Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman indeed described the British scorched earth and concentration camp policies during the Boer war as “methods of barbarism”. They were bad enough, but to call them genocide, as Mark Lewinski does (Letters, 15 April), is a gross exaggeration. The camps held the women and children of Boer guerillas whose homes had been destroyed (captured guerillas were sent overseas). The number of deaths is not “unrecorded”: 4,177 were women; 22,074 were children under 16; 1,676 were old men. The maximum recorded population of the camps was 118,408.
The deaths were due mainly to the poor administration of the camps, overcrowding, poor sanitation, low rations, and infectious diseases, but not to a deliberate policy of genocide. (The separate camps for black people, in which some 14,000 died, have received very little publicity.)
Ralph Blumenau
London
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