HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

A massacre is the killing of a large number of people or animals, especially those who are not involved in any fighting or have no way of defending themselves. A massacre is generally considered to be morally unacceptable, especially when perpetrated by a group of political actors against defenseless victims. The word is a loan of a French term for "butchery" or "carnage". A "massacre" is not necessarily a " crime against humanity". Other terms with overlapping scope include war crime, pogrom, mass killing,
mass murder Mass murder is the act of murdering a number of people, typically simultaneously or over a relatively short period of time and in close geographic proximity. The United States Congress defines mass killings as the killings of three or more pe ...
, and
extrajudicial killing An extrajudicial killing (also known as extrajudicial execution or extralegal killing) is the deliberate killing of a person without the lawful authority granted by a judicial proceeding. It typically refers to government authorities, whether ...
.


Etymology

The modern definition of ''massacre'' as "indiscriminate slaughter, carnage", and the subsequent verb of this form, derive from late 16th century Middle French, evolved from Middle French ''"macacre, macecle"'' meaning "slaughterhouse, butchery". Further origins are dubious, though may be related to Latin ''macellum'' "provisions store, butcher shop". The Middle French word ''macecr'' "butchery, carnage" is first recorded in the late 11th century. Its primary use remained the context of animal slaughter (in hunting terminology referring to the head of a stag) well into the 18th century. The use of ''macecre'' "butchery" of the mass killing of people dates to the 12th century, implying people being "slaughtered like animals". The term did not necessarily imply a multitude of victims, e.g. Fénelon in ''Dialogue des Morts'' (1712) uses ''l'horride massacre de Blois'' ("the horrid ''massacre'' at he chateau ofBlois") of the assassination of
Henry I, Duke of Guise Henry I, Prince of Joinville, Duke of Guise, Count of Eu (31 December 1550 – 23 December 1588), sometimes called ('Scarface'), was the eldest son of Francis, Duke of Guise, and Anna d'Este. His maternal grandparents were Ercole II d'Este, Du ...
(1588), while Boileau, ''Satires XI'' (1698) has ''L'Europe fut un champ de massacre et d'horreur'' "Europe was a field of ''massacre'' and horror" of the
European wars of religion The European wars of religion were a series of wars waged in Europe during the 16th, 17th and early 18th centuries. Fought after the Protestant Reformation began in 1517, the wars disrupted the religious and political order in the Catholic Chu ...
. The French word was loaned into English in the 1580s, specifically in the sense "indiscriminate slaughter of a large number of people". It is used in reference to
St. Bartholomew's Day massacre The St. Bartholomew's Day massacre (french: Massacre de la Saint-Barthélemy) in 1572 was a targeted group of assassinations and a wave of Catholic mob violence, directed against the Huguenots (French Calvinist Protestants) during the French War ...
in '' The Massacre at Paris'' by
Christopher Marlowe Christopher Marlowe, also known as Kit Marlowe (; baptised 26 February 156430 May 1593), was an English playwright, poet and translator of the Elizabethan era. Marlowe is among the most famous of the Elizabethan playwrights. Based upon the ...
. The term is again used in 1695 for the Sicilian Vespers of 1281, called "that famous Massacre of the French in Sicily" in the English translation of ''De quattuor monarchiis'' by
Johannes Sleidanus Johannes Sleidanus or Sleidan (1506 – 31 October 1556) was a Luxembourgeois historian and annalist of the Reformation. Life He was born at Schleiden, then part of the duchy of Luxembourg, an element of the Spanish Netherlands (not far from Aach ...
(1556), translating ''illa memorabilis Gallorum clades per Siciliam'', i.e. ''massacre'' is here used as the translation of Latin '' clades'' "hammering, breaking; destruction". The term's use in historiography was popularized by Gibbon's ''
History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire ''The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'' is a six-volume work by the English historian Edward Gibbon. It traces Western civilization (as well as the Islamic and Mongolian conquests) from the height of the Roman Empire to th ...
'' (1781–1789), who used e.g. "
massacre of the Latins The Massacre of the Latins ( it, Massacro dei Latini; el, Σφαγὴ τῶν Λατίνων) was a large-scale massacre of the Roman Catholic (called "Latin") inhabitants of Constantinople, the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire, by the Eastern ...
" of the killing of Roman Catholics in Constantinople in 1182. The Ã…bo Bloodbath has also been described as a kind of massacre, which was a mass punishment carried out on the Old Great Square in Turku on November 10, 1599, in which 14 opponents of the Duke Charles (later King Charles IX) in Finland were decapitated; in the Battle between Duke Charles and Sigismund, Duke Charles defeated King Sigismund's troops in the
Battle of Stångebro The Battle of Stångebro, or the Battle of Linköping, took place at Linköping, Sweden, on 25 September 1598 (O.S.) and effectively ended the personal union between Sweden and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, that had existed since 1592. ...
in
Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden,The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names states that the country's formal name is the Kingdom of SwedenUNGEGN World Geographical Names, Sweden./ref> is a Nordic country located on ...
in 1598 and then made an expedition to Finland, where he defeated the resistance during the Cudgel War and executed the estates in Turku without consulting Finland's leading
nobles Nobility is a social class found in many societies that have an aristocracy. It is normally ranked immediately below royalty. Nobility has often been an estate of the realm with many exclusive functions and characteristics. The characteristi ...
. An early use in the propagandistic portrayal of current events was the " Boston Massacre" of 1770, which was employed to build support for the American Revolution. A pamphlet with the title ''A short narrative of the horrid massacre in Boston, perpetrated in the evening of the fifth day of March, 1770, by soldiers of the 29th regiment'' was printed in Boston still in 1770. The term ''massacre'' began to see inflationary use in journalism first half of the 20th century. By the 1970s, it could also be used purely metaphorically, of events that do not involve deaths, such as the Saturday Night Massacre—the dismissals and resignations of political appointees during Richard Nixon's Watergate scandal.


Definitions

The term ''massacre'', being a synonym of "butchery, carnage", is by nature hyperbolic or subjective, primarily used in partisan descriptions of events. Robert Melson (1982) in the context of the "
Hamidian massacres The Hamidian massacres also called the Armenian massacres, were massacres of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire in the mid-1890s. Estimated casualties ranged from 100,000 to 300,000, Akçam, Taner (2006) '' A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide an ...
" used a "basic working definition" of "by massacre we shall mean the intentional killing by political actors of a significant number of relatively defenseless people... the motives for massacre need not be rational in order for the killings to be intentional... Mass killings can be carried out for various reasons, including a response to false rumors... political massacre... should be distinguished from criminal or pathological mass killings... as political bodies we of course include the state and its agencies, but also nonstate actors..." Similarly, Levene (1999) attempts an objective classification of "massacres" throughout history, taking the term to refer to killings carried out by groups using overwhelming force against defenseless victims. He is excepting certain cases of mass executions, requiring that massacres must have the quality of being morally unacceptable. The term "fractal massacre" has been given to two different phenomena, the first being the fracturing of
Aboriginal Aborigine, aborigine or aboriginal may refer to: *Aborigines (mythology), in Roman mythology * Indigenous peoples, general term for ethnic groups who are the earliest known inhabitants of an area *One of several groups of indigenous peoples, see ...
tribes by killing more than 30% of the tribe on one of their hunting missions, and the second being given to the phenomenon of many small killings adding up to a larger genocide.


See also

*
Democide Democide is a term coined by American political scientist Rudolph Rummel to describe "the intentional killing of an unarmed or disarmed person by special agent, government agents acting in their authoritative capacity and pursuant to government p ...
* Disaster *
Ethnic cleansing Ethnic cleansing is the systematic forced removal of ethnic, racial, and religious groups from a given area, with the intent of making a region ethnically homogeneous. Along with direct removal, extermination, deportation or population transfer ...
* Genocide * Killing spree * List of events named massacres * Mass killing *
Mass murder Mass murder is the act of murdering a number of people, typically simultaneously or over a relatively short period of time and in close geographic proximity. The United States Congress defines mass killings as the killings of three or more pe ...
* Pogrom * Tragedy * Tragedy (event) * War crime


References


Notes


Citations


Sources

* * *


Further reading

* * {{Authority control * Killings by type