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ABSTRACT
During the course of the Anglo-Boer War of 1899–1902, over 9,000 captured Boers were sent abroad to India as prisoners of war. Using hitherto unexamined sources, this article explores how, during their internment and repatriation, British officials and administrators across the empire collaborated in a concerted attempt to transform the imperial enemy into colonial collaborator. This involved a necessarily intercolonial effort to conduct a successful programme of ‘re-education’ capable of cultivating ‘white’ British virtues in preparing Boer POWs for their future rights and duties in reconstructing Southern Africa upon their repatriation. In so doing, the government of India and other colonial officials across the empire thus recapitulated their ideal of Britain’s imperial project in the Boer POW camps. Highlighting the intercoloniality of this process, India’s viceroy, Lord George Curzon, played as prominent a role as did the War Office, or South Africa’s soon-to-be pro-consul, Lord Alfred Milner. The microcosmic imperialism of Boer internment thus reveals a great deal about the nature and structure of power within the British Empire, and emphasises the value of an intercolonial or transcolonial perspective in examining the complex, global consequences of the Anglo-Boer War.
Acknowledgements
I am indebted to the close reading, support and criticism of a number of friends and colleagues. I especially thank Chris Holdridge for his conversation and suggestions, and I look forward to collaborating with him to turn this research into a larger volume encompassing each of the camps across the globe. Thanks too to the initial supporters of this research, Robert Aldrich, Cindy McCreery, Alison Bashford and Roger Louis, and especially to Mark McKenna, who read closely its first drafts. I am grateful also to Benjamin Mountford, Michel Doortmont, Andrew May, Christina Twomey, James Vernon, Carol Summers and Effie Karageorgos for their helpful interventions at conferences, dinners, via email and over coffee. Final thanks are due to the University of Sydney and UC Berkeley History Departments for providing intellectually nourishing environments, a generous grant given by the Australasian Pioneers’ Club and the tireless efforts of the staff at the British Library and the UK National Archives.
Disclosure Statement
No conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. According to the official record, 32,561 prisoners were taken in the course of the war, about half of the entire Boer field force. These numbers are taken from the official report made by the War Office on the closing of prisoner-of-war camps in 1905. ‘General Questions Relating to Boer and Foreign Prisoners of War, 1899–1902’, WO 32/8347, The National Archives, Kew (hereafter TNA).
2. Another project ongoing at this time is Michel Doortmont’s biography of Dr Hendrik Muller, a Dutch businessman and diplomat known, among other things, for his international advocacy on behalf of Boer internees of both the British civilian and military camps.
3. See especially Omissi and Thompson, eds, Impact of the South African War; Cuthbertson, Grundlingh and Suttie, eds, Writing a Wider War; Lowry, ed., South African War Reappraised; in addition, for the best recent history of the war as a whole, see Nasson, The Boer War; for the wider context of interment in the course of the war, see van Heyningen, Concentration Camps; Hyslop, ‘The Invention of the Concentration Camp’.
4. See, for especially relevant examples, Chandramohan, ‘“Hamlet with the Prince of Denmark Left Out”?’; Dutta, ‘Interlocking Worlds of the Anglo-Boer War’;Hofmeyr, ‘South Africa’s Indian Ocean’; Wasserman, ‘Erection and Maintenance of Monuments’.
5. Mackenzie, ‘General Editor's Introduction’, viii.
6. Hofmeyr, ‘South Africa’s Indian Ocean’, 368.
7. The best single work on the topic remains Oosterhuizen, ‘Die Beheer, Behandeling en Lewe’. This dissertation appears never to have been published, however, and very few copies of it exist. There are a number of excellent English-language reference resources, for example Wessels. A Century of Postgraduate Anglo-Boer War Studies; van Hardtsevelt, The Boer War.
8. Forth, ‘An Empire of Camps’.
9. This personal manifestation of British Liberalism abroad became much more prevalent in nineteenth-century moral tales and colonial policies throughout the British Empire, and many have written on this process. Dipesh Chakrabarty's metaphor of the ‘waiting room’ of empire seems a particularly apt one here, but it seems that the waiting room phenomena is a symptom of a greater cause—underlying assumptions inherent to this particular European view of the world, rather than the particular, more specifically, particularly poor, manifestation of it in certain contexts. See, in particular, Metha for his argument about the transformation of liberal thought when challenged by the Indian context and a critique of its inconsistencies, and Metcalf for his excellent study of the translation of the challenges of liberalism into the Raj's political structure and rule. Metha, Liberalism and Empire; Metcalf, Ideologies of the Raj. Similarly, see Koditschek on contemporary understandings of the challenges to liberal imperialism, notably the notion advanced by those like Henry Maine and other juridical positivists that the development of such virtues was determined by and suited to local practice and purpose—the expression of an ongoing Victorian critique of the universalism of previous centuries. For more on this see especially Mantena. Koditschek, ‘Greater Britain and the “Lesser Breeds”’; Mantena, Alibis of Empire.
10. Here see especially Fischer-Tiné,‘ Making of a “Ruling Race”’.
11. The phrase is first found in Bartlett, Report from Malaya, 109. Notable works regarding latter-day colonial interments include Elkins, Imperial Reckoning’; Anderson, Histories of the Hanged; Stubbs, Hearts and Minds in Guerrilla Warfare.
12. Metcalf, Ideologies of the Raj, 217.
13. Wirgman, ‘The Boers and the Native Question’.
14. Telegraph, Curzon to Hamilton, 3 May 1900, Curzon Papers, Mss Eur f. 111/202, British Library (hereafter BL).
15. Private Letter, Godley to Hamilton, 30 Dec. 1900, Curzon Papers, Mss Eur f. 111/170, BL.
16. Letter, Curzon to Hamilton, 3 Jan. 1901, Curzon Papers Mss Eur f. 111/160, BL. Letter, Hamilton to War Office, 30 Apr. 1900, IOR L/MIL/7/15678, BL.
17. Letter, Bowring to Curzon, 2 Jan. 1900, Curzon Papers Mss Eur f. 111/181, BL.
18. India, 28 Sept. 1900, quoted in Omissi, ‘India’, 218.
19. Sialkot Paper, 16 Jan.1900, quoted in Omissi, ‘India’, 222.
20. Bangavasi, 13 Jan. 1900, quoted in Omissi, ‘India’.
21. Telegram, Commander In Chief, India, to Curzon, 22 Feb. 1901, Curzon Papers, Mss Eur f. 111/203, BL.
22. Letter, Hamilton to Curzon, 21 June 1901, Curzon Papers, Mss Eur f. 111/160, BL.
23. Letter, Hamilton to Curzon, 28 Feb. 1901, Curzon Papers, Mss Eur f. 111/160, BL.
24. Letter, Hamilton to Curzon, 24 Jan. 1901, Curzon Papers, Mss Eur f. 111/160, BL.
25. See especially a particularly long-winded episode in Letter, Curzon to Hamilton, 21 Feb. 1901, Curzon Papers, Mss Eur f. 111/160, BL.
26. Letter, Curzon to Hamilton, 7 March 1901, Curzon Papers, Mss Eur f. 111/160, BL.
27. Letter, Godley to Hamilton, 25 Feb. 1901, IOR L/MIL/7/15678, BL.
28. Private Letter, Hamilton to Curzon, 12 March 1901, Curzon Papers, Mss Eur f. 111/171, BL.
29. Private Letter, Curzon to Hamilton, 14 March 1901, Curzon Papers, Mss Eur f. 111/171, BL.
30. Suggestion to Send Boer Prisoners to Tasmania, 1901, A6006 1901/12/31, National Archives of Australia (hereafter NAA). There seems to have also been a concern that escaped Boer prisoners would enlist in Australian forces in order to return to South Africa and desert; see NAA A8 1902/25/78 and NAA A6662 11. West Australian Sunday Times, 12 May 1901.
31. Cypher Telegram, Brodrick to Curzon, 20 Aug. 1901, Curzon Papers, Mss Eur f. 111/162, BL.
32. Letter, Curzon to Hamilton, 1 Apr. 1901, Curzon Papers, Mss Eur f. 111/160, BL.
33. Letter, Hamilton to Curzon, 25 Apr. 1901, Curzon Papers, Mss Eur f. 111/160, BL.
34. General Despatch no. 123, 8 Aug. 1901, IOR L/MIL/7/15689, BL. The prisoner died on 7 June 1901. His death is reported in a letter from Ampthill to Curzon, 10 June 1901, Curzon Papers, Mss Eur f. 111/203, Bl. ‘This circumstance will, no doubt, in due course provide the atrocity-monger with a further weapon’, Ampthill says.
35. Letter, Curzon to Hamilton, 1 May 1901, Mss Eur f. 111/160. Englishman, Calcutta, 1 May 1901.
36. Letter, Hamilton to Curzon, 2 May 1901, Curzon Papers, Mss Eur f. 111.160, BL.
37. Letter, Curzon to Hamilton, 1 May 1901, Curzon Papers, Mss Eur f. 111/160, BL.
38. Letter, Curzon to Hamilton,, 8 May 1901, Curzon Papers, Mss Eur f. 111/160, BL. See also the newspaper clippings attached to this letter, one of them being an article from the Times of India, Bombay, from 1 March 1901 praising the selection of the site as healthy and the other being the retraction published by the Englishman, Calcutta, 8 May 1901.
39. Letter, Curzon to Hamilton,, 26 June 1901, Curzon Papers, Mss Eur f. 111/160, BL.
40. Letter, Curzon to Hamilton, 15 May 1901, Curzon Papers, Mss Eur f. 111/160, BL. A series of articles attached from the Times of India ridicules the Englishman's attacks. ‘The latest “atrocity”’, ‘The “unhealthiness” of Ahmednagar’, ‘A Silly Spectre Laid’, Times of India, 2 May 1901.
41. Letter, Hamilton to Curzon. 6 June 1901, Curzon Papers, Mss Eur f. 111/160, BL.
42. Letter, Curzon to Hamilton, 3 July 1901, Mss Eur f. 111/160, BL
43. For a discussion of the provision of servants as part of maintaining Boer elite whiteness, see Jacobs, ‘Krygsgevangenekampe’.
44. Letter, Curzon to Hamilton, 24 July 1901, Curzon Papers, Mss Eur f. 111/160, BL. Boer prisoners quickly became renowned for this handiwork; see Pretorius, ‘Boer Prisoner of War Art’.
45. Letter, Curzon to Hamilton, 24 July 1901, Curzon Papers, Mss Eur f. 111/160, BL.
46. Enclosures to Paragraph 15 of General Despatch No. 171, 18 Sept. 1902, 2; Enclosure to Paragraph 7 of General Despatch No. 122, 10 July 1902, 1, IOR L/MIL/7/15690, BL.
47. See the lengthy report of health returns which would be included in every general despatch from India after the Ahmednagar scandal. IOR L/MIL/7/15689, BL.
48. Cypher Telegram, Secret, Hamilton to Curzon, 8 Feb. 1902, Curzon Papers, Mss Eur f. 111/172, BL.
49. ‘General Questions Relating to Boer and Foreign Prisoners of War, 1899–1902’, WO 32/8347, TNA.
50. Grundlingh, Die ‘Hendsoppers’ en ‘Joiners’.
51. Letter, Curzon to Hamilton, 7 May 1902, Curzon Papers, Mss Eur f. 111/161, BL.
52. Letter, Ridgeway to Chamberlain, 11 Dec. 1900, CO 537/403, TNA.
53. Letter, Chamberlain to Ridgeway, 6 Aug. 1901, CO 537/404, TNA
54. Private Telegram, Hamilton to Curzon, 23 Aug. 1901, Curzon Papers, Mss Eur f. 111/170, BL; Private Telegram, Ridgeway to Chamberlain, 8 Aug. 1901, CO 537/404, TNA
55. Letter, Hamilton to Curzon, 22 Aug. 1901, Curzon Papers, Mss Eur f. 111/160, BL; Telegram, Private and Confidential, Hamilton to Curzon, 23 Aug. 1901, Curzon Papers, Mss Eur f. 111/170, BL.
56. Letter, Curzon to Hamilton, 4 Sept. 1901, Letter, Hamilton to Curzon, 22 Aug. 1901, Curzon Papers, Mss Eur f. 111/160, BL.
57. Minute by Arthur Godley discussing Curzon's objection on grounds of ‘native misunderstanding’, CO 537/408, TNA.
58. Letter, Hamilton to Curzon, 22 Aug. 1901, Curzon Papers, Mss Eur f. 111/160, BL.
59. Letter, Curzon to Hamilton, 4 Sept. 1901, Curzon Papers, Mss Eur f. 111/160, BL.
60. See one account by a successful escapee. de Villiers, Hoe ek ontsnap het.
61. Letter, Curzon to Hamilton, 11 Sept. 1901, Curzon Papers, Mss Eur f. 111/160, BL.
62. Health Reports of Boer Prisoners 1901–03, Weekly Despatch, No. 91, 22 May 1902, IOR/L/MIL/7/15689, BL. The prisoner shot while escaping was recorded on 24 March 1902, and the two who died from gunshot wounds on 11 April 1902.
63. Letter, Curzon to Hamilton, 9 Oct. 1901, Curzon Papers, Mss Eur f. 111/160, BL.
64. Letter, Curzon to Hamilton, 23 Oct. 1901, Curzon Papers, Mss Eur f. 111/160, BL. See also the Indian Daily News, 16 Oct. 1901, regarding Boer POWs and opinions, which Curzon enclosed with this letter as further confirmation of his beliefs.
65. Original Typescript Journal of Jesse Collings, MP, Tour of India, Ad Mss 58773, 52, BL.
66. Ibid.
67. Ibid., 51–52.
68. Ibid.
69. Ibid., 53.
70. Draft Telegram (sent) on Behalf of CO, IO to Curzon, 9 June 1902, IOR L/MIL/7/15706, BL.
71. Draft (sent) Telegram, Hamilton to Curzon, 19 June 1902, IOR L/MIL/7/15706, BL.
72. Telegram, Chamberlain to Governors of Ceylon, St. Helena, and Bermuda, 28 June 1902, IOR L/MIL/7/15706, BL.
73. Letter, Major J. H. Goldwyn, Commandant, Ahmednagar, to Quartermaster-General India, 4 Jan. 1903, in Enclosure to Paragraph 16 of Despatch No. 17, 5 Feb. 1903, IOR L/MIL/7/15706, BL.
74. This was especially the case in St. Helena. See telegram, Chamberlain to Milner, sent 24 July 1902, and telegram, Milner to Chamberlain, 26 July 1902, IOR/L/MIL/7/15706, BL.
75. Telegram, Curzon to Hamilton, 9 July 1902, IOR/L/MIL/7/15706, BL.
76. Ibid.
77. Telegram, Milner to Curzon, 3 July 1902, Curzon Papers, Mss Eur f. 111/162, BL.
78. Draft (sent) Telegram, Hamilton to Curzon, 26 July 1902, IOR/L/MIL/7/15706, BL.
79. Letter, Curzon to Hamilton, 27 Aug. 1902, Curzon Papers, Mss Eur f. 111/161, BL.
80. IOR/L/MIL/7/15690, BL.
81. Letter, Curzon to Hamilton, 27 Aug. 1902, Curzon Papers, Mss Eur f. 111/161, BL. It should be noted that Curzon considered only about 200 of these to be ‘real irreconcilables’.
82. Letter, Botha and De La Rey to Chamberlain, from Norrex Hotel, Strand, 14 Nov. 1902, IOR/L/MIL/7/15706, BL.
83. Copy Translation Letter, Botha De La Rey to Boer Prisoners, 12 Nov. 1902, IOR/L/MIL/7/15706, BL.
84. This story is taken from Commandant Goldwyn's report to the Quartermaster General of India, Major J. H. Goldwyn, Commandant, Ahmednagar, to Quartermaster-General India, 4 Jan. 1903, in Enclosure to Paragraph 16 of India Despatch No. 17 of 5 Feb. 1903, IOR/L/MIL/7/15706, BL.
85. Letter, Northcote to Curzon, 7 Feb. 1903, Curzon Papers, Mss Eur f. 111/207, BL. He writes tellingly: ‘had I any authority there, I would make them work hard, and live hard, till they came to their senses.’
86. Letter, Captain G. Head, Commandant Shahjehanpur, to Quartermaster-General India, 3 Jan. 1903, in Enclosure to Paragraph 16 of India Despatch No. 17 of 5 Feb. 1903, IOR/L/MIL/7/15706, BL.
87. Cypher Telegram, Curzon to Hamilton, 16 May 1903, Curzon Papers, Mss Eur f. 111/173, BL.
88. For a wider context to this legal environment, and especially on the 1874 Vagrancy Act, see especially Fischer-Tiné, Low and Licentious Europeans. Thanks to my anonymous reviewers for bringing this scholarship to my attention.
89. Cypher Telegram, Hamilton to Curzon, 2 July 1903, Curzon Papers, Mss Eur f. 111/173, BL.
90. Cypher Telegram, Curzon to Hamilton, 28 July 1903, Curzon Papers, Mss Eur f. 111/173, BL.
91. Cypher Telegram, Hamilton to Curzon, 14 Aug. 1903, Curzon Papers, Mss Eur f. 111/173, BL.
92. Cypher Telegram, Hamilton to Curzon, 20 Sept. 1903, Curzon Papers, Mss Eur f. 111/173, BL.
93. Hofmeyr, ‘South Africa's Indian Ocean’, 367. The most famous of these is Henry Englebrecht, a game warden in early twentieth-century Ceylon who regularly gets special mention in Leonard Woolf's biographies. See Ondaatje, Woolf in Ceylon.
94. Here I am thinking of Clare Anderson's CArcheplago project on the Indian Ocean world's long history of internment, incarceration and forced migration, Christina Twomey's beginning project on global civil internment practices, including those of the Anglo-Boer War, that many states chose to initiate in the course of conflict around the turn of the nineteenth century, and the ongoing ‘transcolonial’ projects first charted in the commemorative volume published on Thomas Metcalf's retirement. Ghosh and Kennedy, eds, Decentring Empire.