In Empire's Violent End, Thijs Brocades Zaalberg and Bart Luttikhuis, along with expert contributors, present comparative research focused specifically on excessive violence in Indonesia, Algeria, Vietnam, Malaysia, Kenya, and other areas during the wars of decolonization. In the last two decades, there have been heated public and scholarly debates in France, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands on the violent end of empire. Nevertheless, the broader comparative investigations into colonial counterinsurgency tend to leave atrocities such as torture, execution, and rape in the margins. The editors describe how such comparisons mostly focus on the differences by engaging in "guilt ranking." Moreover, the dramas that have unfolded in Algeria and Kenya tend to overshadow similar violent events in Indonesia, the very first nation to declare independence directly after World War II.

Empire's Violent End is the first book to place the Dutch-Indonesian case at the heart of a comparison with focused, thematic analysis on a diverse range of topics to demonstrate that despite variation in scale, combat intensity, and international dynamics, there were more similarities than differences in the ways colonial powers used extreme forms of violence. By delving into the causes and nature of the abuse, Brocades Zaalberg and Luttikhuis conclude that all cases involved some form of institutionalized impunity, which enabled the type of situation in which the forces in the service of the colonial rulers were able to use extreme violence.

1. Introduction: Beyond the League Table of Barbarity: Comparing Extreme Violence during the Wars of Decolonization, by Thijs Brocades Zaalberg and Bart Luttikhuis
2. Not an Afterthought: Accountability for Colonial Violence in the Dutch and British Metropoles, by Huw Bennett and Peter Romijn
3. Windows onto the Microdynamics of Insurgent and Counterinsurgent Violence: Evidence from Late Colonial Southeast Asia and Africa Compared, by Roel Frakking and Martin Thomas
4. Cracking Down on Revolutionary Zeal and Violence: Local Dynamics and Early Colonial Responses to the Independence Struggle in Indochina and the Indonesian Archipelago, 1945–1947, by Pierre Asselin and Henk Schulte Nordholt
5. The Places, Traces, and Politics of Rape in the Indonesian and the Algerian Wars of Independence, by Stefania Scagliola, Natalya Vince, Adel Khedidja, and Galuh Ambar Sasi
6. "The Normal Order of Things": Contextualizing "Technical Violence" in the Netherlands-Indonesia War, by Azarja Harmanny and Brian McAllister Linn
7. "Bloodshed on a Rather Large Scale": Tactical Conduct and Noncombatant Casualties in Dutch, French, and British Colonial Counterinsurgency, by C.H.C Harinck
8. Comparing the Afterlives, Political Uses, and Memories of Extreme Violence during the Wars of Decolonization in France, the Netherlands, and Britain, by Raphaëlle Branche