60 years after the UN Convention - Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation

108 development dialogue december 2008 – revisiting the heart of darkness
despite the fact that mass deaths accompanied the paths of Europeans
into America, Africa, Asia and Australia, and indigenous states and
peoples were destroyed. In all probability, no other period in human
history saw the destruction of so many cultures as the 16th and 17th
centuries. The overwhelming majority of deaths resulted from imported
diseases, while many people died performing slave labour or
were put to the sword during Christianisation. The victims’ suff ering
was certainly just as great as in cases of intentional annihilation,
and yet one cannot speak of genocide in these colonial cases, as the
destruction of entire peoples was not intended. In fact, the colonial
economy needed the indigenous population for exploitative purposes.
33 The same is true of slavery which does not constitute genocide
despite the fact that it aff ected an estimated 24 million African men
and women of whom about half were transported to America and the
Caribbean where they had to perform forced labour often in the most
inhumane conditions (Drescher 1996). After all, the intention to exploit
Africans’ labour was inconsistent with their physical destruction,
even if working them to death was willingly accepted in some cases.
These conclusions apply to the other continents as well. 34
Nonetheless, there were genocidal moments in the process when
the tendency to declare the original inhabitants of a country to be
‘subhuman creatures’ (Untermenschen) and to eliminate them rather
than simply dispossessing them prevailed. Such cases mainly concern
North America, Australia, New Zealand and southern Africa. It is
no coincidence that these were places that became settler colonies or
were intended as such, for the genocidal idea could assume relevance
where the replacement of the indigenous population with another
was possible or seemed desirable. Following Raphael Lemkin, 35 Ann
Curthoys and John Docker have recently postulated that the combination
of murder and settlement is a constant factor in genocides.
Whereas they, like Lemkin, conceive of genocide as a two-step process,
whereby new settlement follows murder (Curthoys and Docker
2001), I see the relation of cause and consequence working in a circular
manner: a genocidal dynamic can develop from the process of
settlement, while space for settlement can also be created by the mass
murder of the original inhabitants.
33 Cf. Gründer (1998), who rejects the notion of colonial genocide, even if he does not
deny that in some situations there were genocidal orders, massacres or consequences.
34 For the opposite position regarding Australia and America, see Churchill (1997), Barta
(2000).
35 Lemkin (1944) talks of colonisation but uses the term as a synonym for settlement.