Extremely Violent Societies

1. Introduction: extremely violent societies; Part I. Participatory Violence: 2. A coalition for violence: mass slaughter in Indonesia, 1965-66; 3. Participating and profiteering: the destruction of the Armenians, 1915-23; Part II. The Crisis of Society: 4. From rivalries between elites to a crisis of society: mass violence and famine in Bangladesh (East Pakistan), 1971-77; 5. Sustainable violence: strategic resettlement, militias and 'development' in anti-guerrilla warfare; 6. What connects the fate of different victim groups? The German occupation and Greek society in crisis; Part III. General Observations: 7. The ethnization of history: the historiography of mass violence and national identity construction; 8. Conclusions.

Christian Gerlach is Professor of Contemporary History at the University of Bern. His award-winning titles in German include Calculated Murder: The German Economic and Extermination Policy in Byelorussia (third edition, 2001), War, Food, Genocide: German Extermination Policies in the Second World War (second edition, 2001), and The Last Chapter: The Murder of Hungarian Jews, 1944-45 (with Gotz Aly, second edition, 2004).

'In this pathbreaking book, Christian Gerlach undermines the tunnel-vision of mainstream genocide research. Introducing a challenging new theoretical approach, Gerlach convincingly demonstrates the messy, complex patterns of mass violence in the modern world. Everyone interested in these issues will enrich their understanding by engaging with his arguments and case-studies.' Martin Shaw, University of Sussex 'A tour de force of thinking and research, Extremely Violent Societies is a bold and original analysis of mass violence in the twentieth century. Writing global history at its best, Christian Gerlach ranges from Ottoman Armenia to Nazi-occupied Europe, from Indonesia to East Pakistan and further to explore why, at particular times, these societies exploded in paroxysms of violence. In supplanting a simplistic, state- and ideology-centered genocide model with a multi-causal approach, he convincingly argues that complex processes during transitional crises enlist all social groups in producing these terrible outcomes. At once sober and humane, this book is a landmark in the scholarly analysis of the most troubling phenomenon of our times.' A. Dirk Moses, University of Sydney 'After his remarkable study on the Holocaust, Christian Gerlach demonstrates in this very innovative book, his capacity to tackle mass violence from a comparative perspective. His approach is not only courageous and challenging, but also insightful and certainly deserves to be discussed in genocide scholarly circles and beyond.' Jacques Semelin, CERI-CNRS, Center for International Studies and Research