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The Lessons of Late Ottoman Genocides for Contemporary Iraq and Syria
By Hannibal Travis
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Scholars of genocide studies have begun to explore the constitutional and political causes of genocide. After many years in which theories of evil intention prevailed, structuralist and functionalist theories have gained ground. For example, Rene Lemarchand's studies in the comparative dynamics of genocide suggest that the colonial and precolonial context of an entire region may make genocide attractive at either the national or the local level.[1] He argues that "social structure" may lead to genocide where groups are "ranked" in terms of access to social goods such as wealth or education, enjoyment of human rights, or power.[2] Adam Jones looks to Cambodia as a "subaltern genocide" in which rebels who fought the UN-recognized government for some time took over and began mass executions of those seen as "traitorous" to the new Khmer Rouge system, and starved many others by misrule.[3] Jones observes that the Khmer Rouge served a functional role in the world system, serving as "prot

Notes [1] Rene Lemarchand, The Dynamics of Violence in Central Africa (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010), p. 89; Rene Lemarchand, "Introduction," in Rene Lemarchand (Ed.), Forgotten Genocides: Oblivion, Denial, and Memory (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), p. 5-7. [2] Lemarchand, "Introduction," p. 7. [3] Adam Jones, The Scourge of Genocide: Essays and Reflections (London: Routledge, 2013), http://books.google.com/books?id=0_dsB7omBVcC&pg=PT218#v=onepage&q&f=false. [4] Ibid. [5] Lemarchand, Dynamics, pp. ix, 4, 84-87, 92-93, 104-121, Lemarchand, "Introduction," pp. 6-7, 13-15; Jones, Scourge of Genocide, http://books.google.com/books?id=0_dsB7omBVcC&pg=PT221#v=onepage&q&f=false. [6] Lemarchand, Dynamics, 20, 76, 122-126. [7] Karl Marx, The Eastern Question: A Reprint of Letters Written 1853-1856 Dealing with the Events of the Crimean War (London: Swan Sonnenschein & Co., 1897). p. 374. [8] H.P. Selmer, "On the Turkish Question," The New Monthly Magazine and Universal Register 101 (1854), p. 75. [9] A.J.P. Taylor, "John Bright and the Crimean War," Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, vol. 36, 1954, pp. 501-22, p. 509. [10] Vahakn Dadrian, The History of the Armenian Genocide: Ethnic Conflict from the Balkans to Anatolia to the Caucasus (New York: Berghahn Books, 1995), pp. 7-19, 26-93, 113-171. [11] Elizabeth Wormeley Latimer, Russia and Turkey in the Nineteenth Century (1893), pp. 165, 233. [12] Dadrian, The History of the Armenian Genocide, p. 67, quoting Treaty of Paris, 1856, art. 7. [13] British and French banks helped the Ottomans raise tens of millions of dollars of pounds in the period between the Crimean and Russo-Turkish Wars, helping finance an Ottoman deficit that reached half the amount of the budget by 1875-1876. Frederick Martin, The Statesman’s Year-book 1878, pp. 465-70. [14] Gerard Libaridian, "What Was Revolutionary About Armenian Revolutionary Parties in the Ottoman Empire?", in Ronald Suny, Fatma G



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