The Magnitude Of Genocide

This book defines genocide, distinguishing it from mass murder, war crimes, and other atrocities; allows readers to grasp the magnitude of the crime of genocide across time and throughout human civilization; and facilitates an understanding of new and potential cases of genocide as they occur. Recently, the topic of intervention against genocide has received attention in global politics and the national political discourse of major countries. The challenges in confronting genocide and attempting to make a positive change are manifold. Simply establishing an agreement on the legal definition of genocide—and distinguishing it from genocidal massacres, war crimes, and other crimes against humanity—is problematic. This book provides a valuable resource for students, scholars, and journalists when public awareness of, and interest in, genocide has reached unprecedented levels. Written in an accessible way for a broad readership, the book makes use of case studies to enable an understanding of emerging and potential genocide with the necessary depth of coverage to evaluate critically the ways in which the United Nations and national governments engage them. Readers will understand the essential ingredients of genocide, from antiquity to the present, and grasp the extent of the crime across human history. A variety of case studies provides a means to measure genocidal magnitudes in terms of their intent and motive, geographical extent, pace, method, participants, outcomes, legacies, punishments, and reparations. A unique and crucial feature of the book is that it gives as much attention to the differences among genocides—for example, between a large-scale genocide like the Holocaust and the extermination of a 500-person Amazonian tribe—while still treating both within a single conceptual framework of genocide, without "discounting" the smaller case.

This book defines genocide, distinguishing it from mass murder, war crimes, and other atrocities; allows readers to grasp the magnitude of the crime of genocide across time and throughout human civilization; and facilitates an understanding of new and potential cases of genocide as they occur. Recently, the topic of intervention against genocide has received attention in global politics and the national political discourse of major countries. The challenges in confronting genocide and attempting to make a positive change are manifold. Simply establishing an agreement on the legal definition of genocide—and distinguishing it from genocidal massacres, war crimes, and other crimes against humanity—is problematic. This book provides a valuable resource for students, scholars, and journalists when public awareness of, and interest in, genocide has reached unprecedented levels. Written in an accessible way for a broad readership, the book makes use of case studies to enable an understanding of emerging and potential genocide with the necessary depth of coverage to evaluate critically the ways in which the United Nations and national governments engage them. Readers will understand the essential ingredients of genocide, from antiquity to the present, and grasp the extent of the crime across human history. A variety of case studies provides a means to measure genocidal magnitudes in terms of their intent and motive, geographical extent, pace, method, participants, outcomes, legacies, punishments, and reparations. A unique and crucial feature of the book is that it gives as much attention to the differences among genocides—for example, between a large-scale genocide like the Holocaust and the extermination of a 500-person Amazonian tribe—while still treating both within a single conceptual framework of genocide, without "discounting" the smaller case.

The Killing Trap offers a comparative analysis of the genocides, politicides and ethnic cleansings of the twentieth century, which are estimated to have cost upwards of forty million lives. The book seeks to understand both the occurrence and magnitude of genocide, based on the conviction that such comparative analysis may contribute towards prevention of genocide in the future. Manus Midlarsky compares socio-economic circumstances and international contexts and includes in his analysis the Jews of Europe, Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, Tutsi in Rwanda, black Africans in Darfur, Cambodians, Bosnians, and the victims of conflict in Ireland. The occurrence of genocide is explained by means of a framework that gives equal emphasis to the non-occurrence of genocide, a critical element not found in other comparisons, and victims are given a prominence equal to that of perpetrators in understanding the magnitude of genocide.

Despite the catch-cry bandied about after the Holocaust, "Never Again", genocides continue to destroy cultures and communities around the globe. In this collection of essays, Australian scholars discuss the crime of genocide, examining regimes and episodes that stretch across time and geography. Included are discussions on Australia’s own history of genocide against its Indigenous peoples, mass killing and human rights abuses in Indonesia and North Korea, and new insights into some of the core twentieth century genocides, such as the Holocaust and the Armenian Genocide. Scholars grapple with ongoing questions of memory and justice, governmental responsibility, the role of the medical professions, gendered experiences, artistic representation, and best practice in genocide education. Importantly, genocide prevention and the role of the global community is also explored within this collection. This volume of Genocide Perspectives is dedicated to Professor Colin Tatz AO, an inspirational figure in the field of human rights, and one of the forefathers of genocide studies in Australia.

Examines the topic of genocide through a series of essays.

Genocide isn't past tense and the Nazi and Bosnian eras are not yet closed. The demonising of people as 'unworthy' and expendable is ever-present and the consequences are all too evident in the daily news. These fourteen essays by Australian scholars confront the issues: the need for a measuring scale that encompasses differences and similarities between seemingly divergent cases of the crime; the complicity of bureaucracies, the healing professions and the churches in this 'crime of crimes'; the quest for historical justice for genocide victims generally following the Nuremberg Trials; the fate of children in the Nazi and postwar eras; the 'worthiness' of Armenians, Jews and Romani people in twentieth century Europe; and the imperative to tackle early warning signs of an incipient genocide. Colin Tatz is a founding director of the Australian Institute for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, visiting fellow in Politics and International Relations at the Australian National University, and honorary visiting fellow at the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies. He teaches and publishes in comparative race politics, youth suicide, migration studies, and sports history.

The Historiography of Genocide is an indispensable guide to the development of the emerging discipline of genocide studies and the only available assessment of the historical literature pertaining to genocides.

The Holocaust is frequently depicted in isolation by its historians. Some of them believe that to place it in any kind of comparative context risks diminishing its uniqueness and even detracts from the enormity of the Nazi crime. In reality, such a restricted understanding of 'uniqueness' has pulled the Holocaust apart from history and set up barriers to a better understanding of the racial onslaught unleashed within the Third Reich and its conquered territories. Working against the grain of much earlier writing, this innovative new history combines a detailed re-appraisal of the development of the genocide of the Jews, a full consideration of Nazi policies against other population groups, and a comparative analysis of other modern genocides. The Holocaust is portrayed as the culmination of a much wider history of European genocide and ethnic cleansing, from the late nineteenth century onwards. Ultimately, Bloxham shows that an explanation for the Holocaust rooted exclusively in Nazism and antisemitism is inadequate when set against one that is both prepared to give due weight to the immediate circumstances of the Second World War in eastern Europe and to situate the Jewish genocide within the broader patterns of human behaviour in the late-modern world.