Concentration Camps

In popular perception concentration camps are synonymous with genocide. In fact, the great majority of concentration camps were not sites of genocide. This book shows they were a global phenomenon, with an astonishing range of functions. It asks why they were invented in the twentieth century, not before. Their origin on the colonial periphery raises questions about continuities from imperial warfare to political repression under authoritarian dictatorships and to the contemporary world. Concentration camps are a transnational phenomenon, emerging in learning processes simultaneously (within and between imperial spheres-Britain, Spain, the USA, and Germany around 1900), and diachronically (from then to the First World War, the Gulag, and Nazi camps). Discussing concentration camps not solely in the context of Auschwitz and genocide sometimes encounters strong emotional resistance; the notion that camps had functions other than mass murder seems like breaching a taboo. This sense of shock will spark curiosity for the argument that camps existed (and exist) under a variety of regimes, including at times democratic powers. They are often concomitant with empire-building by revolutionary dictatorships, used as sites of performative violence, and also as central elements of utopian schemes of social and racial transformation. The book contextualizes them with other carceral institutions, and integrates the perspective of perpetrators and the victims. It will reshape the way we think about concentration camps as part of modern civilization, past and present.