The numbers of civilians brought in steadily grew until the camp authorities were overwhelmed. Disease killed thousands, particularly children, and the reaction of the officers in charge was generally slow so that by October 1901 the overall death rate reached 344 per 1,000. Although conditions improved thereafter about 10 per cent of the pre-war Boer population died. The figure for Africans who died in their camps is still a matter of speculation. Once the situation became known in Britain, thanks largely to Emily Hobhouse, outrage grew and led to the Liberal party leader, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, describing this policy as ‘methods of barbarism’. Kitchener appeared indifferent to all this, although his two most recent biographers disagree about his attitudes: Trevor Royle says he ‘paid little heed to the proper provision of the camps’; while John Pollock notes that he did visit some camps, and that not all of them were death traps. Nevertheless, Kitchener cannot escape blame. The system lacked proper organisation: camp commandants could not make adequate arrangements as civilians kept being brought in without notice. Kitchener’s main problem was that his mind was elsewhere – on the war. He expected subordinates to get on with things and it seems many were fearful of bothering him. Only when the civilian authorities, under the High Commissioner, Lord Milner, took control towards the end of 1901 did conditions improve. But by then Kitchener had reversed his policy of bringing in civilians. The farms were still being destroyed but now it was up to the commandos to look after their families.47
A third means of defeating the commandos was the use of surrendered Boers against their former comrades. Kitchener promoted the creation of two units, the National Scouts and the Orange River Colony Volunteers, whose knowledge of the country and Boer fighting methods proved invaluable to the British. Their impact upon the morale of those still fighting was vital, as Bill Nasson has noted: ‘If by no means a principal factor in bringing about a Boer defeat, the plague of collaboration was there in the final losing equation between actual hardship and loss of faith.’48
For Kitchener commanding armies was not the only task he had to perform. The nature of the conflict required him to exercise total control over the war effort and this brought him into collision with the local civilian authorities. In 1901, especially, Kitchener demanded and got martial law extended to Cape Colony in the teeth of opposition from the colony’s government, led by Sir Gordon Sprigg. This meant that military courts would exercise supreme authority in the colony, especially in trying rebels. This also led to problems with the British government, particularly when Lieutenant General French ordered public executions. Kitchener, however, actually proved quite lenient and from 500 capital cases only 33 were deemed severe enough to warrant execution. An important factor here was that because of the fear of rebellion, all agreed that the war in Cape Colony had to be ended promptly. Thus the British government found itself supporting Kitchener against the Cape politicians and against its own inclinations.49
Kitchener’s civilian counterpart, Milner, High Commissioner since 1897 and one of the architects of the war, had his own views about how the war should be run, and was as strong-willed as Kitchener himself. For Milner, the war was secondary to the establishment of civilian government in the occupied areas, within which the British would dominate their Boer collaborators. His ultimate aim was to turn South Africa British, especially the Transvaal, by eventually settling British colonists in the countryside. Once the Boers were outnumbered in the richest part of South Africa then the ‘weakest link in the imperial chain’50 would be strong again. For Milner, the concentration camps were symbolic of Kitchener’s slapdash approach and simply exacerbated Boer hostility; moreover, Kitchener seemed to be a man in a hurry, desperate to end the war quickly without thought for the future. As Kitchener showed no sign of agreeing with Milner’s assessment of the situation in 1901, he took leave and lobbied the government in London. When Milner came back he had apparently won: he had obtained Cabinet backing for his plans; the mining industry was to be restarted; the British refugees from Johannesburg were to return, and the occupied areas were to be developed according to his ideas. In return, Milner had promised a reduction in troop numbers and cuts in expenditure. However, Milner then went too far and recommended restructuring the command in South Africa, but as the military situation was far from rosy, Kitchener hit back making Milner’s optimism look rather ridiculous. Kitchener had refused to comply with Milner’s demands and as Milner acknowledged Kitchener had ‘probably more than the ordinary soldier’s contempt for the opinions of a civilian … It is impossible to guide a military dictator of very strong views & strong character’.51 However, Lord Salisbury refused to sack Kitchener on Milner’s urging and wanted to know if a new commander would do any better. Indeed, Kitchener had virtually dared the government to sack him in the full knowledge that there was no one else who could replace him.
Kitchener’s rivalry with Milner would come to a head during the peace negotiations between April and May 1902. Kitchener has often been condemned as thinking more of his next job – Commander in Chief in India – than the proper political settlement of South Africa. Such a view ignores his diplomatic skills first seen at Fashoda in 1898. Kitchener well understood that for Britain to retain South Africa the collaboration of the Boer leadership was vital and he was willing to talk to them if necessary. He had come close to a deal with Louis Botha, the leader of the Transvaal commandos, at Middelburg in March 1901, and although he and Kitchener had got on, Milner had done his best to sabotage the talks. Botha anyway had not wanted a settlement, and had simply tested the water, but by 1902 the situation had changed. The Boer cause was disintegrating: Kitchener’s methods were working; the commandos were short of all supplies; their society was divided and in a state of civil war; their countryside was destroyed; their families were dying in the camps or roaming the countryside, and, to cap it all, Africans were inflicting defeats on Boer commandos. Kitchener believed that a moderate settlement was required once the Boers acknowledged their defeat; Milner, however, thought otherwise. If the Boer generals became popular leaders in peace he knew his plans would not work. He wanted the Boer collaborators installed, but Kitchener well knew this would cause trouble in the future. The Boer generals were the only ones who could deliver peace and reconcile their people to the new order. And it was Kitchener who got his way, making promises that the Boers found acceptable: they would be compensated for the destruction of their farms and the fate of the non-white population was to be a matter for post-war South Africa to decide. Consequently, Boer independence was ended when the Treaty of Vereeniging was signed on 31 May 1902, and Kitchener could leave as the most pre-eminent soldier in the British Empire.52 Unfortunately, Queen Victoria had not lived to see one of her favourite generals bring, for Britain, a satisfactory end to the war.
As a military commander, Kitchener’s faults had been outweighed by the nature of the campaigns fought. In the Sudan his command style, while erratic at times, had been sufficient to defeat the Dervishes because the campaign had called for other qualities beyond simply fighting battles. The same could be said for the war in South Africa. This required a strong will that could endure short-term defeats to ensure long-term victory. Kitchener had come close to cracking but his willpower, and foresight, had seen him through. He realised that victory required more than military operations and that a protracted guerrilla war meant that civilians too were on the front line. This type of warfare meant that he demanded, and received, power beyond that of guiding mobile columns. Kitchener, in effect, did become a ‘military dictator’ in South Africa, having demonstrated his political skills in obtaining the backing of those at the highest level in Britain. Those skills were shown further when he negotiated the peace treaty that secured a South Africa loyal to the British Empire for the next forty years or so. Thus warfare in the British empire often called for abilities beyond the battlefield and Kitchener had those. That is what made him the empire’s most famous soldier because for him those qualities would be called
on again in a far greater struggle.
Bibliography
Kitchener has been well served by biographers and many accounts appeared before his death. His campaigns in the Sudan and South Africa have also been well covered over the years and only a flavour of those can be given here. The standard biographies are those by Sir George Arthur, Life of Lord Kitchener, 3 vols (London: Macmillan, 1920); Philip Magnus, Kitchener: Portrait of an Imperialist (London: John Murray, 1958); Trevor Royle, The Kitchener Enigma (London: Michael Joseph, 1985); and John Pollock, Kitchener (London: Constable & Robinson, 2002). There are useful essays on Kitchener in Byron Farwell, Eminent Victorian Soldiers (London: Viking, 1986) and Mark Urban, Generals (London: Faber & Faber, 2005). Kitchener’s public image is discussed in Keith Surridge, ‘More than a great poster: Lord Kitchener and the image of the military hero’, Historical Research, 74, 185 (2001), 298–313. For the Sudan campaign see Winston S. Churchill, The River War, 2 vols (London: Longmans, 1899); Henry Keown-Boyd, A Good Dusting: a Centenary Review of the Sudan Campaigns 1883–1899 (London: Guild Publishing, 1986); Edward Spiers, ed., Sudan: the Reconquest Reappraised (London: Frank Cass, 1998) and ‘Ismat Hasan Zulfo, Karari (London: Frederick Warne, 1980). For Omdurman, see Philip Ziegler, Omdurman (London: Collins, 1973). There are many books covering the South African War, but for those that focus more on Kitchener see André Wessels, ed., Lord Kitchener and the War in South Africa 1899–1902 (Stroud: Sutton Publishing for Army Records Society, 2006); Keith Terrance Surridge, Managing the South African War, 1899–1902 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1998); Keith Surridge, ‘The Politics of War: Lord Kitchener and the Settlement of the South African War, 1901–1902’, in Greg Cuthbertson, Albert Grundlingh and Mary-Lynn Suttie, eds, Writing a Wider War: Rethinking Gender, Race, and Identity in the South African War, 1899–1902 (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2002), pp. 213–32; Keith Surridge, ‘Lord Kitchener and the South African War 1899–1902’, Soldiers of the Queen: The Journal of the Victorian Military Society, 101 (June 2000), 19–25.
Appendix
Chronology of Victorian Wars
1837–38 Canadian Rebellion
1839–42 First Afghan War
1839–42 First China (Opium) War
1843 Conquest of Scinde
1843 Gwalior Campaign
1845–46 First Sikh War
1846–47 First Maori War
1846–47 Seventh Kaffir (Cape Frontier) War
1848–49 Second Sikh War
1850–53 Eighth Kaffir (Cape Frontier) War
1852–53 Second Burma War
1852 Black Mountain Expedition
1854–56 Crimean War
1856–57 Persian War
1856–57 Second China (Arrow) War
1857–58 Indian Mutiny
1858 Sittana Expedition
1860 Third China War
1860–61 Second Maori War
1861 Sikkim Expedition
1862–64 Taiping Rebellion
1863 Ambeyla Expedition
1863–66 Third Maori War
1864–66 Bhutan Expedition
1865–66 Jamaican Insurrection
1866 Fenian Raids into Canada
1867–68 Abyssinian Expedition
1868 Black Mountain Expedition
1870 Red River Expedition
1871–72 Lushai Expedition
1873–74 Second Ashanti (Asante) War
1874–75 Duffla Expedition
1875–1876 Perak Campaign
1877–78 Jowakhi Expedition
1877–78 Ninth Kaffir (Cape Frontier) War
1878 Dispatch of Indian Troops to
Malta and Cyprus
1878–80 Second Afghan War
1879 Zulu War
1879–80 Sekhkhuni Campaign
1880–81 First South African (Anglo-Transvaal) War
1882 Conquest of Egypt
1884–85 Bechuanaland Field Force
1884–85 Suakin Expeditions
1884–85 Gordon Relief Expedition
1885 Riel’s Rebellion
1885–86 Third Burma War
1888 Sikkim Expedition
1888 Hazara and Black Mountain Expeditions
1888 Zululand Rebellion
1889–90 Chin-Lushai Expedition
1891 Manipur Expedition
1891 Miranzai Expedition
1891 Hunza and Nagar Expedition
1892 Tambi Expedition
1892–93 Chin Hills Expedition
1893 Matabeleland Rebellion
1894 Gambia Expedition
1894–95 Mahsud Expedition
1895 Relief of Chitral
1895–1900 Third Ashanti (Asante) War
1896 Mashonaland Rebellion
1896–98 Reconquest of the Sudan
1896–97 Bechuanaland Expedition
1897 Benin Expedition
1897–98 Tochi, Malakand, Buner, Mohmand and Tirah Expeditions
1898 Fashoda Incident
1898 Sierra Leone Hut Tax Rebellion
1899–1902 Second South African (Anglo-Boer) War
1900 Boxer Rebellion
1901–4 Somaliland Campaign
Notes
Introduction
1. Ian F W Beckett, ‘Another British Way in Warfare: Charles Callwell and Small Wars’, in Ian F W Beckett, ed., Victorians at War: New Perspectives (Society for Army Historical Research Special Publication No. 16, 2007), pp. 89–102.
2. Hove, Wolseley Mss, W/P 3/17, Wolseley to wife, 16 Dec. 1873.
3. Ian F W Beckett, ‘Command in the Late Victorian Army’, in Gary Sheffield, ed., Leadership and Command: The Anglo-American Experience since 1861 (London: Brassey’s, 1997), pp. 37–56; idem, ‘Command in South Africa’, in Peter Boyden, Alan Guy and Marion Harding, eds, Ashes and Blood: The British Army in South Africa, 1795-1914 (London: National Army Museum, 1999), pp. 60–71.
4. G W Steevens, With Kitchener to Khartoum (Edinburgh: Blackwood & Sons, 1898), p. 22.
5. General Sir Neville Lyttelton, Eighty Years Soldiering, Politics, Games (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1927), p. 212.
6. Royal Archives, VIC/MAIN/N/41/78, Hardinge to the Queen, 12 Feb. 1885.
7. Royal Archives, Cambridge Mss, VIC/AddE/1/8596, Stanley to Cambridge, 20 Mar. 1879.
8. E N Bennett, The Downfall of the Dervishes: Being a Sketch of the Final Sudan Campaign of 1898 (Methuen, London, 1898), p. 70.
9. Ian F W Beckett, ‘Victorians at War: War, Technology and Change’, Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research, 81 (2003), 330–38; idem, The Victorians at War (London: Hambledon, 2003), p. 180.
10. Brian Bond, The Victorian Army and the Staff College (London: Eyre Methuen, 1972), p. 29.
11. Beckett, Victorians at War, pp. 8–9.
12. Narrative of the Field Operations connected with the Zulu War of 1879 (London: War Office Intelligence Branch, 1881), pp. 152–54.
13. Earl of Midleton, Records and Recollections, 1856–1939 (London: John Murray, 1939), p. 120.
14. Beckett, Victorians at War p. 11.
Chapter 1 Garnet Wolseley
1. Field Marshal Viscount Wolseley, The Story of a Soldier’s Life (London: Archibald Constable & Co., 1903), I, p. 135.
2. Halik Kochanski, Sir Garnet Wolseley: Victorian Hero (London: Hambledon Press, 1999), pp. 1–5.
3. Wolseley, Story of a Soldier’s Life, I, p. 55.
4. Byron Farwell, Eminent Victorian Soldiers: Seekers of Glory (New York: Viking, 1985), pp. 194–96.
5. Charles Rathbone Low, General Lord Wolseley (of Cairo): A Memoir (London: Richard Bentley & Son, 1883), p. 25.
6. Ibid., pp. 27–28.
7. Kochanski, Wolseley, pp. 20–24.
8. Low, General Lord Wolseley, pp. 119–24.
9. Ibid., pp. 140–46.
10. The arme blanche was the doctrinal belief in using mounted cavalry as an offensive weapon. The impetus of the mounted charge was believed to overcome modern breech-loading rifles and machine-guns. It was a deriva
tive of offensive doctrine of European military institutions of the period 1870–1914.
11. Henry Havelock and George Denison wrote extensively on the use of cavalry on the modern battlefield and were proponents of the use of mounted infantry, which was the antithesis to the arme blanche school of this time (1870–1914). Mounted infantry doctrine determined that horses were best relegated to transportation of soldiers to the battlefield and not as offensive weapons themselves: essentially a means of transportation to the battlefield. Dension’s book, Modern Cavalry, appeared in 1896.
12. Jay Luvaas, The Military Legacy of the Civil War: The European Inheritance (University Press of Kansas, 1959), pp. 110–12.
13. For a more comprehensive study of the ‘Wolseley Ring’ see Leigh Maxwell, The Ashanti Ring: Sir Garnet Wolseley’s Campaigns, 1870–1882 (London: Leo Cooper, 1985) and Ian F W Beckett, ‘Wolseley and the Ring’, Soldiers of the Queen, 69 (1992), 14–25.
14. Brian Bond, The Victorian Army and the Staff College 1854–1914 (London: Eyre Methuen, 1972), pp. 117–19.
15. Edward M. Spiers, The Late Victorian Army, 1868–902 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992), pp. 153–54.
16. Major General Sir Garnet Wolseley, ‘England as a Military Power in 1854 and in 1878’ and ‘Long and Short Service,’ Nineteenth Century 111 (March 1878), 433–56 and IX (March 1881), 558–72, cited from, Spiers, Late Victorian Army, p. 154.
17. Spiers, Late Victorian Army, p. 157.
18. Shelford Bidwell and Dominick Graham, Fire-Power: British Army Weapons and Theories of War 1904–1945 (London: Allen & Unwin, 1982), pp. 7–10.
19. National Library of Scotland, Blackwood Mss, MS 4315 and 4403, Brackenbury to Blackwood, 27 November 1874 and 11 October 1880, cited from, Spiers, Late Victorian Army, p. 158.
20. Low, General Lord Wolseley, p. 239.
21. Wolseley Journal, ‘Memorandum by Wolseley’ (printed extract), August 1872, cited from Henry Brackenbury, The Ashanti War: A Narrative (Edinburgh: William Blackwood & Sons, 1874), pp. 117–23.
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