A Modern History of Forgotten Genocides and Mass Atrocities

This is the first textbook of its kind to amass cases of genocide and other mass atrocities across the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries that have largely been pushed to the periphery of Genocide Studies or “forgotten” altogether.

Divided into four thematic sections – Genocide and Imperialism; War and Genocide; State Repression, Military Dictatorships, and Genocide; and Human-Caused Famine, Attrition, and Genocide – A Modern History of Forgotten Genocides and Mass Atrocities covers five continents, including case studies from Biafra, Yemen, Argentina, Russia, China, and Bengal. They range from the French conquest of Algeria in the mid-nineteenth century to the Yazidi genocide perpetrated by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria between 2014 and 2017, and show that at times of rising authoritarianism, military conquest, and weaponization of hunger, lines between what is war and what is genocide are increasingly blurred. By including genocides and mass atrocities that are often overlooked, this volume is crucial to the ongoing debates about whether “this atrocity or that one” amounts to genocide.

By including key points, events, terms, and critical questions throughout, this is the ideal textbook for undergraduate students who study genocide, mass atrocities, and human rights across the globe.

Jeffrey S. Bachman is Associate Professor at the American University School of International Service, USA. He is the author of The Politics of Genocide: From the Genocide Convention to the Responsibility to Protect (2022) and The United States and Genocide: (Re)Defining the Relationship (2017), and editor of Genocide Studies: Pathways Ahead (2024) and Cultural Genocide: Law, Politics, and Global Manifestations (2019).

Esther Brito Ruiz is a PhD student at American University, specializing in mass violence and gender. She is a contributor to edited volumes, including Genocide Studies: Pathways Ahead (2024), and author of academic articles, including “Do No Harm: The Role of Humanitarian Aid and Neutrality in Protracting Civil Wars” (2023) and “The Geopolitics of Human Suffering: A Comparative Study of Media Coverage of the Conflicts in Yemen and Ukraine” (2023).