List of wars and disasters by death toll

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_and_disasters_by_death_tollarmed conflicts

These figures of one million or more deaths include the deaths of civillians from diseases, famine, etc., as well as deaths of soldiers in battle and possible massacres and genocide.

Where only one estimate is available, it appears in both the low and high estimates. This is a sortable table. Click on the column sort buttons to sort results numerically or alphabetically.

Lowest Estimate  ↓ Highest Estimate  ↓ Event  ↓ Location  ↓ From  ↓ To  ↓ See also  ↓
55,000,000[1] 72,000,000[2] World War II Worldwide 1939 1945 World War II casualties andSino-Japanese War[3]
33,000,000[4] 36,000,000[5] An Shi Rebellion China 756 763 Medieval warfare
30,000,000[6] 100,000,000[7] Mongol Conquests Asia, Central- and Eastern Europe, Middle East 1207 1472 Mongol invasions and Tatar invasions
25,000,000[8] 25,000,000 Qing dynasty conquest of the Ming Dynasty China 1616 1662 Qing Dynasty
20,000,000[9] 30,000,000+[10] Taiping Rebellion China 1851 1864 Dungan revolt
15,000,000 65,000,000 World War I (High estimate includesSpanish flu deaths)[11] Worldwide 1914 1918 World War I casualties
15,000,000[12] 20,000,000[12] Conquests of Timur Middle East, India, Central Asia,Russia 1369 1405 [13]
8,000,000[14][15] 12,000,000 Muslim Rebellion China 1862 1877 Panthay Rebellion
5,000,000[citation needed] 9,000,000[16] Russian Civil War Russia 1917 1921 Russian Revolution (1917), List of civil wars
3,800,000[17] 5,400,000[18] Second Congo War Democratic Republic of the Congo 1998 2003 First Congo War
3,500,000[citation needed] 6,500,000[citation needed] Napoleonic Wars Europe, Atlantic, Pacific andIndian Ocean 1804 1815 Napoleonic Wars casualties
3,000,000 11,500,000[19] Thirty Years' War Holy Roman Empire 1618 1648 Religious war
3,000,000[citation needed] 7,000,000[citation needed] Yellow Turban Rebellion China 184 205 Part of Three Kingdoms War
2,500,000[citation needed] 3,500,000[20] Korean War Korean Peninsula 1950 1953 Cold War
2,495,000[citation needed] 5,020,000[citation needed] Vietnam War South East Asia 1959 1975 Indochina War
2,000,000 4,000,000[21] French Wars of Religion France 1562 1598 Religious war
2,000,000[22] 2,000,000 Shaka's conquests Africa 1816 1828 Ndwandwe–Zulu War
1,500,000[23] 2,000,000[24] Afghan Civil War Afghanistan 1979 present Saur Revolution

A list of court cases where persons known or unknown have been found guilty of one or more crimes against humanity which caused a substantial loss of life.

This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.
Lowest Estimate  ↓ Highest Estimate  ↓ Case  ↓ Perpetrators  ↓ Date of crime  ↓ Location  ↓ Notes  ↓
~8,000 ~8,000 ICTY, Prosecutor, Vidoje Blagojevic & Dragan Jokic Dragan Jokic 1995 Bosnia Dragan Jokic was found guilty, of extermination as a crime against humanity, for his part in supporting the Srebrenica massacre, and on appeal was found to have been "integrally involved in the murder operation, spanning multiple mass killing sites"[25][26]
Main article: Genocides in history

The CPPCG defines genocide in part as "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group".

Determining what historical events constitute a genocide and which are merely criminal or inhuman behavior is not a clear-cut matter. In nearly every case where accusations of genocide have circulated, partisans of various sides have fiercely disputed the interpretation and details of the event, often to the point of promoting wildly different versions of the facts. An accusation of genocide, therefore, will almost always be controversial.

The following list of genocides and alleged genocides should be understood in this context and not necessarily regarded as the final word on the events in question.

Lowest Estimate  ↓ Highest Estimate  ↓ Event  ↓ Location  ↓ From  ↓ To  ↓ Notes  ↓
2,000,000[27] 100,000,000[28] European colonization of the Americas The Americas 1492 1900 Heavily disputed as genocide, but many Marxist and Structuralist historians consider deaths caused by disease, displacement, and conquest of Native American populations during European settlement of North and South America. The genocidal aspects of this event are entwined with loss of life caused by the lack of immunity of Native Americans to diseases carried by European settlers and their livestock (see Population history of American indigenous peoples).[29][30]
8,000,000[31] 10,000,000[32] Tropical diseases, including sleeping sickness andsmallpox,[33][34] and Belgian atrocities in theCongo Free State under the rule of King Leopold II of Belgium Congo Free State 1885 1908 In 1885, King Leopold II. of Belgium installed a corporate state owned by himself that included today’s Democratic Republic of the Congo. His goal was to enrichen himself by exploiting the country’s natural resources like ivory and rubber. The Belgian Force Publique (FP) enslaved millions of Africans and forced them to collect rubber for King Leopold. Adam Hochschild estimates that the population of the Congo region has been halfed during Leopold’s rule, but determining precisely how many people died is next to impossible as no accurate records exist. Louis and Stengers state that population figures at the start of Leopold's control are only "wild guesses", while E.D. Morel's attempt and others at coming to a figure for population losses were "but figments of the imagination". The Belgian atrocities in the Congo may be regarded as genocide.[35]
5,830,000[36] 7,000,000[37] Genocides of Nazi Germany Europe 1941 1945 With around 6 million Jews murdered, many scholars define the Holocaust as a genocide of European Jewry alone. Broader definitions include up to 1,500,000 Romani. A broader definition includes political and religious dissenters, 200,000 handicapped, 2 to 3 million Soviet POWs, 5,000 Jehovah's Witnesses, 15,000 homosexuals and small numbers of mixed-race children (known as the Rhineland bastards), bringing the death toll to around 10.5 million. The number rises to 14 million if the deaths of approximately 2 million more ethnic Poles are included. See Holocaust, Consequences of German Nazism
2,500,000 10,000,000[38] Holodomor, famine, political repression Ukrainian SSR 1932 1933 Famine in Ukraine caused by the government of Joseph Stalin, a part of Soviet famine of 1932-1933. Holodomor is claimed by contemporary Ukrainian government to be a genocide of the Ukrainian nation.
5,000,000[citation needed] 10,000,000[39] Atlantic Slave Trade Africa and The Americas 1500 1900 For about 400 years, millions of Africans were kidnapped from their homes to work as slaves for Europeans or people of European descent in the Americas. Many did not survive their ill-treatment during their storage and shipment. Some scholars regard the Atlantic slave trade as part of what they call the Maafa or African Holocaust.
1,700,000[citation needed] 3,000,000[citation needed] Famine, political repression Cambodia 1975 1979 As of September 2007, no one has been found guilty of participating in this genocide, but on 19 September 2007 Nuon Chea, second in command of the Khmer Rouge and its most senior surviving member, was charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity. He will face Cambodian and United Nations appointed foreign judges at the special genocide tribunal.[40]
26,000[41] 3,000,000[41] 1971 Bangladesh atrocities East Pakistan(nowBangladesh) 1971 1971 Atrocities in East Pakistan by the Pakistani military, leading to theBangladesh Liberation War and Indo-Pakistani War of 1971, are widely regarded as a genocide against Bengali people, but to date no one has yet been indicted for such a crime.
500,000[42] 1,000,000[42] Rwandan genocide Rwanda 1994 1994 Hutu killed unarmed men, women and children. Some perpetrators of the genocide have been found guilty by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, but most have not been charged due to no witness accounts.
500,000[43] 3,000,000[43] Expulsion of Germans after World War II Europe 1945 1950 With at least 12 million[44][45][46] Germans directly involved, possibly 14 million or more, it was the largest movement or transfer of any single ethnic population in modern history[45] and largest among the,post-war expulsions in Central and Eastern Europe (which displaced more than twenty million people in total).[44] The events have been usually classified as population transfer,[47] or as ethnic cleansing.[48]Some go as far as calling it a genocide[49]: for example, R. J. Rummelhas classified these events as both democide and genocide.[50]
1,500,000 2,000,000[51] Armenian Genocide Ottoman Empire 1914 1918 Usually called the earliest genocide of the 20th century between half and one and half million were killed in the genocide. The word genocidehas been a controversial title and many countries including Turkeyrefuse to call the incident a genocide, but a handful of countries have deemed it a genocidal act.
500,000[52] 1,500,000[52] Algerian War Former French Colony, currently known as Algeria 1830 1962  
400,000[53] 400,000[53] Russian conquest of theCaucasus Caucasus 1817 1864 During the last decade or so, especially after the two First and Second Chechen Wars, pro-Chechen groups started to investigate the history of the Caucasian War and came to label the Caucasian exodus as a "Circassian ethnic cleansing", although the term had not been in use in the 19th century. They point out that the exodus was not really voluntary but rather was a matter of what is today called ethnic cleansing – the systematic emptying of villages by Russian soldiers[54]and was accompanied by Russian colonisation.[55] They estimate that some 90 percent of the Circassians estimated at more than three million[56] had relocated from the territories conquered by Russia. During these events, and the preceding Caucasian War, at least tens of thousands of Circassians perished in a "programme of forced expulsion, deportation and massacre at the hands of the Russian government".[57] See also: Muhajir (Caucasus)
275,000[58] 750,000[58] Assyrian genocide Ottoman Empire 1915 1918 Disputed, but some consider it a genocide.
270,000[59] 655,000[60] Ustashe massacres ofSerbs, Jews, Roma Croatia 1941 1945 No academic consensus if this was persecution or genocide during period of Independent State of Croatia
200,000[61] 1,000,000[61] Greek genocide Ottoman Empire 1915 1918 Disputed, but some consider it a genocide.
270,000[62] 702,000[62] Western Anatolian Turkish Genocide Greece 1919 1922 Systematic extermination of the Moslem population was carried out by the Greek forces in Asia Minor.
100,000 300,000 Nanking Massacre Nanking 1937 1938 The Nanking Massacre, commonly known as the Rape of Nanking, was an infamous genocidal war crime committed by the Japanese military in Nanjing, then capital of the Republic of China, after it fell to the Imperial Japanese Army on 13 December 1937.
225,000 650,000[citation needed] Depopulation ofAustralian aborigines[63][64] Australia 1788 1888 No academic consensus that this was a genocide, see Australian genocide debate
200,000 400,000[65] Darfur conflict Sudan Early 2003 present See International response to the Darfur conflict
130,000[citation needed] 200,000[citation needed] Massacres of MayanIndians Guatemala 1962 1996 Genocide according to the Historical Clarification Commission.[66][67]
117,000[68] 500,000[68] Revolt in the Vendée France 1793 1796 Described as genocide by some historians. See also French Revolution
150,000[citation needed] 300,000[citation needed] Political repression ofEast Timorese East Timor 1975 1990s Commonly referred to as genocide by media, scholars.[citation needed]
100,000[citation needed] 400,000[citation needed] Political repression ofWest Papuans Indonesia 1961 present Genocide according to some sources, see Genocide in West Papua
100,000[69] 200,000[70] Al-Anfal Campaign Iraq 1986 1989 Ba'athist Iraq destroys over 2,000 villages and commits genocide on their Kurdish population.
50,000[71] 100,000[71] Massacres of Hutus Burundi 1972 1972 Tutsi government massacres of Hutu, see Burundi genocide
50,000[citation needed] 50,000[citation needed] Massacres of Tutsis Burundi 1993 1993 Hutu government massacres of Tutsi, see Burundi genocide
24,000[72] 75,000[73] Herero and Namaqua genocide Namibia 1904 1908 Generally accepted. See also Imperial Germany
8,000[74] 17,000[75] Massacres duringZanzibar Revolution Zanzibar 1964 1964 Thousands of Arabs and Indians were massacred during the revolution.
8,000 8,000[76] Srebrenica massacre Srebrenica 1995 1995 A genocidal massacre according to the ICTY. See also Bosnia war.

This section includes famines that according to some scholars were caused or exacerbated by the policies of the ruling regime.

See also Famine and List of famines

This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.
Lowest Estimate  ↓ Highest Estimate  ↓ Event  ↓ Location  ↓ From  ↓ To  ↓ Notes  ↓
20,000,000[84] 43,000,000[84] Great Leap Forward famine under the Chinese Communist Party led by Mao Zedong People's Republic of China 1959 1962  
6,000,000 10,000,000[85] Famine in the Soviet Union, under the leadership ofJoseph Stalin, including Holodomor Soviet Union 1932 1933 As of November 2006, the Ukrainegovernment was trying to get this mass starvation recognised by the United Nations as an act of genocide, with Russian government and many members of the Ukrainian parliament opposing such a move.[85]
5,250,000 10,300,000[14] Great Famine of 1876–78 India 1876 1878  
4,000,000 4,000,000 Bengal famine in British-ruled India India 1943 1943  
1,250,000[14] 10,000,000[14] Indian famine of 1899–1900 India 1899 1900 famine in India
750,000[86][87] 1,500,000[88] Great Irish Famine United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland 1846 1849 [89]

This section lists deaths from the systematic practice of human sacrifice or suicide. For notable individual episodes, see Human sacrifice and mass suicide.

Lowest Estimate  ↓ Highest Estimate  ↓ Description  ↓ Group  ↓ Location  ↓ From  ↓ To  ↓ Notes  ↓
300,000 1,500,000 Human sacrifice Aztecs Mexico 14th century 1521 Human sacrifice in Aztec culture
13,000[90] 13,000 Human sacrifice Shang dynasty China BC1300 BC1050 Last 250 years of rule
7,941[91] 7,941 Ritual suicides Sati Bengal, India 1815 1828  
3,912 3,912 Kamikaze suicide pilots, see note[92] Imperial Japanese air forces Pacific theatre 1944 1945  
913 913 Jonestown Revolutionary Suicide Followers of ThePeoples Temple cult Jonestown November 18, 1978 November 19, 1978 The Event was the largest loss of American civilian life in a non-natural disaster until theSeptember 11th 2001 attacks.