Jane Meiring

Against the Tide: a Story of Women in War Jane Meiring

Women in the Second Anglo-Boer War demonstrated great heroism. Theirs is a remarkable history derived from diaries and letters written during their incarceration in concentration camps. Against the Tide illustrates the fortitude of the brave Dutch women and children in their struggle against impossible circumstances in the attempt to save their country from the stronger forces of the British usurper.

Not many today are aware that the British government established concentration camps to imprison innocent civilians nearly forty years before Germany did so. Their intention was to cause a quick surrender by such intimidation. However, the imprisoned Dutch women watching their children dying in these camps, developed a deep animosity toward their aggressors, and contrary to expectations, it only spurred the women on to more defiance that then strengthened the men's resolve to keep fighting.

Among the few British sympathizers, Emily Hobhouse, a tenacious, justice-seeking English woman, spearheaded a major public awareness of the untenable conditions in the camps. She defied her own government in a risky plan to help ease the suffering of the captive women and children in South Africa.

The Boer women demonstrated many acts of bravery including daring espionage and actually fighting alongside their men against overwhelming enemy forces. And after the war was lost, they played an active role, in forging a new language and a new Afrikaner nation from the embers of that tragedy.