Before the Peace of Westphalia, enemy fighters captured by belligerent forces were usually executed, … See more

Following General John Burgoyne's surrender at the Battle of Saratoga in 1777, several thousand British and German (Hessian and Brunswick) troops were marched to Cambridge, Massachusetts. For various rea… See more

The earliest known purpose-built prisoner-of-war camp was established by the Kingdom of Great Britain at Norman Cross, in 1797 to house the increasing number of prisoners from the French Revolutionary Wars and … See more

Lacking a means for dealing with large numbers of captured troops early in the American Civil War, the Union and Confederate governments relied on the traditional European system of parole and exchange o… See more

During the Second Boer War, the British government established prisoner-of-war camps (to hold captured Boer belligerents or fighters) and concentration camps (to hold Boer civilians). In total, six prisoner-of-war camps wer… See more

The first international convention on prisoners of war was signed at the Hague Peace Conference of 1899. It was widened by the Hague Convention of 1907. The main combatant nations engaged in World War I abide… See more

From autumn 1920, thousands of captured Red Army soldiers and guards had been placed in the Tuchola internment camp, in Pomerania. These prisoners lived in dugouts, and many died of hunger, cold, and infectio… See more