The Dark Side of a Beloved Victorian Writer
When the Doctor becomes the Disease.
The Illusion of Romantic Conquest
All conquerors glorify their victories, and gloss over the horror and human butchery of warfare. This was the point of my most recent book, Kings, Conquerors, Psychopaths: slaughter and the horrific aren’t the path that some kings, conquerors choose. They all do.
Because they all must. There is no way for one person to hold millions in subjugation except through broad, abject terror. All of the king’s men, in all countries, were never dashing knights and defenders of virtue. They were terrorist organizations, no different from the death squads in modern totalitarian régimes.
Even we freedom- and equality-loving Americans have not been exempt, and have done the same going back to the Puritans. The fact is, all tribes and nations have romanticized warfare, while censoring and denying the horrific, fundamental truth: Conquest is slaughter and theft against entire nations.
The Historical Whitewashers
Perhaps none, however, were more skilled at whitewashing than the Victorian English. Beginning with Elizabeth I, the ambitious, tiny country of England began invading the rest of the globe, and their grasping greed became a fervor under the matronly Victoria.
By the late 19th century, the minuscule island country controlled half of the world’s international trade, and by the early 20th, she controlled about 1/5 of the Earth’s lands, and 1/5 of her peoples. The British did this by the wholesale slaughter of native Americans in the New World, blowing men from guns in Asia, and dismembering Africans across the sub-Sahara.
The British in the Boer Wars
As well as by murdering children and women in South Africa in the second Boer War. England lost the First Boer War to the South African colonists. After gold and diamonds were subsequently discovered in the country, however, the British resumed their attacks with gusto.
And vengeance. In addition to simple greed, the English were also motivated by the desire to avenge themselves in the earlier embarrassment. Their retributions extended far off of the battlefield, as the British began imprisoning the families of Boer fighters. These confined non-combatants were provided with insufficient food, sanitation, and protection from the elements. Many died from disease and malnutrition. Worse, because the British took care to separate parents and siblings, many of the children died alone in fear and misery.
Lizzie van Zyl
The mascot for the Boer atrocity was 6 year-old Lizzie van Zyl, who wasted away in one of the British concentration camps. Emily Hobhouse was a tireless English welfare worker for the incarcerated Boers, and she sent the above picture back to England. In the photograph, it is hard to tell that Lizzie is even a child, but one can see her cradling a doll that Hobhouse had given her. The picture was received with outrage in England.
With the photograph, Hobhouse described Lizzie’s maltreatment by the medical staff in the camp:
Dr. Pern says the child was “quite an idiot.” Unhappily neither Dr. Pern nor the nurse could speak Dutch, and the child could speak no English; to me she could talk quite sensibly about her doll, and her desire that the other children shall have dolls like the one I brought her…
Mrs. Botha told one very pathetic story about Lizzie. She was in the hospital one day, probably visiting her own daughter, when the child began to cry very sadly, “Mother, Mother” she cried. “I want to go to Mother!” Mrs. Botha went up to her to comfort her and try to stop her heart-broken wailing and was just beginning to tell her she should soon see her mother when the nurse in charge broke in very crossly: “There, there, don’t trouble about that child, Mrs. Botha. The sooner we are rid of her the better. She is such a nuisance we are all longing to get rid of her.”
Lizzie died a few days later, just after her 7th birthday.
Blaming the Victim
Lizzie’s case demonstrates an important part of the whitewashing of atrocities by all warring nations: the victimizers blame the victims. To the British invaders, Lizzie was not a normal little girl, starving from lack of food and maternal warmth. She was sub-human, an irritation, and disposable. Lizzie herself was to be blamed for her suffering.
This same approach was taken by the many defenders of English actions in the War. Several books, articles, and tracts supporting the British efforts in South Africa were written by a Dr. Doyle, a physician who had served at Bloemfontein in the War. He responded to the picture of Lizzie by, of course, blaming the victims:
It is worthy of record that the portrait of an emaciated child has been circulated upon the Continent and in America as a proof positive of the horrors of the concentration system. It is only too probable that there are many emaciated children in the camps, for they usually arrive in that condition. This particular portrait however was, as I am credibly informed, taken by the British authorities on the occasion of the criminal trial of the mother for the ill-usage of the child. The incident is characteristic of the unscrupulous tactics which have been used from the beginning to poison the mind of the world against Great Britain.
Hobhouse took Doyle to task for his comments:
Doyle, on p. 106 of his recent pamphlet referring to this case, says he was “credibly informed that the portrait of the child was taken by the British authorities on the occasion of the criminal trial of the mother for ill-usage of the child.” It would be interesting to know where Dr. Doyle got this information; it is a serious thing to allege against an absent and defenseless woman. I notice Dr. Pern makes no mention of any such trial.
The Honored Whitewasher
Doyle was unfazed, and continued his impassioned support for King & Country. In part because of his defense of the British Empire in South Africa, in 1902 Edward VII knighted Doyle. This gave him the title for which he is known today:
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
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Excerpted from Kings, Conquerors, Psychopaths: From Alexander to Hitler to the Corporation.
“…the book’s scientific analysis, which spans Darwin’s concept of evolution to cutting-edge psychology, is a welcome addition to historical conversations…”
— Kirkus Reviews
