Bibliographical Essay

There are not very many general overviews of concentration camps. The two most interesting methodologically are Bettina Greiner and Alan Kramer (eds.), Welt der Lager: Zur ‘Erfolgsgeschichte’ einer Institution (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2013) and Christoph Jahr and Jens Thiel (eds.), Lager vor Auschwitz: Gewalt und Integration im 20.

On the first colonial camps, apart from the works mentioned above, see also Elizabeth Van Heyningen's work, which provides a needed corrective to Afrikaner mythologies, but perhaps giving too much credence to British good intentions. See especially: ‘“Costly Mythologies”: The Concentration Camps of the South African War in Afrikaner Historiography', Journal of Southern African Studies 34.3 (2008), 495-513; ‘The Concentration Camps of the South African (Anglo-Boer) War, 1900-1902', History Compass 7.1 (2009), 22-43; and The Concentration Camps of the Anglo-Boer War: A Social History (Auckland Park: Jacana, 2013). See also Fransjohan Pretorius, ‘The White Concentration Camps of the Anglo-Boer War: A Debate without End', Historia 55.2 (2010), 34-49. On the Hereros, see the essays in Jürgen Zimmerer and Joachim Zeller (eds.), Volkermord in Deutsch-Südwestafrika: Der Kolonialkrieg (1904-1908) in Namibia und seine Folgen (Berlin: Christoph Links Verlag, 2003) and Jonas Kreienbaum, ‘“Vernichtungslager” in Deutsch-Südwestafrika? Zur Funktion der Konzentrationslager im Herero- und Namakrieg (1904-1908)', Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 58.12 (2010), 1014-26.

The literature on the Nazi camps is mountainous. The essential starting point is now Nikolaus Wachsmann, KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps (London: Little, Brown, 2015), but other examples of innovative recent work include: Marc Buggeln, Slave Labor in Nazi Concentration Camps (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014); Kim Wünschmann, Before Auschwitz: Jewish Prisoners in the Prewar Concentration Camps (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015); Christopher Dillon, Dachau and the SS: A Schooling in Violence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015); Habbo Knoch and Thomas Rahe (eds.), Bergen-Belsen: Neue Forschungen (Gottingen: Wallstein, 2014); and Jane Caplan and Nikolaus Wachsmann (eds.), Concentration Camps in Nazi Germany: The New Histories (London: Routledge, 2010).

Likewise, the literature on the Gulag is now huge and far more sophisticated than it was at the turn of the century.

On camps in Franco's Spain see: Fernando Mendiola Gonzalo, ‘Forced Labor, Public Policies, and Business Strategies during Franco's Dictatorship: An Interim Report', Enterprise and Society 14.i (2013), 182-213; Javier Rodrigo's article mentioned above and his chapter in Greiner and Kramer (eds.), Welt der Lager; Carme Molinero et al. (eds.), Una imensa prision: los campos de concentration y prisiones durante la guerra civil y el franquismo (Barcelona: Editorial Critica, 2003), 224-44; and the beautifully written book by Helen Graham, The War and its Shadow: Spain's Civil War in Europe's Long Twentieth Century (Eastbourne: Sussex Academic Press, 2012). On fascist Italy, see Adriano Dal Pont, I Lager di Mussolini: l'altra faccia del confine nei documenti della polizia fascista (Milan: La Pietra, 1975); Michael R. Ebner, Ordinary Violence in Mussolini's Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011); and Luigi Reale, Mussolini's Concentration Camps for Civilians: An Insight into the Nature of Fascist Racism (London: Vallentine Mitchell, 2011).

On concentration camps in communist regimes see, among many others: Kate Saunders, Eighteen Layers of Hell: Stories from the Chinese Gulag (London: Cassell, 1996); Klaus Mühlhahn, ‘The Dark Side of Globalization: The Concentration Camps in Republican China in Global Perspective', World History Connected 6.1 (2009), 543-61; Kang Chol-hwan and Pierre Rigoulot, The Aquariums of Pyongyang: Ten Years in a North Korean Gulag (Oxford: Perseus Press, 2001); Virgil lerunca, Fenomenul Pitesti (Bucharest: Humanitas, 2013); and, although contentious, the relevant sections in Stephane Courtois et al., The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999).