The Great Big Book of Horrible Things: The Definitive Chronicle of History's 100 Worst Atrocities (105 page)

36.
David E. Stannard, "The Politics of Genocide Scholarship," in Alan S. Rosenbaum, ed.,
Is the Holocaust Unique? Perspectives on Comparative Genocide (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996), p. 178. By one estimate, 2.4 million of the 5.1 million victims of the Holocaust died of disease in ghettos and concentration camps.

37.
Rummel,
Statistics of Democide,
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/SOD.TAB2.1A.GIF
(accessed March 20, 2011).

38.
The New York Public Library American History Desk Reference (New York: Macmillan, 1997), p. 15.

39.
Thornton,
American Indian Holocaust and Survival, p. 23; Stannard,
American Holocaust, pp. 266–267, 339–342.

40.
Livi-Bacci,
Concise History of World Population History, p. 31; Coe, Dean, and Benson,
Atlas of Ancient America, p. 13; Mann,
1491, p. 148.

41.
The easiest solution would be to roughly guess that somewhere from one-third to two-thirds of the population decline can be blamed on the Europeans. That's 11 million to 24 million out of 35 million.

If we prefer to build a case-by-case indictment, let's ignore the wild guesses about pre-Columbian populations, and count only the authenticated number of natives who disappeared under European rule as recorded from one colonial census to the next. Well after the first wave of disease had done its worst and the Spaniards were running the show, 112,000 Cuban natives disappeared between 1512 and 1600, as did 5,300,000 Mexicans (1548–1605) and 700,000 Peruvians (1572–1620) (Livi-Bacci,
Concise History of World Population History
, pp. 55–56). In Hispaniola, the population dropped from 60,000 in 1508 to 500 in 1548 (Meltzer,
Slavery
, vol. 2, p. 8). According to Russell Thornton, in
American Indian Holocaust and Survival
, p. 90, the North American Indian population went from 600,000 in 1800 to 200,000 in 1890, during the advance of the American frontier. Then there are the 800,000 Indians in the Amazon region who disappeared during the twentieth century. Since governments are usually held accountable for bad things that happen on their watch, that's 7.3 million well-documented lives lost under Western domination in just a few quick calculations, which gives us a baseline to start with. And that doesn't even count Central America or the Aztecs and Incas who were killed directly during the conquest.

This suggests an outside range of 7 million to 24 million indictable deaths, which means that regardless of the exact death toll, the American conquest belongs high on my list, ranking no lower than number 19 and possibly as high as number 4.

Genocide

1.
Diamond,
Third Chimpanzee, pp. 289, 299.

2.
Ibid., p. 303.

3.
The median of twelve published estimates. See
http://www.necrometrics.com/20c5m.htm#Holocaust
.

4.
The median of six published estimates. See
http://www.necrometrics.com/20c5m.htm#Holodomor
.

5.
The death toll is the geometric mean of the high (1 million) and the low (250,000) number. Ian Hancock, "Responses to the Romani Holocaust," in Alan S. Rosenbaum, ed.,
Is the Holocaust Unique? Perspectives on Comparative Genocide (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996), pp. 39–64.

6.
The number is the geometric mean of the high (1.2 million deaths, estimated by Tibetan government-in-exile) and the low (100,000 deaths, estimated by Jack Nusan Porter,
Genocide and Human Rights (Washington, DC: University Press of America,1982)) numbers.

7.
Median of five published estimates. See
http://www.necrometrics.com/20c5m.htm#Yugo
.

8.
Martin Mennecke et al., "Genocide in Bosnia-Herzegovina," in Samuel Totten et al., eds.,
Century of Genocide: Critical Essays and Eyewitness Accounts, 2d ed. (New York: Routledge, 2004), p. 422.

9.
Totten,
Dictionary of Genocide: A-L, p. 26.

10.
McEvedy,
Penguin Historical Atlas of the Pacific, p. 76.

11.
"Experts Double 1788 Estimate of Aborigines,"
Advertiser, February 26, 1987, citing Derek John Mulvaney and John Peter White,
Australians to 1788 (Broadway, NSW, Australia: Fairfax, Syme & Weldon Associates, 1987).

12.
Diamond,
Third Chimpanzee, p. 283; Cocker,
Rivers of Blood, p. 177.

13.
Ben Kiernan, "The First Genocide: Carthage, 146 BC,"
Diogenes 203 (2004), pp. 27–39.

14.
The median of thirteen published estimates. See
http://www.necrometrics.com/20c1m.htm#Burundi72
.

15.
The Timor-Leste Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation (CAVR),
Conflict-Related Deaths in Timor-Leste: 1974–1999,
http://www.cavr-timorleste.org/updateFiles/english/CONFLICT-RELATED%20DEATHS.pdf
(accessed March 11, 2011).

16.
Joshua 8–11.

17.
Alfred W. Crosby,
Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe 900–1900 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 80.

18.
Pakenham,
Scramble for Africa, p. 615: The Nama population was reduced by 10,200 (from 20,000 to 9,800), the Herero by 65,000 (from 80,000 to 15,000).

19.
Numbers 31; David Plotz, "The Bible's Most Hideous War Crime,"
Slate, August 23, 2006,
http://www.slate.com/id/2146473/entry/2148272/
.

20.
Diamond,
Third Chimpanzee, pp. 278–281.

21.
Dale Mackenzie Brown, "The Fate of Greenland's Vikings,"
Archaeology, February 28, 2000.

22.
Douglas L. Oliver,
Polynesia in Early Historic Times (Honolulu: Bess Press, 2002), p. 255.

23.
Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza et al.,
The History and Geography of Human Genes (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), p. 366.

24.
Segal,
Islam's Black Slaves; "Muhammad and Jews of Medina,"
Muhammad: Legacy of a Prophet, PBS,
http://www.pbs.org/muhammad/ma_jews.shtml
(accessed March 11, 2011).

25.
Chalk and Jonassohn,
History and Sociology of Genocide, p. 65.

26.
Xenophon,
Hellenica, trans. H. G. Dakyns, book 2, ch. 2,
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1174/1174-h/1174-h.htm
(accessed March 9, 2011).

Burma-Siam Wars

1.
Peter Williamson Floris, an English visitor to Bangkok in 1612, described these wars as "the occasion of the almost total destruction of the kingdom of Pegu, [which] caused the loss of many millions of lives." Multiple contemporary witnesses clearly considered these wars to be extraordinarily destructive. For the sake of ranking, I'm calling the death toll for these conflicts 900,000—based on adding the body counts from individual events, which I'll admit are rather dubious case by case, but may reflect an accurate order of magnitude for the whole. Anthony Reid, in
Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988), estimated the combined population of the two principal kingdoms at around 5 million, with 23 million people living throughout Southeast Asia.

2.
Gaspero Balbi, "Voyage to Pegu, and Observations There, Circa 1583,"
SOAS Bulletin of Burma Research 1, no. 2 (Autumn 2003),

(accessed March 9, 2011).

3.
Fred Arthur Neale,
Narrative of a Residence at the Capital of the Kingdom of Siam (London: Office of the National Illustrated Library, 1852), p. 208.

4.
"Divine Rights,"
Bangkok Post, January 25, 2001; "Mystery of a Princess,"
Bangkok Post, February 25, 1999; "Princess to the Rescue,"
Nation (Thailand), March 1, 1999.

5.
Sale,
Universal History (1759), vol. 7, p. 108.

6.
"Warrior King Remains a Very Modern Mystery,"
Nation (Thailand), April 30, 2006.

French Wars of Religion

1.
Knecht,
French Religious Wars, p. 91 ("The total of deaths during the wars has been roughly estimated at between two and four million").

2.
Frieda,
Catherine de Medici, p. 136.

3.
Knecht,
French Religious Wars, pp. 38–41.

4.
Ibid., pp. 41–46.

5.
"Henry III," in
Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th ed., vol. 13, p. 291; Horne,
La Belle France, p. 89.

6.
Frieda,
Catherine de Medici, p. 255.

7.
Knecht,
French Religious Wars, p. 53.

8.
Turchin,
Historical Dynamics, p. 181.

9.
Frieda,
Catherine de Medici, p. 328.

10.
Horne,
La Belle France, p. 91.

11.
Ibid., p. 98.

12.
Ibid., p. 97.

13.
Monty Python and the Holy Grail, directed by Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones (Sony Pictures, 1975).

Russo-Tatar War

1.
Henri Troyat,
Ivan the Terrible (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1984), p. 144.

2.
Blum,
Lord and Peasant in Russia, p. 159.

3.
The English ambassador, Giles Fletcher, reported that 800,000 Muscovites died in the fire and panic, which was clearly an exaggeration even if a flood of rural refugees entered into the city. The peacetime population of Moscow had been counted as 100,000; then after the fire, in 1580, the papal ambassador reported only 30,000 inhabitants. Brian Glyn Williams,
The Crimean Tatars: The Diaspora Experience and the Forging of a Nation (Leiden: Brill, 2001), p. 50; Isabel de Madariaga,
Ivan the Terrible: First Tsar of Russia (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005), p. 266.

The Time of Troubles

1.
Duffy and Ricci,
Czars, p. 174: "Although no reliable figures exist, the population is estimated to have plummeted during the Time of Troubles from 14 million to 9 million." J. P. Cooper, in
New Cambridge Modern History, vol. 4:
The Decline of Spain and the Thirty Years War, 1609-48/49 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979), p. 602, offers a lower estimate but in the same order of magnitude: "The Troubles had cost some two and a half million lives."

2.
Henri Troyat,
Ivan the Terrible (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1984); Joan Bos, "Ivan IV of Russia,"
Joan's Mad Monarchs Series,
http://www.xs4all.nl/~monarchs/madmonarchs/ivan4/ivan4_bio.htm
(accessed March 20, 2011).