Pogroms outside the Eastern Borderlands

This chapter addresses the extent to which our explanation for pogrom violence against Jews in eastern Poland during the summer of 1941 can account for other instances of popular anti-Jewish violence and inter-communal violence not involving Jews in other times and places. The chapter begins with similar cases: wartime Lithuania, Romania, and Greece. It then addresses post-emancipation anti-Jewish pogroms in Germany and Russia. Finally, we examine intercommunal violence that does not involve Jews: anti-Muslim pogroms in post-independence India and the lynching of blacks in the post-Civil War American South. Political threat does not constitute the only explanation for popular violence against minorities, but its importance has not been appreciated.