“A System Steadily Perfected”

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aidan Forth
Keyword(s):  
Mortality Rates ◽  
Concentration Camps ◽  
British Government ◽  
Social Investigation ◽  
Epidemic Disease ◽  
Boer War ◽  
Emergency Relief ◽  
History Of

In an effort to reduce mortality rates from epidemic disease, the British government engaged in a campaign to reform the Anglo-Boer War concentration camps. Officials like Alfred Milner and Joseph Chamberlain actively mobilized imperial Britain’s long history of encampment and solicited expertise from the fields of metropolitan welfare and social investigation to appoint a women’s committee (led by Millicent Fawcett) to visit the camps and recommend reforms. Chamberlain also contacted the India Office and ultimately imported Colonels Samuel J. Thomson and James S. Wilkins, who had analogous inter-imperial experience managing plague and famine camps in India. Drawing from lessons synthesized in India, these “imperial careerists” introduced stricter discipline and new measures like barbed-wire quarantine wards and forced hospitalization, which ultimately reduced camp mortality. New camps in Cape Colony and Natal constructed by Wilkins and Thomson refined camp management to a state of perfection and helped vindicate concentration camps as a legitimate technology of imperial statecraft and emergency relief.

Boer Wars

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen M. Miller
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Careful Analysis ◽  
Concentration Camps ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Boer War ◽  
The Awakening ◽  
High Commissioner ◽  
History Of ◽  
Liberal Government ◽  
The Times

In an effort to bring political and economic rationalization to South Africa, the British pursued a plan of confederation. An important step toward accomplishing that goal was the annexation of the Transvaal in 1877. In late 1880, the Transvaal reasserted its independence and war erupted. Shortly after the humiliating defeat at Majuba in February 1881, Gladstone’s Liberal government eagerly sought a way out of the conflict. Two inconclusive peace “conventions” followed. New problems arose later in the century caused by the discovery of gold, the emergence of German power in the region, the awakening of Afrikaner nationalism, and the aggressive political pursuits of British administrators. Attempts to prevent a second war were pursued half-heartedly by Lord Milner, the British High Commissioner. As the British prepared an ultimatum, Paul Kruger, the president of the Transvaal, issued one of his own on 9 October 1899. The Second Anglo-Boer War, or South African War, began with a Boer invasion of the Cape Colony and Natal that led to the sieges of Ladysmith, Kimberley, and Mafeking. British attempts to break the sieges failed and culminated in Black Week in December 1899. Salisbury’s government struck back in the new year. Lord Roberts took command of a much larger force, strengthened by British volunteers and imperial troops, and drove through the Boer Republics. As the Boers embraced insurgency tactics, the conventional phase of the war came to an end. Lord Kitchener’s utilization of mounted drives and blockhouses, destruction of land and livestock, and the removal of civilians to concentration camps eventually destroyed the Boers capacity to continue the war. Peace came at Vereeniging on 31 May 1902. The scope of the second war naturally overshadowed the first in the literature. But important too were the growth in literacy and the drop in publishing costs. Whereas published memoirs and diaries trickled out after the first war, Great Britain witnessed a flood of literature even before the war had ended. Conan Doyle’s The Great Boer War was a bestseller and there was great interest in Leo Amery’s enormous project, The Times History of the War. Texts written in English vastly outnumbered those in Dutch and Afrikaans. Although historians, showed continued interest in the war, it was not until the late 1970s that the production of quality scholarship, based on careful analysis of primary sources and exploring topics other than battles and leadership, became the norm. The centennial brought a resurgence of interest in the war and with it lots of fine new scholarship.

scholarly journals Craft practised by Afrikaner women during and after the Anglo-Boer War 1899-1902 and the appropriation of similar craft in the work of selected contemporary South African artists

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Joan Alkema
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
The Body ◽  
Concentration Camps ◽  
African Women ◽  
Common Denominator ◽  
The South ◽  
Boer War ◽  
Body Of Knowledge ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Impact

This dissertation was researched in two main parts. The first enquiry was to establish whether the Afrikaner women practised any form of craft during their time of interment in the Anglo-Boer War concentration camps, during 1899-1902. The second part explores the appropriation of craft within the Post-Modern context by five South African artists. During this research into the craft practises of Afrikaner women in the concentration camps, I discovered that this particular issue has not been satisfactorily documented. The reasons for this are directly connected to the patriarchal system of the Calvinist Afrikaner. The impact which this system had on the craft practices of Afrikaner women and the lack of documentation thereof, are discussed. The paucity of information on Afrikaner women‟s history led to primary research where I gained the information I needed from the descendents of interned women. The findings of this research includes various forms of needlecraft such as embroidery, quilting, crocheting, and dress and bonnet making. Amongst the artefacts found were two ceramic dogs made in the camp. Various forms of tin and wire artefacts were also found. The contribution to the impoverished Afrikaner women by Hobhouse, the South African Agricultural Association and the South African Women‟s Federation is explained in relation to this dissertation. The freedom that Post-Modern thought created amongst artists enabled them to explore exciting ways of executing their art. The five South African artists whose work I chose to explore are Billy Zangewa, Sue Pam-Grant, Gina Waldman, Antionette Murdoch and Nirmi Ziegler. Their art practices are varied but the common denominator is the incorporation of various forms of traditional feminine craft into their work. They subvert the patriarchal order, draw attention to land issues, explore women‟s fragility and raise awareness concerning the abuse of the environment. I conducted an interview with Ziegler and relied on written documentation for the research concerning the other artists. I also made use of my own analysis and instinct as a woman and mother to interpret some works. As an Afrikaner woman I execute my work by using traditional feminine craft and specific motives found during my research. I deliver commentary on the lack of vi documentation of all of Afrikaner women‟s history. I use myself as an example of an Afrikaner woman and document my own history within the greater Afrikaner history which is contained and embedded within the history of South Africa. My research into and documentation of the craft practises of Afrikaner women during and directly after the Anglo-Boer War adds to the body of knowledge concerning the history of Afrikaner women. The same applies to the work of the five artists I explored. The diversity of material, concept and execution of their work will add some knowledge to the existing body of knowledge about their work, but more so to the documentation of women's history.

“Only Matched in Times of Famine and Plague”

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aidan Forth
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Mortality Rates ◽  
Concentration Camps ◽  
Boer War ◽  
African Refugees ◽  
Cultural Ideals ◽  
Labor Camps ◽  
Epidemic Diseases ◽  
Political Scandal ◽  
Political Subversion

This chapter examines inmate life inside the Anglo-Boer War concentration camps. Native African refugees were segregated into a system of labor camps while British officials developed a form of governmentality that sought to educate, anglicize and rehabilitate Boer refugees by inculcating British cultural ideals and industrial habits, thereby transforming them into imperial citizens and willing partners of a British South Africa. The medical techniques of quarantine and segregation were adapted to inmates suspected of political subversion, who were detained in undesirable camps. Ultimately, both African and Boer camps suffered from the spread of epidemic diseases like measles, which resulted in staggering mortality rates in the camps and created a damaging political scandal in Britain. The humanitarian reformer Emily Hobhouse noted that scenes of suffering and death in the concentration camps could only be matched by similar sights during plague and famine in India.

Scars from a Childhood Disease: Measles in the Concentration Camps during the Boer War

1996 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 593-611 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce Fetter ◽  
Stowell Kessler
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South Carolina ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
Concentration Camps ◽  
Margaret Mitchell ◽  
Boer War ◽  
Economic Changes ◽  
Childhood Disease ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Relationship

He had died ignominiously and swiftly of pneumonia following measles, without ever having gotten any closer to the Yankees than the camp in South Carolina.(Mitchell 1960 [1936])Writing for an American audience in the 1930s, Margaret Mitchell was able to dispatch the husband of Scarlett O’Hara with a certain irony. By then measles had become a childhood disease that was seldom fatal. During the nineteenth century, however, measles was not so lightly dismissed. Epidemics in populations with high proportions of susceptible individuals could be dangerous indeed. This article traces the history of measles in South Africa, showing how political and economic changes temporarily produced conditions that led to a devastating epidemic during the Boer War (1899–1902). It then compares the history of measles in South Africa with that in Great Britain and closes with a discussion of the relationship between human and biological causes in the history of the disease.

Humanitarianism, Human Rights and Biopolitics in the British Empire, 1890–1902

2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 96-115 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Clark
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Concentration Camps ◽  
Boer War ◽  
Personal Rights

The 1890s were a key time for debates about imperial humanitarianism and human rights in India and South Africa. This article first argues that claims of humanitarianism can be understood as biopolitics when they involved the management and disciplining of populations. This article examines the historiography that analyses British efforts to contain the Bombay plague in 1897 and the Boer War concentration camps as forms of discipline extending control over colonized subjects. Secondly, human rights language could be used to oppose biopolitical management. While scholars have criticized liberal human rights language for its universalism, this article argues that nineteenth-century liberals did not believe that rights were universal; they had to be earned. It was radical activists who drew on notions of universal rights to oppose imperial intervention and criticize the camps in India and South Africa. These activists included two groups: the Personal Rights Association and the Humanitarian League; and the individuals Josephine Butler, Sol Plaatje, Narayan Meghaji Lokhande, and Bal Gandadhar Tilak. However, these critics also debated amongst themselves how far human rights should extend.

The Wilkins Lecture 2000: Medical futures

2001 ◽  
Vol 55 (2) ◽  
pp. 309-323 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. S. Porter
Keyword(s):  
Early History ◽  
Perfect Health ◽  
Social Investigation ◽  
Thomas More ◽  
Complete Health ◽  
Sir Thomas More ◽  
Future Society ◽  
History Of ◽  
Nature Of Medicine

This paper examines forecasts made by writers, medical and non-medical alike, as to the nature of medicine in a future society. In particular, starting from Plato and Sir Thomas More, it explores what place (if any) has been envisaged for medicine in a future Utopian society. By way of an explanatory device, predictions concerning medicine are compared and contrasted to expectations as to the role of the sciences, natural and social. Investigation of the corpus of social prognostications in fact reveals a dearth of glorious expectations as to the future of medicine as such, although certain writings have held out great hopes for biologistic disciplines, such as eugenics. It is often in ‘golden age’ fantasies about the early history of mankind that the most glowing descriptions of complete health are painted. Similarly, perfect health is something often viewed not in social but in individualistic terms. Explanations are offered of these perhaps slightly surprising facts.

Boer War

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Cultural Influences ◽  
African Region ◽  
Boer War ◽  
War Memory ◽  
South African War ◽  
White Settler ◽  
History Of ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
And Control

The Boer War of 1899–1902, also termed the Anglo-Boer War or South African War, was waged by Britain to establish its imperial supremacy in South Africa and by Boers/Afrikaners to defend their independent republican order and control of the destiny of the white settler states they had secured in the interior. Large, long, controversial and costly, the Boer War was a colonial conflict which finally completed the British imperial conquest of the Southern African region. As is to be expected of a war that has a widely recognized significance not only in the history of European imperialism in Southern Africa but in world history more generally, literature on the 1899–1902 conflict is, simply, enormous. Scholarship is available not merely in English and in Afrikaans, but also in Dutch, French, German, Russian, Spanish, and even in Japanese. As it happens, more recent decades have seen the publication of sizeable bibliographies covering a century of writings on the Boer War in German and in Dutch. Although it could obviously not be claimed that every aspect of the 1899–1902 period—military, political, economic, social, or cultural—has been treated, evenly or otherwise, by so vast a body of literature, the sheer quantity of work available has to influence the scope and selectivity of any Boer War bibliography of this kind. While this bibliographic article includes some seminal early pieces, it is weighted toward more recently works and, in particular, includes scholarship which contains detailed bibliographies covering aspects of warfare (battles, sieges) that are not a specific focus of the approach taken here. Secondly, other classifiable areas of historiography which fall beyond the limits of this article, such as war memory and commemoration, and postwar economic reconstruction and political state-making, are treated—in some instances, quite substantially—in single-author general overviews and in multi-author edited treatments. In other respects, this article goes beyond more conventional historical terrain in including the war’s literary and cultural influences.

scholarly journals Trends in Use of Cardioprotective Medication in Peripheral Artery Disease: A Nationwide Study

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sadaf Kamil ◽  
Thomas S. G. Sehested ◽  
Kim Houlind ◽  
Jens F. Lassen ◽  
Gunnar H. Gislason ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Cardiovascular Disease ◽  
Angiotensin Converting Enzyme ◽  
Vitamin K Antagonists ◽  
Oral Anticoagulants ◽  
Mortality Rates ◽  
Converting Enzyme ◽  
Peripheral Artery ◽  
Nationwide Study ◽  
History Of ◽  
Artery Disease

Background Guideline‐based cardioprotective medical therapy is intended to reduce the burden of adverse cardiovascular and limb outcomes in patients with peripheral artery disease (PAD). However, contemporary data describing trends in use of medication remains limited. The present study, therefore, aims to investigate changes in use of cardioprotective medication in PAD. Methods and Results By using Danish national healthcare registries, we identified all patients with first‐time diagnosis of PAD (1997–2016) and classified them into two groups: (1) PAD+ that includes all patients with PAD with a history of cardiovascular disease, ie, myocardial infarction, atrial fibrillation, and stroke (n=162 627); and (2) PAD (n=87 935) that comprise patients without a history of cardiovascular disease. We determined the use of medication in the first 12 months after the incident diagnosis of PAD and estimated age standardized 1‐year mortality rates. Our results showed increase in use of cardioprotective medication throughout the study period in both groups. However, PAD+ had a higher use of medication (acetylsalicylic acid, 3.5%–48.4%; Clopidogrel, 0%–17.6%; vitamin K antagonists, 0.9%–7.8%; new oral anticoagulants, 0.0%–10.1%; Statins, 1.9%–58.1%; angiotensin‐converting enzyme inhibitors, 1.2%–20.6%), compared with PAD (acetylsalicylic acid, 2.9%–54.4%; Clopidogrel, 0%–11.9%; vitamin K antagonists, 0.9%–2.4%; new oral anticoagulants, 0.0%–3.4%; Statins, 1.5%–56.9%; angiotensin‐converting enzyme, 0.9%–17.2%), respectively. Furthermore, 1‐year mortality rates in PAD declined with increased use of medications during study. Conclusions In this nationwide study, use of cardioprotective medication increased considerably with time, but compared to patients with other atherosclerotic diseases, there remains an underuse of guideline‐based medical therapy in patients with PAD.

The limits of power: the political ecology of the Spanish Empire in the Greater Southwest

Antiquity ◽  
1992 ◽  
Vol 66 (250) ◽  
pp. 153-171 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas E. Sheridan
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
Political Ecology ◽  
Land Tenure ◽  
New World ◽  
Spanish Empire ◽  
The Political ◽  
Epidemic Disease ◽  
Spanish Conquest ◽  
History Of

The Spanish conquest of the Americas was one of the most dramatic cultural and biological transformations in the history of the world. Small groups of conquistadores toppled enormous empires. Millions of Native Americans died from epidemic disease. Old World animals and plants revolutionized Native American societies, while New World crops fundamentally altered the diet and land-tenure of peasants across Europe. In the words of historian Alfred Crosby (1972: 3),The two worlds, which God had cast asunder, were reunited, and the two worlds, which were so very different, began on that day [I1 October 14921 to become alike.

Armageddon and the Gulag, 1939–1945

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven A. Barnes
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Mortality Rates ◽  
Postwar Period ◽  
Social Phenomenon ◽  
Soviet System ◽  
Total War ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Initial Stage ◽  
Red Army ◽  
History Of

This chapter focuses on the Gulag during the Armageddon of the Great Patriotic War. It shows how the institutions, practices, and identities of the Gulag shifted in accord with the demands of total war. The war was an era of mass release on an unprecedented scale side by side with the highest mortality rates in the history of the Gulag system. After four years of brutal, exhausting warfare and a disastrous initial stage, the Soviet Union emerged from its Armageddon victorious. The early postwar period offered no indication that the Gulag would cease to be a mass social phenomenon within fifteen years. Rather, the Gulag remained a pillar in the reestablishment of the Soviet system, following the Red Army into liberated territories, so that every liberated district received its own corrective labor colony. By 1944, the camp and colony population began to grow again.

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