Selected Death Tolls for Wars, Massacres and Atrocities Before the 20th Century

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Our ignorance of history makes us libel our own times. People have always been like this. -- Gustave Flaubert

Primitive War

Analysing statistics in Lawrence Keeley's War Before Civilization: the Myth of the Peaceful Savage (1996):

According to Carl Haub, some 1138 million prehistoric humans were born between 50,000 and 8,000 BCE. According to the above analysis of Table 6.2, 170 million of them would have died in war.

Or instead, we could apply the analysis of Table 6.1. Assuming an average prehistoric population of 3 million, this indicates 4500 KIA each year worldwide, or 189 million for all the years between 50,000 and 8,000 BCE.

For later history, let's assume that from 8000 BCE to 1500 CE, the world's primitive population stayed about the same -- at 5 million. (After all, population growth would be confined to technologically innovative societies -- you know, civilization.) With 0.45% of them dying in war every year, this adds up to another 214 million killed in primitive war.

In total, all this indicates some 400 million people who died in primitive war before the primitives were wiped out or absorbed by civilization. Two caveats, however:

  1. This does NOT displace WW2 as the worse thing that people have ever done to each other, because it's not a "thing". It's a category. The proper comparison is not "primitive war" vs. "World War II"; it's "primitve war" vs. "state-level war".
  2. Don't you go tacking these 400M onto any kind of "death by government" category, because Keeley (and other anthropologists) specifically describe the societies in this category as "non-state".

Slavery

African American Slavery

In American Holocaust (1992), David Stannard estimates that some 30 to 60 million Africans died being enslaved. He claims a 50% mortality rate among new slaves while being gathered and stored in Africa, a 10% mortality among the survivors while crossing the ocean, and another 50% mortality rate in the first "seasoning" phase of slave labor. Overall, he estimates a 75-80% mortality rate in transit.

In Slavery A World History, Milton Meltzer estimates that 10 million slaves arrived in the Americas. This would be the residue after 12.5% of those shipped out from Africa died on the ocean, 4-5% died while waiting in harbor, and 33% died during the first year of seasoning.

In "The Atlantic Slave Trade and the Holocaust" (Is the Holocaust Unique, A. Greebaum, ed., 1996), Seymour Drescher estimates that 21M were enslaved, 1700-1850, of which 7M remained in slavery inside Africa. 4M died "as a direct result of enslavement". Of the 12M shipped to America, 15%, or 2M more, died in the Middle Passage and seasoning year.

Jan Rogozinski, A Brief History of the Caribbean (1994): "[A]s many as eight million Africans may have died in order to bring four million slaves to the Caribbean islands."

In The Slave Trade, Hugh Thomas estimates that 13M left African ports, and 11,328,000 arrived. Here are a few other numbers from Thomas:

In the chapter on African population in the Atlas of World Population History (1978), Colin McEvedy estimates that 9.5 million African slaves were imported into the Americas between 1500 and 1880. He also suggests a 15% mortality rate on the ocean.

Rummel estimates a total death toll of 17,267,000 African slaves (1451-1870)

Fredric Wertham claims that 150,000,000 Africans died of the slave trade.

My Estimate:

Looking at all the scholarship on the subject, it looks like, at the very least, 35% of those enslaved in Africa died before they were ever put to work in America. On the other hand, at least 20% of them survived. Between these extreme possibilites (35-80%), the most likely mortality rate is 62%.

In terms of absolute numbers, the lowest possible (and only barely possible at that) death toll we can put on the trans-Atlantic slave trade is 6 million. If we assume the absolute worst, a death toll as high as 60 million is at the very edge of possibility; however, the likeliest number of deaths would fall somewhere from 15 to 20 million.


Death Rates Low Likely High
Seasoning 15% 33% 50%
Arrived 9.5M 11M 15M
Ocean Crossing 10% 15% 18%
Africa 20% 33% 50%
Died 6M 17.8M 58M

If 5 million slaves were shipped in the 18th Century (the busiest century, see Hugh Thomas, above), then the 18th Century death toll could be around 8.1 million. (=5/11*17.8)

Keep in mind that these numbers only count the dead among the first generation of slaves brought from Africa. Subsequent generations would contribute additional premature or unnatural deaths.

Slavery in the Islamic World

Ronald Segal, in Islam's Black Slaves, estimates the total number of African slaves shipped to the Muslim world at 11.5M-14M. This breaks down as follows:

Segal also mentions estimates by Raymond Mauvy:

What was the mortality rate among these slaves? Here are a few estimates in Segal:

Death Toll

How many people died in all the slave harvesting by Moslems over the centuries? I hesitate to estimate, but I think we can safely assume that at least 3 people died for every 2 living slaves delivered (similar to the death rate in the Atlantic trade), which comes to about 19M deaths. Keep in mind that the data is so spotty and the margin of error so wide that we can't honestly or definitively accuse either the Christian or Moslem slave trade of being worse than the other.

Biblical Atrocities

[FAQ: "How reliable are these numbers?"]

Religious Martyrs

Analysis of Martyr Statistics:

How accurate are these numbers? Well, at first glance, I'm sure that they overstate the number of Christians in Central Asia before Genghis and Tamerlane, and I can't recall any event in recorded history that put 676,000 Christians at the mercy of Hindus. Nor can I find a massacre of Vietnamese Catholics in 1970. (1870, yes, but not 1970) And I'm not sure what they mean by "Quasi-religionists". And a million Bahai's? No way. But all in all, I'd say that the 20th Century numbers seem to be in the right order of magnitude (probably too high, but the right number of digits) if we accept their definition of martyr. That definition, however, can be debated.

The hard part of tallying martyrdoms is that not only do we have to figure out who, when and where, but also why. Did the Bolsheviks choose their victims because they were Christians, or dissidents, or middle class, or just in the way? According to Bruce Lincoln, Red Victory, "a commission appointed by [anti-Communist] General Denikin to look into Bolshevik atrocities indicated that more than five times as many teachers and professors, and more than seven times as many physicians, died at the hands of the Bolsheviks than did priests."

Most of these martyrologists seem to count any Christian (no matter how nominal) who died under persecution (no matter the reason). For example, many would count the Rwandan massacres as religious persecution because so many victims tried to take sanctuary in churches, even though both the victims and the killers were usually of the same religion. [see http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/religion/july-dec00/rwanda_8-31.html] A tighter definition obviously would yield smaller totals. Let's look at possible alternatives.

At one extreme, there is the notion that the universe is the scene of an eternal struggle between the wicked and the righteous, therefore all violent deaths among the righteous are martyrdoms. There's no arguing with this viewpoint, so let's just nod and grin and back away slowly. A calmer argument with the same result is that a person's belief system is such a central component of his character that every decision in life has religious roots, and therefore every conflict in society has a religious element to it.

At the other extreme we find the argument that, deep down, every high-minded ideology (such as religion) is really a mask for cold self-interest, and therefore no one really dies for their faith.

Between these all-or-nothing alternatives, there's plenty of room to debate just what is or isn't a martyrdom. While Barrett et al use a theological definition which focuses on the mental state of the victim ("in a situation of witness"), I would recommend a secular definition that focuses on the mental state of the killers ("for religious reasons"). After all, you can't die for your beliefs unless your beliefs are under attack.

It's probably best to balance several criteria:

  1. If the only difference between the two conflicting groups is religion, then my guess is that we've got a religious conflict. Serbs and Croats are basically the same thing except for religion. Ditto for Hindi and Urdu, so whenever they fight it out, the victims could be considered martyrs.
  2. If there are multiple differences between the two sides in a conflict, then it's a lot trickier determining whether religion, race, economics or ethnicity is the prime motive. Considering that the Roma (Gypsies) differed from the average European in just about everything - including religion - should we really count their annihilation as a martyrdom?
  3. If the persecutors confess to religious motives, we should at least consider the possibility that they're telling the truth. When the Crusaders declared their intent to free their holy places from the unbelievers, then we might want to take them at their word rather than finagling a way to blame economic forces for it. Ditto for Communist attempts to eradicate religion in their countries.
  4. If converting to the persecutors' religion does nothing to save the victims, then the motivation is probably not religious. During the Holocaust, Jews were killed regardless of whether they had converted to Christianity, making this an ethnic rather than a religious persecution. On the other hand, many of the Armenians attacked by the Turks were forcibly converted to Islam rather than killed, making this more likely a religious persecution.
  5. When the victims and perpetrators are of the same religion, can we call it a martyrdom? Many martyrologists would include Martin Luther King on their lists. Their reasoning? He was a Baptist minister killed for his beliefs -- but he was killed for his political beliefs, at the hands of a Methodist -- hardly an example of religious persecution.

Finally, notice how these martyrmetrics use an interesting double standard. Atheism and secularism are counted as religions when they're the persecutors, but they aren't considered religions when they're the victims. Does this mean that no one in the history of humanity has ever been killed for being less religious than his enemies? Just to name names - Anwar Sadat, Yitzhak Rabin, Socrates, Mohandas Gandhi, Hypatia of Alexandria, Malcolm X and the occupants of the World Trade Center may count as secular martyrs. They were all murdered for religious reasons, but not because of their religion.

Questionable Traditions

Several alleged martyrdoms and religious fights are widely doubted by historians.

Ancient Greece

[FAQ: "How reliable are these numbers?"]

India

Religious practices outlawed under Wm. Bentinck, r.1828-35

List of Recurring Sources

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Last updated July 2005

Copyright © 1999-2005 Matthew White