Internment is the imprisonment of people, commonly in large groups, withoutcharges[1] orintent to file charges.[2] The term is especially used for the confinement "of enemy citizens inwartime or ofterrorism suspects".[3] Thus, while it can simply meanimprisonment, it tends to refer to preventive confinement rather than confinementafter having been convicted of some crime. Use of these terms is subject to debate and political sensitivities.[4] The wordinternment is also occasionally used to describe aneutral country's practice of detainingbelligerentarmed forces and equipment on its territory during times of war, under theHague Convention of 1907.[5]
Interned persons may be held inprisons or in facilities known asinternment camps orconcentration camps. The termconcentration camp originates from the Spanish–CubanTen Years' War when Spanish forces detained Cuban civilians in camps in order to more easily combat guerrilla forces. Over the following decades the British during theSecond Boer War and the Americans during thePhilippine–American War also used concentration camps.
The termsconcentration camp andinternment camp are used to refer to a variety of systems that greatly differ in their severity, mortality rate, and architecture; their defining characteristic is that inmates are held outside therule of law.[6]Extermination camps or death camps, whose primary purpose is killing, are also imprecisely referred to asconcentration camps.[7]
TheAmerican Heritage Dictionary defines the termconcentration camp as: "A camp where persons are confined, usually without hearings and typically under harsh conditions, often as a result of their membership in a group which the government has identified as dangerous or undesirable."[9]
Although the first example of civilian internment may date as far back as the 1830s,[10] the English termconcentration camp was first used in order to refer to thereconcentration camps (Spanish:reconcentrados) which were set up by theSpanish military inCuba during theTen Years' War (1868–1878).[11][12] The label was applied yet again to camps set up by the United States during thePhilippine–American War (1899–1902).[13] And expanded usage of theconcentration camp label continued, when theBritish set up camps during theSecond Boer War (1899–1902) in South Africa for interningBoers during the same time period.[11][14]
During the 20th century, the arbitrary internment of civilians by the state reached its most extreme forms in theSovietGulag system of concentration camps (1918–1991)[15] and theNazi concentration camps (1933–1945). The Soviet system was the first applied by a government on its own citizens.[12] The Gulag consisted in over 30,000 camps for most of its existence (1918–1991) and detained some 18 million from 1929 until 1953,[15] which is only a third of its 73-year lifespan. The Nazi concentration camp system was extensive, with as many as 15,000 camps[16] and at least 715,000 simultaneous internees.[17] The total number of casualties in these camps is difficult to determine, but the deliberate policy ofextermination through labor in many of the camps was designed to ensure that the inmates would die of starvation, untreated disease andsummary executions within set periods of time.[18] Moreover, Nazi Germany established sixextermination camps, specifically designed to kill millions of people, primarily bygassing.[19][20]
As a result, the term "concentration camp" is sometimes conflated with the concept of an "extermination camp" and historians debate whether the term "concentration camp" or the term "internment camp" should be used to describe other examples of civilian internment.[4]
Scholars have debated the efficacy of internment as acounterinsurgency tactic. A 2023 study found that internment during theIrish war of independence led to greater grievances among Irish rebels and led them to fight longer in the war.[28]
Curragh Camp in Ireland (1939–1946, 1957–1959). Curragh Camp was by far the largest, at least 30 other prisons and camps were used throughout the country.[55]
^Lowry, David (1976). "Human Rights Vol. 5, No. 3 "INTERNMENT: DENTENTION WITHOUT TRIAL IN NORTHERN IRELAND"".Human Rights.5 (3). American Bar Association: ABA Publishing:261–331.JSTOR27879033.The essence of internment lies in incarceration without charge or trial.
^Stone, Dan (2015).Concentration Camps: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press. pp. 122–123.ISBN978-0-19-879070-9.Concentration camps throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries are by no means all the same, with respect either to the degree of violence that characterizes them or the extent to which their inmates are abandoned by the authorities... The crucial characteristic of a concentration camp is not whether it has barbed wire, fences, or watchtowers; it is, rather, the gathering of civilians, defined by a regime as de facto 'enemies', in order to hold them against their will without charge in a place where the rule of law has been suspended.
^James L. Dickerson (2010).Inside America's Concentration Camps: Two Centuries of Internment and Torture. Chicago Review Press. p. 29.ISBN978-1-55652-806-4.
^abThe Columbia Encyclopedia: Concentration Camp (Sixth ed.). Columbia University Press. 2008.
^"Concentration Camp Listing". Belgium: Editions Kritak.Sourced from Van Eck, LudoLe livre des Camps andGilbert, Martin (1993).Atlas of the Holocaust. New York: William Morrow.ISBN0-688-12364-3.. In this online site are the names of 149 camps and 814 subcamps, organized by country.
^Evans, Richard J. (2005).The Third Reich in Power. New York: Penguin Group.ISBN978-0-14-303790-3.
Kotek, Joël (2000).Le siècle des camps (in French). Lattès. p. 805.ISBN978-2-7096-1884-7. Exhaustive history of the internment camps. Also available in German (Kotek, Joël; Rigoulot, Pierre (2001).Das Jahrhundert der Lager. Propyläen.ISBN978-3-549-07143-4.)
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