A History of Mass Violence
Publisher
:
PUF
Parution date
:
EAN
:
9782130580515
Number of pages
:
297
Description
Under what circumstances does mass violence occur? What makes countries, regions, and individuals resort to violence on an unrestrained scale, shaking the foundations of a world that thought itself civilized? Thierry Camous, author of the internationally renowned Orients-Occidents, 25 siècles de guerre, identifies and examines three historical paroxysms that he believes led to major incidences of mass violence in our past.
Camous postulates that the birth of the state was the first rupture in the fabric of society that led to mass violence. The emergence of the state, he argues, led directly to class struggle, which then encouraged the development of the second rupture: the struggle for power. This gave birth to fear and resentment, and became a powerful agent in the formation of extreme ideologies.
Then, in the author’s view, a liberalism in the political realm provided the vector for extreme ideologies to yield to dreams of transforming society. Unfortunately, to achieve these dreams, people often employed organized violence against a race or class. It took the third rupture—the arrival of modern religions and intolerant doctrines—to encourage and make acceptable true mass violence. The “other,” the pagan or heretic, became a sworn enemy who must be annihilated. Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, and Buddhism have all, at one or more times, perpetuated mass violence, Camous explains, showing the common denominators among these religions and how they can stop the trend from going forward.
Author
Thierry Camous :
Thierry Camous has a Ph.D. in ancient history. He teaches history at the Université de Nice Sophia-Antipolis and has also taught at the University of Guangzhou in China. He is a former student of the École Française de Rome, and is a researcher at the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique. His latest work, Orients-Occidents, 25 siècles de guerre (PUF, 2007), has been translated into several languages.
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