First Genocide of the 20th Century?

[Queequeg]

I'm reading Hannah Arendt and A Shameful Act simultaneously so this seems a really interesting question.  I'm voting Armenia.

[Eddie Teach]

I'm not sure why you consider proximity to the year 1900 something significant.

[jimmy olsen]

Shouldn't it be the Congo Free State?

[Admiral Yi]

This is a really pointless question.  What exactly changes if we call something a genocide or not?

[Queequeg]

Shouldn't it be the Congo Free State?

I thought of it as a 19th Century phenomenon. 

I'm not sure why you consider proximity to the year 1900 something significant.

I think "genocide" is an actual practice that relies on a certain type of rhetorical justification and state involvement that I don't think many states were capable of in the 19th Century.  That's clearly a related argument, though. 

[Eddie Teach]

I think genocide is something that has existed for a long time. We just used to call it War.

[Monoriu]

I think genocide is something that has existed for a long time. We just used to call it War.

It was probably really common in the, I don't know, Stone Age or something.  I don't think a tribe expanded by moving into unoccupied land.  They probably killed everybody to move in. 

[PDH]

Genocide or Ethnocide is a more recent phenomena.  It describes intent to destroy not only the people, but a culture they embody.  Previous wars, conquests and invasions saw not the extinction of culture, but the mixing and fusion of cultures. 

Germany trying to eradicate European Jewry is Genocide.  The Bell-Beaker people conquering previous societies over time and adopting their technologies and rituals when they could is not Genocide.  Given my definition (your mileage may vary), the German colonial attacks were Genocide.

n.b. my statements might be framed in such a way as to elicit discussion...

[jimmy olsen]

I think genocide is something that has existed for a long time. We just used to call it War.

It was probably really common in the, I don't know, Stone Age or something.  I don't think a tribe expanded by moving into unoccupied land.  They probably killed everybody to move in.

I don't think that the land was crowded enough to support endemic warfare until agricultural societies began to emerge.

[Razgovory]

I think genocide is something that has existed for a long time. We just used to call it War.

It was probably really common in the, I don't know, Stone Age or something.  I don't think a tribe expanded by moving into unoccupied land.  They probably killed everybody to move in.

I don't think that the land was crowded enough to support endemic warfare until agricultural societies began to emerge.

Well you would be wrong.  The Inuit wiped out the Dorset culture.  It's thought that interbreeding was minimal.  Just destruction of one culture by another.

[jimmy olsen]

I think genocide is something that has existed for a long time. We just used to call it War.

It was probably really common in the, I don't know, Stone Age or something.  I don't think a tribe expanded by moving into unoccupied land.  They probably killed everybody to move in.

I don't think that the land was crowded enough to support endemic warfare until agricultural societies began to emerge.

Well you would be wrong.  The Inuit wiped out the Dorset culture.  It's thought that interbreeding was minimal.  Just destruction of one culture by another.

That event occured after the emergence of agricultural societies.

[Sophie Scholl]

Genocide or Ethnocide is a more recent phenomena.  It describes intent to destroy not only the people, but a culture they embody.  Previous wars, conquests and invasions saw not the extinction of culture, but the mixing and fusion of cultures. 

The Old Testament is filled with what qualifies as genocide by your definition.  The results were probably closer to the mixing and fusion that you mention, as Ball seemed pretty damn hard to eliminate, but there was certainly attempts at the effort.

[jimmy olsen]

I think genocide is something that has existed for a long time. We just used to call it War.

While massacring the male population was not uncommon, typically the women and children were spared.

[Razgovory]

I think genocide is something that has existed for a long time. We just used to call it War.

It was probably really common in the, I don't know, Stone Age or something.  I don't think a tribe expanded by moving into unoccupied land.  They probably killed everybody to move in.

I don't think that the land was crowded enough to support endemic warfare until agricultural societies began to emerge.

Well you would be wrong.  The Inuit wiped out the Dorset culture.  It's thought that interbreeding was minimal.  Just destruction of one culture by another.

That event occured after the emergence of agricultural societies.

Neither culture was agricultural, or even pastoral.  They were strictly hunter-gather.

[Eddie Teach]

I think genocide is something that has existed for a long time. We just used to call it War.

While massacring the male population was not uncommon, typically the women and children were spared.

They were raped and enslaved, their cultures destroyed.