Boer War Books. GX1, Leitz Elmar-V 65mm

The Anglo Boer War of 1899-1902 was the last major conflict to be squeezed into the 19th century before it ended. I have long had an interest in this piece of history because it was such an important war for both the future of Britain and South Africa and shaped both countries so deeply:
In some ways it was the last "gentleman's war". Yes, compared to WW1 and 2, it was quite a "polite", chivalrous affair, but it was not short of bloodletting and great cruelty on both sides.
The world heard the term "concentration camp" for the first time.
The Black Man's political role was defined in South Africa for almost the next century. It was decided at the Treaty of Vereeniging in 1902 which concluded the war, that the black people who formed the majority of South Africa's population were to be entirely excluded from the post war political process and to be treated as an inexhaustible pool of cheap labor.
The history of how the British burned farms and shipped Boer women and children to camps (there to die of illnesses which could have been controlled), is heartrending. It spawned a nationalism and hatred which lasts to this day.
One wants to side with the Boers in this fight, a rag-tag collection of farmers of Northern European descent, relocated to the southern tip of Africa and, as has been written, "equipped with inconveniently modern rifles", standing against the might of the entire British Empire. But the truth is that they're not particularly sympathetic characters in this drama or the one of statehood which followed; one just has to read of what they did to the indigenous black people who sided with the British during the war, and for the subsequent 92 years...
The Boer War was a rehearsal for the real carnage of 1914-1918 with pretty-much all the same British officers in command - at least all those that the Boers hadn't killed. Germany supplied the Boers with those "modern rifles" and watched from the sidelines to see how devastatingly effective they were in action. The knowledge gained was put to use in the trenches of Western Europe less than 20 years later.
Today's Blip is of my little library on this subject.