5 - Environment and the State

Summary

The central question of this chapter is how a region like Ottoman Kurdistan comes to explode in violence. I suggest that violence manifests in a cumulative way. To make this argument, I adopt an expanded conception of violence that moves beyond physical encounters or bloodshed between groups to also incorporate smaller acts of property violation, such as animal theft, as well as violence on a larger canvas, such as through state-building strategies and environmental change. Thus, I argue that to understand the roots of the Armenian massacres of 1894–96 requires understanding decades of environmental degradation and the various forms of violence produced.