This chapter focuses on the series of conflicts between the Roman government and the Jewish population of the Roman empire during the first and second centuries CE. Modern theories on this relationship are as elaborate and convoluted as the corpus of primary sources available for it. Both will be analyzed here through the scope of genocide, in an attempt to determine whether there ever existed a Roman intent to destroy the Jewish group or parts of it, and the extent to which actual destruction ultimately occurred.

Beginning in 302 CE, the four emperors of the Roman tetrarchy collectively issued a series of edicts that decreed severe penalties against the Empire’s Manichaean and Christian subjects. These decrees constituted the most widespread and systematic religious persecutions in imperial history. In this chapter, I explore these edicts and their consequences in the context of a global history of genocide. I argue that, while these persecutions may not satisfy modern juristic definitions of genocide, which tend to emphasize physical violence, they nonetheless suggest that the emperors aimed to eliminate alternative systems of knowledge, to remove particular religio-cultural populations from the civic collective, and to prevent these groups’ social reproduction. I suggest the tetrarchy’s edicts comprise something akin to a “cultural genocide” by the Roman government. I conclude with some brief reflections on the use of cultural genocide as an interpretive tool for understanding ancient acts of community violence.

The chapter explores the workings of gender in genocidal processes. It frames the subject inclusively, to address women and men; masculinities and femininities; the specific vulnerabilities of LGBT people; survivor, victim and perpetrator experiences; and structural and institutional forms of sexualized violence alongside event-specific ones. The chapter encourages readers to rethink major categories of analysis and themes in genocide studies as gendered phenomena.

Although pervasive, gender is often overlooked for its role in how genocide is conceived, performed, and experienced. The chapter traces its influence in connection to other explanatory narratives and theories such as the roles of the state, militarism, war, imperialism, racism, and sexism. Was gender one of many facets or a primary force in escalating or de-escalating the violence over time and space? Variables of race and ethnicity, themselves typically intersecting with social class, crucially shape how gender identities are imposed, interpreted, and experienced. The interaction of gender with an age variable is also noted. The coverage spans case studies of genocide in Europe, Asia, the Americas and Africa in order to illuminate the universal and particular. The authors also present on the role of courts in prosecuting mass rape and sexual violence as acts of genocide. The conclusion points out key intellectual, ethical and policy challenges ahead.

Crusading in the Levant remains one of the notorious chapters in medieval history. Though rich in source material and featuring an expansive historiography, the violence of the subject has seldom received attention as a discrete topic. This study limits the analysis to the First Crusade and specifically to events at Jerusalem in July 1099. Consulting Western, Armenian, Arabic and Hebrew sources reveals the nature and perception of this eleventh-century event. Crucial considerations include: pre-existing contextual tumult in the Levant, questions around crusader extermination policy, source material reliability, and if crusade violence was exceptional. Within a century, the fall of Jerusalem became a tool in the service of political agendas. This created mythistory that served to illuminate as well as obfuscate and influenced subsequent scholarship. The central question persists: Did genocide occur at Jerusalem? The sources agree that violence, bloodshed and mass killing characterize the crusader victory. The research concludes that it is not necessary to think or argue that the crusades were in fact genocide, but underscores what we might learn from looking at the violence of the crusades through the paradigm of genocide studies.

This chapter explores the related questions of whether or not genocide is found in sources from ancient Mesopotamia and whether ancient Mesopotamian empires carried out genocidal violence. The chapter focuses on the three most relevant sets of sources from Mesopotamia: evidence from the 23rd century BCE related to the violent reprisals of two kings of Akkad, Rimuš and Naram-Sin, against the “rebellious” cities of Sumer and Elam; the Sumerian “city laments” dating to a few centuries later; and first-millennium BCE Neo-Assyrian royal inscriptions. This examination demonstrates that, while mass violence is hardly rare in accounts of Mesopotamian history, finding evidence for genocide is not a straightforward task. Whether or not the Mesopotamians practiced genocide hinges on how one defines that term, and whether the targeted destruction of cities constitutes a type of genocide. In addition to an exploration of urbicide as genocide, the chapter considers how Mesopotamian accounts of mass violence contributed to accounts and practices of violence, including genocidal violence, elsewhere in ancient West Asia in later periods.

In 1208 Pope Innocent III proclaimed a crusade of “extermination” and “expurgation” against the heretics supposedly infesting the lands of the count of Toulouse. What is now known as the “Albigensian Crusade” lasted twenty-one years and was the first holy war in which Christians were guaranteed salvation by killing other Christians. The massacres during the crusade, especially at Béziers in 1209, were “genocidal moments.” The victims, though, were neither an ethnic, national, or racial group. The victims were arguably a regional or possibly a cultural group, but such groups are not covered by the modern legal definition of genocide. Nevertheless, they were deliberately targeted for destruction. Despite accusations of heresy, the victims were not initially a self-consciously different religious group either. Crucially, they were not “Cathars,” which is what most medieval historians and genocide scholars assume the victims to have been. “Catharism” as a medieval heresy never existed; it was an invention of nineteenth-century scholars trying to understand the Albigensian crusade more “scientifically” and less confessionally. Finally, were the individual testimonies collected by the first inquisitions into heretical depravity, established in Toulouse in the aftermath of the Albigensian crusade, analogous to the memories of individuals who witnessed or survived genocides collected by modern tribunals?

Gruesome instances of mass killing have punctuated the 6000 year-long sequence of the prehistoric South American Andes, an area that encompasses modern-day Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and northern Argentina and Chile. Accurately gauging the intensity and intent of violence—in particular mass extermination—among people who left no form of written language, requires a forensic skeletal approach that informs on both the cause and manner of death, as well as the nature of corpse disposal or burial, which itself reveals how bodies were treated after death.

Time and again, aggressors in the Andes marshalled common tactics, including the sacking of towns and sanctuaries, instituting systems of mass displacement, controlling reproduction among women, moving children from subservient groups, and orchestrating the maiming and murder of both formidable rivals and civilian noncombatants alike. These violent episodes of eradication may best be understood as outbreaks of local communal strife, limited in both place and time. These genocidal moments capture the collective murder of targeted sub-population groups. The physical and material record helps us identify catastrophic death assemblages, reconstruct the profiles of victim and perpetrators, discern the methods of murder, and even deduce underlying motivations for attack.

A question not asked to this point in the study of genocide by all the scholars associated with this work in the various disciplines is whether or not there something inherent in the very social construction we call “religion” that lends itself, adapts itself, all-too-easily to those communities— both nation-states and non-nation-state actors—that perpetrate genocide, either in actuality or in potential? Thus, this contribution begins with something of a theoretical look-see vis-à-vis that nexus between religion and genocide by suggesting applicable definitions for both and further outlining the constituent factors of each. (NB: There are, in truth, uncomfortable similarities between religious groups and genocidal perpetrator groups which, to my understanding, have never been addressed or explored.) To further bolster my overall argument—that religion, however defined and understood, is a “participating factor” (my preferred term) in all genocides, both historically and contemporarily—a series of case studies, using Raphael Lemkin’s tri-partite division from his incomplete History of Genocide—Antiquity, Middle Ages, Modern Times—are examined to determine whether my thesis holds.

Genocide has a way of imposing silence. Part of its purpose is to erase history, and human voices. This series of three volumes aims to contribute to breaking the silence that so often follows genocidal outbreaks. These volumes attempt to document and understand this global phenomenon. The term “genocide,” as a way of describing the “practice of extermination of nations and ethnic groups,” was coined in 1943, when Raphael Lemkin (1900-1959) penned the preface to his 1944 book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe. Five years later the United Nations General Assembly unanimously adopted the Genocide Convention. But Lemkin considered genocide to have much older roots. He had set about writing – but did not complete before his death – a three-volume history of genocide from ancient times, in which he argued that the phenomenon had “followed humanity throughout history.”

The term genocide has often been applied to the Mongol conquests in the thirteenth century, as well as many other pre-modern groups. Legally, the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide can only be applied anachronistically to the Mongols, but the Mongols have been accused of genocide of the Tatars (1202) as well as the Tangut (1227). Yet, these accusations often misunderstand the events themselves, not to mention the motives of not only the Mongols, but also the purpose of those actions. This is not to say that the Mongols did not employ massacres and other actions of mass destruction. Indeed, massacres were used widely, but often more judiciously that one might expect. Indeed, rape, pillage and plunder was standard not only for the Mongols but virtually all military organizations of the era.

While the legal application of the UN Convention definition may be impractical, nonetheless, investigating its attribution to the Mongols can be a useful exercise as it can help us understand not only the era and methods of violence employed, but also how the Mongols understood and rationalized their actions. Of greater significance is the employment of Leo Kuper’s concept of “genocidal massacres”. This concept cannot be considered anachronistic in any sense. Furthermore, it lends itself to a broader understanding of whether these “genocidal massacres” lead to a broader pattern of actions that might properly fall under the umbrella of genocide as defined by the UN Convention on the basic principle described by Douglas Adams, “If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family anatidae on our hands”.

Additionally, this study cannot be confined strictly to episodes of violence. In order to properly understand genocide in the context of the Mongol Empire, or any entity, one must understand other policies (both direct and indirect) that may be connected to the genocidal act. This is all the more important as the Mongol Empire emerged from the steppes which in the 12th century had numerous tribal entities into a single polity known as the Yeke Monggol Ulus. The use of the term ulus is particularly important. While it eventually acquired the meaning of “patrimony” and then later “nation or country” as it does today (Mongolia’s name in Mongolian is Mongol Uls), in the thirteenth century it was only used by the Mongols to refer to the various Mongol lineages. Other non-Mongol groups were considered irgen or people. There was a clear identification of the other. Thus, we must also consider whether the establishment of the Yeke Monggol Ulus was simply the melding of diverse groups, whether through voluntary or coercive actions, or perhaps something a bit different and did this Mongols apply massacres, deportations, and others aspects related to genocide and extermination as instruments of state creation in the creation of the Yeke Monggol Ulus.

In 146 BCE, Rome destroyed the cities of Carthage and Corinth, and in 133 BCE the Spanish stronghold of Numantia. The destruction of a city in the Greco-Roman world was a deeply symbolic act, and these particular acts of ‘urbicide’ – as we now call the intentional destruction of a city – were viewed by Greco-Roman authors as pivotal moments in Roman the expansion of Rome’s power. All three acts can be understood through the prism of retributive ‘conspicuous destruction’, designed to deter others from revolting against Rome’s power. In each case, Rome effaced individual responsibility for any perceived acts of disloyalty, and collectively punished the community through its effective elimination: after many perished in the siege and or sack of the city, the surviving population was enslaved, and the city itself destroyed – not to be re-inhabited by the survivors. When viewed through the prism of the definition of ‘genocide’ in the ‘Genocide Convention’, these actions of Rome could be viewed as intentional acts to destroy these civic communities ‘as such’, and thus warrant consideration as genocide. Of the three, Carthage stands out in the predetermination on the part of some at Rome – fueled by existential anxieties - to destroy the city, before an actual pretext existed.

The European conquest of the seven islands of the Canarian archipelago lasted almost a century (1402-1496). It was carried mostly by private adventurers backed by the legal rights of the Castilian crown and supplied by private financiers, who expected a quick return. It brought the destruction of the native population of all its islands, the erasure of their names, language, custom, economy, land ownership, ecological environment, beliefs, culture, social structure, and political organization. The means by which it was achieved were enslavement, deportation, disease, and the strategic use of terror. Acculturation, miscegenation, and the building of a colonial society based on plantation agriculture and long-distance trade did the rest to erase any trace of the indigenous culture. Genocide, in the case of the Canary Islands, can be understood both as a process of attrition, following its use by Fein and Rosenberg, and as an outcome, the aggregate result of thousands of specific instances of violence. It also was a prelude, a necessary learning ground and a blueprint of the European conquest and settler colonialism in the Antilles begun in the 1490s. The American conquest proved a much faster application of the same template for genocide, over a vast territory.

The Vietnamese Le dynasty launched a massive invasion of its neighbor, Champa, in 1471. The invasion, which was the culmination of centuries of back and forth conflict, produced widespread Cham deaths, and the permanent weakening of the southern kingdom. The Vietnamese actions, resulting in at least 40,000 recorded deaths, may well have been genocidal, though the limited historical record is unclear. It does, though, reveal that the Vietnamese used beheading against many of the victims, an action that appears punitive rather than incidental to warfare, and uniquely applied to the Cham. Furthermore, the Vietnamese carried out a project to rename geographical features in the Cham territories, suggesting a degree of cultural erasure while also substantially and permanently reducing the size of the Cham realm. Thus, although the evidence for genocide is ambiguous, it is clear that the Vietnamese actions in the late fifteenth century sought permanently to reduce the influence and threat posed by Champa via an overwhelming show of force.

This chapter explores key episodes of extreme violence in the context of wars between Greek-speaking groups in the Hellenistic period. Case studies explore the phenomenon of destruction of Hellenistic cities and interrogate whether such destruction in warfare should be counted as genocide. The chapter identifies and compares conditions for extreme violence in the Hellenistic period, which was marked by continual warfare. It argues that competing discourses about justice, together with different emotional regimes related to justice, including anger, pity, and shame, serve both to moderate and intensify violence throughout this period. Where violence is taken to be just, views of justice as legitimate punishment and vengeance can ground acts of extreme violence, while view of justice as reasonable, equitable and gentle may moderate violence but could also be activated to justify extreme violence, if it is taken to be responding to extraordinary provocations or ethical and religious violations. These traditions of justice and emotional norms in the context of warfare in turn sit within a range of other cultural and political commitments which may both moderate and provoke extreme violence, including the development and maintenance of civic identity, legal and religious norms, and considerations of economic and political power.