Internment, Immersive Technology and Historical Empathy: Natal’s Fort Napier Camp (1914-1919) as a Virtual Reality Experience

Abstract

The article presents a new way of reconstructing and representing the history of internment. It provides a critical academic framework for the authors’ virtual reality experience (VRE) Interned. Fort Napier Camp in South Africa held 2,500 civilians, mostly German ‘enemy aliens’, during the First World War. The VRE gives users an immersive experience of the camp and was produced through rigorous cross-sector collaboration between academia and industry. Based on user feedback, we argue that the empathy-related opportunities of VR create novel gateways to understanding experiences of minorities in wartime. Expanding the concept of ‘historical empathy’, we also argue that immersive technologies remain underused by historians.