It as at this point that we need to get one thing clear. Despite what you may have read (for example in Concentration Camps, A British Idea), the British did not invent the concentration camp. That particular accolade goes to the Spanish, in particular one General Valeriano Weyler who, when faced with a rebellion in Cuba in 1895, began removing the Cuban peasants from their land and placing them in 'reconcentrados'. In English 'reconcentrado' became concentration camp, and earned a certain odious reputation for ill-treatment. When the British army first began constructing camps during their South African war, no one called them concentration camps, they were simply called refugee camps or laagers. It was not until March 1901 that the term 'concentration camp' was first used to describe the British refugee camps in South Africa by the Liberal MPs Charles Prestwich Scott and John Ellis, who were engaged in a piece of (fairly justifiable) political mud slinging directed against the government. The designation of concentration camp stuck, and quite rightly, since it was clearly the intention of the British to concentrate the Boer civilian population in a number of distinct and controllable locations.

It is also worth noting in this context that at same time the British were building their concentration camps in Africa, the United States of America was doing much the same thing in the Philippines for much the same reasons.

http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node=British%20Concentration%20Camps%20in%20South%20Africa

You are right. The site is a little scary. But the particular information LWM referenced seems to be correct.

Compared to the pictures smuggled out of our camps in WWII, and I can give you a link to some of those...

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/8420/main.html

I think the Japanese had it easier than many of the poor black residents of New Orleans in 2005 and to this day. How many Japanese died as a result of FDR's actions? If you are a pro-life Republican who believes in the sanctity of life above all us, and the fact is many Japanese would have been in danger of serious harm, and worse, at the hands of an angry white population, what would you do? Then again, if your idea of SCOTUS material is Judge Bork and presdidential material is Steve Forbes, you are beyond a Kool-aid drinker. You are a crayola soup epicure and gourmand.

Tom Payne,

You and Bork Forbes there are the holocaust deniers. In point of fact, the Americans actually started the whole "concentration camp" craze and you probably have visited one and paid reparations for it (by gambling) and didn't even realize it. We called them reservations and we killed more people than the British, but you don't hear much about that either these days. That's Holocaust Denial, for you. I think it's you two that have had the lobotomies. You in particular, Mr. Payne, annoy me because I have a great amount of respect for the American founder whose name you have taken and misspelled. You probably don't know a thing about him either. So... why don't both of you white ass clowns climb down off your high white horses and go fuck your self-righteous selves.