What do you think?
Rate this book
Genocide Before the Holocaust
This innovative and ambitious work is a systematic examination of the many instances of genocide that took place in the late nineteenth and early twentieth-century centuries that were precursors to the Holocaust.
There is an appalling symmetry to the many instances of genocide that the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century world witnessed. In the wake of the break-up of the old Hapsburg, Ottoman and Romanov empires, minority populations throughout those lands were persecuted, expelled and eliminated. The reason for the deplorable decimations of communities - Jews in Imperial Russia and Ukraine, Ottoman Assyrians, Armenians and Muslims from the Caucasus and Balkans - was, Cathie Carmichael contends, located in the very roots of the new nation states arising from the imperial rubble. The question of who should be included in the nation, and which groups were now to be deemed ‘suspect’ or ‘alien’, was one that preoccupied and divided Europe long before the Holocaust. Examining all the major eliminations of communities in Europe up until 1941, Carmichael shows how hotbeds of nationalism, racism and developmentalism resulted in devastating manifestations of genocidal ideology. Dramatic, perceptive and poignant, this is the story of disappearing civilizations - precursors to one of humanity’s worst atrocities, and part of the legacy of genocide in the modern world.
There is an appalling symmetry to the many instances of genocide that the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century world witnessed. In the wake of the break-up of the old Hapsburg, Ottoman and Romanov empires, minority populations throughout those lands were persecuted, expelled and eliminated. The reason for the deplorable decimations of communities - Jews in Imperial Russia and Ukraine, Ottoman Assyrians, Armenians and Muslims from the Caucasus and Balkans - was, Cathie Carmichael contends, located in the very roots of the new nation states arising from the imperial rubble. The question of who should be included in the nation, and which groups were now to be deemed ‘suspect’ or ‘alien’, was one that preoccupied and divided Europe long before the Holocaust. Examining all the major eliminations of communities in Europe up until 1941, Carmichael shows how hotbeds of nationalism, racism and developmentalism resulted in devastating manifestations of genocidal ideology. Dramatic, perceptive and poignant, this is the story of disappearing civilizations - precursors to one of humanity’s worst atrocities, and part of the legacy of genocide in the modern world.
- GenresHistory
256 pages, Paperback
First published August 14, 2009
29 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
August 6, 2018
Perspectives on the Doctrines of Genocide
Filled with powerful and thought provoking ideas, Ms. Carmichael's short book begins with the conjecture that the late millenial consolidation of European countries were ideologically a form of internal colonialism that then expanded onto the world stage, yet never quite gelled in the Balkans, Caucus or Ukraine. Intriguingly she characterizes both the Ottoman Empire and Imperial Russia of the late 19th centure as parallel "apartheid" states exhibitting a kind of symetry in their oppression of religious minorities. In the case of Russia the targets were Mulsims (evicted into Turkey in the aftermath of the Crimean War) and Jews, victims of widespread pogroms from the Black sea to the Baltic; for the Ottomans it was primarily Christian Armenians and Greeks who, under Sharia based Muslim law were legally unable to bear arms and defend themselves leading to large scale massacres of Greeks and the Armenian Genocide. One has to realize that the victimized populations, though of different religion and ethnicities, merely lived on opposite sides of a common border.
The middle of the book boldly presents the contrasting ideologies of humanism vs. what Carmichael describes as "eliminationionism", the prevalent notion that competing ethnic groups could not co-exist and that one would necessarily eradicate the other. Paul Rohrbach, a German activist and travel writer examined in Chapter 3, is interesting as he suggested resettling the Armenians to a less unfriendly location where they would be safer. Unfortunately even though Rohrbach's interest was in building German influence the Turks adopted this idea and engaged in forced deportations towards Syria and Lebanon - most of the deportees dying enroute.
Chapter 5 "The Battleground in Print" is a bit unusual in that it takes a look at the influence of epic writing on the population at large. Some of the causality IMHO is backwards - most of the peasantry was illiterate and at best would have merely heard of these writings. Conventionally one would have concluded that the popularity of these works among the intelligentsia were more a reflection of public mood. In either case it is still interesting and relevant to our understanding of the history.
Chapter 7 "The Battle in the Courtroom" is another impressive foray. It surveys a dozen trials and numerous political assassinations where ethnicity was at issue. In each case she notes the the large support given by the public either for the defendant or the victim.
Overall the examples are excellent and wide marshaling a multitude of sources and quotations, touching on themes such as the attitudes of the dominant groups towards minorities, the popularity of the Protocols, the Dreyfus and Beiyless trials, the assassination of Talat Pasha and the destruction of Smyrna and numerous less well known events. Not only does it expand one's knowledge of history, it challenges one's perspectives by showing that contemporaneous events in different regions with different groups were in fact similar in nature.
It's a good book. I highly recommend it as a source of insight into the nature of genocide and the makeup of the Western and Middle Eastern world on the cusp of the modern age.
Filled with powerful and thought provoking ideas, Ms. Carmichael's short book begins with the conjecture that the late millenial consolidation of European countries were ideologically a form of internal colonialism that then expanded onto the world stage, yet never quite gelled in the Balkans, Caucus or Ukraine. Intriguingly she characterizes both the Ottoman Empire and Imperial Russia of the late 19th centure as parallel "apartheid" states exhibitting a kind of symetry in their oppression of religious minorities. In the case of Russia the targets were Mulsims (evicted into Turkey in the aftermath of the Crimean War) and Jews, victims of widespread pogroms from the Black sea to the Baltic; for the Ottomans it was primarily Christian Armenians and Greeks who, under Sharia based Muslim law were legally unable to bear arms and defend themselves leading to large scale massacres of Greeks and the Armenian Genocide. One has to realize that the victimized populations, though of different religion and ethnicities, merely lived on opposite sides of a common border.
The middle of the book boldly presents the contrasting ideologies of humanism vs. what Carmichael describes as "eliminationionism", the prevalent notion that competing ethnic groups could not co-exist and that one would necessarily eradicate the other. Paul Rohrbach, a German activist and travel writer examined in Chapter 3, is interesting as he suggested resettling the Armenians to a less unfriendly location where they would be safer. Unfortunately even though Rohrbach's interest was in building German influence the Turks adopted this idea and engaged in forced deportations towards Syria and Lebanon - most of the deportees dying enroute.
Chapter 5 "The Battleground in Print" is a bit unusual in that it takes a look at the influence of epic writing on the population at large. Some of the causality IMHO is backwards - most of the peasantry was illiterate and at best would have merely heard of these writings. Conventionally one would have concluded that the popularity of these works among the intelligentsia were more a reflection of public mood. In either case it is still interesting and relevant to our understanding of the history.
Chapter 7 "The Battle in the Courtroom" is another impressive foray. It surveys a dozen trials and numerous political assassinations where ethnicity was at issue. In each case she notes the the large support given by the public either for the defendant or the victim.
Overall the examples are excellent and wide marshaling a multitude of sources and quotations, touching on themes such as the attitudes of the dominant groups towards minorities, the popularity of the Protocols, the Dreyfus and Beiyless trials, the assassination of Talat Pasha and the destruction of Smyrna and numerous less well known events. Not only does it expand one's knowledge of history, it challenges one's perspectives by showing that contemporaneous events in different regions with different groups were in fact similar in nature.
It's a good book. I highly recommend it as a source of insight into the nature of genocide and the makeup of the Western and Middle Eastern world on the cusp of the modern age.
Displaying 1 of 1 review