A Shared Malady: Concentration Camps in the British, Spanish, American and German Empires

Abstract

A Shared Malady: Concentration Camps in the British, Spanish, American and German EmpiresThis article explores the parameters and conduits of interimperial connections at the turn of the nineteenth century by focusing on the development of colonial concentration camps and the discourse that surrounded them. Print media; published books and official documents; direct correspondence; the movement of officials and their critics; foreign military attaches; and institutionalised transnational military and medical knowledge all contributed to continuities of practice across and between the British, Spanish, American and German empires. Comparable practices of civilian concentration and the management of camps emerged as a result of direct learning, and of structural and institutional similarities that were themselves the products of an integrated western imperial formation. Similar attitudes about race and violence, and a shared conviction in the superiority of «western» civilisation and the legitimacy of Europ...