Daily quote by Second Boer War

• During the Philippine-American War, the United States built a concentration camp on the island of Marinduque. Concentration camps were invented, however, by the British — specifically by Lord Kitchener, who established the first during the Second Boer War (1899-1902). The conflict had evolved into an insurgency pitting Boer ‘commandos’ against regular British troops. Kitchener responded by ordering that all non-combatant Boers should be ‘concentrated’ within specially created camps — partly to guarantee their safety as he initiated a ‘scorched-earth’ policy in the Transvaal and Cape Colony, but also to deny Boer guerrillas the ‘water’ in which they ‘swam’. Although Kitchener was a notably tough general, he was no monster. But the concentration camps were run incompetently: 28,000 of the Boer inmates died in epidemics, leading to scandal, enquiries and the discontinuation of a bad policy.
  • Simon Sebag Montefiore, Monsters: History's Most Evil Men and Women (2009), p. 216