The Specter of Genocide: Mass Murder in Historical Perspective (review)

In the last decades of the twentieth century, scholarship and interest in genocides and other mass crimes multiplied, reflecting the shocking range of killings from East Timor to Rwanda to the former Yugoslavia. This collection of original essays addresses key issues and ongoing debates in the emerging interdisciplinary field of Genocide Studies. Gellately and Kiernan discuss the complexities of definitions distinguishing genocide under the UN Genocide Convention, with its high legal-intent threshold and exclusion of political groups, and terms such as ethnic cleansing, which often includes territorial expulsion, and mass crimes (the subject of Jacques Semelin's essay about the former Yugoslavia [1991–1999]). Why and how have so many civilians who are members of, or purported to be members of, specific groups been targeted for elimination from Asia and Africa to Europe and North America? Why and how some conflicts turn into mass murder is a recurrent theme in this collection.

Besides the editors' introduction and conclusion, the book is divided into four parts: "Genocide and Modernity" (Kiernan, Eric D. Weitz, Omer Bartov, and Marie Fleming); "Indigenous Peoples and Colonial Issues" (Elazar Barkan, Isabel V. Hull, and John G. Taylor); "The Era of the Two World Wars (Jay Winter, Nicolas Werth, Gellately, and Gavan McCormack); and "Genocide and Mass Murder since 1945" (Edward Kissi, Robert Melson, Greg Grandin, and Semelin).

Certain essays focus on crimes in one country. Werth describes a murderous program of social engineering in "The Mechanism of a Mass Crime: The Great Terror in the Soviet Union 1937–38"; Gellately focuses on "The Third Reich, the Holocaust, and Visions of Serial Genocide"; and Barkan examines the conquest, abduction, and murder of indigenous peoples from the Americas to Australia in "Genocides of Indigenous Peoples: Rhetoric of Human Rights." In "Reflections on Modern Japanese History in the Context of the Concept of Genocide," McCormack asks whether Western demands (often unofficial) employed a double standard in demanding Japanese admission and apology for atrocities committed during World War II but excluding atrocities of major Western countries from accountability.

Kiernan in "Twentieth Century Genocides: Underlying Ideological Themes from Armenia to East Timor" provides a comparative analysis that describes how "racism, religious prejudice, expansionism and idealization of cultivation" have been transformed from a relatively harmless part of nationalism into a deadly combination (51). The essay traces the narrative of territorial decline and ideals of recovery in a series of diverse cases, such as the Ottoman Empire, Nazi Germany, Khmer Cambodia, and Mohamed Suharto's Indonesia.

Weitz's "The Modernity of Genocides: War, Race and Revolution in the Twentieth Century" emphasizes the aesthetic of death that emerged out of World War I and how rituals of killing play a crucial role in the drive for ideological purity linked to revolutions in modern states. Weitz points out that killing is a performative act and describes how "enormously inventive" human beings have been in carrying out mass murder. He draws up a list of human cruelties linked to creative rituals and explores the range of methods, from deportation to torture and random shootings to desecration of bodies, that help to explain why and how so many individuals take part in modern mass crimes.

The final section on post-1945 genocide is noteworthy in providing essays on Indonesia, Cambodia and Ethiopia, Rwanda, Guatemala, and the former Yugoslavia. The editors point out that gaps still remain—for example, scholarship about Bangladesh and events in Asia and Africa, especially from scholars in these regions. The section includes Kissi's comparative essay on Cambodia and Ethiopia and how civil war became a vehicle for the Dergue to eliminate the Oromo and other ethnic groups, as well as Melson's analysis of how revolution in Rwanda led to a total domestic genocide.

Grandin's "History, Motive, Law, Intent: Combining Historical and Legal Methods in Understanding Guatemala's 1981–83 Genocide" discusses the UN-administered Historical Clarification Commission (CEH), its findings of state-sponsored...