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Peter Hilpold
There is surely no dearth of studies on genocide, but Mark Levene, a reader in history at the University of Southampton and an expert in genocide research, has demonstrated that it is still possible to add a thorough study to the enormous library already existing on this subject. True, some of Levene's basic assumptions may be contested in academia but this does not detract from the value of his enormous research project�s outcome. Already on the first page of his monumental study he clearly states its basic assumption: according to Levene, genocide is not an aberrant phenomenon in modern history but "integral to a "mainstream" historical trajectory of development towards a single, global, political economy composed of nation states" (vol. I, at 1). He sees the cases of genocide as a consequence of a more general Great Power conflict and the breakdown of the great multinational states, the Ottoman Empire, the Habsburg Empire, and the Russian Empire of the Romanovs.
Levene concentrates on geographical areas that he qualifies as "rimlands", or Europe's semi-periphery, where a new nation-building process took place which was based on radical nationalist ideas that led to widespread ethnic cleansing in a region that was known before for its multicultural richness. The rimlands examined offer a threefold delineation: the Balkans, a Caucasus�Black Sea�eastern Anatolia zone and "the Land Between", "a giant sliver of territory running from the Baltic southwards, to include Belorussia and right-bank Ukraine in the east, and as far as the Crimea in its western reaches embracing the lands of historic Poland, with an approximate north-west, south-east line running from Silesia through the Carpathians and sub-Carpathian ranges towards an intersection with the Danube at its deltaic point of entry into the Black Sea" (vol. I, at 7). No doubt, there is a conspicuous territorial overlap
