Exceptional Space: Concentration Camps and Labor Compounds in Late Nineteenth-Century South Africa

Abstract

This chapter explores and compares the causes and effects of colonial labor camps and concentration camps in nineteenth-century southern Africa. This comparison is an attempt to understand the relationship between the lethality of wartime camps and labor camps in the modern era. While concentration camps and worker labor camps were established according to ostensibly different power regimes and causal factors, British wartime concentration camps established dif- ferent camps for Boers and Africans—the latter being structurally identical to preceding labor camps established on the South African Diamond Fields.