I may be missing something, but why are Bulgaria, Austria, Portugal, Holy Roman Empire(a bit vague, I'd say) and Germany(only existed for 30 years by 1900) being compared with the likes of the Mongol and British Empire?
An awfully Eurocentric list of states. What about Assyria? The Aztec state? Various Chinese states? The Sultanate of Delhi was absolutely brutal toward its non-Muslim subjects -- and quite proudly recorded its numerous massacres of them.
I chose "other", since there were numerous states that were worse than any of the ones listed.
Would also include the Ghaznavids and Ghurids along with the Almohads.
First of all, relax. You're coming across very aggressively in a way that I don't appreciate.
Now, the Taino are arguably still extant in the descendants of Carib Mestizos, and there is some argument as to whether they were completely wiped out or persisted in the Antillean highlands for such a time that they became indistinguishable from the aforementioned Mestizos. Further, their genetic markers are in fact dominant among Puerto Rican citizens where 69.6% of the studied Puerto Ricans were found to have Taino genetic markers, according to a 2003 study by the University of Puerto Rico, meaning their contribution to the country's genetic makeup is substantial. This would not be the case were they completely genocided out of existence or into obscurity.
The destruction of the Susquehannock/Conestoga does not constitute a genocide, unfortunately. They are a subcultural group of the Iroquois; the total destruction of the Iroquois would constitute a genocide, but not a subculture of the Iroquois. While it's not necessarily complaisant, under Article 6 of the Rome Statute you can only genocide national, ethnical, racial or religious groups. The Susquqhannock does not fall into any of these categories, unfortunately, and so their destruction is not genocide.
I would question your parameters for what constitutes a genocide. Contrary to popular belief the definition of genocide is rather narrow. It has to be the active and continued suppression and destruction of any of the aforementioned groups, and is only considered complete and total when every single member of that group is dead. This is why I tend to paraphrase and say the Palawa are the only group to be completely wiped out because they are one of the few groups to fit the definition of 'complete genocide'.
Why is the Netherlands in the list, asking a somebody who lives there.What is in your eyes the most evil state in the history before 1900?
Why is the Netherlands in the list, asking a somebody who lives there.
However, I will argue that it was the first Empire to simutaneously organize it's conquered territories without major population shifts (except for some places in Afghanistan and China), insititute universal religious tolerance and greatly expand the connection between the east and the west. It's brutal death and destruction were not the cold, evil calculations of genocide or hate, but rather a logistical move as how else would an army of 100,000 horsemen which consistently beat forces twice as large and maintain garrisons. In fact cities that were accommodating to the Mongols were spared and treated as loyal servants. When a people or nation were conquered, the Mongols would sit the leaders down with some Airag (horse beer) and tell them "you are a Mongolian now".
I second that, every country did something stupid, but to brand it as a evil state i find to go to far.As somebody who also lives there, I vaguely suspect that the answer is going to have something to do with Jan Pieterszoon Coen, and possibly with his actions on the Banda Islands specifically.
(As I mentioned before, I personally do not think that such things can make an entire country 'evil'.)
You're right the Incas and Spartans should be on there as well. As I mentioned that list was just off the top of my head.What did Carthage do? Iirc she wasn't particularly genocidal.
If you're thinking of human sacrifice, while not particularly nice it's little if any worse than exposing babies on hillsides, or killing people in the arena as public entertainment. And afaik the Carthaginians didn't go waging wars to get more sacrificial victims.
Why is the Netherlands in the list, asking a somebody who lives there.
Border gore.I can kind of (well, kind of) understand the reasoning for putting all these countries into the poll...except one. What evil was the Holy Roman Empire associated with?
Well that is crazy.Write-in for the Daxi Dynasty in China. Their leader carried out the massacre of large swathes of Sichuan's population and erected the infamous "Seven Kills" stele.
The Timurids have arguably done a lot worse than the Safavids.Why is Safavid Persia on the list, but not Timurid Persia?
Certainly their propaganda emphasizes their savagery A LOT. They really made a point of how much they killed, raped, burned and enslaved. The Romans, or the Chaldaeans, also recurred to this type of propaganda heavily, but it wasn't the whole point in the same way it was for the Neo-Assyrian Empire.Agreed that all cases need to be judged by the standards of their time. But weren't the Assyrians pretty savage even for the 7th Century BC?
Um... If that's so, it just means you're reading into things too much, because there's nothing aggressive in my wording.
Yes, I'm aware that there's plenty of indigenous DNA in modern Caribbean populations, and also that modern Caribbean cultures maintain Taino influences. By your own words, the indigenous Tasmanians also left behind extent mixed race descendents, so it's a similar situation.
The Susquehannock are part of the Iroquoian language family, but they aren't Iroquois. There are plenty of ethnic groups that are distinguishable despite similar languages - Russian and Ukrainian are practically mutually intelligible, as are Uzbek and Uyghur, or Swedish and Norwegian, or Kazakh and Kyrgyz. Conversely, ethnic groups like the Han Chinese or Mongolians might have multiple mutually unintelligible languages within a single erhnic group - Demonstrating that what constitutes an ethnic group isn't even very clear-cut in the first place.
As the Susquehannocks existed as a distinct cultural group, I would argue that the murder of the Conestogas by the Paxton Boys is a genocide.
Well, you did say that there is a living mixed-race population with Palawa ancestry, so my criteria isn't much different from your's.
The concept of evil is not too expanded and could be subjective frankly. Thus, could we receive a more concise criteria for which state I choose? Say, which state did this or that the worst?
This is an opinion poll, so I believe OP wants us to be subjective.The concept of evil is not too expanded and could be subjective frankly. Thus, could we receive a more concise criteria for which state I choose? Say, which state did this or that the worst?