Editorial

Abstract

As we bring the fifteenth volume to a close, there is conflict that is affecting Archaeology as a whole. Both Archaeology and History have become enmeshed in the Culture Wars that have been weaponized by the Right in America; where America leads, these days the UK appears to follow. The rumblings could be heard when, on a 2019 edition of BBC TV’s Question Time, Jacob Rees-Mogg spoke about the British concentration camps of the Boer War and said that the death rate was the same as it was in Glasgow at the time. He also spoke about the camps having been established to protect civilians during all-out war. Both he and his opponent, Grace Blakeley, showed a lack of specific knowledge: Ms Blakeley stated that concentration camps were invented by the British, when in fact they were first developed as ‘reconcentrados’ in the War of Cuban Independence as Spain tried to suppress the Cuban rebels. Both Britain and the USA subsequently adapted the idea to their own situations, and in all cases, the camps were appalling breaches of human rights. Rees-Mogg spoke as though there was a consistent mortality rate in the British camps, when in fact the rate varied considerably and dropped below mortality rates in British urban environments when they were taken out of military control and put under the Civil Service. However, for much of the existence of the camps, the death rate was considerably higher than in late Victorian Glasgow; it also ignores the terrible loss of life in the camps for the black population. Furthermore, both speakers missed the fact that the camps themselves were not the main crime against humanity. Rather, it was the scorched earth policy that made the camps a necessity. Rees-Mogg was correct to say that they were ‘put in the camps for their protection’ (BBC 2019, 00:21), but there would have been no need to provide facilities for the civilians if their farms had not been destroyed, their cattle slaughtered, and the waterholes poisoned. The point here is that history and archaeology are being used in current political debates but without due attention to the full historical picture. For Rees-Mogg, there were elements of the historical situation that could present the British Empire as an entity that made mistakes but which was fundamentally decent and benign – not a description that many Indian or Boer academics might accept. The full picture shows that while there was not a genocidal intent to the British camps in South Africa, the camps were nevertheless a crime against humanity, as was the scorched earth policy. As any other empire, the British Empire was coercive and met protest and dissent with violence – it was certainly not benign. Rees-Mogg was using history to support his conservative world view, but he was not prepared to consider the parts of history that did not fit his chosen narrative. More recently, statues have come to the fore, and there has been a spate of statue removals or non-removals. Statues have become politicized, and attitudes towards the situation vary. Some see the removal of statues as an attempt to erase history (though it is not clear how removing a statue removes the historical records about that person), others JOURNAL OF CONFLICT ARCHAEOLOGY 2020, VOL. 15, NO. 3, 171–175 https://doi.org/10.1080/15740773.2020.1985913