GetWiki

{{short description|Incident of killing civilians}}{{other uses}}{{Use mdy dates|date=November 2017}}{{Use American English|date=November 2017}}{{homicide}}{{Terrorism}}File:Eugène Delacroix - Le Massacre de Scio.jpg|thumb|right|upright=1.36|Le Massacre de Scio (“The Chios massacre“) a painting (1824) by Eugène DelacroixEugène DelacroixA massacre is an event of killing people who are not engaged in hostilities or are defenseless.WEB, Definition of a Massacre,dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/massacre, Cambridge Dictionary, It is generally used to describe a targeted killing of civilians en masse by an armed group or person.The word is a loan of a French term for “butchery” or “carnage”.WEB,www.dictionary.com/browse/massacre, the definition of massacre, Dictionary.com, November 24, 2017, JOURNAL, Gallant, Thomas W., Thomas W. Gallant, Levene (Mark) and Roberts (Penny), (Eds.), The Massacre in History, Crime, History & Societies, 2001, 5, 1, 146–148, 1422-0857, 10.4000/chs.800,journals.openedition.org/chs/800, 1 September 2023, 1-57181934-7, free, Other terms with overlapping scope include war crime, pogrom, mass killing, mass murder, and extrajudicial killing.

Etymology

Massacre derives from late 16th century Middle French word macacre meaning “slaughterhouse” or “butchery”. Further origins are dubious, though may be related to Latin macellum “provisions store, butcher shop”.WEB, Massacre,www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/massacre, Merriam-Webster.com, January 8, 2017, WEB, Massacre,etymonline.com/index.php?term=massacre&allowed_in_frame=0, Etymonline.com, January 8, 2017,etymonline.com/index.php?term=massacre&allowed_in_frame=0," title="web.archive.org/web/20170108081801etymonline.com/index.php?term=massacre&allowed_in_frame=0,">web.archive.org/web/20170108081801etymonline.com/index.php?term=massacre&allowed_in_frame=0, January 8, 2017, Douglas, Harper, DICTIONARY, Massacre,en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/massacre, Oxford Dictionaries (website), Oxford Dictionaries, January 8, 2017, Oxford University Press, January 8, 2017,web.archive.org/web/20170108082349/https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/massacre, dead, The Middle French 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”.WEB,www.cnrtl.fr/etymologie/massacre, Trésor de la Langue Française informatisé, Massacre, 22 March 2019, fr, The term did not necessarily imply a multitude of victims, e.g. Fénelon in Dialogue des Morts (1712) uses l’horride massacre de Blois (“the horrid massacre at [the chateau of] 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 by Christopher Marlowe. The term is again used in 1695 for the Sicilian Vespers of 1281, called “that famous Massacre of the French in Sicily” in the English translation of De quattuor monarchiis by Johannes Sleidanus (1556),BOOK, De Quatuor Summis Imperiis: An Historical Account of the Four Chief Monarchies Or Empires of the World, Nathaniel Rolls, 1695, 186, Johannes, Sleidanus, Johannes Sleidanus,books.google.com/books?id=uzBQAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA186, 11990422, translating illa memorabilis Gallorum clades per Siciliam, i.e. massacre is here used as the translation of Latin (:wikt:clades#Latin|clades) “hammering, breaking; destruction”.BOOK, Sleidani de quatuor monarchiis libri tres, Apud Felicen Lopez de Haro, 1669,books.google.com/books?id=aF9iU6S6XpUC&pg=PA301, 301, I., Sleidanus, The term’s use in historiography was popularized by Gibbon’s History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1781–1789), who used e.g. “massacre of the Latins” of the killing of Roman Catholics in Constantinople in 1182. The Ã…bo Bloodbath has also been described as a kind of massacre, which was a mass punishment carried out on the Old Great Square in Turku on November 10, 1599, in which 14 opponents of the Duke Charles (later King Charles IX) in Finland were decapitated; in the Battle between Duke Charles and Sigismund, Duke Charles defeated King Sigismund’s troops in the Battle of StÃ¥ngebro in Sweden in 1598 and then made an expedition to Finland, where he defeated the resistance during the Cudgel War and executed the estates in Turku without consulting Finland’s leading nobles.BOOK, Eino, Jutikkala, Eino Jutikkala, Kauko, Pirinen, Kauko Pirinen, A history of Finland, Dorset Press, 1988, 0-88029-260-1, An early use in the propagandistic portrayal of current events was the “Boston Massacre” of 1770, which was employed to build support for the American Revolution. 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.{{efn|name=BM}}The term massacre began to see inflationary use in journalism in the 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 dismissals and resignations of political appointees during Richard Nixon’s Watergate scandal.

Definitions

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...“JOURNAL, Melson, Robert, Theoretical Inquiry into the Armenian Massacres of 1894–1896, Comparative Studies in Society and History, July 1982, 24, 3, 482–3, 10.1017/s0010417500010100, 144670829, 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 executions, requiring that massacres must have the quality of being morally unacceptable.{{efn|name=LR}}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,WEB, Definition,c21ch.newcastle.edu.au/colonialmassacres/introduction.php, Colonial Frontier Massacres in Australia, 1788-1930, Centre For 21st Century Humanities, 2022-08-01, and the second being given to the phenomenon of many small killings adding up to a larger genocide.{{sfn|Dyck|2016|pp=192–193}}

See also

{{Wiktionary}}

• Democide
• Disaster
• Ethnic cleansing
• Femicide
• Genocide
• Killing spree
• Mass killing
• Mass murder
• Pogrom
• Tragedy
• Tragedy (event)
• War crime

References

Notes

{{notelist|refs={{efn|name=LR|“Although it is not possible to set unalterable rules about when multiple murders become massacres. Equally important is the fact that massacres are not carried out by individuals, instead they are carried out by groups... the use of superior, even overwhelming force...” Levene excludes “legal, or even some quasi-legal, mass executions”. He also points out that it is “...most often ... when the act is outside the normal moral bounds of the society witnessing it... In any war ... this killing is often acceptable.“{{harv|Levene|Roberts|1999|p=90}} }}{{efn|name=BM|The shortened name “Boston massacre” was in use by the early 1800s{{harv|Austin|1803|p=314}} The term “Massacre Day” for the annual remembrance held during 1771–1783 dates to the late 19th century.{{harv|De Grasse Stevens|1888|p=126}} The 1772 “Massacre Day of Oration” by Joseph Warren was originally titled An Oration Delivered March 5th, 1772. At the Request of the Inhabitants of the Town of Boston; to Commemorate the Bloody Tragedy of the Fifth of March, 1770.}}}}

Citations

{{reflist}}

Sources

• BOOK, Austin, Benjamin, Constitutional Republicanism, in Opposition to Fallacious Federalism: As Published Occasionally in the Independent Chronicle, Under the Signature of Old-South. To which is Prefixed, a Prefatory Address to the Citizens of the United States, Never Before Published,books.google.com/books?id=fvY-AAAAYAAJ, 1803, Adams & Rhoades, editors of the Independent Chronicle,
• BOOK, (Augusta, De Grasse Stevens, Old Boston: An American Historical Romance, 1888, George Allen, B00087E73Q,
• BOOK, History Can Bite: History Education in Divided and Postwar Societies, Dyck, Kirsten, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2016, 9783847106081,books.google.com/books?id=d2gCkAEACAAJ, Bentrovato, Denise, Korostelina, K. V., Schulze, Martina,
• BOOK, The Massacre in History,books.google.com/books?id=XrOT0cczclkC, Berghahn, 1999, 978-1-57181-934-5, Mark, Levene, Penny, Roberts,

Further reading

• ENCYCLOPEDIA, Kenz, David El, GLOSSARY TERM: Massacre, Online Encyclopedia of Mass Violence,www.massviolence.org/Massacre, November 22, 2013, none,
• BOOK, Levene, Mark, The massacre in history, 1999, Berghahn Book, Providence, 978-1-57181-934-5, 1. publ., Roberts, Penny, none,

{{Massacres}}{{War crimes}}{{Authority control}}