| MO4965 | Ethnic Cleansing and Genocide in 20th-Century Europe |
| Lecturer | Dr Tomasz Kamusella |
| Credits | 60 |
| Availability | 2012-2013 Semester 1 & 2 |
| Class Hour | view timetable |
Description |
During the last two centuries modernization has placed in the hands of governments unprecedented instruments and resources with which they can effect ideologically justified and politically motivated changes in the populations of states. Serious attempts at mass expulsions and exterminations of entire populaces were first made in the 19th century in the colonies of the European powers. In Europe the phenomenon manifested itself during the 20th century, mainly in attempts to achieve a precise fit of nation-states with their ethnolinguistically defined nations. The massacres (genocide) of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire were followed by mass expulsions of other populations during and after World War I in Central Europe. World War II culminated in the genocide of the Jews and Roma, while after the war an even bigger wave of expulsions occurred. At approximately the same time, socially and nationally defined groups were exterminated or forcibly relocated within the Soviet Union. The internationally accepted conceptualization and criminalization of genocide in 1948 did not prevent renewed rounds of expulsions and attempted genocides in the second half of the 20th century in Central and Eastern Europe. |
| Basic Reading | A W Crosby Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900 (1986) N M Naimark Fires of Hatred: Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth-Century Europe (2001) D Olusoga and C W Erichsen The Kaiser’s Holocaust: Germany’s Forgotten Genocide and the Colonial Roots of Nazism (2010) A S Rosenbaum (ed) Is the Holocaust Unique? Perspectives on Comparative Genocide (2009) T Snyder Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin (2010) |
Course Structure |
Semester 1 1. Historiography and Politics: How to Talk About Ethnic Cleansing and Genocide? 2. A Prelude to Modernity: Religiously Motivated Ghettoization and Expulsions of Jews and Muslims 3. Modernization and the Colonial Beginnings of Modern Ethnic Cleansing: Northern America, Australia, Free State of Congo, South West Africa and South Africa 4. The Great War and Its Aftermath I: The Armenian Genocide and the Population Exchange Between Greece and Turkey 5. The Great War and Its Aftermath II: New Nation-States and Ethnic Cleansing 6. The League of Nations and Minority Rights Protection: Successes and Failures 7. Stalin as a Genocidaire I: Deportations and Exterminations of Social Classes and Border Populations 8. Hitler as a Genocidaire I: Expulsions and Exclusions of Jews, the Exterminations of the Disabled and Homosexuals, and ‘Bringing Germans Home’ 9. Hitler as a Genocidaire II: The Genocides of Jews and Roma, and Cleansing the Germans of the Un-German Element 10. Instruments of Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing: Gulag, the Concentration Camp, Ghetto, Famine, Einsatzgruppen, Passport… 11. Stalin as a Genocidaire II: Deportations and Exterminations of Enemy Nations, Populations and Elites Semester 2 |
| Assessment | 60% examination: 2 x 3-hour papers |
Learning Outcomes |
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| Restrictions | Available only to students in the second year of the Honours programme |