The Great Big Book of Horrible Things: The Definitive Chronicle of History's 100 Worst Atrocities (97 page)

An Lushan Rebellion

Fang La Rebellion

Ugandan Bush War

General Means

WARS (78 MULTICIDES):
The violence at their core had organized armies fighting each other openly.

INTERNATIONAL WARS (48 MULTICIDES):
Multiple sovereign nations fought each other.

CIVIL WARS (30 MULTICIDES):
Factions fought inside one country.

INSTITUTIONAL OPPRESSION (21 MULTICIDES):
These atrocities don’t have enough organized conflict to count as wars. Most of the killing flows in one direction, from the oppressors to the oppressed, in the form of dictators, slavery, and genocide.

General Cause

IDEOLOGICAL MULTICIDES (32 MULTICIDES):
These were driven by some sort of fanatic, utopian ideology such as Communism or religion. This point is debatable because every historic event will have some participants who are in it for themselves and others who are in it for bigger principles. But if we were to arrange my top one hundred on a spectrum, some will be more ideological than others. I’m saying that “some” is 32. Among them:

RELIGION (13 MULTICIDES):
The single most important cause for the killing was a belief in god(s).

COMMUNISM (6 MULTICIDES):
All the major perpetrators were Communist.

RED-WHITE CIVIL WARS (6 MULTICIDES):
Communists fought anti-Communists.

MISCELLANEOUS IDEOLOGICAL CONFLICTS (7 MULTICIDES).

ETHNIC MULTICIDES (28 MULTICIDES):
These conflicts were internal or external. They arose just because the other side was different. This type includes genocides, ethnic civil wars, and colonial conflicts, but not wars between sovereign nations treating each other as equals.

GREED (18 MULTICIDES):
At some point, the control of a specific resource or source of wealth became an issue in the multicide, although not necessarily the most important issue. Among the most frequent resources in dispute:

SLAVES (6 MULTICIDES):

Slave Wars

Mideast Slave Trade

Atlantic Slave Trade

Haitian Slave Revolt

American Civil War

Mahdi Revolt

OIL (5 MULTICIDES):

Second World War

Angolan Civil War

Saddam Hussein

Iran-Iraq War

Sanctions against Iraq

DEBT (4 MULTICIDES):

Third Mithridatic War

Slave Wars

Mahdi Revolt

Second World War

SUGAR (3 MULTICIDES):

Atlantic Slave Trade

Haitian Slave Revolt

Cuban Revolution

GOLD (3 MULTICIDES):

Mideast Slave Trade

Atlantic Slave Trade

Conquest of the Americas

GRAIN (3 MULTICIDES):

Slave Wars

Famines in British India

Second World War

Principal Location

CHINA (14 or 16 MULTICIDES):

Age of Warring States

Qin Shi Huang Di

Xin Dynasty

The Three Kingdoms of China

An Lushan Rebellion

Fang La Rebellion

Fall of the Yuan Dynasty

Fall of the Ming Dynasty

Sino-Dzungar War

Taiping Rebellion

Panthay Rebellion

Hui Rebellion

Chinese Civil War

Mao Zedong

(Largely but not exclusively in China: Chinggis Khan, Second World War)

EUROPE (7 or 8 MULTICIDES):
widespread and multinational inside Europe, less so outside of it.

Fall of the Western Roman Empire

War of the Spanish Succession

War of the Austrian Succession

Seven Years War

Napoleonic Wars

First World War

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

(Largely but not exclusively in Europe: Second World War)

RUSSIA (6 or 7 MULTICIDES):

Russo-Tatar War

The Time of Troubles

Peter the Great

Crimean War

Russian Civil War

Joseph Stalin

(Largely but not exclusively in Russia: Second World War)

FRANCE (5 or 6 MULTICIDES):

Gallic War

Albigensian Crusade

Hundred Years War

French Wars of Religion

Franco-Prussian War

(Largely but not exclusively in France: First World War)

ROMAN EMPIRE (5 MULTICIDES):
More than just Italy or single provinces.

First Punic War

Second Punic War

Gladiatorial Games

Fall of the Eastern Roman Empire

Justinian

INDIA (5 MULTICIDES):

Bahmani-Vijayanagara War

Aurangzeb

Famines in British India

Partition of India

Bengali Genocide

MEXICO (4 or 5 MULTICIDES):

Mayan Collapse

Aztec Human Sacrifice

Mexican War of Independence

Mexican Revolution

(Largely but not exclusively in Mexico: Conquest of the Americas)

VIETNAM (4 MULTICIDES):

Chinese Conquest of Vietnam

French Indochina War

Vietnam War

Postwar Vietnam

KOREA (3 MULTICIDES):

Goguryeo-Sui Wars

North Korea

Korean War

Historical Trends

POST-COLONIAL AFRICAN CIVIL WARS (9 MULTICIDES):
Tribal enemies inside an African nation fought a seemingly endless war with small arms, little discipline, and no mercy, often funded by outside interests.

ROMAN CONQUEST AND RESISTANCE (6 MULTICIDES):
The rise but not the fall of Rome.

WARS OF TRENCHES AND IDIOTIC FRONTAL ASSAULTS (6 MULTICIDES):
Clueless generals of the Industrial Era sent their men charging against entrenched riflemen. After they were slaughtered, they dug in, waited awhile, and tried again.

CHINESE DYNASTIES COLLAPSING (5 MULTICIDES):
Everything’s plugging along just fine until all hell breaks loose.

EUROPEAN BALANCE-OF-POWER WARS FOUGHT WITH MUSKETS (5 MULTICIDES):
Bewigged monarchs of the Enlightenment played a giant chess game with live ammo.

CHINESE PEASANT REVOLTS (4 MULTICIDES):
Chinese peasants are stereotypically obedient and subservient, except when they aren’t.

MONGOL INVASIONS (4 MULTICIDES):
The barbarians are waiting just over the horizon to come crashing down on civilization.

Participants

FRENCH (18 MULTICIDES)

CHINESE (17 MULTICIDES)

BRITISH (16 MULTICIDES)

RUSSIANS (12 MULTICIDES)

GERMANS (11 MULTICIDES)

AMERICANS (11 MULTICIDES)

ROMANS (9 MULTICIDES)

AUTRIANS (7 MULTICIDES)

SPANISH (7 MULTICIDES)

POLES (7 MULTICIDES)

TURKS (7 MULTICIDES)

TOTAL NUMBER OF DEATHS
*

ONE HUNDRED DEADLIEST MULTICIDES:
455 million killed overall. This comes to about 725,000 people killed for every page of this book, or 2,000 people killed per word.

WARS:
315 million, including 49 million soldiers and 266 million civilians. On average, 85 percent of the people killed in wars have been civilians.

INSTITUTIONAL OPPRESSION:
141 million.

IDEOLOGICAL MULTICIDES:
142 million.

RELIGION:
47 million.
†

COMMUNISM:
67 million.

RED-WHITE CIVIL WARS:
26 million.