Author Archives: A. Dirk Moses

About A. Dirk Moses

A. Dirk Moses has taught history at the University of Sydney since 2000 and was professor of global and colonial history at the European University Institute, Florence, from 2011 to 2015. He is the author of the prize-winning German Intellectuals and the Nazi Past (Cambridge University Press, 2007) and has published many articles, book chapters, and edited books, including the Oxford Handbook of Genocide Studies (2010, coedited with Donald Bloxham) and Colonial Counterinsurgency and Mass Violence: The Dutch Empire in Indonesia (Routledge, 2014, coedited with Bart Luttikhuis). He is senior editor of the Journal of Genocide Research and is finishing a book called The Problems of Genocide contracted with Cambridge University Press.

Transformative Occupations in the Modern Middle East

July 25, 2017 by and
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As guest editors of the dossier on “Transformative Occupations in the Modern Middle East” in the current issue of Humanity, we are delighted that Leila Farsakh and Gershon Shafir each agreed to contribute an introductory meditation on the fiftieth anniversary of the 1967 Arab-Israeli War and the history of the transformative Israeli occupation in Palestine. The dossier, as a unit, builds on the work of the critical legal scholars who have done so much to develop the concept of transformative occupation in the years since Continue reading →

Introduction: Transformative Occupations in the Modern Middle East

July 25, 2017 by and
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This article defines and deploys the concept of transformative occupation to argue for its value in understanding the history of state formation (and prevention) in the Middle East across the twentieth century, during and after imperial and colonial occupation. It argues that socio-political histories of these occupations can in turn refine and extend the heuristic yield of the concept of transformative occupation, for use in other cases globally. The essay also identifies a set of sub-themes that inform our use of the concept: developmental ideologies, Continue reading → Continue reading →

Empire, Resistance, and Security: International Law and the Transformative Occupation of Palestine

July 25, 2017 by
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In this essay, I identify and examine the legal-rhetorical mode of reasoning that justifies colonial-transformative occupations by legitimizing the repression of indigenous resistance via appeals to self-defense. The discretionary power authorized by the law of occupation in defence of the occupant’s security becomes, in the hands of a prolonged occupying power with territorial ambitions, the door through which an entire cart and horses of colonial apparatus can be driven. The essay traces this mode of reasoning since the early modern period, and exemplifies it in Continue reading → Continue reading →