Jess Melvin, The Army and the Indonesian Genocide: Mechanics of Mass Murder (Routledge, 2018)
It\u2019s not often that you run across a smoking gun.\xa0Jess Melvin did, at an archive in Banda Aceh.\n\nSince the massacres in Indonesia in 1965-66, academics, journalists, politicians and military officials\xa0 have argued about the motivations for the killing.\xa0 With little documentation to draw from, these debates relied on careful analysis of context and circumstance.\xa0 The result was widespread disagreement about how centralized the killing was and whether the killing was planned in advance.\n\nMelvin, in her new book The Army and the Indonesian Genocide: Mechanics of Mass Murder (Routledge, 2018), puts some of these questions to rest.\xa0 It seems clear from her work that, at least in the regions covered by her research, that the Army was looking for an occasion to eliminate the Communist Party.\xa0 And that it saw the clumsily executed kidnappings and killings of 1 October as a golden opportunity to put this plan into action.\xa0 Finally, while she lacks direct evidence for other regions in Indonesia, her efforts to apply her own insights to the rest of the country seem measured and logical.\n\nMelvin\u2019s research is careful and thorough.\xa0 The book reminds me of Christopher Browning\u2019s The Origins of the Final Solution\u2013it feels like a detective working through every bit of evidence in an attempt to be fair and impartial.\xa0 Anyone studying the violence in Indonesia will have to reckon with Melvin\u2019s book.\n\nThis podcast is part of a short series on the mass atrocities in Indonesia.\xa0 Recently I talked with Geoff Robinson about his book\xa0The Killing Season\xa0and Kate MacGregor, Annie Pohlman and\xa0 Jess Melvin about their edited volume The Indonesian Genocide of 1965:\xa0 Causes, Dynamics and Legacies.\xa0 I\u2019ll conclude the series soon with an interview with Vannessa Hearman about her book Unmarked Graves.\n\n\n\nKelly McFall\xa0is Professor of History and Director of the Honors Program at Newman University. He\u2019s the author of four modules in the\xa0Reacting to the Past\xa0series, including\xa0The Needs of Others: Human Rights, International Organizations and Intervention in Rwanda,\xa01994.\nLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices\nSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/genocide-studies