ABSTRACT
The British won the ‘Boer War', but had the Boers really lost? 1 They were given £3 million to repair and restore their properties devastated by the British army's scorched-earth policies, and were also offered interest-free loans. No compensation was offered for the deaths of approximately 30,000 Afrikaaner women and children in the concentration camps and about 7,000 on the battlefield; or for the c.18,000 Africans who died in the camps set up for them, plus the untold number who died in the fighting. 2 The Treaty of Vereeniging (May 1902) incorporated the Transvaal and the Orange Free State into British-controlled South Africa: they were soon declared selfgoverning Crown colonies with their Black populations unenfranchised. A prime concern of Milner, the British High Commissioner and Cape Governor, an avowed and articulate racist, was to ensure that all his domain was safe for the gold and diamond mine magnates and for capitalist investors. 3
