If the American revolution had happened 100 years later it would have looked like the Boer war. That's the war where the British used barbed wire and the machine gun to invent the concentration camp.
> If the American revolution had happened 100 years later it would have looked like the Boer war.
Smart. It would have. That is indeed how you fight an insurgency.
Not sure how new it really is though. Compare and contrast to the Harrying of the North.
> to invent the concentration camp
I hear they borrowed the idea from the Spanish in Cuba.
Compared to alternatives, it was supposed to be more humane: "Get the civilians out of harm's way (and keep them from aiding the guerillas without killing them)".
It wasn't until the Nazi extermination camps of WW2 that the phrase "concentration camp" took on such negative valences.
Granted people did die in concentration camps, but the deaths were of things like cholera -- the same diseases that would run through army camps. Arguably we still have them today, under the new name "refugee camp".
> the Boer war
It shouldn't be left out that the British had a decent case for moral high ground in that war. The Boers were religious hyper-conservatives who believed God had given them a right to Black slaves, whereas the British had banned slavery throughout the Empire and were going to some expense to enforce this.
