Excellent research, guys.
Increase of war--staggering statements from the Really Teach book
by M.J. 33 Replies latest watchtower bible
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M.J.
Hey check this out: http://www.crystalinks.com/chinahistory.html
However the primary cause of the decline of the Chinese empire was not European and American interference, as the ethnocentric Western historians would lead many to believe.
On the contrary it was a series of internal upheavals. Most prominent of these was the Taiping Civil War which lasted from 1851 to 1862.
The civil war was started by an extremist believer in a school of thought partly influenced by Christianity who believed himself to be the son of God and the younger brother of Jesus. Although the imperial forces were eventually victorious, the civil war was one of the bloodiest in human history - costing at least twenty million lives (more than the total number of fatalities in the First World War).
Even better! Check out what the WTS says about it!
*** g82 3/22 p. 7 Why Religion Is Involved ***
An especially interesting and illuminating example is the Taiping Rebellion of 1850-64 in China, during a time of foreign oppression and internal corruption. The cult was a strange mixture of Confucianism and Christian Evangelism. The leader, Hung Hsiu-Chuan, claimed that, as a son of God and brother of Jesus, he was sent by God to earth to establish the Tai-ping Tien-kuo, the Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace. The movement eventually penetrated 16 of the 18 provinces, captured some 600 cities and occupied Nanking, making it the "heavenly capital" on earth. It has been called "the greatest pre-modern mass movement in history," and with its downfall went possibly as many as 40 million lives.
Renner's numbers for the 19th century? 19.4 million casualties. Not even the total number lost in the Taiping Rebellion.
What about Genghis Kahn's butchery in the 13th century? His conquest of northern China alone cost an estimated 18 million Chinese lives! In total, it's roughly estimated that his conquests claimed millions more: http://www.rotten.com/library/bio/historical/genghis-khan/
It's difficult to know exactly how well-deserved that bad reputation was, but the Mongol Wars of the 13th century depopulated Asia by somewhere between 30 million and 60 million people.
Renner's numbers for the 1st-15th centuries? 3.7 million people!
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The Mayor of Turiwhate
You would get the impression that WTS claims about the huge upsurge in deadly wars from the time of WWI onward primarily refer to the wars that took place in Europe.
Other posters on this thread, though, have drawn attention to the massive death toll of (earlier) wars that were fought in Asia.
Even in Europe, large scale warfare has run in cycles:
eg: - The Thirty Years War of the 17th Century (any war that kills 75% of a country's population has to be treated as a large-scale one!)
- The Napoleonic Wars of the first decade of the 19th Century.
Concerning the last 100 years, would it not be correct to say that the 61 years since the end of WWII is one of the longest periods of stability that Europe has known?
Perhaps W. Schnell, in his "Thirty Years a Watchtower Slave", had a point:
He maintained (when discussing this thought of "more and more deadly wars") that the WTS merely capitalised on the great upheaval in Europe that followed the First World War.
- After all, they had to do something to detract from the fact that they were completely wrong about 1914!
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Londo111
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