This study has ranged widely over late modern genocide. It has shown that the phenomenon, in the original sense of targeted, destructive anti-population violence, has been an accompaniment of very varied political and armed conflicts throughout the twentieth and into the twenty-first century. Contrary to the assumptions of the comparative genocide paradigm, such destructive violence mostly does not take place in discrete national, domestic circumstances, between regimes and their ‘own’ civilians. Rather, genocide is commonly directed against civilians across borders, and not always by regimes; and even when it takes place within borders, it is almost invariably conditioned by international relations, in the twin senses of relations between states and between nations.

Shifting patterns of genocide, changing international contexts

I have recognized the relationship between genocide and the modern international system pointed out by other scholars. However I have argued distinctively that patterns of genocide have changed rapidly together with the changing world political and military conditions of modernity, even during the relatively short period under discussion. I have given substance to the proposal, already made by others, that ‘international context’ is the key to understanding genocide. By focusing on the synchronizations of major changes in the history of genocide with major changes in the international system, I have tried to show what kinds of transformations are most important.