HIST232: Mass violence in the 20th century OVERVIEW The module introduces you to the theoretical aspects and the historical experience of mass violence in the twentieth-century. It is divided into three parts: 1.
2. 3.
theoretical approaches to mass violence, focus on perpetrator motives, and overview of the conceptual and judicial tools determined during the twentieth century to deal with these kinds of violent actions (war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide); exploration in comparative terms of selected case-studies of mass (‘eliminationist’) violence throughout the twentieth century and across the world; and discussion of the political and legal dimensions of prevention and punishment of such crimes, starting with the Nuremberg Charter and the ensuing trials of Nazi war criminals, and proceeding to more recent and contemporary initiatives (ad hoc courts, International Criminal Court)
Within a broadly historical framework of analysis, the module examines comparatively in which circumstances nationalism, memory, and prejudice (religious, ethnic, ‘racial’) resulted in devastating instances of mass violence, perpetrated by states, its various organisations, military and para-military forces, dissident groups, and above all ‘ordinary people’. Extensive use of audio-visual material (documentaries, podcasts, relevant films, oral and written testimonies) will be made in both lectures and seminars.
KEY THEMES • • • • • • • •
Violence: motivation, facilitation, execution Violence and modernity Cultural and psychological profile of perpetrators Victims: the individual dimension of mass violence The concepts of ‘genocide’ and ‘crimes against humanity’ Earlier instances of ‘eliminationist’ violence: massacres in history Organisation of eliminationist campaigns Prevention and punishment of crimes of mass violence
CASE STUDIES Ottoman empire and the ‘Armenian genocide’ (1905) The Nazi ‘final solution’: Jews and other victims Democratic Kampuchea/Cambodia (1975-79) Former Yugoslavia (Bosnia, Croatia, Kosovo) (1991-2000) Rwanda (1994) Reference made to the genocide of the Hereros of Namibia (1905), the Ukrainian famine (1932-33), Biafra, East Timor, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Darfur.
HIST232 - Mass violence in the 20th century