Reports, &c., on the Working of the Refugee Camps in the Transvaal, Orange Rive Colony, Cape Colony, and Natal

Large 4to (33.5 x 21 x 5.6cm), 387pp. + vii + 131pp. + iv + 134pp. + v + 103pp. + ii + 32pp. + 7pp. + 208pp. + 5pp. + 5pp. Half leather binding, with green cloth covered boards. Gilt lettering to spine.Top edge stained, fore and bottom edges speckled.

Small sticker to front board. Some rubbing and edgewear to the boards and spine. Very small sticker to spine. Tear to spine (approximately 17cm) along edge with front board. Crack to gutter between front free endpaper and pastedown. Old library stamps to title pages of the reports. Crack to gutter between pp. 206 and 207 of last report. Creasing, edgewear and small chips to edges of pages of the statistics sections at the rear of book (10 pages total). Overall a well bound copy.

The Anglo-Boer War concentration camps had originally been set up by the British Army as refugee camps to provide refuge for civilian families who had been forced to abandon their homes for whatever reason related to the war. However, when the Earl Kitchener took over in late 1900, he introduced new tactics in an attempt to break the guerrilla campaign and the influx of civilians grew dramatically as a result. An epidemic of measles killed thousands. According to the historian, Thomas Pakenham, Kitchener initiated plans to flush out guerrillas in a series of systematic drives, to sweep the country bare of everything that could give sustenance to the guerrillas, including women and children... It was the clearance of civilians—uprooting a whole nation—that would come to dominate the last phase of the war.