Narratives of Suffering and National Identity in Boer war South Africa‪.‬

The poor conditions in the concentration camps run by the British for Afrikaner women and children and African civilians during the Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902 resulted in thousands of deaths due to disease and poor sanitary conditions. During and after the war, Emily Hobhouse, the English reformer whose investigations prompted changes in the camps, gathered and published first-person accounts by women in the white camps, telling of their ordeals. The narratives testify to the complicated racial and class position of Boer women and Boer culture in relation to Europe as well as in relation to Africans. Although Hobhouse's project in making public the narratives of Boer women's suffering was initially an anti-war one, an effort to persuade her own government to change the policies that were producing such appalling conditions for Afrikaner noncombatants, the narratives were quickly absorbed into a more partisan effort to rally Boer nationalist sentiments. **********