The Barrack 1572-1914 tells the little-known history of a building type that many people used
to register as an alien interloper in conventionally built-up areas. The barrack is a mostly
lightweight construction a hybrid between shack tent and traditional building. It is a
highly efficient structure that sometimes also proves to be extremely durable. Easy to erect
and to take down it is-after the introduction of railways and later motor vehicles in the late
19th and early 20th centuries-also easy to transplant from one location to another. Originating
as a standardized accommodation in the late 16th century the barrack became a mass-produced
utility of military and civilian mobilization in the 19th century providing immediate shelter
for soldiers as well as for displaced persons disaster victims or prisoners. The barrack
played a decisive role in shaping the political space of modernity. Robert Jan van Pelt
traces nearly 350 years of barrack history up to 1914. That year in which the Great War broke
out proved to be a turning point in the perception of the barrack away from pragmatic
emergency shelter and towards sinister forced housing. Richly illustrated with some 250 images
van Pelt's book records the traditions of barrack design and the technological inventiveness
that went into it in the late 19th century.
