1. Pick a topic from the following list. Any other topic MUST be approved by the professor:
a. Was the Spanish conquest of the New World a genocidal act?
b. How did the Belgians devastate the populations of the Congo in the 19th and 20th centuries?
c. Why did the Ottoman Turks enact the Armernian Genocide?
d. What was the Holodomor, and why did Stalin implement it?
e. What motivated the Khmer Rouge’s genocidal actions in Cambodia?
f. What factors caused the Rwandan Genocide?
g. What factors caused genocide in Bosnia-Herzegovina?
Sample Answer
Genocide and Mass Atrocities in History
a. Was the Spanish conquest of the New World a genocidal act?
Historians and legal scholars debate whether the Spanish conquest meets the strict definition of genocide as outlined by the 1948 UN Convention (which requires the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group).
Argument for Genocide: The Spanish conquest resulted in the catastrophic destruction of indigenous populations through mass enslavement, forced labor (like the mita system), massacres, and systemic cruelty. Figures like Bartolomé de las Casas documented the brutal nature of the conquest, which included deliberate policies of extermination against
Argument Against Genocide (or for Democide/Mass Killing): The primary cause of death was disease (smallpox, measles, etc.)—up to 90% of the population perished from Old World pathogens against which they had no immunity. While the Spanish were brutal, their primary goal was economic exploitation and conversion, not necessarily the total extermination of the native population, whom they needed as a labor source.
Conclusion: Most historians agree the conquest was an unprecedented demographic catastrophe and involved mass killing and democide driven by greed, but the specific legal definition of genocide (intent to destroy the group) remains a subject of academic dispute.
b. How did the Belgians devastate the populations of the Congo in the 19th and 20th centuries?
The devastation in the Congo Free State (1885-1908), which was the personal property of King Leopold II of Belgium, was driven by the brutal extraction of rubber and ivory.
Forced Labor and Mutilation: Leopold's regime implemented a system of forced labor enforced by the Force Publique (his private army). Villages were given impossibly high quotas for wild rubber collection. Failure to meet these quotas resulted in swift and severe punishment, including whipping, burning of villages, and the cutting off of hands and feet (often collected as proof that a bullet was not wasted on game).
Famine and Disease: The forced displacement and labor disrupted agriculture, leading to widespread famine. The concentration of people in labor camps and the general malnutrition exacerbated the spread of deadly diseases (like African sleeping sickness).
Demographic Toll: Estimates of the death toll vary widely, but scholars generally agree that the population declined by millions (estimates range from 3 million to 10 million) during Leopold's 23-year reign. The systematic cruelty and reduction of the population to instruments of production make this a stark example of a mass killing motivated by economic extraction.
c. Why did the Ottoman Turks enact the Armenian Genocide?
The Armenian Genocide (1915–1917) was driven by a confluence of nationalism, wartime paranoia, and religious intolerance within the collapsing Ottoman Empire.
Nationalist Ideology: The ruling party, the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), or the Young Turks, embraced a pan-Turkic nationalist ideology known as Turanism, which sought to create an ethnically and religiously pure Turkish state stretching into Central Asia. The Christian Armenians, scattered throughout eastern Anatolia, were seen as a foreign obstacle to this vision.