Colonial violence and Holocaust studies

This article examines the ways in which British colonial atrocities can further our understanding of European colonial violence and its relationship with genocidal violence in twentieth-century European warfare and the Holocaust. This issue will be examined in relation to the British war of reconquest in the Sudan 1896-99, which utilized methods including starvation tactics and the killing of the enemy wounded. Propaganda which dehumanized the “enemy” and justified British supremacy over “inferior races” in the name of “civilization” was also key. European traditions of violence in the colonies provide an important historical context for the genocidal violence of the twentieth century.