Empire, Colony, Genocide - (War and Genocide) by A Dirk Moses (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

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."

Review Quotes

FIRST PRIZE IN THE CATEGORY OF NON-EUROPEAN HISTORY
Awarded for 2009 by H-Soz-und-Kult

"With its depth of theoretical insight and the wealth of empirical material this volume sets new standards for the history of colonialism and genocide"

"...an impressive achievement [to be used) as a core text for graduate and upper-- undergraduate courses in genocide studies...The book deserves to be read straight through; it maintains an admirable consistency of tone, purpose and scholarly quality through more than 450 pages. Specialists in the field will wish to add it to their collections immediately." - European History Quarterly

"...much of the material in this book is thoughtful and thought provoking, particularly for those with academic or political interests in imperialism and colonization...[There are many] thought-provoking considerations that the probing contributions to Moses' volume on genocide will raise among careful readers." - H-Net Reviews

"The essays in it establish the historical record of genocide in ways both verifiable and meaningful and thus, in a sense, permit future scholars to advance our ability to explain the ultimate political question of this or any time. This excellent volume certainly deserves the tribute of further scholarly and theoretical effort." - Holocaust and Genocide Studies

"The theoretical and empirical are linked in this stimulating volume in an exemplary manner." - Zeitschrift für Genozidforschung

"There is still so much to be understood and interpreted about the intersections of empire, colony and Genocide, and the pieces gathered here by Moses are successfully informative and thought-provoking." - Journal of Australian Colonial History

"...a fine body of work. The essays cannot examine every example of genocide, but collectively they represent a starting point for students, scholars and general readers. For this reason, I wholeheartedly recommend this book for high school and university courses alike." - Canadian Journal of History/Annales canadiennes d'histoire

"Moses has gathered an elite cohort of scholars with unrivalled expertise. Still, he makes no claim to comprehensiveness and I must follow his example. It is way beyond any review to do justice to the wealth of research and interpretive insight in all of these contributions. So let me say at the outset: the book is essential reading for anyone grappling with the deep and often intractable issues that confront us as historians of genocide." - Borderlands e-journal

"The essential problem of the book - its recurrent question as well as its potential pitfall - is the position of the Holocaust in relation to other acts of extermination...This creates a tension throughout the book; it also makes it worth debating and certainly makes it a remarkably useful text to inform further research and for teaching purposes." - Journal of Global History

"...the volume offers an unusually rich, deeply disturbing material." - Peripherie

"Empire, Colony, Genocide represents an important contribution to genocide studies. Taken individually or collectively, the contributors should be applauded for some thoughtful, methodologically sophisticated, and intellectually rigorous work ... What this volume provides, therefore, is stimulus to further analyze the social, economic, and cultural threads that fostered this complexity, and rationalized genocidal violence." - Journal of Genocide Research

"Crossing broad temporal ranges and geographies, the collection repre