ABSTRACT
The vulnerability of ethnic and religious minorities in the modern state system evoked mounting humanitarian concern in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It was decisive in the formation of Raphael Lemkin, a Polish Jew who was powerfully moved by anti-Jewish pogroms in Eastern Europe, and by the slaughter of Armenians and other Christian minorities in the Ottoman Empire during the First World War. But Lemkin’s investigation of such persecutions extended far beyond the modern era. He grew up reading works like Henryk Sienkiewicz’s Quo Vadis, and listening to stories about the Roman campaigns against early Christians.
