Genocide and ethnic cleansing Books

Book SynopsisThis text is one of the few surviving eyewitness sources on the Assyrian genocide during the First World War, written by a seminarian living in greater Tur Abdin (the southeast of today's Turkish state). It is translated and annotated by a master of Syriac with an in-depth knowledge of modern Assyrian history.Trade Review"Western society is increasingly interested in being acquainted with the historical reality of the great tragedies of humanity. This has been one of the worst after the massive holocaust of the Jews during the Nazi era. Therefore, this work can be considered a significant contribution to the subject." -Professor Dr Efrem Yildiz, University of Salamanca

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Book SynopsisMoral uncertainty surrounding the use of armed drones has been a persistent problem for more than two decades. In response, Moralities of Drone Violence aims to provide greater clarity by exploring and ordering a variety of ways in which violent drone use can be judged as just or unjust in various circumstances. The book organises moral ideas around a series of concepts of ?drone violence?: warfare, violent law enforcement, tele-intimate violence, and violence devolved from humans to artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. In contrast to the way armed drones tend to be debated narrowly in terms of war and law, this broad-based approach to normative inquiry affords more scope to discern and address the potential for these weapon systems to support moral progress or to generate injustice.

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Book SynopsisAfter 1948, the 370,000 Jews of Romania who survived the Holocaust became one of the main sources of immigration for the new state of Israel as almost all left their homeland to settle in Palestine and Israel. Romania’s decision to allow its Jews to leave was baldly practical: Israel paid for them, and Romania wanted influence in the Middle East. For its part, Israel was rescuing a community threatened by economic and cultural extinction and at the same time strengthening itself with a massive infusion of new immigrants.In this thoroughly updated edition, Radu Ioanid traces the secret history of the longest and most expensive ransom arrangement in recent times, a hidden exchange that lasted until the fall of the Communist regime. Drawing on a wealth of oral testimonies, recently declassified documents from the archives of the Romanian secret police, and newly available material from the government archives of Ukraine, Moldova, Russia, and Germany, Ioanid follows Israel’s long and expensive ransom arrangement with Communist Romania. He uncovers the elaborate mechanisms that made it successful for decades, the shadowy figures responsible, and the secret channels of communication and payment. The book sheds new light on Romania’s pre-fascist and fascist antisemitic legislation and its implementation. Ioanid explores in greater detail the physical destruction of Romania’s Jewish and Roma communities, including the pogroms of Bucharest and Iasi as well as the deportations and the massacres from Bessarabia, Bukovina, and Transnistria. New chapters consider the forced labor of the Jews, persecution by the Protestant churches, and the decision-making process of the Antonescu government in its treatment of Jews and Roma. As suspenseful as a Cold-War thriller, his book tells the full, startling story of an unprecedented slave trade and its origins.

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Book SynopsisFor nearly a century, members of the Dildilian family practiced the art of photography in Ottoman Turkey, Greece and the United States. This book contains over 300 photographs, most taken during the Ottoman era. The photos record a crucial half century of Armenian culture, with the earliest dating from 1888, when Tsolag Dildilian opened and operated the family business in central Anatolia, first in Sivas and later in Marsovan and Samsun, and the last taken in late 1930s Greece after the family's forced exile from their homeland in 1922. The photographs and the stories that unfold around them capture a defining period in the nearly 3,000-year history of the Armenians in Anatolia and the Armenian Highlands. The early- twentieth century witnessed the violent erasure of the Armenians from their historic homeland, with catastrophic effects for the Dildilian family and their community. Yet this was also a period of unprecedented educational, cultural and commercial development for the Armenians. The Dildilian family was intimately involved in the triumphs and tragedies of these years and this book, through its rich pictorial history, sheds unprecedented light on the real-life experiences of Armenians in the devastating years of the Armenian Genocide and beyond. It is an unusual and original contribution to the social history of the Near East.Table of ContentsIntroduction Early Photographs in Sebastia (Sivas), the Ancestral Home of the Dildilians, 1888-1894 The Late 1890s and the Early Years of the New Century The Dildilians and Anatolia College: The Campus Cities of Anatolia and Their Sights The Art of Portrait Photography A Photographic Homage to Those Who Did Not Survive Photographing the Aftermath of the Genocide The Dildilians after the War (1918-1923) Epilogue, 1926

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Book SynopsisIn 2011, Myanmar embarked in a democratic transition from a brutal military rule that culminated four years later, when the first free election in decades saw a landslide for the party of celebrated Nobel Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi. Yet, even as the international community was celebrating a new dawn, old wars were raging in the northern borderlands. A crisis was emerging in western Arakan state where the regime intensified its oppression of the vulnerable Muslim Rohingya community. By 2017, the conflict had escalated into a military onslaught against the Rohingya that provoked the most desperate refugee crisis of our times, as over 750,000 of them fled their homes to neighbouring Bangladesh.In The Burmese Labyrinth, journalist Carlos Sardiña Galache gives the in depth story of the country. Burma has always been an uneasy balance between multiple ethnic groups and religions. He examines the deep roots behind the ethnic divisions that go back prior to the colonial period, and so shockingly exploded in recent times. This is a powerful portrait of a nation in perpetual conflict with itself.Trade ReviewAnyone attempting to understand why mass violence against the Rohingya occurred should seek out first this exemplary study by the Spanish journalist Carlos Sardiña Galache. * Mekong Review *

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Book SynopsisThe assassination in Istanbul in 2007 of the author Hrant Dink, the high-profile advocate of Turkish-Armenian reconciliation, reignited the debate in Turkey on the annihilation of the Ottoman Armenians. Many Turks subsequently reawakened to their Armenian heritage, in the process reflecting on how their grandparents were forcibly Islamised and Turkified, and the suffering they endured to keep their stories secret. There was public debate about Armenian property confiscated by the Turkish state and books were published about the extermination of the minorities. The silence had been broken. After the First World War, Turkey forcibly erased the memory of the atrocities, and traces of Armenians, from their historic lands, to which the international community turned a blind eye. The price for this amnesia was, Cheterian argues, 'a century of genocide'.Turkish intellectuals acknowledge the price a society must pay collectively to forget such traumatic events, and that Turkey cannot solve its recurrent conflicts with its minorities - like the Kurds today - nor have an open and democratic society without addressing its original sin: the Armenian Genocide, on which the Republic was founded.Trade Review'Cheterian's straightforward historical account does not shy away from a more disturbing aspect of the genocide's legacy where the quest for justice denied over generations spills over into the violence of reprisals, revenge, and terrorism' * LA Review of Books *‘Open Wounds provides a comprehensive insight into many relevant issues with regard to the consequences of denial for Armenians and other minorities such as the Kurds . . . an impressive account of how survivors and successive generations resisted erasure through Armenian historiography, memory politics and the composition and evolution of the diaspora’.'Cheterian's book offers one of the most complete tellings of the twisted, emotional story of the decimation of 1.5 million Armenians in Ottoman Turkey in 1915, during the fury of World War I and the story of the political struggle over the massacre in the century since it occurred.' * Foreign Affairs *'In this extraordinary and beautifully-written book, Cheterian tells us the little known story of the aftermath of the Armenian Genocide of 1915. He reaches into the history and present-day politics of Armenians and Turks to tell a story and provide explanations that have been neglected or elided by others. There is no other text like this.' * Ronald G. Suny, Professor Emeritus of Political Science and History, University of Chicago and former chairman of the Society for Armenian Studies *

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Book Synopsis

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Book Synopsis

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Book Synopsis

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Book SynopsisPerpetrator Cinema explores a new trend in the cinematic depiction of genocide that has emerged in Cambodian documentary in the late twentieth- and early twenty-first centuries. Raya Morag analyzes how Post–Khmer Rouge Cambodian documentarians propose a direct confrontation between the first-generation survivor and the perpetrator of genocide.Trade ReviewThis compelling book will matter as long as mass atrocities persist. Focused on the Cambodian genocide, Morag addresses a new phase in how we confront such events: films where survivors confront perpetrators face-to-face. These confrontations bring the visceral truth borne directly of human encounter to the fore with consequences both intensely personal and profoundly political. -- Bill Nichols, author of Speaking Truths with Film: Evidence, Ethics, Politics in DocumentaryThis book is far more than an illuminating analysis of Cambodian postgenocide cinema, valuable as that is, given the Pol Pot regime’s destruction of the country’s film industry, its artists, and its entire film archive, along with 1.7 million Cambodian lives. Morag ushers us forward to view unique interactions and confrontations between first-generation survivors and top- and lower-level Khmer Rouge perpetrators, made possible by the regime’s overthrow in 1979, its remnants’ defeat and surrender in 1999, and the establishment of the UN-sponsored Khmer Rouge tribunal in 2006. The book offers front-row seats to a new genre of post-Holocaust global documentary film, with innovative approaches to the study of genocide, trauma, and gender. -- Ben Kiernan, author of The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power and Genocide in Cambodia Under the Khmer Rouge, 1975-79In Perpetrator Cinema, Raya Morag brings her superb intellect and expertise in trauma and Holocaust cinema to this study of groundbreaking films inspired by Cambodia's Year Zero. Morag brilliantly explores why an ethics of moral resentment undergirds the survivor-perpetrator duels in the cinema of Rithy Panh, Thet Sambath and Rob Lemkin, and Guillaume P. Suon, among others, and aptly considers films about sexual violence, among the Khmer Rouge's worst human rights abuses. Documentary scholars and South Asian cinema specialists will find much to praise in this theoretically rich, engrossing work. -- Deirdre Boyle, The New SchoolA must resource for students of documentary film and politics . . . Essential. * Choice *Table of ContentsPrefaceAcknowledgmentsAbbreviations1. Defining Perpetrator Cinema2. Post–Khmer Rouge Cambodian Cinema and the Big Perpetrators: Reconciliation or Resentment?3. Perpetratorhood Paradigms: The Duel and Moral Resentment4. Gendered Genocide: The Female Perpetrator, Forced Marriage, and RapeEpilogue: The Era of Perpetrator EthicsNotesFilmographyBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisMathias Thaler articulates a novel perspective on the study of violence that demonstrates why the imagination matters for political theory. He explores how narrative art, thought experiments, and historical events can challenge and enlarge our existing ways of thinking about violence.Trade ReviewAll naming of extreme violence–genocide, torture, terrorism–conveys a political judgment. Exploring the politics of naming, Mathias Thaler questions the binary of moralism and unreconstructed realism and brilliantly shows how storytelling, thought experiments, and genealogies nourish our imagination and thereby contribute to better orient our reflective judgments. A remarkably original contribution to a judgment-based approach to politics. -- Alessandro Ferrara, University of Rome Tor Vergata, author of The Force of the Example: Explorations in the Paradigm of JudgmentIn Naming Violence, Mathias Thaler asks how we can get beyond a stalemate between moralist and realist approaches in the political theory of violence, with an emphasis particularly on the critique of 'ideal,' definitional approaches. He argues that the imagination is key to an alternative way of approaching violence as a political theorist. This book makes both a very strong contribution to the literature within political theory on political violence and a broader contribution to metatheoretical debates about how to do political theory. -- Kimberly Hutchings, Queen Mary University of London, author of International Political Theory: Rethinking Ethics in a Global EraForcefully arguing against realists and moralists, Thaler rescues the category of imagination as a way of providing critical tools to show us how things could have been different and develops a new understanding of how cruelty and suffering have to be re-described to meet each historical moment. This is, indeed, a brave way to face the urgent problem of the violence of our times. -- María Pía Lara, author of The Disclosure of Politics: Struggles Over the Semantics of SecularizationAlthough a ubiquitous political phenomenon, violence is notoriously difficult to conceptualize. Dominant paradigms in political theory are flawed; moralism sanitizes violence while realism shies away from crucial matters of evaluation. Thaler’s impressive and insightful 'politics of naming' demonstrates how historically grounded appreciation of violence’s protean character may be linked to an orienting normativity. He sheds light not just on the problem of violence but also on fundamental issues such as the role that imagination plays in reasoning and the nature of political judgment. This is a brilliant, thought-provoking, and timely study and a much-needed exemplar of engaged political theorizing. -- Lois McNay, Oxford University, author of The Misguided Search for the PoliticalIn a world replete with acts of violence that are deeply contested and difficult to respond to evaluatively, Mathias Thaler's Naming Violence proposes a form of political theorizing that allows us to respond to such acts while acknowledging the messiness and complexity of our judgments alongside a defense of the need to judge. Avoiding moralism and unreflective realism, Thaler's writing exemplifies the power of imaginative judgment with exceptional clarity. Engaging with film, thought experiments, and genealogy, Naming Violence provides us with a powerful toolbox to support thinking and theorizing as democratic practice. -- Aletta Norval, Anglia Ruskin University, author of Aversive Democracy: Inheritance and Originality in the Democratic TraditionA thought-provoking revision of accepted certainties on both sides of the realist/moralist divide, and a critical contribution to political theorizations of violence. -- Jessica Whyte, University of New South Wales * Political Theory *[A] brilliant new book... -- Christopher Finlay, Durham University * Contemporary Political Theory *A compelling and novel framework to further understand the interdependence between language and our collective conceptualization of political violence. * H-War *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments1. Political Theory Between Moralism and Realism2. Telling Stories: On Art’s Role in Dispelling Genocide Blindness3. How to Do Things with Hypotheticals: Assessing Thought Experiments About Torture4. Genealogy as Critique: Problematizing Definitions of Terrorism5. The Conceptual Tapestry of Political ViolenceNotesBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisGathering work from contributors in international law, political science, sociology, and history, New Critical Spaces in Transitional Justice explains current trends in responses to post-conflict and post-authoritarian nations and offers original empirical research to help define the field for the future.Table of ContentsAcknowledgementsIntroduction: Reconceptualizing Transitional Justice: Exploring the Nexus between Agency and Spatiality / Arnaud Kurze and Christopher K. Lamont Part I: Art, Activism and Politics: Redefining Space in Transitional Justice 1. Borrowing Achilles' Armor: The Political Afterlife of Former Transitional Justice Mechanisms / Marcos Zunino 2. The Site and Sights of Transitional Justice: Art at the Constitutional Court in Johannesburg /Eliza Garnsey 3. Youth Activism, Art and Transitional Justice: Emerging Spaces of Memory After the Jasmine Revolution / Arnaud Kurze Part II: Civil Society, Gender and Transitions: Emerging Spaces and Victimhood 4. Gendered Post­Conflict Justice: Male Survivors of Sexual Violence in Northern Uganda / Philipp Schulz 5. Claiming Space: Advocacy for Gender Justice in Cambodia / Katharina Behmer 6. The Question of Gender Inclusiveness of Bottom­Up Strategies in Bosnia and Herzegovina Caterina Bonora Part III: Spatiality, Temporality and the State 7. Libya in Transition: Spaces for Justice After Qadhafi / Christopher K. Lamont 8. Navigating the Narrow Spaces for Transitional Justice in Iraq / Mieczysław P. Boduszyński9. Accountability in Syria: What are the Options? / Iva Vukusic10. Dignity for the Defeated: Recognizing the "Other" in Post­Yugoslav Commemorative Practices / Vjeran PavlakovićConclusion: Practicing Critical Transitional Justice and the Road Ahead / Arnaud Kurze and Christopher K. LamontBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisGathering work from contributors in international law, political science, sociology, and history, New Critical Spaces in Transitional Justice explains current trends in responses to post-conflict and post-authoritarian nations and offers original empirical research to help define the field for the future.Table of ContentsAcknowledgementsIntroduction: Reconceptualizing Transitional Justice: Exploring the Nexus between Agency and Spatiality / Arnaud Kurze and Christopher K. Lamont Part I: Art, Activism and Politics: Redefining Space in Transitional Justice 1. Borrowing Achilles' Armor: The Political Afterlife of Former Transitional Justice Mechanisms / Marcos Zunino 2. The Site and Sights of Transitional Justice: Art at the Constitutional Court in Johannesburg /Eliza Garnsey 3. Youth Activism, Art and Transitional Justice: Emerging Spaces of Memory After the Jasmine Revolution / Arnaud Kurze Part II: Civil Society, Gender and Transitions: Emerging Spaces and Victimhood 4. Gendered Post­Conflict Justice: Male Survivors of Sexual Violence in Northern Uganda / Philipp Schulz 5. Claiming Space: Advocacy for Gender Justice in Cambodia / Katharina Behmer 6. The Question of Gender Inclusiveness of Bottom­Up Strategies in Bosnia and Herzegovina Caterina Bonora Part III: Spatiality, Temporality and the State 7. Libya in Transition: Spaces for Justice After Qadhafi / Christopher K. Lamont 8. Navigating the Narrow Spaces for Transitional Justice in Iraq / Mieczysław P. Boduszyński9. Accountability in Syria: What are the Options? / Iva Vukusic10. Dignity for the Defeated: Recognizing the "Other" in Post­Yugoslav Commemorative Practices / Vjeran PavlakovićConclusion: Practicing Critical Transitional Justice and the Road Ahead / Arnaud Kurze and Christopher K. LamontBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Inasmuch as we live in an age of historical amnesia, this book seeks to critically assess how and in what ways the crimes of the Soviet period were absolved or denied or abetted by Western political analysts, journalists, political actors of the Right and the Left, fellow travelers, members and non-members of the Communist parties."—George O. Liber, author of Total Wars and the Making of Modern Ukraine, 1914-1954Table of ContentsIntroduction: Escape from Truth1. Dreaming of Russia2. Ex Oriente Lux3. In the Soviet Theater of Life4. Wonderland5. Stalin Presents6. A Black-and-White Western7. The Curtain Falls, the Show Goes On8. The Passing of an Illusion?CodaBibliographyNotesIndex

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Inasmuch as we live in an age of historical amnesia, this book seeks to critically assess how and in what ways the crimes of the Soviet period were absolved or denied or abetted by Western political analysts, journalists, political actors of the Right and the Left, fellow travelers, members and non-members of the Communist parties."—George O. Liber, author of Total Wars and the Making of Modern Ukraine, 1914-1954Table of ContentsIntroduction: Escape from Truth1. Dreaming of Russia2. Ex Oriente Lux3. In the Soviet Theater of Life4. Wonderland5. Stalin Presents6. A Black-and-White Western7. The Curtain Falls, the Show Goes On8. The Passing of an Illusion?CodaBibliographyNotesIndex

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Book SynopsisThis work provides a detailed narrative of the civil war in the Vendee region of western France, which lasted for much of the 1790s but was most intensely fought at the height of the Reign of Terror, from March 1793 to early 1795.Trade Review“Secher’s work is among the most significant accounts of the Revolution. This translation will be welcomed by American historians of France. It provides a significant case study for readers interested in the relationships between religion, region, and political violence.” —Thomas Kselman, University of Notre Dame"A comprehensive, chilling account of the protracted popular insurrection in western France against the excesses of the revolutionary regime during The Terror. The work covers a great deal of economic and social history as well as providing an operational treatment of the campaigns that may well have left 600,000 people dead. Although largely forgotten today, the operations in the Vendee set the standard for counter-insurgency operations used by the Napoleonic regime, which ultimately backfired in Spain and elsewhere." —The NYMAS Review“Secher belongs to a school of French historians who view the French Revolution as the godfather of the harsh leftist regimes of Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot, and his work is a major contribution to this point of view. Through an exhaustive examination of obscure departmental archives and private parish records, Secher certainly proves that the French Reign of Terror was not restricted to the streets of Paris.” —Library Journal"Highly recommended. Important for all collections; accessible to general readers; of great interest to specialists.” —Choice“. . . an important. . . book.” —History: Reviews of New Books“Clearly that message still has an appeal in parts of the English-speaking world. In the year 2004 Secher’s gruesome retelling of the conflict in the Vendée reverberates in global landscape. The problem of political violence has not gone away; indeed it has become more acute.” —Times Literary Supplement“. . . highly recommended.” —New Oxford Review“In [this] controversial book, Reynald Secher takes some elements of the revisionist school and transforms them. . . . Secher sees in the violence a kind of precursor to the absolute ruthlessness of 20th-century totalitarianism.” —New York Times Book Review (Review of French edition)

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