Overview

Concentration camps are a relatively new invention, a recurring feature of twentieth century warfare, and one that is important to the modern global consciousness and identity. Although the most famous concentration camps are those under the Nazis, the use of concentration camps originated several decades before the Third Reich, in the Philippines and in the Boer War, and they have been used again in numerous locations, not least during the genocide in Bosnia. They have become defining symbols of humankind's lowest point and basest acts. In this book, Dan Stone gives a global history of concentration camps, and shows that it is not only ""mad dictators "" who have set up camps, but instead all varieties of states, including liberal democracies, that have made use of them. Setting concentration camps against the longer history of incarceration, he explains how the ability of the modern state to control populations led to the creation of this extreme institution. Looking at their emergence and spread around the world, Stone argues that concentration camps serve the purpose, from the point of view of the state in crisis, of removing a section of the population that is perceived to be threatening, traitorous, or diseased. Drawing on contemporary accounts of camps, as well as the philosophical literature surrounding them, Stone considers the story camps tell us about the nature of the modern world as well as about specific regimes.

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9780198790709

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Reviews

terse, punchy ... Stone has a simple style that conveys the horrors of the camps without lurching into sensationalism as he tries to situate camps within larger structures of state-building and incarceration. This is a grim history, but one we must not flinch from remembering. Catholic Herald

A careful and comprehensive analytical survey that tracks the concentration camp brilliantly across the many diversities of time and place, without either flattening the concept or lessening its Third Reich connotations. Geoff Eley, Karl Port Distinguished University Professor of Contemporary History, University of Michigan

`A careful and comprehensive analytical survey that tracks the concentration camp brilliantly across the many diversities of time and place, without either flattening the concept or lessening its Third Reich connotations.' Geoff Eley, Karl Port Distinguished University Professor of Contemporary History, University of Michigan

Terse, punchy ... Stone has a simple style that conveys the horrors of the camps without lurching into sensationalism as he tries to situate camps within larger structures of state-building and incarceration. This is a grim history, but one we must not flinch from remembering. * Catholic Herald * [An] elegant and compact book... admirably measured and insightful. * Christopher Dillon, International Affairs * Dan Stone has succeeded in providing an outstanding overview of the world of the concentration camp that, with fewer than two hundred pages, remains virtually unrivalled as a quick introduction to the topic. * Marc Buggeln (Humboldt University), European History Quarterly, Vol. 47 * In this elegant and compact book, therefore, the prolific Holocaust historian Dan Stone poses a highly pertinent question: what is a concentration camp? The answer is anything but simple. * Christopher Dillon (Kings College, London), International Affairs 94:2 *

Author Information

Dan Stone is Professor of Modern History at Royal Holloway, University of London, where he is also Director of the Holocaust Research Centre. He is the author or editor of sixteen books, including Histories of the Holocaust (OUP, 2010) and The Liberation of the Camps: The End of the Holocaust and its Aftermath (Yale, 2015), and some seventy scholarly articles. He is currently the recipient of a Leverhulme Trust Major Research Fellowship, working on a project on the International Tracing Service.

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