Who invented concentration camps?

Question

So far as I know it was the British in their war to suppress Afrikaner independence near the end of Queen Victoria's reign.

Then the Third Reich revived and applied the idea in the 'thirties. Then after WW2 the British recovering Malaya from the defeated Japanese sought to restore colonial rule and I think they built concentration camps to pursue this. Did they perhaps give them some euphemistic name?

Then Mao Tse Tung developed "re-education camps" in China. Then the US in its attempt to prevent Vietnamese independence built "strategic hamlets." Today we see people held without trial or even access to lawyers at Guantanamo Bay. Are all these examples analogs of the concentration camps where the British kept the Boers in isolation? Or is there some significant difference?

Was the practice known prior to the Boer War? Winston Churchill was a war correspondent at the time - did he comment on it?

Answer 1

The English term "concentration camp" was first used to describe camps operated by the British in South Africa during the 1899-1902 Second Boer War. Allegedly conceived as a form of humanitarian aid to the families whose farms had been destroyed in the fighting, the camps were used to confine and control large numbers of civilians as part of a Scorched Earth tactic.

The expression does not exist before this time, however the practice of interning a large group of troublesome people can be dated back to the time of the Assyrian Empire in the 1st century BCE.

Answer 2

Who Invented The Concentration Camp

Answer 3

It is not clear who invented the concentration camp - I think it was
probably the Romans; however, a more well-known example is the
"reconcentrados" of Imperial Spain, used to put down an uprising of the
Cubans in 1895 - 1898.

The British Army sent two observers to Cuba to evaluate the Spanish tactic.
One of these was Winston Churchill. Wonder if that's when he picked up
his fondness for cigars. So Kitchener was definitely aware of the tactic
and its use in Spain before the Second Anglo Boer War (1899 - 1902), in
which Britain used concentration camps.

There's a description of the Spanish camps here, made by US Senator
Redfield Proctor. It appears in Clara Barton's THE RED CROSS,
entitled 'Concentration Camps of Cuba 1895-1898'.

http://www.amigospais-guaracabuya.org/oagld003.php

As you can see the Spanish reconcentrados (that means "reconcentrating place")
exhibit the sinister morphology of the concentration camp - the barbed wire,
the watch towers, the location near rail junctions, interned civilians, guards,
ditches...

You can see the effect of the Spanish camps here:

http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/reconcentrado.htm

Since 1895 is definitely before 1899 it seems that the dishonour for
inventing concentration camps belongs to our Spanish cousins. The Spanish
camps killed far more people than the British camps; the Havana camp alone
killed 50,000 people; nearly twice as many victims as the 28,000 Boer
deaths that concern us so much today. It is estimated the Spanish camps
killed 100,000 - 300,000 people in total. Here is Castro addressing Pope John Paul:

"Under extremely difficult conditions, Cuba was able to
constitute a nation. It had to fight alone for its independence with
unsurmountable heroism and, exactly 100 years ago, it
suffered a real holocaust in the concentration camps were a
large part of its population perished, mostly old men, women
and children; a crime whose monstrosity is not diminished by
the fact that it has been forgotten by humanity's conscience.
As a son of Poland and a witness of Oswiecim, you can
understand this better than anyone."

Answer 4

The term was first used to describe camps operated by the British in South Africa during the 1899-1902 Second Boer War. The word internment may also be used.

Answer 5

I think the Boer war was the first time the term was used and the practice formalized. But it was part of a long history of efforts on the part of great powers to control and pacify potentially hostile populations dating back to Babylon and Assyria.

Answer 6

The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed. defines concentration camp as

a camp where non-combatants of a district are accommodated, such as those instituted by Lord Kitchener during the South African war of 1899-1902; one for the internment of political prisoners, foreign nationals, etc., esp. as organized by the Nazi regime in Germany before and during the war of 1939-45
The English term "concentration camp" was first used to describe camps operated by the British in South Africa during the 1899-1902 Second Boer War. Allegedly conceived as a form of humanitarian aid to the families whose farms had been destroyed in the fighting, the camps were used to confine and control large numbers of civilians as part of a Scorched Earth tactic. A report after the war stated that 27,927 Boers (of whom 22,074 were children under 16) and 14,154 black Africans died as a result of diseases developed due to overcrowding, inadequate diets and poor sanitation in the camps. In all, about 25% of the Boer inmates and 12% of the black African inmates died. The term "concentration camp" was coined at this time to signify the "concentration" of a large number of people in one place, and was used to describe both the camps in South Africa (1899-1902) and those established by the Spanish to support a similar anti-insurgency campaign in Cuba (circa 1895-1898 [1]), although at least some Spanish sources disagree with the comparison [2].

Use of the word concentration comes from the idea of concentrating a group of people who are in some way undesirable in one place, where they can be watched by those who incarcerated them. For example, in a time of insurgency, potential supporters of the insurgents are placed where they cannot provide them with supplies or information.

The term concentration camp lost some of its original meaning after Nazi concentration camps were discovered, and has ever since been understood to refer to a place of mistreatment, starvation, forced labour, and murder. The expression since then has only been used in this extremely pejorative sense; no government or organization has used it to describe its own facilities, using instead terms such as internment camp, resettlement camp, detention facility, etc, regardless of the actual circumstances of the camp, which can vary a great deal.
This and more you can find in Vikpedia
More about concentration camps in the 20th century you will find here:
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/GERconcentration.htm

Answer 7

http://h2g2.com/entry/A2893638/conversation/view/F1865508/T8157427