Boer Guerrilla Fighters Essay

I agree that the way the British soldiers treated the Boer fighters and civilians was in fact brutal. With the use of the ‘refugee camps’ and the scorched earth policy it made them seem that much more brutal. Sources P, Q and R all offer different insights into how brutally British soldier dealt with the Boer guerrilla fighters during the Second Boer war in 1899, with evidence to support the brutality of it all. Source R strongly agrees that the British treated the Boers badly, particularly the women and children, with this being said the source also has elements of disagreements. At a first glance source Q seems to disagree but that disagreement is later challenged within the source. Source P takes an agreeing approach to the statement. From the sources it appears that the way the British dealt with the Boers was brutally, but how brutal were they when trying to defeat the Boers guerrilla fighters is debatable. There is evidence in source Q and elements of source R would support the fact that the British soldier didn’t treat the Boers brutally. Source Q explains that ‘The English did burn down farm houses, but never shot the people within them’ and ‘Of course, brutal treatment did occur, but mostly the Boer prisoners were treated with respect.’ This links in with a certain part of source R where it ways ‘The high death rate was the result of incompetence and lack of foresight on the part of the British military authorities.’ The scorched earth policy was brought in by Kitchener, it involved British soldiers going into the Boer farm houses, evacuating them and then burning them down. By burning the houses down Boer men couldn’t use their farm houses as a way of hiding from the British and the women couldn’t resupply their men during the guerrilla warfare. The policy itself isn’t considered to be a brutal tactic as it wasnâ₠¬â„¢t killing or harming anyone; if killings were taking place then this would have made it brutal. The none-brutality of this tactic suggests the British were not brutal when dealing with the Boers and they ‘treated (them) with respect’. The women and children were then transferred into the British refugee camps. Originally the concentration camps had been set up by the British army as â€Å"refugee camps† to provide refuge for civilian families, mainly woman and children, who had been forced to abandon their homes primarily due to the scorched earth policy. These concentration camps started as refugee camps, and then turned into outside prisons until finally things got out of hand and became concentration camps. The quote from source R shows that the progression of refugee to concentration camps wasn’t the original plan of action for the British but due to disorganisation and ‘incompetence’ the standards and quality of the refugee camps fell. Both sources give sufficient evidence to support the fact the British soldiers weren’t Bruta l with their dealings with the Boers as one of the tactics weren’t brutal and the concentration camps weren’t intentional. Sources P and R both show evidence to support the idea that the British were brutal with their treatment of the Boar population. Source P says ‘Some of our work was unpleasant. If we found any arms or ammunition concealed on a farm we had to burn down the place.’ Source R really highlights the brutality and reality of warfare. ‘The treatment of the Boer population in the camps was brutal’ and ‘Over 20,000 Boer women and children died in 40 camps, about one in four of the inmates.’ It was the soldiers who had to do the process of the scorched earth policy, they were ordered to destruct the farms and the homes of civilians in order to prevent the still-fighting Boers from obtaining food and supplies. The intention of the British government was the complete eradication of the Boer nations. From 1899 – 1901, the British destroyed 40 towns and burned crops. The impact of the British scorched earth policy during the war killed both half of the Boer Nations. During January 1901 Emily Hobhouse arrived at a camp in Bloemfontein where she found diseases such as measles, bronchitis, pneumonia, dysentery and typhoid had invaded the camp with fatal results. The very few tents were not enough to house the one or more sick persons, most of them children. When she requested soap for the people, she was told that soap is an article of luxury. She later succeeded, after a struggle, to have it listed as a necessity, together with straw, more tents and more kettles in which to boil the drinking water. She distributed clothes and supplied pregnant women, who had to sleep on the ground, with mattresses. Among the many dying people there was a child called Lizzie von Zyl, Hobhouse used her death as an example of the hardships the Boer women and children faced in the British concentration camps during the war. Both of the sources show the difficulties the Boer population had to face during the Second Boer War as a result of the brutality from the British. Without the scorched earth policy the concentration camps may not have risen to the extent and disaster which was witnessed by Emily Hobhouse on her journey to Bloemfontein.