Download Colonial Violence and Holocaust Studies Abstract This article

Colonial Violence and Holocaust Studies
Abstract
This article examines the ways in which British colonial atrocities can further our
understanding of European colonial violence and its relationship with genocidal
violence in twentieth-century European warfare and the Holocaust. This issue will be
examined in relation to the British war of reconquest in the Sudan 1896–99, which
utilized methods including starvation tactics and the killing of the enemy wounded.
Propaganda which dehumanized the “enemy” and justified British supremacy over
“inferior races” in the name of “civilization” was also key. European traditions of
violence in the colonies provide an important historical context for the genocidal
violence of the twentieth century.
Keywords:
Holocaust, Genocide studies, genocidal violence, colonialism, British Empire, Nazi
Empire
This article will discuss the ways in which the history of European colonial violence
can enhance our understanding of the Holocaust; it will be argued that this history
provides an important context for Nazi genocidal violence within European traditions.
There has been an increased focus in recent years on the phenomenon of extreme
violence in a colonial context, which greatly contributes to our understanding of the
history of Europe and its relationship with genocide, years before it was carried out by
the Nazis on European soil. Scholars have been increasingly exploring the importance
of European imperialism to the policies of the Nazis, focusing particularly on the
colonialism of Wilhelminian Germany. However, the present study will focus on
British colonial violence. Considering the fact that the British Empire was
underpinned by methods of extreme violence and in light of its scale and significance,
it is a natural progression that the British imperial project also be examined within the
context of colonial atrocities and genocidal violence. It is not the aim of this article to
suggest a direct continuity between British colonial violence and the Holocaust, but
rather to explore the relevance of the British Empire as one aspect of the historical
context within which the barbarities of the Nazi regime may be considered. This study
1
is relevant to both the history of empire and studies of Nazi colonial violence and will
begin by discussing some of the recent scholarly debates concerning colonialism,
National Socialism, and the Holocaust, before moving on to a discussion of the
Anglo-Egyptian War of Reconquest in the Sudan against the Mahdists 1896–9,
suggesting ways in which an exploration of British colonial violence can further our
understanding of Nazi genocidal violence.
When Hannah Arendt discussed the idea of “boomerang effects” in her
seminal work The Origins of Totalitarianism in 1951, she was not alone in suggesting
links between European colonialism and the advent of fascism and genocide on
European soil.i Anti-colonial critics including Aimé Césaire also made it clear that for
them the connections between the violent destruction of European colonialism and
Nazi policies were more than obvious.ii Colonial violence was clearly a consideration
for Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term “genocide” in 1944; as Dirk Moses
highlights, Lemkin “did not just write about genocide in colonial contexts; he defined
the concept as intrinsically colonial.”iii This point is made clear by Lemkin’s oftquoted statement that:
Genocide has two phases: one, destruction of the national pattern of the
oppressed group; the other, the imposition of the national pattern of the
oppressor. This imposition, in turn, may be made upon the oppressed
population which is allowed to remain or upon the territory alone, after
removal of the population and the colonization of the area by the oppressor’s
own nationals.iv
More recently, a key figure in the “continuity thesis” debate, Jürgen Zimmerer
has explored the connections between German colonial violence and the Holocaust;
such studies have been particularly instructive in highlighting links between
colonialism and Nazi genocide. As well as Zimmerer, scholars including Isabel Hull
and Benjamin Madley have focused in particular on connections between Nazi
policies in “the East” and German colonial policies in Africa.v Issues that have been
hitherto explored include the transfer of knowledge via the personnel that initially
worked in the German colonies of the Kaiserreich and later in Nazi Germany for
example.vi
2
Scholars have also been considering Adolf Hitler’s expansionist aims in the
East as a European colonial projectvii and Zimmerer has stated that “European
colonialism stood at the beginning of a development of particular notions of space and
race that found its culmination in the ‘hunger plan’ of 1941, the genocidal massacres
in the context of combating partisans, and the utilization of gas for organized
suffocation.”viii European colonialism provided a model of brutal and unrestrained
conquest and occupation and as David Furber and Wendy Lower have emphasized,
the Nazis were able to justify their policies of colonial expansion in the East as
“merely applying nineteenth-century colonial methods to Europe.”ix Similarly,
Donald Bloxham highlights that even if the Nazi regime only “adopted similar levels
of harshness and exploitation to those deployed by other European states in their
colonies, the picture was very grim.”x Hence, scholars have acknowledged that Nazi
violence may be viewed as being within the traditions of European history and are
considering the relationship between the role of colonialism and the genocide of
European Jewry, and as Furber and Lower have also acknowledged “the problematic
of resettlement and Jewish question went hand in hand in the General Government as
elsewhere.”xi While clearly, the Jewish population was to be ultimately excluded from
the Nazi Empire, it was nevertheless the case that they were affected by Nazi colonial
policies and “the decision to exterminate the Jews was part of a larger Nazi vision of a
racial empire in the East.”xii Peter Fritzsche has also argued that the destruction of
European Jewry was linked to “clear[ing] the ground for colonization” and hence,
“The ongoing murder of Jews, the anticipation of a complete victory over the Soviet
Union, and the heady prospect of new, clean colonies in the East were closely
intertwined.”xiii
The colonial paradigm is arguably less useful with regard to the Holocaust and
some scholars strongly dispute its application to the extermination of European Jewry
in particular, as policies directed at the Jewish populations did differ to the treatment
of the Polish population for example, although it is evident that the two also
overlapped in many ways. As Shelley Baranowski asserts, Jews under the Nazis also
suffered from methods similar to those conducted in the European colonies and states
that “similar to colonial subjects in other settings, Jews endured increasingly rigid
segregation and the theft of their assets, and their labor was exploited in work gangs,
camps, and ghettos.”xiv There are scholars who are vehemently opposed to the
application of the colonial genocide approach to the Holocaust. In highlighting the
3
colonial aspects of Nazi violence it not the intention of this article to ignore the
particularities of the Holocaust, but rather to demonstrate that Nazi anti-Semitic
measures were also affected by colonial policies and that the two were interconnected
in a variety of ways. Scholars including Dan Diner contest the relevance of
colonialism, arguing that there is a fundamental difference between the Holocaust and
colonial genocide, as the Holocaust was “pure annihilation, over and above war,
conflict, and enmity.”xv Within these discussions of the “imperial” nature of Nazi
Germany it is clear that the question of Holocaust “uniqueness” and arguments
regarding its historicization continue to loom over Holocaust and genocide studies. xvi
Roberta Pergher and Mark Roseman have highlighted the negative effects of this
approach thus:
Although these two critiques of existing literature, the one skeptical of a
colonial inheritance, the other suggesting that Holocaust literature has failed to
embrace an imperial framework, stand in some creative tension, in fact both
ultimately point to the same problem, namely, that the moral and political
stakes in defending or challenging the Holocaust’s uniqueness have muddied
efforts to integrate it productively into larger developments and categories.xvii
Scholars have shown that the colonial paradigm can prove useful for furthering our
understanding of the Nazis’ “Final Solution” of the “Jewish Question.” Furber and
Lower assert that the colonial context is relevant regarding the extermination of the
Jews and state: “The Holocaust was not a typical colonial genocide because ‘the Jew’
was not a typical colonial other.” Suggesting a different perspective on the issue,
these authors have proposed that “the Nazis feared the Jews ... because they regarded
themselves as the indigenous people of Central and Eastern Europe who were fighting
off Jewish penetration.”xviii Moses has discussed the extent to which the genocide of
European Jewry can be explained by the colonial genocide paradigm, and contends
that Lemkin certainly did not consider this to be the case. However, Moses suggests
that we may view the Holocaust as a “subaltern” genocide,xix and states that the Nazis
viewed themselves as being involved in a “war of national liberation” against the
Jews.xx According to Moses, the Nazis viewed themselves as the attacked indigenous
population, and “the Jews” their colonizers; he argues that these factors provide an
4
explanation for the Nazis’ “relentless drive to exterminate the Jews entirely,”xxi an
element which critics argue is lacking within a colonial framework.
While it was logical that scholars initially focused their attention on German
colonialism as a tool for understanding the genocidal policies of the Nazis, it is a
natural and necessary progression that European colonialism be considered in order to
help us understand the European traditions of violence which provide the background
to the genocidal violence of the twentieth century. Within the context of the
Netherlands and the Holocaust, Ido de Haan supports this view, stating:
the Holocaust is an episode in European history, not just because it happened
everywhere, or because the Nazis had Europe-wide ambitions, but also
because the causes, nature and effects of the Holocaust were closely related to
the general European phenomena of imperialism, colonialism and genocide.xxii
While it is clear that colonial aspects alone cannot explain the destruction of European
Jewry, it may be argued that it is essential that future studies of the Holocaust
consider the genocide within a wider context of European violence.
A consideration of the significance of British colonial violence as part of the
wider phenomenon of European colonialism and its relevance to Nazi genocidal
policies throughout Europe is also significant for British history as there is still a
general lack of discussion regarding the wider implications of the role of violence and
atrocity in the British Empire, although genocide scholars are increasingly examining
the relationship between Britain and genocide,xxiii particularly in reference to its
colonies. The historiography on the destruction of the Aborigines in Australia is
already remarkably large;xxiv while this research has led to much debate in Australia,
the genocidal history of the Aborigines continues to be overlooked within Britain and
in “British History,”xxv although the destruction of the Aborigines began under British
rule.xxvi Indeed, one may hope that Tom Lawson’s recently published The Last Man:
A British Genocide in Tasmania marks a change in this approach.xxvii Several
historians of empire are considering the role of everyday violence in the British
Empire, including contradictions within the colonial legal systems, as well as the
violent nature of decolonization.xxviii However, despite Britain’s vast empire and the
destruction it wrought, there are still few explorations of the theme of British colonial
violencexxix and these studies tend to focus on isolated occurrences of violence
5
without exploring the wider context and how these may be part of a broader pattern of
colonial violence.xxx Areas that genocide scholars are now exploring include the
destruction of the Native Americans in North America,xxxi British colonization and
rule in Ireland,xxxii and the British colonial wars in Rhodesiaxxxiii and Zululandxxxiv to
name a few. It is interesting that it has taken so long for historians of empire to
seriously address issues of atrocity; it is important that the findings of genocide
scholars be incorporated into those of historians of empire, thus highlighting the
integral role that violence played. Hence, explorations of the relationship between the
British Empire and mass violence are relevant for our understanding of the history of
empire as well as Holocaust and genocide studies. It is also the case that the true
extent of the violence used to uphold the Empire and British interests as a whole has
failed to seep into British consciousness more generally. The debates surrounding
both the introduction of Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD) and the opening of a
permanent Holocaust Exhibition at the Imperial War Museum (IWM) in London have
further highlighted this lack of awareness and, at times, apparent hypocrisy. xxxv Dan
Stone has previously argued that the emphasis on the Holocaust in Britain has
produced a “screen memory” effect, which “conceptually prohibits inquiry into
Britain’s own historical record.”xxxvi However, he then goes on to conclude that “it is
precisely this focus on the Holocaust that has encouraged a reconsideration of the
question of genocide in imperial history.”xxxvii This process has occurred through
firstly the development of the historiography of the Holocaust and comparative
genocide studies more generally.
Hitler has been quoted at various times as having referred to British
colonialism as a model for German expansion and his admiration for the British
Empire is well known; this fact should, as Stone has highlighted, “give us pause for
thought.”xxxviii Indeed, the Nazis were perplexed that their imperial aims and racial
policies were not well received in Britain; it has been noted that Alfred Rosenberg,
head of the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories, hoped that British
dismay would be temporary, stating: “it seems to us ... that the British Empire too is
based on a racially defined claim of dominance.”xxxix Racial prejudices were
fundamental to British imperialism, as was “scientific racism” in the second half of
the nineteenth century, as well as the work of Charles Darwin in particular,
“extinction discourse” and “degeneration” theory, for example.xl The development of
racial thought both in the metropole and on the periphery has been documented by
6
scholars, thus demonstrating the centrality of racial stereotypes and the view of
“natives” as “savage,” “primitive,” and “backward,” as opposed to the “civilized” and
“advanced” Europeans. The alleged inherent superiority of Europeans was provided
as justification for the imperial project and the fulfillment of a “moral duty” within
which the native populations were seen as irresponsible and incapable of looking after
themselves. According to Daniel Pick, social Darwinism and other related theories at
this time “underpinned the supremacist rhetoric” of imperialism, although “the specter
of internal degradation continually haunted it”xli and it was commonly believed that
Western “civilization” remained on the precipice between “civilization” and
“barbarism.”xlii Western European powers simultaneously espoused their superiority
over “savages” devoid of “civilization” in the colonies, with the application of a racial
hierarchy, while also voicing concerns regarding the “degeneracy” and potential
demise of its own population.xliii As historian Anthony Pagden has stated, “There was
a persistent dread among European colonists that … it would be only a matter of time
before the European civilizers would themselves become ‘native’ – either that or they
would perish altogether.”xliv One can recognize parallels between these fears and the
claims of the Nazis that they were defending “Western civilization” against
“international Jewry,”xlv as well as the view that the “subhuman” Russian population
needed to be removed as “a terror to all civilized nations” and the quest for the ethnic
purification of the Volksgemeinschaft.xlvi Indeed, George Mosse described the “Final
Solution” as the “climax of European racism.”xlvii
British military campaigns utilized a range of methods to enforce and maintain
British power throughout the Empire; methods of violence that were standard practice
included, inter alia, the use of collective reprisals and scorched earth policies,
starvation tactics on the enemy as well as the wider population, “divide and rule”
strategies, punitive expeditions, looting, as well as a disregard for international
standards of warfare and in some cases the massacring of the enemy wounded. One
case that included all of these aspects was the Anglo-Egyptian Reconquest of the
Sudan, which came after the Mahdists had successfully kept the British out of the
country for over a decade, having established power in 1885 under the Mahdi,
Muhammed Ahmad. It was clear from the beginning of the campaign under the Sirdar
(commander-in-chief) of the Egyptian Army, Herbert Kitchener, that the methods to
be utilized would be brutal. For example, Prime Minister Lord Salisbury suggested to
Lord Cromer, Consul-General of Egypt in 1896, that “with search lights and a maxim
7
gun you could prevent an enemy’s camp from supplying itself with water from the
river – and so starve it out.”xlviii Major J. Farley recollected that fighting in 1896 was
conducted in an uncompromising manner as “no quarter [was] given or asked” and
that “many of [the Mahdist soldiers] were only waiting the opportunity to surrender,
[and] as they came out with hands in the air, they were duly put in the bag.” xlix
However, all other battles of the reconquest were to pale in comparison to the Battle
of Omdurman on 2 September 1898.l Official figures state that 11,000 Mahdists were
killed and over 16,000 seriously wounded, although these statistics do not take into
account the number of fatalities that resulted from the practice of neglect and killing
of the enemy wounded;li in contrast, Anglo-Egyptian forces lost just 48 men and 382
were wounded in the battle.lii War propaganda was utilized by Reginald Wingate, the
Director of Military Intelligence of the Egyptian Army and “chief propagandist” for
the reconquest, as Wingate sought to justify the extreme military tactics with
“unrelieved descriptions of bloodshed and oppression,”liii fuelling the perception of
the Mahdia as a brutal, barbaric regime with bestial and savage tales, which were
undoubtedly exaggerated. This propaganda and the campaign were fuelled by the
death of General Charles Gordon at Khartoum in 1885 at the hands of the Mahdists.
First-hand accounts of the reconquest campaign convey the fact that many British
troops did not recognize their enemies as fellow human beings and Lt. A. Unsworth
stated that the “sight of the mutilated bodies had no more effect on me than the sight
of a wounded fly would have.”liv Jens-Uwe Guettel has highlighted a similar mindset
in the case of German soldiers fighting in the East and in reference to soldiers’ letters
home he argues that there was a perception of “the German advance as a battle of
civilization against sub-human barbarity.”lv Furthermore, he emphasizes that German
soldiers utilized the brutal actions of the Soviet Union in the Ukraine to justify their
own brutality towards prisoners of war and civilians while at the same time claiming
to “liberate” the Ukraine from Soviet oppression, for example. To make his point,
Guettel quotes one soldier’s letter from the front: “Well, these beasts will receive
punishment that is their due. Maybe you have already noticed that the battles have
resulted in very few prisoners. Every one of them we have found before our rifles is
no more.”lvi
Winston Churchill, who was present in Omdurman both as a war
correspondent and soldier, described the effects of British propaganda thus:
8
the unmeasured terms in which the Dervishes had been described in the
newspapers, and the idea which had been laboriously circulated, of “avenging
Gordon”, had inflamed [the soldiers’] passions, and had led them to believe
that it was quite correct to regard their enemy as vermin – unfit to live.lvii
Thousands of enemy wounded were left for dead on the battlefield; Medical Officer
Major Adamson depicted the scene on his departure from Omdurman several days
after the battle: “The voyage is a horrible memory, at least the first day of it, for all
along the river edge were dead or wounded dervishes, great vultures tearing at the
corpses or waiting patiently for the wounded to die.”lviii Furthermore, the night after
the battle the town was subject to the so-called reinforcement of “law and order” in
which Major-General Granville Egerton described how “the shooting all round was
incessant, probably looting and a general repayment of old scores,” in which local
leaders were targeted.lix
The “civilized” versus “barbaric” dichotomy was a key component of the
British imperial project and was used by participants to try and understand their own
reactions to their participation in these brutal events, as one soldier noted: “One’s
feelings are really quite unusual at such a time, and I take it all the old primeval
savage blood left in our highly civilized bodies is asserting itself a bit.”lx The
prejudices of the invaders are also evident in the accounts of many soldiers and
correspondents who could not hide their disgust at what awaited them in the aftermath
of the battle. For example, one soldier recounted: “the accursed place was left to
fester and fry in its own filth and lust and blood. The reek of its abomination steamed
up to heaven to justify us of our vengeance.”lxi As historian M. W. Daly has
highlighted:
That a sprawling and populous city, hours after its bombardment and
occupation by an invading army, host to thousands of the wounded and dying
who had escaped the carnage of the battlefield, should offend the aesthetic and
moral senses of war correspondents may be surprising.lxii
The conditions created by the invading power were used to reinforce the common
perception of the “savage native”; this is a theme which one can recognize in Nazi
rhetoric regarding the ghettoized Jewish population for example, in which we can see
9
the effects of the dehumanization of the Jewish victims as conveyed by Alfred
Rosenberg, who stated: “Seeing this race en masse, which is decaying, decomposing,
and rotten to the core will banish any sentimental humanitarianism.”lxiii Hence, the
Nazis used the horrendous conditions that they had forced upon the Jewish population
to further justify their annihilationist policies through their own “self-fulfilling
prophecy.”lxiv Reactions by German troops to the Soviet Union were reminiscent of
British responses to newly conquered territory set for colonization: as a member of
the 12th Air Force Regiment stated, “Russia is on the whole still a huge
disappointment for the individual. No culture, no paradise (…) the lowest level, filth,
a humanity that shows us that we will have a huge task of colonization here.”lxv
Historians have emphasized the importance of the advanced weaponry utilized
by the British in the reconquest campaign, which essentially turned the Battle of
Omdurman into a one-sided massacre. In his assessment of the battle, Byron Farwell
concluded that “cool efficiency had triumphed over hot religious fanaticism.”lxvi Such
a representation of the reconquest and the use of modern weaponry also seeks to
encourage the “civilized” versus “barbaric” dichotomy; depictions of the British
military campaign as cold and distant through modern technology are typical of a
broader pattern of Eurocentrism that stresses the “civilized” methods of Western
powers in comparison to their “savage” enemy, thus underplaying the brutality of the
methods of modern warfare. Churchill summed up the conflict as “probably the most
signal triumph ever gained by the arms of science over Barbarians.”lxvii Hence, the
role of technology has been emphasized with regards to the reconquest and Vinay Lal
alludes to the “terrible tedium experienced by Kitchener’s men” as they fired their
machine guns. This “tedium” Lal links with the bureaucratization of killing in
reference to the work of Arendt, and states that “the moral distancing that takes place
when pulling the trigger and the filing of papers become tasks akin to one
another.”lxviii However, such a view, comparing the slaughter of Omdurman with the
role of the Schreibtischtäter in the Holocaust, underplays the importance of the
realities of face-to-face killing. Accounts of the battle demonstrate that the effects of
British war tactics were anything but “civilized,” As Ernest Bennett, a journalist who
was present at the end battle, stated:
10
Anyone who has seen the effects of shell fire – bodies ripped open, jaws torn
off, and kindred horrors – may find it difficult to differentiate very markedly
between accursed usages inseparable from every system of warfare, civilized
and barbarous alike.lxix
It has also been the case with reference to twentieth-century conflicts as well as the
Holocaust in particular that there has been a tendency to overemphasize the role of
modern technology in an attempt to create distance, as Stone has stated with reference
to the perception of “industrial killing” and the Holocaust: “any talk of ‘modernity’ in
the smooth, bureaucratic sense seems more a way of hiding the reality of the horror
from ourselves than a faithful description.”lxx Eric Weitz has also discussed this issue
and highlights that “the wars of the twentieth century, for all the technological
prowess that marked them as something new, by no means eliminated face-to-face
brutality.”lxxi With regards to the Holocaust, it is important to consider, for example,
the role of the Einsatzgruppen and the “ghetto clearances” in 1942 which led to the
deaths of one million Jews who were killed in “wild shootings.”lxxii
Yehouda Shenhav has recently discussed Arendt’s work regarding Nazi and
imperial bureaucracy, as well as her thesis on the “banality of evil,” focusing
specifically on Cromer; Shenhav compares the alleged similarities between Cromer
and Adolf Eichmann in particular.lxxiii Cromer was instrumental in the Sudan
campaign and Kitchener reported directly to him rather than the War Office
throughout the reconquest;lxxiv elsewhere Cromer has been described as “the
embodiment of cold administrative rationality” and his role in the reconquest requires
further investigation.lxxv Shenhav highlights the foundations of both the Nazi and
British colonial bureaucracies which were based on race, arbitrary rule with “states of
exception,” and moral aloofness. According to Shenhav, Arendt “argued that the
dangerous liaisons between race and bureaucracy had unleashed extraordinary power
and destruction, all the more alarming as they were ‘bathed in an aura of rationality
and civilization’.”lxxvi The flexible and arbitrary nature of colonial rule further
increased British power throughout its colonies. As Arendt argued, “The only ‘law’
[these men] obeyed was the ‘law’ of expansion, and the only proof of their
‘lawfulness’ was success.”lxxvii Hence, scholars are exploring a variety of ways in
which one can identify historical continuities between European colonialism and the
Nazi Empire.
11
Colonial conflicts were underpinned by the imperial ideology which presented
the indigenous population as “barbaric” and “inferior” and thus not subject to the
same “standards” of European warfare;lxxviii this included the development of
weaponry purely designed for use in the colonies, such as explosive bullets. lxxix
Although the use of these bullets had already been banned as a result of the St.
Petersburg Declaration in 1868, the British justified their utilization in colonial
warfare. These justifications were founded on racist assumptions, for example as
Bennett stated, “The main object of a soldier in battle is to put his opponent out of
action, and it is found by experience that the ordinary bullet does not adequately
secure this result when employed against barbarous or semi-barbarous enemies.”lxxx
As Alex Bellamy explains, “societies had to fulfill the ‘standards of civilization’ in
order to enjoy the protection of civilized rules. If they did not, they fell outside the
moral order.”lxxxi There are clear parallels in the justifications for the violation of
international law in both the context of British colonial warfare and the Nazi disregard
for these laws in the “war of annihilation” which took place in the Soviet Union from
1941 onwards.lxxxii
The concept of the “civilizing mission” was central to the British Empire,
although, as V. G. Kiernan highlighted, this concept was based upon the premise that
“Whatever a white man did must in some grotesque fashion be ‘civilized’.”lxxxiii
British colonial victories were typically accompanied by claims of “liberation” for the
conquered territory, as the following statement from Bennet Burleigh suggests in
relation to the Sudan: “the rehabilitation of the country through the setting up of just
government will be in the nature of discharging a duty long incumbent on Great
Britain,”lxxxiv although the administration under the Condominium Agreement
introduced military law and enforced policies which increased the suffering of the
general population. Local inhabitants had already suffered greatly throughout the
campaign as their towns were burnt and the famine conditions in the country
exploited for the war effort. Kitchener went on to administer the country to the further
detriment of its inhabitants and happily made use of the situation to build his railway
on the cheap, arguing, for example, that “[t]he natives around Goz Abu Guma are
starving ... and you can get as many as you like for a handful of dhurra a day.” lxxxv
Hence, British justifications for colonial conquest were based on the pretense of
“liberation” and the suffering of the local population was underplayed. In the case of
Nazi-occupied Poland the racial hierarchy that was to be implemented was made clear
12
through the distribution of supplies and reflected the Nazis’ Germanization program;
as Hans Frank, the Governor-General of the “General Government” in Nazi-occupied
Poland stated:
the first problem is the members of the ethnic German community who in the
future receive the same rations as the Reich Germans. They must not be
treated differently. Until now we have taken the view that the ethnic Germans
must gradually adjust to the German standard … I am not interested in the Jew
… Whether or not they get any fodder to eat is the last thing I’m concerned
about… .lxxxvi
With regards to the Polish population, Frank proclaimed: “I am only interested in the
Poles in so far as I see in them a reservoir of labor, but not to the extent that I feel it is
a governmental responsibility to give them a guarantee that they will get a specific
amount to eat.”lxxxvii Frank also noted that “[t]he Führer further stated explicitly that
we had no obligation to create German conditions of life here, that there was no room
for Germanization efforts. What we have here is a gigantic labor camp.”lxxxviii
For the most part, Hitler was not concerned with “civilizing” the “native”
populations in the East, as the following statement makes clear: “Anyone who talks
about cherishing the local inhabitant and civilizing him goes straight to the
concentration camp.”lxxxix Indeed, as Elizabeth Harvey has pointed out in the case of
the Germanization program in Poland, the Nazis did not aim to assimilate or perhaps
“civilize” the Polish population, “but to eradicate ‘Polishness’ and ultimately
eliminate the Polish population from ‘German soil’.”xc According to Nazi rhetoric,
Poland was “mired in filth and vermin” and would need to be “cleansed.”xci Harvey
highlights that the Nazis only perceived a “civilizing mission” for those deemed to
fulfill their criteria of “Germanness” and who were therefore considered “settlement
material.”xcii Furber has argued that for Hitler, “the ‘civilizing mission’ was not worth
the effort; according to the Nazis’ racist ideology, only races with a genetic
predisposition to civilization could be civilized; to try to civilize lesser races was a
waste of time.”xciii It was also the case that these Nazi policies had further
implications for the Jewish population and Furber has highlighted how “antiSemitism combined with the Eastern ‘civilizing mission’ in a deadly embrace,” citing
the example of Dietrich Troschke who blamed the primitiveness of eastern Poles on
13
“Jewish influences”; the way to “civilize” Poland was to remove all traces of them.xciv
Moreover, “[a]nti-Semitism, which the Nazis brought with them to the East, helped
them to see Jews as standing everywhere in the way of both civilization and the war
effort.”xcv Carroll P. Kakel has also highlighted that for the Nazis in Eastern Europe,
rather than a “civilizing” mission, there “would be a radical ‘colonizing’ one, where,
Hitler said ‘land’ – but not ‘peoples’ – would be ‘Germanized’” and the “inferior”
races would be deported and eliminated, i.e. the Jews, the “Gypsies,” and the
Slavs.xcvi Baranowski acknowledges that Nazi Lebensraum was to be achieved
“without the pretence of a ‘civilizing mission’”;xcvii Mark Mazower concurs, stating:
“A ruling power, according to [Hitler], should not even pretend that what it was doing
was in anyone’s interest but its own.”xcviii Clearly this issue represents a difference in
approach between British and Nazi colonialism, although it was nevertheless the case
that imperial rhetoric informed Nazi discussions on the subject. In the case of British
colonialism, the “moral duty” of the “civilizing mission” was central to public
justifications for colonial rule and the violence this entailed and it was also highly
important in informing the approach and attitudes of colonial administrators and
troops on the ground.
In the case of the Sudan, as Mark Levene has asserted, “for all its racial
nastiness, [Kitchener’s] campaign did stop short of outright genocide.”xcix While
Kitchener’s policies did not lead to genocide, massacres and excessive violence
clearly did take place and are part of a wider European tradition of violence. The
timing of the Sudan conflict is relevant within the context of the development of
European imperialism and the Scramble for Africa in which Britain’s dominance was
already waning at the end of the nineteenth century. Levene has highlighted that
during this time, “the iron-fist generals, the ones who were prepared to contemplate
radical solutions to colonial insurrections, replaced those who operated by the book.”c
The extreme nature of colonial warfare was heightened further by the fact that, as
Levene highlights, those taking up arms in opposition to European colonial rule “were
more than aware that they were staring into the abyss, that once the railways and
roads were laid, their autonomy and integrity would be gone and that this was their
one and only chance to break free.”ci Clearly, the mix of racial prejudice and superior
weaponry contributed to the extreme nature of colonial conflicts. As Pergher and
Roseman highlight, “On the face of it, genocide is inimical with empire, indeed in
some sense its negation” as “[i]f the ‘others’ are all eliminated … imperial rule
14
ends.”cii Scholars have been debating the extent to which genocide within a colonial
context can be viewed as “inevitable,” particularly if one considers the variant of
“settler colonialism” specifically.ciii One can detect the “potentiality” of genocide in
this and other cases of British colonial violence; the underlying potential of the British
Empire for mass killing could be ignited during times of crisis and threat and it is
within this context that the reconquest can be viewed.civ As Stone has stated in his
advocacy of scholars focusing on genocide as part of a historical process, we need to
“take a more historical view, which can explain why certain situations evolve into
genocide policies and, importantly, why some violent ones do not.”cv With reference
to the Sudan campaign, the British defeat in the Sudan in 1885 is important, as it is
clear that the British had no intention of leaving the country defeated for a second
time. Colonial violence throughout the British Empire was connected as part of a
broader framework of British colonial military behavior and an acceptance of a
particularly brutal type of warfare against one’s colonial “enemies.” British
colonialism can be seen within a wider framework of extreme violence and whilst
colonial warfare did not always lead to “wholesale genocide,” as Jürgen Zimmerer
and Dominik Schaller point out, “even in cases in which colonial military
commanders did not aim at exterminating their indigenous enemies they usually
willingly and cynically accepted the death of thousands of Africans or Asians as a
collateral damage of their method of warfare.”cvi
Enquiries into the brutal actions of colonial powers such as Britain challenge
the debates regarding the extent to which we can identify a specific line of German
continuity from the colonies of the Kaiserreich to the Holocaust, or as Madley states,
“From Africa to Auschwitz.”cvii In-depth studies of European colonial violence have
further significance for the apparent emergence of a new colonial Sonderwegcviii and
the extent to which German colonial violence can be understood as “exceptional.”cix
In response to this development, it is the contention of this article that a consideration
of European colonialism is essential; Birthe Kundrus also emphasizes an approach
which would “relativize the significance of German colonialism and stress the
European dimension of imperialism.” Hence, Kundrus acknowledges the relevance of
colonialism for our understanding of Nazi warfare and occupation in the East and also
points out that “the imperial world of the 1930s, especially the British Empire, was a
kind of ‘sounding board’ for National Socialism.”cx In contrast, both Geoff Eley and
Guettel have emphasized a “break” between traditional European colonialism and the
15
Nazi Empire and have argued that Nazi leaders ultimately rejected nineteenth-century
“liberal-capitalist” colonialism.cxi With regards to a focus on the German variant,
Thomas Kühne has also pointed out that for Hitler, “German overseas colonialism
was a past mistake that the Third Reich was not to repeat.”cxii Guettel has further
argued that imperialism for the Nazis was “expansionism as a polar opposite to the
German colonialist activities.”cxiii While we may question the extent to which Hitler
was inspired by German colonialism specifically, it is nevertheless the case that the
Holocaust occurred within the traditions of European colonialism.
In questioning the continuity approach, Robert Gerwarth and Stephan
Malinowski have argued that neither “the scope, nature, [nor] objectives of the
violence unleashed in German Southwest Africa constituted genuinely ‘new’ or
exceptional levels of violence previously unknown to European colonialism.”cxiv
Pascal Grosse has also highlighted the inherent assumption within the “continuity
thesis” that “if German colonialism led in some causal way to National Socialism,
then the German colonial order must have been different from its European rivals.”cxv
While the above statement from Gerwarth and Malinowski is certainly correct, they
also claim that “National Socialism and the German war of annihilation constituted a
break with European traditions of colonialism rather than a continuation.”cxvi In
contrast, the present study argues that the violence of National Socialism occurred
very much within the traditions of European colonial violence and that the latter was
much more extreme than Gerwarth and Malinowski seem to think; it may be argued
that twentieth-century European violence therefore represents a continuation of
traditions of colonial violence.
Donald Bloxham and Robert Gerwarth’s Political Violence in TwentiethCentury Europe convincingly argues that European colonial violence had wider
significance for developments on European soil, acknowledging that “violent colonial
expansion was a shared European experience characterized by transnational learning
processes, particularly with respect to the treatment of non-European natives and the
construction of colonial identities of white supremacy.”cxvii The authors add that these
processes occurred within a “system of mutual observation and emulation”;cxviii the
British Empire was central to this system. The violence that occurred in the colonies
was relevant to Europe as it provided experiences of extreme violence and thus “the
empires of Europe served as training grounds and spaces for the construction of new
techniques and mentalities of violence.”cxix As stated above, the timing of the Battle
16
of Omdurman was significant within the context of developments in European
colonialism and the levels of violence utilized; Doris Bergen places it within the
context of a period which “must have contributed to a sense among many Europeans
that human life – at least the lives of people they considered inferior – was extremely
cheap.”cxx Furthermore, James McMillan claimed within the context of the battle and
the “extreme violence” of the Boer War that “after 1914, it involved no great leap of
imagination on the part of the military and of civilian policy-makers to adapt their
model of colonial war to European theatres of war.”cxxi Hence, an increasing number
of scholars are acknowledging the importance of European colonialism as one of the
“preconditions” for the Holocaustcxxii and the latter can be viewed as one part of a
wider history of extreme European violence. It is not the intention here to suggest that
both European colonial violence and Nazi violence were identical phenomena but
rather that European colonialism represented a precedent of violence and conquest
within European history, from which Hitler’s genocidal policies in the East could
draw.
The continuity thesis, which argues the relevance of German colonialism in
particular for the genocidal violence of the Second World War, is often criticized for a
teleological approach, in which “direct lines” are debated. However, as Eley has
highlighted with reference to Nazi violence, “Flagging these precedents does not
require an oversimplified model of causal explanatory continuity.”cxxiii The present
work does not claim a direct link between the violent campaigns of the British Empire
and Nazi genocide. However, the history of European colonialism provides the
backdrop to genocidal conflicts on European soil in the first half of the twentieth
century and this fact should not be ignored, and requires further explanation. Despite
the ongoing reservations of proponents of Holocaust “uniqueness,” scholars have
begun to explore further links between other colonial violence and the Holocaust,
demonstrating the value of this approach. Kakel’s exploration of The American West
and the Nazi East is just one example.cxxiv Although one must remain cautious, the
Holocaust has become “the ‘gold standard’ in modern history” in which, “[b]y linking
them to the Holocaust, the histories of colonialism and imperialism are upgraded.” cxxv
Despite the reservations of some, it is clear that colonialism and the Holocaust shared
characteristics; as Stone has argued, “Nazi genocidal policies were, at least at first, a
continuation of policies undertaken by the European imperial powers.”cxxvi Kühne has
recently provided a review of the literature on colonialism and the Holocaust, which,
17
as he states, leads to “an ambivalent assessment of the explanatory potential of the
colonial paradigm” and rightly argues for multi-causal analyses, stating that “[f]urther
research needs to examine the specific colonial or imperial knowledge translated into
specific Nazi ideologies and similarities.”cxxvii Overall, scholars’ ongoing debates
highlight the fundamental need for more empirically based, synchronic comparisons
of colonial violencecxxviii and the want for further in-depth enquiry into individual
cases of colonial brutality.cxxix
To conclude, it is the contention of this article that the future of Holocaust
studies and other genocides will benefit from a greater consideration of the violent
events of European colonialism, of which the British Empire was a key driving force.
It is argued that the significance of the British Empire to Nazi imperial policies goes
beyond Hitler’s known admiration for British colonialism, and studies of British
colonial violence are necessary for furthering our understanding of Holocaust and
genocide studies, as well as British imperial history. V. G. Kiernan’s work was
notable in its exploration of the significance of European colonial violence and
twentieth-century warfare and the ways in which “violence outside Europe was about
to come home to roost,” firstly in the escalation of intra-European violence and the
military campaigns of the First World War.cxxx As one soldier seems to have already
suspected, the conflict in the Sudan was indicative of events to come in Europe. As
Major-General G. M. Franks stated in reference to Omdurman:
It was indeed a city of the dead, and it was very horrible and sad. War is a
cruel and terrible thing, and the more one sees of it and its results, the more
one hopes there may never be anything so terrible in Europe again. One talks
in a light hearted way of fighting France or Germany, but these things are
horrible enough in savage lands.cxxxi
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by a bursary from the Friendly Hand Charitable Foundation
and a Reid Scholarship. I would like to thank Dan Stone and the anonymous
reviewers of this journal for their comments on earlier versions of this essay.
Disclosure statement
18
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
Arendt, Origins, 206, 223. For further discussion, see, Moses, “Hannah Arendt”; Stone, “Defending
the Plural”; Rothberg, Multidirectional Memory, chap. 2.
ii
Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism.
iii
Moses, “Empire, Colony, and Genocide,” 9.
iv
Lemkin, Axis Rule, 79.
v
See Zimmerer, “The Birth of the Ostland”; Zimmerer, “Kolonialer Genozid?”; Madley, “From Africa
to Auschwitz,”; Hull, “Military Culture.”
vi
Zimmerer, “The Birth of the Ostland,” 211-212.
vii
For example Zimmerer, “The Birth of the Ostland,”; Furber and Lower, “Colonialism and
Genocide,” 372-403; Kakel, The Holocaust as Colonial Genocide.
viii
Zimmerer, “Colonialism and the Holocaust,” 67.
ix
Furber and Lower, “Colonialism and Genocide,” 373.
x
Bloxham, The Final Solution, 22.
xi
Furber and Lower, “Colonialism and Genocide,” 378.
xii
Ibid., 379.
xiii
Fritzsche, Life and Death, 193, 195.
xiv
Baranowski, “Nazi Colonialism and the Holocaust,” 60.
xv
As cited in Stone, Histories, 233–4; Diner, Gegenläufige Gedächtnisse.
xvi
See for example Stone, “The Historiography of Genocide.”
xvii
Pergher and Roseman, “The Holocaust,” 43.
xviii
Furber and Lower, “Colonialism and Genocide,” 375.
xix
See: Moses, “Empire, Colony, Genocide,” 37.
xx
Ibid., 39.
xxi
Ibid., 38.
xxii
de Haan, “Imperialism, Colonialism and Genocide,” 326.
xxiii
See for example Shaw, “Britain and Genocide.”
xxiv
Key examples include Evans, Saunders and Cronin, Exclusion; Moses, Genocide and Settler
Society; Reynolds, An Indelible Stain?; Ryan, The Aboriginal Tasmanians; Tatz, With Intent to
Destroy.
xxv
Stone, “Britannia Waives the Rules,” 182, 199 n32.
xxvi
As Ann Curthoys makes clear in her chapter, “Genocide in Tasmania,” 231.
xxvii
Lawson, The Last Man.
xxviii
Examples include Kolsky, Colonial Justice in British India; Anderson, Histories of the Hanged.
xxix
One example is Gott, Britain’s Empire.
xxx
On the historiography of the Indian Mutiny, see Wagner, “The Marginal Mutiny”; much has been
written on the Boer War, one example is Judd and Surridge, The Boer War. There are of course
exceptions and V.G. Kiernan’s work is significant in this regard: Kiernan, The Lords of Human Kind;
Kiernan, European Empires. Additional works on colonial warfare include de Moor and Wesseling,
Imperialism and War; Klein and Schumacher, Kolonialkriege.
xxxi
For the debate on the genocide of the Native Americans, see Churchill, A Little Matter of Genocide;
Stannard, American Holocaust; Cave, “Genocide in the Americas”; Riley Sousa, “‘They Will be
Hunted Down’.”
xxxii
See Levene, The Rise of the West, 48-51, 53-57; McVeigh, “‘The Balance of Cruelty’.”
xxxiii
See: Levene, The Rise of the West, 252-6.
xxxiv
See: Lieven, ‘“Butchering the Brutes’,” 614–32.
xxxv
On the IWM, see for example Lawson, “Ideology in a Museum of Memory,” 173-183. On HMD,
see Bloxham, “Britain’s Holocaust Memorial Days”; Cesarani, “Seizing the Day.”
xxxvi
Stone, “Britannia Waives the Rules,” 190.
xxxvii
Ibid., 189.
xxxviii
Ibid., 174.
xxxix
Cited in Strobl, The Germanic Isle, 93; see also Stone, “Britannia Waives the Rules,” 175-6, 181.
xl
On the “extinction discourse,” see Brantlinger, Dark Vanishings.
xli
Pick, Faces of Degeneration, 39.
xlii
See also Kuklick, The Savage Within.
xliii
Hawkins, Social Darwinism, 5.
xliv
Pagden, Peoples and Empires, 151.
i
19
xlv
Levene, The Meaning of Genocide, 69.
See Fritzsche, Life and Death, 185; Mazower, Hitler’s Empire, 597.
xlvii
Mosse, Toward the Final Solution, xxi.
xlviii
Salisbury to Cromer, 20 March 1896, TNA FO633/114.
xlix
Farley, “Recollections of the Dongola Expedition,” SAD/304/2.
l
For the history of the Mahdia, see Holt, The Mahdist State.
li
See Daly, Empire on the Nile, 2–3.
lii
Holt, Mahdist State, 240.
liii
Ibid., 224.
liv
Unsworth, 16 April 1898, SAD/233/5.
lv
Guettel, “The US Frontier,” 408.
lvi
Ibid., 408.
lvii
Winston Churchill cited in Daly, Empire on the Nile, 3.
lviii
Cited in Keown-Boyd, A Good Dusting, 241.
lix
Egerton, 9 September 1898, SAD/477/8.
lx
Franks, 9 April 1898, SAD/403/2. Every effort has been made to trace the rights holders for Franks’
work, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publishers would be pleased to acknowledge
the relevant individual or publisher in any future edition.
lxi
Steevens cited in Daly, Empire on the Nile, 6.
lxii
Daly, Empire on the Nile, 6–7.
lxiii
Cited in Burleigh and Wippermann, The Racial State, 102.
lxiv
Harvey, Women and the Nazi East, 90.
lxv
Cited in Zimmerer, “Colonialism and the Holocaust,” 55.
lxvi
Farwell, Prisoners of the Mahdi, 310.
lxvii
Churchill cited in Spiers, “Wars of Intervention,” 47.
lxviii
Lal, “The Concentration Camp and Development,” 131-2; Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem.
lxix
Bennett, “After Omdurman,” 25.
lxx
Stone, Histories, 153.
lxxi
Weitz, “The Modernity of Genocides,” 55.
lxxii
Pohl, “War, Occupation and the Holocaust,” 99.
lxxiii
Shenhav, “Beyond ‘Instrumental Rationality’.”
lxxiv
Wolseley Memorandum, TNA FO78/4894.
lxxv
Osterhammel, Europe, 16–17.
lxxvi
Shenhav, “Beyond ‘Instrumental Rationality’,” 387.
lxxvii
Arendt, Origins, 215.
lxxviii Bellamy, “Mass Killing,” 165.
lxxix
Killingray, “Colonial Warfare in West Africa,” 155.
lxxx
Bennett, The Downfall of the Dervishes, 228-9.
lxxxi
Bellamy, “Mass Killing,” 165.
lxxxii
Mazower, Nazi Empire, 11. See for example Kassimeris, The Barbarization of Warfare.
lxxxiii
Kiernan, The Lords of Human Kind, 24.
lxxxiv
Burleigh, The Khartoum Campaign, 41–2.
lxxxv
Cited in Daly, Empire on the Nile, 19. For more on the exploitation of famine conditions for the
war effort in the Sudan, see Serels, “Feasting on Famines.”
lxxxvi
Cited in Noakes and Pridham, Foreign Policy, War and Racial Extermination, 381.
lxxxvii
Cited in ibid., 382.
lxxxviii
Cited in Kühne, “Colonialism and the Holocaust,” 352.
lxxxix
Cited in Kakel, The American West and the Nazi East, 132.
xc
Cited in Fritzsche, Life and Death, 172.
xci
Harvey, Women and the Nazi East, 90.
xcii
Ibid., 2.
xciii
Furber, “Near as Far in the Colonies,” 545.
xciv
Ibid., 559.
xcv
Ibid., 578.
xcvi
Kakel, The American West and the Nazi East, 131.
xcvii
Baranowski, “Nazi Colonialism and the Holocaust,” 59.
xcviii
Mazower, Nazi Empire, 587.
xcix
Levene, The Rise of the West, 260.
c
Ibid., 269.
xlvi
20
ci
Ibid., 254.
Pergher and Roseman, “The Holocaust”, 45.
ciii
See for example Wolfe, “Settler Colonialism”; Finzsch, “‘The Aborigines ... Were Never
Annihilated’,” 252; see also Docker, “Are Settler-Colonies Inherently Genocidal?”
civ
Both Moses and Levene have discussed the importance of genocidal “moments” of potentiality:
Levene, The Rise of the West, 52; Moses, “Conceptual Blockages,” 171.
cv
Stone, “Defending the Plural,” 52.
cvi
Schaller and Zimmerer, “Settlers, Imperialism, Genocide,” 193–4.
cvii
Madley, “From Africa to Auschwitz.”
cviii
Stone, Histories of the Holocaust, 237.
cix
See for example Hull, “Military Culture.”
cx
Kundrus, “Forum,” 269.
cxi
Eley, “Commentary,” 257; Guettel, “The US Frontier,” 415.
cxii
Kühne, “Colonialism and the Holocaust,” 343.
cxiii
Cited in Kühne, “Colonialism and the Holocaust,” 350.
cxiv
Gerwarth and Malinowski, “Hannah Arendt’s Ghosts,” 284.
cxv
Cited in Fitzpatrick, “The Pre-History of the Holocaust?” 500.
cxvi
Gerwarth and Malinowski, “Hannah Arendt’s Ghosts”, 285. Emphasis in original.
cxvii
Bloxham et al, “Europe in the World,” 14.
cxviii
Ibid., 15.
cxix
Ibid., 19.
cxx
Bergen, The Holocaust, 32.
cxxi
McMillan, “War,” 48.
cxxii
Bergen, The Holocaust, chap. 1.
cxxiii
Eley, “Commentary,” 255.
cxxiv
Kakel, The American West and the Nazi East; for a discussion of this approach, see Guettel, “The
US Frontier.”
cxxv
Kühne, “Colonialism and the Holocaust,” 340.
cxxvi
Stone, “Britannia Waives the Rules,” 174.
cxxvii
Kühne, “Colonialism and the Holocaust,” 339, 356–7.
cxxviii
Stone, Histories of the Holocaust, 235.
cxxix
This article is part of a more detailed inquiry into three cases of British colonial violence, focusing
on the Reconquest of the Sudan, the Perak War (1875-6) and the Sierra Leone “Hut Tax” War (1898)
and based on archival research.
cxxx
Kiernan, The Lords of Human Kind, 320.
cxxxi
Franks, 2 May 1898, SAD/403/2.
cii
21
Notes on contributor
Michelle Gordon is a PhD candidate at Royal Holloway, University of London and is
currently writing her thesis on British colonial violence. Michelle’s work explores the
links between colonial atrocities that occurred throughout the British Empire, as well
as examining British colonial violence within a wider framework of both European
genocidal violence in twentieth-century European warfare and the Holocaust.
Bibliography
Primary Sources
FO633 Cromer Papers, The National Archives (TNA).
FO78 Foreign Office Papers, TNA.
Duncan, J.S.R. (G. Egerton papers) Sudan Archive, University of Durham Library
SAD/477.
Farley, J. B. B. SAD/304.
Franks, G. M. SAD/403.
Wingate Papers, (A. Unsworth papers) SAD/233.
Secondary Sources
Anderson, David. Histories of the Hanged: Britain’s Dirty War in Kenya and the End
of Empire. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2005.
Arendt, Hannah. Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. New
York: Viking Press, 1963.
Arendt, Hannah. The Origins of Totalitarianism. London: Harcourt Brace &
Company, 1976 (first published 1951).
Baranowski,
Shelley.
“Nazi
Colonialism
and
the
Holocaust:
Inseparable
Connections.” Dapim: Studies on the Holocaust 27, no. 1 (2013): 58–62.
Bellamy, Alex J. “Mass Killing and the Politics of Legitimacy: Empire and the
Ideology of Selective Extermination.” Australian Journal of Politics and History 58,
no. 2 (2012): 159–180.
Bennett, Ernest N., “After Omdurman.” Contemporary Review 75 (1899): 18–33.
Bennett, Ernest N. The Downfall of the Dervishes or The Avenging of Gordon: Being
a Personal Narrative of the Final Soudan Campaign of 1898. New York: Negro
Universities Press, 1969 (first published 1899).
22
Bergen, Doris. The Holocaust: A New History. Stroud: Tempus, 2008 (first published
as War and Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust in 2003).
Bloxham, Donald, “Britain’s Holocaust Memorial Days: Using the Past in the Service
of the Present.” Immigrants and Minorities 21, no. 1 (2003): 41–62.
Bloxham, Donald. The Final Solution: A Genocide. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2009.
Bloxham, Donald, Martin Conway, Robert Gerwarth, A. Dirk Moses, and Klaus
Weinhauer. “Europe in the World: Systems and Cultures of Violence.” In Political
Violence in Twentieth-Century Europe, edited by Donald Bloxham and Robert
Gerwarth, 11–39. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
Brantlinger, Patrick. Dark Vanishings: Discourse on the Extinction of Primitive
Races, 1800–1930. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003.
Burleigh, Bennett. The Khartoum Campaign: A Special Correspondent’s View of the
Reconquest of the Sudan by British and Egyptian Forces under Kitchener – 1898.
London: Leonaur, 2008 (first published 1899).
Burleigh, Michael, and Wolfgang Wippermann. The Racial State: Germany, 1933–
1945. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
Cave, Alfred A. “Genocide in the Americas.” In The Historiography of Genocide,
edited by Dan Stone, 273–295. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010 (first
published 2008).
Césaire, Aimé. Discourse on Colonialism. Translated by Joan Pinkham. New York:
Monthly Review Press, 2000 (first published 1955).
Cesarani, David. “Seizing the Day: Why Britain Will Benefit from Holocaust
Memorial Day.” Patterns of Prejudice 34, no. 4 (2000): 61–66.
Churchill, Ward. A Little Matter of Genocide: Holocaust and Denial in the Americas,
1492 to the Present. San Francisco, CA: City Lights Books, 1997.
Curthoys, Ann. “Genocide in Tasmania: The History of An Idea.” In Empire, Colony,
Genocide: Conquest, Occupation, and Subaltern Resistance in World History, edited
by A. Dirk Moses, 229–252. New York: Berghahn Books, 2010 (first published
2008).
Daly, M. W. Empire on the Nile: The Anglo-Egyptian Sudan 1898–1934. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1986.
23
de Haan, Ido. “Imperialism, Colonialism and Genocide: The Dutch Case for an
International History of the Holocaust.” BMGN – Low Countries Historical Review
(2010): 301–327.
de Moor, J. A., and H. L. Wesseling, eds. Imperialism and War: Essays on Colonial
Wars in Asia and Africa (Leiden: Brill, 1989).
Diner, Dan. Gegenläufige Gedächtnisse. Über Geltung und Wirkung des Holocaust.
Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2007.
Docker, John. “Are Settler-Colonies Inherently Genocidal? Re-Reading Lemkin.” In
Empire, Colony, Genocide: Conquest, Occupation, and Subaltern Resistance in
World History, edited by A. Dirk Moses, 81–101. New York: Berghahn Books, 2010
(first published 2008).
Eley, Geoff. “Commentary: Empire, Ideology and the East: Thoughts on Nazism’s
Spatial Imaginary.” In Heimat, Region, and Empire: Spatial Identities under National
Socialism, edited by Claus-Christian W. Szejmann and Maiken Umbach, 252–275.
Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.
Evans, Raymond, Kay Saunders, and Kathryn Cronin. Exclusion, Exploitation and
Extermination: Race Relations in Colonial Queensland. Sydney: Australia and New
Zealand Book Company, 1975.
Farwell, Byron. Prisoners of the Mahdi. New York: Harper & Row, 1967.
Finzsch, Norbert. “‘The Aborigines ... Were Never Annihilated, and Still They Are
Becoming Extinct’: Settler Imperialism and Genocide in Nineteenth-Century America
and Australia.” In Empire, Colony, Genocide: Conquest, Occupation, and Subaltern
Resistance in World History, edited by A. Dirk Moses, 253–270. New York:
Berghahn Books, 2010 (first published 2008).
Fitzpatrick, Matthew. “The Pre-History of the Holocaust? The Sonderweg and
Historikerstreit Debates and the Abject Colonial Past.” Central European History 41
(2008): 477–503.
Fritzsche, Peter. Life and Death in the Third Reich. London: Belknap Press of
Harvard University Press, 2008.
Furber, David. “Near as Far in the Colonies: The Nazi Occupation of Poland.” The
International History Review 26, no. 3 (2004): 541–579.
Furber, David, and Wendy Lower. “Colonialism and Genocide in Nazi-Occupied
Poland and Ukraine.” In Empire, Colony, Genocide: Conquest, Occupation, and
24
Subaltern Resistance in World History, edited by A. Dirk Moses, 372–403. New
York: Berghahn Books, 2010 (first published 2008).
Gerwarth, Robert, and Stephan Malinowski. “Hannah Arendt’s Ghosts: Reflections
on the Disputable Path from Windhoek to Auschwitz.” Central European History 42
(2009): 279–300.
Gott, Richard. Britain’s Empire: Resistance, Repression and Revolt. London: Verso,
2011.
Guettel, Jens-Uwe. “The US Frontier as Rationale for the Nazi East? Settler
Colonialism and Genocide in Nazi-Occupied Eastern Europe and the American
West.” Journal of Genocide Research 15, no. 4 (2013): 401–419.
Harvey, Elizabeth. Women and the Nazi East: Agents and Witnesses of
Germanization. New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 2003.
Hawkins, Mike. Social Darwinism in European and American Thought, 1860–1945:
Nature As Model and Nature As Threat. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1997.
Holt, P. M. The Mahdist State in the Sudan, 1881–1898: A Study of its Origins,
Development and Overthrow. 2nd ed. London: Oxford University Press, 1970 (first
published 1958).
Hull, Isabel V. “Military Culture and the Production of ‘Final Solutions’ in the
Colonies: The Example of Wilhelminian Germany.” In The Specter of Genocide:
Mass Murder in Historical Perspective, edited by Robert Gellately and Ben Kiernan,
141–162. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
Judd, Denis, and Keith Surridge. The Boer War: A History. London and New York: I.
B. Tauris, 2013 (first published 2003).
Kakel, III, Carroll P. The American West and the Nazi East: A Comparative and
Interpretative Perspective. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.
Kakel, III, Carroll P. The Holocaust as Colonial Genocide: Hitler’s “Indian Wars” in
the “Wild East”. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.
Kassimeris, George, ed. The Barbarization of Warfare. New York: New York
University Press, 2006.
Keown-Boyd, Henry. A Good Dusting: A Centenary Review of the Sudan Campaigns
1883–1899. London: Secker & Warburg, 1986.
Kiernan, V. G. European Empires from Conquest to Collapse, 1815–1960. London:
Fontana and Leicester University Press, 1982.
25
Kiernan, V. G. The Lords of Human Kind: Black Man, Yellow Man, and White Man
in the Age of Empire. London: The Cresset Library, 1988 (first published 1969).
Killingray, David. “Colonial Warfare in West Africa, 1870–1914.” In Imperialism
and War: Essays on Colonial Wars in Asia and Africa, edited by J. A. de Moor and H.
L. Wesseling, 146–167. Leiden: Brill, 1989.
Klein, Thoralf, and Frank Schumacher, eds. Kolonialkriege: Militärische Gewalt im
Zeichen des Imperialismus. Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2006.
Kolsky, Elizabeth. Colonial Justice in British India: White Violence and the Rule of
Law. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
Kühne, Thomas. “Colonialism and the Holocaust: Continuities, Causations, and
Complexities.” Journal of Genocide Research 15, no. 3 (2013): 339–362.
Kuklick, Henrika. The Savage Within: The Social History of British Anthropology,
1885–1945. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
Lal, Vinay. “The Concentration Camp and Development: The Pasts and Future of
Genocide.” In Colonialism and Genocide, edited by A. Dirk Moses and Dan Stone,
124–147. London: Routledge, 2007.
Lawson, Tom. “Ideology in a Museum of Memory: A Review of the Holocaust
Exhibition at the Imperial War Museum.” Totalitarian Movements and Political
Religions 4, no. 2 (2003): 173–183.
Lawson, Tom. The Last Man: A British Genocide in Tasmania. London: I. B. Tauris,
2014.
Lemkin, Raphael. Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of Occupation, Analysis of
Government, Proposals for Redress. Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace, 1944.
Levene, Mark. Genocide in the Age of the Nation State, Volume I: The Meaning of
Genocide. London: I. B. Tauris, 2005.
Levene, Mark. Genocide in the Age of the Nation State, Volume II: The Rise of the
West and the Coming of Genocide. London: I. B. Tauris, 2005.
Lieven, Michael. “‘Butchering the Brutes All Over the Place’: Total War and
Massacre in Zululand, 1879.” History 18 (1999): 614–632.
Madley, Benjamin. “From Africa to Auschwitz: How German South West Africa
Incubated Ideas and Methods Adopted and Developed by the Nazis in Eastern
Europe.” European History Quarterly 35, no. 3 (2005): 429–464.
26
Mazower, Mark. Hitler’s Empire: Nazi Rule in Occupied Europe. London: Penguin,
2009 (first published 2008).
McMillan, James. “War”. In Political Violence in Twentieth-Century Europe, edited
by Donald Bloxham and Robert Gerwarth, 40–86. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2011.
McVeigh, Robbie. “‘The Balance of Cruelty’: Ireland, Britain and the Logic of
Genocide.” Journal of Genocide Research 10, no. 4 (2008): 541–561.
Moses, A. Dirk. “Conceptual Blockages and Definitional Dilemmas in the ‘Racial
Century’: Genocides of Indigenous Peoples and the Holocaust.” In Colonialism and
Genocide, edited by A. Dirk Moses and Dan Stone, 148–180. London: Routledge,
2007.
Moses, A. Dirk. “Empire, Colony, and Genocide: Keywords and the Philosophy of
History.” In Empire, Colony, Genocide: Conquest, Occupation, and Subaltern
Resistance in World History, edited by A. Dirk Moses, 3–54. New York: Berghahn
Books, 2010 (first published 2008).
Moses, A. Dirk, ed. Genocide and Settler Society: Frontier Violence and Stolen
Indigenous Children in Australian History. Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2004.
Moses, A. Dirk. “Hannah Arendt, Imperialisms, and the Holocaust.” In German
Colonialism: Race, the Holocaust, and Postwar Germany, edited by Volker Langbehn
and Mohammad Salama, 72–92. New York: Columbia University Press, 2011.
Mosse, George. Toward the Final Solution: A History of European Racism.
Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1978.
Noakes, Jeremy, and Geoffrey Pridham eds. Nazism: A Documentary Reader, Vol. 3:
Foreign Policy, War and Racial Extermination. Rev. ed. Exeter: University of Exeter
Press, 1997.
Osterhammel, Jürgen. Europe, the “West” and the Civilizing Mission. German
Historical Institute London: The 2005 Annual Lecture. London: German Historical
Institute, 2006.
Pagden, Anthony. Peoples and Empires: Europeans and the Rest of the World, From
Antiquity to the Present. London: Phoenix Press, 2002 (first published 2001).
Pergher, Roberta, and Mark Roseman. “The Holocaust – An Imperial Genocide?”
Dapim: Studies on the Holocaust 27, no. 1 (2013): 42–49.
Pick, Daniel. Faces of Degeneration: A European Disorder, c. 1848–c. 1918.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.
27
Pohl, Dieter. “War, Occupation and the Holocaust in Poland.” In The Historiography
of the Holocaust, edited by Dan Stone, 88–119. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan,
2005.
Reynolds, Henry. An Indelible Stain? The Question of Genocide in Australia’s
History. Ringwood: Viking, 2001.
Riley Sousa, Ashley. “‘They Will be Hunted Down like Wild Beasts and Destroyed!’:
A Comparative Study of Genocide in California and Tasmania.” Journal of Genocide
Research 6, no. 2 (2004): 193–209.
Rothberg, Michael. Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age
of Decolonization. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009.
Ryan, Lyndall. The Aboriginal Tasmanians. London: University of Queensland Press,
1982.
Schaller, Dominik J., and Jürgen Zimmerer. “Settlers, Imperialism, Genocide: Seeing
the Global Without Ignoring the Local.” Journal of Genocide Research 10, no. 2
(2008): 191–199.
Serels, Steven. “Feasting on Famines: Food Insecurity and the Making of the AngloEgyptian Sudan, 1883–1956.” Unpublished PhD diss., McGill University, 2012.
Shaw, Martin. “Britain and Genocide: Historical and Contemporary Parameters of
National Responsibility.” Review of International Studies 37, no. 5 (2011): 2417–
2438.
Shenhav, Yehouda. “Beyond ‘Instrumental Rationality’: Lord Cromer and the
Imperial Roots of Eichmann's Bureaucracy.” Journal of Genocide Research 15, no. 4
(2013): 379–399.
Spiers, Edward M. “Wars of Intervention: A Case Study – The Reconquest of the
Sudan 1896–99.” Strategic and Combat Studies Institute 32 (1998).
Stannard, David E. American Holocaust: The Conquest of the New World. New York:
Oxford University Press, 1994.
Stone, Dan. “Britannia Waives the Rules: British Imperialism and Holocaust
Memory.” In Memory and Mass Atrocity: Essays on the Holocaust and Genocide,
174–195. London: Valentine Mitchell, 2006.
Stone, Dan. “Defending the Plural: Hannah Arendt and Genocide Studies.” New
Formations 71 (2011): 46–57.
Stone, Dan. Histories of the Holocaust. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.
28
Stone, Dan. “The Historiography of Genocide: Beyond ‘Uniqueness’ and Ethnic
Competition.” Rethinking History 8, no. 1 (2004): 127–142.
Strobl, Gerwin. The Germanic Isle: Nazi Perceptions of Britain. Cambridge
University Press: Cambridge, 2000.
Tatz, Colin. With Intent to Destroy: Reflecting on Genocide. London: Verso, 2003.
Wagner, Kim A. “The Marginal Mutiny: The New Historiography of the Indian
Uprising of 1857.” History Compass 9, no. 10 (2011): 760–766.
Weitz, Eric D. “The Modernity of Genocides: War, Race, and Revolution in the
Twentieth Century.” In The Specter of Genocide: Mass Murder in Historical
Perspective, edited by Robert Gellately and Ben Kiernan, 53–74. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2003.
Wildenthal, Lora, Jürgen Zimmerer, Russell A. Berman, Jan Rüger, Bradley Naranch,
and Birthe Kundrus. “Forum: The German Colonial Imagination.” German History
26, no. 2 (2008): 251–271.
Wolfe, Patrick. “Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native.” Journal of
Genocide Research 8, no. 4 (2006): 387–409.
Zimmerer, Jürgen. “Colonialism and the Holocaust: Towards an Archaeology of
Genocide.” Translated by Andrew H. Beattie. In Genocide and Settler Society:
Frontier Violence and Stolen Indigenous Children in Australian History, edited by A.
Dirk Moses, 49–76. Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2004.
Zimmerer, Jürgen. “Kolonialer Genozid? Vom Nutzen und Nachteil einer historischen
Kategorie für eine Globalgeschichte.” In Von Windhuk nach Auschwitz? Beiträge zum
Verhältnis zwischen Kolonialismus und Holocaust, edited by Jürgen Zimmerer, 196–
221. Münster: LIT Verlag, 2009.
Zimmerer, Jürgen. “The Birth of the Ostland out of the Spirit of Colonialism: A
Postcolonial Perspective on the Nazi Policy of Conquest and Extermination.” Patterns
of Prejudice 39, no. 2 (2005): 197–219.
29