The Routledge History of Genocide takes an interdisciplinary yet historically focused look at history from the Iron Age to the recent past to examine episodes of extreme violence that could be interpreted as genocidal. Approaching the subject in a sensitive, inclusive and respectful way, each chapter is a newly commissioned piece covering a range of opinions and perspectives. The topics discussed are broad in variety and include: genocide and the end of the Ottoman Empire Stalin and the Soviet Union Iron Age warfare genocide and religion Japanese military brutality during the Second World War heritage and how we remember the past. The volume is global in scope, something of increasing importance in the study of genocide. Presenting genocide as an extremely diverse phenomenon, this book is a wide-ranging and in-depth view of the field that will be valuable for all those interested in the historical context of genocide.

What were the lives of Africans in provincial England like during the early modern period? How, where, and when did they arrive in rural counties? How were they perceived by their contemporaries? This book examines the population of Africans in Norfolk and Suffolk from 1467, the date of the first documented reference to an African in the region, to 1833, when Parliament voted to abolish slavery in the British Empire. It uncovers the complexity of these Africans' historical experience, considering the interaction of local custom, class structure, tradition, memory, and the gradual impact of the Atlantic slaving economy. Richard C. Maguire proposes that the initial regional response to arriving Africans during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was not defined exclusively by ideas relating to skin colour, but rather by local understandings of religious status, class position, ideas about freedom and bondage, and immediate local circumstances. Arriving Africans were able to join the region's working population through baptism, marriage, parenthood, and work. This manner of response to Africans was challenged as local merchants and gentry begin doing business with the slaving economy from the mid-seventeenth century onwards. Although the racialised ideas underpinning Atlantic slavery changed the social circumstances of Africans in the region, the book suggests that they did not completely displace older, more inclusive, ideas in working communities.

Genocide Studies is a rapidly expanding field, benefiting greatly from global perspectives. Interdisciplinary in style while retaining a clear historical focus, The Routledge History of Genocide looks at much of recorded human history to examine episodes of extreme violence that could be interpreted as genocidal in a sensitive, inclusive and respectful way. Each of the chapters is a newly commissioned state of the art piece, and the contributions cover a range of opinions and perspectives as well as providing accurate reference for the reader.

This title is divided into six broad, thematic sections: Genocide as a Phenomenon, Pre-Modern Genocides, Colonialism and its Aftermath, Extreme Nationalism and Eliminations of Population, Communist Exterminations of Populations and Responses to Genocide. Throughout the book these sections acknowledge that genocide is an extremely varied phenomenon; its complex variables include the nature of regimes and leaders, ideologies in different human epochs, the responses of ordinary men and women and simply the limits of the possible. "