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Genocides by the Oppressed: Subaltern Genocide in Theory and Practice, edited by Nicholas A. Robins and Adam Jones. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2009. 217pp. $24.95 paper. ISBN: 9780253220776.
Most studies of genocide have emphasized the importance of state power in organizing and carrying out mass poUtical murder. The idea animating this volume is that sometimes mass murder is perpetrated by those who rebel against the state. Several examples of genocide "from below" are featured. The Pueblo Revolt of 1680 in New Mexico killed perhaps 400 of 2,000 Spanish settlers. An Indian revolt in what is now Peru and Bolivia slaughtered perhaps 100,000 lighterskinned people - Creoles, mestizos, and Spanish- between 1780 and 1782. The Haitian slave revolt küled hundreds of thousands between 1791 and 1804, including driving out or kilting about 40,000 whites.
The chapters of this edited book include interesting material, often briefer versions of books written by chapter authors. In Chapter One, Nicholas Robins provides an overview of his Native Insurgencies and the Genocidal Impulse in the Americas (2005) and Priest-Indian Conflict in Upper Peru (2007). Indians victimized by white men wanted to kül everyone lighter than themselves. Chapter Two, by Adam Jones, offers brief vignettes of slave revolts (Nat Turner), native rebellions (King PhiUp's War), peasant revolts (EmiUano Zapata), and anticolonial wars (Algeria's FLN). Jones suggests a common denominator...