a universal symbol of evil over the past 40 years, some of the complexities of the
history of concentration camps were forgotten.
Indeed, the fact that the existence of concentration camps pre-dates the Third
Reich – and the fact that the Nazis didn’t invent the term – means the idea that we
should be outraged purely by its use today is ahistorical. It tells us more about the
resonances the phrase has today, which are very different from those it would have
had in earlier times and in other places.
As is the case with all contested concepts, the precise origins of the term
‘concentration camp’ are debated. The Spanish in Cuba, and the Americans in
the Philippines, created so-called ‘zones of concentration’ at the end of the 19th
centur y. Despite the similarit y in names, however, we should be cautious. A ndreas
Stucki, a historian at the University of Bern, argued in the Journal of Genocide
Research in 2018 that these two cases have been incorporated into the wider history
of the subject more because of semantics than the nature of what actually hap-
pened. In the case of Cuba, large numbers of people were relocated from what was
considered to be a guerrilla war zone. Famous images showing starving, ill-cared-
for people seem to reflect modern concepts of concentration camps, yet these were
not really camps but, rather, regions to which civilians had been relocated, and we
would be hard-pressed to fit them into the same historical categor y.
Historians have noted that the British created ‘concentration camps’ in South
Africa during the Second Boer War (1899–1902). They were used as a means of iso-
lating those Boer civilians believed by the British to be aiding the guerrilla fighters- providing them with supplies and food, and helping them melt back into the gen-
eral population when they weren’t fighting. The camps in South Africa, in which
conditions were shocking and an estimated 48,000 died, have similarities with
those created less than two decades later for civilian refugees and internees during
the First World War. The latter facilities weren’t called ‘concentration camps’ – ex-
cept in the sarcastic comments of inmates – but are particularly worthy of mention
because they mark the first large-scale internment of civilians on European soil.
This speaks of a kind of state paranoia, and of a fear of foreigners owing
allegiance to a different state – both of which have become commonplace today but
which, at the start of the 20th century, were new phenomena. These camps are also
interesting because they normalised the idea of statelessness: of abandoning people
so that they no longer have any state protection. In this sense, there’s a case to be
made that the Soviet Gulag and other camps created by communist regimes might
also justifiably be called concentration camps. So, too, might British camps in
Kenya set up to hold Mau Mau ‘rebels’ in the 1950s, and camps set up under South
American dictatorships in the 20th century.
Other historical examples of similar camps also fit
this pattern. The internment of Italians and German-
Jewish refugees in Britain at the start of the Second
World War is one instance; an even clearer case is the
internment of Japanese-Americans during the same
conflict. These latter were people who had done
GE
TT
Y^ I
MA
GE
S
Boer families in
a British camp in
Eshowe, in what is
now KwaZulu-Natal,
South Africa, in 1900
during the Second
Boer War. Held in
appalling conditions
at the camp, many
people diedÆ
First World War camps marked
the first large-scale internment
of civilians on European soil