Genocide : a world history

193 Pages·2017·5.455 MB·English

by  Naimark, Norman M

Genocide:
A World History

The
New
Oxford
World
History
Genocide:
A World History
Norman M. Naimark
1
1
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Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Names: Naimark, Norman M., author.
Title: Genocide : a world history / Norman M. Naimark.
Description: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2017] | Series: New Oxford world
history | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016019771 | ISBN 978–0–19–976526–3 (pbk. : alk. paper) |
ISBN 978–0–19–976527–0 (hardback : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Genocide—History.
Classification: LCC HV6322.7 .N348 2017 | DDC 364.15/109—dc23 LC record available
at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016019771
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Paperback printed by WebCom, Inc., Canada
Hardback printed by Bridgeport National Bindery, Inc., United States of America
Frontispiece: Photos of tortured and murdered victims of the Cambodian genocide
at the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, housed in a former
prison used by the Khmer Rouge regime. Photo by Mark Garten/U N Photo.
Contents
Editors’ Preface  ..........................................................vii
Introduction  ................................................................1
Chapter 1 The Ancient World ..................................................7
Chapter 2 Warrior Genocides  ................................................16
Chapter 3 The Spanish Conquest  ..........................................34
Chapter 4 Settler Genocides  ..................................................48
Chapter 5 Modern Genocides  ...............................................65
Chapter 6 Communist Genocides  ..........................................86
Chapter 7 Anti- Communist Genocides  ................................104
Chapter 8 Genocide in the Post– Cold War World ................123
Conclusion ...............................................................142
Chronology  .............................................................145
Notes  ......................................................................147
Further Reading  ......................................................161
Websites  ..................................................................163
Acknowledgments  ...................................................165
Index  .......................................................................171

Editors’ Preface
T
his book is part of the New Oxford World History, an innova-
tive series that offers readers an informed, lively, and up-to-date
history of the world and its people that represents a significant
change from the “old” world history. Only a few years ago, world his-
tory generally amounted to a history of the West—Europe and the
United States—with small amounts of information from the rest of the
world. Some versions of the “old” world history drew attention to every
part of the world except Europe and the United States. Readers of that
kind of world history could get the impression that somehow the rest of
the world was made up of exotic people who had strange customs and
spoke difficult languages. Still another kind of “old” world history pre-
sented the story of areas or peoples of the world by focusing primarily
on the achievements of great civilizations. One learned of great build-
ings, influential world religions, and mighty rulers but little of ordi-
nary people or more general economic and social patterns. Interactions
among the world’s peoples were often told from only one perspective.
This series tells world history differently. First, it is comprehensive,
covering all countries and regions of the world and investigating the
total human experience—even those of so-called peoples without his-
tories living far from the great civilizations. “New” world historians
thus share in common an interest in all of human history, even going
back millions of years before there were written human records. A few
“new” world histories even extend their focus to the entire universe, a
“big history” perspective that dramatically shifts the beginning of the
story back to the big bang. Some see the “new” global framework of
world history today as viewing the world from the vantage point of
the Moon, as one scholar put it. We agree. But we also want to take a
close-up view, analyzing and reconstructing the significant experiences
of all of humanity.
This is not to say that everything that has happened everywhere and
in all time periods can be recovered or is worth knowing, but that there
is much to be gained by considering both the separate and interrelated
stories of different societies and cultures. Making these connections is
still another crucial ingredient of the “new” world history. It emphasizes
connectedness and interactions of all kinds—cultural, economic, polit-
ical, religious, and social—involving peoples, places, and processes. It
makes comparisons and finds similarities. Emphasizing both the com-
parisons and interactions is critical to developing a global framework
that can deepen and broaden historical understanding, whether the
focus is on a specific country or region or on the whole world.
The rise of the new world history as a discipline comes at an oppor-
tune time. The interest in world history in schools and among the gen-
eral public is vast. We travel to one another’s nations, converse and
work with people around the world, and are changed by global events.
War and peace affect populations worldwide, as do economic condi-
tions and the state of our environment, communications, and health
and medicine. The New Oxford World History presents local histories
in a global context and gives an overview of world events seen through
the eyes of ordinary people. This combination of the local and the global
further defines the new world history. Understanding the workings of
global and local conditions in the past gives us tools for examining our
own world and for envisioning the interconnected future that is in the
making.
Bonnie G. Smith
Anand Yang
viii Editors’ Preface
Introduction
G
enocide has been a part of human history from its very begin-
nings. There is little reason to think that our prehistoric fore-
bears were either more or less civilized than ourselves when
confronting and eliminating other peoples and suspected enemies.
Extended families, clans, and tribes routinely engaged in genocidal
actions against their rivals, just as ancient empires and modern nation-
states enacted their murderous hatred for imagined or real enemies in
mass killing. Over the ages, genocide has had both internal and external
dimensions. Political leaders of societies small and large, primitive and
modern, have turned against internal groups—t ribal, ethnic, religious,
social— and sought their elimination as a way to preserve privilege,
avoid dissidence, consolidate power, and accumulate wealth. They have
also conquered and dominated neighboring (or distant) territories for a
variety of imperial purposes and have killed and suppressed, as well as
co- opted, native peoples of those regions in order to dominate them and
seize their land and resources.
Any consideration of the world history of genocide must deal with
the question of definition, for it is crucial in understanding the special
character of genocide as the “crime of crimes” in order to distinguish it
from other terrible atrocities against human beings that have been com-
mitted over the centuries. Genocide is a different category of crime from,
for example, war crimes, which were originally defined by the Hague
Convention of 1898 and then further developed by the Nuremberg
Tribunal in 1946 and the Geneva Convention of 1949. These include
such war- specific crimes as looting, the murder of hostages, the use
of gas, and the killing of prisoners of war. Genocide also differs from
“crimes against humanity,” which the Treaty of Rome (1998) classi-
fies as murder, extermination, enslavement, depopulation or forcible
transfer of population, torture, and a variety of sexual crimes, including
rape.1 Genocide has its own provenance deriving from the thinking and
activism of the Polish Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin. Contemporary