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The Boer war might count, I'm sure there are other examples > The British response to guerrilla warfare was to set up complex nets of blockhouses, strongpoints
by eigenket 5y ago
The Boer war might count, I'm sure there are other examples
> The British response to guerrilla warfare was to set up complex nets of blockhouses, strongpoints, and barbed wire fences, partitioning off the entire conquered territory. In addition, civilian farms and livestock were destroyed as part of a scorched earth policy. Survivors were forced into concentration camps. Very large proportions of these civilians died of hunger and disease, especially the children
- azalemeth 5y agoMy grandmother's parents were in one of these concentration camps. She told stories about how the British used to arrive periodically to kill all the chickens and lifestock and try to maximise famine, and how her dad was a gun-runner for the Boers. She later emigrated to London (!).
- hermitcrab 5y agoAccounts of the Boer concentration camps are horrific. And the scorched earth policy was brutal. I don't think it was a deliberate attempt to exterminate the Boers though. Just to subjugate them enough so the British empire could take what it wanted.
- ArkanExplorer 5y agoThe lesson of genocide appears to be: carry it out in the most boring way possible (starvation, exposure, disease, suppression of fertility) and people will forget about it or never realize it occurred. As soon as you introduce novel technologies or extensive record-keeping, your actions remain cemented in history and popular consciousness.