Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener - The Boer War

The Boer War

During the Second Boer War (1899–1902), Kitchener arrived with Lord Roberts on the RMS Dunottar Castle and the massive British reinforcements of December 1899. Officially holding the title of chief of staff, he was in practice a second-in-command, and commanded a much-criticised frontal assault at the Battle of Paardeberg in February 1900.

Following the defeat of the conventional Boer forces, Kitchener succeeded Roberts as overall commander in November 1900, and was promoted to a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George (GCMG) 29 November 1900. A reconciliatory peace treaty which Kitchener had negotiated with the Boer leaders failed in February 1901 due to British cabinet veto. Kitchener subsequently inherited and expanded the successful strategies devised by Roberts to force the Boer commandos to submit, including concentration camps and the scorched earth policy.

In a brutal campaign, these strategies removed civilian support from the Boers with a scorched earth policy of destroying Boer farms, slaughtering livestock, building blockhouses, and moving women, children and the elderly into concentration camps. Conditions in these camps, which had been conceived by Roberts as a form of control of the families whose farms he had destroyed, began to degenerate rapidly as the large influx of Boers outstripped the ability of the minuscule British force to cope. The camps lacked space, food, sanitation, medicine, and medical care, leading to rampant disease and a staggering 34.4% death rate for those Boers who entered. The biggest critic of the camps was the Englishwoman, humanitarian, and welfare worker Emily Hobhouse. Despite being largely rectified by late 1901, they led to wide opprobrium in Britain and Europe, and especially amongst South Africans.

The Treaty of Vereeniging was signed in 1902 following a tense six months. During this period Kitchener struggled against Sir Alfred Milner, the Governor of the Cape Colony, and the British government. Milner was a hard-line conservative and wanted forcibly to Anglicise the Afrikaans people (the Boers), and Milner and the British government wanted to assert victory by forcing the Boers to sign a humiliating peace treaty; Kitchener wanted a more generous compromise peace treaty that would recognize certain rights for the Afrikaners and promise future self-government. He even entertained a peace treaty proposed by Botha and the other Boer leaders that would have maintained the sovereignty of the South African Republican and the Orange Free State while requiring them to sign a perpetual treaty of alliance with the UK and grant major concessions to the UK such as equal rights for English with Dutch in their countries, voting rights for Uitlanders, and a customs and railway union with the Cape Colony and Natal, although he knew the government in the UK would reject the offer. The British cabinet rejected the offer. Eventually the British government decided the war had gone on long enough and sided with Kitchener against Milner. (Louis Botha, the Boer leader with whom Kitchener had negotiated his aborted peace treaty in 1901, became the first Prime Minister of the self-governing Union of South Africa in 1910. The treaty also agreed to pay for reconstruction following the end of hostilities. Six days later Kitchener, who had risen from major-general to the brevet rank of full general during the war, was created Viscount Kitchener, of Khartoum and of the Vaal in the Colony of Transvaal and of Aspall in the County of Suffolk.