Extremely Violent Societies
Mass Violence in the Twentieth-Century World

Investigation of the causes of twentieth-century mass violence worldwide beyond terms such as 'genocide' and 'ethnic cleansing'.

Christian Gerlach (Author)

9780521880589, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 14 October 2010

502 pages
23.5 x 16 x 2.7 cm, 0.9 kg

'After his remarkable study on the Holocaust, Christian Gerlach demonstrates in this very innovative book, his capacity to tackle mass violence from a comparative perspective. His approach is not only courageous and challenging, but also insightful and certainly deserves to be discussed in genocide scholarly circles and beyond.' Jacques Semelin, CERI-CNRS, Center for International Studies and Research

In this groundbreaking book Christian Gerlach traces the social roots of the extraordinary processes of human destruction involved in mass violence throughout the twentieth century. He argues that terms such as 'genocide' and 'ethnic cleansing' are too narrow to explain the diverse motives and interests that cause violence to spread in varying forms and intensities. From killings and expulsions to enforced hunger, collective rape, strategic bombing, forced labour and imprisonment he explores what happened before, during, and after periods of widespread bloodshed in countries such as Armenia, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Nazi-occupied Greece and in anti-guerilla wars worldwide in order to highlight the crucial role of socio-economic pressures in the generation of group conflicts. By focussing on why so many different people participated in or supported mass violence, and why different groups were victimized, he offers us a new way of understanding one of the most disturbing phenomena of our times.

1. Introduction: extremely violent societies
Part I. Participatory Violence: 2. A coalition for violence: mass slaughter in Indonesia, 1965–66
3. Participating and profiteering: the destruction of the Armenians, 1915–23
Part II. The Crisis of Society: 4. From rivalries between elites to a crisis of society: mass violence and famine in Bangladesh (East Pakistan), 1971–77
5. Sustainable violence: strategic resettlement, militias and 'development' in anti-guerrilla warfare
6. What connects the fate of different victim groups? The German occupation and Greek society in crisis
Part III. General Observations: 7. The ethnization of history: the historiography of mass violence and national identity construction
8. Conclusions.

Subject Areas: Social & cultural history [HBTB], 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000 [HBLW]