My original post: http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/10/112134/1.ashx
Again, I quote from the "Bible Teach" book, on p.89:
Millions of people have been killed in wars during the past century. One British historian wrote: "The 20th century was the most murderous in recorded history...it was a century of almost unbroken war, with few and brief periods without organised and armed conflict somewhere." A report from the Worldwatch Institute states: "Three times as many people fell victim to war in [the 20th] century as in all the wars from the first century AD to 1899." More that 100 million people have died as a result of wars since 1914. Even if we know the sorrow of losing one loved one in warfare, we can only imagine such misery and pain multiplied millions of times over.
The "British Historian" quoted was none other than Eric Hobsbawm, who is a controversial figure often charged with coloring his historical asessments with promotion of his personal communist agenda. Not to say that this necessarily applies to his asessment here--I simply do not have all the facts at present to make a judgement on that, yet would be an interesting topic for further investigation.
For starters, check out this graph from the Human Security report:
The source is cited as: Monty G. Marshall and Ted Robert Gurr, Peace and Conflict 2005 .
Here's a critical review of Hobsbawm: http://www.newcriterion.com/archive/21/jan03/hobsbawm.htm
The 2nd author quoted claiming there were "three times as many victims" falling to war in the 20th century as in previous centuries dating back to the first century is Michael Renner, senior researcher at the Worldwatch Institute. Here is the quoted article: http://www.worldwatch.org/press/news/1999/04/29/
Another article from Renner shows a breakdown of the figures he used to come up with that statement:
War-Related Deaths Over the Centuries
DEATHS DEATHS PER
IN THOUSAND
CENTURY MILLIONS PEOPLE
1st to 15th 3.7 n.a.
16th 1.6 3.2
17th 6.1 11.2
18th 7.0 9.7
19th 19.4 16.2
20th(*) 109.7 44.4(*) Up to 1995
However, he cites no references.
Are his numbers suspect?
Just a quick amateur check by ME was very revealing!
I just ran a quick check on a couple of wars in the 17th century. Two notable wars in the 17th century were the Thirty Years' War and the Manchu-Chinese war.
R.R. Palmer, in A History of the Modern World (New York, 1952), p. 133, put the estimates of casualties of the Thirty Years' War at 7-8 million civilians and 2-3 million soldiers, for a total death toll of 9-11 million. Here's what Awake! says about the Thirty Years' War:*** g72 4/22 p. 13 Religion’s Role in Past Wars ***
The Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648) between Catholics and Protestants was especially terrible. During it Germany lost some three fourths of its population. Augsburg dropped from 80,000 to 18,000 inhabitants. And only about one quarter of the people of Bohemia remained. The fall of the Protestant city of Magdeburg illustrates the savagery of the fighting.
Britannica mentions: (1618–48), in European history, a series of wars fought by various nations for various reasons, including religious, dynastic, territorial, and commercial rivalries. Its destructive campaigns and battles occurred over most of Europe, and, when it ended with the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, the map of Europe had been irrevocably changed.
Now onto the Manchu conquest of Ming China, or Manchu-Chinese War. This extended conflict began in 1644 and resulted in an estimated 25 million lives lost. [E.L. Jones, The European Miracle (Cambridge, London, New York: Cabridge University Press, 1981), p.36.]
also see: http://www.san.beck.org/3-8-QingEmpire1644-1799.html http://www.gotheborg.com/index1.htm?http://www.gotheborg.com/chronology/qing.shtml
So accounting for only two wars from the 17th century gives us a figure of about 35 million war casualties.However, Michael Renner from the Worldwatch Institute indicated that there were 6.1 million total war deaths in the 17th century!
Ok, so much for the 17th century. I decided to check out casualties from a war in the 19th century, the Taiping Rebellion (1850-64).Again, here's what Awake! had to say 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.
40 millon--that's nearly 4 times as many as were killed directly by World War I!
Yet Michael Renner claimed there were 19.4 million war casualties for the entire 19th century!
Okay what about Renner's pre-15th century numbers? I decided to simply check out the carnage instigated by one guy in the 13th century--Genghis Khan. John Man, in the book Gehghis Khan: Life, Death, and Resurrection reported that Genghis Khan's conquests reduced the population by 40 million, and other estamates go as high as 60 million:
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.
Interestingly, Michael Renner's war-death figure for the entire timespan of the 1st through 15th centuries is a mere 3.7 millon!
What is the deal with this kind of reporting by the Worldwatch Institute?
Here's what one critic of the Worldwatch Institute had to say:
http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=18800
Written By: Jay Lehr, Ph.D.
Published In: Environment News
Publication Date: April 1, 2006
Publisher: The Heartland Institute
For many years, I have been reading the annual reports issued by The Worldwatch Institute on the state of the world's environment. With dismay and disgust, I have found them to be scaremongering doomsday diatribes filled with junk science, offering wrongheaded solutions to non-existent problems, and with socialist undertones not at all well-disguised.