ABSTRACT
No study of genocide can proceed without attention to the four horsemen of the genocidal apocalypse, enumerated in this chapter's title. Tracing the connections between state formation and empire-building, incorporating an understanding of war and revolution, and linking all these to genocidal outbreaks is arguably genocide studies’ single most fertile line of inquiry in the twenty-first century. The central emphasis on state and empire in recent key works of genocide studies pivots on the concepts of social ordering and “legibility,” ethnonational collectivity, and racial hierarchy and “purity” that emerged from the Enlightenment and its multiple philosophical and scientific revolutions. Classical and modern states alike have coalesced and expanded through acts of imperialism and colonization. Imperialism is “a policy undertaken by a state to directly control foreign economic, physical, and cultural resources”.
