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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
Crimes against humanity are widespread or systemic acts committed by or on behalf of a ''de facto'' authority, usually a state, that grossly violate human rights. Unlike war crimes, crimes against humanity do not have to take place within the ...
". Other terms with overlapping scope include
war crime,
pogrom
A pogrom () is a violent riot incited with the aim of massacring or expelling an ethnic or religious group, particularly Jews. The term entered the English language from Russian to describe 19th- and 20th-century attacks on Jews in the Russian ...
,
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, whethe ...
.
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
Middle French (french: moyen français) is a historical division of the French language that covers the period from the 14th to the 16th century. It is a period of transition during which:
* the French language became clearly distinguished from t ...
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
Blois ( ; ) is a commune and the capital city of Loir-et-Cher department, in Centre-Val de Loire, France, on the banks of the lower Loire river between Orléans and Tours.
With 45,898 inhabitants by 2019, Blois is the most populated city of the ...
'' ("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, ...
(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 cou ...
.
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 in ''
The Massacre at Paris
''The Massacre at Paris'' is an Elizabethan play by the English dramatist Christopher Marlowe (1593) and a Restoration drama by Nathaniel Lee (1689), the latter chiefly remembered for a song by Henry Purcell. Both concern the Saint Bartholomew ...
'' 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 t ...
. The term is again used in 1695 for the
Sicilian Vespers
The Sicilian Vespers ( it, Vespri siciliani; scn, Vespiri siciliani) was a successful rebellion on the island of Sicily that broke out at Easter 1282 against the rule of the French-born king Charles I of Anjou, who had ruled the Kingdom of ...
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
A clade (), also known as a monophyletic group or natural group, is a group of organisms that are monophyletic – that is, composed of a common ancestor and all its lineal descendants – on a phylogenetic tree. Rather than the English te ...
'' "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 t ...
'' (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
Åbo Bloodbath
The Åbo Bloodbath ( sv, Åbo blodbad; fi, Turun verilöyly) of 10 November 1599 was a public execution in the Finnish town of Turku (Åbo), then part of the Kingdom of Sweden, in the context of the War against Sigismund and the Club War. Swed ...
has also been described as a kind of massacre, which was a mass punishment carried out on the
Old Great Square in
Turku
Turku ( ; ; sv, Åbo, ) is a city and former capital on the southwest coast of Finland at the mouth of the Aura River, in the region of Finland Proper (''Varsinais-Suomi'') and the former Turku and Pori Province (''Turun ja Porin lääni''; ...
on November 10, 1599, in which 14 opponents of the Duke Charles (later
King Charles IX) in
Finland
Finland ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of B ...
were
decapitated
Decapitation or beheading is the total separation of the head from the body. Such an injury is invariably fatal to humans and most other animals, since it deprives the brain of oxygenated blood, while all other organs are deprived of the i ...
; in the
Battle between Duke Charles and Sigismund, Duke Charles defeated
King Sigismund
Sigismund of Luxembourg (15 February 1368 – 9 December 1437) was a monarch as King of Hungary and Croatia (''jure uxoris'') from 1387, King of Germany from 1410, King of Bohemia from 1419, and Holy Roman Emperor from 1433 until his death in 1 ...
'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
The Cudgel War (also Club War, fi, Nuijasota, links=no, sv, Klubbekriget, links=no) was a 1596–1597 peasant uprising in Finland, which was then part of the Kingdom of Sweden. The name of the uprising derives from the fact that the peasants ar ...
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
The Boston Massacre (known in Kingdom of Great Britain, Great Britain as the Incident on King Street) was a confrontation in Boston on March 5, 1770, in which a group of nine British soldiers shot five people out of a crowd of three or four hu ...
" of 1770, which was employed to build support for the
American Revolution
The American Revolution was an ideological and political revolution that occurred in British America between 1765 and 1791. The Americans in the Thirteen Colonies formed independent states that defeated the British in the American Revolut ...
. 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 Saturday Night Massacre was a series of events that took place in the United States on the evening of Saturday, October 20, 1973, during the Watergate scandal. U.S. President Richard Nixon ordered Attorney General Elliot Richardson to fire ...
—the dismissals and resignations of political appointees during
Richard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913April 22, 1994) was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as a representative and senator from California and was ...
's
Watergate scandal
The Watergate scandal was a major political scandal in the United States involving the administration of President Richard Nixon from 1972 to 1974 that led to Nixon's resignation. The scandal stemmed from the Nixon administration's continual ...
.
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 execution
Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is the state-sanctioned practice of deliberately killing a person as a punishment for an actual or supposed crime, usually following an authorized, rule-governed process to conclude that t ...
s, 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 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
Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people—usually defined as an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group—in whole or in part. Raphael Lemkin coined the term in 1944, combining the Greek word (, "race, people") with the Latin ...
.
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
A disaster is a serious problem occurring over a short or long period of time that causes widespread human, material, economic or environmental loss which exceeds the ability of the affected community or society to cope using its own resources ...
*
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
Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people—usually defined as an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group—in whole or in part. Raphael Lemkin coined the term in 1944, combining the Greek word (, "race, people") with the Latin ...
*
Killing spree
A spree killer is someone who commits a criminal act that involves two or more murders or homicides in a short time, in multiple locations. The U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics defines a spree killing as "killings at two or more locations wit ...
*
List of events named massacres
The following is a list of events for which one of the commonly accepted names includes the word "massacre".
Definition
''Massacre'' is defined in the ''Oxford English Dictionary'' as "the indiscriminate and brutal slaughter of people ...
*
Mass killing
Mass killing is a concept which has been proposed by genocide scholars who wish to define incidents of non-combat killing which are perpetrated by a government or a state. A mass killing is commonly defined as the killing of group members without ...
*
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
A pogrom () is a violent riot incited with the aim of massacring or expelling an ethnic or religious group, particularly Jews. The term entered the English language from Russian to describe 19th- and 20th-century attacks on Jews in the Russia ...
*
Tragedy
Tragedy (from the grc-gre, τραγῳδία, ''tragōidia'', ''tragōidia'') is a genre of drama based on human suffering and, mainly, the terrible or sorrowful events that befall a main character. Traditionally, the intention of tragedy ...
*
Tragedy (event)
A tragedy is an event of great loss, usually of human life. Such an event is said to be ''tragic''. Traditionally, the event would require "some element of moral failure, some flaw in character, or some extraordinary combination of elements" to b ...
*
War crime
References
Notes
Citations
Sources
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Further reading
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{{Authority control
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Killings by type