Empire, Colony, Genocide

In 1944, Raphael Lemkin coined the term “genocide” to describe a foreign occupation that destroyed or permanently crippled a subject population. In this tradition, Empire, Colony, Genocide embeds genocide in the epochal geopolitical transformations of the past 500 years: the European colonization of the globe, the rise and fall of the continental land empires, violent decolonization, and the formation of nation states. It thereby challenges the customary focus on twentieth-century mass crimes and shows that genocide and “ethnic cleansing” have been intrinsic to imperial expansion. The complexity of the colonial encounter is reflected in the contrast between the insurgent identities and genocidal strategies that subaltern peoples sometimes developed to expel the occupiers, and those local elites and creole groups that the occupiers sought to co-opt. Presenting case studies on the Americas, Australia, Africa, Asia, the Ottoman Empire, Imperial Russia, and the Nazi “Third Reich,” leading authorities examine the colonial dimension of the genocide concept as well as the imperial systems and discourses that enabled conquest. Empire, Colony, Genocide is a world history of genocide that highlights what Lemkin called “the role of the human group and its tribulations.”

In 1944, Raphael Lemkin coined the term “genocide” to describe a foreign occupation that destroyed or permanently crippled a subject population. In this tradition, Empire, Colony, Genocide embeds genocide in the epochal geopolitical transformations of the past 500 years: the European colonization of the globe, the rise and fall of the continental land empires, violent decolonization, and the formation of nation states. It thereby challenges the customary focus on twentieth-century mass crimes and shows that genocide and “ethnic cleansing” have been intrinsic to imperial expansion. The complexity of the colonial encounter is reflected in the contrast between the insurgent identities and genocidal strategies that subaltern peoples sometimes developed to expel the occupiers, and those local elites and creole groups that the occupiers sought to co-opt. Presenting case studies on the Americas, Australia, Africa, Asia, the Ottoman Empire, Imperial Russia, and the Nazi “Third Reich,” leading authorities examine the colonial dimension of the genocide concept as well as the imperial systems and discourses that enabled conquest. Empire, Colony, Genocide is a world history of genocide that highlights what Lemkin called “the role of the human group and its tribulations.”

Preface
A. Dirk Moses

SECTION I: INTELLECTUAL HISTORY AND CONCEPTUAL QUESTIONS

Chapter 1. Empire, Colony, Genocide: Keywords and the Philosophy of History
A. Dirk Moses

Chapter 2. Anti-colonialism in Western Political Thought: The Colonial Origins of the Concept of Genocide
Andrew Fitzmaurice

Chapter 3. Are Settler-Colonies Inherently Genocidal? Re-reading Lemkin
John Docker

Chapter 4. Structure and Event: Settler Colonialism, Time, and the Question of Genocide
Patrick Wolfe

Chapter 5. "Crime without a Name": The Case for "Indigenocide"
Raymond Evans

Chapter 6. Colonialism and Genocides: Towards an Analysis of the Settler Archive of the European Imagination
Lorenzo Veracini

Chapter 7. Biopower and Modern Genocide
Dan Stone

SECTION II: EMPIRE, COLONIZATION AND GENOCIDE

Chapter 8. Empires, Native Peoples, and Genocide
Mark Levene

Chapter 9. Colonialism, History, and Genocide in Cambodia, 1747–2005
Ben Kiernan

Chapter 10. Genocide in Tasmania: The History of an Idea
Ann Curthoys

Chapter 11. "The aborigines... were never annihilated, and still they are becoming extinct": Settler Imperialism and Genocide in 19th-century America and Australia
Norbert Finzsch

Chapter 12. Navigating the Cultural Encounter: Blackfoot Religious Resistance in Canada (c. 1870-1930)
Blanca Tovías

Chapter 13. Genocide in German Southwest Africa and German East Africa
Dominik J. Schaller

Chapter 14. Inner Colonization and Inter-imperial Conflict: The Destruction of the Armenians and the End of the Ottoman Empire
Donald Bloxham

Chapter 15. Inner Colonialism and the Question of Genocide in Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union
Robert Geraci

Chapter 16. Colonialism and Genocide in Nazi-occupied Poland and Ukraine
David Furber and Wendy Lower

SECTION III: SUBALTERN GENOCIDE

Chapter 17. Genocide from Below: The Great Inca Rebellion of 1780–82 in the Southern Andes
David Cahill

Chapter 18. Political Loyalties and the Genocide of a Settler Community: The Eurasians in Indonesia, 1945-46
Robert Cribb

Chapter 19. Savages, Subjects, and Sovereigns: Conjunctions of Modernity, Genocide, and Colonialism
Alexander L. Hinton

Notes on Contributors
Select Bibliography
Index