WE OWE HUMANITY A BETTER FUTURE

The Dzungar Genocide

The Dzungar Genocide

1755 - 1758 Death Toll: 480,000-600.000

The Dzungar genocide (Chinese: 準噶爾滅族; lit. 'extermination of the Dzungar tribe') was the mass extermination of the Mongol Dzungar people by the Qing dynasty. 

The Qianlong Emperor ordered the genocide due to the rebellion in 1755 by Dzungar leader Amursana against Qing rule, after the dynasty first conquered the Dzungar Khanate with Amursana's support. 

The genocide was perpetrated by Manchu generals of the Qing army supported by Turkic oasis dwellers (now known as Uyghurs) who rebelled against Dzungar rule. The Dzungar Khanate was a confederation of several Tibetan Buddhist Oirat Mongol tribes that emerged in the early 17th century, and the last great nomadic empire in Asia. Some scholars estimate that about 80% of the Dzungar population, or around 500,000 to 800,000 people, were killed by a combination of warfare and disease during or after the Qing conquest in 1755–1757.

After wiping out the native population of Dzungaria, the Qing government then resettled Han, Hui, Uyghur, and Sibe people on state farms in Dzungaria along with Manchu Bannermen to repopulate the area.

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Circassian Genocide

Circassian Genocide

1864 - 1867 Death Toll: 400,000-2,000,000

The Circassian genocide,or Tsitsekun, was the Russian Empire's systematic mass murder, ethnic cleansing, and expulsion of 80–97% of the Circassian population, around 800,000–1,500,000 people, during and after the Russo-Circassian War (1763–1864). The peoples planned for removal were mainly the Circassians, but other Muslim peoples of the Caucasus were also affected. Several methods used by Russian forces such as impaling and tearing the bellies of pregnant women were reported. Russian generals such as Grigory Zass described the Circassians as "subhuman filth", and glorified the mass murder of Circassian civilians, justified their use in scientific experiments, and allowed their soldiers to rape women.

During the Russo-Circassian War, the Russian Empire employed a genocidal strategy of massacring Circassian civilians. Only a small percentage who accepted Russification and resettlement within the Russian Empire were completely spared. The remaining Circassian population who refused were variously dispersed or killed en masse. Circassian villages would be located and burnt, systematically starved, or their entire population massacred. Leo Tolstoy reported that Russian soldiers would attack village houses at night.[20] William Palgrave, a British diplomat who witnessed the events, adds that "their only crime was not being Russian". In 1864, "A Petition from Circassian leaders to Her Majesty Queen Victoria" was signed by the Circassians requesting humanitarian aid from the British Empire. In the same year, mass deportation was launched against the surviving population before the end of the war in 1864 and it was mostly completed by 1867. Some died from epidemics or starvation among the crowds of deportees and were reportedly eaten by dogs after their death. Others died when the ships underway sank during storms.

Calculations, including taking into account the Russian government's own archival figures, have estimated a loss of 80–97% of the Circassian population in the process. The displaced people were settled primarily to the Ottoman Empire. Sources state that as many as 1 to 1.5 million Circassians were forced to flee in total, but only half could make it to land. Ottoman archives show nearly 1 million migrants entering their land from the Caucasus by 1879, with nearly half of them dying on the shores as a result of diseases. If Ottoman archives are correct, it would make it the biggest genocide of the 19th century, and indeed, in support of the Ottoman archives, the Russian census of 1897 records only 150,000 Circassians, one tenth of the original number, still remaining in the now-conquered region.

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The Armenian Genocide

The Armenian Genocide

1915 - 1917 Death toll: 600,000-1,500,000

The Armenian Genocide was the systematic destruction of the Armenian people and identity in the Ottoman Empire during World War I. Spearheaded by the ruling Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), it was implemented primarily through the mass murder of around one million Armenians during death marches to the Syrian Desert and the forced Islamization of Armenian women and children.
Before World War I, Armenians occupied a protected, but subordinate, place in Ottoman society. Large-scale massacres of Armenians occurred in the 1890s and 1909. The Ottoman Empire suffered a series of military defeats and territorial losses—especially the 1912–1913 Balkan Wars—leading to fear among CUP leaders that the Armenians, whose homeland in the eastern provinces was viewed as the heartland of the Turkish nation, would seek independence. During their invasion of Russian and Persian territory in 1914, Ottoman paramilitaries massacred local Armenians. Ottoman leaders took isolated indications of Armenian resistance as evidence of a widespread rebellion, though no such rebellion existed. Mass deportation was intended to permanently forestall the possibility of Armenian autonomy or independence.
On 24 April 1915, the Ottoman authorities arrested and deported hundreds of Armenian intellectuals and leaders from Constantinople. At the orders of Talaat Pasha, an estimated 800,000 to 1.2 million Armenians were sent on death marches to the Syrian Desert in 1915 and 1916. Driven forward by paramilitary escorts, the deportees were deprived of food and water and subjected to robbery, rape, and massacres. In the Syrian Desert, the survivors were dispersed into concentration camps. In 1916, another wave of massacres was ordered, leaving about 200,000 deportees alive by the end of the year. Around 100,000 to 200,000 Armenian women and children were forcibly converted to Islam and integrated into Muslim households. Massacres and ethnic cleansing of Armenian survivors were carried out by the Turkish nationalist movement during the Turkish War of Independence after World War I.
The Armenian genocide resulted in the destruction of more than two millennia of Armenian civilization. Together with the mass murder and expulsion of Syriac and Greek Orthodox Christians, it enabled the creation of an ethnonational Turkish state. The Turkish government maintains that the deportation of Armenians was a legitimate action that cannot be described as genocide. As of 2022, 33 countries have recognized the events as genocide, as do the vast majority of historians.

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The Greek Genocide

The Greek Genocide

1914 - 1922 Death Toll: 300,000-900,000

The Greek genocide (Greek: Γενοκτονία των Ελλήνων, Genoktonia ton Ellinon), which included the Pontic genocide, was the systematic killing of the Christian Ottoman Greek population of Anatolia which was carried out mainly during World War I and its aftermath (1914–1922) on the basis of their religion and ethnicity.

It was perpetrated by the government of the Ottoman Empire led by the Three Pashas and by the Government of the Grand National Assembly led by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, against the indigenous Greek population of the Empire. 

The genocide included massacres, forced deportations involving death marches through the Syrian Desert, expulsions, summary executions, and the destruction of Eastern Orthodox cultural, historical, and religious monuments. 

Several hundred thousand Ottoman Greeks died during this period. Most of the refugees and survivors fled to Greece (adding over a quarter to the prior population of Greece). Some, especially those in Eastern provinces, took refuge in the neighbouring Russian Empire.

By late 1922, most of the Greeks of Asia Minor had either fled or had been killed.[18] Those remaining were transferred to Greece under the terms of the later 1923 population exchange between Greece and Turkey, which formalized the exodus and barred the return of the refugees. 

Other ethnic groups were similarly attacked by the Ottoman Empire during this period, including Assyrians and Armenians, and some scholars and organizations have recognized these events as part of the same genocidal policy

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The First Genocide of Ukraine (Holodomor)

The First Genocide of Ukraine (Holodomor)

1932 - 1933 Death Toll: 3,000,000 - 5,000,000

The Holodomor (Ukrainian: Голодомо́р, romanized: Holodomor, IPA: [ɦolodoˈmɔr];derived from морити голодом, moryty holodom, 'to kill by starvation'), also known as the Terror-Famine or the Great Famine, was a man-made famine in Soviet Ukraine from 1932 to 1933 that killed millions of Ukrainians. The Holodomor famine was part of the wider Soviet famine of 1932–1933 which affected the major grain-producing areas of the country.
While scholars universally agree that the cause of the famine was man-made, whether or not the Holodomor constitutes a genocide remains in dispute. Some historians conclude that the famine was planned and exacerbated by Joseph Stalin in order to eliminate a Ukrainian independence movement. Others suggest that the famine arose because of rapid Soviet industrialisation and collectivization of agriculture.
Ukraine was one of the largest grain-producing states in the USSR, and as a result was hit particularly hard by the famine. Early estimates of the death toll by scholars and government officials vary greatly. A joint statement to the United Nations signed by 25 countries in 2003 declared that 7–10 million died. However, current scholarship estimates a range significantly lower, with 3.5 to 5 million victims. The famine's widespread impact on Ukraine persists to this day.
Since 2006, the Holodomor has been recognized by Ukraine alongside 15 other countries, as a genocide against the Ukrainian people carried out by the Soviet regime.

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The Holocaust

The Holocaust

1939 - 1945 Death Toll: 6,000,000

The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II.

Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; around two-thirds of Europe's Jewish population. 

The murders were carried out in pogroms and mass shootings; by a policy of extermination through labor in concentration camps; and in gas chambers and gas vans in German extermination camps, chiefly Auschwitz-Birkenau, Bełżec, Chełmno, Majdanek, Sobibór, and Treblinka in occupied Poland.

Nazi Germany implemented the persecution in stages. Following Adolf Hitler's appointment as chancellor on 30 January 1933, the regime built a network of concentration camps in Germany for political opponents and those deemed "undesirable", starting with Dachau on 22 March 1933. 

After the passing of the Enabling Act on 24 March, which gave Hitler dictatorial plenary powers, the government began isolating Jews from civil society; this included boycotting Jewish businesses in April 1933 and enacting the Nuremberg Laws in September 1935. On 9–10 November 1938, eight months after Germany annexed Austria, Jewish businesses and other buildings were ransacked or set on fire throughout Germany and Austria on what became known as Kristallnacht (the "Night of Broken Glass"). 

After Nazi Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, triggering World War II, the regime set up ghettos to segregate Jews. Eventually, thousands of camps and other detention sites were established across German-occupied Europe.

The segregation of Jews in ghettos culminated in the policy of extermination the Nazis called the Final Solution to the Jewish Question, discussed by senior government officials at the Wannsee Conference in Berlin in January 1942. 

As Nazi German forces captured territories in the East, all anti-Jewish measures were radicalized. Under the coordination of the SS, with directions from the highest leadership of the Nazi Party, killings were committed within Germany itself, throughout occupied Europe, and within territories controlled by Germany's allies. Paramilitary death squads called Einsatzgruppen, in cooperation with the German Army and local collaborators, murdered around 1.3 million Jews in mass shootings and pogroms from the summer of 1941. By mid-1942, victims were being deported from ghettos across Europe in sealed freight trains to extermination camps where, if they survived the journey, they were gassed, worked or beaten to death, or killed by disease, starvation, cold, medical experiments, or during death marches. 

The killing continued until the end of World War II in Europe in May 1945.

The Holocaust is understood as being primarily the genocide of the Jews, but during the Holocaust era (1933–1945), systematic mass-killings of other population groups occurred. These included Roma, Poles, Ukrainians, Soviet civilians and prisoners of war, and other targeted populations. Smaller groups were also victims of deadly Nazi persecution, such as Jehovah's Witnesses, Black Germans, disabled people, communists, and homosexuals.

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The Jewish Exodus

The Jewish Exodus

1948 - 1970 Faith Undetermined: 900,000

The Jewish exodus from the Muslim world was the departure, flight, expulsionevacuation and migration of 850,000 Jews,[ primarily of Sephardi and Mizrahi background, from Arab countries and the Muslim world, mainly from 1948 to the early 1970s. The last major migration wave took place from Iran in 1979–80, as a consequence of the Iranian Revolution. A number of small-scale Jewish migrations began in many Middle Eastern countries early in the 20th century with the only substantial aliyah (immigration to the area today known as Israel) coming from Yemen and Syria. Few Jews from Muslim countries immigrated during the period of Mandatory Palestine.[4] Prior to the creation of Israel in 1948, approximately 800,000 Jews were living in lands that now make up the Arab world. Of these, just under two-thirds lived in French- and Italian-controlled North Africa, 15–20% in the Kingdom of Iraq, approximately 10% in the Kingdom of Egypt and approximately 7% in the Kingdom of Yemen. A further 200,000 lived in Pahlavi Iran and the Republic of Turkey. The first large-scale exoduses took place in the late 1940s and early 1950s, primarily from Iraq, Yemen and Libya. In these cases over 90% of the Jewish population left, despite the necessity of leaving their property behind.[5] Two hundred and sixty thousand Jews from Arab countries immigrated to Israel between 1948 and 1951, accounting for 56% of the total immigration to the newly founded state.[6] The Israeli government's policy to accommodate 600,000 immigrants over four years, doubling the existing Jewish population,[7] encountered mixed reactions in the Knesset; there were those within the Jewish Agency and government who opposed promoting a large-scale emigration movement among Jews whose lives were not in danger.[7]Later waves peaked at different times in different regions over the subsequent decades. The peak of the exodus from Egypt occurred in 1956 following the Suez Crisis. The emigrations from the other North African Arab countries peaked in the 1960s. Lebanon was the only Arab country to see a temporary increase in its Jewish population during this period, due to an influx of Jews from other Arab countries, although by the mid-1970s the Jewish community of Lebanon had also dwindled. Six hundred thousand Jews from Arab and Muslim countries had reached Israel by 1972. In total, of the 900,000 Jews who left Arab and other Muslim countries, 600,000 settled in the new state of Israel, and 300,000 migrated to France and the United States. The descendants of the Jewish immigrants from the region, known as Mizrahi Jews ("Oriental," literally: "Eastern Jews") and Sephardic Jews ("Spanish Jews"), currently constitute more than half of the total population of Israel, partially as a result of their higher fertility rate. In 2009, only 26,000 Jews remained in Arab countries and Iran, as well as 26,000 in Turkey. The reasons for the exoduses are manifold, including pull factors, such as the desire to fulfill Zionist yearnings or find a better economic status and a secure home in Europe or the Americas and, in Israel, a policy change in favor of mass immigration focused on Jews from Arab and Muslim countries, together with push factors, such as persecutionantisemitism, political instability, poverty and expulsion. The history of the exodus has been politicized, given its proposed relevance to the historical narrative of the Arab–Israeli conflict. When presenting the history, those who view the Jewish exodus as analogous to the 1948 Palestinian exodus generally emphasize the push factors and consider those who left as refugees, while those who do not, emphasize the pull factors and consider them willing immigrants.

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The Congo Crisis

The Congo Crisis

1960 - 1965 Death Toll: 100,000 Faith Unknown: 580,000 - 975,000 Displaced Population: Over 2,000,000

The Congo Crisis (French: Crise congolaise) was a period of political upheaval and conflict between 1960 and 1965 in the Republic of the Congo (today the Democratic Republic of the Congo).[c] The crisis began almost immediately after the Congo became independent from Belgium and ended, unofficially, with the entire country under the rule of Joseph-Désiré Mobutu. Constituting a series of civil wars, the Congo Crisis was also a proxy conflict in the Cold War, in which the Soviet Union and the United States supported opposing factions. Around 100,000 people are believed to have been killed during the crisis.A nationalist movement in the Belgian Congo demanded the end of colonial rule: this led to the country's independence on 30 June 1960. Minimal preparations had been made and many issues, such as federalismtribalism, and ethnic nationalism, remained unresolved. In the first week of July, a mutiny broke out in the army and violence erupted between black and white civilians. Belgium sent troops to protect fleeing whites. Katanga and South Kasai seceded with Belgian support. Amid continuing unrest and violence, the United Nations deployed peacekeepers, but UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld refused to use these troops to help the central government in Léopoldville fight the secessionists. Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba, the charismatic leader of the largest nationalist faction, reacted by calling for assistance from the Soviet Union, which promptly sent military advisers and other support.The involvement of the Soviets split the Congolese government and led to an impasse between Lumumba and President Joseph Kasa-Vubu. Mobutu, in command of the army, broke this deadlock with a coup d'état, expelled the Soviet advisors and established a new government effectively under his own control. Lumumba was taken captive and subsequently executed in 1961. A rival government of the "Free Republic of the Congo" was founded in the eastern city of Stanleyville by Lumumba supporters led by Antoine Gizenga. It gained Soviet support but was crushed in early 1962. Meanwhile, the UN took a more aggressive stance towards the secessionists after Hammarskjöld was killed in a plane crash in late 1961. Supported by UN troops, Léopoldville defeated secessionist movements in Katanga and South Kasai by the start of 1963.With Katanga and South Kasai back under the government's control, a reconciliatory compromise constitution was adopted and the exiled Katangese leader, Moïse Tshombe, was recalled to head an interim administration while fresh elections were organised. Before these could be held, however, Maoist-inspired militants calling themselves the "Simbas" rose up in the east of the country. The Simbas took control of a significant amount of territory and proclaimed a communist "People's Republic of the Congo" in Stanleyville. Government forces gradually retook territory and, in November 1964, Belgium and the United States intervened militarily in Stanleyville to recover hostages from Simba captivity. The Simbas were defeated and collapsed soon after. Following the elections in March 1965, a new political stalemate developed between Tshombe and Kasa-Vubu, forcing the government into near-paralysis. Mobutu mounted a second coup d'état in November 1965, taking personal control of the country. Under Mobutu's rule, the Congo (renamed Zaire in 1971) was transformed into a dictatorship which would endure until his deposition in 1997.

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Cambodian Genocide

Cambodian Genocide

1975 - 1979 Death Toll: 1,386,734 - 3,000,000

The Cambodian genocide (Khmer: របបប្រល័យពូជសាសន៍នៅកម្ពុជា) was the systematic persecution and killing of Cambodian citizens by the Khmer Rouge under the leadership of Communist Party of Kampuchea general secretary Pol Pot, who radically pushed Cambodia towards an entirely self-sufficient agrarian socialist society. It resulted in the deaths of 1.5 to 2 million people from 1975 to 1979, nearly a quarter of Cambodia's population in 1975 (c. 7.8 million).

Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge had long been supported by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its chairman, Mao Zedong; it is estimated that at least 90% of the foreign aid which the Khmer Rouge received came from China, including at least US$1 billion in interest-free economic and military aid in 1975 alone. After it seized power in April 1975, the Khmer Rouge wanted to turn the country into an agrarian socialist republic, founded on the policies of ultra-Maoism and influenced by the Cultural Revolution. Pol Pot and other Khmer Rouge officials met with Mao in Beijing in June 1975, receiving approval and advice, while high-ranking CCP officials such as Politburo Standing Committee member Zhang Chunqiao later visited Cambodia to offer help. To fulfill its goals, the Khmer Rouge emptied the cities and forced Cambodians to relocate to labor camps in the countryside, where mass executions, forced labor, physical abuse, malnutrition, and disease were rampant. In 1976, the Khmer Rouge renamed the country Democratic Kampuchea.

The massacres ended when the Vietnamese military invaded in 1978 and toppled the Khmer Rouge regime. By January 1979, 1.5 to 2 million people had died due to the Khmer Rouge's policies, including 200,000–300,000 Chinese Cambodians, 90,000–500,000 Cambodian Cham (who are mostly Muslim), and 20,000 Vietnamese Cambodians. 20,000 people passed through the Security Prison 21, one of the 196 prisons the Khmer Rouge operated, and only seven adults survived. The prisoners were taken to the Killing Fields, where they were executed (often with pickaxes, to save bullets) and buried in mass graves. Abduction and indoctrination of children was widespread, and many were persuaded or forced to commit atrocities. As of 2009, the Documentation Center of Cambodia has mapped 23,745 mass graves containing approximately 1.3 million suspected victims of execution. Direct execution is believed to account for up to 60% of the genocide's death toll, with other victims succumbing to starvation, exhaustion, or disease.

The genocide triggered a second outflow of refugees, many of whom escaped to neighboring Thailand and, to a lesser extent, Vietnam. In 2001, the Cambodian government established the Khmer Rouge Tribunal to try the members of the Khmer Rouge leadership responsible for the Cambodian genocide. Trials began in 2009, and in 2014, Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan were convicted and received life sentences for crimes against humanity committed during the genocide.


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The Illegal overthrow of The Hawaiian Kingdom

The Illegal overthrow of The Hawaiian Kingdom

1795 - 1893 (Overthrown) Ever Since: A De Jure Sovereign Kingdom

The Hawaiian Kingdom, or Kingdom of Hawaiʻi (Hawaiian: Ke Aupūni o Hawai‘i), was a sovereign state located in the Hawaiian Islands. The country was formed in 1795, when the warrior chief Kamehameha the Great, of the independent island of Hawaiʻi, conquered the independent islands of Oʻahu, Maui, Molokai and Lānaʻi and unified them under one government. In 1810, the whole Hawaiian archipelago became unified when Kauaʻi and Niʻihau joined the Hawaiian Kingdom voluntarily. Two major dynastic families ruled the kingdom: the House of Kamehameha and the House of Kalākaua.

The kingdom won recognition from the major European powers. The United States became its chief trading partner and watched over it to prevent other powers (such as Britain and Japan) from asserting hegemony. In 1887 King Kalākaua was forced to accept a new constitution in a coup by the Honolulu Rifles, an anti-monarchist militia. Queen Liliʻuokalani, who succeeded Kalākaua in 1891, tried to abrogate the new constitution. She was overthrown in 1893, largely at the hands of the Committee of Safety, a group including Hawaiian subjects and resident foreign nationals of American, British and German descent, many educated in the US. Hawaiʻi was briefly an independent republic until the U.S. illegally annexed it through the Newlands Resolution on July 4, 1898, which created the Territory of Hawaiʻi. United States Public Law 103-150 of 1993 (known as the Apology Resolution), acknowledged that "the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi occurred with the active participation of agents and citizens of the United States" and also "that the Native Hawaiian people never directly relinquished to the United States their claims to their inherent sovereignty as a people over their national lands, either through the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi or through a plebiscite or referendum."

Origins 

Unification of HawaiiIn ancient Hawaiʻi, society was divided into multiple classes. At the top of the class system was the aliʻi class with each island ruled by a separate aliʻi nui. All of these rulers were believed to come from a hereditary line descended from the first Polynesian, Papa, who would become the earth mother goddess of the Hawaiian religion. Captain James Cook became the first European to encounter the Hawaiian Islands, on his third voyage (1776–1780) in the Pacific. He was killed at Kealakekua Bay on the island of Hawaiʻi in 1779 in a dispute over the taking of a longboat. Three years later the island of Hawaiʻi was passed [by whom?] to Kalaniʻōpuʻu's son, Kīwalaʻō, while religious authority was passed to the ruler's nephew, Kamehameha.

Hawaiian military officer, 1819 (by Jacques Arago)The warrior chief who became Kamehameha the Great, waged a military campaign lasting 15 years to unite the islands. He established the Hawaiian Kingdom in 1795 with the help of western weapons and advisors, such as John Young and Isaac Davis. Although successful in attacking both Oʻahu and Maui, he failed to secure a victory in Kauaʻi, his effort hampered by a storm and a plague that decimated his army. Eventually, Kauaʻi's chief swore allegiance to Kamehameha (1810). The unification ended the ancient Hawaiian society, transforming it into an independent constitutional monarchy crafted in the traditions and manner of European monarchs. The Hawaiian Kingdom thus became an early example of the establishment of monarchies in Polynesian societies as contacts with Europeans increased. Similar political developments occurred (for example) in Tahiti, Tonga, Fiji and New Zealand.

Overthrow

Overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom. USS Boston's landing force on duty at the Arlington Hotel, Honolulu, at the time of the overthrow, January 1893. In 1893, local businessmen and politicians, composed of six non-native Hawaiian Kingdom subjects, five American nationals, one British national, and one German national, all of whom were living and doing business in Hawaiʻi, overthrew the queen, her cabinet and her marshal, and took over the government of the Hawaiian Kingdom. Historians suggest that businessmen were in favor of overthrow and annexation to the U.S. in order to benefit from more favorable trade conditions with its main export market. The McKinley Tariff of 1890 eliminated the previously highly favorable trade terms for Hawaiʻi's sugar exports, a main component of the economy.

United States Government Minister John L. Stevens summoned a company of uniformed U.S. Marines from the USS Boston and two companies of U.S. sailors to land on the Kingdom and take up positions at the U.S. Legation, Consulate and Arion Hall on the afternoon of January 16, 1893. This deployment was at the request of the Committee of Safety, which claimed an "imminent threat to American lives and property." Stevens was accused of ordering the landing on his own authority and inappropriately using his discretion. Historian William Russ concluded that "the injunction to prevent fighting of any kind made it impossible for the monarchy to protect itself."

1895 Wilcox rebellion

On July 17, 1893, Sanford B. Dole and his committee took control of the government and declared itself the Provisional Government of Hawaii "to rule until annexation by the United States" and lobbied the United States for it. Dole was president of both the Provisional Government and the later Republic of Hawaii. During this time, members of the former government lobbied in Washington D.C. for the United States to restore the Hawaiian Kingdom. President Grover Cleveland considered the overthrow to have been an illegal act of war; he refused to consider annexation of the islands and initially worked to restore the queen to her throne. Between December 14, 1893, and January 11, 1894, a standoff occurred between the United States, Japan and the United Kingdom against the Provisional Government to pressure them into returning the Queen known as the Black Week. This incident drove home the message that President Cleveland wanted Queen Liliʻuokalani's return to power, and so on July 4, 1894, the Republic of Hawaii was requested to wait for President Cleveland's second term to finish. As lobbying continued in Washington during 1894, the royalist faction was secretly amassing an army 600 strong led by former Captain of the Guard Samuel Nowlein. In 1895 they attempted a counter-rebellion, and Liliʻuokalani was arrested when a weapons cache was found on the palace grounds. She was tried by a military tribunal of the Republic, convicted of treason, and placed under permanent house arrest in her own home.

On January 24, 1895, while under house arrest Liliʻuokalani was forced to sign a five-page declaration as "Liliuokalani Dominis" in which she formally abdicated the throne in return for the release and commutation of the death sentences of her jailed supporters, including Minister Joseph Nāwahī, Prince Kawānanakoa, Robert Wilcox and Prince Jonah Kūhiō:

Before ascending the throne, for fourteen years, or since the date of my proclamation as heir apparent, my official title had been simply Liliuokalani. Thus I was proclaimed both Princess Royal and Queen. Thus it is recorded in the archives of the government to this day. The Provisional Government nor any other had enacted any change in my name. All my official acts, as well as my private letters, were issued over the signature of Liliuokalani. But when my jailers required me to sign ("Liliuokalani Dominis,") I did as they commanded. Their motive in this as in other actions was plainly to humiliate me before my people and before the world. I saw in a moment, what they did not, that, even were I not complying under the most severe and exacting duress, by this demand they had overreached themselves. There is not, and never was, within the range of my knowledge, any such a person as Liliuokalani Dominis. — Queen Liliuokalani, "Hawaii's Story By Hawaii's Queen".

“It is understood to all that the Kingdom of Hawai’i is a De jure Sovereign Kingdom and the lands and it’s independence which were taken from it by an armed force must be returned in a form which will give all sides the ability to reach a hand towards each other in resolution of peace and not in any way with a hand holding a spear.” 

His Majesty Dr. Edmund K. Silva Jr. The King of Hawai’I.


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World War I

World War I

1914 - 1918 Death Toll: 20,000,000

World War I or the First World War, (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. It was fought between two coalitions, the Allies (primarily France, the United Kingdom, Russia, Italy, Japan and the United States) and the Central Powers (led by Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire). Fighting occurred throughout Europe, the Middle East, Africa, the Pacific, and parts of Asia. An estimated 9 million soldiers were killed in combat, plus another 23 million wounded, while 5 million civilians died as a result of military action, hunger, and disease. Millions more died as a result of genocide, while the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic was exacerbated by the movement of combatants during the war.

The first decade of the 20th century saw increasing diplomatic tension between the European great powers. This reached breaking point on 28 June 1914, when a Bosnian Serb named Gavrilo Princip assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne. Austria-Hungary held Serbia responsible, and declared war on 28 July. Russia came to Serbia’s defence, and by 4 August, defensive alliances had drawn in Germany, France and Britain.

German strategy in 1914 was to first defeat France, then attack Russia. However, this failed, and by the end of 1914, the Western Front consisted of a continuous line of trenches stretching from the English Channel to Switzerland. The Eastern Front was more fluid, but neither side could gain a decisive advantage, despite a series of costly offensives. Attempts to bypass the stalemate caused fighting to expand into the Middle East, the Alps, the Balkans and overseas colonies, bringing Bulgaria, Romania, Greece and others into the war.

The United States entered the war on the side of the Allies in April 1917, while the Bolsheviks seized power in the Russian October Revolution, and made peace with the Central Powers in early 1918. Freed from the Eastern Front, Germany launched an offensive in the west on March 1918, hoping to achieve a decisive victory before American troops arrived in significant numbers. Failure left the German Imperial Army exhausted and demoralised, and when the Allies took the offensive in August 1918, they could not stop the advance.

Between 29 September and 3 November 1918, Bulgaria, the Ottoman Empire and Austria-Hungary agreed to armistices with the Allies, leaving Germany isolated. Facing revolution at home, and with his army on the verge of mutiny, Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicated on 9 November. The Armistice of 11 November 1918 brought the fighting to a close, while the Paris Peace Conference imposed various settlements on the defeated powers, the best-known being the Treaty of Versailles. The dissolution of the Russian, German, Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires resulted in the creation of new independent states, among them Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia. Failure to manage the instability that resulted from this upheaval during the interwar period contributed to the outbreak of World War II in September 1939.

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The 1918 Flu Pandemic

The 1918 Flu Pandemic

1918 Death Toll: 17,000,000 - 50,000,000

The 1918 flu pandemic, also known as the Great Influenza epidemic or by the common misnomer of the Spanish flu, was an exceptionally deadly global influenza pandemic caused by the H1N1 influenza A virus. The earliest documented case was March 1918 in Kansas, United States, with further cases recorded in France, Germany and the United Kingdom in April. Two years later, nearly a third of the global population, or an estimated 500 million people, had been infected in four successive waves. Estimates of deaths range from 17 million to 50 million, and possibly as high as 100 million, making it one of the deadliest pandemics in history.

The pandemic broke out near the end of World War I, when wartime censors in the belligerent countries suppressed bad news to maintain morale, but newspapers freely reported the outbreak in neutral Spain, creating a false impression of Spain as the epicenter and leading to the "Spanish flu" misnomer. Limited historical epidemiological data make the pandemic's geographic origin indeterminate, with competing hypotheses on the initial spread.

Most influenza outbreaks disproportionately kill the young and old, with a higher survival rate in-between, but this pandemic had unusually high mortality for young adults. Scientists offer several explanations for the high mortality, including a six-year climate anomaly affecting migration of disease vectors with increased likelihood of spread through bodies of water. The virus was particularly deadly because it triggered a cytokine storm, ravaging the stronger immune system of young adults, although the viral infection was apparently no more aggressive than previous influenza strains. Malnourishment, overcrowded medical camps and hospitals, and poor hygiene, exacerbated by the war, promoted bacterial superinfection, killing most of the victims after a typically prolonged death bed.

The 1918 Spanish flu was the first of three flu pandemics caused by H1N1 influenza A virus; the most recent one was the 2009 swine flu pandemic. The 1977 Russian flu was also caused by H1N1 virus.

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