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Caesar's Gallic campaign was unprovoked and led to the destruction of the old civilisation, which was gradually replaced by a Romanised one; and Pliny and Plutarch agreed that it was an act of genocide of monstrous proportions. It was all for one end: the protagonist and instigator of the venture cynically used the genocide in the political struggle at home. Part of his objective was also to capture a huge number of slaves who were useful for demagogic purposes. Caesar knew well that, without a counter to Pompey's military glory, an equal division of power with him would be impossible, especially after Crassus' death. Thus the impressive military achievement in Gaul in the years 58–51 bc reveals itself as a twofold triumph: it was the vehicle of Romanisation of a large part of the North European West; and at the same time it provided the aspiring princeps with the authority, military and legal, that he needed, as part of a long praeparatio for the day of reckoning and civil war.

This chapter explores the aftermath of the 1908 ‘Young Turk’ Revolution in the Ottoman Empire that resulted in the reinstatement of the Ottoman Constitution and the lifting of most restrictions on both domestic and international mobility. As the Chapter demonstrates, the lifting of the migration ban resulted in a sharp increase in both out-migration and return migration. At the same time, the United States and other migrant-receiving states were strengthening restrictions on immigration, stranding many Ottoman migrants in transit ports throughout Europe. Also, Istanbul was forced to balance its commitment to freedom of movement with its growing demand for military-aged men and its increasing concern about the effects of migration on the empire’s economy. The chapter concludes with the Armenian genocide, its aftermath, and the legacies of migration.

Humanitarian intervention has recently become widely accepted as a form of justifiable war, supplementing “self-defence” as a potential just cause. In addition to justifications based on the prevention or curtailment of genocide, for example, many have argued that humanitarian interventions can be justifiably launched to punish the perpetrators of such gross wrongdoings. This chapter subjects “punitive intervention” to rigorous analysis. After discussion of numerous historical examples which might fall into this category, it proceeds to interrogate both just war theory and international law for possible justifications of intervention citing “punishment” at their core. Neither are found to provide plausible bases for such justifications, but the chapter concludes by showing how this result does not mean that those responsible for the crimes which do prompt justified intervention necessarily escape justice and punishment.

Until recently, just war theory has rarely, if ever, engaged with questions about what practices might be required to build the just peace for which a just war should have been waged. Most of the literature on post-conflict social reconstruction has not been concerned with issues of whether there was any justification to the conflicts in question. This chapter brings these debates together by arguing that a just and durable post-conflict peace requires a variety of processes to heal the scars of war sufficiently to open up the possibilities of future peaceful and just co-existence between former enemies. Operating with the non-ideal concept of a peace which is “just enough”, this chapter discusses examples – drawn from numerous conflicts and the aftermath of the 1994 Rwandan genocide in particular – of “memory” or “forgiveness” work as some ways in which former enemies have “dealt with the past” in pursuit of some form of reconciliation. Although context-sensitivity is crucial, some general guidelines can be drawn from such analyses which could provide a peacebuilding framework for jus post bellum.

Many people derive their historical knowledge from movies. This chapter addresses this issue through a discussion of fictional films about the Holocaust and the Rwandan genocide. Historical dramas frequently offer up tales of good versus evil that reassure viewers about their moral place in the world, as in the ‘one good man’ motif exemplified in Schindler’s List (1993). Though academic criticism has critiqued these tendencies, it also has a predominantly moralistic outlook, preoccupied with taboos and limits. This chapter argues that such moralism, which presents perpetrators as antithetical to everything that we, the viewers, stand for, impedes ethical reflection. Inspired by Hannah Arendt’s philosophy, it attempts to shift the debate by investigating how films enable or prevent insights into how genocide happens through the wider population’s complicity. It elaborates Arendt’s ‘boomerang thesis’, which questions traditional interpretations of the Holocaust as a ‘unique’ event, suggesting links between colonialism, the Holocaust and contemporary atrocities, and applies these insights in its readings of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas (2008), Hotel Rwanda (2004), Sometimes in April (2005) and The Night of Truth (2004).

Chapter 3 addresses in detail the Simele massacres by weaving together three distinct stories of the events: British, Iraqi and Assyrian. Thus it is built on British archival material from 1933; Iraqi apologias from archival sources; the writings of Khaldun Husry, son of Arab nationalist Sati#x2018; al-Husri; Assyrian eyewitness reports from oral sources; and material from the League of Nations archive. Furthermore, the American documents from the period were also inspected for perhaps a fourth narrative of events. This chapter exposes and explores reactions to Simele by Assyrians, Iraqis and the British and American governments. It frames Simele as the critical event that defined the emergent Iraqi nation-state. The chapter proceeds to briey contextualize the Assyrian influence on other ideologies and mainstream politics.

The findings of the chapters are readdressed and analysed in their larger contexts in Chapter 7. This chapter also discusses the recognition of the Assyrian experience and the precedence it sets within a global context. Further, it confronts reasons for and dimensions of acculturation, comparing Eastern ethnic-based nations and Western civic democracies and their treatment of minorities and indigenous peoples.

The Conclusion reviews the book’s main insights in the light of The Act of Killing (2012), a critically acclaimed documentary about the Indonesian genocide which was released just as the book was being completed.

This chapter scrutinises just war theory generally, and later chapters concentrate specifically on the core just war principles of just cause, last resort, proportionality, and noncombatant immunity. The chapter is divided into five parts. The first part addresses the question of how received just war principles should be elucidated or revised or supplemented, so as to be applicable from the standpoint of the Security Council. The second part considers the pertinence of just war theory to the intertwined topics of armed humanitarian intervention and the responsibility to protect. With the aim of ensuring that uses of armed force are sufficiently morally constrained, the third part discusses how a demanding just cause principle ought to be counterbalanced especially by a stringent principle of last resort. In the fourth part, the main thesis that received just war principles should be generalised is illustrated by means of the particular case of genocide in Rwanda. The fifth part introduces the related main thesis that received just war principles should be temporalised.

This chapter reviews the government policies in Turkey in a host of long outstanding issue areas, mostly predating the AKP rule, such as the tension between piety and secularism, especially in exercises of free speech, with a freshly acquired zeal on the part of the judiciary towards ‘protecting religious values’, in effect cases of deemed ‘blasphemy’ against Islam; the basic Alevi rights towards a full recognition, which fell on deaf ears as before; gross impunity of the security forces in tackling the Kurdish insurgence, as in the Roboskî massacre of 2011; and the domestic debate on the ghastly fate of the Ottoman Armenians, traced here through the baffling mysteries of the Dink assassination in 2007. The chapter also comments on the purported government complicity in the jihadist bloodbath in the greater region following the Arab Spring and on the attendant allegations of its ‘international crimes’, especially in Syria.

The Introduction contextualizes the Armenian population in Lebanon. It distinguishes between Armenians who lived in Lebanon prior to the division of the Ottoman Empire, in the wake of the Armenian Genocide, and after the establishment of French and British mandatory rule in the Levant. In addition, it outlines the ecclesiastic, class, linguistic, and political gamut of the Armenian population in Lebanon. It analyzes how Armenians organized themselves according to the villages and centers in the Ottoman Empire that they hailed from and reformed their political ideologies, affiliations, and ecclesiastic connections resulting in the establishment of mini-enclaves within Armenian-populated neighborhoods in Lebanon. The introduction also positions the book within four fields: histories of Armenians, Lebanon, the Cold War in the Middle East, and the Diaspora Studies. The innovation of linking these fields together through the themes of identification, belonging, and articulating citizenship produces fresh readings of the time period. This intervention draws attention to experiences that established scholarship does not adequately tackle, increasing the possible ways and methods to study and approach the region, its inhabitants, and historical time frame.