ABSTRACT
The killing had been decided at a meeting held less than a mile away and only a few hours before the invasion of the Travis house. The meeting had been called to agree upon a plan "to rise and kill all the white people". Massacre is extremely demanding on the perpetrator, both psychologically and physically. Psychologically, massacre demands that some ordinary people learn how to kill others— others whom they know, amongst whom they live, and with whom they may have perfectly normal relations until the process of destruction is initiated. Examining individual instances of massacre, Semelin discerns three fundamental political dynamics or rationalities on display: subjugation, eradication, and insurrection. Killing in the service of subjugation means that a population is subjected to the terror of destructive example to produce an effect in the remainder, such as surrender and subservience, as in wars of colonial conquest.
