GENOCIDE

When, in 1881, the German anti-Semite Dühring urged a "final settling of accounts" with the Jews, he spoke, rather obliquely, of the need for a "Carthaginian" solution (p. 113f.). This was not merely a euphemism, however, as it might now seem. On the contrary, it was well known that Rome had utterly destroyed Carthage in the last Punic War. Hence Dühring's meaning was clear. But his phrasing remained cryptic because the vocabulary of mass death had not yet attained technical precision. Not until World War II, in fact, were the terms "genocide" and "crimes against humanity" introduced. Thus, in December 1948, when the United Nations declared the willful destruction of an entire people to be a breach of international law—a principle enshrined in the U.N. Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide—the very word for mass murder was still novel.

CONCEPTUAL ROOTS

The word "genocide" was coined by the jurist Raphaël Lemkin in his book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe. "New conceptions require new terms," Lemkin wrote. "By 'genocide,' we mean the destruction of a nation or. . . ethnic group"—that is, "murder, though on a vastly greater scale" (1944, pp. 79, 91).

Mass murder, of course, is hardly new. But only since the French Revolution has there been widespread concern with what the philosopher Hegel called "the fanaticism of destruction," which aims, Hegel said, to eliminate all enemies, real or imagined ([1821] 1991, p. 38). An early expression of this concern came from Gracchus Babeuf, the leading socialist in the French Revolution, who decried the "exterminating wheel" of Robespierre's Terror. Robespierre's "general system of government," Babeuf contended, is also a "general system of extermination" ([1794] 1987, pp. 96–98). In a similar spirit, the liberal poet August von Platen deplored the Russian repression of the Polish revolution of 1831 as an instance of "Volksmurder" (Jonassohn 1998, p. 140). Others later made similar charges. But it was not until the Nazi Holocaust that the international community felt the need to adopt a special term for the attempted murder of a people.

In 1945, soon after Lemkin's book appeared, the defeated Nazi rulers were charged with "deliberate and systematic genocide." A year later the United Nations ratified a working definition of genocide as the "denial of the right of existence of entire human groups" (Kuper 1981, pp. 22–23). Lemkin's new coinage had won swift acceptance. Since then, it has become universally popular—and equally controversial.

GLOBAL VIOLENCE

The popularity of the idea of genocide reflects its continuing relevance in today's world. Globally, there were at least forty-four state-organized mass slaughters in the period from 1945 to 1989, many of which were quasi-genocidal by almost any definition. These massacres resulted in an average of 1.6 million to 3.9 million deaths per annum—significantly more, that is, than the total number of fatalities caused by all wars and natural disasters in this period. And in every decade since 1945 another 1.85 million people have died in wars and civil wars (Gurr and Harff 1989). Nor has the picture improved since 1989. In 1993, for example, there were twenty-three wars, 25 million refugees, and a record number of armed U.N. interventions in conflicts around the world (Gurr and Harff 1994). In 1994, a genocidal massacre in Rwanda caused roughly 850,000 deaths (Smith 1998). Elsewhere—in Burundi, east Timor, and myriad other places—similar if smaller tragedies have unfolded.

Many groups, in other words, have been victims of systematic violence in the recent past, and allegations of genocide abound. Yet the concept itself remains elusive—partly, indeed, thanks to its own success. So many people now equate genocide with evil that nearly every conflict is marked by charges and countercharges of genocide. Abortion, birth control, forced sterilization, intermarriage, and desegregation are just a few of the countless practices that have been labeled genocidal. Almost anything controversial, it seems, can be called genocide.

For social scientists, plainly, the matter is more complex. This was clear from the outset in Lemkin's work, which remains paradigmatic in many ways.

TOTAL WAR

Sociologically, Lemkin believed that the Holocaust was not a contingent feature of German Nazism but rather an expression of intrinsic Nazi tendencies. As an absolutist form of nationalism, Nazism claimed absolute sovereignty over non-Germans on the ground of purported German racial-national superiority. This, in turn, led to a Nazi conception of war as Total War—the conviction, that is, that wars are not merely struggles between states but rather inevitable racial contests between peoples, with total victory or defeat as the ultimate outcomes. And the Nazi repudiation of universalist ethics inspired the belief that, in Total War, enemy peoples may be totally destroyed without ethical qualms.

Genocide was not, however, the entire Nazi agenda. On the contrary, in Lemkin's view, genocide was a single part of a many-sided strategy. The ultimate Nazi goal was to build a German empire, and in pursuing this goal only certain types of enemies were slated for annihilation: Jews, who were seen as the poisonous racial antithesis of everything German; so-called Gypsies, who were regarded as racially inferior pests; and a variety of others (including democratic intellectuals, Marxists, and resistance fighters) whom the Nazis saw as irreconcilable political foes. Enemies of other kinds, however, were to be ruled rather than massacred. Some, indeed, were to be incorporated into the Nazi empire as lesser "Germanic" peoples (including the Dutch, Flemings, and Scandinavians). Others, including Russians, Serbs, and Poles, were to be enslaved and reduced in numbers (by limits on birthrates, food rationing, etc.) but were not to be liquidated per se.

AN AGE OF ABSOLUTES

For Lemkin, that is, genocide was a strand in the fabric of Nazi war aims. And though the genocidal aspect of Nazi policy had historical precedents, it was also uniquely modern in many ways. Neither of the two pillars of the Holocaust ("master-race mythology and aggressive technology") could be grasped apart from specifically modern forces, including science and industry, nationalism, racism, and statism. Nor could modern German militarism be equated with the warrior ethics of times past. Other peoples had periodically committed mass murder, but German militarism had risen to new heights of virulence, driven, Lemkin concluded, by an acute "national and racial emotionalism" that was given a uniquely destructive force by modern technology (1944, p. xiv).

The consequence, as the sociologist Jessie Bernard noted shortly after the war ended (1949, p. 652), is that "ethnic conflict in our day has taken an unexpectedly brutal turn," even reaching the level of "exterminating whole peoples—genocide." Previous conflicts, however brutal, now seemed relatively small and unsystematic by comparison.

VARIETIES OF GENOCIDE

This is not to say, however, that genocide is entirely unique to modernity. In recent decades, sociologists have tended to agree that the willful destruction of entire peoples is, in fact, an ancient practice, common to many cultures. But it is also widely accepted that mass murder has assumed new forms in the twentieth century (as Lemkin said). This change is not merely quantitative but qualitative, and it is often framed in terms of a contrast between two ideal-types: (1) instrumental genocide, or mass murder to achieve pragmatic goals; and (2) ideological genocide, or mass murder as an end in itself.

Save for a relatively small proportion of cases that prefigure contemporary trends (e.g., wars of religion like the Crusades), most premodern genocides were essentially instrumental in nature. Modern genocides, in contrast, are often said to be largely if not primarily ideological—though instrumental motives remain powerful as well.

THE ORIGIN OF MASS MURDER

Many scholars, like Kurt Jonassohn, believe that genocides have occurred "throughout history in all parts of the world" (Jonassohn 1988, in Chalk and Jonassohn 1990, p. 415). Leo Kuper, in a classic study, called genocide "an odious scourge which has inflicted great losses on humanity in all periods of history" (1981, p. 11). Sociobiologists, meanwhile, have been even bolder, claiming that genocide is not only universal for humanity but for our closest evolutionary relatives as well (including chimpanzees and our evolutionary ancestors; cf. Diamond 1991, p. 264). E. O. Wilson, the founder of sociobiology, has speculated that genocide may be a "primitive cultural capacity," rooted in "the possession of certain genes," that confers a selective advantage on predatory groups that wish to spread their genes at the expense of their neighbors (1980, p. 298).

In reality, however, there is very little evidence of anything like genocidal violence in the evolutionary or historical record until comparatively recently. Sociobiologists who defend the idea that people and chimps share "a continuous, 5-million-year habit of lethal aggression" have offered, as their best evidence, the testimony of witnesses who report that, in more than 100 years of observation at four sites, seven chimps were assaulted by groups from neighboring chimp communities; and though none of the victims were killed on the spot, several later died or disappeared (Wrangham and Peterson 1996, pp. 16–21, 63).

This, it seems plain, is slight evidence for the large claim that people and their relatives and ancestors are genocidal by nature. Little else in the ethological or evolutionary record seems to lend credibility to this claim. Nor does history before the discovery of agriculture show significant evidence of mass murder.

To date, the earliest known evidence of collective violence is a gravesite in the Nile Valley containing fifty-nine men, women, and children, most of whom were killed by weapons with projectile points. This massacre, dating back 12,000–14,000 years, was "almost certainly" a consequence of disruptions produced by a crisis in the proto-agricultural system that was evolving in the region (Reader 1998, p. 146). The only other authenticated evidence of mass violence in remote antiquity is a similar but smaller burial ground in Bavaria dating back 7,700 years (Frayer 1997).

PLOUGHSHARES INTO SWORDS

In general, archaeological evidence makes it clear that wars, massacres, and even murders were comparatively rare in pre-agricultural days (Ferguson 1997). And the ethnographic evidence shows that, while hunter-gatherers are seldom entirely nonviolent, they have significantly fewer wars, internal conflicts, and interpersonal violence than agrarian peoples (Ember and Ember 1997;Ross 1993). Even the famously "fierce" Yamomami of northern Brazil and Venezuela seem to have been driven to violence as much by the influence of outside forces as by internal pressures (Ferguson 1992). "It seems unlikely," as the genocide scholars Chalk and Jonassohn conclude, "that early man engaged in genocide during the hunting and gathering stage" (1990, p. 32).

For some peoples, this stage lasted until the recent past. For humanity as a whole, hunting and foraging remained universal until roughly 11,000 years ago. Shortly afterwards, agriculture arose in the Middle East; and then, in succession, in China 11,000 years ago in Papua, Mexico, and the Andes 10,000 years ago in West Africa 6,000 years ago and elsewhere.

Once agriculture had appeared, mass violence assumed new dimensions.

EMPIRE AND TERROR

The first weapons of war, and the earliest signs of mass warfare, appeared at the dawn of the agrarian era. In the ensuing millenia the first true wars were fought (Ferrill 1997, pp. 18–19). The intent of these wars was usually instrumental—to win land and labor, to keep enemies at bay, to build states and empires. This was the context in which mass violence became familiar. Genocide in particular was almost always linked to empire building in this period.

Historically, empire builders generally seek tribute or servile labor from the peoples they conquer, which leads them to spare the lives of noncombatants, especially peasants. This was the spirit in which Sumerian, Hittite, and Babylonian epics of remote antiquity warned of the folly of genocide (Cohn 1996). But as fortified cities emerged as obstacles in the path of empire, conquest sometimes took more brutal forms. And peasant resistance often provoked vengeful repression. Hence, by the third millenium b.c.e., genocidal conquests had become comparatively common in the early Egyptian empire (Jonassohn 1998). Elsewhere, genocidal massacres seem to have become common by the first milennium b.c.e.

The Assyrians in particular became legendary for their merciless assaults on fortified cities, including Babylon, which Sennacherib decimated in 689 b.c.e. The goal of such assaults was usually to destroy an imperial or commercial rival. The preferred method was to lay siege to a city and starve its citizens into submission by burning crops and destroying livestock. Once a campaign of this kind triumphed, the conquerors would often raze the defeated city, salt the earth, and slaughter the citizens. The legalistic Romans dubbed this practice "devastation."

Early "devastations" included the destruction of Melos by Athens in 416 b.c.e. (for refusing to take sides in the Peloponnesian Wars); the destruction of two Sicilian cities by Carthage in 409 b.c.e.; and the annihilation of Carthage by Rome in 146 b.c.e. In the latter case, as many as 150,000 people are said to have died.

THE CONTINUATION OF WAR BY OTHER MEANS

Sociologists have identified a range of motives for instrumental genocide. Chalk and Jonassohn, for example, say that most genocides of this type (which they call "utilitarian") have been prompted by the wish to acquire wealth, to terrorize real or potential enemies, or to avert threats (1990, pp. 34–36). Until comparatively recently, motives of this kind have been the main effective spurs to genocide both in the circum-Mediterranean world and elsewhere. In brief, it seems that whenever empires fight, great opportunities and equally great dangers are at stake. In such cases, genocidal massacres can become the extraordinary means of attaining goals that, in other contexts, would be pursued by ordinary statecraft.

Examples abound. Canton was gutted in 879 c.e. and its population was decimated. In the twelfth century c.e., Afghan conquerors from Ghur destroyed the city of Ghazni and all its men. In the next century the Mongols laid waste to Transoxania and Khurasan, evidently killing hundreds of thousands of people. Not long afterwards, all 12,000 of the Meos people (south of Delhi) were killed in the wake of a failed uprising. Many events in the sixteenth-century Spanish conquest of the Americas were plainly genocidal. And many other examples of this kind can be cited as well (Chalk and Jonassohn 1990; Jonassohn, 1998).

A related form of genocide accompanied the rise of modern colonialism. In the Americas, for example, the English Puritans liquidated the Pequot in 1637, the French destroyed the Natchez in 1731, and Argentine settlers virtually eliminated the Araucanians in 1878–1885. In Africa, many peoples have been devastated by colonial conquests; some (including the Herero of Namibia and the Matumbi of Tanzania) have suffered mass destruction. Many indigenous peoples in Australia have been destroyed, and in Tasmania the entire aboriginal population was extinguished by 1876.

These are just a few of the many cases in which genocide has accompanied instrumental conquest.

IDEOLOGICAL GENOCIDE

In some cases, however, genocide is not an instrumental means to an end, but rather an end in itself. Genocides of this type, in which the destruction of entire peoples is sought for intrinsic reasons, are generally classified as "ideological" (Fein 1993; Smith 1987). These massacres, which are typically fueled by religious or ethnoracial fanaticism, are often among the deadliest of genocides, since they seek to destroy targeted peoples for reasons of "principle," not simply expediency. And they are often instrumentally irrational in an almost chemically pure sense. In 1994, for example, the rulers of Rwanda were so preoccupied by the wish to annihilate an unarmed ethnic minority that they left themselves virtually defenseless against an army of invading rebels from Uganda (Des Forges 1999). Between 1975 and 1979, the Pol Pot regime wrought havoc across the length and breadth of Cambodia in a vain effort to purge Cambodia of every trace of foreign, urban, and intellectual influence (Kiernan 1996). In the Nazi Holocaust, the German leaders diverted vital resources from the Russian front to fuel the militarily useless operations of the death camps (Postone 1980). Earlier, during World War I, Turkey failed to finish the strategically crucial Berlin–Bagdad railway largely because the Turkish rulers were so intent on destroying the Armenians that they liquidated large numbers of Armenian construction workers (Jonassohn 1998).

Genocides of this type are thus doubly destructive—first, because they are prosecuted with systematic ruthlessness; and second, because they often hurt the perpetrators as well as the victims.

BEFORE IDEOLOGY?

Only a few instances of premodern mass violence are clearly ideological in inspiration—including, for example, the Crusades and the persecution of Cathar heretics in thirteenth-century Languedoc. But many other early cases also reveal a noninstrumental side.

Beginning in 1634, for example, the Iroquois fought a series of "mourning wars" against the Hurons, which resulted in large-scale massacres of Huron men and women. The main object, in this case, was to "requicken," in the bodies of Huron children, the spirits of Iroquois who had died in epidemics. This was perhaps not an "ideological" motive in the modern sense, but it was clearly inspired by religious belief (Richter 1992). Similarly, the genocidal massacres that accompanied the Mongol conquests were fueled, in part, by apocalyptic faith in Mongol destiny (Jagchid and Hyer 1979). And several Indian cases recorded by Jonassohn (1998) were largely religious in character—for example, the massacre of Jains by the Hindu king of Pandya in the eleventh century c.e., the destruction of the Buddhist majority of Bihar by Muslim conquerors in the twelfth century c.e., and the persistent efforts of Bahmani sultans to exterminate or convert Hindus in the Deccan region in the period 1347–1482 c.e.

Broadly defined, in other words, ideological genocide may have been more common in the past than scholars have tended to say. But it is nonetheless plain that the twentieth century marked a new departure. Only in this century did mass murder routinely followed paths defined by doctrine.

A NEW SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS

Raphaël Lemkin had been well aware that genocidal practices predated the twentieth century (Fein 1993). But he believed that the absolutist racism and nationalism of the modern era gave contemporary mass murder decisive new features. Above all, genocide was now pursued with heightened self-consciousness. In the characteristic genocides of the twentieth century—most notably the liquidation of Armenians by Turkey in World War I, the Nazi Holocaust during World War II, and the postwar massacres of minority groups by governments in Indonesia, Pakistan, Cambodia, Burundi, and Rwanda—the intent was genocidal from the start. Entire groups were sentenced to death for ideological as well as geopolitical reasons. And these sentences were pronounced with full awareness of their antihumanistic implications, since they defied the humanitarian trend, rooted in Puritanism and bourgeois constitutionalism (Tergel 1998; Troeltsch [1912] 1958), which had swept the Euro-Atlantic world in the nineteenth century.

What explains this genocidal intent? What gives "ideological" genocide its compelling force? For Lemkin the answer lies, in part, in social psychology. He sees evidence, in particular, of such psychological tendencies as cynicism, denial, "contempt for the victim," and "exaggerated pride," among others (1992, pp. 189–235). This line of reasoning is richly developed in the research literature on the personality traits most relevant to genocide: aggressiveness, submissiveness, and punitiveness. It was first shown, in a flawed but classic study (Adorno et al. 1950), that these three traits systematically covary in structured and intelligible ways. Later research has significantly refined this original discovery.

It is now well understood that certain kinds of harsh personal experience tend to make people (1) submissive to leaders and (2) aggressive toward—outsiders. And people imbued with this dually obedient and violent tendency are often exceptionally willing to persecute or fight those who are authoritatively defined as their "enemies" (Altemeyer 1996; Hopf 1993; Lederer and Schmidt 1995). The significance of this fact for the study of genocide was revealed by Ross, who showed that conflict intensity is strongly related to personality variables of just this type. While objective social divisions tend to determine who fights whom—class versus class, nation versus nation, and so forth—personality-forming experiences play an exceptionally large role in determining the destructiveness of any given conflict. Ross found, after systematically studying the interplay of forty-one variables in ninety nonindustrial societies, that "the more affectionate and warm and the less harsh the socialization in a society, the lower the level of political conflict and violence" (1993, p. 99); and indeed, no other single factor has a greater impact.

DIVIDED SOCIETIES

Patterns of socialization are thus highly relevant to the study of genocide. No less relevant are structural determinants—few of which, however, have yet received systematic attention. This is largely due to the fact that the sociology of genocide is still just a few decades old. While studies of anti-Semitism, ethnocentrism, and the Holocaust have been common throughout the postwar era, the study of genocide as a phenomenon sui generis was first pursued in the 1970s by a small cohort of sociologists—Dadrian, Kuper, Fein—who have remained central to the enterprise ever since.

Leo Kuper, the "doyen of genocide scholars" (Charny 1994, p. 64), set the stage for much of the research that was to follow. Focusing entirely on the twentieth century, Kuper noted that genocide in this century has been distinctive in several ways. In addition to the rising influence of ideological motives, Kuper observed that contemporary genocides are also exceptionally likely to occur within divided societies, as autocratic states seek to defend their monopoly of power against the challenges of domestic rivals. Genocidal massacres are still common in the conflicts between societies as well—especially, Kuper says, when imperialist motives are at work—but internal conflicts are now especially acute. This is particularly true in postcolonial societies, many of which were profoundly destabilized by the experience of colonial rule. Such societies are often pure artifacts of the colonial imagination, rigidly stratified and ethnically divided in new and untenable ways. When dissent arises in these "new nations," the rulers—sans consent—resort to coercion, often on a grand scale. Hence the state-sponsored massacres in such postcolonial realms as Indonesia, the former "East Pakistan" (now Bangladesh), Rwanda, and Burundi. And communal divisions in these nations run so deep that genocidal massacres often unfold entirely within civil society, unbidden by the state (Kuper 1981).

Many of Kuper's themes were adapted from classical texts by Sartre (1968) and Cohn (1967), and many later scholars have pursued variations on these themes (see Andreopolous 1994; Totten et al. 1995). Except for Jonassohn, who delves into remoter history, most social scientists continue to focus mainly on twentieth-century cases (Dadrian 1995; Mazian 1990; Melson 1992; Wallimann and Dobkowski 1987). Much has been learned about these cases. Yet in many ways genocide remains as elusive as ever. Part of the problem is definitional.

DUELLING DEFINITIONS

As the study of genocide proves, definitions are deeply political. This was apparent from the beginning of the United Nations debate over genocide in 1948. For the Russian delegates, "genocide" was a logical effect and extension of fascist doctrine, revolving around the victimization of racial and ethnic groups. Others argued that social classes and political groups can also be the victims of genocide. When the final vote was taken, religious as well as national and ethnic groups were identified as possible targets of genocide, but political groups were excluded. And the United Nations further limited the applicability of its definition by specifying that genocide entails an "intent to destroy" some group, "in whole or in part." Since proving intent is notoriously difficult, some delegates questioned whether the Genocide Convention, so restricted, could ever be enforced. Similar doubts were voiced about the idea of "destroying" a group. Lemkin, in his original formulation, had said that genocide can take cultural as well as physical forms. But does this mean that efforts to sabotage the culture, language, or religion of a group are just as much "acts of genocide" as attempts to physically destroy the group?

Questions of this kind quickly proved to have direct political relevance. In 1951, W. E. B. Du Bois, Paul Robeson, and others addressed a book-length petition to the United Nations accusing the U.S. government of systematically genocidal actions against African Americans (Patterson et al. 1951). Reluctance to entertain charges of this kind led many U. S. senators to oppose the Genocide Convention; and, indeed, the United States did not endorse the Convention until 1986 (LeBlanc 1991). Nor did the United Nations prove eager to enforce the Convention. Not until the Rwandan massacres of 1994, in fact, did the United Nations classify a postwar event as "genocide"—and even this came after the fact. It has remained extremely difficult, in short, for policy makers to operationally define or apply the notion of genocide.

Scholars, meanwhile, have spent considerable time on definitional issues. Kuper offered an influential distinction between genocide and "genocidal massacre" as a means of distinguishing the attempted murder of entire peoples from large-scale massacres that are not prompted by the wish to destroy groups in toto. He did not, however, establish clear criteria for this distinction, which limits its utility. Nor has any other approach won consensus. Thus, debate rages over the classification of many events: "the rape of Nanking," Stalin's purges, the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima, the carpet bombing of Vietnam, "human-made" famine in Mao's China, and similar events. Other debates pivot on questions of principle. Are there unintended genocides? Is genocide distinct from the destruction of a culture? Does genocide belong on a continuum with other forms of destructiveness, or is it qualitatively unique?

THE LIMITS OF CLASSIFICATION

Many answers have been given to these questions, but it remains far from clear that "genocide" is, indeed, a unitary phenomenon or amenable to general explanation. Most scholars have tended to focus on relatively clear cases of mass murder inspired by modern racial-national ideologies, but even these vary in significant respects. Another approach, proposed by the psychologist Charny (1994), is to subsume the full range of mass-destructive practices into a wider matrix; but it seems unlikely that the criterion of mass destructiveness alone is sufficient to justify treating ecological catastrophe, ethnic slaughter, and cultural repression as elements in a unified field of events.

For fuller, more nuanced understanding, comparative research is needed on a widening scale. Whether the general notion of "genocide" will continue to prove compelling remains to be seen.

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