Dissertation Defense: Daniel Solomon

Candidate: Daniel Solomon

Major: Government

Advisor: Laia Balcells, Ph.D.

Title: The Symbolic Logic of Pogrom Violence: Evidence from Four Cases

What explains why pogroms target communities in some locations, but not in others? In this dissertation, I introduce a theory of pogroms that explains how the spatial pattern of pogrom violence varies across different contexts. My explanation for spatial variation in violence during pogroms, which I describe as a *symbolic theory* of pogrom violence, suggests that the pattern of group-targeted violence will correspond to the prevailing political order, or the distribution of coercive authority between armed actors in a specific area. I conceive of pogroms as symbolic acts because organizers use *public* attacks to exclude targeted groups from the prevailing order.

I conceive of four ideal types of political order that precede pogroms: (1) *consolidated* orders, in which state actors provide explicit support to organizers with a broad base of social support; (2) *state-building* orders, in which explicit state support interacts with organizers with a thin base of social support; (3) *contested* orders, which involve implicit state support and broad-networked organizers; and (4) *anarchic* orders, in which state actors provide implicit support to thin-networked organizers. I hypothesize that pogrom participants will target highly visible groups in consolidated and anarchic orders, whereas state-building and contested orders will reflect the underlying processes of political and economic competition, respectively, that animate prevailing patterns of political control.

I test these hypotheses in four archetypal pogrom cases: Kristallnacht, in Nazi Germany in November 1938, is the consolidated case; La Matanza, against the Mexican population of the Lower Rio Grande Valley, in 1915, is the state-building case; the pogrom against the Black population of East St. Louis, IL, in 1917, is the contested case; and the anti-Caribbean violence in the London neighborhood of Notting Hill, in 1958, is the anarchic case. For each case, I collect and compile novel quantitative data, including original data about violent incidents during the episode, to create proxy variables for various plausible explanations for pogrom attacks. The sources for these variables are diverse, including census records, city and community directories, press records, reports from commissions of inquiry, and law-enforcement documents. I use spatial regression analysis to analyze these data.

I find modest, but inconsistent, evidence in favor of the symbolic theory. In the Kristallnacht case, synagogue attacks by pogrom participants were more likely where a community’s Jewish population share was larger, but other visibility measures—the presence of a Jewish religious center, the presence of a kosher butcher, and the interaction between support for the Nazi Party and Jewish religious activity—had no effect on violence. In the Lower Rio Grande Valley case, Anglo-supremacist militias were more likely to organize anti-Mexican violence where previous attacks by so-called “bandits” targeted cattle herds, farms, and infrastructure associated with the region’s Anglo community. In East St. Louis, White-supremacist pogrom participants were more likely to attack the city’s Black residents where White-Black diversity was higher. Lastly, at Notting Hill, White-nationalist participants were more likely to attack their Caribbean neighbors where Caribbean households were more heavily concentrated. I conclude by discussing implications for historical political economy research about violence.