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Talk:Genocides in history/Archive 15

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Religious Genocide In India By Muslims

Latest comment: 8 years ago4 comments3 people in discussion

This Subsection is to discuss whether to include the attacks by muslims upon the peoples of india as genocide . A principle reference is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_violence_in_India .

India

The earliest documented religious wars in India are from the 8th century, when Islamic armies attacked the Hindu and Buddhist kingdoms in the northwest parts of Indian subcontinent, now modern Pakistan and parts of Indian states of Gujarat, Rajasthan and Punjab in the early 8th century. After each battle all captured men were executed and their wives and children enslaved. One fifth of the booty and slaves were dispatched back as khums tax to Hajjaj and the Caliph.[1]

Historical records of religious violence are extensive for medieval India, in the form of corpus written by numerous Muslim historians. Will Durant states that Hindus were historically persecuted during Islamic rule of the Indian subcontinent.[19] The total number of deaths of this period, are usually attributed to the figure by Prof. K.S. Lal, who estimated that between the years 1000 AD and 1500 AD the population of Hindus decreased by 80 million.[2][3][4]

The reign of Aurangzeb that followed, witnessed one of the strongest campaign of religious violence in Mughal Empire's history, with an estimated 4.6 million people killed.[96] The Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb's reign saw a scale of religious violence in India that lists as 23rd in 100 deadliest episodes of atrocities in human history.[5] Aurangzeb issued orders in 1669, to all his governors of provinces to "destroy with a willing hand the schools and temples of the infidels, and that they were strictly enjoined to put an entire stop to the teaching and practice of idolatrous forms of worship".[6]

[7] Durant, Will. The Story of Civilization: Our Oriental Heritage. p. 459. "The Mohammedan Conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history." [8]Lal, K. S. (1979). Bias in Indian Historiography. [9]Lal, K. S. (1999). Theory and Practice of Muslim State in India. [10]Gilbert Pollet (1995). Indian Epic Values: Rāmāyaṇa and Its Impact. Peeters Publishers. [11]Andre Wink (2004), Al-Hind, the Making of the Indo-Islamic World, Brill Academic Publishers, ISBN 90-04-09249-8 [12] Matthew White (2011), Aurangzeb - in Atrocities: The 100 Deadliest Episodes in Human History, W.W. Norton & Co., ISBN 978-0393081923 [13]Vincent Smith (1919), The Oxford History of India, Oxford University Press, page 437

GeMiJa (talk) 23:48, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ [30]
  2. ^ [20]
  3. ^ [21]
  4. ^ [22]
  5. ^ [96]
  6. ^ [102]
  7. ^ 19
  8. ^ 20
  9. ^ 21
  10. ^ 22
  11. ^ 30
  12. ^ 96
  13. ^ 102
  • Do the books above explicitly call these events "genocide" or "genocidal"? If they do, please go ahead and include - after providing quotation from multiple secondary RS that it was a genocide. However, simply placing something like that is not acceptable. My very best wishes (talk) 15:36, 27 April 2016 (UTC)
  • MAYBE YOU COULD EXPLAIN WHY THE DIRECT QUOTES OF SURAH 9 OF THE QURAYN DIRECTING THESE GENOCIDES WERE DELETED -

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_violence_in_India - STILL NOT TO 1500ad below

King Jaipal then sent a new message to the Sultan and his Amir, stating "You have seen the impetuosity of the Hindus and their indifference to death. If you insist on war in the hope of obtaining plunder, tribute, elephants and slaves, then you leave us no alternative but to destroy our property, take the eyes out of our elephants, cast our families in fire, and commit mass suicide, so that all that will be left to you to conquer and seize is stones and dirt, dead bodies, and scattered bones."[36]

The campaign of violence, abasement and humiliation was not merely the works of Muslim army, the kazis, muftis and court officials of Allauddin recommended it on religious grounds.[53] Kazi Mughisuddin of Bayánah advised Allauddin to "keep Hindus in subjection, in abasement, as a religious duty, because they are the most inveterate enemies of the Prophet, and because the Prophet has commanded us to slay them, plunder them, and make them captive; saying - convert them to Islam or kill them, enslave them and spoil their wealth and property."[53]

After Khilji dynasty, Tughlaq dynasty assumed power and religious violence continued in its reign. In 1323 Ulugh Khan began new invasions of the Hindu kingdoms of South India. At Srirangam, the invading army desecrated the shrine and killed 12,000 unarmed ascetics. GeMiJa (talk) 12:58, 28 April 2016 (UTC)

Again, you are not providing any reliable sources calling this 'genocide'. What you are pointing to here is religious persecution without any scholarly/academic source referring to it explicitly as being 'genocide'. As we follow reliable WP:SECONDARY sources, it would be WP:OR for editors to call it genocide based on our own interpretation. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 01:26, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

And yet this citation goes without reference , while the contemporary translations of surah 9 of the qurayn that direct genocide based upon religion , which have been the basis of modus operandi for the militant aggression of fictional ishmaelism since its inception , are REMOVED FROM THIS DISCOURSE : " The Old Testament documents the destruction of the Midianites, taking place during the life of Moses in the 2nd millennium BCE. The Book of Numbers chapter 31 recounts that an army of Israelites killed every Midianite man but captured the women and children as plunder. These were later killed at the command of Moses, with the exception of girls who have not slept with a man. The total number killed is not recorded but the number of surviving girls is recorded as thirty two thousand. " 01:19, 30 April 2016 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by GeMiJa (talk • contribs)

RfC: Definition of genocide to select content for this page

Latest comment: 8 years ago21 comments8 people in discussion
There is consensus against restricting the definition of genocide to the UN definition for the purposes of this page. (non-admin closure) ~ RobTalk 14:11, 23 May 2016 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Should this page include only cases that satisfy mainstream definition of genocide as "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group"? My very best wishes (talk) 20:22, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

  • This needs a clarification. According to current version of this page, it includes all atrocities "that have been characterized as genocide by some reliable source ... whether or not this is supported by mainstream scholarship". However, even if something was called a "genocide" or "genocidal" in selected academic RS, this is sometimes clearly a political group, such as communists or anti-communists, rather than "a national, ethnical, racial or religious group", which is the legal/UN-backed definition of the term and also the "majority" definition in RS. There are numerous alternative definitions of the term by individual researchers that significantly differ and include all political killings, any killings by the governments, etc. This leads to disputes, such as one just above on this page. My very best wishes (talk) 20:57, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

Survey

Just to clarify, List of events named massacres "is a list of events for which one of the commonly accepted names includes the word massacre". Key here is "one of the commonly accepted names", and we do have WP:Common name rule related to this. For example, Armenian genocide would belong here because it includes "genocide" in the commonly accepted name. Yes, this is something reasonable. My very best wishes (talk) 22:37, 13 April 2016 (UTC)
For The cases of genocide included in this article should be those that match the UN definition according to RS. That will include things like Germany in SW Africa, Germany in Europe, Europeans in the Americas, Turks against Armenians, Rwanda etc. It will exclude Indonesia, some of Stalin's super culls, and so forth. It's pretty disgusting, I believe, to cheapen the meaning of genocide by expanding it; mass murder is bad enough without making out to be something it isn't. --BowlAndSpoon (talk) 13:55, 14 April 2016 (UTC)
Did you mean that you "agree" with proposal to include only events according to the definition? BTW, some events were claimed to be directed at killing of certain ethnic groups, but denied by the perpetrators and some others. That obviously should be included if the claims are notable and reliably sourced, even if there is a scholarly debate about it, as in the case of Holodomor, but it must be noted on the page that such debate exists. In addition, can this term be applied to events of the past (e.g. extermination of peoples by Genghis Khan)? Yes, just as any other modern terminology, it can be applied to anything, and UN statements tell about this directly ("at all periods of history genocide has inflicted great losses on humanity."). Looking at the page, I would say that extermination of Cossacks should probably stay since they have their own culture, but simply "Soviet citizens" - not sure (probably, no). My very best wishes (talk) 15:04, 14 April 2016 (UTC)
Yes, sorry. Misread the OP, alteration made. I fully agree with what you say. What gets included or excluded, while it cannot involve OR, will simply have to involve some measure of judgement by us lowly WP editors. The example you give of a debated event that would be included, the Ukrainian famine, is a good one. Include but include that it is there is a legit debate. Something as obviously genocidal as the Holocaust can obviously be included without qualification.
"can this term be applied to events of the past" – I'd give this a Yes. I mean, and I am sure you would agree, we already do so, in a sense. The term genocide obviously wasn't even coined until the Forties, yet we still happily apply it anachronistically to Armenia and Germany in SW Africa. I am assuming you are querying whether it is admissible to do so before modern notions of nation and race came along, hence your mooting Genghis Khan. I still think it's OK, which doesn't count for anything, but a weightier assent to doing so comes from, say, Ben Kiernan (I am again assuming you have read his 2007 survey of genocide through history, given you appear to be a keen editor on this topic). Sorry, typing in a rush! --BowlAndSpoon (talk) 22:09, 14 April 2016 (UTC)
  • Neutral. It appears that majority of books on the subject uses this term in the "narrow"/UN-backed sense (see for example "Hidden Genocides: Power, Knowledge, Memory" - I intentionally checked less-known cases described in this book). However, a number of books uses this term in a wider sense. In particular, "Stalin's Genocides" by Norman M. Naimark tells that the original genocide definition by UN included also words "political groups", but the definition was changed on requests from countries who could be accused of the genocide based on the wider definition. I think either way is fine, but we need clarity. I personally do not mind including a lot of events that are currently not included: Soviet War in Afghanistan, all mass murders by communist regimes, and a lot of other events that were claimed to be a "genocide" in a number of RS, but do not satisfy the narrow definition. As a note of order, all these materials should be included if RfC produces "no consensus", i.e. the current criteria remain. My very best wishes (talk) 22:34, 14 April 2016 (UTC)
  • Oppose for reasons stated above. I imagine many instances of mass killing listed here would have to be removed from the article if this became the consensus, not just the Indonesian massacres, which is the primary target here.--C.J. Griffin (talk) 22:47, 14 April 2016 (UTC)
After quickly looking at content, I do not really see anything to remove except Indonesia and two first paragraphs in North Korea section (third paragraph is fine). "Soviet civilians" section ([1]) needs to be decribed as a part of Generalplan Ost that certainly was a genocide by any definition. This is about it. My very best wishes (talk) 03:24, 15 April 2016 (UTC)
Oh really now? Given your preferred reading material (The Black Book of Communism, Rummel, Naimark, [insert anti-Communist historian here]), I'm not surprised by this oversight to say the least...--C.J. Griffin (talk) 03:51, 15 April 2016 (UTC)
(edit conflict) MVBW, I can't see how you've come to that conclusion given that the majority of the pre-20th century 'genocides' have no RS pointing to the UN definition simply by virtue of it being revisionism. The arguments for 'genocide' for these instances is based on research other than the UN definition. Using the UN definition would require WP:OR on behalf of editors in order to establish whether any instance fits that definition. 'Genocide' may be a modern term that's just managed to move out of being a neologism, but genocidal acts are by no means a modern innovation, therefore proscribing it as if it were makes no sense in terms of value to the reader. I really do think that this RfC is a bit topsy-turvy in as far as what editors are trying to accomplish.
My evaluation of any contentious issues surrounding this article (as well as a number of related articles and lists where the same issues keep being raised in perpetuity) is whether WP:CONTENTFORKING may be in order. If so, before going any further, it must be established that we're genuinely dealing with WP:SPINOFF and not WP:POVFORK. I've encountered arguments like 'trivialising' the subject (in fact, I've used it myself) but, conversely, eliminating what doesn't fit one specific algorithm is as much 'trivialisation' as is the former. Hegelian dialectic algorithms are best left to philosophy. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 04:15, 15 April 2016 (UTC)
@C.J. Griffin. Current version of this page tells: The trial began in 1994 and on 12 December 2006 Mengistu was found guilty of genocide and other offences.. Hence Ephiopia definitely belongs to this page, regardless to the RfC.
@Iryna. I think this RfC is important. If consensus will be "oppose" (keep the current criteria for inclusion), then a lot more materials will have to be included on this page. As already noted, one will have to include War in Afghanistan, all Mass killings under Communist regimes (a lot of them are currently not included), Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and a lot of wars. As already noted in previous thread, there are multiple scholarly sources to justify such inclusions. My very best wishes (talk) 18:30, 15 April 2016 (UTC)
Ah, now you're already opening up exceptions to your own proposed rule of strictly adhering to the Genocide Convention, as the so-called "genocide" conviction of Mengistu flies in the face of it (it was a politically biased trial anyway, much like that against Saddam Hussein). It is stated in the article that "Ethiopian law includes attempts to annihilate political groups in its definition of genocide." This is exactly what you and the other virulently anti-Communist editor here have been pushing against, that the annihilation of political groups should not be included in this article (because of Stalin, of course). You're willing to make an exception if the perpetrator is a Communist, but not if the victims were "Communists" (and union leaders, intellectuals, feminists, journalists and anyone else associated with the Indonesian Left). If one is genocide, both are genocide! At least in the latter case you have renowned scholars describing it as such, and not a biased court as in the former.--C.J. Griffin (talk) 13:39, 15 April 2016 (UTC)
To put it simple, the case of someone being convicted for "genocide" definitely passes any reasonable criteria for inclusion, in my opinion. This is unlike some other cases that have been generally described in sources as "killing" (the "killing" in the title of the corresponding WP page) and clearly do not fall under the mainstream/UN-backed definition of genocide. I noticed only a couple of such cases on this page so far. All cases that are currently included on the page and related to the Soviet Union (and Stalin) are actually about the repressions of ethnic or religious groups (Cossacks are a cultural group that also fall under the mainstream definition), except that the "Soviet citizens" section (genocide by Nazi) should be rephrased as I suggested above. My very best wishes (talk) 15:31, 15 April 2016 (UTC)
  • Oppose Current proposal as worded, since it is inherently WP:OR. Most useful (partial) definition is quoted by MVBW "one of the commonly accepted names". That could be expanded to include 'name used by a significant body of scholarly sources'. I recognise the difficulty here, which is avoiding 'trivial' or polemical uses and distinguishing from 'mass murder'. In cases where the use is not obvious (it is obvious in the cases of Rwanda, WWII, Armenia etc) it might be useful to include the reasoning behind the use. In many cases of course, genocide and mass murder coincide, but no one would include homosexuals/the infirm etc in the WWII genocide, were the primary targets NOT ethnic groups. Pincrete (talk) 21:58, 25 April 2016 (UTC)
The materials you think "no one would include" are already included in this section and rightly so, because they fall under any Genocide definition. My very best wishes (talk) 15:05, 27 April 2016 (UTC)
  • Oppose per my arguments above the RfC, as well as in this survey section. It would be a breach of NOR to proscribe events recorded in this article according to a single definition. It's evident that editors involved here are highly aware of the inherent problems of incorporating other scholarly definitions and debates, but manufacturing our own preferred definition is not acceptable. There may be potential future discussions as to splitting the content according to the multiple definitions, but that's contingent on thorough and comprehensive discussions and consensus prior any bold moves. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 23:37, 25 April 2016 (UTC)
That's fine, but then practically any mass murder under communist regimes belong to this page, because there are multiple secondary sources (books) describing them as "genocide"/"genocidal". Same can be said about almost everything described as democide by Rummel. I count you will not object to including such materials. My very best wishes (talk) 15:05, 27 April 2016 (UTC)
  • Oppose I agree with what many of the others have discussed; reducing this list to a single definition would not be appropriate, because there is no policy-backed reason for giving the UN definition primacy over any other definition. The relevant policy is WP:DUE, and my interpretation of policy with respect to this case is that the various definitions should be presented, duly weighted and attributed, in a short section at the top (as is currently the case) and if there is disagreement over a given incident, the various sides of the disagreement should once again be presented, duly weighted, in that particular section. Vanamonde93 (talk) 21:04, 5 May 2016 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Recently added content by 81.100.25.101

Latest comment: 7 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

81.100.25.101 (talk · contribs · WHOIS) recently added improperly referenced content, reverted in [2], [3]. (PS: small grammatical mistake in second revert edit summary). Baking Soda (talk) 04:49, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

Needs a better title

Latest comment: 7 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Better title would be Genocides, democides and alleged genocides and democides in history. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.92.183.18 (talk) 15:05, 18 June 2016 (UTC)

Algerian Genocide

Latest comment: 7 years ago5 comments4 people in discussion

Hi, more than 2 million Algerians were killed by the French. This constitutes an Algerian Genocide and should be defined as such. -Ribbontool (talk) 17:29, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

It is more accurate to describe it as a war of national liberation. It is true that the French killed a lot of Algerians trying suppress the Algerian revolt, but I don't think their intention was to destroy the Algerians as a people, it was to keep them as colonial subjects. I think it devalues the sheer evil of The Holocaust in which the Nazi attempt to kill all the Jews in the world just because they were Jewish to equate it to the Algerian war of independence. I think it was a typical war of national liberation with a lot of casualties, not genocide. "...much water, or shall we say much blood, has flowed under the bridges...", to quote Rudyard Kipling. RockyMtnGuy (talk) 16:17, 5 July 2016 (UTC)
I'm no expert on this topic, but my understanding is that probably fewer than one million were killed, and both sides were guilty of horrific atrocities.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 17:01, 5 July 2016 (UTC)
I think that pretty much summarizes it. Neither the French nor the Algerians were eligible for the Nobel Peace Prize or the Goody Two-Shoes award. It was just another bloody war in history, but as the old saying goes, the winners get to write the history books. RockyMtnGuy (talk) 15:09, 6 July 2016 (UTC)
The Algerians were invaded by as modern colonial power which liquidated a third of the indigenous population. The revolt against what is acknowledged as genocide was led by a local commander who (a) drew up peace treaties with the French invader, systematically dishonoured by the latter as their territorial designs grew; (b) united the local tribes and introduced a form of modernizing centralized administration, including the local Jewes and Christians; (b) fought the French on their terms and on several occasions utterly humiliated them by inflicting military defeats. The French only won by resorting to methods of genocide. The consequences are still with usNishidani (talk) 16:11, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

Genocide by smallpox exposed blankets? Urban myth or documented fact?

Latest comment: 7 years ago15 comments2 people in discussion

The article says: Smallpox-exposed blankets given as gifts at Fort Pitt were part of one of the most famously documented cases of germ warfare

This story of native people being killed by exposure to smallpox exposed blankets seems to pop up in relation to a lot of early explorers, but it has a few problems:

  • The germ theory of disease wasn't generally accepted until the 1880s. So how would colonists prior to that time have thought of using germs to kill natives? They didn't know what caused smallpox.
  • It wouldn't have worked anyway. Smallpox can't generally be spread by infected blankets. Smallpox spreads directly from person to person via aerosols coughed out by a victim, not by contact with infected objects.
  • There are only a few suspected instances of transmission of smallpox via linen, and they are controversial since it wasn't proven that the victims weren't exposed to the disease through the air.
  • The smallpox virus can be inactivated by ordinary laundering or exposure to sunlight. Just hanging the blankets out in the sun would have killed any smallpox virus on them.

See CDC: Questions and Answers About Infection Control and Isolation of Smallpox Patients and WHO: Infected inanimate objects (fomites) and their role in transmission of smallpox

I'm just putting it out there that this idea appears to be something of an urban myth, and should have been vetted before going into an article.RockyMtnGuy (talk) 17:06, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

It's not a myth; it's been well-established fact for some time. If something you read in Wikipedia seems odd to you, the best thing to do is examine the source citation after the information. The information you quoted happens to be heavily cited to high-quality, reliable sources:
If you don't want to do the heavy reading, this is an excellent summary.
As for your personal theories, germ theory has been around since the 16th century, even if not universally accepted until the 19th century. Of course smallpox can be spread by exposed items, for almost 3 weeks - the CDC says so. And of course, there are the documents from the individuals themselves, explaining their intent and actions. Regards, Xenophrenic (talk) 21:02, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

And here is an analysis that indicates there is some academic fraud here. I hate all the academic fraudsters running rampant on the Internet. See Did the U.S. Army Distribute Smallpox Blankets to Indians? Fabrication and Falsification in Ward Churchill's Genocide Rhetoric. RockyMtnGuy (talk) 17:56, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

Fraud here? The only mention he makes of the incident is to say this: ... the Lord Amherst affair of 1763, in which there is compelling evidence that British colonial forces distributed smallpox-infested goods to Indians in New England. So I think citing Brown undermines your theory, unless you meant that this analysis which indicates Mr. Brown's analysis is fraud, supports your point? Welcome to the internet. Xenophrenic (talk) 21:02, 3 June 2016 (UTC)
Through the miracle of Googling the Internet, I discovered that in 2007 the University of Colorado found Professor Churchill guilty of academic misconduct, including plagiarism and research misconduct, and fired him for cause. See: Report of the Investigative Committee of the Standing Committee on Research Misconduct at the University of Colorado at Boulder concerning Allegations of Academic Misconduct against Professor Ward Churchill. It's a real dog's breakfast of things unethical researchers do. He stands convicted of not reading his sources and just making things up whenever he felt like it. My favorite is him publishing things under his wife's name, and then quoting himself as a reference without mentioning that it is his wife he is citing, never mind the fact he wrote it in the first place. Naughty, naughty, naughty. Anyhow, read the report. Facts are facts. You can reinterpret them, but you can never make them go away, especially on the Internet.RockyMtnGuy (talk) 22:13, 3 June 2016 (UTC)
Through the miracle of reading, you'll see that the issue we are discussing — The 1763 incident of biological warfare at Fort Pitt — is not cited to Churchill. And even if it were cited to him, his scholarship on the matter isn't contested. So you climbed up on a soapbox to shout "fraud", citing an essay that doesn't even address the smallpox incident - except to say that it happened? And now you continue to march down that irrelevant trail, declaring that someone not cited in this article, who was accused of academic misconduct on matters not at all relevant to this article, and was fired - and this supports what here, exactly? (And just FYI, Jury Says Professor Was Wrongly Fired, but this isn't the venue for such off-topic rambling.) Google is very powerful and useful indeed, but one must be able to read in order to benefit by its use. Enjoy your breakfast, Xenophrenic (talk) 22:40, 3 June 2016 (UTC)
Through the miracle of reading, I actually read some of the references, (unlike Prof. Churchill who allegedly didn't read his references... and the jury was overturned by the courts but appeals are ongoing through the miracle of the American legal system). If you do so, you'll find that in 1763 the smallpox epidemic was already running wild, decimating both Europeans and Indians, and had started before the alleged blanket incident. Dixon (2005):

In 1762, during negotiations with the Indians at Easton one observer noticed that the Indian agent had "the pox so badly that he can't live long ..."

and also

The most probable source of the smallpox epidemic that struck the Indians during the late summer of 1763 was not British perfidy but the Indians themselves, who contracted the disease while raiding isolate wilderness settlements.

Basically, I'm saying the blanket theory isn't credible because it wouldn't have worked on scientific grounds, regardless of British intentions. At that early date, neither the British nor the Indians knew what caused smallpox (a virus), and both were being killed by it indiscriminately. Theories about intentions are somewhat moot. The Indians got smallpox because one of them was coughed at by a Brit who had smallpox, not because the British intended it. Neither of them knew enough to control an epidemic.RockyMtnGuy (talk) 23:14, 3 June 2016 (UTC)
No, the jury wasn't "overturned" (juries don't get overturned), but the monetary award Churchill never asked for was vacated by the judge, and according to the same judge, the University had quasi-judicial immunity (read: loophole), so he was SOL on getting his job back. Even the American Legal system can't stop political witch hunts. Irrelevant. I've read Dixon. (I put that ref there, in fact.) And I also put in the refs that shred Dixon's apologetics and theories completely, including demonstrating that Dixon's "already there" example was over 100 miles away. I'm not sure what "blanket theory" you refer to; we're not getting into anything theoretical here. As for the simple facts: gentlemen at Fort Pitt gave blankets and a handkerchief (wrapped in a linen), from their hospital full of pox-infected people, to a couple native emissaries for the express purpose of conveying smallpox to them. Yes, they actually wrote that reason in their ledger. That alone is the required genocidal intent, regardless of whether the tainted gifts successfully killed 10,000 natives or not. Did some natives also get the pox from Brits coughing on them? It wouldn't surprise me, but that has nothing to do with what this article is about. Regards, Xenophrenic (talk) 00:02, 4 June 2016 (UTC)
By the way, for a more detailed rundown on not only the genocidal attempts, but the subsequent attempts to cover it up, and even attempts to bury or rewrite the historical record of such events, you can read Siege of Fort Pitt. Xenophrenic (talk) 00:13, 4 June 2016 (UTC)

No, I'm afraid that my analysis indicates this incident falls heavily into the urban legend category.

  1. The timing (1763) was around a century before the germ theory of disease was proven. Prior to the work of Louis Pasteur, around 1850, people did not know what caused smallpox, and did not really know how it spread.
  2. The WHO document indicates that the method (dirty blankets) probably would not have worked. The British might have thought that it would, but they were wrong.
  3. The Dixon document indicates that the dirty blanket method did not work in reality. The Indians did not get smallpox from infected blankets, they got it by face to face contact with infected white settlers.

People have been spreading this story and calling it genocide, but it is more a case of attempted germ warfare by people who don't know anything about germs. The net effect was sort of like attempting to murder someone by giving them dirty socks for Christmas. (Redacted) I've seen similar things pop up in articles elsewhere, but they suffer from similar credibility problems: Nobody at that time knew enough about germs to do germ warfare, and the method people think was used wouldn't work in a real war. If terrorists want to use smallpox as a biological weapon, they are going to have to use something like an aerosol bomb. The CDC has more info on their web site. The problem with stories of this sort is they sound credible, and get people disturbed and upset, but in reality they are not credible. People who don't know just think they sound real and repeat them over and over, which is how urban legends get started. Just watch Mythbusters on TV for innumerable examples.RockyMtnGuy (talk) 10:32, 4 June 2016 (UTC)

No, I'm afraid that my analysis indicates...
That's fine. Just as soon as your analysis is published in a reliable source, we can consider using it to modify our Wikipedia articles. And as I said above, reading carefully is important (i.e.; Dixon never indicates that the genocide "did not work", but he certainly did his darndest to raise doubt about its success, in his defense of the genocide attempts). I enjoyed our discussion. Regards, Xenophrenic (talk) 14:38, 4 June 2016 (UTC)
Actually, Dixon does go on at great length about how the perfidious plot failed to work.

Having established that it was deliberate policy to infect the Indians with smallpox, it is also important to examine whether the plan succeeded. An undetermined number of Indians did become infected with smallpox at some point during the war. Much less certain, however, is how the Indians contracted the disease.

-----

Ironically, the evidence most often cited by historians to prove treachery is the statements of Killbuck and Hicks. While these two accounts indicate that smallpox devastated the Ohio Country people, they also disclosed that the epidemic was not likely not caused by Ecuyer's distribution of infected blankets.

-----

On July 26, a full month after Turtle's Heart and Maumaultee received the infected blankets from Captain Ecuyer, the same two chiefs once again appeared before the fort to parley. Since the incubation period for smallpox is about two weeks, these two Indian leaders should have exhibited the full range of symptoms...

-----

Although it is plausible that both chiefs had at one time already contracted smallpox and acquired immunity, it is more likely that Ecuyer's attempt to spread the disease failed. (p. 154)

And, in the broader context it should be noted that the British commanders were overruled from the top that same year. King George III signed the Royal Proclamation of 1763 which forbade all settlement west of the Appalachian Mountains and gave Ohio Country to the Indians. He also said colonists could only get land from Indians by signing a treaty and paying fair market value. The American Revolution changed that in the US, but in Canada, the Royal Proclamation of 1763 is still the law. The courts have ruled compliance is not optional. Otherwise the Indians still own the land. Anybody in Canada who didn't pay for Indian land over the last few centuries is having to pay up now, and the asking prices are getting well into the high billion$$$.RockyMtnGuy (talk) 22:22, 4 June 2016 (UTC)
Regarding your Dixon quotes, I again note that he never indicates that the genocide "did not work", but he certainly did his darndest to raise doubt about its success, in his defense of the genocide attempts.
gave Ohio Country to the Indians!
Thanks for the levity.   Xenophrenic (talk) 22:45, 4 June 2016 (UTC)
Dixon said,

it is more likely that Ecuyer's attempt to spread the disease failed.

which I took as meaning "it did not work".
As for the Royal Proclamation of 1763, there isn't much levity involved. I used to work as a business analyst in the Land Department of a Canadian oil company and know a lot about Indian land claims. Unlike the US, the Royal Proclamation was never revoked in Canada, so it was ALWAYS illegal to steal Indian land in Canada. In fact it has been grandfathered into the Canadian constitution, so it cannot be overridden by any law. Fortunately, in most of Canada, Queen Victoria signed the numbered treaties, so the Indians got paid for their land in blankets and horses. Unfortunately, in British Columbia the provincial government thought they were playing by American rules and didn't sign any treaties for over 100 years. That created what lawyers call a title defect in ownership of most of the land in BC. A title defect is

...any irregularity in the chain of title of property (usually real property) that would give a reasonable person pause before accepting a conveyance of title.

British Columbia is significantly larger than Texas, so this is a lot of land whose title is clouded. The Indians have their own lawyers nowadays, so they are claiming they still own it all, and they have a valid legal case.RockyMtnGuy (talk) 22:48, 6 June 2016 (UTC)
...which I took as meaning "it did not work".
Well, that one is on you. Speculating that one thing is "more likely" than another thing doesn't mean it didn't happen. And the fact that his arguments have subsequently been challenged and found to be deficient just makes his speculation even less relevant. Xenophrenic (talk) 21:13, 11 September 2016 (UTC)

United States: Genocide of Natives

Latest comment: 7 years ago22 comments3 people in discussion

The Genocide of Natives section led with the following sentence:

Authors, such as David Cesarani, have argued that United States government policies in furtherance of its so-called Manifest Destiny constituted genocide.

That content is only from one half of that discussion, which goes against our editing conventions. For balance, I added the following sentence after the lead sentence:

While other authors, such as Holocaust scholar and political scientist Guenter Lewy, reject the label of genocide and views the depopulation of Native Americans as "not a crime but a tragedy".(Were American Indians the Victims of Genocide?)

Editor Xenophrenic (talk) pointed out that the article now had a duplicate "not a crime but a tragedy” quote from Guenter Lewy. His preference was to delete my entry in favor of keeping this version, which appeared in the “Americas” section:

Holocaust scholar and political scientist Guenter Lewy rejects the label of genocide and views the depopulation of the Americas as "not a crime but a tragedy.:

I pointed out the fallacy in his action. The source’s context is very specific. It is only about American Indians (i.e Native Americans within the current border of the continental USA). Nothing in the source mentions the rest of the "Americas" (i.e. Canada, Mexico, South America, etc…).

Therefore, I removed the duplicate from the “Americas” section and properly reinstated my original addition to the Genocide of natives within the United States section. This was done in order to balance that discussion (which goes along with our editing conventions). Also, removing the duplicate from the "Americas" section did not alter the character of that section.

Oddly, Xenophrenic deleted my entry yet again. He modified the sentence and placed it in the “Americas” section. His modified version is,

Political scientist Guenter Lewy rejects the label of genocide and views the depopulation of the native Americans as "not a crime but a tragedy, involving an irreconcilable collision of cultures and values.”

There are two issues:

  1. The replacement of, “Holocaust scholar and political scientist Guenter Lewy...” with “political scientist Guenter Lewy...” His standing as a Holocaust scholar is an important distinction considering this page is about genocide.
  2. The sentence was moved to the section that benefits from it the least. The source is specifically about genocide of Native Americans. It makes better sense for it to balance the Genocide of Natives within the United States section. Moving it out of the “Americas” section doesn’t change the character of that section. Adding it to the "Genocide of Natives within the United States" section completes the content from both halves of that discussion, which goes along with our editing conventions.

I moved to revert the "United States: Genocide of Natives" section to lead with,

Authors, such as David Cesarani, have argued that United States government policies in furtherance of its so-called Manifest Destiny constituted genocide. While other authors, such as Holocaust scholar and political scientist Guenter Lewy, reject the label of genocide and views the depopulation of Native Americans as "not a crime but a tragedy".(Were American Indians the Victims of Genocide?) OoflyoO (talk) 08:05, 23 June 2016 (UTC)
You mistakenly labeled your content move as per WP:BRD (which means that you would have reverted to pre-June 16, when the problematic was first introduced). If you'd like to revert to that version while the problematic edits are discussed, we can certainly do that.
I removed "Holocaust scholar" from the intro to Lewy because I didn't see that in the cited Commentary source (or evidence of scholarship in that field on his Wikipedia page), although he has written some regarding it.
I also expanded Lewy's quote to be more complete, and I replaced "the Americas" with "native American" per your expressed concern about that wording. There is significant content under the "Americas" section (Lewy included) that also applies to the more specific "United States" subsection; would you have any objections to moving that content along with the Lewy sentence? Xenophrenic (talk) 15:28, 23 June 2016 (UTC)
The problematic was realized on your revert notes on 07:48, 22 June 2016 and following steps were taken to remedy‎. Therefore, I WP:BRD to the post before that revert.
Fair point on removing “Holocaust scholar” and I no longer consider that one of the issues.
I am not interested in changing the character of the “Americas” section.
At this point, my concern is balancing out the “Genocide of Natives” leading sentence with the Lewy source as follows:
Authors, such as David Cesarani, have argued that United States government policies in furtherance of its so-called Manifest Destiny constituted genocide. While other authors, such as Guenter Lewy, reject the label of genocide and views the depopulation of Native Americans as "not a crime but a tragedy".(Were American Indians the Victims of Genocide?)
Another alternative is to remove the following sentence from “Genocide of Natives”
Authors, such as David Cesarani, have argued that United States government policies in furtherance of its so-called Manifest Destiny constituted genocide.
Will you agree to that alternative? OoflyoO (talk) 23:28, 23 June 2016 (UTC)
I'm not sure what you mean by "balancing" one sentence with another, as the debate around genocide of native Americans certainly isn't a 50/50 situation. But it is true that there has been at least some argumentation against describing the destruction of the native population as genocide, so there should be something there. The Lewy sentence you proposed doesn't really tell the reader anything (other than some guy named Lewy doesn't think the tragedy should be called "genocide"). I've temporarily moved the Cesarani sentence from the "US" sub-section to the "America" section, while I work on expanding the content about the academic debate in the US and other subsections. You are welcome to help, of course. Regards, Xenophrenic (talk) 02:04, 24 June 2016 (UTC)
That is your opinion, as the debate is 50/50 as far as reasoning goes. And, the Cesarani sentence doesn't really tell the reader anything either (other than some guy named Cesarani thinks the tragedy should be called "genocide"). Your opinion on the matter is very obvious. Still, you have to make sure to avoid pushing one side over the other. Otherwise a balance is lost. — Preceding unsigned comment added by OoflyoO (talk • contribs) 02:38, 24 June 2016 (UTC)
You should read the Cesarani sentence more carefully, and you'll discover that not only does he think the tragedy constitutes genocide, it further explains that the reason is because of the United States government policies in furtherance of its so-called Manifest Destiny. As for my "opinion"? I don't have one; I can only go by what reliable sources tell me. And while you are reading, you should brush up on Wikipedia Policy regarding the difference between what you think is "balance" and what is WP:FALSEBALANCE: While it is important to account for all significant viewpoints on any topic, Wikipedia policy does not state or imply that every minority view or extraordinary claim needs to be presented along with commonly accepted mainstream scholarship as if they were of equal validity. Regards, Xenophrenic (talk) 02:59, 24 June 2016 (UTC)
If Mr. Lewy is "just some guy", then so is Cesarani. I think Mr. Lewy's view is a significant viewpoint and not a minor one. OoflyoO (talk) 03:11, 27 June 2016 (UTC)
Lewy's view is that there is just one Holocaust or genocide, and describing anything else by those terms is something to be argued against. Also, I never said Lewy's view wasn't significant. I said: The Lewy sentence you proposed doesn't really tell the reader anything (other than some guy named Lewy doesn't think the tragedy should be called "genocide"). It doesn't convey to our readers anything about Lewy's view. Xenophrenic (talk) 04:31, 27 June 2016 (UTC)

Let's look at this hypothetical genocide from the aboriginal side. Fortunately the aboriginal peoples have their own web sites now. I must warn you I'm Canadian, not American, and I've talked to the Blackfeet about their history, so be prepared from some disconnects from the more common US delusional systems of history.

THE BLACKFEET NATION

Like so many of the Great Plains tribes, the Blackfeet originally lived far to the east in the area north of the Great Lakes. It is thought they even ranged as far east as Labrador. Therefore, anthropologists sometimes classify them in prehistory as one of the eastern woodlands tribes.

(Many native people have the myth that they have always been where they are, but they all came from somewhere else. The Blackfeet know where they came from.)

After arrival of the Europeans along the Eastern seashore in the 1600's it is believed that the Blackfeet were probably one of the first tribes to begin moving west. Pushed westward, initially by their traditional enemies, the Cree, the Blackfeet soon were roaming over the huge portion of the northern plains from northern Saskatchewan and central Alberta to the Rockies, the head waters of the Missouri...

  • 1700's Blackfeet probably living in valley of the Northern Saskatchewan River near the Eagle Hills in Canada. Hunt buffalo on foot with bows and arrows.
  • 1730 Blackfeet attacked by Shoshone who are on horseback. First time the Blackfeet have seen horses which they call "elk dogs."
  • 1730-50 Blackfeet acquired their first horses in peaceful trade with their neighbors, the Flathead, Kootenai, and Nez Perce.
  • 1780 Hudson Bay Company builds Buckingham House on the Saskatchewan River in Canada, reaching Blackfeet country. Blackfeet obtain guns through trade.
  • 1781 Small pox epidemic sweeps through Blackfeet country, killing hundreds.
  • 1780-1805 Blackfeet almost exterminate the Shoshone in battles over hunting territory
  • 1787 Blackfeet warriors journey south toward Santa Fe. Encounter Spanish miners and steal their horses.

All of these new items produced a technical and cultural revolution for the Blackfeet. Furthermore, they soon became perhaps the best horsemen of all the Great Plains Indian nations. They rapidly and aggressively expanded their territory by pushing the Shoshone to the southwestern corner of Montana Territory and pushing the Flathead and Kootenai across the Continental Divide into the western valleys of the territory. By 1780, there were as many as 15,000 members of the Blackfeet Nation.

(At this point in time, the Blackfeet had largely pushed out their enemies, and were in total control of the plains. Instead of having walk everywhere with only dogs to carry their goods and bows and arrows to shoot buffalo, they had horses to ride and guns to shoot game. Life became much better for them because of the European invasion. A few hundred had been killed by smallpox, but where's the genocide? But then ...)

In 1855, the hostility between the Blackfeet and the U.S. government culminated in the Baker Massacre. This incident was precipitated by a band of Piegans having killed a prominent settler, Malcolm Clark, outside of Helena in the Fall of 1869. The army decided to retaliate that winter, so Colonel E.M. Baker departed from Fort Shaw and went north to the Marias River and in a surprise attack on January 23, 1870, killed almost all of Heavy Runner's band--mostly women and children who were ill with smallpox.

Even though, in 1880-1881, the Blackfeet still had some successful buffalo hunts, their staff of life had been virtually eliminated. By the winter of 1882, the Blackfeet were destitute. They were forced suddenly to rely on their enemy, the U.S. government. That winter more than 600 Blackfeet died of starvation. In 1877, the Bloods and the north Blackfeet signed a Treaty Number Seven with the Canadian government, restricting them to designated reservations in Alberta. The Piegan Blackfeet remained south of the 49th parallel, occupying part of the vast reservation north of the Missouri and Marias rivers.

Note that the Canadian situation was different from the US because of what they called the "medicine line" - the 49th parallel beyond which the US cavalry would not pursue them because the Canadian police would have stopped them and taken their guns away. (And, I know Americans will say, "No, Canadians wouldn't have dared to fight American soldiers". Yes they would have.) Their real problem was not smallpox but that the buffalo disappeared and they had to negotiate treaties just to get enough food to survive. Many people blame the disappearance of the buffalo on the white buffalo hunters, but there were few white hunters on the Canadian side of the border but the buffalo disappeared anyway - in fact, they disappeared on the Canadian side first. So - who killed the buffalo? My guess is that it was the Blackfeet. We shouldn't have given them guns and horses because we should have known they would kill off all the buffalo with them. You can call it genocide, but I call it just not being aware of consequences. It was kind of like giving American civilians assault rifles, to be provocative about it.RockyMtnGuy (talk) 03:19, 2 July 2016 (UTC)

I think I have a fair understanding of your position as you've expressed it above:
... this hypothetical genocide ... peoples have their own web sites now ... common US delusional systems of history ... Life became much better for them because of the European invasion ... where's the genocide? ... who killed the buffalo? My guess is ... You can call it genocide, but I call it ...
So if I have this straight, it is your opinion that academic descriptions of genocide are "hypothetical" (although I have yet to see you actually engage those arguments); anybody can have a website (you even linked to a dubious one that claims a massacre was caused by events 14 years in the future); US history is "delusional"; the last surviving indigenous peoples should thank the European invaders for making life "much better"; it was the natives, not the colonists, that caused the buffalo to nearly disappear; you acknowledge you don't know where the genocide argument comes from; and lastly, you apparently think what I "call it", or what you "call it", matters in some way with regard to Wikipedia article improvement (hint: our articles should reflect what reliable sources say, not what you or I "guess"). Xenophrenic (talk) 18:23, 3 July 2016 (UTC)
The reason I use the phrase, "hypothetical" is because this article says things like, "A 2010 study suggests that a group of Anasazi in the American Southwest were killed in a genocide that took place circa 800 CE", which implies the Anasazi were wiped out. However, if you go and talk to the descendants of the Anasazi, they strongly disagree. Also, they don't like the word, "Anasazi" because it was a Navajo word meaning "Ancient Enemy", and they prefer to use "Ancestral Puebloans" instead. Other people believe that it was prolonged drought and starvation that caused them to abandon their settlements and chop up their neighbors for food. The article also said, "Smallpox-exposed blankets given as gifts at Fort Pitt were part of one of the most famously documented cases of germ warfare." I did some research into germ warfare, and discovered that smallpox can't be spread by this method. If you are going to use it as a biological weapon, you need to aerosolize it, which you can't do with blankets. Also, I saw a documentary last night about the Battle of the Belly River between the Cree and the Blackfoot, narrated by a native person. Apparently the Cree Indians believed the white man's rumor that the Blackfoot had nearly been wiped out by smallpox, so they send a band of warriors to finish them off. Well, it turned out the rumors were false - only one band of Blackfoot had been decimated, and the rest of them were healthy. So it turned into a rerun of Custer's Last Stand with no white men involved. The entire Blackfoot Confederacy, including the Blackfoot, Blood, and Peigan tribes descended on the Cree and wiped out almost all of them. Only 4 or 5 Cree warriors survived. So, the stories of white genocide against Indians are often not as accurate as some think. (But then there's Indian genocide against Indians.)RockyMtnGuy (talk) 17:14, 4 July 2016 (UTC)
RockyMtnGuy (talk), what is you position regarding the Lewy sentence that was moved out of the "Genocide of Natives" section to the “Americas” section when the source is specifically about genocide of Native Americans. I believe it makes better sense for it to balance the Genocide of Natives within the United States section. Moving it out of the “Americas” section doesn’t change the character of that section. Adding it to the "Genocide of Natives within the United States" section completes the content from both halves of that discussion, which goes along with our editing conventions.
I prefer this in the lead of "Genocide of Natives within the United States" section:
Authors, such as David Cesarani, have argued that United States government policies in furtherance of its so-called Manifest Destiny constituted genocide. While other authors, such as scholar and political scientist Guenter Lewy, reject the label of genocide and views the depopulation of Native Americans as "not a crime but a tragedy".(Were American Indians the Victims of Genocide?) OoflyoO (talk) 01:38, 3 July 2016 (UTC)
As noted above, your preferred sentence tells us one of the reasons behind Cesarani's position (pursuit of Manifest Destiny) , while it doesn't tell us any of the reasons behind Lewy's position, which is non-informative. Xenophrenic (talk) 18:23, 3 July 2016 (UTC)
Cesarani's definition of "Manifest Destiny" is rather creative re-interpretive of the history of the term. Manifest Destiny was invented in the 1840's to describe the United State's intention to expand west to the Pacific Ocean by taking over Canadian and Mexican territory. The American slogan at the time was "54 40 or fight", which is to say the US wanted everything on the west coast of North American as far north as Russian Alaska. It resulted in a war with Mexico in which the US seized California, Arizona, New Mexico, and several other states. In British territory, it resulted in a negotiated agreement giving the US Oregon and Washington, while Britain kept British Columbia. Later, the US bought Alaska from Russia which ironically gave it the coast north of 54 40 plus interior Alaska. The Indians were only involved in that they were in the way of American settlers in all this new American territory, and the US pushed them onto reservations despite their violent objections. So, all things considered, I think he's just trying to make a political point without much historical justification. In the 19th century the rules of war were different. It was just ruthless military expansion, which was standard operating procedure for empires at the time. Genocide is a term only invented in 1944 to describe Hitler's deliberate attempt to exterminate the harmless Jews using gas chambers, which is an entirely different sort of thing than fighting a war with someone who can shoot back.RockyMtnGuy (talk) 14:09, 4 July 2016 (UTC)
Also, did David Cesarani actually say the words that are attributed to him. I'm having trouble finding the references. In fact, a lot of the references in this article are extremely flaky and of dubious authenticity. Reading some of them is why I used the phrase "delusional system" in my comments above. Not that I know anything about anybody here, so if I somehow offend someone somewhere, I'm sorry about that.15:39, 4 July 2016 (UTC)
If a reader wants more information about Lewy's position they can go to the source. I am thinking there is a consensus that either 1) we remove the Cesarani sentence or 2) supplement it with Lewy's to make:
Authors, such as David Cesarani, have argued that United States government policies in furtherance of its so-called Manifest Destiny constituted genocide. While other authors, such as scholar and political scientist Guenter Lewy, reject the label of genocide and views the depopulation of Native Americans as "not a crime but a tragedy".(Were American Indians the Victims of Genocide?)
RockyMtnGuy do we have a consensus on this? OoflyoO (talk) 02:53, 7 July 2016 (UTC)
Under the Wikipedia:Neutral point of view criteria, we should do the latter.

All encyclopedic content on Wikipedia must be written from a neutral point of view (NPOV), which means representing fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias, all of the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic.

However, I'm having trouble verifying the David Cesarani quote. Unless we can verify it, we should delete it, because he may not have actually said it. It is fundamentally unethical to someone else's words in a famous person's mouth, although a lot of politicians and political activists seem to like to do that.RockyMtnGuy (talk) 17:27, 7 July 2016 (UTC)
@RockyMtnGuy: it is agreed, we do have a consensus on the matter. Do we use the latter until we can verify the David Cesarani quote? I'll leave it up to you to make the edit
I did do the edit, but I left in the Cesarani quote, changed it to "Cesarani is alleged to have said" (the media's favorite phrase when a case has not been proven), and flagged it as dubious with a link back to here. There are are a lot of sources who say that Cesarani said that, but they all use exactly the same wording, which to my mind indicates there is a lot of academic plagiarism going on in the genocide research field. Did any of these sources read the original? If not they should get an "F" on their term paper. Or, if they are like one person I could name, they should get fired by their university for academic misconduct. If you can find the original quotations, feel free to remove "alleged" from the edit.RockyMtnGuy (talk) 17:23, 13 July 2016 (UTC)
And then Xenophrenic deleted the Lewy quote under the pretext of confirming the Cesarani quote, which I can only assume he has seen with his own personal two eyes, so I won't dispute that Cesarani said it. Let me remind him that Wikipedia is not a soapbox or means of promotion. I have my own thoughts on the subject, but I have confined most of them to the talk page. I have not indulged in deleting everything from the article I disagreed with. I would prefer he do the same.RockyMtnGuy (talk) 18:52, 16 July 2016 (UTC)
then Xenophrenic deleted the Lewy quote under the pretext of confirming the Cesarani quote
I did no such thing. Please pay attention to the edit summaries. Grab another cup of coffee, take a cold shower, whatever it takes, then re-read the edit summary and kindly explain to me just how many times you think our article (worse, the very same section) needs to repeat "Lewy says it's not a crime, it's a tragedy". And since we're sharing Wikipedia editing convention wisdom, please refrain from inserting the names of your fellow editors in the edit summaries. Why? Because you can't go back and edit or delete an edit summary if you say something ludicrous, and it is that much worse if the nonsense appears next to someone's username. Xenophrenic (talk) 22:48, 17 July 2016 (UTC)
If you had simply left the original edit by OoflyoO stand, we would be okay on the points I am making. The changes you made unbalance it from a POV standpoint, and the quote by Cesarani only applies to the United States and not to the Americas as a whole. For instance, Canada - the northern half of North America - was not depopulated of native people. In fact Canada today has far more native people than it ever had, if census figures are to be believed. The Blackfoot and Cree Indians in particular did well and increased in population. Central and South America were generally not depopulated by European diseases, they were mostly depopulated by African diseases such as malaria and yellow fever, which Europeans also had no resistance to. That is the reason the Spanish and Portuguese brought over African slaves. Africans were the only ones with resistance to African diseases - e.g. the mutation that causes sickle cell anemia also made them immune to malaria. Much of the section header really only applies to the United States, but is generalized to cover the rest of the continent. And then it ends by quoting Venezuelan autocrat Hugo Chávez - whose half-baked economic ideas turned the country with the largest oil reserves in the world into an economic basket case that can't even feed its own people - as an authority on history. It is highly political, littered with radical rhetoric, and needs a rewrite.RockyMtnGuy (talk) 23:22, 18 July 2016 (UTC)
@RockyMtnGuy is correct, Xenophrenic (talk) is going against the consensus here. We don't need the Lewy quote twice, we need it once under the United states section. — Preceding unsigned comment added by OoflyoO (talk • contribs) 19:09, 3 August 2016 (UTC)
I've scanned this whole page (and the archives) and I can't find where that alleged consensus was developed (or even where it was substantially discussed). Would you mind pointing it out for me, Oo?
RockyMtnGuy, the original edit by OoflyoO had several other problems, described in detail above, which were never addressed and fixed; so no, letting that edit stand would degrade our article when we should be striving to improve it. Regards, Xenophrenic (talk) 21:13, 11 September 2016 (UTC)
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