No, it was the Spanish. Concentration camps were used in
Cuba about five years before their use in South Africa during
the Second Anglo Boer War. The Spanish speak Spanish, not
English, and therefore their name for ‘concentration camp’ is
a Spanish term, ‘Reconcentrado’ (reconcentration place).

Unfortunately, when we started using them, two Brit MPs,
C. P. Scott and John Ellis, decided to translate the term
‘Reconcentrado’ into English, giving ‘concentration camp’.

The US Army, which used them in The Phillipines at the
same time as the British Army used them in South Africa,
did not translate the name, so people don’t blame
the US for inventing concentration camps.

The name isn’t really important because otherwise we’d
have to exonerate the Nazis from using concentration
camps because they called them ‘konzentrationslagers’.

The idea that the British invented concentration camps
comes from Goebbels and was used to justify the Nazi
use of concentration camps.

> That’s how they won the Boer way anyway.

Nope. We beat the Boers because we were militarily superior,
e.g., Paardeburg. The brave Boers were actually stealing food
off the same women and children whose welfare so concerns us
today. They are pathetic rag-tag criminals, not freedom fighters.

See the diary of Lt. Schikkerling—page 383, THE GREAT ANGLO-BOER WAR, Byron Farwell

“At one farm, the housewife welcomed the men of the Johannesburg
Commando warmly, but they stole her pigs and turkeys anyway, causing
her to break into tears: “If only she had cursed us,” said Schikkerling,
“we could have stood it; but she merely wept; and this drew from me
all I had to leave her—a tear of pity.”

==
Here’s an example of the brave Boer commandos stealing food
from a concentration camp…

“Young Commandant Willem Fouche, operating in Cape Colony,
heard that administrators of the camp at Aliwal North
were traitors from the Orange Free State. On July 17 1901
he led an attack on the camp, killed two Bantu, and carried
off four of the alleged traitors; he also tried there to
drum up some recruits, but out of 689 men in the camp only
five elected to follow him. On Sept 15 1901 the Belfast
camp was raided, apparently only to get supplies, but
the attack was repulsed; one woman and two children were
wounded. In December about 800 Boers captured the
Pietersburgh camp, and J. E. Tucker, the superintendent,
and his staff were made prisoners. After a gay, all
night party with wives, sweethearts, friends, and relations
the burghers released their prisoners unharmed and rode off
into the sunrise.”

THE GREAT ANGLO-BOER WAR, Byron Farwell

By the end of the war the Boers were so disoriented that they
even asked HMG to keep the terrible camps open a bit longer
so they could carry on fighting: bravely ambushing, sniping
and running away from the British troops.

You know, I think you would like “Ohm Krüger (1941)” – a film
made about the Boer War. It shows Winston Churchill as
Commandant of a Boer War concentration camp, slobbering
bulldog at his feet.

Max Muir

A “concentration camp” is exactly what it sounds like—a camp built for the purpose of “concentrating” a given group in one particular place. The term was invented by the British to describe their facilities of that type built during the Boer War.

The US has used concentration camps a number of times in the past. Last time I trained with my old Marine Corps Reserve unit at Fort Chaffee, Arkansas (mid-1990s), one that was used to “concentrate” Vietnamese boat people and later the Cuban Mariel Boatlift population was still intact—barbed wire, guard towers, the whole nine yards.

The complex at Guantanamo Bay is a “concentration camp”—its purpose is to be a place to “concentrate” alleged unlawful combatants against the US in one place.

The nisei population in WWII was put in “concentration camps.” Maybe “internment facilities” has a less ominous ring to it, but they were what they were.

If you build facilities for concentrating people, you’re building “concentration camps.” If you don’t like that because you think it makes you sound like maybe you’re a Nazi or a Stalinist, well, tough.

-Hey, sorry you’ve haven’t heard from me in awhile, I’ve been on vacation and doing job hunting, I’m back now though.