I’ve been reading a bit of American history lately, and believe it would not be entirely inaccurate to characterize the attitude and actions of Americans of European descent towards native Americans, as one of a conquering civilization towards the conquered native civilization. Admittedly, from at least the fifteenth century onward, Europeans unintentionally killed a great number of Indians through communicable diseases, and early settlers/explorers did a number on the Eastern, S. American and Mexican, and Caribbean tribes.
But many of the more public and (dare I say) dishonest war against Indians occurred quite recently, in the latter half of the 19th century. Lewis & Clark travelled in, what, 1803 or so, and Wounded Knee couldn’t have been much later than 1890.
So my question is:
**What examples can you offer post-dating, say, 1890, of an invading culture intentionally and successfully dispossessing and relocating, if not exterminating, as large a percentage of a native peoples? **
I am admittedly not a student of history. Most of the examples I was able to come up with seemed more along the lines of tribal conflict between two or more indigenous groups, or the attempted conqueror was not quite as successful as the US on a national scale.
I guess if people disagree with my characterization of the American government’s behavior towards Indians, this would be more appropriate in GD.
Dinsdale: After WW2’s aftermath, Stalin’s government relocated some ethnic minorities, including Volga Germans, from the eastern USSR to the western USSR. I think my professor in Soviet history remarked that only a shortage of railroad cars prevented the USSR from transporting the Ukrainians to Siberia.
During WW2, the Nazis took millions of people from conquered European territories and used them as slave labor in Germany. This was part of Hitler’s New World Order. Not only did the Nazis try to exterminate Jews and Gypsys, they also slaughtered many Ukranians and other Slavic peoples.
China has invaded Tibet altho’ I must confess that I am unaware of any massive relocation of people.
For a brief period in the Vietnam War, the Vietnamese government (aided and abetted by Uncle Sugar) moved peasants from their traditional villages to special enclaves. I think this policy was dropped when it became obvious it inculcated pro-Viet Cong sympathies in the peasants affected.
During the Boer War (1900-1902), the British government rounded up many thousands of Boers and incarcerated them in the first concentration camps of the century. Several thousands died because of poor nutrition and sanitation.
I belive the Germans carried out mass executions in a couple of African countries prior to WW1 although I am ignorant of the details and do not know if mass relocations were involved. Possibly some of the recent troubles in Africa meet the guidelines you outline; I don’t know enough about African history to judge.
Again, I am unaware of the details, but I belive the Turkish slaughter of Armenians after WW1 may meet your criteria.
My first thought was the Boer War as well. To The Peyote Coyote’s list, I believe we can add the Chinese treatment of the Uighars, an Islamic culture in western China. I believe they aren’t relocating them, so much as flooding the area with ethnic Chinese.
We may include the Assyrian, Neo-Babylonian, and Byzantine practices of population transfer as a punishment for rebellion (the Teeming Thousands will have undoubtedly heard of “the Ten Lost Tribes”), and the Roman practice of wholesale enslavement of elites (all of which, of course, considerably antedate 1890 CE).
The U.S.'s treatment of Indians is hardly something of which to be proud. In most cases, however, a difference of policy has not been because the conquerors were fuller of the milk of human kindness, but because they didn’t have the numerical advantagge to exterminate the conquered.
Thanks for all the responses, and please allow a couple of additional questions. Were any of the purges/relocations mentioned as total and permanent as US Indian policy? And were they committed by an outside conquerer, rather than the winner of internecine conflict?
Applied to the examples given:
I know nothing about the Volga Germans, or where they were transferred from or to.
Re Ukrainians, are not there presently some ethnic Ukrainians constituting a portion of the modern Ukrainian nation’s population?
Making no excuses for the Nazis, but were they as successful as the US was against the Indians?
With China and Tibet, that is probably a good example. Tho no forced relocation, the most recent things I have read suggests an imminent erosion of Tibetan culture simply by influx of ethnic Chinese.
Were VietNam’s actions based on ethnic differences, or political? Seems to me more like civil war.
Re the Boer War, were the Boers indigenous?
German mass executions in African countries and Turkish slaughter of Armenians might well meet my criteria. Tho if I wished to be a stickler, I might argue that the scale was far less than our “cleansing.”
In any event, it seems like in terms of recency and scope, this is yet aother example where we Americans might stick out our chests and justifiably contend, “We’re number one!” Or at least a top contender.
Dinsdale: Volga Germans were a minority in old Russia – ethnic Germans who lived in the Volga River region. They and several other minorities were transferred lock, stock and barrel from eastern USSR to western USSR (many of them went to Siberia, I presume) because they gave aid, or were accused of giving aid, to the Germans during WW2. I do not know if these relocations were as permanent as U.S. policy since Russia has changed greatly since Stalin’s day.
The reason Ukranians still inhabit the Ukraine, according to my Soviet history class, was that there was too many of them for Stalin’s thugs to transport.
Obviousily, the Nazis did not take over Europe, but they still managed to start a war that killed some 10s of millions of people. Incidentally, I think that if you examine immediate post-WW2 European history you will find that millions of minorities were uprooted and forced to move to other countries.
Vietnam was a civil war, true. However, from what I have read in Stanley Karnow’s history “Vietnam” there were, and still are, major cultural differences between the north and south.
I think many black Africans would view the Boers as invaders. However, I think they had lived in southern Africa for about three centuries before the Boer War. That makes them indigenous in my book.
In the early part of the 20th century Mexico, under president/dictator Porfirio Díaz, relocated pretty much the entire Yaqui nation, out of Sonora and into the Yucatán area. This was the result of Porfirio’s campaign to establish federal rule throughout Mexico; basically the Yaquis did not recognize Mexican authority or laws over their land or affairs–not unlike the present claims held in Chiapas.
The plan was met with considerable resistance, and eventually an anti-federal rebellion and the deportations to the plantations in the Mexican Southeast. The Yaquis later became important figures in the Anarchist movement of Ricardo Flores Magón.
Re: Germans in Africa: just prior to WWI, the German government of Colonial West Africa (today’s Togo, I think) headed off/suppressed a “revolt” by killing something like 90+% of the large tribe involved. Hermann Goering’s father was governor, I believe. There were a lot of postcards made of mass hangings and the like.
The Turkish-Armenian thing was during WWI; 1915-1916, I believe. The Armenians were viewed rightly or wrongly as being sympathetic to various degrees with the Russian attempts to invade from the northeast.
A sensitive issue would be the whole Greek-Turkish war and its aftermath in 1922. A Greek (Gen. Mexatas?) had this “Great Idea” (as it was called then) to reclaim lands held by Greeks in ancient and/or Byzantine times; Ionia, Constantinople, and so on. The Greek Army got well inland in Anatolia, making a huge “bulge” that on a map looks like a disaster waiting to happen. Which it did. They got chased out and the evacuation of the last big Greek enclave on the Anatolian coast (then Smyrna, now Izmir) was a catastrophe. A lot of civilians apparently were killed by the Turks in the process. US ships stood offshore within sight of the docks to assist. I don’t know how much help they were able to render. The Treaty of Lausanne was actually pretty generous to the defeated Greeks. Both sides agreed to let those who wanted (needed) to leave for the country of choice. In Greece, they still refer to this euphemistically as the “exchange of populations”.
I must admit that I am no scholar on the subject, but I remember reading about how the “civilized” europeans tried to “cilvilize” the Australian Aborigines in the last century. This included taking young children from their parents at an early age, sending them to school far away, and deliberatelly breaking apart the existing social framework.
Killing an Aborigine was not really considered a very big deal until relatively late (1920s?).
This was gleaned from a book by Bill Bryson, who normally soes his research. No doubt dopers from Down Under will have more to say.
To be eprfectly honest if you’re asking for events that occured entirely post 1890 you’re probably going to be disappointed. It generally takes more than 100 years to completely disposses people unless you’re prepared to kill everyone.
However there is one classic example that extends through 1890. The Chatham Islands lied about 700km off the coast of New Zealand, and were occupied by a group of people known as the Moriori. In the 1840s a large group of New Zealand Maoris (a completely separate cultural group) were given passage to the Catham on an English ship with the express intention of invading the islands. These Maoris claimed the land for themselves, killing hundreds of people immediately upon arrival and enslaving the rest. The Mori Ori were kept as slaves, largely forbidden from having children and probably more sickeningly kept as food for festivals. The last of the Mori Ori died in the 1930s.
As for the plight of the Australian Aborigines, that’s a long story and a debate in itself. Suffice it to say that there have been some debatable social decisions made concerning Aboriginal peoples, but in general such decisions have been made with the best interests of Aborigines at heart, however misdirected the actions. There has been no verifiable evidence presented in at least two well prepared court cases that children were ever taken from their parents against their will except in cases of imminent and indisputable danger to the children.
Apropos the OP’s question, and thinking about how our history books treat our own less than glorious exploits, I came across this today: Until lions have their historians, tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunter. - African Proverb