Gulag elaborated on the concept beginning as early as 1920. After 1928, millions of opponents of Soviet collectivization as well as common criminals were imprisoned under extremely harsh conditions and many died.

Answer 5

In a modern sense, yes.

In the says of Hannibal and Attila the Hun, the forces of the enemy were simply defeated... Killed or incorporated into their own armies. This is simply not the British or Western Europe ways of the last 300 years.

The British faced a horrible problem when engaging the Boars in what is now South Africa. It was simply unacceptable to try to kill them all. Their guerrilla tactics were terrorist-like, so quarantining the Boars seemed to be the most humane way to treat this problem. Yes, Human Rights were totally violated, but the guerrilla could be sorted out. This was a long and horrible time for that period of colonization. Eventually, peace could be had.

Hitler's camps had a different function... to eliminate the Jews and other undesired ethnics. While some ethics were kept for slavery, Hitler feared the Jews because of their intelligence, and had hopes to eliminate all of them.

Answer 6

It was a British Government policy during the Boer War to intern Boer civilians in what were called concentration camps. It was considered a humane response to the military need to clear settlements that were giving support to enemy troops.

There were problems with hygeine and many died from preventable disease like dystentry.

However, these camps were not the ones the Nazis ran. They were not about the systematic abuse and murder of civilians
.
Having said that, there was abuse there and it was a shameful episode in British Military history.

Answer 7

Search on the term holocaust denial for specific reasons why certain segments of the population challenge the historical records regarding the holocaust. The evidence of the events is there. However, sometimes the truth is not clear enough for people. To your observation that history is rewritten, yes it is! The following is only an opinion. It could be argued that people feel the need to "tweak" the past to make it work for them in current circumstances, i.e. politics, religion ect .

Answer 8

No the British have never put anyone into concentration camps. It was the Germans that did that in the second world war and they were vile evil places.

Answer 9

There has been camps for prisinors for many centuries. The NAZI'S didn't have concentration camps they were death camps all over poland etc they even had there own people in them ie germans although Hitler was Austrian. They were solely for the killing of people not to keep till the war was over.

Answer 10

No. Not the Army. The British Government at the end of the nineteenth century in S Africa.