Princeton University Press Books in Human Rights and Crimes against Humanity

Human Rights and Crimes against Humanity

Eric D. Weitz, Series Editor

Human rights catastrophes are a recurrent feature of the modern era. They create countless victims, and the societies that have engaged in large-scale atrocities remain haunted by their pasts. To counter such abuses, new standards of human rights protection have arisen and are expressed in an array of proclamations, treaties, and tribunals. Human Rights and Crimes against Humanity provides a forum for publication and debate on the perpetration of large-scale atrocities and the often highly charged political and ethical issues of human rights protection, memory, and redress that develop in their wake. The series uses a broad understanding of crimes against humanity, including genocides, ethnic cleansings, massacres, various forms of slavery, lynchings, mass rapes, and torture. Chronologically, the series runs from around 1500, the onset of the modern era marked by European colonialism abroad and the Atlantic slave trade, to the present. Geographically, it takes in every area of the globe. It publishes significant works of original scholarship and major interpretation by academics, journalists, and other writers. An important goal is to bring these crimes--and the responses to them--to the attention of a wide audience and to stimulate discussion and debate in the public sphere as well as among scholars and in the classroom. The knowledge that develops from the series will also, we hope, help promote human rights standards and prevent future crimes against humanity.