Consequences
The deplorable conditions of the Concentration Camps were fully documented by Emily Hobhouse. Hobbhouse had heard stories of the civilian camps and vowed to do something about it. She petitioned different relief societies in London and was finally sponsored at the end of 1900 to visit the camps. She documented the deteriorating conditions of the camps. The camps were originally set for small numbers of people but were quickly populated with ten times the number of people for which they were designed. Hobbhouse gave her report to the House of Commons. There was an immediate outcry against the cruelty of the British Army by her most ardent supporter, the future Prime Minister of England, Lloyd George. The government appointed a commission headed by Millicent Fawcett to investigate and report back. In December of 1900, Fawcett’s report verified the conditions reported by Hobbhouse, including the fact that over 80% of the deaths were children under the age of 16. The government implemented the recommendations of Fawcett and by the end of the war, the death rate in the camps was less than in most of the industrial cities of Britain.1
The damage was done. The British citizens were weary of the war. The Boer commandos could no longer operate and were being slowly killed and captured. The two sides agreed to a peace treaty at Vereeniging on 31 May 1902. The British had won. Britain refused to give the Boer republics independence and insisted on the franchise for Blacks. The Boers finally agreed to enfranchise the Blacks, but only after the republics became independent, thus ensuring the Blacks would not get the vote until after the Boers achieved their aims. The British, who had used between ten to twenty thousand Blacks in their army, agreed to this concession.2 This was not a white mans war, but it was a white mans peace. The irony of the situation was that the unification of the British South Africa Colonies in 1910 elected all of the Afrikaner leaders of the Boer forces at the head of government.
The British Army totally changed their command structure, instituting a general staff that addressed the failings of the staff work in the war. However, they learned some wrong lessons from the war also. The Boers had defeated the British time after time by being very mobile, but always fighting them from dug in positions. The trench was the only way armies could defend against the accurate and rapid firepower of the new rifles. This lesson had
to be learned again by the British in nine years in the trenches in France. Instead, the British incorrectly learned that the cavalry was the military arm of honor. The British had defeated the Boers by riding them down with highly mobile forces, but these were only made effective through the use of the fences and blockhouses of Kitchener.3 All the top generals for the British in WWI came from the cavalry of the Second Anglo Boer War. Kitchener became the face of recruiting posters for all of Britain.
