The Cambridge World History of Genocide: Volume 2, Genocide in the Indigenous, Early Modern and Imperial Worlds, from c.1535 to World War One

by Ned Blackhawk (Editor), Ben Kiernan (Editor), Benjamin Madley (Editor)

Volume II documents and analyses genocide and extermination throughout the early modern and modern eras. It tracks their global expansion as European and Asian imperialisms, and Euroamerican settler colonialism, spread across the globe before the Great War, forging new frontiers and impacting Indigenous communities in Europe, Asia, North America, Africa, and Australia. Twenty-five historians with expertise on specific regions explore examples on five continents, providing comparisons of nine cases of conventional imperialism with nineteen of settler colonialism, and offering a substantial basis for assessing the various factors leading to genocide. This volume also considers cases where genocide did not occur, permitting a global consideration of the role of imperialism and settler-Indigenous relations from the sixteenth to the early twentieth centuries. It ends with six pre-1918 cases from Australia, China, the Middle East, Africa, and Europe that can be seen as 'premonitions' of the major twentieth-century genocides in Europe and Asia.

Genres: Nonfiction, World History

720 pages, Hardcover

Published May 4, 2023

About the author

Ned Blackhawk (Western Shoshone) is Professor of History and American Studies at Yale University. The Native American and Indigenous Studies Association awarded Violence over the Land its Book of the Decade Award as "one of the ten most influential books in Native American and Indigenous Studies in the first decade of the twenty-first century."

Reviews

[Tony Gualtieri · Rating 5 out of 5]

With a few of exceptions such as the Taiping Rebellion and the use of gas during WWI, this volume covers genocides either directly or indirectly due to colonialism. Reading these potted histories in succession shows how colonial genocide events follow a similar pattern. Each begins with a relatively trivial cause followed by a massively disproportionate response motivated by revenge and dehumanizing of the victims through racial and cultural lenses. In most cases, the benefits to the oppressor are short-term and ultimately backfire on the perpetrators.

Special emphasis is placed on the 19th century killing of indigenous people in Australia and the United States. These genocides are shown to be systemic, following a slightly different pattern of episodic violence and family dispersal through residential schools. Interestingly, little mention is made of genocides in Latin and South America during this period.

Like any collection of edited chapters, there is some repetition, but less time is spent in this volume defining and proving genocide compared to the first. It would be comforting to think that these colonial genocides are a thing of the past, but the recent events in Gaza show how much the pattern holds. Indeed, the case studies here show how clearly Israel is engaging in genocide against the Palestinians even as one can take comfort that the native people of the region will never be eradicated.