C. Vanessa Olivier

Linking Colonialism to Genocide

In addition to this class, I am also taking a human rights course, which in many ways has explored similar issues to what we have addressed in our literature course.  While reading “We wish to inform you that tomorrow we and our children will be killed,” Phillip Gourevitch’s account of the 1994 Rwandan genocide campaign, I came across the idea that the roots of modern day genocide are arguably linked directly to colonialism and its embedded systems.  In the book, the author explains how exclusionary policies and impunity coupled with poverty and inequality left the Rwandan poor with a sense of hopelessness, inferiority, failure, and deep resentment.  Gourevitch adds that years of enduring colonial rule and modern “colonial models of official discrimination” created a country consumed with hatred and antipathy.  The state further contributed to the unrest through propagation of ethnic division initiated by European colonizers (in our class readings the British systematically divided India into Muslim/Hindu factions).  Richard Robbins, professor of anthropology at the State University of New York agrees, saying “If we examine cases of purported ethnic conflict we generally find that it involves more than ancient hatred; even the ‘hatreds’ we find are relatively recent, and constructed by those ethnic entrepreneurs taking advantage of situations rooted deep in colonial domination and fed by neocolonial exploitation” These historical modes of structural violence in place allowed the modern day Rwandan government to incite violence with ease. I immediately wondered if this is a universal stance regarding the cause and effect relationship between colonialism and genocide, and if so, if this is a fair argument or rather accusation.  How long will colonialism be a valid source of blame for current issues in previously colonized countries?

My initial research led me to an academic website at Yale University, detailing its Colonial Genocides program.  Following links from this site, I discovered an abundance of information on the current scholarly debates in Australia regarding the colonial-genocide relationship among European white settlers and the aboriginal population.  The focus of these discussions centers on shifting the world perception of the Nazi Holocaust from a unique occurrence to an ongoing phenomenon in order to reveal how colonial practices, in general, encourage genocide.   Not surprisingly, many Australian academics specifically criticize Britain for refusing to view their patterns of colonization as genocidal in nature and moreover for denying the direct correlation between European colonization and the Holocaust.  These progressive philosophies, however, are not entirely new.  In 1944, Ralph Lemkin, a lawyer and Holocaust survivor of Polish and Jewish decent, introduced the concept of genocidal colonialism in the aftermath of WWII.  In fact, Lemkin invented the word “genocide,” from the Greek “genes” (race) and the Latin “cide” (killing).  According to Lemkin, genocide most often

“refers to a coordinated plan aimed at the destruction of the essential foundations of the life of national groups, so that these groups wither and die like plants that have suffered a blight. The end may be accomplished by the forced disintegration of political and social institutions, of the culture of the people, of their language, their national feelings and their religion. It may be accomplished by wiping out all basis of personal security, liberty, health and dignity. When these means fail the machine gun can always be utilized as a last resort. Genocide is directed against a national group as an entity and the attack on individuals is only secondary to the annihilation of the national group to which they belong.”

Furthermore, genocide encompasses two phases: the first involves the destruction of the national pattern of the oppressed group; the second, the imposition of the national pattern of the oppressor.  Lemkin insightfully notes, though, that the relationship between oppressor and victim is unstable, often resulting in the “strange transformation of genocidal victims into genocidists”  In other words, the colonizers and the colonized both suffer from the affects of genocide, creating a s perpetual cycle of dehumanization.

As the forefather of genocide studies, Raphael Lemkin was not only an educator on the topic but an activist, as well.  Lemkin forever regretted the decision of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide to solely prohibit physical and biological genocide, thus excluding cultural genocide from international law.  In “Introduction to the Study of Genocide,” he offers a detailed discussion on the distinction between cultural change and cultural genocide. Lemkin writes that cultural genocide “must not be confused with the gradual changes a culture may undergo”, occurring “by means of the continuous and slow adaptation of the culture to new situations”, where a very common type of adaptation is to “outside influences” and the “assimilation of certain foreign culture traits”. Lemkin refers to such adaptation as “the process of cultural diffusion.” Genocide, on the other hand, involves complete and violent change, “that is, the destruction of a culture … the premeditated goal of those committing cultural genocide”.  Lemkin repeatedly refers to the American colonizers (Spanish/Britain) use of slavery and religion as extremely effective methods in the execution of cultural genocide.  Lemkin's broad definition of genocide and its innate link with colonialism provides a solid basis for progressive discussions the genocidal nature of colonization.

When I began this journey, I never expected to discover such extensive research regarding the links between colonialism and genocide.  When I have read about past and present cases of foreign ethnic cleansing, I simplified the issue, failing to acknowledge the complex history leading to such events.  In contrast, I have always been aware of the oppressive role played by Americans in the native Indian encounter; however, my understanding of the events did not encompass the intimate relationship shared by colonialism and genocide, nor had I ever considered the idea of cultural genocide.  Reviewing our class objectives with this knowledge, I now more clearly understand the significance of objective 3b: “compare or contrast the United States’ colonial status and independence from England with other countries’ colonial and postcolonial states.”  In short, settler colonies are innately genocidal: they can not operate without being so. (5)  In my opinion, there will always be some degree of conflict upon any new cultural encounter – it is an unavoidable fact.  Human progress results in inevitable encounters with “the other,” which in turn produces the oppressor and the oppressed.  The hope lies in our ability to offer a more thoughtful, respectful response to this timeless theme.

… colonialism cannot be left without blame.

(Raphaël Lemkin, “Introduction to the Study of Genocide”)

SOURCES

Barkan, Elazar.  “Genocides of Indigenous Peoples”, in Robert Gellately and Ben Kiernan (eds), The Specter of Genocide: Mass Murder in Historical Perspective (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge UK and New York, 2003), pp.117-139.

Docker, John.  "The Enlightenment, Genocide, Postmodernity", Journal of Genocide Research, Vol.5, no.3, September 2003, pp.339-360

Gourevitch, Philip. 1998. We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families: Stories from Rwanda. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Lemkin, Raphaël. "Genocide – A Modern Crime".   Free World – "A Magazine devoted to the United Nations and Democracy".   April 1945, pp.39-43.

Lemkin, Raphael. "Genocide as a Crime under International Law". American Journal of International Law, vol.41, no., 1947, pp.145-151.

Lemkin, Raphael and Samantha Power. Axis Rule In Occupied Europe: Laws Of Occupation, Analysis Of Government, Proposals For Redress. Lawbook Exchange, 2005. ISBN 1-58477-576-9.

Rawson, Claude.  God, Gulliver, and Genocide: Barbarism and the European Imagination, 1492-1945 (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2001).

Robbins, Richard.  Global Problems and the Culture of Capitalism (Allyn and Bacon, 1999, 2002), pp. 269-274

Stannard, D.  American Holocaust: The Conquest of the New World, New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.

Totten, Samuel and Steven Leonard Jacobs (eds), Pioneers of Genocide Studies (Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick and London, 2002), Winston, Churchill.  A Little Matter of Genocide: Holocaust and denial in the Americas 1492 to the present (City Lights Books, San Francisco, 1997), pp.84, 415-6, 421-2, 441 note 64.

http://www.cceia.org/resources/publications/dialogue/2_12/section_1/5139.html

Carnegie Council: The Voice for Ethics in International Policy

http://www.ushmm.org/conscience/analysis/details.php?content=2004-02-26

Paper by John Docker for United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, Washington DC, 26 February 2004.

http://www.preventgenocide.org

Extensive collection of Ralphael Lemkin’s works

http://www.yale.edu/gsp/colonial/index.html 

Yale program titled Colonial Genocides

http://www.globalissues.org/Geopolitics/Africa/Rwanda.asp

NGO - Social, Political, Economic and Environmental Issues

http://www.hrw.org/reports/1999/rwanda/Geno1-3-09.htm#P215_91722

Human Rights Watch

http://www.inogs.com/_mgxroot/page_10780.html

The International Network of Genocide Scholars