Research Articles
A tool for modernisation? The Boer concentration camps of the South African War, 1900–1902
Submitted: 28 April 2010 | Published: 07 June 2010
About the author(s)
Elizabeth van Heyningen, Department of Historical Studies, University of Cape Town, South AfricaAbstract
Author comment: My article was never intended to denigrate Afrikaners in any way. The republican Boers were caught up in an unjust war and they suffered dreadful losses as a result. However, I have argued elsewhere that many of the farm families, who had had little contact with modern preventive medicine, functioned within a different cultural world from the British who ran the camps. I have discussed this in much more detail in the following article: Van Heyningen E. Women and disease. The clash of medical cultures in the concentration camps of the South African War. In: Cuthbertson G, Grundlingh A, Suttie M-L, editors. Writing a wider war. Rethinking gender, race, and identity in the South African War, 1899–1902. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2002; p. 186–212. A shorter version of the article has also been published in Van Heyningen E. British doctors versus Boer women: Clash of medical cultures. In: Pretorius F, editor. Scorched Earth. Cape Town: Human & Rousseau, 2001; p. 78–197. There is also an Afrikaans version of this book published under the title of Verskroeide aarde. The same ideas are discussed by Professor Pretorius and myself in the documentary Scorched Earth which has been aired several times recently on the History Channel of DSTV.
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