The Boer War and Britain's Concentration Camps
Britain herds Boer and Black African civilians into camps to break guerrilla resistance, and tens of thousands die there
Quick facts
- Region
- Transvaal and Orange Free State, southern Africa
- Boer deaths in camps
- About 28,000, mostly women and children
- Black African deaths in separate camps
- About 14,000
What happened
Britain fought the Second Boer War against the Boer republics of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State, descendants of Dutch settlers in southern Africa, largely to secure control of the region's gold and diamond wealth. When Boer fighters turned to guerrilla tactics after their conventional armies were defeated, the British army responded by burning farms and moving civilians, along with Black African labourers and residents on Boer land, into camps intended to deny the guerrillas supplies and support. Poor planning left the camps overcrowded with inadequate rations and almost no medical or sanitary facilities. Roughly 28,000 Boers, most of them women and children, died in these camps from malnutrition and disease, and around half that number of Black Africans died in separate camps. The Fawcett Commission, sent by the British government to investigate, found that most of the deaths had been preventable.
Why it matters
The scandal of the concentration camps, exposed at the time by campaigners such as Emily Hobhouse, shocked British public opinion and became one of the first widely publicized instances of a colonial power inflicting mass civilian death through internment, feeding growing doubts at home about the morality of empire.
How we know
World History Encyclopedia and the National Army Museum both cite matching death-toll figures drawn from the Fawcett Commission's official wartime investigation into the camps.
Sources
- World History Encyclopedia. British Concentration Camps in the Boer War · Reputable sourceworldhistory.org · The domain "worldhistory.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- National Army Museum. Boer War · Reputable sourcenam.ac.uk · The domain "nam.ac.uk" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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