Talk:Second Boer War/Archive 1

message: How does one officially dispute the neutrality of an article?  This article is clearly biased, and not only that, it ends with a philosophical/religious thesis, meandering down an ally about St Paul! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 4.248.253.168 (talk • contribs)  00:36, 1 October 2004  (UTC)
:It is hard to stay neutral in an article of this nature. This war has two sides and a lot of South African problems (pass cultural hatred) stems from this war. I agree we must stay neutral in writing of this article but the truth must be revelled before forgiving can happen. I am a child of colonialism and must not brush this under the carpet because I don’t like what my forefathers did.
--Jcw69 09:26, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Neutrality 

message: I have tried to merge the two sections without attempting to resolve the POV dispute.  Whatever the arguments are I don't think that the article really needs to have two sections on the same thing.  I have also eliminated a good deal of what I felt did not add any information on the subject.
"The temptation of riches has led to many conflicts in the world, and this remained true in the south of Africa." is a nice piece of writing but IMHO not appropriate for an encyclopedia with its high information density.
As far as the other debates on this page here is my two-pence worth.
* "It can easily be seen how Milner had no desire for a peaceful solution to the problems in South Africa.".  I can't easily see it from what is in the article and it should be removed unless someone adds something to make it easily seen.
* "several key British colonial leaders favoured a war with the Boer republics". This is a bit that I shrunk.  Even so - few people favour war on its own, they favour annexation of another country, replacing Saddam or whatever - a war is usually a means and not an end.  It should say what their real goal was. And if there were several powerful people who held this view, then name more than one - presumably Rhodes and Beit and maybe some more.
* "He believed that the British were natural rulers..." I would shorten this sentence. IMHO this is probably correct since most "middle class" Victorian Britons took this view but the back half of the sentence doesn't add anything except a moral judgement on Milner.
* "to thwart an attempt made by the Transvaal Republic to link up with German South West Africa.".  What does "link up" mean? Join the German empire? Exchange Christmas cards?  It should be clarified.
* The concentration camps issue is an important part of the history of the second Boer war and its political consequences; and more could be added. Although they have particularly horrific  connotations to us now, this was not the case when they were first created, only once conditions deteriorated (and the public became aware of it). The article correctly bears much of this out. However it contains verbage which I haven't removed - e.g. "The tragedy of the concentration camps can be described in the toll it took on the people held within them." - well how else would they be tragic? Its nice to see the figures and the comparison with military casualties but I would like to see a description of why people died too, and also the political fallout.
* There is a lot of hyperbole still. "inept" is fine when describing General Buller, but "hopelessly inept" is hyperbole; The difference is that Buller was out of his depth fighting the Boers with their modern weapons and tactics but must have been competent enough in other areas to have reached a general. Ditto "amazing foresight", there are plenty of historical precedents for Kruger and his contempories to have known about for people not to to be amazed, so I think amazing is too strong->"considerable foresight", "famous Bushveldt Carbaniers" - not as famous as Elvis Presley->"Bushveldt Carbaniers" etc. 
* Did the war affect the non-European population? If so then that deserves mentioning.  --Jll 10:33, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Collapsing the two Second Boer War sections together 

message: I was the one who disputed the neutrality of this article, it now has, in my opinion, a neutral POV, therefore, unless someone objects, I will remove the POV warning.--Derinrob99 07:36, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: NPOV

message: Remember when Prince Harry wore an SS uniform, and the English made such a row about it, and saying that he should go to Auschwitz and the concentration camps? I said to my mom about how hypocritical it was, that the English were making such a deal about something that they invented. Thinking about it now, I should have written in to the newspapers who went on about the concentration camps and said that the English in general should be silent about the issue of concentration camps. As a people in general, they are in no right to condemn another nation for using concentration camps, when they used them themselves, and for that, the lives of 40,000 people (almost 50% of that were children under 16) were ended. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 62.56.54.56 (talk • contribs) 17:30, 29 June 2005  (UTC)
:I am British and I think that the British use of concentration camps was absolutely disgraceful. But I don't understand how you feel that the modern Britain should be silent about this particular issue, just because it comes up in the British history (over a century ago). I think even the British press and public back then didn't like what was going on and did condemn the use of them, which is probably a factor in why they havn't been used since, by the British. Whatever country you are from, your history will still have some pretty bad things in which you would probably want to change, if you could. If those same bad things happened in the future, you would still speak out about it, because you think its wrong, regardless of whether your country did it in the past or not. --84.43.56.240 16:13, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: concentration camps 

message: There is a mention of POWs going "overseas".  Yet there is no mention of where they were sent.  There should be, with a link to the place(s), and footnote to back it up.  Also, Canada and other countries, that belonged to Commonwealth, sent troops, and should be mentioned.  Canada is mentioned in the [World War I] article, so I don't see the difference.  Hopefully, somebody already has the knowledge to put something up about this.  If not, I'll do some research, and put something up in the future.  --rob 4 July 2005 18:51 (UTC)
:I put this in.  The comments about POWs is still sparse.  Ideally, more complete stats about POWs, with footnotes is needed.  I am concerned some pre-existing text "Of the 28,000 Boer men captured as prisoners of war, 25,630 were sent overseas.".  There's no footnote for this.  I doubt this statement is true, since I suspect Natal had more than 2370 POWs (not civilians).  I would not count Natal as "overseas" (I thought it was a mainland province of South Africa, then a colony).  But, honestly, I don't know, and so didn't change touch that.  I think the text in question intendend just to say the 25,630 POWs were taken further away from where they lived, but not necessarily "overseas", in the literal sense.  --rob 03:23, 19 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Overseas and non-British involvement