Blood and Soil : A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur

by Ben Kiernan

• ISBN13: 9780300144253
• ISBN10: 0300144253
• Format: Trade Paper
• Copyright: 2009-02-17
• Publisher: Yale University Press

Summary

For thirty years Ben Kiernan has been deeply involved in the study of genocide and crimes against humanity. He has played a key role in unearthing confidential documentation of the atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge. His writings have transformed our understanding not only of twentieth-century Cambodia but also of the historical phenomenon of genocide. This new bookthe first global history of genocide and extermination from ancient timesis among his most important achievements. Kiernan examines outbreaks of mass violence from the classical era to the present, focusing on worldwide colonial exterminations and twentieth-century case studies including the Armenian genocide, the Nazi Holocaust, Stalin's mass murders, and the Cambodian and Rwandan genocides. He identifies connections, patterns, and features that in nearly every case gave early warning of the catastrophe to come: racism or religious prejudice, territorial expansionism, and cults of antiquity and agrarianism. The ideologies that have motivated perpetrators of mass killings in the past persist in our new century, says Kiernan. He urges that we heed the rich historical evidence with its telltale signs for predicting and preventing future genocides.

Author Biography

Ben Kiernan is the A. Whitney Griswold Professor of History, professor of international and area studies, and the founding director of the Genocide Studies Program at Yale University (www.yale.edu/gsp). His previous books include How Pol Pot Came to Power: Colonialism, Nationalism, and Communism in Cambodia, 1930–1975 and The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power, and Genocide in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, 1975-1979, published by Yale University Press.

Table of Contents

List of Maps	p. ix
Introduction	p. 1
Early Imperial Expansion
Classical Genocide and Early Modern Memory	p. 43
The Spanish Conquest of the New World, 1492-1600	p. 72
Guns and Genocide in East Asia, 1400-1600	p. 101
Genocidal Massacres in Early Modern Southeast Asia	p. 133
Settler Colonialism
Introductory Note	p. 165
The English Conquest of Ireland, 1565-1603	p. 169
Colonial North America, 1600-1776	p. 213
Genocidal Violence in Nineteenth-Century Australia	p. 249
Genocide in the United States	p. 310
Settler Genocides in Africa, 1830-1910	p. 364
Twentieth-Century Genocides
Introductory Note	p. 393
The Armenian Genocide: National Chauvinism in the Waning Ottoman Empire	p. 395
Blut und Boden: Germany and Nazi Genocide	p. 416
Rice, Race, and Empire: Japan and East Asia	p. 455
Soviet Terror and Agriculture	p. 486
Maoism in China: A Rural Model of Revolutionary Violence	p. 512
From the Mekong to the Nile: Genocide in Cambodia and Rwanda	p. 539
Epilogue: Racial and Religious Slaughter from Bangladesh to Baghdad	p. 571
Note	p. 607
Acknowledgments	p. 698
Index	p. 701
Illustrations
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