The point is often made, for whatever purpose, that Britain invented the concentration camp in the Boer War, but usually it is wrongly equated with Nazi death camps.
Britain’s general intention in the Boer War was to remove women and children, notably from areas subjected to the scorched earth policy, so that they could not provide support to the Boer guerrillas. This was rather more successful than originally envisaged as disease and neglect, whether through contempt for the internees and or bad administration, killed many of them. That, while deserving of condemnation, was not the intention of the policy, whereas in Nazi death camps (as distinct from Nazi concentration camps) it was.
Thinking that the same term used by different nations at different times necessarily means the same thing makes about as much sense as thinking that the German Democratic Republic was equivalent to the democratic republic in the United States, at any point in US history.
Oddly enough, people who castigated Britain for inventing concentration camps often tended to be the sort who castigated America for being a failure as a democratic republic while not bothering to get wound up about the absence of both democratic and republican elements in the German Democratic Republic.
I am not defending the appalling suffering and needless deaths Britain imposed upon Boer women and children in the concentration camps, but equating those camps with Nazi death camps is ridiculous.
On a different aspect, it is debatable whether the Boer War concentration camps would now fall under war crimes or crimes against humanity. Either way, Britain’s conduct was appalling. But not evil like Nazi death camps.
