Gate at the Auschwitz concentration camp
31 January 2025
One might, with some justification, think that the term concentration camp, like the term genocide, came out of Holocaust perpetrated by the Nazis during World War II, but that is not the case. The term is almost half a century older, coming out of another war, the Cuban War of Independence (1895–98).
Concentration camp is an anglophone term to describe the camps in which the Spanish government of Cuba resettled what they called reconcentrados, a word that was also borrowed into English at the time. The earliest example of concentration camp that I have found is in a report from a US consul to Cuba that was reported in Michigan’s Copper Country Evening News on 24 May 1897:
A consular report from Cuba tells of a new order of concentration. The effect of it will be to add greatly to the horrors of the situation. The suffering will be increased, and the deaths will be more numerous. The order, so far as the consul knows, applies to about one-third of the province of Santa Clara. This is the region of sugar estates.
Obliged to form camps.
Under the original order of concentration the agricultural population was obliged to form camps at the centrals, or grinding plants, of such estates as maintained a Spanish garrison. This permitted the farming population to gather in bodies of from 500 to 1,000. By this distribution in small bodies the reconcentrados were able to find some subsistence. The smaller concentration has been attended with less hardship than the larger. The new order just made by the Spanish authorities abolishes the concentration camps on the sugar estates. It directs that only [sic] points of concentration in the district shall be the cities having municipal organizations. In this district there are but three “municipals,” as they are called.
Must Move to Three Towns.
To these three points the entire farming population will now be driven. The report from the consul says:
“There are twenty-five estates on which the camps of reconcentrados had been established. The camps averaged 500 persons. Now these persons, 12,500 in all, must move to the three towns. In the camps on the estates they had built shanties, which must be abandoned. That, however, is not the worst feature. They had planted gardens and were about to realize food crops. All must be left behind, and the 12,500 must be added to the three large camps, where the people are starving. The situation is becoming worse every day, and this new order is going to aggravate it.
Another early use is in the Louisville Courier Journal of 17 July 1897. Weyler was the Spanish governor-general of Cuba General Valeriano Weyler y Nicolau:
“In the beginning of the concentration,” this American writes, “the people driven into the towns were occasionally allowed to go to the country on passes and search for food to bring back to the camp. Having such passes, they sometimes escaped the notice of the scouting parties. Now, however, the Spanish columns have received orders from Weyler to shoot any one, whether furnished with a pass or not, wherever found outside of the concentration camp. I will give an example of the operation of this new order, to show how it works. The little town of Mata is situated near the railroad. It had in time of peace about 100 inhabitants and four stores. Under concentration 3,500 reconcentrados have been collected there.”
While the Spanish did have terms for the people who were interned in such camps, concentrados and reconcentrados, they did not have a special term for the camps themselves. The term campo de concentración did not appear until 1918.
The Cuban War of Independence ended in 1898 with the intervention of the United States on the Cuban side, a theater in the global Spanish-American War, which also netted the United States the Philippines as a colony. But concentration camps would again appear in another colonial war, the Boer War in South Africa (1899–1902), when the British interned many Dutch Boer settlers and Indigenous peoples in such camps. There is this transcript of parliamentary debate from the Aberdeen Journal of 18 June 1901:
CONCENTRATION CAMPS
In answer to Mr Scott,
Mr BRODRICK, Secretary for War, said the numbers in the concentration camps were approximately as follows:—Transvaal, 37,739; Natal, 2524; Orange River Colony, 20,374; and Cape Colony, 2490. Of these a large number were natives. The dietary of free issues consisted of meat, bread or flour, meal, coffee, sugar, salt, and condensed milk. The supply of meat ranged from 2 to 4lbs., and of bread, flour, and meal about 7lbs. per week. The women and children had in most instances been brought into the camps because they could not be fed at isolated stations, or because it was necessary for military reasons to clear the districts in which they were living. He was communicating with Lord Kitchener respecting the release of those who might have friends willing to receive them.
Mr LLOYD GEORGE asked for information as to the rate of mortality in these camps.
Mr HERBERT LEWIS said it would perhaps be convenient if he at once put a question of which he had been given private notice, viz., whether the Government was aware that for three weeks ending the 13th May there were 80 deaths out of a total of 3125 persons at the refugee camp on the Racecourse at Johannesburg, and that 220 persons were reported sick in the camp.
And like the Spanish campo de concentración, the Afrikaans konsentrasiekamp was coined as a historical term in 1921.
In contrast, the German Konzentrationslager didn’t make an appearance until 1920, referring to hypothetical camps, and 1933, referring to real ones. The Spanish, Afrikaans, and German terms are calques of the English one.
There is a more innocuous sense of concentration camp that also dates to the Spanish-American War, that is with the meaning of a military assembly location. There is this from the Boston Daily Advertiser with a dateline of 10 May 1898:
Washington, May 10.—Maj.-Gen. Sewell has been assigned to command the concentration camp near Falls Church, Va. This is taken as an indication that the general has concluded to accept his military command, risking his tenure in office as a senator thereby.
(The OED has similar quotation from 12 May, but that one is incorrectly dated. Both the dictionary and NewspaperArchive.com’s metadata give the date as 1897, but it is actually from a year later.)
This military sense of concentration camp would also get some use in the British military. From the Friend of India of 7 September 1899:
The Government of India have sanctioned the Imperial Service troops taking part in the coming winter’s manœuvres, and it is settled that the Mysore Cavalry will join the concentration camp near Bangalore.
Of course, unfavorable press about the camps in South Africa, and of course the horrors of the Nazi Holocaust, pretty much ended this military sense of the phrase.
Sources:
“Concentration Camps” (17 June 1901). Aberdeen Journal (Scotland), 18 June 1901, 6/2. Gale Primary Sources: British Library Newspapers.
“Has Sewell Accepted?” Boston Daily Advertiser (Massachusetts), 11 May 1898, 1/5. Gale Primary Sources: Nineteenth Century U.S. Newspapers.
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, September 2015, s.v. concentration camp, n., concentrado, n.; June 2009, s.v. reconcentrado, n.
“Telegram from Lee.” Copper Country Evening News (Calumet Michigan), 24 May 1897, 1/2. Library of Congress: Chronicling America.
“Troops Ordered to Cuba.” Elkhart Weekly Truth (Indiana), 12 May 1898, 4/6. NewspaperArchive.com. (Note the database’s metadata incorrectly gives the date as 1897, an error which the OED repeats.)
“Weyler’s Victims.” Louisville Courier Journal, 17 July 1897, 9/5. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
“Winter Military Manœuvres” (5 September). Friend of India, 7 September 1899, 12/3. Gale Primary Sources: Nineteenth Century UK Periodicals.
Photo credit: Xiquinhosilva, 2010. Wikimedia Commons. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.