The period between the two World Wars was characterized by an acceleration of mass violence across the world. Developments in technology, communications, ideology, global political and economic integration, and the organization of society greatly expanded the power and reach of states while radicalizing ideologies of domination and control. Two major 20th-century genocides, the Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire and the Nazi Holocaust of European Jews, are the terrible bookends of this period; they were preceded and informed by colonial genocides, such as the genocide of Herero and Nama...

Historical studies of genocide in the 20th century trace the roots back to the sociopolitical, economic, and cultural developments of the early modern period. From globalization to urbanization, to imperialism, state formation and homogenization, from religious warfare to enlightenment, to racism: many factors connected with genocide first emerged or vastly developed between the 15th and 18th centuries. While the early modern period did not have a crime of genocide, it possessed its own legal system which contemplated the rightful destruction of whole peoples, and a political culture that...

The cry of "never again" reverberated around the world in the aftermath of the Holocaust. Yet despite the unprecedented horrors of the Shoah, and the subsequent creation of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, the frequency of genocide intensified in the post-Holocaust period. Since 1945 there have been genocides or mass killings in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), East Timor, Indonesia, Guatemala, Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, Darfur, Iraq, and elsewhere. This volume examines the cultural history of genocide in the modern world. It focuses on the period from...

The preamble to the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide recognizes "that at all periods of history genocide has inflicted great losses on humanity". Studies of the phenomenon of genocide have, however, tended to concentrate on the modern world. The original contributions in this volume turn the focus to the question of genocide and mass violence in the ancient world, with a particular emphasis on the worlds of Greece, Rome and the Near East. This volume presents a range of views on the challenges of applying the modern concept of "genocide"...

The long 19th century, approximately 1750 to 1918, was one of significant existential change for peoples across the globe. The beginning of this period saw the expansion of empires, and shortly thereafter, the Euro-American Enlightenment brought about calls for revolutions and the "rights of man". The events and ideas made way for empire and the creation of the nation-state. European states primarily concentrated their aggressive colonization in the Global South, bringing mostly white metropolitans and settlers into intimate contact with diverse African, Asian, and American populations. The...

The period covered by this volume, roughly 800-1400, considers genocidal massacres and actions within the context of the pre-modern state, a time when the term "genocide" did not yet exist. In considering rhetoric, discrimination, and political and legal marginalization that impacted the lives of particular peoples, the volume takes as its premise that genocidal practices and massacres can occur when social dynamism and political change challenges the identity of a community. The case studies analysed in the individual chapters implicitly or explicitly draw upon the frameworks of...