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.
South African Wars (1879–1915)
General Herbert Kitchener was the famed British military leader, sent out by Milner to complete the defeat of the Boers in 1899. Unable to defeat the Boer commandos and their guerilla warfare tactics, Kitchener resorted to systematic burning of Boer civilian settlements and homesteads, as "Scorched Earth" tactics to initiate a famine. He also made large-scale use of concentration camps for the Boer civilian population. Roughly 26,370 Boer women and children (81% were children) died in these concentration camps, and roughly 20,000 Black African prisoners died in similar camps. However, in 1902 they eventually succeeded in pressurising the Boer commandos to surrender and sign the Treaty of Vereeniging.