Civilian-Driven Violence and the Genocide of Indigenous Peoples in Settler Societies

Existing studies of settler colonial genocides explicitly consider the roles of metropolitan and colonial states, and their military forces in the perpetration of exterminatory violence in settler colonial situations, yet rarely pay specific attention to the dynamics around civilian-driven mass violence against indigenous peoples. In many cases, however, civilians were major, if not the main, perpetrators of such violence. The focus of this book is thus on the role of civilians as perpetrators of exterminatory violence and on those elements within settler colonial situations that promoted mass violence on their part.

1. ‘No Savage Shall Inherit the Land’: Civilian-driven Violence in the Making of Settler Genocides Mohamed Adhikari 2. Raiders, Slavers, Conquistadors, Settlers: Civilian-driven Violence in the Extermination of Aboriginal Canary Islanders Mohamed Adhikari 3. ‘Shooting a Black Duck’: Genocidal Settler Violence against Indigenous Peoples and the Creation of Canada Sidney L. Harring 4. ‘An Unbroken Line of Crimes and Blood’: Settler Militia and the Extermination and Enslavement of San in the Graaff-Reinet District of the Cape Colony, c. 1776–1825 Lance van Sittert and Thierry Rousset 5. Establishing a Code of Silence: Civilian and State Complicity in Genocidal Massacres on the New South Wales Frontier, 1788–1859 Lyndall Ryan 6. ‘Pale Death … Around our Footprints Springs’: Assessing Violent Mortality on the Queensland Frontier from State and Private Exterminatory Practices Raymond Evans & Robert Ørsted-Jensen 7. ‘There Cannot be Civilisation and Barbarism on the Island’: Civilian-driven Violence and the Genocide of the Selk’nam People of Tierra del Fuego Alberto Harambour 8. Missionaries, Agents, Principals and Teachers: Civilian Complicity in the Perpetration of Genocide in Indigenous Boarding Schools in New Mexico and Manitoba, 1879–1975 Andrew Woolford 9. ‘Little Kings’: Farmers’ ‘Erasive’ Practices in German South West Africa Robert Gordon 10. Settler Genocide in Rwanda? Colonial Legacies of Everyday Violence Susan Thomson 11. Colonialism, Frontiers, Genocide: Civilian-Driven Violence in Settler Colonial Situations Lorenzo Veracini

Mohamed Adhikari is Emeritus Associate Professor in the Historical Studies Department at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. His books include The Anatomy of a South African Genocide: The Extermination of the Cape San Peoples (2010), Genocide on Settler Frontiers: When Hunter-gatherers and Commercial Stock Farmers Clash (2014) and Destroying to Replace: Settler Genocides of Indigenous Peoples (forthcoming 2022). In 2020 he received the inaugural Impact Award from the International Network of Genocide Scholars.