Destroy Them Gradually: Displacement as Atrocity

Andrew R. Basso

Published by Rutgers University Press 2024

Destroy Them Gradually

Displacement as Atrocity

Andrew R. Basso

In the series Genocide, Political Violence, Human Rights

https://doi.org/10.36019/9781978831322

Overview
Contents

About this book

Perpetrators of mass atrocities have used displacement to transport victims to killing sites or extermination camps to transfer victims to sites of forced labor and attrition, to ethnically homogenize regions by moving victims out of their homes and lands, and to destroy populations by depriving them of vital daily needs. Displacement has been treated as a corollary practice to crimes committed, not a central aspect of their perpetration. Destroying Them Gradually examines four cases that illuminate why perpetrators have destroyed populations using displacement policies: Germany’s genocide of the Herero (1904–1908); Ottoman genocides of Christian minorities (1914–1925); expulsions of Germans from East/Central Europe (1943–1952); and climate violence (twenty-first century). Because displacement has been typically framed as a secondary aspect of mass atrocities, existing scholarship overlooks how perpetrators use it as a means of executing destruction rather than a vehicle for moving people to a specific location to commit atrocities.

Author / Editor information

Andrew R. Basso is an adjunct faculty member with the Laurier Institute for the Study of Public Opinion and Policy and Wilfrid Laurier University. He researches transitional justice, human
rights, and political violence in local and global contexts. He is the coauthor of From Bureaucracy to Bullets: Extreme Domicide and the Right to Home (Rutgers University Press, 2022).

Reviews

“Destroy Them Gradually focuses our attention on spatial techniques of displacement and their prominent role in group destruction. Basso offers a compelling argument for taking displacement seriously as a crime and demonstrates the new and profound insights one gains when giving fuller attention to questions of when, where, and why this method of atrocity is deployed.”— Andrew Woolford, author of This Benevolent Experiment: Indigenous Boarding Schools, Genocide, and Redress in Canada a

"In this brilliant intervention, Andrew Basso demonstrates that displacement constitutes its own understudied method of mass violence. Basso reveals the role of displacement in historical atrocities and, as we nosedive into intense climate change, how it is rapidly becoming perhaps the most prevalent form of mass destruction. Anyone concerned with the future of mass violence should read this timely contribution."

— Benjamin Meiches, Benjamin Meiches, associate professor of Politics, Philosophy and Public Affairs at the University o

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Illustrations Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Part 1 Displacement Atrocity Crimes
1 Extirpation: Understanding Annihilatory Forced Displacement Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	9
2 Exposure: A Theory of Displacement Atrocity Crimes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	23
Part 2 German South-West Africa
3 Trepidation: Colonized Namibia and Violent Horizons (1652–1904) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	41
4 Extermination: Germany’s Genocide of the Herero (1904–1908) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	58
5 Inescapability: Germany’s Genocide of the Nama (1905–1908) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	74
Part 3 The Ottoman Empire and Turkey
6 Collapse: The Nadir of the Ottoman Empire (1839–1915) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	89
7 Excision: The Ottoman Genocide of Christian Minorities (1914–1925) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	104
8 Neurosis: The Hamidian Massacres (1894–1897) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	120
Part 4 Central and Eastern Europe
9 Metamorphosis: A World Made New (Ninth Century– 1945) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	137
10 Catharsis: The Expulsion of Germans (1943–1950) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	154
11 Desolation: The Holocaust (1933–1945) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	172
Part 5 Climate Violence and Conclusions
12 Tragedy: Logics of Displacement Climate Violence in the Twenty-First Century Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	187
13 Farce: To Continue to Destroy Them Gradually? Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	201
14 Praxis: Seeking Justice and Disrupting Pathways Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	211
Acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	225
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	227
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	285
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	319
About the Author Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	328

Language: English
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Audience: College/higher education;
Pages
- Main content: 342
Illustrations
- Other: 1 B-W photograph, 17 tables
Keywords: crime; genocide; displacement; war; discrimination; ethnicity; human rights; religion; politics; policy; justice; victim; massacre

eBook

Published: February 16, 2024
ISBN: 9781978831322