Greatest Man-made Tragedy in History -- Nominations

[SPC]

I submit the following:

The French Revolution
The Holomodor
Operation Keelhaul
World War I
The Khmer Rouge
The 30 Years War
Gun Control

Also The French Revolution? No (sort of: well it was a tragedy but in a different way than all those other sane opinions)

The French Revolution paved the way for a socialist dictatorship that almost conquered Europe. I would call that a tragedy. I don't necessarily believe it is the greatest tragedy, but I'm just throwing that idea out there. Also, how come you criticize me for putting victim disarmament but you leave Al alone for putting a more ridiculous answer, industrialization?

lol.

Al's answer is perfectly legitimate if at all aware what industralization was actually like in Britain (and if you dare say that it was due to the forces of small government and the free market then not only are a distorter of history but a complete intellectual fraud aswell.)

So, rather than address my point, you mock it? Also, what are you talking about blaming industrialization on the British government? Even so, why is it a bad thing? I would consider Luddism to be a more pathetic view than opposing the French Revolution.

[Earth]

The agricultural revolution
Industrial Revolution
The Asian Holocaust
Nazi initiated Holocaust
Holodomor
Khmer Rouge
The Great Purges
Rwandan genocide (all genocides, sadly there's too many to list)
Bolshevik Revolution
Slavery
Nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki

[Tetro Kornbluth]

When you claim that the French Revolutionary State (which one? The Patriot Assembly?, The Girondin Assembly? The Jacobin Rule and the Committe of Public Society? The Post-Thermidor Directory? The Napeolonic State?) was a socialist dictatorship then you clearly have no intellectual credibility in terms of discussing the French Revolution at all. None. What. So. Ever.

But then we are all familiar with your abuse of the word "socialism" to mean "stuff I don't like".

As for Industrialization, I'll leave Al, who is far more knowledgable than I, on that one. Only to say, way to misread what I wrote.

Oh, yes I forgot Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

[SPC]

When you claim that the French Revolutionary State (which one? The Patriot Assembly?, The Girondin Assembly? The Jacobin Rule and the Committe of Public Society? The Post-Thermidor Directory? The Napeolonic State?) was a socialist dictatorship then you clearly have no intellectual credibility in terms of discussing the French Revolution at all. None. What. So. Ever.

But then we are all familiar with your abuse of the word "socialism" to mean "stuff I don't like".

As for Industrialization, I'll leave Al, who is far more knowledgable than I, on that one. Only to say, way to misread what I wrote.

Oh, yes I forgot Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

industrialization, according to Wikipedia, is a process of social and economic change whereby a human group is transformed from a pre-industrial society into an industrial one. What's wrong with that? I suppose Al and you would rather work on a farm for >12 hours a day?

[Tetro Kornbluth]

When you claim that the French Revolutionary State (which one? The Patriot Assembly?, The Girondin Assembly? The Jacobin Rule and the Committe of Public Society? The Post-Thermidor Directory? The Napeolonic State?) was a socialist dictatorship then you clearly have no intellectual credibility in terms of discussing the French Revolution at all. None. What. So. Ever.

But then we are all familiar with your abuse of the word "socialism" to mean "stuff I don't like".

As for Industrialization, I'll leave Al, who is far more knowledgable than I, on that one. Only to say, way to misread what I wrote.

Oh, yes I forgot Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

industrialization, according to Wikipedia, is a process of social and economic change whereby a human group is transformed from a pre-industrial society into an industrial one. What's wrong with that? I suppose Al and you would rather work on a farm for >12 hours a day?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I don't have an utterly negative view of industrialisation (hell, my own family is a product of it in so many different ways) but a complicated and conflicted one. To believe that an event, a process really, is tragic is certainly not the same as saying it is wholly bad or an evil.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

I don't have an utterly negative view of industrialisation (hell, my own family is a product of it in so many different ways) but a complicated and conflicted one. To believe that an event, a process really, is tragic is certainly not the same as saying it is wholly bad or an evil.

If this is addressed to me, I know that, I just felt like popping SPCs bubble (not that he lives in anything but a series of bubbles).

[Filuwaúrdjan]

If this is addressed to me,

Nope; 'twas addressed to SPC.

[??????????]

The Discovery of America

Inevitable events don't count here.

[Earth]

I suppose Al and you would rather work on a farm for >12 hours a day?

Farming, and textile manufacturing at home (cottage industry), to me, is more favorable than working in a factory in 19th century England.

[??????????]

I suppose Al and you would rather work on a farm for >12 hours a day?

Farming, and textile manufacturing at home (cottage industry), to me, is more favorable than working a factory in 19th century England.

Finally! We agree. And Al, I agree with you about industrialization, for the most part.

[Lunar]

The Discovery of America

Inevitable events don't count here.

Well, I think something being inevitable makes it less tragic.

I'm still not sure if industrialization is a man-made "event"

[??????????]

The Discovery of America

Inevitable events don't count here.

Well, I think something being inevitable makes it less tragic.

I'm still not sure if industrialization is a man-made "event"

I see no way for a positive outcome to ever have come out of the contact between any outside nation and the North American Indians. While it may be tragic, the natives weren't really that innocent either. While I suppose they should be applauded for defending the land they didn't even consider themselves to own they also committed atrocities against Europeans and they never would have lived peaceably with the white man. Sad reality.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The Discovery of America

Inevitable events don't count here.

Well, I think something being inevitable makes it less tragic.

I'm still not sure if industrialization is a man-made "event"

I see no way for a positive outcome to ever have come out of the contact between any outside nation and the North American Indians. While it may be tragic, the natives weren't really that innocent either. While I suppose they should be applauded for defending the land they didn't even consider themselves to own they also committed atrocities against Europeans and they never would have lived peaceably with the white man. Sad reality.

...thus making it a tragedy.

[Earth]

I'm still not sure if industrialization is a man-made "event"

If it's a different mode of organization brought on by technology, then it is man made. That's really an oversimplification, but for now, it works.

[Lunar]

emphasis on event.

[Earth]

Not a singular event, but we can talk about it as a whole in hindsight.

[Lunar]

Not a singular event, but we can talk about it as a whole in hindsight.

I mean, can we?

Isn't it still going on? 

[Earth]

Not a singular event, but we can talk about it as a whole in hindsight.

I mean, can we?

Isn't it still going on? 

Technological advances are obviously still going on, but as a time period, I'm talking about the industrial revolution, the beginnings.

[jokerman]

The agricultural revolution
Industrial Revolution

Just don't go off blowing up buildings, Ted.

[Earth]

The agricultural revolution
Industrial Revolution

Just don't go off blowing up buildings, Ted.

You might as well call Jared Diamond or Kirkpatrick Sales a terrorist as well.

[GMantis]

World War I. Without World War I (15 million), no World War II (55 million). And no communism & the related civil wars (70+ million total in Russia & China alone). So you are talking 140 million without even including things like Korea, the Khmer Rouge, and all the side-effects of World Wars I & II. The European nations would have gradually transferred peacefully over to constitutional democracy, with the exception of Russia. But even Russia would have been much better off.

Why couldn't Russia transfer to Constitutional democracy?

The Discovery of America

Inevitable events don't count here.

Well, I think something being inevitable makes it less tragic.

I'm still not sure if industrialization is a man-made "event"

I see no way for a positive outcome to ever have come out of the contact between any outside nation and the North American Indians. While it may be tragic, the natives weren't really that innocent either. While I suppose they should be applauded for defending the land they didn't even consider themselves to own they also committed atrocities against Europeans and they never would have lived peaceably with the white man. Sad reality.

Ah, the old fiction about the "terra nullus". Didn't know there were people nowadays who believed it.
And as for "peaceably living with the white man", it's failure was certainly not all, or even mainly their fault. You might have forgotten what happened in your beloved South in the 1830s. Or what's happening now in some Latin American countries.
Atrocities happened, but the European settlers weren't that civilised, in the modern sense, themselves.

[GMantis]

As my entry, I would add the Ottoman conquest of the Balkans and their subsequent rule. It fits the criteria of being relatively unknown, consideringthe general love affair with the Ottoman empire.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Thinking about this further, an obvious answer (that fits in well with the idea of a Tragedy) would be Marxism. Thinking on from there, perhaps the entire idea, ideology really, of Progress.

[Orser67]

Great Leap Forward should be in there.

War of the Triple Alliance is an interesting one.  Poor Paraguay.