Genocide Before the Holocaust - Hardcover

Carmichael, Cathie

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0300121172 ISBN 13: 9780300121179

Publisher: Yale University Press, 2009

Synopsis

This innovative and ambitious work is a systematic examination of the many instances of genocide that took place in the late nineteenth and early twentieth-century centuries that were precursors to the Holocaust.

There is an appalling symmetry to the many instances of genocide that the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century world witnessed. In the wake of the break-up of the old Hapsburg, Ottoman and Romanov empires, minority populations throughout those lands were persecuted, expelled and eliminated. The reason for the deplorable decimations of communities - Jews in Imperial Russia and Ukraine, Ottoman Assyrians, Armenians and Muslims from the Caucasus and Balkans - was, Cathie Carmichael contends, located in the very roots of the new nation states arising from the imperial rubble. The question of who should be included in the nation, and which groups were now to be deemed ‘suspect’ or ‘alien’, was one that preoccupied and divided Europe long before the Holocaust.

Examining all the major eliminations of communities in Europe up until 1941, Carmichael shows how hotbeds of nationalism, racism and developmentalism resulted in devastating manifestations of genocidal ideology. Dramatic, perceptive and poignant, this is the story of disappearing civilizations - precursors to one of humanity’s worst atrocities, and part of the legacy of genocide in the modern world.

About this title

About the Author:

Cathie Carmichael is Senior Lecturer in Modern European History at the University of East Anglia. Her previous books include Ethnic Cleansing in the Balkans, Language and Nationalism in Europe and Slovenia and the Slovenes.

Review:

"'Carmichael's fascinating and original work breaks new ground in charting the genesis of exclusionary thinking and violence. The interdisciplinary approach is unmatched: any reader will gain new insights about how generations came to develop, understand and also resist mass killing.' Ben Lieberman, Fitchburg State University, author of Terrible Fate: Ethnic Cleansing and the Making of Modern Europe"

About this edition

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0300121172
• ISBN 13: 9780300121179
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256