Scorched earth
A scorched-earth policy is a military strategy that aims to destroy anything that might be useful to the enemy while it is advancing through or withdrawing from a location. Any assets that could be used by the enemy may be targeted, for example food sources, water supplies, transportation, communications, industrial resources, and even the locale's people themselves.
Second Boer War
The British saw their tactics of Scorched Earth and concentration camps as ways of controlling the Boers by "eliminating the decay and deterioration of the national character" and as a way of reinforcing the values, through subjugation of citizens and the destruction of the means for the Boer soldiers to continue fighting, of British society that the Boers were rejecting by engaging in a war against the Commonwealth. The Boers saw them as a British ploy designed to coerce the Boer soldiers into a surrender. With approximately 10% of their population confined, many of whom were women and children, the Boers suggested that the British were forcing the Afrikaners to return to their homes and protect their families who were in danger of internment.