Scorched Earth by Fransjohan Pretorius (Ed)

Scorched Earth

A Centenary Review of the Anglo-Boer War Concentration Camps and Destruction Policies

Bibliographic Specifications

• Title: Scorched Earth
• Editor: Prof. Fransjohan Pretorius
• Publisher: Human & Rousseau (Pty) Ltd, Cape Town
• Publication Date: 2001
• ISBN-10: 0798141921
• ISBN-13: 9780798141925
• Edition Details: True First Edition, Centenary Release
• Binding: Original publisher's cloth-bound hardcover with pictorial dust jacket
• Physical Format: Large Octavo / Quarto, 296 pages. Extensively enhanced with historical battlefield photographs, camp diagrams, and witness profiles.

Official Condition Report

• The Book: Very Good Plus (VG+)
• Exterior: Hardcover cloth boards are uniform and structurally square. The lower outer extremities show slight edge-chipping and minor corner bumping from standard shelf placement, but remain highly resilient.
• Interior: Binding is strong and pristine. Text pages are crisp, bright white, and clean throughout. Features a neat, contemporary handwritten gift inscription on the front flyleaf page, indicating a well-maintained provenance.
• The Dust Jacket: Very Good (VG)
• Condition: Complete with rich, unfaded cover colors. Shows very limited signs of shelf wear and minor wrinkling along the extreme upper edges. Completely free of major paper loss, stains, or tearing.
• Preservation: Now archival-grade protected inside a clear, removable cellophane cover sleeve.

Synopsis & Historical Significance

Published in 2001 to mark the centenary of the conflict, Scorched Earth is an authoritative, sober re-examination of the most controversial military strategy implemented by British forces during the Anglo-Boer War.

Edited by Prof. Fransjohan Pretorius, this volume brings together an elite panel of historians to investigate the systematic burning of Boer homesteads and the forced internment of Boer and Black civilians into separate concentration camp networks. Rather than repeating old myths, this centenary review utilizes primary data to provide a objective, definitive account of the trauma that reshaped the demographic and political landscape of South Africa for a century.

Editor Profile: Prof. Fransjohan Pretorius

Professor Fransjohan Pretorius is an emeritus professor of history at the University of Pretoria and stands undisputed as one of the world's absolute leading authorities on the Anglo-Boer War. He is a multi-award-winning author and researcher whose pioneering work on the daily lives of the Boer commandos (Kommandolewe) revolutionized modern understandings of the conflict.