Genocide in the Age of the Nation State: The Rise of the West and the Coming of Genocide v. 2 Most books on genocide consider it as a twentieth-century phenomenon. In The Rise of the West and the Coming of Genocide, Levene argues that this approach doesn"t grasp its true origins. Genocide developed out of modernity and the striving for the nation-state, both essentially Western experiences. European expansion fuelled its pre-1914 emergence. Full description