Emily Hobhouse's Second Mission: The 1903 War After the War
The Story of South Africa: Empire, Apartheid, and Transformation — Fexingo HistoryPlay episode
Show notes
In 1903, two years after the Treaty of Vereeniging, Emily Hobhouse returned to South Africa to face the wreckage of the Boer War's concentration camps. The British had burned farms, uprooted families, and interned thousands of Boer women and children—and Black Africans too, though their suffering was long ignored. Hobhouse, the Cornish activist who'd exposed the camps' horrors to the world, came back to distribute aid, confront officials, and document what she saw. Her report, 'The Brunt of the War', revealed the camps' death toll—over 26,000 Boer women and children, and at least 20,000 Black Africans—and her work complicated the myth of a 'gentle war'. This episode looks at her second mission: the orphans she tried to save, the officials who obstructed her, and the legacy of a woman who refused to look away. It's a story about the long aftermath of war, the politics of memory, and what it means to bear witness. #EmilyHobhouse #BoerWar #ConcentrationCamps #SouthAfrica #TheBruntOfTheWar #Orphans #BlackAfrican #TreatyOfVereeniging #BritishEmpire #HumanitarianAid #WarAftermath #20thCentury #WomenInHistory #Protest #History #FexingoHistory #SouthernAfrica #WarCrimes Keep every episode free: buymeacoffee.com/fexingo
