Did genocide exist in prehistory before the formation of states? With Europe as focus, this article seeks an answer to this seminal question by coupling three lines of archaeological evidence: warfare, abnormal graves and genetics. When warfare is waged against other groups, there is a risk of genocidal events of unconstrained violence. Warfare became more frequent when Neolithic farmers, and later pastoral herders, migrated into the land in several expansions that eventually absorbed or replaced original residents. In the Bronze Age, along with professional military units and higher population densities, abnormal graves increased significantly in frequency. Indeed, warfare is often in evidence in abnormal graves, which call to mind recent examples of genocidal massacres and mass graves. At times, however, there is no apparent reason for the deviant interment. The victims in these graves evidently shared some form of identity. Young women and adolescents are often in minority, probably because they were taken captives and incorporated in the captors’ society as wives and labourers. The conclusion is that genocidal moments took place. Genetic and archaeological evidence corroborates that exposed groups’ possibility to continue reproducing themselves economically, culturally and biologically became restricted. Epidemics is an unknown variable.

William I’s ‘Harrying of the North’ was a military expedition against local rebels and a Danish invasion force in the winter of 1069–70. It has been regarded since the 1870s as a uniquely savage treatment of the English inhabitants of northern England, wantonly destructive of life and the means of sustenance, and tantamount to genocide. Such views derive from the two fullest medieval accounts, by the early twelfth-century historians Symeon of Durham and Orderic Vitalis. However, neither was an eye-witness, both were at work two generations later, and both had their own agenda in describing the destruction of the North and William I’s cruelty. The Harrying should instead be seen as a routine military operation which took place, unusually, in the depths of winter, and so had unusually severe consequences. More strictly contemporary accounts from Evesham and Beverley reveal a regional but probably localized famine and a refugee crisis. Further, the record in Domesday Book (1086) of many Yorkshire villages as ‘waste’ should be read as referring not to physical destruction but to the absence of surplus values accruing to landlords, and not caused by the Harrying alone. The Harrying of the North was no genocide.

This chapter explores the pervasiveness of narratives of genocide and mass violence in Israelite and early Jewish sources and relate this genocidal impulse to the interethnic violence that occurred in the ancient Levant in different periods. It argues that various historical factors contributed to the prevalence of extreme violence in these sources: the brutality of imperialistic aggression carried out against the Israelites by several ancient Near Eastern empires; the demographic shifts that contributed to material scarcities in the Iron Age II and the Hellenistic-Roman era; and the dichotomized processes of ethnic boundary-marking that characterize so many Israelite and early Jewish texts. The merging of these factors generated an abundance of literature depicting genocide and other forms of mass violence.

The role of climate (including abrupt changes and extreme weather) in modern-era violence and conflict has received considerable attention in the past two decades from scholars in multiple fields, yet the mechanisms underlying (and even the reality of) such a role remains contested. Concern over projected climatic changes as a trigger for intensified violence, including mass killing and genocide, nonetheless continues to propel research. Data limitations are frequently cited as a challenge, yet comparatively few studies have turned to the millennia of human history documenting a broad range of violence against diverse social and environmental backgrounds. This chapter reviews evidence for ‘pathways’ by which climate may have contributed to violence and conflict in the Ancient Near East and Egypt. It emphasized religious, ideological, and ethnic dimensions that may have been catalysed by the psychological and material impacts of extreme weather to promote violence and conflict. In particular, we study state-enacted violence by the Neo-Assyrian Empire (909-611 BCE) and internal revolt in Ptolemaic Egypt (305-30 BCE). Newly available ice-core-based dates of explosive volcanism allow the examination of societal responses to the ensuing hydroclimatic shocks (also potentially ‘ominous’ volcanic dust-veils). These can be shown to closely precede documented increases in violence and conflict, including external warfare and internal revolt.

This chapter examines and compares three genocidal events in the early modern Caribbean and Mesoamerica: the massacres of Xaragua (Hispaniola, 1503), Cholula (Mexico, 1519), and Toxcatl (Mexico, 1520; also known as the Massacre of Templo Mayor). Each of the three mass killings marked a political and military turning point in the history of Spanish military expansion in the Americas. They share other important characteristics, too. These massacres were entirely or partially planned and executed by European actors, namely Spanish officials and military entrepreneurs (conquistadores) under the leadership of fray Nicolás de Ovando, Hernán Cortés and Pedro de Alvarado respectively. Each event can be described as a genocidal massacre targeting a specific community because of its membership of a larger group: the primary objective of the European perpetrators was to provide an object lesson for the surviving members of that group (Leo Kuper). In each case, European perpetrators sought to avoid scrutiny and censure from within their own group by explaining and justifying their actions as a pre-emptive strike against indigenous plots. The tangible involvement of indigenous actors — altogether crucial in the case of the Massacre of Cholula ax— further complicates the historical analysis of a complex sources.

From Antiquity through contemporary times, depriving populations of access to food, water and other means to sustain life has been a central tool of genocide. The deliberate withholding or destruction of objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population can be used to pursue policies that systematically target groups with an impact equal to, and potentially even more widespread than, acts of killing. However, the acts that produce and sustain starvation are treated as lesser crimes than killing. When described as famine, these calamities are often presented as natural or unintentional crises of hunger or low nutrition. Drawing on historical examples that range from ancient Carthage, colonial famines, the Nazi Hungerplan, Communist agricultural and political policies, manipulation of humanitarian aid during the war in Bosnia, and genocides in the 21st century, this chapter considers the complications of assessing intent and formulating responses to mass starvation. It offers a wide-ranging overview of the critical concepts, legal developments, and key issues at stake when deliberate deprivation is imposed on a people as part of genocidal policies.

This Introduction to Volume I of The Cambridge World History of Genocide, which covers the ancient, medieval, and early modern worlds, raises questions about the nature of premodern genocide, about the meaning of genocide and genocidal intent in the premodern era, and about both perpetrators and victim groups, and about the scale, techniques, and ideologies of genocide in that long historical period in comparison to those of genocides committed in modern times. The chapter considers whether or not genocide can be considered a ‘transhistorical phenomenon’. It also asks whether mass violence in the pre-modern and early modern periods occurred in a different moral context than that of modern times, presenting some differing views on this question. Finally the chapter introduces the substantive chapters of the volume, and how they variously examine material, political, sociocultural, and ideological factors that contributed to premodern outbreaks of genocide, as well as noting some changes over time from prehistory to the early modern era.

This chapter examines mass killing, ‘extermination’ and ‘genocide’ in Chinese history, focusing on the Warring States period and early empires. The Chinese language contains many words for ‘attack’, ‘kill’, ‘extermination’, ‘eradication’, and ‘destruction’ of the enemy. The concept of ‘genocide’ is rendered as ‘extermination’ of an ethnic group. Mass killing was facilitated by China’s precocious development of the technology of rule, especially national conscription and centralized administration. As early as 268 BCE, the state of Qin articulated and practiced an official policy of conquest by ‘attacking not only territory but also people’ to ensure that rival states and their populations could not recover. The Western Han dynasty massacred the Xiongnu in 133-91 BCE and beyond, while the Eastern Han dynasty exterminated the Qiang in 169. Ran Min of a later divided era launched ‘execution of the Jie and extermination of their kind’ in 350. The recurrence of mass killing did not end with the fall of the last dynasty in 1911. The ‘megamurderers’ Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong created ‘China’s bloody twentieth century’ by killing 10.2 million in 1921-48 and 37.8 million in 1923-76, respectively.

Caesar’s conquest of Gaul makes for a fascinating study in mass-violence in the ancient world. Caesar’s own narrative of his conquest, the Bellum Gallcium, provides us with one of our few first-hand accounts of conquest. Caesar’s keen political eye means that the narrative must be one he considered would resonate with a significant proportion of Romans. As such, it provides perhaps one of our best guides not so much as to what happened, but as to the place of mass violence within Roman thinking. Within the text, Caesar clearly states what can be regarded as a genocidal’ desire, namely that the ‘the stock and name of the tribe’ (stirps ac nomen civitatis) of the Germanic Eburones might be destroyed for their role in ambushing Caesar’s forces (Bellum Gallicum 6.34), as well as narratives of other acts of mass-killing. In addition, Caesar narrates several instances of mass-enslavement – an action that, although not readily caught by modern legal definitions of genocide, would have the same effect by dispersing a people, and causing the cessation of that people’s existence as a distinct group of people. However, Caesar’s text also shows a concern to portray such events as justified as within a retributive framework of wrongs done to Rome.

'Urbicide' is a Latin formation - as deployed in this chapter, it refers to the total or near-total destruction of cities (poleis) of the ancient Greek/Hellenic world between the 6th and the 4th centuries BCE. Urbicide was an extreme measure of interstate politics, but not as rare as one might have predicted - or hoped. It represented the other, dark side of the ancient Greeks' fierce attachment to their own native polis. In some cases a polis might be removed from the map once and for all (e.g. Arisba on the island of Lesbos). In others, it might be only temporarily annihilated (Thebes). In all cases, the possibility of largescale enslavement of formerly free Greek citizens was ever-present, and often was realised.

The article discusses the most consequential episodes of genocidal violence against the Jews in medieval Western Europe: the slaughter of Jews in the Rhineland during the First Crusade (1096), the massacres in England (1189-90), the Rintfleisch and Armleder massacres in Germany (1298, 1336-38), the Shepherds’ Crusade violence in France and northern Iberia (1320-21), attacks on Jews during the Black Death epidemic (1348-1351), and the anti-Jewish urban riots in Castile and Aragon (1391-92). While the massacres did not aim to eradicate Jews from the Western Christendom, by the end of the medieval period the violence expanded in scope, affecting entire regions and even kingdoms. Christians from all walks of life – not just lower-class people – participated in the assaults. They had a variety of motivations: while some wanted to take revenge on the supposed killers of Christ, others resented Jews’ association with royal power, or felt victimized by Jewish moneylenders. The dissemination of conspiracy theories about Jews committing ritual murder, desecrating the Eucharistic host, or causing the plague also led to violence. Jews were accused of plotting to destroy Christianity, inflict physical harm on Christians, and undermine their livelihood. In this sense, medieval and modern anti-Jewish violence have far more in common than many scholars are willing to admit.