Concentration Camps Before Hitler: Britain’s Colonial War System in Africa

The concentration camp is often associated almost exclusively with Nazi Germany, creating the misleading impression that it emerged suddenly in twentieth-century Europe. In reality, the camp system was a colonial invention, refined and normalized within imperial warfare long before Hitler. British colonial campaigns in Africa played a decisive role in developing the administrative logic, legal rationalizations, and coercive techniques that later defined modern concentration camps.

Historian Caroline Elkins notes that “the infrastructure of detention, surveillance, and collective punishment did not originate in Europe but was perfected in colonial laboratories” (Elkins, 2005). British Africa served as one of the most important of these laboratories.

 

Defining the Colonial Concentration Camp.

The term “concentration camp” did not originally imply extermination. It referred to the forced concentration of civilian populations into guarded settlements to sever resistance movements from food, shelter, intelligence, and social networks.

According to historian Aidan Forth:

“Concentration camps were tools of imperial warfare designed to reorganize civilian life under military supervision, often with catastrophic humanitarian consequences.”
— Barbed-Wire Imperialism (2017)

Key features included:

• Forced removal of civilians
• Incarceration without trial
• Collective punishment
• Militarized administration
• Racialized legal exemption from metropolitan law

These elements were consistently present in British Africa.

 

The South African War (1899–1902): Britain’s First Modern Camp System.

Origins and Purpose.

Britain’s most infamous early camp system emerged during the South African War (Anglo-Boer War). Facing mobile guerrilla warfare by Boer commandos, British commander Lord Kitchener implemented a scorched-earth policy combined with mass civilian detention.

By 1901:

• Over 116,000 Boer civilians were interned
• More than 115,000 Black Africans were confined in separate, under-documented camps
• Camps were administered by the British Army under emergency regulations

Kitchener openly acknowledged the strategy, stating that the camps were intended to “clear the country of people who might feed the enemy.”

Conditions and Mortality

Emily Hobhouse’s 1901 report shocked the British public by documenting:

• Severe overcrowding
• Inadequate food rations
• Lack of sanitation
• Measles epidemics

Mortality rates were staggering:

• Approximately 28,000 Boer civilians died, over 22,000 of them children
• Black African deaths likely exceeded 20,000, though records were deliberately incomplete

Historian Bill Nasson writes:

“The camps were not accidental failures of policy; they were integral to Britain’s military strategy of civilian control.”
— The South African War (1999)

 

Black African Camps: Racialized Invisibility.

British officials meticulously recorded white Boer suffering while systematically marginalizing Black African experiences. African detainees were:

• Paid lower rations
• Forced into labor
• Excluded from medical care
• Absent from postwar compensation

As historian Saul Dubow observes:

“African camps were treated as labor reservoirs rather than humanitarian responsibilities.”
— Racial Segregation and the Origins of Apartheid (1989)

This racial hierarchy foreshadowed later colonial detention systems.

 

Kenya and the Mau Mau Emergency (1952–1960): The Gulag of Empire.

The Pipeline System.

During the Mau Mau uprising, Britain created one of the most extensive detention networks in colonial history:

• Over 1.5 million Kikuyu, Embu, and Meru were forcibly relocated
• Approximately 150,000 detainees passed through camps and prisons
• Villagization camps were surrounded by trenches, barbed wire, and watchtowers

Caroline Elkins describes the system as:

“A vast network of detention camps where torture, forced labor, and starvation were not aberrations but routine administrative practices.”
— Imperial Reckoning (2005)

Torture and Forced Confessions

Detainees were subjected to:

• Beatings
• Castration
• Sexual assault
• Forced confessions through violence

British colonial officers referred euphemistically to “rehabilitation,” masking the coercive nature of the camps.

David Anderson notes:

“The colonial state suspended the rule of law entirely, replacing it with a regime of violence justified as security.”
— Histories of the Hanged (2005)

 

Sudan and Egypt: Reconcentration and Frontier Control.

Earlier precedents also existed in Sudan following the defeat of the Mahdist state (1898). British authorities:

• Confined populations to controlled zones
• Restricted movement
• Used forced labor for infrastructure

Similarly, during British occupation of Egypt, collective punishment and detention without trial were deployed against nationalist movements.

Aidan Forth emphasizes:

“These practices formed a continuum of imperial control stretching from Africa to Asia.”
— Barbed-Wire Imperialism (2017)

 

Legal Exceptionalism and the Colonial State.

British camps operated under emergency powers, deliberately bypassing:

• Habeas corpus
• Judicial oversight
• Parliamentary accountability

Colonial law distinguished between:

• Rights-bearing British citizens
• Rightless colonial subjects

As Mahmood Mamdani argues:

“Colonial governance was based on the permanent institutionalization of emergency.”
— Citizen and Subject (1996)

This legal architecture normalized mass detention.

 

Influence on Twentieth-Century Camp Systems.

Historians increasingly recognize that Nazi, Soviet, and other camp systems drew from colonial precedents. German officers in Southwest Africa studied British tactics, while European military manuals circulated colonial lessons widely.

Hannah Arendt observed:

“Imperialism prepared the ground for totalitarian domination by stripping entire populations of legal protection.”
— The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951)

 

Britain’s Forgotten Architecture of Confinement.

British concentration camps in Africa were not historical anomalies. They were:

• Deliberate
• Systematic
• Legally engineered
• Racially structured

They shaped modern counterinsurgency doctrine and redefined civilian populations as military targets. The tendency to associate concentration camps solely with Nazi Germany obscures the imperial genealogy of mass detention, allowing Britain’s colonial violence to remain partially unacknowledged.

Understanding this history is essential not only for African historiography but for any honest reckoning with the origins of modern state violence.

Further Reading.

Elkins, C. Imperial Reckoning (2005)

Anderson, D. Histories of the Hanged (2005)

Forth, A. Barbed-Wire Imperialism (2017)

Nasson, B. The South African War (1999)

Mamdani, M. Citizen and Subject (1996)

Arendt, H. The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951)