[Home] [Headlines] [Latest Articles] [Latest Comments] [Post] [Sign-in] [Mail] [Setup] [Help]
Status: Not Logged In; Sign In
|
History See other History Articles Title: The Top 5 Most Evil Empires Ever The Top 5 Most Evil Empires Ever 5) Assyrians: The Assyrians were the first true terror state. Assyria ruled via terror - population reductions and deportation. They invented systematic genocide and ethnic cleansing. For the first time in history the idea of centralization was introduced into politics; the conquered provinces were organized under an elaborate bureaucracy at the head of which was the king, each district paying a fixed tribute and providing a military contingent. This was the first truly military society of history. No effort was spared which would contribute to the efficiency of the army, or which would assure continued Assyrian supremacy over all possible foes. Terror was another factor contributing greatly to Assyrian success. Their exceptional cruelty and ferocity were possibly reflections of callousness developed over centuries of defense of their homeland against savage enemies. But theirs was also a calculated policy of terror -— possibly the earliest example of organized psychological warfare. It was not unusual for them to kill every man, woman, and child in captured cities. Sometimes they would carry away entire populations into captivity. The policies and procedures of Assyria were employed with vigor and ferocity by and proved invaluable in maintaining security. 4) Aztecs: The Aztec empire should really count as one of the worst of the bunch but it only comes in at number four because their impact on world history was isolated. The Aztecs rules an empire that was rooted in a religion that required warfare to obtain human sacrifices. The Aztecs ruled their empire the way a cattle baron runs his ranch. The subjugated people under Aztec rule existed as stocks to keep the Aztec need for human sacrifices going as well as serving as a source of protein in times of famine. While human sacrifice was practiced throughout Mesoamerica, the Aztecs, if their own accounts are to be believed, brought this practice to an unprecedented level. For example, for the reconsecration of Great Pyramid of Tenochtitlan in 1487, the Aztecs reported that they sacrificed 84,400 prisoners over the course of four days, reportedly by Ahuitzotl, the Great Speaker himself. The Aztecs covered their holy buildings and temples with human body parts and painted their inner holy sanctums with human blood. The smell of rotting human flesh was a pleasing aroma for them. Clearly they belong on the list in the top five. 3) Nazi Germany: For initiating wars of race and ideology on the world that totals and estimated human loss of life, irrespective of political alignment, at roughly 62 million people. The civilian toll was around 37 million, the military toll about 25 million. The Allies lost around 51 million people, and the Axis lost 11 million. For initiating concentration camps and death camps for civilians that killed millions. For making byproducts from human bodies and experimenting on them. The reason the Nazis are in the number three slot is that they only were in power for 12 years. 2) Communist nations: Since this was a semi-cohesive movement I have combined their crimes under the Red banner rather than single out if the USSR was worse that the Red Chinese, etc. According to "The Black Book of Communism" Communist regimes...turned mass crime into a full-blown system of government". Using unofficial estimates he cites a death toll which totals 94 million. and in my opinion trump the Nazis only because their reign of terror lasted longer - about 80 years. 1) Ottoman Turkey: This is a controversial pick for number one on the terror list but the Ottoman Turks ruled their empire - an empire based on control through terror for over 500 years. They kept subjugated people under their yoke through mass killings, population movements and forced conversations. Their victim totals are incalculable because the Turkish terror state lasted for so long. The Turks declared their state a warrior or <> state. In other words, a state that was bound to declare holy war (Jihad) against the non-believers. This way, they were able to bring together all kinds of adventurers, who were willing to fight either for ideological reasons, or for just the spoils of the war. They adopted the inhumane measure of forcibly recruiting young Christian children. In other words, they forcibly took male children of the enslaved Christian families (mainly Greeks. and later also Armenians Bulgarians, Albanians and Serbs), and brought them up in special camps They conditioned them to become fanatic Turks and relentless killers to their own people. These children would grow up to believe that their father was the Sultan and that if they were to die in battle they would go to heaven. Thus, because of this New Army, or Janissaries, (Yeni-ceri in Turkish) the Turks continued to pursue their conquests. They slaughtered systematically millions of Asia Minor's inhabitants, in order to change the ethnic character of the land. It has been estimated that during the seven centuries of Turkish presence in Asia Minor several millions of Greeks, at least two-three million Armenians and hundreds of thousands of Kurds, Syrians, but also Serbs, and Bulgarians in Europe, were systematically massacred. In the 20th century alone, it has been estimated that approximately 1,5 million Armenians and more than 1 million Greeks were exterminated. In this manner, the Turks managed to hold on to Asia Minor, a foreign land for them, where Greek civilizations had flourished for 2.000 years before the appearance of the Turks. The Turks just destroyed these civilizations and unfortunately did not even try to take advantage of its accomplishments. In two previous occasions the Greek people contributed in civilizing their conquerors, as was the case with the Romans and the Franks. One must possess a cultural identity to be able to absorb what is creative and good from other civilizations. Unfortunately, the conquering Turks lacked such an identity. The Turks also failed to administer their subject peoples within the Ottoman Empire. There were no <> in the civilized sense of the word. The Sultan's word was the law in the capital and arbitrary rule of local representatives was the law in the provinces. The property, honor, and life of the conquered were completely at the mercy of the occasional Turkish official. The only bond that kept the multiethnic empire together was the crude use of force-ultimately the butchery-of the rulers. Slaughter was the rule without concern for innocence or guilt. Under these conditions the Turkish administration was truly detestable to all the subject people who suffered and patiently waited for each opportunity to throw off the Ottoman yoke. The Turks failed to assimilate the various nationalities within their empire. They could not also administer them efficiently, not even control the economy because commerce and industry was left in the hands of the Greeks, Armenians and Jews, while the Turks kept busy with governing and simultaneously exploiting the profits while terrorizing the inhabitants. For the enslaved people to be finally liberated from their rulers there took place a series of revolutions, which led to the establishment of independent states. In 1908 the Young Turk revolution forced the Sultan to grant a constitution to the remnants of the Ottoman Empire. In spite of the apparent liberalism of the formally bourgeois revolution, which was spearheaded by the military without the participation of the people, there continued to develop additional centrifugal tendencies as they did in the times of the Sultan's despotism. For those nations still within the Empire whose fellow nationals had established independent states, e. g. the Greeks- it was natural for them to seek union with their free compatriots. Those peoples still within the Empire that had not attained separate statehood, e.g. the Armenians, and the Kurds, focused all their energies towards the attainment of self-determination and the establishment of autonomous national homelands. The Young Turks sought to rid themselves of troublesome non-Turkish ethnic groups so that they could build a homogeneous Turkish state and so they could avoid further mutilation of Turkish controlled territory in areas where non-Turks were in the majority, such as Eastern Thrace, Western Asia Minor and Pontos, where the Greeks were in the majority, Eastern Asia Minor where the Armenians were in the majority and, Southeastern Asia Minor where the Kurds were in the majority. Thus, the supposedly liberal and constitutionally oriented Young Turks returned to the usual Sultanic abrasiveness and brutality, which now became much more organized and systematic and assumed genocidal proportions. The massacres were premeditated: It was decided that <>, This was stated in the L o n d o n T i m e s on the 3rd of October 1911 summarizing the proceedings of the Council of Union and Progress (The Young Turks). At first, the persecutions took place against the Greeks, made under the pretext of the Balkan Wars (1912-1913). Persecution took the form of lootings, expulsions and murders. After the wars, persecution continued even more intensively, to the point where on the 25 of May 1914 the Ecumenical Patriarchate was forced to declare that the Orthodox Church was <>. The Patriarchate, further, in a show of protest and mourning, suspended the activities of Greek churches and Greek schools throughout Turkey. After the declaration of World War I, the Turks found the perfect opportunity to organize more effectively the massacres against ethnic minorities, so that they could finally transform their empire into a homogeneous nation-state. Prominent officers of the Young Turks movement, while serving as members of the government, organized the expulsion of the inhabitants as well as the lootings and massacres that were perpetrated against them. Specifically, Talaat Pasha, minister of the interior, was prominent as the mastermind of the pogroms. However, the entire Turkish state administration participated in the organization and the execution of the extermination program. They began with the genocide of the Armenians, who did not possess a state, which would rush to their aid and followed it up with mass expulsions and massacres of the Greeks. The victims of this period are over 2.5 million people of which 1.5 million were Armenians. In the chronological Index one can see detailed figures regarding the persecution of the Greeks of Asia Minor, Thrace and Pontos. After the end of World War I, the Allies recognized that the Turkish government could not protect the property, honor, and life of the Greeks in the Ottoman Empire. They assigned to Greece the responsibility to administer Eastern Thrace and the Smyrna district. This arrangement was contained in the Treaty of Sevres. Simultaneously, there was established a separate and independent Pontian state. In 1920, Alexander Millerand, president of the Supreme Allied Council stated: <>. The Turkish government signed the Treaty of Sevres but Mustafa Kemal refused to recognize it. After 40 long months of war, during which Kemal's forces secured considerable foreign assistance, the Greek military front in Anatolia collapsed. The Turks reoccupied Asia Minor and entered Smyrna on September 8, 1922. In Smyrna, in the meantime, there was an influx of refugees from various parts of Asia Minor. And the conquering Turks set the city on fire and unleashed the last phase of the genocide against the Greeks and Armenians. These were moments of unbelievable horror. The pier turned red by the blood of the victims. The bishop of Smyrna Chrysostomos was publicly ridiculed and then slaughtered. Events were too horrible to even describe. The American Consul in Smyrna, George Horton, gives a detailed and objective picture of the chilling Turkish crimes in his book T h e B l i g h t o f A s i a (Indianapolis: Bobb and Merryl, 1925). The Treaty of Lausanne ended the Greek-Turkish war and imposed the unjust and mandatory exchange of 300,000 Turks from Greece for the 1,400,000 Greeks that survived the holocaust. The Greek refugees of Asia Minor, without being consulted had to give up their ancestral homes to the Turks, after almost 4,000 years of glorious and productive history. Through the unjust actions of massacre and persecution of Greeks and Armenians, the contemporary Turkish state was thus created. It was a state founded on crime, the state about which French prime minister George Clemanceau said on the 25th of June, 1919: <>. On the 26th of November 1979, the New York Times wrote quite characteristically: <> (After the massacres of many hundreds of thousands). While the total number of dead due to the policies of the Turks may be less than that of the Communists they get pride of place because of their longevity. For 700 years the Turks were the epitome of the 'evil empire'. Even the Mongols halted their depravities when combat ended - but not so the Turks who incorporated it into a constant tool state policy. Even though human justice has not yet punished the Turks, one may believe that there is a Divine Justice to which the Turks will sooner or later be answerable.
Poster Comment: My own list - please feel free to expand and or comment on.
Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 8.
#2. To: Destro (#0)
The British Empire must have been worse than the Aztecs. How about the UK and European Colonialists? Combined they're responsible for a lot of human misery in all 4 corners of the globe. Even when they didn't personally "pull the trigger" they intentionally created political environments that were very destructive.
While all empires tend to be evil because they rule through compulsion and force there is a case to be made that some empires do contribute something positive to those they rule while other empires contribute nothing positive. India may have suffered under British rule but they were better off under the legacy left behind by the British then say the legacy of Mogul rule had on them.
What about Africa and South America?
What about them? This is my list of the top 5 - you are free to come up with your own reasons and lists.
You decided India is better off because of the Brits, it's pretty clear that Africa is not. The Portugese and Spaniards were particularly brutal and ruthless slave-traders and colonialists. The Aztecs don't belong on this list. If you're going back as far as the Assyrians, then what about the Roman Empire?
#13. To: robin (#8)
Like hell they don't.
While the Romans may not be the absolute worst, they definitley rank high in my list. Their destruction of Carthage was one of many crimes against liberty and humanity in the ancient world. While the Carthaginians were not perfect, they represented the closest thing to a captitalist country that existed in ancient times. It was the eqivalent of wiping Hong Kong off the map. Except that Carthage had a formidable navy. Were it not for several strategic mistakes during the punic wars, Carthage could have won and the world would be a much different (and I would suggest, better) place. There are others that also have left a dubious legacy that most don't think about. The Byzantines, in addition to having a fetish for eye-gouging, created the modern secret-police state that was inherited by the Czars and later passed along to the Soviets.
Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest |
||
|
[Home]
[Headlines]
[Latest Articles]
[Latest Comments]
[Post]
[Sign-in]
[Mail]
[Setup]
[Help]
|
||