Abstract

PRETORIUS, Fransjohan. The white concentration camps of the Anglo-Boer War: a debate without end. Historia [online]. 2010, vol.55, n.2, pp.34-49. ISSN 2309-8392.

This article gives an overview of some of the most important historiographical contributions on the white concentration camps the British erected during the Anglo-Boer War. This is followed by a criticism of two recent publications - Liz Stanely's book Mourning Becomes... Post/memory, Commemoration and the Concentration Camps of the South African War (2006, with a first South African edition in 2008), and Elizabeth van Heyningen's article entitled "A Tool for Modernisation? The Boer Concentration Camps of the South African War, 1900-1902", in the South African Journal of Science (2010). Despite quite some merit, both publications are criticised for their subjectivity. It is concluded that the truth is much more complicated and nuanced than the portrayal provided by these writers.

Keywords : Afrikaner nationalism; Anglo-Boer War; British Blue Books; concentration camps; Elizabeth van Heyningen; Emily Hobhouse; E. Neethling; Liz Stanley; post/memory; sanitation.

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