How should we understand genocide in the modern world? As an aberration from the norms of a dominant liberal international society? Or rather as a guide to the very dysfunctional nature of the international system itself? "The Meaning of Genocide" is the first work of its nature to consider the phenomenon within a broad context of world historical development. In this book, Mark Levene sets out the conceptual issues in the study of genocide, addressing the fundamental problems of defining genocide and understanding what we mean by perpetrators and victims, before placing it in the context of world history. "The Meaning of Genocide" is the first of a major four-volume survey which examines its subject within an extensive global and historical framework and which will become the definitive work on the subject.