The Great Big Book of Horrible Things: The Definitive Chronicle of History's 100 Worst Atrocities (96 page)

Civil wars, for instance, aren’t really about land. Instead, the territory is part of a whole package of prizes that goes to the winner—including control over the nation’s treasury, courts, churches, and schools. The land is the place where the prize is kept, not the prize itself, and it usually transfers all at once. In many international wars, the winners forego territorial expansion in favor of reparations and veto power over the loser’s foreign policy. Even when land changes hands, the war is often about something else, and the land is just a way of keeping score. The way that Alsace-Lorraine has been traded back and forth after every war between France and Germany is a prime example of this.

EVIL DICTATORS . . .

For every cruel psychopath slaughtering hundreds of thousands without mercy, I found another ruler with a better historical reputation killing just as many. Idi Amin, Saddam Hussein, and Adolf Hitler, for example, easily fit the stereotypes of the devil incarnate, but other deadly rulers on my list left a mixed legacy as lawgivers (Justinian, Napoleon), modernizers (Peter the Great, Mao Zedong), and organizers (Qin Shi Huang Di). One of the most frightening things I discovered is that murdering huge numbers of people doesn’t necessarily make you a bad person—at least, in the eyes of history.

. . . ESPECIALLY HITLER

The other day, I saw an anti-war music video in which images of horror were flashed onscreen while the band sang about the need for love. It’s a fine sentiment, but my first impression was that every image was politically safe.

Injured children. Abu Ghraib Prison. The Ku Klux Klan. Adolf Hitler.

We all hate Hitler. It doesn’t take courage to denounce Hitler. He’s safely gone and completely discredited.

It takes more courage to denounce someone who has mainstream admirers, like Ataturk, Arafat, Mao Zedong, or Robert E. Lee. The latter two make an interesting pair because you will rarely see them denounced in the same context. American conservatives who have no problem listing Mao as history’s greatest monster go strangely silent on the matter of Confederates. Leftists who would never wear a Confederate flag on their cap will gladly emblazon quotes from Chairman Mao on their T-shirts.

As someone once said, “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?”

WHAT I FOUND:
RAW NUMBERS

I
t’s impossible to find a common cause running through all one hundred of the multicides on my list, unless I pick causes that are too vague to be much help (“hatred,” “stupidity,” “power”). When I tighten my criteria, I find that more specific categories rarely account for even one-eighth of the total. Naturally most of the multicides on my list can fit several types—colonial revolts can become ideological civil wars; cultural conflicts can seem religious; all wars contain a smattering of genocide—but if I assign each event only to the one or two categories that fit the whole atrocity best, I get the totals below.

The best use of these numbers is for broad comparisons of causes. For example, you may notice that religious conflicts are almost three times more common than dynastic disputes. However, if adding/subtracting one or two multicides will completely overturn a comparison, you probably shouldn’t consider that comparison significant.

Specific Nature

HEGEMONIAL WAR (13 MULTICIDES):
Similar countries fought over who’s Number 1.

First Punic War

Second Punic War

Third Mithridatic War

Burma-Siam Wars

Great Northern War

War of the Austrian Succession

Seven Years War

Crimean War

War of the Triple Alliance

Franco-Prussian War

First World War

Iran-Iraq War

Second Congo War

FAILED STATE (12 MULTICIDES):
The central government collapsed, and the land was broken up among warlords.

Age of Warring States

Xin Dynasty

The Three Kingdoms of China

Fall of the Western Roman Empire

Mayan Collapse

The Time of Troubles

Fall of the Ming Dynasty

Mexican Revolution

Russian Civil War

Greco-Turkish War

Chinese Civil War

Somalian Chaos

RELIGIOUS CONFLICT (11 MULTICIDES):
Followers of rival religions fight for cultural dominance.

Crusades

Albigensian Crusade

French Wars of Religion

Thirty Years War

Cromwell’s Invasion of Ireland

Taiping Rebellion

Panthay Rebellion

Hui Rebellion

Mahdi Revolt

Partition of India

War in the Sudan

IDEOLOGICAL CIVIL WAR (10 MULTICIDES):
Factions fought inside a single nation over which type of government to have.

American Civil War

Mexican Revolution

Russian Civil War

Chinese Civil War

Spanish Civil War

Korean War

Vietnam War

Angolan Civil War

Mozambican Civil War

Soviet-Afghan War

WAR OF CONQUEST (9 MULTICIDES):
The primary violence is one country trying to take over another.

Second Persian War

Gallic War

Justinian’s Western Wars

Goguryeo-Sui Wars

Hulagu’s Invasion

Conquest of the Americas

Aurangzeb’s Deccan War

French Conquest of Algeria

Italo-Ethiopian War

ETHNIC CLEANSING (9 MULTICIDES):
The perpetrators were trying to get rid of a hated ethnicity in one burst of activity.

Conquest of the Americas (one
very long
burst of activity)

Cromwell’s Invasion of Ireland

Sino-Dzungar War

First World War (Armenians)

Second World War (Jews, Gypsies)

Expulsion of Germans from Eastern Europe (post World War II)

Partition of India

Bengali Genocide

Rwandan Genocide

RACISM (8 MULTICIDES):
The main perpetrators specifically targeted their victims as a physically distinct, genetically inferior race, unworthy of human decency.

Atlantic Slave Trade

Conquest of the Americas

Haitian Slave Revolt

Famines in British India

Congo Free State

Italo-Ethiopian War

Second World War

War in the Sudan

COLONIAL REVOLT (8 MULTICIDES):
The people of a distant region tried to throw off their alien overlords.

Slave Wars

Roman-Jewish Wars

Fall of the Yuan Dynasty

Haitian Slave Revolt

Mexican War of Independence

Cuban Revolution

French Indochina War

Algerian War of Independence

CLASH OF CULTURES (7 MULTICIDES):
Very different countries fought over who’s Number 1.

Second Persian War

Bahmani-Vijayanagara War

Aurangzeb’s Deccan War

Russo-Tatar War

Great Turkish War

Russo-Turkish War

Second World War (Pacific war, Russian front)

WORLD CONQUEST (7 MULTICIDES):
One nation tried to take over every country within reach.

Alexander the Great

Age of Warring States

Chinggis Khan

Timur

Napoleonic Wars

Shaka

Second World War

COMMUNIST DICTATORS (6 MULTICIDES):
A Communist government or dictator oppressed the people.

Joseph Stalin

North Korea

Mao Zedong

Haile Mengistu

Khmer Rouge

Postwar Vietnam

MODERNISM (6 MULTICIDES):
A nation is dragged kicking and screaming into the modern world.

Peter the Great

Napoleonic-Revolutionary Wars

Famines in British India

Congo Free State

Chinese Civil War

Mao Zedong

COLONIAL EXPLOITATION (4 MULTICIDES):
Most of the dying came as the perpetrators drained an alien region for their own profit.

Mideast Slave Trade

Atlantic Slave Trade

Famines in British India

Congo Free State

DYNASTIC DISPUTE (4 MULTICIDES):
Each side fought in order to put a different member of the ruling family on the throne.

Xin Dynasty

Hundred Years War

The Time of Troubles

War of the Spanish Succession

ETHNIC CIVIL WAR (3 MULTICIDES):
Tribes fought each other inside a single country.

War of the Allies

War in the Sudan

Biafran War

HUMAN SACRIFICE (2 MULTICIDES):
Ritualized killing was performed in hopes of earning the favor of supernatural forces.

Gladiatorial Games

Aztec Human Sacrifice

MISCELLANEOUS

DESPOT (3 MULTICIDES):
An oppressive ruler, without the characteristics that would put his reign into another category.

Qin Shi Huang Di

Idi Amin

Saddam Hussein

COMMON CIVIL WAR (3 MULTICIDES):
Fighting inside a nation, but without the characteristics that would put it into another category.