List of wars and disasters by death toll

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See also: List of wars, List of battles and other violent events by death toll, and List of natural disasters by death toll

This is a list of wars and human-made disasters by death toll. It covers the Lowest Estimate of death as well as the Highest Estimate, the name of the event, the location, and the start and end of each war. Some events overlap categories.

This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.

Contents

[edit] Wars and armed conflicts

 This section is missing citations or needs footnotes. Please help add inline citations to guard against copyright violations and factual inaccuracies. (August 2007)

These figures of one million or more deaths include the deaths of civilians from diseases, famine, etc., as well as deaths of soldiers in battle and possible massacres and genocide.

Where only one estimate is available, it appears in both the low and high estimates. This is a sortable table. Click on the column sort buttons to sort results numerically or alphabetically.

Lowest Estimate Highest Estimate Event Location From To See also
&0000000040000000.00000040,000,000 &0000000080000000.00000080,000,000[1] Muslim conquest in the Indian subcontinent India 11th century 17th century Timur, Mahmud Ghaznavi
&0000000040000000.00000040,000,000[2] 72,000,000[3] World War II (including deaths during The Holocaust) Worldwide 1939 1945 World War II casualties and Sino-Japanese War[4]
&0000000033000000.00000033,000,000[5] &0000000036000000.00000036,000,000[6] An Shi Rebellion China 756 763 Medieval warfare
&0000000030000000.00000030,000,000[7] 60,000,000[8] Mongol Conquests Asia, Europe, Middle East 1207 1472 Mongol invasions and Tatar invasions
&0000000025000000.00000025,000,000[9] &0000000025000000.00000025,000,000 Manchu conquest of the Ming Dynasty China 1616 1662 Qing Dynasty, Zhang Xianzhong
&0000000020000000.00000020,000,000[10] &0000000030000000.00000030,000,000+[11] Taiping Rebellion China 1851 1864 Dungan revolt
&0000000015000000.00000015,000,000 &0000000025000000.00000025,000,000 World War I (High estimate includes Spanish flu deaths)[12] Worldwide 1914 1918 World War I casualties
&0000000010000000.00000010,000,000[13] &0000000020000000.00000020,000,000[13] Conquests of Timur Middle East, India, Asia, Russia 1369 1405 List of wars in the Muslim world[14]
&0000000008000000.0000008,000,000[15][16] &0000000012000000.00000012,000,000 Muslim Rebellion China 1855 1877 Panthay Rebellion
&0000000008000000.0000008,000,000[17] &0000000008000000.0000008,000,000[18] Fall of Rome Roman Empire 3th century 5th century Jewish-Roman Wars
&Expression error: Unrecognised punctuation character ","Expression error: Unrecognised punctuation character ","Expression error: Unrecognised punctuation character ","Expression error: Unrecognised punctuation character ","Expression error: Unrecognised punctuation character ","Expression error: Unrecognised punctuation character ","Expression error: Unrecognised punctuation character ","Expression error: Unrecognised punctuation character ","Expression error: Unrecognised punctuation character ","Expression error: Unrecognised punctuation character ","Expression error: Unrecognised punctuation character ","Expression error: Unrecognised punctuation character ","Expression error: Unrecognised punctuation character ","Expression error: Unrecognised punctuation character ","Expression error: Unrecognised punctuation character ","Expression error: Unrecognised punctuation character ",".Expression error: Unrecognised punctuation character ","2,825,000[19] &0000000009000000.0000009,000,000[20] Russian Civil War Russia 1917 1921 List of civil wars
&0000000003800000.0000003,800,000[21] &0000000005400000.0000005,400,000[22] Second Congo War Democratic Republic of the Congo 1998 2003 First Congo War
&0000000003500000.0000003,500,000[citation needed] &0000000006500000.0000006,500,000[citation needed] Napoleonic Wars Europe, Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Ocean 1804 1815 Napoleonic Wars casualties
&0000000003000000.0000003,000,000 &0000000011500000.00000011,500,000[23] Thirty Years' War Holy Roman Empire 1618 1648 Religious war
&0000000003000000.0000003,000,000[citation needed] &0000000007000000.0000007,000,000[citation needed] Yellow Turban Rebellion China 184 205 Part of Three Kingdoms War
&0000000002500000.0000002,500,000[citation needed] &0000000003500000.0000003,500,000[24] Korean War Korean Peninsula 1950 1953 Cold War
&Expression error: Unrecognised punctuation character ","Expression error: Unrecognised punctuation character ","Expression error: Unrecognised punctuation character ","Expression error: Unrecognised punctuation character ","Expression error: Unrecognised punctuation character ","Expression error: Unrecognised punctuation character ","Expression error: Unrecognised punctuation character ","Expression error: Unrecognised punctuation character ","Expression error: Unrecognised punctuation character ","Expression error: Unrecognised punctuation character ","Expression error: Unrecognised punctuation character ","Expression error: Unrecognised punctuation character ","Expression error: Unrecognised punctuation character ","Expression error: Unrecognised punctuation character ","Expression error: Unrecognised punctuation character ","Expression error: Unrecognised punctuation character ",".Expression error: Unrecognised punctuation character ","1,021,442[25] &0000000003500000.0000003,500,000[citation needed] Vietnam War South East Asia 1959 1975 Indochina War
&0000000002000000.0000002,000,000 &0000000004000000.0000004,000,000[26] French Wars of Religion France 1562 1598 Religious war
&0000000002000000.0000002,000,000[27] &0000000002000000.0000002,000,000 Second Sudanese Civil War Sudan 1983 2005 Religious war
&0000000001000000.0000001,000,000[28] &0000000002000000.0000002,000,000[29] Crusades Holy Land, Europe 1095 1291 Religious war
&0000000002000000.0000002,000,000[30] &0000000002000000.0000002,000,000 Shaka's conquests Africa 1816 1828
&0000000001500000.0000001,500,000[31] &0000000002000000.0000002,000,000[32] Afghan Civil War Afghanistan 1979 present
&0000000000908000.000000908,000 &0000000001000000.0000001,000,000 English civil war United Kingdom 1642 1646

[edit] Genocides and alleged genocides

Main article: Genocides in history

The CPPCG defines genocide in part as "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group".

Determining what historical events constitute a genocide and which are merely criminal or inhuman behavior is not a clear-cut matter. In nearly every case where accusations of genocide have circulated, partisans of various sides have fiercely disputed the interpretation and details of the event, often to the point of promoting wildly different versions of the facts. An accusation of genocide, therefore, will almost always be controversial.

The following list of genocides and alleged genocides should be understood in this context and not necessarily regarded as the final word on the events in question.

This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.
Lowest Estimate Highest Estimate Event Location From To Notes
Full Extinction Full Extinction Human interaction amongst Neanderthals World-wide Paleolithic Paleolithic New evidence has convinced scientists that climate change happening around the time of the Neanderthals extinction would have in no-way been their downfall. Common theory states that Humans with their higher mastery in tool making, hunting, fishing, and fire displaced Neanderthals in their migration, also many theorist point that human disease may have played a the same roll it played during the European colonization of the Americas. Additionally, evidence suggest that Humans may have even killed and ate their close relatives. This would be the earliest genocide ever conducted by human beings and the only to fully exterminate the victims of the genocide. [33] [34][35][36]
8,000,000 140,000,000 European colonization of the Americas The Americas 1492 1918 From when Christopher Columbus set foot onto American land, to the various colonization from empires abroad, to the Battle at Wounded Knee, it is estimated between 8 and 140 million native Americans were killed. The most common amount of deaths came from European diseases hitting the less immune natives, and some have claimed that this was also the result of deliberate biological warfare[37]. As colonization continued, starvation and disease caused by displacement became prevalent. Towards the end, native Americans faced heavily armed soldiers in battle over land disputes and suffered terrible losses. Attempts were made to justify the colonization by the Manifest Destiny.
Further information: Genocide in the Americas
5,830,000[38] 11,000,000[39] Genocides of Nazi Germany Europe 1941 1945 With around 6 million Jews murdered, many scholars define the Holocaust as a genocide of European Jewry alone. Broader definitions include up to 1,500,000 Romani because, like the European Jewry and Slavs, the Roma were also targeted for total annihilation due to their race. A broader definition includes political and religious dissenters, 200,000 handicapped, 2 to 3 million Soviet POWs, 5,000 Jehovah's Witnesses, and 15,000 homosexuals, bringing the death toll to around 9 million. The number rises to 11 million if the deaths of 2 million ethnic Poles are included. See Holocaust, Consequences of German Nazism
2,500,000 10,000,000[40] Holodomor, famine, political repression Ukrainian SSR 1932 1933 Famine in Ukraine caused by the government of Joseph Stalin, a part of Soviet famine of 1932-1933. Holodomor is claimed by contemporary Ukrainian government to be a genocide of the Ukrainian nation.
1,700,000[citation needed] 3,000,000[citation needed] Famine, political repression Cambodia 1975 1979 As of September 2007, no one has been found guilty of participating in this genocide, but on 19 September 2007 Nuon Chea, second in command of the Khmer Rouge and its most senior surviving member, was charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity. He will face Cambodian and United Nations appointed foreign judges at the special genocide tribunal.[41]
1,000,000 1,500,000 Armenian Genocide Ottoman Empire, early Turkey 1914 1918 Usually called the earliest genocide of the 20th century between one and one and half million were killed in the genocide. The word genocide has been a controversial title and many countries including Turkey refuse to call the incident a genocide, but a handful of countries have deemed it a genocidal act.
26,000 [42] 3,000,000[42] 1971 Bangladesh atrocities East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) 1971 1971 Atrocities in East Pakistan by the Pakistani military, leading to the Bangladesh Liberation War and Indo-Pakistani War of 1971, are widely regarded as a genocide against Bengali people, but to date no one has yet been indicted for such a crime.
800,000[citation needed] 3,000,000[citation needed] Rwandan genocide Rwanda 1994 1994 Hutu killed unarmed men, women and children. Some perpetrators of the genocide have been found guilty by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, but most have not been charged due to no witness accounts.
500,000 2,000,000 Great Irish Famine United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland 1846 1849 Although blight ravaged potato crops throughout Europe during the 1840s, the impact and human cost in Ireland—where a third of the population was entirely dependent on the potato for food—was exacerbated by a host of political, social and economic factors which remain the subject of historical debate.[43][44]
400,000 [45] 655,000[46] Ustashe massacres of Serbs, Jews, Roma Balkans 1941 1945 No academic consensus if this was persecution or genocide during period of Independent State of Croatia
100,000 300,000 Nanking Massacre Nanking 1937 1938 The Nanking Massacre, commonly known as the Rape of Nanking, was an infamous genocidal war crime committed by the Japanese military in Nanjing, then capital of the Republic of China, after it fell to the Imperial Japanese Army on 13 December 1937.
225,000 650,000[citation needed] Depopulation of Australian aborigines[47][48] Australia 1788 1888 No academic consensus that this was a genocide, see Australian genocide debate
200,000 400,000[49] Darfur conflict Sudan Early 2003 present See International response to the Darfur conflict
130,000[citation needed] 200,000[citation needed] Massacres of Mayan Indians Guatemala 1962 1996 Genocide according to the Historical Clarification Commission.[50][51]
150,000[citation needed] 300,000[citation needed] Political repression of East Timorese East Timor 1975 1990s Commonly referred to as genocide by media, scholars.
100,000[citation needed] 400,000[citation needed] Political repression of West Papuans Indonesia 1961 present Genocide according to some sources, see Genocide in West Papua
100,000[52] 200,000[53] Al-Anfal Campaign Iraq 1986 1989 Ba'athist Iraq destroys over 2,000 villages and commits genocide on their Kurdish population.
50,000[54] 100,000[54] Massacres of Hutus Burundi 1972 1972 Tutsi government massacres of Hutu, see Burundi genocide
50,000[citation needed] 50,000[citation needed] Massacres of Tutsis Burundi 1993 1993 Hutu government massacres of Tutsi, see Burundi genocide
40,000[citation needed] 100,000[citation needed] Herero and Namaqua genocide Namibia 1904 1908 Generally accepted. See also Imperial Germany
~8,000 ~8,000[55] Srebenica massacre Srebenica 1995 1995 A genocidal massacre according to the ICTY. See also Bosnia war.
Lowest Estimate Highest Estimate Case Perpetrators Date of crime Location Notes
~8,000 ~8,000 ICTY, Prosecutor, Vidoje Blagojevic & Dragan Jokic Dragan Jokic 1995 Bosnia Dragan Jokic was found guilty, of extermination as a crime against humanity, for his part in supporting the Srebenica massacre, and on appeal was found to have been "integrally involved in the murder operation, spanning multiple mass killing sites"[56][57]

[edit] Individual extermination camps

[edit] Famine

This section includes famines that according to some scholars were caused or exacerbated by the policies of the ruling regime.

See also Famine and List of famines

This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.
Lowest Estimate Highest Estimate Event Location From To Notes
20,000,000[65] 43,000,000[65] Great Leap Forward famine under the Chinese Communist Party led by Mao Zedong People's Republic of China 1959 1962
6,000,000 10,000,000[66] Famine in the Soviet Union, under the leadership of Joseph Stalin, including Holodomor Soviet Union 1932 1933 As of November 2006, the Ukraine government was trying to get this mass starvation recognised by the United Nations as an act of genocide, with the Russian government and pro-Russian members of the Ukrainian parliament led by former Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych opposing such a move.[66]
1,250,000[15] 10,000,000[15] Indian famine of 1899–1900 India 1899 1900 Famine in India
5,250,000 10,300,000[15] Great Famine of 1876–78 India 1876 1878
5,000,000 5,000,000 Russian famine of 1921 Russian SFSR 1921 1922
4,000,000 4,000,000 Bengal famine in British-ruled India India 1943 1943
1,000,000[citation needed] 3,000,000[citation needed] Iraqi famine in Iraq, UN Economic Sanctions Iraq 1990 2003
500,000 2,000,000 Great Irish Famine United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland 1846 1849 [67]

[edit] Human sacrifice and ritual suicide

This section lists deaths from the systematic practice of human sacrifice or suicide. For notable individual episodes, see Human sacrifice and mass suicide.

Lowest Estimate Highest Estimate Description Group Location From To Notes
300,000 unknown Human sacrifice Aztecs Mexico 14th century 1521 Human sacrifice in Aztec culture
13,000[68] 13,000 Human sacrifice Shang dynasty China BC1300 BC1050 Last 250 years of rule
3,912 3,912 Kamikaze suicide pilots, see note [69] Imperial Japanese air forces Pacific theatre 1944 1945
7,941[70] 7,941 Ritual suicides Sati Bengal, India 1815 1828
913 913 Jonestown Revolutionary Suicide Followers of The Peoples Temple cult Jonestown November 18 1978 November 19 1978 The Event was the largest loss of American civilian life until the September 11th 2001 attacks.

[edit] See also

[edit] Other lists organized by death toll

[edit] Other lists with similar topics

[edit] Topics dealing with similar themes

[edit] References

  1. ^ http://voi.org/books//tfc/ch7.html "historian Koenraad Elst estimates that between the year 1000 and 1525, eighty million Hindus died at the hands of Muslim invaders, probably the biggest holocaust in the whole history of our planet."
  2. ^ Wallinsky, David: David Wallechinsky's Twentieth Century : History With the Boring Parts Left Out, Little Brown & Co., 1996, ISBN 0316920568, ISBN 978-0316920568 - cited by White
  3. ^ Brzezinski, Zbigniew: Out of Control: Global Turmoil on the Eve of the Twenty-first Century, Prentice Hall & IBD, 1994, ASIN B000O8PVJI - cited by White
  4. ^ BBC - History - Nuclear Power: The End of the War Against Japan
  5. ^ Sorokin, Pitirim: The Sociology of Revolution, New York, H. Fertig, 1967, OCLC 325197 - cited by White
  6. ^ "Death toll figures of recorded wars in human history". http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat0.htm. 
  7. ^ Mongol Conquests
  8. ^ The world's worst massacres Whole Earth Review
  9. ^ McFarlane, Alan: The Savage Wars of Peace: England, Japan and the Malthusian Trap, Blackwell 2003, ISBN 0631181172, ISBN 978-0631181170 - cited by White
  10. ^ Taiping Rebellion - Britannica Concise
  11. ^ "Emergence Of Modern China: II. The Taiping Rebellion, 1851-64". http://www-chaos.umd.edu/history/modern2.html#taiping. 
  12. ^ 1918 Influenza: the Mother of All Pandemics, CDC
  13. ^ a b Timur Lenk (1369-1405)
  14. ^ Matthew's White's website (a compilation of scholarly estimates) -Miscellaneous Oriental Atrocities
  15. ^ a b c d Davis, Mike. Late Victorian Holocausts. 1. Verso, 2000. ISBN 1859847390 pg 113
  16. ^ Gernet, Jacques. A History of Chinese Civilization. 2. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996.ISBN 0-521-49712-4
  17. ^ Edward Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
  18. ^ Edward Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
  19. ^ Readers Companion to Military History, Cowley and Parker, eds. (1996) [1]
  20. ^ Russian Civil War
  21. ^ Inside Congo, An Unspeakable Toll
  22. ^ [http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L22802012.htm "Congo war-driven crisis kills 45,000 a month-study" - Reuters, 22 Jan 2008.
  23. ^ The Thirty Years War (1618-48)
  24. ^ Cease-fire agreement marks the end of the Korean War on 27 July 1953.
  25. ^ COWP http://www.correlatesofwar.org/cow2%20data/WarData/InterState/Inter-State%20Wars%20(V%203-0).htm
  26. ^ Huguenot Religious Wars, Catholic vs. Huguenot (1562-1598)
  27. ^ Sudan: Nearly 2 million dead as a result of the world's longest running civil war, U.S. Committee for Refugees, 2001. Archived 10 December 2004 on the Internet Archive. Accessed 10 April 2007
  28. ^ Wertham
  29. ^ Charles Mackay, Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (1841)"The Crusades". Archived from the original on 11 May 2006. http://web.archive.org/web/20060511083818/http://www.bootlegbooks.com/NonFiction/Mackay/PopDelusions/chap09.html. 
  30. ^ Shaka: Zulu Chieftain
  31. ^ Fueling Aghanistan's War
  32. ^ Afghanistan's Endless War
  33. ^ http://www.neanderthal-man.com/genocide.html
  34. ^ http://english.pravda.ru/science/mysteries/24-10-2007/99419-genocide-0
  35. ^ http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,520549,00.html
  36. ^ http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,185913,00.html
  37. ^ http://www.thefurtrapper.com/indian_smallpox.htm
  38. ^ The Holocaust
  39. ^ [2],[3]
  40. ^ Ukraine remembers famine horror. BBC News. November 24, 2007.
  41. ^ Staff, Senior Khmer Rouge leader charged, BBC 19 September 2007
  42. ^ a b While the official Pakistani government report estimated that the Pakistani army was responsible for 26,000 killings in total, other sources have proposed various estimates ranging between 200,000 and 3 million. Indian Professor Sarmila Bose recently expressed the view that a truly impartial study has never been done, while Bangladeshi ambassador Shamsher M. Chowdhury has suggested that a joint Pakistan-Bangladeshi commission be formed to properly investigate the event.
    Chowdury, Bose comments - Dawn Newspapers Online.
    Hamoodur Rahman Commission Report, chapter 2, paragraph 33 (official 1974 Pakistani report).
    Death Tolls for the Major Wars and Atrocities of the 20th Century: Bangladesh - Matthew White's website
    Virtual Bangladesh: History: The Bangali Genocide, 1971
  43. ^ Cecil Woodham-Smith, The Great Hunger, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1991, p. 19. ISBN 978-0-14-014515-1
  44. ^ Christine Kinealy, This Great Calamity, Gill & Macmillan, 1994, pp. xvi–ii, 2–3. ISBN 0-7171-4011-3
  45. ^ Jasenovac
  46. ^ Twentieth Century Atlas - Death Tolls
  47. ^ The Statistics of Frontier Conflict
  48. ^ Smallpox Through History
  49. ^ Debate over Darfur death toll intensifies
  50. ^ Press conference by members of the Guatemala Historical Clarification Commission, United Nations website, 1 March 1999
  51. ^ Staff. Guatemala 'genocide' probe blames state. BBC. 25 February 1999. Retrieved from http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/286402.stm.
  52. ^ David McDowall, A Modern History of the Kurds, 504 pp., I.B. Tauris, 2004, ISBN 1850434166, pp. 359
  53. ^ William Ochsenwald & Sydney N. Fisher, The Middle East: A History, 768 pp., McGraw Hill, 2004, ISBN 0072442336, pg 659
  54. ^ a b Power, Samantha,A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide ISBN 0-06-054164-4 pp.82-4
  55. ^ While the ICJ found that "genocidal acts" had been carried out throughout the war, the court was able to definitely establish genocidal intent in only one case, the Srebenica massacre: Serbia found guilty of failure to prevent and punish genocide, Sense Agency 26 Feb 2007, accessed 29 August 2007
  56. ^ Summary of Appels of Judgement for Vidoje Blagojevic and Dragan Jokic UN Pres report, 9 May 2007
  57. ^ International Justice Tribune - Lettre d'information
  58. ^ Brian Harmon, John Drobnicki, Historical sources and the Auschwitz death toll estimates
  59. ^ Encyclopedia Americana
  60. ^ Jewish virtual library
  61. ^ Vladimir Dedijer - The Yugoslav Auschwitz and the Vatican Buffalo (NY) 1992 ISBN 978-0-87975-752-6
  62. ^ Peter Witte and Stephen Tyas, A New Document on the Deportation and Murder of Jews during "Einsatz Reinhardt" 1942, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Vol. 15, No. 3, Winter 2001, ISBN 0-19-922506-0
  63. ^ Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, Yale University Press, 2003, revised hardcover edition, ISBN 0-300-09557-0
  64. ^ Yitzhak Arad, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. The Operation Reinhard Death Camps, Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis, 1987, NCR 0-253-34293-7
  65. ^ a b Stéphane Courtois (ed.), 1999: The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression, Harvard University Press, ISBN 0-674-07608-7
  66. ^ a b Helen Fawkes Legacy of famine divides Ukraine BBC News 24 November 2006
  67. ^ The Great Irish Famine Approved by the New Jersey Commission on Holocaust Education on 10 September 1996, for inclusion in the Holocaust and Genocide Curriculum at the secondary level. Revision submitted 11/26/98.
  68. ^ National Geographic, July 2003, cited by White
  69. ^ This toll is only for the number of Japanese pilots killed in Kamikaze suicide missions. It does not include the number of enemy combatants killed by such missions, which is estimated to be around 4,000. Kamikaze pilots are estimated to have sunk or damaged beyond repair some 70 to 80 allied ships, representing about 80% of allied shipping losses in the final phase of the war in the Pacific (see Kamikaze).
  70. ^ Sakuntala Narasimhan, Sati: widow burning in India, quoted by Matthew White, "Selected Death Tolls for Wars, Massacres and Atrocities Before the 20th Century", p.2 (July 2005), Historical Atlas of the 20th Century (self-published, 1998-2005).

[edit] External links

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