Barbed-Wire Imperialism - (Berkeley British Studies) by Aidan Forth (Paperback)

About the Book

"Some of the world's first refugee camps and concentration camps appeared in the British Empire in the late 19th century. Famine camps detained emaciated refugees and billeted relief applicants on public works projects; plague camps segregated populations suspected of harboring disease and accommodated those evacuated from unsanitary locales; concentration camps during the Anglo-Boer War, meanwhile, adapted a technology of colonial welfare in the context of war. Wartime camps in South Africa were simultaneously instruments of military violence and humanitarian care. While providing food and shelter to destitute refugees and disciplining and reforming a population cast as uncivilized and unhygienic, British officials in South Africa applied a developing set of imperial attitudes and approaches that also governed the development of plague and famine camps in India. More than the outcomes of military counterinsurgency, Boer War camps were registers of cultural discourses about civilization, class, gender, racial purity and sanitary pollution. Although British spokesmen regarded camps as hygienic enclaves, epidemic diseases decimated inmate populations creating a damaging political scandal. In order to curb mortality and introduce order, the British government mobilized a wide variety of disciplinary and sanitary lessons assembled at Indian plague and famine camps and at other kindred institutions like metropolitan workhouses. Authorities imported officials from India with experience managing plague and famine camps to systematize and rationalize South Africa's wartime concentration camps. Ultimately, improvements to inmates' health and well-being served to legitimize camps as technologies of liberal empire and biopolitical security"--Provided by publisher.

Book Synopsis

Camps are emblems of the modern world, but they first appeared under the imperial tutelage of Victorian Britain. Comparative and transnational in scope, Barbed-Wire Imperialism situates the concentration and refugee camps of the Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902) within longer traditions of controlling the urban poor in metropolitan Britain and managing "suspect" populations in the empire. Workhouses and prisons, along with criminal tribe settlements and enclosures for the millions of Indians displaced by famine and plague in the late nineteenth century, offered early prototypes for mass encampment. Venues of great human suffering, British camps were artifacts of liberal empire that inspired and legitimized the practices of future regimes.

From the Back Cover

"This book is highly original, timely, and overdue in the best sense of that word. No one has undertaken to show how and why the concentration camp as a form and as an ideology emerged as a constituent part of imperial governance. As with all good histories that begin by examining phenomena cloaked in 'state of exception' arguments, this one reveals the commonplace character of camps in several, often linked, spaces of imperial dominion and settlement."--Antoinette Burton, author of The Trouble with Empire: Challenges to Modern British Imperialism

"This important book foregrounds the importance of violence, confinement, and coercion in Britain's Victorian empire. Through a meticulously detailed, comparative study, Aidan Forth restores to history the lives and worlds of the ten million colonized subjects who were interned in famine, plague, and concentration camps across British India and South Africa. Turning on the concept of the 'disaster imperialism' of famine, plague, and war, Barbed-Wire Imperialism confronts key concerns of global and imperial history: transfers of power and knowledge, trans-imperial connections, governance and governmentality, and liberalism and empire. It also creates a useable past that is of vital relevance in the world today."--Clare Anderson, author of Subaltern Lives: Biographies of Colonialism in the Indian Ocean World, 1790-1920

"Barbed-Wire Imperialism is a model study of biopolitical governance, but it goes far beyond the usual case studies of biopolitical institutions to make connections between metropolitan workhouse discipline, India's famine camps, and Boer War concentration camps. Well written and compelling, bold in scope yet nuanced in analysis, Forth's study changes our understanding of the British Empire."--Anna Clark, author of Alternative Histories of the Self: A Cultural History of Sexuality and Secrets

"Aidan Forth's study takes us further in the pursuit of understanding the history of the British camps of famine, plague, and the Anglo-Boer War (Britain's nineteenth-century 'empire of camps'), and in a fascinating way opens up new avenues of research on a sensitive topic.--Fransjohan Pretorius, author of A to Z of the Anglo-Boer War

"Responses to war, plague, and famine come under critical scrutiny in Aidan Forth's insightful and innovative investigation of civilian confinement camps in high imperial India and South Africa. In tracing crucial lines of connectivity across the Indian Ocean, Forth sheds fresh light on imperial biopolitics, state coercion and sanitary expertise, the control of 'dangerous bodies, ' and suffering and colonial subjects. At the same time, by showing the constraints on imperial excess and questioning the presumed legacies of imperial concentration camps, he revalidates the concept of 'liberal empire.' Assiduous research and attention to detail allied to recognition of global trends make this empire history at its most compelling."--David Arnold, Professor Emeritus University of Warwick

Review Quotes

"A work of exceptional synthesis that upends much of the received wisdom. . . . Barbed-Wire Imperialism shows us how remarkable and complex is the legacy of South Africa's concentration camps in the larger histories of the camp and internment, humanitarianism, and colonial counterinsurgency, and how deeply connected India was to the camp's wartime development."-- "African Historical Review"

"An excellent original study whose significance goes beyond its empirical findings. In an exemplary way, [Forth] takes the imperial camp system as an interpretive prism to give the reader deeper insights into the British imperial mindset."

-- "H-Net"

"Closely reasoned and meticulously researched . . . Aidan Forth makes a compelling argument for revisiting the imperial origins of the concentration camp and for reassessing its significance, not just within the context of the Anglo-Boer War but as a historical phenomenon that concerns and troubles us all."-- "Times Literary Supplement"

"Extremely well-researched, and written in an engaging and lucid style, Forth's Barbed-Wire Imperialism provides an important contribution to British imperial historiography, as well as a crucial starting point for more nuanced examinations of the wider history of imperial Europe's culture of carceral confinement and encampment."-- "Journal of World History"

"Fascinating insight into why camps continued to be regarded as useful institutions long after the end of the Anglo-Boer War...[and] a fine illustration of transnational . . . transfer at work."
-- "Journal of Interdisciplinary History"

"Firmly grounded in local contexts, but revealing of larger thematic and interimperial connections, Barbed Wire Imperialism is transnational history at its best."-- "Victorian Studies"

"Original and persuasive...astute and erudite....Forth brilliantly demonstrates the criss-cross movements of ideas, personnel, and practices between colony and metropolis and between different colonies."-- "American Historical Review"

"This erudite book is a brilliant contribution to our understanding of imperial modalities of domination and discipline through ostensibly humanitarian means."-- "Times Higher Education"

"This is a fascinating account that describes the forces that created and maintained camp networks within the British empire without losing sight of the human suffering of those interned."-- "LSE Review of Books"

"This provocative and ambitious new book . . . is admirably precise in establishing a historically grounded genealogy for camps . . . [it is] beautifully written history."-- "Journal of British Studies"

About the Author

Aidan Forth is Associate Professor of History at MacEwan University.