Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur (review)
Rent from DeepDyve- Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur
Declaration of interest: Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term genocide, hired me as a teenager to write a chapter for his projected encyclopedia of genocide. Kiernan, an expert on the mass murders in Cambodia, covers much of the territory, from ancient Greece and Rome to modern Iraq, describing in sober prose the efforts of human beings to exterminate their fellows. Why do we do it? Kiernan offers four motives: “Racism, expansionism, agrarianism, and antiquity”—that is, the dream of a pure past. Farmers wipe out pastoral societies to obtain their land, supposing that agriculture equals civilization. Racism is relatively modern, though with roots in Aristotle’s justification of natural slavery. History plays an active role in normalizing genocide: Cortés exhorted his troops in Mexico to imitate the Roman armies. Kiernan concludes: “The modern era and modern genocide both began with a revival of interest in the ancient world. . . . Al-Qaeda still sees itself as refighting ancient battles . . . to establish an ethnically pure, agrarian utopia.” Palestinians do not earn a mention, and resentment as a motive is played down. But Kiernan’s four reasons recur with deadening frequency. [End Page 508]
David Konstan is Distinguished Professor of Classics and the Humanistic Tradition at Brown University and has also taught at universities in Egypt, South Africa, Brazil, Argentina, New Zealand, Australia, and Scotland. His books include The Emotions of the Ancient Greeks, Some Aspects of Epicurean Psychology, Pity Transformed, Friendship in the Classical World, Sexual Symmetry, Greek Comedy and Ideology, Roman Comedy, and Catullus’ Indictment of Rome.
