ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book suggest that more research is needed on the practice of wartime forced labour as it affected enemy alien internees and deportees. The First World War led to a step change in the use of internment as a constituent element of twentieth-century warfare. During the First World War internment became a truly global phenomenon but this globality had already begun to emerge in the later nineteenth century, especially during colonial wars. The First World War as a total war meant that civilians became victims in all arenas, albeit with substantial variations depending on the vagaries of time, space and experiences. The Ottoman Empire had gone a long way toward marginalising its Armenian population before 1914, as massacres had occurred against them from the 1890s, meaning the step towards genocide remained a relatively small one.
