Historical grievances alone cannot explain the timing of ethnic violence’s resurgence

Evidence

A history of off-again-on-again slaughter, however, does not itself explain why violence was on again in the late twentieth century. After all, as many pointed out, Serbs, Croats, and Muslims for decades lived very peacefully together in Yugoslavia. Muslims and Hindus did so in India. The many ethnic and religious groups in the Soviet Union coexisted, with a few notable exceptions produced by the Soviet government. Tamils and Sinhalese also lived quietly together on an island often described as a tropical paradise. History did not prevent these relatively peaceful relationships prevailing for substantial periods of time; hence history, by itself, cannot explain the breakdown of peace. Other factors must have intruded in the last decades of the twentieth century. — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 720

Categorization

• SEED: A natural essay angle: the ‘peaceful coexistence before the war’ problem — why groups that lived side by side for decades suddenly turned lethal, and what variables beyond historical grievance actually triggered it.
• XREF: connects to: Suspended ethnic hatreds revived rather than being consumed by war — John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of…, 1605