Known for its function as an internment camp and nicknamed “the Drancy of the South”, the Joffre de Rivesaltes Camp was, above all else, a major military base for stationing and training troops. The evolution and uses of the Joffre Camp are engraved in the history of France. The main purposes of the camp have always gone hand in hand with the events and context of its time; the camp was shaped, filled and emptied by the historical upheavals that began in 1939 and have continued up to the present day.
This study sheds light on this past, especially on the origins and construction of the camp. More specifically, it offers a timeline of the military use of Camp Joffre, even though knowledge on some periods remains sketchy. It reconstructs the turbulent the great military complex that Camp Joffre once was.