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Books > Social sciences > Warfare & defence > Other warfare & defence issues > War crimes > Genocide
Tomochic is a controversial and celebrated example of Mexican
fiction. Tomochic is the fictional narration of the 1892 military
campaign that resulted in the massacre of the small village of
Tomochic, located in the Tarahumara mountains and ordered by the
dictatorial regime of Porfirio Diaz. The work is narrated by an
eyewitness, the then second lieutenant, Heriberto Frias, and
written by him in collaboration with Joaquin Clausell, editor of
the newspaper which published it in serial form between March and
April of 1893. For a period after the series' publication, the
author chose to maintain anonymity. It was expressly this stance
which excited more public interest than any other Mexican writer of
the 19th century and which eventually led to a drawn out trial to
uncover the identity of the author and to implicate him. For,
although it is a work of fiction, the general plot of the work,
involving a confrontation between a professional army and a handful
of citizens, was too similar to the actual massacre as to not be
seen by Porfirio Diaz as a reprovement of himself and his regime.
As a piece of literature, the novel is also admired for its
incorporation of two important trends of the nineteenth
century-history as literature and the war novel.
This book situates Burundi in the current global debate on ethnicity by describing and analyzing the wholesale massacre of the Hutu majority by the Tutsi minority. The author refutes the government's version of these events that places blame on the former colonial government and the church. He offers documentation that identifies the source of these massacres as occurring across a socially constructed fault-line that pitted the Hutu majority's use of ethnicity as an instrument for the achievement of majority rule in parliament against the Tutsi minority's use of ethnocide to gain hegemony. By analyzing the roots of ethnicity conflict, the author derives institutional and other formulae through which conflict among the primary groups in Burundi--and elsewhere--may be mitigated. Published in cooperation with the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD).
Focusing on the twentieth century, this collection of essays by leading international experts offers an up-to-date, comprehensive history and analysis of multiple cases of genocide and genocidal acts. The book contains studies of the Armenian genocide; the victims of Stalinist terror; the Holocaust; and Imperial Japan. Contributors explore colonialism and address the fate of the indigenous peoples in Africa, North America, and Australia. In addition, extensive coverage of the post-1945 period includes the atrocities in the former Yugoslavia, Bali, Cambodia, prhiopia, Rwanda, East Timor, and Guatemala. Robert Gellately is Professor and Strassler Family Chair for the Study of Holocaust History at Clark University, where he teaches a variety of courses in modern German history, modern European history and the history of the Holocaust with a concentration on the study of Nazi Germany and the Gestapo. In Backing Hitler (Oxford, 2001), Gellately uses new evidence to demolish long-held beliefs about what ordinary Germans knew of the concentration camps. His internationally acclaimed book, The Gestapo and German Society (Oxford, 1990) challenges conventional concepts of the Gestapo and daily life in Nazi Germany. He has won numerous fellowships, and awards, most recently from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Germany. Ben Kiernan is A. Whitney Griswold Professor of History and Director of the Genocide Studies Program at Yale University and Convenor of the Yale East Timor Project. Kiernan is the author of The Pol Pot Regime (Yale, 1996), How Pol Pot Came to Power (Verso Books, 1985) and three other works and over a hundred scholarly articles on Southeast Asia and the history of genocide. Choice called him "the most knowledgeable observer of Cambodia anywhere in the Western world." Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge "indicted" and then "sentenced" him as an "arch war criminal." Kiernan is a member of the Editorial Boards of Human Rights Review, the Journal of Human Rights, and the Journal of Genocide Research. He is currently writing a global history of genocide since 1500.
When and how might the term genocide appropriately be ascribed to
the experience of North American Indigenous nations under settler
colonialism? Laurelyn Whitt and Alan W. Clarke contend that, if
certain events which occurred during the colonization of North
America were to take place today, they could be prosecuted as
genocide. The legal methodology that the authors develop to
establish this draws upon the definition of genocide as presented
in the United Nations Genocide Convention and enhanced by
subsequent decisions in international legal fora. Focusing on early
British colonization, the authors apply this methodology to two
historical cases: that of the Beothuk Nation from 1500-1830, and of
the Powhatan Tsenacommacah from 1607-77. North American Genocides
concludes with a critique of the Conventional account of genocide,
suggesting how it might evolve beyond its limitations to embrace
the role of cultural destruction in undermining the viability of
human groups.
An estimated one million Armenians were killed in the dying days of
the Ottoman Empire in 1915. Against the backdrop of World War I,
reports of massacre, atrocity, genocide and exile sparked the
largest global humanitarian response up to that date. Britain and
its empire - the most powerful internationalist institutional force
at the time - played a key role in determining the global response
to these events. This book considers the first attempt to intervene
on behalf of the victims of the massacres and to prosecute those
responsible for 'crimes against humanity' using newly uncovered
archival material. It looks at those who attempted to stop the
violence and to prosecute the Ottoman perpetrators of the
atrocities. In the process it explores why the Armenian question
emerged as one of the most popular humanitarian causes in British
society, capturing the imagination of philanthropists, politicians
and the press. For liberals, it was seen as the embodiment of the
humanitarian ideals espoused by their former leader (and four-time
Prime Minister), W.E. Gladstone. For conservatives, as articulated
most clearly by Winston Churchill, it proved a test case for
British imperial power. In looking at the British response to the
events in Anatolia, Michelle Tusan provides a new perspective on
the genocide and sheds light on one of the first ever international
humanitarian campaigns.
From Hope to Horror: Diplomacy and the Making of the Rwanda
Genocide examines Joyce E. Leader's time in the struggling state of
Rwanda during the early 1990s, documenting the challenges and
troubling disruptions that the transitioning society faced,
including violence as prospective changes unleashed deep-seated
social cleavages. As diplomat at the United States embassy in
Kigali, Leader depicts her firsthand account of Rwanda's descent
from the prospect of democracy and peace into horrific genocide.
From a field perspective, From Hope to Horror follows the political
quest to maintain or gain power that ultimately unleashed a
three-way struggle leading to deep geographic and ethnic divisions
in Rwandan society. Political wrangling played out against a
background of ever-escalating violence while U.S diplomacy pushed
for a democracy and peace without realizing its own contribution to
the violent backlash from those whose power and privilege would be
diminished due to U.S policies if this democracy was reached.
Violence escalated with each step forward in either democracy or
peacemaking until genocide enveloped the country, ending in the
brutal slaughter and traumatizing of millions. Leader explores the
ways in which the United States ultimately failed Rwanda by
neglecting the unintended consequences of its policies in support
of democratization and peacemaking. While Part 1 of From Hope to
Horror documents the unfolding of pre-genocide Rwanda, Part 2 marks
lessons learned that diplomacy must take under consideration to be
more effective at preventing, mitigating, and managing conflicts to
avert genocide. This firsthand account of the political dynamics
inside Rwanda before the genocide will not only fill a gap in the
literature but will also contribute to a dialogue among diplomats
and students of genocide and conflict resolution about U.S. policy
in transitioning societies and the importance of making conflict
prevention a diplomatic and foreign policy priority.
How can human beings kill or brutalize multitudes of other human beings? Focusing particularly on genocide, but also on other forms of mass killing, torture, and war, Ervin Staub explores the psychological, cultural, and societal roots of group aggression. He sketches a conceptual framework for the many influences on one group's desire to harm another: cultural and social patterns predisposing to violence, historical circumstances resulting in persistent life problems, and needs and modes of adaptation arising from the interaction of these influences. Such notions as cultural stereotyping and devaluation, societal self-concept, moral exclusion, the need for connection, authority orientation, personal and group goals, "better world" ideologies, justification, and moral equilibrium find a place in his analysis, and he addresses the relevant evidence from the behavioral sciences. Within this conceptual framework, Staub then considers the behavior of perpetrators and bystanders in four historical situations: the Holocaust (his primary example), the genocide of Armenians in Turkey, the "autogenocide" in Cambodia, and the "disappearances" in Argentina. Throughout, he is concerned with the roots of caring and the psychology of heroic helpers. In his concluding chapters, he reflects on the socialization of children at home and in schools, and on the societal practices and processes that facilitate the development of caring persons, and of care and cooperation among groups. A wide audience will find The Roots of Evil thought-provoking reading.
Over the past 25 years, Rwanda has undergone remarkable shifts and
transitions: culturally, economically, and educationally the
country has gone from strength to strength. While much scholarship
has understandably been retrospective, seeking to understand,
document and commemorate the Genocide against the Tutsi, this
volume gathers diverse perspectives on the changing social and
cultural fabric of Rwanda since 1994. Rwanda Since 1994 considers
the context of these changes, particularly in relation to the
ongoing importance of remembering and in wider developments in the
Great Lakes and East Africa regions. Equally it explores what
stories of change are emerging from Rwanda: creative writing and
testimonies, as well as national, regional, and international
political narratives. The contributors interrogate which frameworks
and narratives might be most useful for understanding different
kinds of change, what new directions are emerging, and how Rwanda's
trajectory is shaped by other global factors. The international set
of contributors includes creative writers, practitioners,
activists, and scholars from African studies, history,
anthropology, education, international relations, modern languages,
law and politics. As well as delving into the shifting dynamics of
religion and gender in Rwanda today, the book brings to light the
experiences of lesser-discussed groups of people such as the Twa
and the children of perpetrators.
Of all the horrors of the last century--perhaps the bloodiest
century of the past millennium--ethnic cleansing ranks among the
worst. The term burst forth in public discourse in the spring of
1992 as a way to describe Serbian attacks on the Muslims of
Bosnia-Herzegovina, but as this landmark book attests, ethnic
cleansing is neither new nor likely to cease in our time.
Norman Naimark, distinguished historian of Europe and Russia,
provides an insightful history of ethnic cleansing and its
relationship to genocide and population transfer. Focusing on five
specific cases, he exposes the myths about ethnic cleansing, in
particular the commonly held belief that the practice stems from
ancient hatreds. Naimark shows that this face of genocide had its
roots in the European nationalism of the late nineteenth century
but found its most virulent expression in the twentieth century as
modern states and societies began to organize themselves by ethnic
criteria. The most obvious example, and one of Naimark's cases, is
the Nazi attack on the Jews that culminated in the Holocaust.
Naimark also discusses the Armenian genocide of 1915 and the
expulsion of Greeks from Anatolia during the Greco-Turkish War of
1921-22; the Soviet forced deportation of the Chechens-Ingush and
the Crimean Tatars in 1944; the Polish and Czechoslovak expulsion
of the Germans in 1944-47; and Bosnia and Kosovo.
In this harrowing history, Naimark reveals how over and over,
as racism and religious hatreds picked up an ethnic name tag, war
provided a cover for violence and mayhem, an evil tapestry behind
which nations acted with impunity.
In the aftermath of the 1992-1995 Bosnian war, the discovery of
unmarked mass graves revealed Europe's worst atrocity since World
War II: the genocide in the UN "safe area" of Srebrenica. "To Know
Where He Lies" provides a powerful account of the innovative
genetic technology developed to identify the eight thousand Bosnian
Muslim (Bosniak) men and boys found in those graves and elsewhere,
demonstrating how memory, imagination, and science come together to
recover identities lost to genocide. Sarah E. Wagner explores
technology's import across several areas of postwar Bosnian society
- for families of the missing, the Srebrenica community, the
Bosnian political leadership (including Serb and Muslim), and
international aims of social repair - probing the meaning of
absence itself.
Between 1929 and 1942, Hungary's motion picture industry
experienced meteoric growth. It leapt into Europe's top echelon,
trailing only Nazi Germany and Italy in feature output. Yet by
1944, Hungary's cinema was in shambles, internal and external
forces having destroyed its unification experiments and productive
capacity. This original cultural and political history examines the
birth, unexpected ascendance, and wartime collapse of Hungary's
early sound cinema by placing it within a complex international
nexus. Detailing the interplay of Hungarian cultural and political
elites, Jewish film professionals and financiers, Nazi officials,
and global film moguls, David Frey demonstrates how the
transnational process of forging an industry designed to define a
national culture proved particularly contentious and surprisingly
contradictory in the heyday of racial nationalism and antisemitism.
Terrortimes, Terrorscapes: Continuities of Space, Time, and Memory
in Twentieth-Century War and Genocide investigates interconnections
between space and violence throughout the twentieth century, and
how such connections informed collective memory. The
interdisciplinary volume shows how entangled notions of time and
space amplified by memory narratives led to continuities of
violence across different conflicts creating "terrortimes" and
"terrorscapes" in their wake. The volume examines such continuities
of violence with the help of an analytical framework built around
different themes. Its first part, spatial and temporal continuities
of violence, looks at contested spaces and ideas of national,
ethnic, or religious homogeneity that are often at the heart of
prolonged conflicts. The second part, on states and actors,
addresses the role of states as enablers of violence, asymmetric
power dynamics, and the connection between imperialism and genocide
in Africa. Imagination and emotion-the focus of the third
part-explores utopian visions and their limits that instigate or
hinder, and the mobilization of emotion through propaganda.
Finally, the fourth part shows how the recollection of the past
sometimes triggers new terrortimes. Departing from an understanding
of violence limited to certain areas and time frames, this volume
describes continuities of violence as overlapping fabrics woven
together from notions of space, time, and memory.
Why countries colonize the lands of indigenous people Over the past
few centuries, vast areas of the world have been violently
colonized by settlers. But why did states like Australia and the
United States stop settling frontier lands during the twentieth
century? At the same time, why did states loudly committed to
decolonization like Indonesia and China start settling the lands of
such minorities as the West Papuans and Uyghurs? Settling for Less
traces this bewildering historical reversal, explaining when and
why indigenous peoples suffer displacement at the hands of
settlers. Lachlan McNamee challenges the notion that settler
colonialism can be explained by economics or racial ideologies. He
tells a more complex story about state building and the conflicts
of interest between indigenous peoples, states, and settlers.
Drawing from a rich array of historical evidence, McNamee shows
that states generally colonize frontier areas in response to
security concerns. Elite schemes to populate contested frontiers
with loyal settlers, however, often fail. As societies grow
wealthier and cities increasingly become magnets for migration,
states ultimately lose the power to settle frontier lands. Settling
for Less uncovers the internal dynamics of settler colonialism and
the diminishing power of colonizers in a rapidly urbanizing world.
Contrasting successful and failed colonization projects in
Australia, Indonesia, China, and beyond, this book demonstrates
that economic development-by thwarting colonization-has proven a
powerful force for indigenous self-determination.
How do the people of a morally shattered culture and nation find
ways to go on living? Cambodians confronted this challenge
following the collective disasters of the American bombing, the
civil war, and the Khmer Rouge genocide. The magnitude of violence
and human loss, the execution of artists and intellectuals, the
erasure of individual and institutional cultural memory all caused
great damage to Cambodian arts, culture, and society. Author Boreth
Ly explores the "traces" of this haunting past in order to
understand how Cambodians at home and in the diasporas deal with
trauma on such a vast scale. Ly maintains that the production of
visual culture by contemporary Cambodian artists and
writers-photographers, filmmakers, court dancers, and
poets-embodies traces of trauma, scars leaving an indelible mark on
the body and the psyche. His book considers artists of different
generations and family experiences: a Cambodian-American woman
whose father sent her as a baby to the United States to be adopted;
the Cambodian-French film-maker, Rithy Panh, himself a survivor of
the Khmer Rouge, whose film The Missing Picture was nominated for
an Oscar in 2014; a young Cambodian artist born in 1988-part of the
"post-memory" generation. The works discussed include a variety of
materials and remnants from the historical past: the broken pieces
of a shattered clay pot, the scarred landscape of bomb craters, the
traditional symbolism of the checkered scarf called krama, as well
as the absence of a visual archive. Boreth Ly's poignant book
explores obdurate traces that are fragmented and partial, like the
acts of remembering and forgetting. His interdisciplinary approach,
combining art history, visual studies, psychoanalysis, cultural
studies, religion, and philosophy, is particularly attuned to the
diverse body of material discussed in his book, which includes
photographs, video installations, performance art, poetry, and
mixed media. By analyzing these works through the lens of trauma,
he shows how expressions of a national trauma can contribute to
healing and the reclamation of national identity.
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