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History

Lemkin applied the concept of genocide to a wide variety of events throughout human history. He and other scholars date the first genocides to prehistoric times. Genocide is mentioned in various ancient sources including the Hebrew Bible, in which God commanded genocide (herem) against some of the Israelites' enemies, especially Amalek. Genocide in the ancient world often consisted of the massacre of men and the enslavement or forced assimilation of women and children—often limited to a particular town or city rather than applied to a larger group.

The destruction of indigenous societies as part of European colonialism was initially not recognized as a form of genocide. Such genocides were often characterized by an initial violent struggle for land and resources on an imperial frontier which escalates to extermination. Later on, the survivors face ongoing genocide in the form of "a wide range of eliminatory practices such as cultural suppression, expulsion, segregation, child confiscation, assimilation, and of course, continued violence". In places like North America, genocide of indigenous peoples continued after the establishment of independent states.

According to Mohamed Adhikari, the two main drivers of settler genocide is, in the long run, the pursuit of profit on the global commodity market and in the short run, indigenous resistance that triggered settler retaliation. Economic activities such as mining, ranching, and agriculture prove so destructive to indigenous societies that the elimination of indigenous people is quicker when settlers are more integrated into global markets and have a higher expectation of profit. While the lack of law enforcement on the frontier ensured impunity for settler violence, the closing of the frontier enabled settlers to consolidate their gains using the legal system. According to Mark Levene, seeing native people as "savages" and racism "played a critical role in psychocultural justifications for genocide" in areas such as Australia and North America.

Genocide was committed on a large scale during both world wars. The prototypical genocide, the Holocaust, involved such large-scale logistics that it reinforced the impression that genocide was the result of civilization drifting off course and required both the "weapons and infrastructure of the modern state and the radical ambitions of the modern man". Scientific racism and nationalism were common ideological drivers of many twentieth century genocides.