This document discusses the four main causes of genocides: convenience, revenge, fear, and fear of pollution. It provides examples throughout history for each cause, such as the Armenian genocide stemming from fear or Nazi anti-Semitism leading to the Holocaust due to fear of pollution. The document notes that while most conflicts stop short of genocide, signs can be seen in advance, so prevention efforts should focus on the early warning period before violence escalates to genocide.

1. GENOCIDES
March 15, 2012
Tecnológico de Monterrey
Campus Querétaro

2. The Four Main Causes
Convenience—instrumental:
disposing of a weaker
population that occupies
wanted land and resists

3. 19th and 20th century colonial policies:
Australia, Americas (Cherokees),
Russians (Circassians), Libya, German
policy in occupied Ukraine, many
massacres that were less than genocidal
Older examples: William in Yorkshire,
Caesar in Gaul, probably many Chinese
cases, many unknown cases
everywhere

5. Revenge: They did something
that deserves to be punished
Mongols in Herat (combined with
instrumental reasoning, to make an
example), Romans in many cases,
including Carthage

6. Germans with Herero in Southwest
Africa, Japanese in Nanjing, many local
cases in World War II (Oradour in France)
that were massacres, if not genocides as
such

7. Fear: If we do not do this to
them, they will destroy us
Armenian genocide of 1915, Rwanda
genocide of 1994, Darfur early 2000s.
Chinese ethno-religious wars against
Muslims in Southwest China in the mid-
19th century

9. Fear of Pollution: To leave
these people alive is to risk
polluting the earth and
destroying all that is good
Biblical stories – Amalekites, Canaanites
in the Book of Joshua

10. Wars or religion, as in Europe between
Protestants and Catholics in the 16th and
17th centuries (where the term massacre
comes from 1570s in France), Cromwell’s
men in 17th century Ireland citing the
Book of Joshua as their model
First crusade in Europe and Jerusalem

11. Nazi anti-Semitism and the Holocaust
War on kulaks by Stalin, Khmer Rouge
attempt to eliminate all traces of
Vietnamese influence and of
“bourgeois” or “urban” culture

14. What Can Be Done?
Most ethnic, religious, nationalist, and
regional conflicts stop far short of
genocide even if they are violent
To stop genocide is hard once it has
begun -- military means necessary --
but signs can be seen long before and
that is the time to try to prevent them