POLL: Most 'evil' states in history

What is to you the most evil state that existed before 1900?

  • Austria(-Hungary)

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Bulgaria

    Votes: 2 0.5%
  • Byzantine Empire

    Votes: 4 1.0%
  • Crusader States

    Votes: 15 3.8%
  • Frankish Empire

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • France (post Frankish Empire)

    Votes: 4 1.0%
  • Germany

    Votes: 6 1.5%
  • Holy Roman Empire

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Macedonian Empire

    Votes: 1 0.3%
  • Ottoman Empire

    Votes: 37 9.3%
  • Portugal

    Votes: 3 0.8%
  • Roman Empire

    Votes: 5 1.3%
  • Russia

    Votes: 7 1.8%
  • Safavid persia

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Spain

    Votes: 50 12.6%
  • United Kingdom

    Votes: 44 11.1%
  • United States

    Votes: 17 4.3%
  • Others

    Votes: 50 12.6%
  • Netherlands

    Votes: 2 0.5%
  • Mongolian Empire

    Votes: 150 37.8%

  • Total voters
    397
An immensely difficult question pre-1900. Post-1900, of course, the answer is obviously Nazi Germany, but pre-1900, I guess I'd have to say the Mongols who indiscriminately raided and conquered their neighbours.
 
The most evil state was clearly the Assyrian Empire; they were built solely on fear. Many Assyrian kings had monuments erected gloating about how they flayed captives and burnt their children alive.
 
As other posters have mentioned, states (especially pre 20th century) are rarely evil. They’re a product of their times and their context.

However, one notable exception would be the appalling house of horror that was Leopold’s Congo Free State.
Couldn't one see Nazi Germany and other 20th century regimes as the product of their times and contexts? I mean I tend to see Nazi Germany as being the culmination of a lot of late 19th and early 20th century European beliefs and ideologies, if only taken to a greater extreme. Social Darwinism, scientific racism,etc, were all present in Europe before the Nazis came to power, and they were widely accepted.
 
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.
Don't forget slavery (the Netherlands was one of the last countries to abolish it) and the slave trade. The wars against rthe Indians in the New Netherlands. The Cape colony and its treatment of the native Africans. The colonisation of Indonesia, with things like the Cultivation System. The treatment as second rate citizens of catholics, jews, lutherans, anabaptiss or remonstrants. The Netherlands does not have clean hands.

Mind you, many other countries did the same or even worse. I think probably the only people who think the Netherlands was the most evil country in history are those idiots of the "grouwe eeuw".
 
They are ethnolinguistically Iroquois, that is a fact. They are not a separate ethnic, religious, racial or national group from the wider Iroquois. Language plays an important role in identifying distinctions between ethnic groups but it’s not the only qualification. The Conestogas are not simply distinct because they had a slightly different language with slightly different cultural practices, just as it’s largely accepted that all the Han Chinese are one ethnic group despite linguistic and cultural differences between someone in Shanghai and someone in Inner Mongolia. Two guys with roots in Ireland are still the same ethnic Irish American despite one identifying as a New Yorker and the other a Houstonian and having different accents and day to day lives.

You could argue it, but it would be a severe misrepresentation of the definition of genocide.

Your definition of an ethnic group is not only rigid but also inconsistent. Within the Han Chinese, for example, Cantonese, Hakka, and Shanghainese speak languages that are mutually unintelligible, yet, as we both agree, they still constitute a single ethnic group. This is in contrast to Russians and Ukrainians, two separate ethnic groups despite their languages being largely mutually intelligible (the Holodomor is recognized as a genocide carried out by Russians against Ukrainians).

Why is that? The biggest component in determining what constitutes an ethnic group is self-identity. Han Chinese are an ethnic group because they identify as one, despite sharp linguistic differences. Russians and Ukrainians are separate ethnic groups because identify that way despite linguistic similarities.

It's admittedly difficult to apply these concepts to groups like the Susquehannock which ceased to exist long before these concepts ever existed, but I argue that they are ethnically distinct from the Iroquois regardless of linguistic affinity, due to their self-identity. They never joined the Iroquois confederacy (aside from kidnapped prisoners of war or a few scattered survivors that may have fled to them after their own tribe was destroyed), and they warred with the Iroquois as a distinctive tribal group, much like other Iroquian groups like the Huron and the Erie.

Even if they were simply a part of the Iroquois, the fate of the Conestoga is still a genocide on the basis of intent by the perpetrators. The Paxton Boys targetted them specifically, because of who they were. The Holocaust is still a genocide against Jews even if it didn't touch Jewish communities in the US, or India, or Bukhara. The Khmer Rouge is still a genocide against ethnic Han Chinese (among many other minority groups in Cambodia) even if it didn't touch Han Chinese communities outside of Cambodia. Even entertaining your reasoning that the Susquehannock are just a sub-group of the Iroquois, the continued existence of other Iroquian groups in New York, Canada, or elsewhere doesn't change the fact that the Paxton boys wanted to eliminate them due to their ethnicity...

But as I also argue, the Susquehannock are seperate from the Iroquois, and like the Palawa, they were completely annihilated. They had previously been whittled down by disease, war, and displacement from their land, and some of them may have left genetic descendants through intermarriage and assimilation into the Shawnee, Iroquois, Lenape, or even white and black communities, but as a distinctive tribe, the last remnants of the Susquehannocks, along with their customs, language, and identity, ceased to exist due to their murder by the Paxton Boys.
 
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mad orc

Banned
The main reason why the 'British empire ' was 'Evil' to me is not because it has or hasn't got the biggest death count .
I admit that maybe some other empire may have a greater death count .
The difference lies in the fact that England did it all in the name of 'uplifting' natives ,'educating' colonies .
Spreading the word of liberty(In later years) .
and claiming that they were a just ,judicial and 'civilized' empire .

Now show me if there is a time when Genghis khan said 'I am a fair ruler who cares for all humans and want to uplift society' ? .

and that's why !
 
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?
Colonization of the Baltics/Pomerania (and if we're counting Charlemagne, slaughter of the Saxons)?
 
The main reason why the 'British empire ' was 'Evil' to me is not because it has or hasn't got the biggest death count .
I admit that maybe some other empire may have a greater death count .
The difference lies in the fact that England did it all in the name of 'uplifting' natives ,'educating' colonies .
Spreading the word of liberty(In later years) .
and claiming that they were a just ,judicial and 'civilized' empire .

Now show me if there is a time when Genghis khan said 'I am a fair ruler who cares for all humans and want to uplift society' ? .

and that's why !

I think thats hypocrisy. Its really annoying and a good reason not to like them but not necesserily evil. Also Rome's wars were always just and they defended themsel so well that somehow they ended up with an Empire. Point is the brits werent the only ones or even the worst hypocrits.
 

Deleted member 92121

No love for the lands of the Khans? Though simply numerically speaking, you can't beat Mongol genocides, their Empire was not hostile to cooperating entities, and the stability and east-west connection it built was significant.

For people claiming the Mongols never created anything: they created the basis for society in most of Asia for centuries to come. From central Asia to the Mughals and their Taj Mahal, to the silk road.

The Spanish Empire on the other hand? A bureaucratic aristocratic monstrosity that destroyed every independent civilization in the Americas, forging the slave trade on a international level and persecuting everyone they deemed a heretic. Evil.

EDIT:
Because people don't read the entire discussion and jump straight to quoting, here are a few clarifications:
I Don't think that just because one nation commited countles atrocities over the centuries and is responsible for some real bad developments in human history, that nation is simply evil having done nothing to contribute to society. One Exception is Nazi Germany because screw nazi Germany.
I Didn't say the Mughals are the same as mongols(they are not), neither have I said the Mongols invented the Silk Road
The Inquisition didn't burn everyone they came across, so I changed it to "Persecuted". Because that was what it was, a organization with the purpose of coercing control through fear, and the fact that they ONLY burned over a thousand human beings doesn't change the fact that they were threatening entire societies with the pyre if they didn't comply.
I DON'T think the mongols were in any way angels. This is a poll about the most evil nation, not which one is bad and which one is cool. Saying one was worst then the other doesn't mean you're freaking defending the other.
 
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No love for the lands of the Khans? Though simply numerically speaking, you can't beat Mongol genocides, their Empire was not hostile to cooperating entities, and the stability and east-west connection it built was significant.

For people claiming the Mongols never created anything: they created the basis for society in most of Asia for centuries to come. From central Asia to the Mughals and their Taj Mahal, to the silk road.

The Spanish Empire on the other hand? A bureaucratic aristocratic monstrosity that destroyed every independent civilization in the Americas, forging the slave trade on a international level and burning everyone they deemed a heretic. Evil.
Can't help but notice the double thinking.
 
No love for the lands of the Khans? Though simply numerically speaking, you can't beat Mongol genocides, their Empire was not hostile to cooperating entities, and the stability and east-west connection it built was significant.

For people claiming the Mongols never created anything: they created the basis for society in most of Asia for centuries to come. From central Asia to the Mughals and their Taj Mahal, to the silk road.

The Spanish Empire on the other hand? A bureaucratic aristocratic monstrosity that destroyed every independent civilization in the Americas, forging the slave trade on a international level and burning everyone they deemed a heretic. Evil.

Where are the songs of the Tatars? Where are the canals and libraries of Baghdad? Where are the cities of the Khwarezm? Where are the towns of the Rus'? Their glories have passed away in blood and ash, trampled underfoot by the horses of the Mongols for no other reason than that they could.

The Spanish Empire built cathedrals and churches too, and their treasure fleets sailed around the earth, the first among the human race to do so. Take the good with the bad. :p
 

Deleted member 92121

Can't help but notice the double thinking.

What i was trying to convey was that the Mongol Empire lasted a couple of centuries and left massive cultural connections between east-west and a significant socio-political imprint in Asia. It killed millions, more then any other, yet it's not as inherently evil as the Spanish Empire (and a couple others.), whose repercursion on history, with the spread of slavery,the destruction of the american civilizations and the 5 centuries long relentless persecution of "heretics" and "heathens", was much more severe and, in simple words, Evil.

Where are the songs of the Tatars? Where are the canals and libraries of Baghdad? Where are the cities of the Khwarezm? Where are the towns of the Rus'? Their glories have passed away in blood and ash, trampled underfoot by the horses of the Mongols for no other reason than that they could.

The Spanish Empire built cathedrals and churches too, and their treasure fleets sailed around the earth, the first among the human race to do so. Take the good with the bad. :p

Where's the Land of Inca? Where's the gold of Machu Pichu? Where' the Pyramids long torn down? Where's the Aztecs and the Incas? Where's the golden cities of West Africa? Where's the Kingdom of Mansa Musa? Where's the gods of the polynesians? Where's the gods of any of them?

All taken and burned, all used and spent. All for some baroque Cathedrals covered in Gold?

And for the last part, I believe you've mistaken the Spanish for the Portuguese, rulers of the seas. ;)
 
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What i was trying to convey was that the Mongol Empire lasted a couple of centuries and left massive cultural connections between east-west and a significant socio-political imprint in Asia. It killed millions, more then any other, yet it's not as inherently evil as the Spanish Empire (and a couple others.)



Where's the Land of Inca? Where's the gold of Machu Pichu? Where' the Pyramids long torn down? Where's the Aztecs and the Incas? Where's the golden cities of West Africa? Where's the Kingdom of Mansa Musa? Where's the gods of the polynesians? Where's the gods of any of them?

All taken and burned, all used and spent. All for some baroque Cathedrals covered in Gold?

And for the last part, I believe you've mistaken the Spanish for the Portuguese, rulers of the seas. ;)
The Inca descendants are still there, their language as well and a lot of their architecture. So are the Aztecs.

Golden Cities of West Africa? What are you talking about?
Mansa Musa? Mali? Why are accusing the Spanish of destroying them?

Frankly your whole point is dumb to its core, no the Mongols WERE inherently worse morally than Spaniards as a whole but apparently the fact they "left an imprint" makes them good, you think the Spaniards or Portoguese didn't left an imprint, that they didn't connect the Atlantic and the world?

This is a perfect case of double think, when 2 groups do relatively similar things, you take one favourable PoV for one and a unfavourable for the other.
 

Deleted member 92121

The Inca descendants are still there, their language as well and a lot of their architecture. So are the Aztecs.
Sure the ruins are still there. And sure, there's still descendants of those that survived and were forcibly converted, and assimilated. Yay.

Golden Cities of West Africa? What are you talking about?
Mansa Musa? Mali? Why are accusing the Spanish of destroying them?
Slave trade.

Frankly your whole point is dumb to its core,
Oh, behave.

no the Mongols WERE inherently worse morally than Spaniards as a whole
Well, i guess it's settled then.

but apparently the fact they "left an imprint" makes them good, you think the Spaniards or Portoguese didn't left an imprint, that they didn't connect the Atlantic and the world?

Sure they connected the Atlantic world. By creating modern slavery. They didn't conmect civilizations, they simply wiped out the old and used the americas as a plantation and mining core to fund their empire.
The mongols never connected anything though right? Not like there was some kind of trade along some kind of road that extended from china to the mediterranean? I must be imagining it.


This is a perfect case of double think, when 2 groups do relatively similar things, you take one favourable PoV for one and a unfavourable for the other.
Granted that neither of them were nice.
 
What i was trying to convey was that the Mongol Empire lasted a couple of centuries and left massive cultural connections between east-west and a significant socio-political imprint in Asia. It killed millions, more then any other, yet it's not as inherently evil as the Spanish Empire (and a couple others.)

And the Spanish Empire is the beginning of the modern world, with all its beauties and all its atrocities, also leaving equally massive cultural connections between east and west, perhaps even more so considering the Columbian Exchange.

Where's the Land of Inca? Where's the gold of Machu Pichu? Where' the Pyramids long torn down? Where's the Aztecs and the Incas? Where's the golden cities of West Africa? Where's the Kingdom of Mansa Musa? Where's the gods of the polynesians? Where's the gods of any of them?

All taken and burned, all used and spent. All for some baroque Cathedrals covered in Gold?

The Inca still speak Quechua and are still there, and the same can be said of the Maya in Guatemala and the Mexica with Nahuatl. I am Filipino, and I still speak Tagalog. The empire of Mali collapsed for reasons unrelated to the Spanish Empire, so don't lay their corpse at the feet of Spain.

As for the gods of Mesoamerica: any religion that doesn't practice human sacrifice encountering a culture that regularly practices human sacrifice is not going to react well. Islam would have reacted worse, frankly speaking: had it been Al-Andalus, they would have torn down the idols of the Mexica even more violently, destroyed the very names of their gods, and forced the Faith down their throats, I'm sure.

And I could say the same about that ostentatious marble tomb in India built on the corpses of the Khwarezm.

And for the last part, I believe you've mistaken the Spanish for the Portuguese, rulers of the seas. ;)

Eh. Spain sailed just as much as Portugal did, and lasted far longer. :p :p :p
 
Sure they connected the Atlantic world. By creating modern slavery. They didn't conmect civilizations, they simply wiped out the old and used the americas as a plantation and mining core to fund their empire.
The mongols never connected anything though right? Not like there was some kind of trade along some kind of road that extended from china to the mediterranean? I must be imagining it.
The Spanish created (with the Portuguese) modern globalisation. They created the modern world.
If we really want to be splitting hairs, the Spanish introduced the potatoes to Europe and China, allowing billions more to be born.

Some of the Aztec civilisation was erased, but it's also through cultural assimilation. Many of the Nobles of Mexico in the XVIIth century (one of the most cosmopolitan places on Earth) were ethnically Aztecs
 

Deleted member 92121

And the Spanish Empire is the beginning of the modern world, with all its beauties and all its atrocities, also leaving equally massive cultural connections between east and west, perhaps even more so considering the Columbian Exchange.

That's a excellent point.

The Inca still speak Quechua and are still there, and the same can be said of the Maya in Guatemala and the Mexica with Nahuatl. I am Filipino, and I still speak Tagalog.

Yes, their people were not exterminated, but I never claimed the contrary. There's still Inca and Mexica descendants, and the languages survived, but that doesn't change the fact that their civilizations were oblitareted and said people were subjected to Spanish rule, christian forced conversion, and a lot more.

The empire of Mali collapsed for reasons unrelated to the Spanish Empire, so don't lay their corpse at the feet of Spain.
I was not speaking specifically of Mali, just of the west african societies. Tried to sound a bit poetic, failed.

As for the gods of Mesoamerica: any religion that doesn't practice human sacrifice encountering a culture that regularly practices human sacrifice is not going to react well. Islam would have reacted worse, frankly speaking: had it been Al-Andalus, they would have torn down the idols of the Mexica even more violently, destroyed the very names of their gods, and forced the Faith down their throats, I'm sure.
But Islam didn't reach the mesoamerican faiths, christianity did. I'm not saying Islam would be any nicer, nor am i attacking christianity(Christian here). Just because it could've been worse, it doesn't mean it wasn't horrible. The religious intolerance promulgated by spain in it's own land and later on the New world was absolutely insanity.

And I could say the same about that ostentatious marble tomb in India built on the corpses of the Khwarezm.
Yeah, i agree with that. But the Mongol Empire, on it's core, was extremely tolerant of other faiths within it. To a Bizarre degree.



Eh. Spain sailed just as much as Portugal did, and lasted far longer. :p :p :p
CoffCoffupstartspaniardscoffcoff :p
 

Deleted member 92121

The Spanish created (with the Portuguese) modern globalisation. They created the modern world.
If we really want to be splitting hairs, the Spanish introduced the potatoes to Europe and China, allowing billions more to be born.

Some of the Aztec civilisation was erased, but it's also through cultural assimilation. Many of the Nobles of Mexico in the XVIIth century (one of the most cosmopolitan places on Earth) were ethnically Aztecs

You're absolutely correct. I am not saying the Spanish and portuguese Empires were simply evil and should not have existed. And I'm certainly not saying they never did anything that proved benefitial for humanity later on. I only exist because of said globalization.

What I'm saying is that introducing modern Slavery to the world, centuries of considerable religious persecution, the American genocide due to germs and steel, and the striping of a continent of so much natural wealth is, well, is comparatively worse then what the mongols did.

But hey, that's just a opinion.
 
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