Violence

For other uses, see Violence (disambiguation).

"Hitting" redirects here. For the baseball term, see Batting (baseball).

"Violent" redirects here. For the Stellar* song, see Violent (song).

Violence is the exertion of physical force so as to injure or abuse. The word is used broadly to describe the destructive action of natural phenomena like storms and earthquakes. More frequently the word describes forceful human destruction of property or injury to persons, usually intentional, and forceful verbal and emotional abuse that harms others.

Contents 1 Psychology and Sociology 2 Law 3 War 4 Religious and Political Ideology 5 Health and prevention 6 Violence in the media 7 Historical examples of violence 8 See also 9 References 10 Sources 11 External links

Psychology and Sociology

See also: Aggression

The causes of violent behavior in humans are often research topics in psychology and sociology. Neurobiologist Jan Volavka emphasizes that for those purposes, “violent behavior is defined as overt and intentional physically aggressive behavior against another person." The Neurobiology of Violence, An Update, Journal of Neuropsychiatry Clin Neurosci 11:3, Summer 1999.

Scientists disagree on whether violence is inherent in humans. Among prehistoric humans, there is archaeological evidence for both contentions of violence and peacefulness as primary characteristics. Heather Whipps, Peace or War? How early humans behaved, LiveScience.Com, March 16, 2006.

Riane Eisler, who describes early matriarchal societies, and Walter Wink, who coined the phrase “the myth of redemptive violence,” suggest that human violence, especially as organized in groups, is a phenomenon of the last five to ten thousand years.

The “violent male ape” image is often brought up in discussions of human violence. Dale Peterson and Richard Wrangham in “Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence” write that violence is inherent in humans.Peterson, Dale; Richard Wrangham (1997). Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence. Mariner Books.  ISBN 0-395-87743-1

 .

However, William L. Ury, editor of a book called "Must We Fight? From the Battlefield to the Schoolyard--A New Perspective on Violent Conflict and Its Prevention” debunks the "killer ape" myth in his book which brings together discussions from two Harvard Law School symposiums. The conclusion is that “we also have lots of natural mechanisms for cooperation, to keep conflict in check, to channel aggression, and to overcome conflict. These are just as natural to us as the aggressive tendencies."Cindy Fazzi, Debunking the "killer ape" myth, Dispute Resolution Journal, May-Jul 2002.

James Gilligan writes violence is often pursued as an antidote to shame or humiliation.Gilligan, James (1996). Violence: Our Deadly Epidemic and Its Causes. Putnam Adult.  ISBN 0-399-13979-6 . The use of violence often is a source of pride and a defense of honor, especially among males who often believe violence defines manhood.Emotional Competency; Dr. Michael Obsatz,From Shame-Based Masculinity to Holistic Manhood, Robin Morgan, The Demon Lover On the Sexuality of Terrorism, W.W. Norton, 1989, Chapter 5.

Stephen Pinker in a New Republic article “The History of Violence” offers evidence that on the average the amount and cruelty of violence to humans and animals has decreased over the last few centuries.Stephen Pinker, The History of Violence, The New Republic, March 19, 2007.

Law

One of the main functions of law is to regulate violence and violenc crimes. The sociologist Max Weber stated that state power is the Monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force on a specific territory. Law enforcement is the main means of regulating nonmilitary violence in society.

Governments regulate the use of violence through legal systems governing individuals and political authorities, including the police and military. Most societies condone some amount of police violence to maintain the status quo and enforce laws.

However, German political theorist Hannah Arendt noted: "Violence can be justifiable, but it never will be legitimate ... Its justification loses in plausibility the farther its intended end recedes into the future. No one questions the use of violence in self-defence, because the danger is not only clear but also present, and the end justifying the means is immediate".Arendt, Hannah sfdhxvczgrsdfcxzrfergSDS n Violence. {{{title}}}. Harvest Book, 52. . Many governments do abuse their monopoly on power to engage in violence against citizens. In the twentieth century in acts of democide governments may have killed more than 260 million of their own people through police brutality, execution, massacre, slave labor camps, and through sometimes intentional famine.Twentieth Century Democide; [http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/war-1900.htm Atlas - Wars and Democide of the Twentieth Century.

Damage to property is usually considered a less serious offense unless the damage injures, or potentially could injure, others. Unpremeditated or small-scale acts of random violence or coordinated violence by unsanctioned private groups usually are prosecuted. While most societies condone the killing of animals for food and sport, increasingly they have adopted mores and laws against animal cruelty.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation classifies violence resulting in homicide, into criminal homicide and justifiable homicide (e.g. self defense).Uniform Crime Reporting Handbook. Federal Bureau of Investigation (2004)..

Below are some forms of violent crimes outlawed by governmental legal entities:

• Abuse - to use wrongly or improperly used; misuse
• Aggravated assault - assault with the use of weapons or in other circumstances beyond the realm of normal assault
• Assault - an unlawful physical attack upon another or threat to do violence to another
• Assault and battery - an assault involving actual bodily contact
• Battery - an unlawful attack upon another person by beating or wounding, or by touching in an offensive manner
• Cruelty to animals - a cruel act upon an animal
• Child Abuse - cruelty to children (people under the age of 18)
• Domestic violence - acts of violence against a person living in one\'s household or a member of one\'s immediate family
• Homicide - the killing of another human being
• Murder - homicide in certain proscribed conditions
• Property damage - damage to another\'s property (ie: breaking of things, burning, or harming in a devastating manner)
• Rape- the unlawful compelling of someone through physical force or duress to have sexual intercourse

War

War is a state of prolonged violent, large-scale conflict involving two or more groups of people, usually under the auspices of government. War is fought as a means of resolving territorial and other conflicts, as war of aggression to conquer territory or loot resources, in national self-defense, or to suppress attempts of part of the nation to secede from it.

Since the Industrial Revolution, the lethality of modern warfare has steadily grown. World War I casualties were over 40 million and World War II casualties were over 70 million.

Nevertheless, some hold the actual deaths from war have decreased compared to past centuries. Lawrence H. Keeley, a professor at the University of Illinois, calculates that 87 per cent of tribal societies were at war more than once per year, and some 65 per cent of them were fighting continuously. The attrition rate of numerous close-quarter clashes, which characterize endemic warfare, produces casualty rates of up to 60%, compared to 1% of the combatants as is typical in modern warfare. http://www.troynovant.com/Franson/Keeley/War-Before-Civilization.html Review of book “War Before Civilization” by Lawrence H. Keeley], July, 2004. Stephen Pinker agrees, writing that “in tribal violence, the clashes are more frequent, the percentage of men in the population who fight is greater, and the rates of death per battle are higher.”Stephen Pinker.

Jared Diamond in his award-winning novels, Guns, Germs and Steel and The Third Chimpanzee provides sociological and anthropological evidence for the rise of large scale warfare as a result of advances in technology and city-states. The rise of agriculture provided a significant increase in the number of individuals that a region could sustain over hunter-gatherer societies, allowing for development of specialized classes such as soldiers, or weapons manufacturers. On the other hand, tribal conflicts in hunter-gatherer societies tend to result in wholesale slaughter of the opposition (other than perhaps females of child-bearing years) instead of territorial conquest or slavery, presumably as hunter-gatherer numbers could not sustain empire-building.^{[citation needed]}

Religious and Political Ideology

Many Ahmedabad\'s buildings were set on fire during 2002 Gujarat violence

Religious and political ideologies have been the cause of interpersonal violence, and violent riots, political repression, ethnic cleansing and genocide through out history. "Doctrinal War: Religion and Ideology in International Conflict," in Bruce Kuklick (advisory ed.), The Monist: The Foundations of International Order, Vol. 89, No. 2 (April 2006), p. 46. Ideologues often falsely accuse others of violence, such as the ancient blood libel against Jews, the medieval accusations of casting witchcraft spells against women, caricatures of black men as “violent brutes” that helped excuse the late nineteenth century Jim Crow laws in the United States,The Brute Caricature, Ferris State University Museum of Racist Memorabilia. and modern accusations of satanic ritual abuse against day care center owners and others. 42 M.V.M.O. Court Cases with Allegations of Multiple Sexual And Physical Abuse of Children.

Both supporters and opponents of the twenty-first century war on terrorism regard it largely as an ideological and religious war.John Edwards\' \'Bumper Sticker\' Complaint Not So Off the Mark, New Memo Shows; Richard Clarke, Against All Enemies: Inside America\'s War on Terror, Free Press; 2004; Michael Scheuer, Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror, Potomac Books Inc., June, 2004; Robert Fisk, The Great War for Civilisation - The Conquest of the Middle East, Fourth Estate, London, October 2005; Leon Hadar, The Green Peril: Creating the Islamic Fundamentalist Threat, August 27, 1992; Michelle Malkin, Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week kicks off, October 22, 2007; John L. Esposito, Unholy War: Terror in the Name of Islam, Oxford University Press, USA, September 2003.

Vittorio Bufacchi describes two different modern concepts of violence, one the “minimalist conception” of violence as an intentional act of excessive or destructive force, the other the “comprehensive conception” which includes violations of rights, including a long list of human needs.Vittoriio Bufacchi, Two Concepts of Violence, Political Studies Review, April 2005, Volume 3, Issue 2, Page 193-204. These concepts are reflected in conflicts between “left wing” anti-capitalists and “right wing’” pro-capitalists.

Anti-capitalists assert that “capitalism is violent.” They believe private property, trade, interest and profit survive only because police violence defends them and that capitalist economies need war to expand. Michael Albert Life After Capitalism - And Now Too. Zmag.org, December 10, 2004; Capitalism explained . Many contest calling any form of property damage “violent.”L.A. Kaufman, Who were those masked anarchists in Seattle?, December 10, 1999; Eco-Warrior Celebrates Another Year Behind Society\'s Bars of Ignorance; Liz Highleyman, The Global Justice Movement. Similarly, many anti-capitalists lambast what they call “structural violence” which denotes a form of violence in which social institutions kill people slowly by preventing them from meeting their basic needs, often leading further to social conflict and violence.

Supporters of capitalism are wary of a wide definition of violence that requires the state and its violent enforcement agencies to fulfill all needs denied by structural violence. However, unlike those critics who support state capitalismBruce Bawer, The Peace Racket, September 7, 2007., free market supporters argue that it is violently enforced state laws intervening in markets which cause many of the problems anti-capitalists attribute to structural violence. Hans-Hermann Hoppe, From the Economics of Laissez Faire to The Ethics of Libertarianism.

Throughout history, some religions like Jainism, Buddhism, Quakerism and individuals like Mahatma Gandhi have preached that humans are capable of eliminating individual violence and organizing societies through purely nonviolent means. Gandhi himself once wrote: “A society organized and run on the basis of complete non-violence would be the purest anarchy.”Bharatan Kumarappa, Editor, "For Pacifists," by M.K. Gandhi, Navajivan Publishing House, Ahmedabad, India, 1949. Modern political ideologies which espouse similar views include pacifist varieties of voluntarism, mutualism, anarchism and libertarianism.

Health and prevention

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) defines violence as "Injury inflicted by deliberate means", which includes assault, as well as "legal intervention, and self-harm".CDC Definition of Violence. The World Health Organization ( “WHO”) in its first World Report on Violence and Health defined violence as "the intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person or against a group or community, that either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment or deprivation." World Report on Violence and Health, October 3, 2002..

WHO estimates that each year around 1.6 million lives are lost world-wide due to violence. It is among the leading causes of death for people ages 15-44, especially of males.WHO: 1.6 million die in violence annually.

Recent estimates for murders per year in various countries include: 55,000 murders in BrazilBrazil murder rate similar to war zone, data shows., 30,000 murders in Russia, 25,000 murders in Colombia,Colombia\'s Uribe wins second term., 20,000 murders in South Africa, 15,000 murders in Mexico, 14,000 murders in the United States, Twentieth Century Atlas - Homicide., 11,000 murders in Venezuela, 6,000 murders in El Salvador, 1,600 murders in JamaicaJamaica \'murder capital of the world\'., 1000 murders in France, 500 murders in Canada, and 200 murders in Chile. Crime Statistics.

Violence in the media

Main article: Media violence research

The topic of violence in popular media is controversial. This includes violence in films, television, music, comic books, and video games and televised sports. Violence in the media has led to government censorship and regulation. In the United States the FCC regulates television and radio, as does the CRTC in Canada. Media also self-regulate, as through many movie rating systems and the Entertainment Software Rating Board for video games. Sheet 15 - Children and Violence in the Media.

Violent content has been a central part of video game controversy. Critics like Dave Grossman and Jack Thompson argue that violence in games (some of which they both call "murder simulators") hardens children to unethical acts. Violence in Media Entertainment; Childhood Exposure to Media Violence Predicts Young Adult Aggressive Behavior, According to a New 15-year Study, American Psychological Association press release, March 9, 2003.

Historical examples of violence

Acts of violence are commonly found in historical record. The following is an incomplete list of some of the more large-scale examples of violence in history.

- Caesar\'s campaigns. As many as 1 million people (probably 1 in 4 of the Gauls) died, another million were enslaved, 300 tribes were subjugated and 800 cities were destroyed during the Gallic Wars (present-day France). The entire population of city of Avaricum (Bourges) (40,000 in all) was slaughtered.Julius Caesar The Conquest of Gaul During Julius Caesar\'s campaign against the Helvetii (modern-day Switzerland) approximately 60% of the tribe was destroyed, and another 20% was taken into slavery.Helvetti

- Boudica\'s uprising. Boudica (d. 60/61AD) was a queen of the Celtic Iceni people of Norfolk in Roman-occupied Britain who led a major uprising of the tribes against the occupying forces of the Roman Empire. They destroyed Camulodunum (Colchester, a settlement for discharged Roman soldiers), Londinium (London) and Verulamium (St Albans). In the three cities destroyed, between 70,000 and 80,000 people are said to have been killed. Tacitus says the Britons had no interest in taking or selling prisoners, only in slaughter by gibbet, fire or cross. Cassius Dio\'s account gives more prurient detail: that the noblest women were impaled on spikes and had their breasts cut off and sewn to their mouths, "to the accompaniment of sacrifices, banquets, and wanton behaviour" in sacred places, particularly the groves of Andraste.BoudicaJason Burke, "Dig uncovers Boudicca\'s brutal streak", The Observer , 3 December 2000

- Albigensian Crusade. The Albigensian Crusade or Cathar Crusade (1209–1229) was a 20-year military campaign initiated by the Roman Catholic Church to eliminate the heresy of the Cathars of Languedoc. Béziers was a Languedoc stronghold of Catharism and the first city to be sacked, on July 22, 1209. In the bloody massacre which followed, no one was spared, not even those who took refuge in the churches. The commander of the Crusade was the Papal Legate Arnaud-Amaury (or Arnald Amalaricus, Abbot of Citeaux). When asked by a Crusader how to distinguish between the Catholics and Cathars once they\'d taken the city, the abbot famously replied, "Kill them all, God will know His own" - "Neca eos omnes. Deus suos agnoscet".Jewish History 1200 - 1299 In the end, the Albigensian Crusade killed an estimated 1,000,000 people, not only Cathars but much of the population of southern France.Massacre of the Pure

- Mongol Empire. Quoting Eric Margolis, Adam Jones observes, in his book Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction, that in the 13th century the Mongol horsemen of Genghis Khan were genocidal killers (génocidaires) who were known to kill whole nations leaving nothing but empty ruins and bones.Jones References, p.4 note 12 Eric s. Margolis War at the top of the World, the struggle for Afghanistan, Kashmir and Tibet (New York, Routledge, 2001) p.155 Many ancient sources described Genghis Khan\'s conquests as wholesale destruction on an unprecedented scale in their certain geographical regions, and therefore probably causing great changes in the demographics of Asia. For example, over much of Central Asia speakers of Iranian languages were replaced by speakers of Turkic languages. The eastern part of the Islamic world experienced the terrifying holocaust of the Mongol invasions, which turned northern and eastern Iran into a desert. Between 1220 and 1260, the total population of Persia may have had dropped from 2,500,000 to 250,000 as a result of mass extermination and famine.Battuta\'s Travels: Part Three - Persia and Iraq

Before the Mongol invasion, Chinese dynasties reportedly had approximately 120 million inhabitants; after the conquest was completed in 1279, the 1300 census reported roughly 60 million people.Ping-ti Ho, "An Estimate of the Total Population of Sung-Chin China", in Études Song, Series 1, No 1, (1970) pp. 33-53. About half of the Russian population died during the Mongol invasion of Rus.History of Russia, Early Slavs history, Kievan Rus, Mongol invasion Historians estimate that up to half of Hungary\'s two million population at that time were victims of the Mongol invasion of Europe.Welcome to Encyclopædia Britannica\'s Guide to History

The Pope Innocent IV’s envoy to the Mongol Khan, who passed through Kiev in February 1246, wrote:

"They [the Mongols] attacked Russia, where they made great havoc, destroying cities and fortresses and slaughtering men; and they laid siege to Kiev, the capital of Russia; after they had besieged the city for a long time, they took it and put the inhabitants to death. When we were journeying through that land we came across countless skulls and bones of dead men lying about on the ground. Kiev had been a very large and thickly populated town, but now it has been reduced almost to nothing, for there are at the present time scarce two hundred houses there and the inhabitants are kept in complete slavery."The Destruction of Kiev

- Timur’s conquests. Timur Lenk was a 14th century conqueror of much of Middle East and Central Asia, and founder of the Timurid dynasty. He thought of himself as a ghazi, but his biggest wars were against Muslim states. In 1383 Timur started the military conquest of Persia. He captured Herat, Khorasan and all eastern Persia to 1385 and massacred almost all inhabitants of Neishapur and other Iranian cities. When revolts broke out in Persia, he ruthlessly suppressed them, massacring the populations of whole cities. When Timur entered Delhi (India), the city was sacked, destroyed, and left in ruins. When Timur conquered Persia, Iraq and Syria, the civilian population was decimated. In the city of Isfahan he ordered the building of a pyramid of 70,000 human skulls, from those that his army had beheaded,Timur\'s history and a pyramid of some 20,000 skulls was erected outside the Aleppo.The Seven Years Campaign Timur herded thousands of citizens of Damascus into the Cathedral Mosque before setting it aflame,Battle of Damascus and had 70,000 people beheaded in Tikrit, and another 90,000 more in Baghdad.New Book Looks at Old-Style Central Asian Despotism After the capture of Bagdad, Timur ordered that every soldier should return with at least two severed human heads to show him (many warriors were so scared they killed prisoners captured earlier in the campaign just to ensure they had heads to present to Timur). Nestorian Christians east of Iraq were almost entirely eliminated by Timur.Nestorian Church As many as 17 million people may have died from his conquests.Timur Lenk (1369-1405)

- Aztec human sacrifice. The Aztecs sacrificed thousands of victims (often slaves or prisoners of war) annually to the sun god Huitzilopochtli; an offering to Huitzilopochtli would be made to restore the blood he lost, as the sun was engaged in a daily battle. Human sacrifices would prevent the end of the world that could happen on each cycle of 52 years. For the re-consecration of Great Pyramid of Tenochtitlan in 1487, the Aztecs reported that they sacrificed about 80,400 people over the course of four days. According to Ross Hassing, author of Aztec Warfare, "between 10,000 and 80,400 persons" were sacrificed in the ceremony.Hassig, Ross (2003). "El sacrificio y las guerras floridas". Arqueología mexicana, p. 46-51.The Enigma of Aztec Sacrifice

- Vlad the Impaler. Vlad the Impaler, also known as Vlad Dracula, the 15th century ruler of Wallachia in present-day Romania, has been characterized as exceedingly cruel. Impalement was his preferred method of torture and execution. As expected, death by impalement was slow and painful. Victims sometimes endured for hours or days. Impalement was Vlad\'s favourite method of torture but was by no means his only one. The list of tortures he is alleged to have employed is extensive: nails in heads, cutting off of limbs, blinding, strangulation, burning, cutting off of noses and ears, mutilation of sexual organs (especially in the case of women), scalping, skinning, exposure to the elements or to animals, and boiling alive. No one was immune to Vlad the Impaler\'s attentions. His victims included women and children, peasants and great lords, ambassadors from foreign powers and merchants.The Historical Dracula In 1459, he had 30,000 of the Saxon merchants and officials of the Transylvanian city of Kronstadt who were transgressing his authority impaled.History of Central EuropeVlad the Impaler In 1462 Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror, during his campaign against Wallachia, was “greeted” by the sight of veritable forest of stakes on which Vlad the Impaler had impaled 20,000 Turkish prisoners.The Real Prince Dracula Dracula was probably killed in battle against the Ottoman Empire near Bucharest in December of 1476.

- Thirty Years\' War. The Thirty Years\' War was fought between 1618 and 1648, primarily on the territory of Holy Roman Empire. Virtually all of the major European powers were involved. The Thirty Years\' War was the most destructive conflict in Europe prior to World War I. Atrocities and massacres, such as Sack of Magdeburg, became standard methods of warfare. During the war, Germany\'s population was reduced by 30% on average; in the territory of Brandenburg, the losses had amounted to half, while in some areas an estimated two thirds of the population died. Germany’s male population was reduced by almost half. The population of the Czech lands declined by a third. The Swedish armies alone destroyed 2,000 castles, 18,000 villages and 1,500 towns in Germany, one-third of all German towns.Germany - The Thirty Years\' War - The Peace of WestphaliaPopulationThe Thirty Years\' War

- Reconquest of Ireland. It is estimated that as much as a third of the entire population of Ireland perished during the civil wars and subsequent Cromwellian conquest in the mid-17th century. Since the Irish Rebellion of 1641, Ireland had been mainly under the control of the Irish Confederate Catholics. The Cromwellian reconquest of Ireland was extremely brutal, and it has been alleged that many of the army\'s actions during the reconquest would today be called war crimes or even genocide. William Petty who conducted the first scientific land and demographic survey of Ireland in the 1650s (the Down Survey), concluded that at least 400,000 people and maybe as many as 620,000 had died in Ireland between 1641 and 1653, many as a result of famine and plague. At the time, Ireland had around 1.5 million inhabitants.The curse of Cromwell - BBC

- The Deluge. During the 1640s and 1650s the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was devastated by several conflicts, in which the Commonwealth lost over a third of its populations (over 3 million people).About Poland First, the Chmielnicki Uprising when Bohdan Khmelnytsky\'s Cossacks massacred tens of thousands of Jews and Poles in the eastern and southern areas he controlled (today\'s Ukraine). It is recorded that Khmelnytsky told the people that the Poles had sold them as slaves "into the hands of the accursed Jews". It is estimated that 100,000 Jews were massacred and 300 of their communities destroyed. The decrease of the Jewish population during that period (referred to in Polish history as The Deluge) is estimated at 100,000 to 200,000, which also includes emigration, deaths from diseases and jasyr (captivity in the Ottoman Empire).Judaism Timeline 1618-1770

- Revolt in the Vendée. Vendée is remembered as the place where the peasants revolted against the French Revolutionary government in 1793. They resented the changes imposed on the Roman Catholic Church by the Civil Constitution of the Clergy (1790) and broke into open revolt in defiance of the Revolutionary government\'s military conscription. This guerrilla war became known as the Revolt in the Vendée, led at the outset by an underground faction called the Chouans.

Initially the Vendée rebels gained the upper hand, so on August 1 1793 the Committee of Public Safety ordered General Jean-Baptiste Carrier to carry out a pacification of the region. The Republican army was reinforced and the Vendéan army was eventually defeated. The Reign of Terror, seen elsewhere in France, was extraordinarily brutal in the Vendée. There was a massacre of 6,000 Vendée prisoners, many of them women, after the battle of Savenay. Subsequently, there was the drowning of 3,000 Vendée women at Pont-au-Baux. This was followed by 5,000 Vendée priests, old men, women, and children killed by drowning at the Loire River at Nantes in what was called the "national bath" - tied in groups in barges and then sunk into the Loire. Under orders from Committee of Public Safety in February 1794 the Republican forces launched their final "pacification" (the Vendée-Vengé or "\'Vendée Avenged") - twelve columns, the colonnes infernales ("infernal columns") under Louis-Marie Turreau, were marched through the Vendée, indiscriminately targeting not only the remaining rebels and the people who had given them support, but the innocent as well.The Heart of Darkness: How Visceral Hatred of Catholicism Turns Into GenocideWars Of The Vendee

Beyond these massacres there were formal orders for forced evacuation and \'scorched earth\' - farms were destroyed, crops and forests burned, and villages razed. There were many reported atrocities and a campaign of mass killing universally targeted at residents of the Vendée regardless of combatant status, political affiliation, age or gender. Some consider these acts to be the first modern genocide.Jones, Adam Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction p.7 (Routledge/Taylor & Francis Publishers Forthcoming 2006)[1] Masson, Sophie Remembering the Vendee (Godspy 2004. First published in "Quadrant" magazine Australia, 1996) The campaign was ordered as such by the Comité de Salut public:

"The committee has prepared measures that tend to exterminate this rebellious race of Vendéeans, to make their abodes disappear, to torch their forests, to cut their crops."

The orders to Turreau were:

"Exterminate the brigands to the last man instead of burning the farms, punish the fleeing ones and the cowards, and crush that horrible Vendée. Combine the most assured means to exterminate all of this race of brigands."

When the campaign dragged to an end in March 1796 the estimated dead numbered between 117,000 and 500,000, of a population of around 800,000.Three State and Counterrevolution in France by Charles TillyVive la Contre-Revolution!McPhee, Peter Review of Reynald Secher, A French Genocide: The Vendée H-France Review Vol. 4 (March 2004), No. 26

- Wahhabist conquests. The Saudi Wahabbist sheiks were convinced that it was their religious mission to wage holy war (jihad) against all other forms of Islam. In 1801 and 1802, the Saudi Wahhabists under Abdul Aziz ibn Muhammad ibn Saud attacked and captured the holy Shia cities of Karbala and Najaf in Iraq, massacred the Shiites and destroyed the tombs of the Shiite Imam Husayn and Ali bin Abu Talib. In 1802 they occupied Taif where they massacred the population. In 1803 and 1804 the Wahhabis captured Mecca and Medina. In Mecca and Medina they destroyed monuments and various holy Muslim sites and shrines, such as the shrine built over the tomb of Fatima Zahra, the daughter of Muhammad, and even intended to destroy the grave of the Prophet Muhammad.The Destruction of Holy Sites in Mecca and MedinaSaudi Arabia - THE SAUD FAMILY AND WAHHABI ISLAMNibras Kazimi, A Paladin Gears Up for War, The New York Sun, November 1, 2007John R Bradley, Saudi\'s Shi\'ites walk tightrope, Asia Times, March 17, 2005Amir Taheri, Death is big business in Najaf, but Iraq\'s future depends on who controls it, The Times, August 28, 2004

- Taiping Rebellion. During the Taiping Rebellion (1850-1864) that followed the secession of the Tàipíng Tiānguó (太平天國, Heavenly Kingdom of Perfect Peace) from the Qing empire both sides tried to deprive each other of the resources to continue the war and it became standard practice to destroy agricultural areas, butcher the population of cities and in general exact a brutal price from captured enemy lands in order to drastically weaken the opposition\'s war effort.Ch\'ing China: The Taiping Rebellion This war truly was total in that civilians on both sides participated to a significant extent in the war effort and in that armies on both sides waged war on the civilian population as well as military forces.Taiping Rebellion: The destruction of the Chinese culture In total between 20 and 30 million died in the conflict making it bloodier than the World War I or Russian Civil War.Chinese Cultural Studies: Concise Political History of ChinaThe Great War: A Review of the Explanations

- War of the Triple Alliance. War of the Triple Alliance (1864-1870) was the bloodiest conflict in the history of South America, fought between Paraguay and the allied countries of Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay. Paraguay’s prewar population of between one and one-half million was reduced to about 221,000 in 1871, of which only about 28,000 were men.Nineteenth Century Death Tolls Paraguay\'s dictator, Francisco Solano López, is widely regarded as being responsible for the war, which led to his death. "Conquer or die" became the order of the day. Lopez ordered thousands of executions in the military. In 1868, when the allies were pressing him hard, he convinced himself that his Paraguayan supporters had actually formed a conspiracy against his life. Thereupon several hundred prominent Paraguayan citizens were seized and executed by his order, including his brothers and brothers-in-law, cabinet ministers, judges, prefects, military officers, bishops and priests, and nine-tenths of the civil officers, together with 500 foreigners, among them several members of the diplomatic legations (the San Fernando massacres). The bodies were dumped into mass graves.War of the Triple AllianceParaguay - The War of the Triple Alliance

- Indian Wars. In his book The Wild Frontier: Atrocities during the American-Indian War from Jamestown Colony to Wounded Knee, amateur historian William M. Osborn sought to tally every recorded atrocity in the area that would eventually become the continental United States, from first contact (1511) to the closing of the frontier (1890), and determined that 9,156 people died from atrocities perpetrated by Native Americans, and 7,193 people died from those perpetrated by settlers. Osborn defines an atrocity as the murder, torture, or mutilation of civilians, the wounded, and prisoners.The Wild Frontier: Atrocities During The American-Indian War

- Second Boer War. The English term "concentration camp" was first used to describe camps operated by the British in South Africa during the Second Boer War (1899–1902).

These had originally been set up as "refugee camps" by the Army for families whose farms had been destroyed by the British under their "Scorched Earth" policy (sweeping the country bare of everything that could give sustenance to the guerrillas, including women and children, and including destroying crops, burning down homesteads and farms, poisoning wells, and salting fields) and thousands of Boers had already been brought into them.

Kitchener succeeded Roberts as commander-in-chief in South Africa in November 29, 1900 and in an attempt to break the guerilla campaign, initiated plans to "flush out guerrillas in a series of sytematic drives, organized like a sporting shoot, with success defined in a weekly \'bag\' of killed, captured and wounded, and to sweep the country bare of everything that could give sustenance to the guerrillas, including women and children. . . . It was the clearance of civilians -- uprooting a whole nation -- that would come to dominate the last phase of the war."Thomas Pakenham, The Boer War Following Kitchener\'s new policy, more camps were built and converted to prisons and many tens of thousands more women and children were forcibly moved to prevent the Boers from resupplying at their homes.

By August 1901, 93,940 Boers were reported to be in "camps of refuge". A report after the war concluded that 27,927 Boers (of whom 24,074 [50% of the Boer child population] were children under 16) had died of starvation, disease and exposure in the concentration camps. In all, about one in four (25%) of the Boer inmates, mostly children, died.Niall Ferguson, Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order, p. 250Australian War Memorial

- Don Cossacks.

Main article: Red Terror

Following the defeat of the White Army in Russian Civil War, a policy of decossackization (Raskazachivaniye) took place on the surviving Cossacks and their homelands since they were viewed as potential threat to the new Soviet regime.Cossacks history That was the first example when Soviet leaders decided to "eliminate, exterminate, and deport the population of a whole territory". Nicolas Werth, Karel Bartošek, Jean-Louis Panné, Jean-Louis Margolin, Andrzej Paczkowski, Stéphane Courtois, The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression, Harvard University Press, 1999, hardcover, 858 pages, ISBN 0-674-07608-7 Soviet order to exterminate Cossacks is unearthed The Cossack homelands were often very fertile, and during the collectivisation campaign many Cossacks shared the fate of kulaks. The man-made Holodomor famine of 1932-1933 hit the Don and Kuban territory the hardest. According to historian Michael Kort, "During 1919 and 1920, out of a population of approximately 1.5 million Don Cossacks, the Bolshevik regime killed or deported an estimated 300,000 to 500,000".Kort, Michael (2001). The Soviet Colosus: History and Aftermath, p. 133. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe. ISBN 0-7656-0396-9.

- Spanish Civil War. The number of casualties is disputed; estimates generally suggest that between 500,000 and 1 million people were killed in the Spanish Civil War. Over the years, historians kept lowering the death figures and modern research concludes that 500,000 deaths is the correct figure.Hugh Thomas, The Spanish Civil War (2001), pp. xviii & 899–901, inclusive. Atrocities during the war were committed on both sides.Spain: Repression under Franco after the Civil WarSpain poised to seek the graves of Franco\'s disappeared At least 50,000 were executed during the civil war.Spain torn on tribute to victims of Franco Franco\'s victory was followed by tens of thousands of summary executions.A revelatory account of the Spanish civil warSpanish Civil War: Casualties

In his recent, updated history of the Spanish Civil War, Antony Beevor "reckons Franco\'s ensuing \'white terror\' claimed 200,000 lives."Men of La Mancha". Rev. of Antony Beevor, The Battle for Spain. The Economist (June 22, 2006). The \'red terror\' had already killed 38,000."A Week in Books Julius Ruiz concludes that "although the figures remain disputed, a minimum of 37,843 executions were carried out in the Republican zone with a maximum of 150,000 executions (including 50,000 after the war) in Nationalist Spain."Julius Ruiz, "Defending the Republic: The García Atadell Brigade in Madrid, 1936". Journal of Contemporary History 42.1 (2007):97. In Checas de Madrid, César Vidal comes to a nationwide total of 110,965 victims of Republican repression; 11,705 people being killed in Madrid alone.International justice begins at home by Carlos Alberto Montaner, Miami Herald, August 4, 2003

- During World War II. -- Germany.

Main articles: Holocaust, German war crimes, and Consequences of German Nazism

During World War II, the holocaust initiated by the German National Socialist party killed millions of people: Slavs, Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Serbs, and especially Jews. After the end of World War II, this genocide came to be known as the Holocaust. Poles, Jehovah\'s Witnesses, Roma and homosexuals and anybody considered a threat to the Nazi party were rounded up and sent to labour camps, death camps, or just killed in their homes.

The Nazi occupation of Poland resulted in the death of one-fifth of the population, some 6 million people, half of them Jewish. The Soviet Union lost an estimated 27 million people during the war, about half of all World War II casualties.Leaders mourn Soviet wartime deadMassacres and Atrocities of WWII in Eastern Europe Of the 5.7 million Soviet POWs captured by the Germans, 3.5 million had died while in German captivity by the end of the war. Soviet Prisoners of War: Forgotten Nazi Victims of World War II

-- Japan.

Main article: Japanese war crimes

Japanese soldiers rounded up and killed millionsRummel, R.J. Statistics of Democide: Genocide and Mass Murder since 1900 Chapter 3. LIT Verlag Münster-Hamburg-Berlin-Wien-London-Zürich (1999) of civilians and prisoners of wars from surrounding nations, especially from Korea, China, Philippines and US during World War II. At least 20 million Chinese died during the Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945).Nuclear Power: The End of the War Against JapanRemember role in ending fascist war

Unit 731 was amongst one of the most notorious examples of wartime atrocities committed on a civilian population during World War II, where cruel and inhumane experiments were done to thousands of Chinese civilians and Allied prisoners of war. The Rape of Nanking is another example of atrocity committed by Japanese soldiers on a civilian population. Hundreds of thousands of men were slaughtered, while women of all ages were systematically raped and / or killed by Japanese soldiers.Chinese city remembers Japanese \'Rape of Nanjing\'

The Three Alls Policy (Sankō Sakusen) was a Japanese scorched earth policy adopted in China during World War II, the three alls being: "Kill All, Burn All and Loot All". Initiated in 1940 by Ryūkichi Tanaka, the Sankō Sakusen was implemented in full scale in 1942 in north China by Yasuji Okamura who divided the territory into pacified, semi-pacified and unpacified areas. The approval of the policy was given by Imperial Headquarters Army Order Number 575 on 3 December 1941.

Because of the sheer scale of suffering caused by the Japanese military during the 1930s and 1940s, it is often compared to the military of Nazi Germany during 1933–45. Much of the controversy regarding Japan\'s role in World War II revolves around the death rates of prisoners of war and civilians under Japanese occupation. The historian Chalmers Johnson has written that:

It may be pointless to try to establish which World War Two Axis aggressor, Germany or Japan, was the more brutal to the peoples it victimised. The Germans killed six million Jews and 20 million Russians [i.e. Soviet citizens]; the Japanese slaughtered as many as 30 million Filipinos, Malays, Vietnamese, Cambodians, Indonesians and Burmese, at least 23 million of them ethnic Chinese. Both nations looted the countries they conquered on a monumental scale, though Japan plundered more, over a longer period, than the Nazis. Both conquerors enslaved millions and exploited them as forced labourers — and, in the case of the Japanese, as [forced] prostitutes for front-line troops. If you were a Nazi prisoner of war from Britain, America, Australia, New Zealand or Canada (but not Russia) you faced a 4 % chance of not surviving the war; [by comparison] the death rate for Allied POWs held by the Japanese was nearly 30 %.Johnson, Looting of Asia, [2]

-- Soviet Union.

Main article: Soviet war crimes

According to the historian Norman Naimark, the propaganda of Soviet troop newspapers and the orders of Soviet high command were jointly responsible for excesses by members of the Red Army. The general tenor in the writings was that the Red Army had come to Germany as an avenger and judge to punish the Germans. Norman M. Naimark Cambridge: Belknap, 1995 ISBN 0-674-78405-7 On January 12, 1945 army General Cherniakhovsky turned to his troops with the words: There shall be no mercy - for nobody, as there had also been no mercy for us... The land of the fascists must become a desert … Antony Beevor, Berlin: The Downfall 1945, Penguin Books, 2002, ISBN 0-670-88695-5

On the German side, any organized evacuation of civilians was forbidden by the Nazi government to boost morale of the troops, now for the first time defending the "Fatherland", even when the Red Army entered German territory in the last months of 1944. It is estimated that Soviet soldiers raped at least 2,000,000 German women and girls, an estimated 200,000 of whom later died from injuries sustained, committed suicide, or were murdered outright. Richard Overy, Russia\'s War: Blood upon the Snow (1997), ISBN 1-57500-051-2 \'They raped every German female from eight to 80\'Red Army troops raped even Russian women as they freed them from camps

- Mao Zedong. Mao’s first political campaigns after founding the People’s Republic were land reform and the suppression of counter-revolutionaries, which centered on mass executions, often before organized crowds. These campaigns of mass repression targeted former KMT officials, businessmen, former employees of Western companies, intellectuals whose loyalty was suspect, and significant numbers of rural gentry.China Misperceived: American Illusions and Chinese Reality by Steven W. Mosher, pp 72, 73 The U.S. State department in 1976 estimated that there may have been a million killed in the land reform, 800,000 killed in the counterrevolutionary campaign.Deaths in China Due to Communism by Stephen Rosskamm Shalom, pg 24 Mao himself claimed a total of 700,000 killed during these early years (1949–53).Mao: The Unknown Story by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday, pg 337: "Mao claimed that the total number executed was 700,000, but this did not include those beaten or tortured to death in the post-1949 land reform, which would at the very least be as many again. Then there were suicides, which, based on several local inquiries, were very probably about equal to the number of those killed." Also cited in Mao Zedong, by Jonathan Spence, as cited here. However, because there was a policy to select "at least one landlord, and usually several, in virtually every village for public execution",Twitchett, Denis; John K. Fairbank. The Cambridge history of China. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 052124336X. Retrieved on 2007-03-25.  1 million deaths seems to be an absolute minimum, and many authors agree on a figure of between 2 million and 5 million dead.The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression by Stephane Courtois, et al; China: A Long March into Night by Jean-Louis Margolin, pg 479Estimates, sources and calculations from R.J. Rummel’s China’s Bloody Century: Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1900 (See lines 1 through 90) In addition, at least 1.5 million people were sent to "reform through labour" camps (laogai).Short, Philip (2001). Mao: A Life. Owl Books, 436. ISBN 0805066381. “At least a million-and-a-half more disappeared into the newly established \'reform through labour\' camps, purpose-built to accommodate them.”  Mao’s personal role in ordering mass executions is undeniable.Commentary transferred to Huang Jing regarding the supplementary plan to suppress counterrevolutionaries in TianjinMao\'s "Killing Quotas" by Li Changyu. Human Rights in China (HRIC). September 26, 2005, at Shandong University He defended these killings as necessary for the securing of power.Terrible Honeymoon: Struggling with the Problem of Terror in Early 1950s China by Jeremy Brown

It is estimated that hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, perished in the violence of the Cultural Revolution.Source List and Detailed Death Tolls for the Twentieth Century Hemoclysm. Historical Atlas of the Twentieth Century. Retrieved on 2007-02-27. When Mao was informed of such losses, particularly that people had been driven to suicide, he blithely commented: "People who try to commit suicide - don\'t attempt to save them! . . . China is such a populous nation, it is not as if we cannot do without a few people."MacFarquhar, Roderick and Schoenhals, Michael. Mao\'s Last Revolution. Harvard University Press, 2006. p. 110 ISBN 0674023323

- Equatorial Guinea. In September 1968, Francisco Macías Nguema was elected first president of Equatorial Guinea, and independence was granted in October.Francisco Macias Nguema In July 1970, Nguema created a single-party state. In 1972 Nguema took complete control of the government and assumed the title of President for Life. Nguema’s regime was characterized by abandonment of all government functions except internal security, which was accomplished by terror; he acted as chief judge who sentenced thousands to death. This led to the death or exile of up to 1/3 of the country\'s population. Out of a population of 300,000, an estimated 80,000 had been killed.Coup plotter faces life in Africa\'s most notorious jailTrue hell on earth: Simon Mann faces imprisonment in the cruellest jail on the planet Uneasy around educated people, he had killed everyone who wore spectacles. All schools were ordered closed in 1975. The economy collapsed, and skilled citizens and foreigners left.If you think this one\'s bad you should have seen his uncle

- Idi Amin Dada. Idi Amin, dictator of Uganda from 1971 to 1979, is notorious for being one of the bloodiest dictators of the 20th century.2003: \'War criminal\' Idi Amin dies The exact number of people killed is unknown. The International Commission of Jurists estimated the death toll at no fewer than 80,000 and more likely around 300,000.Idi Amin An estimate compiled by exile organizations with the help of Amnesty International puts the number killed at 500,000. The victims soon came to include members of other ethnic groups, religious leaders, journalists, senior bureaucrats, judges, lawyers, students and intellectuals, criminal suspects, and foreign nationals. In some cases entire villages were wiped out.Idi Amin killer file Bodies were dumped into the River Nile, on at least one occasion in quantities sufficient to clog the Owen Falls Hydro-Electric Dam in Jinja.Idi Amin: \'Butcher of Uganda\', CNN, August 16, 2003

- Ethiopia. During Mengistu’s 17-year reign it was not uncommon to see students, suspected government critics or rebel sympathisers hanging from lampposts each morning. Mengistu himself is alleged to have murdered opponents by garroting or shooting them, saying that he was leading by example.Guilty of genocide: the leader who unleashed a \'Red Terror\' on Africa by Jonathan Clayton, The Times Online, December 13, 2006 Some experts have estimated that 150,000 university students, intellectuals and politicians were killed during Mengistu\'s rule.\'Butcher of Addis Ababa\' is guilty of genocide with torture regime Amnesty International estimates that up to 500,000 people were killed during the Red Terror of 1977 and 1978.Zimbabwe won\'t extradite former Ethiopian dictator On 12 December 2006 Mengistu Haile Mariam was found guilty of genocide and other offences. He was sentenced to life in prison in January 2007.Ethiopian Dictator Sentenced to Prison by Les Neuhaus, The Associated Press, January 11, 2007

- Western New Guinea. Amnesty International has estimated that more than 100,000 Papuans, one-sixth of the population, have died as a result of government-sponsored violence against West Papuans,Report claims secret genocide in Indonesia - University of Sydney while others had previously specified much higher death tolls.West Papua Support In 2004 th