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.

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.