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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 Russia ...
,
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 withou ...
, mass murder, 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 ...
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 of He or HE may refer to: Language * He (pronoun), an English pronoun * He (kana), the romanization of the Japanese kana へ * He (letter), the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets * He (Cyrillic), a letter of the Cyrillic script called ''He'' ...
Blois") of the assassination of Henry I, Duke of Guise (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 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. 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 (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 term, ...
'' "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" 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 in Sweden 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 ...
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 characteri ...
. An early use in the propagandistic portrayal of current events was the "
Boston Massacre The Boston Massacre (known in 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 hundred who were harassing t ...
" 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 Revoluti ...
. 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. President of the United States, U.S. President Richard Nixon ordered United State ...
—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 contin ...
.


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" 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 Lat ...
.


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 government agents acting in their authoritative capacity and pursuant to government policy or high ...
*
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 *
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 Lat ...
*
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 ...
*
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 withou ...
* Mass murder *
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

* * *


Further reading

* * {{Authority control * Killings by type