Wiliam Cowper on Cruelty to Animals

I recently ran across William Cowper's poem, On Cruelty to Animals.  But I couldn't find it anywhere on the web.  So here it is.  You're welcome.

On Cruelty to Animals

I would not enter on my list of friends

(Though grac’d with polish’d manners and fine sense,

Yet wanting sensibility) the man,

Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm.

An inadvertent step may crush the snail,

That crawls at ev’ning in the public path;

But he that has humanity, forewarn’d,

Will tread aside, and let the reptile live.

The creeping vermin loathsome to the sight,

And charg’d perhaps with venom, that intrudes,

A visitor unwelcome, into scenes

Sacred to neatness and repose, th’ alcove,

The chamber, or refectory, may die:

A necessary act incurs no blame.

Not so when, held within their proper bounds,

And guiltless of offence, they range the air,

Or take their pastime in the spacious field:

There they are privileg’d; and he that hunts

Or harms them there is guilty of a wrong,

Disturbs the economy of Nature’s realm,

Who, when she form’d, design’d them an abode.

The sum is this.  If man’s convenience, health,

Or safety, interfere, his rights and claims

Are paramount, and must extinguish theirs.

Else they are all -- the meanest things that are,

As free to live, and to enjoy that life,

As God was free to form them at the first,

Who in his sov'reign wisdom made them all

Ye therefore, who love mercy, teach your sons,

To love it too. The spring-time of our years

Is soon dishonour'd and defil'd in most

By budding ills, that ask a prudent hand,

To check them. But alas! none sooner shoots,

If unrestrain'd, into luxuriant growth,

Than cruelty, most dev'lish of them all.

Mercy to him, that shows it, is the rule

And righteous limitation of its act,

By which Heav'n moves in pard'ning guilty man;

Aud he that shows none, being ripe in years,

And conscious of the outrage he commits,

Shall seek it, and not find it, in his turn.

  Distinguish'd much by reason, and still more

By our capacity of grace divine,

From creatures, that exist but for our sake,

Which, having serv'd us, perish, we are held

Accountable; and God some future day

Will reckon with us roundly for th' abuse

Of what he deems no mean or trivial trust.

Superior as we are, they yet depend .

Not more on human help than we on theirs.

Their strength, or speed, or vigilance, were giv'n

In aid of our defects. In some are found

Such teachable and apprehensive parts,

That man's attainments in his own concerns,

Match'd with th' expertness of the brutes in theirs,

Are ofttimes vanquish'd and thrown far behind.

Some show that nice sagacity of smell,

And read with such discernment, in the port

And figure of the man, his secret aim,

That oft we owe our safety to a skill

We could not teach, and must despair to learn.

But learn we might, if not too proud to stoop

To quaduped instructors, many a good

And useful quality, and virtue too,

Rarely exemplified among ourselves.

Attachment never to be wean'd, or chang'd

By any change of fortune; proof alike

Against unkindness, absence, and neglect;

Fidelity, that neither bribe nor threat

Can move or warp; and gratitude for small

And trivial favours, lasting as the life,

And glist'ning even in the dying eye.

Cowper

Anything new in the art of memory?

All books that are designed to help people improve their memories are basically alike.  They start off with the story of Simonides, the ancient greek guy who was at a banquet, but was called to the door just before the roof fell in, killing everyone else.  He was able to identify the corpses based on where they were sitting at the banquet.  It's unclear whether he was a great mnemonist (yes that's a word) before this event, or whether he milked it for everything it was worth afterwards.  When you think about it, it's pretty natural to be able to remember where people were sitting around a table; just thinking about the locations almost automatically evokes a memory of the person who was sitting there, even if you weren't paying particular attention to that person.

And then the books go through the various systems for memory, one at a time -- link, peg, loci. Rarely anything new or particularly interesting, although for a while there I was using the Person-Action-Object (PAO) System decribed by Joshua Foer in Moonwalking With Einstein for memorizing decks of playing cards (I have since forgotten my persons, objects, and actions, so don't ask me to try it).

Anyway, I decided to read a 1600s memory book just to get a sense whether the modern mnemonists have come up with anything new, other than PAO.  The book is called Mnemonica, or, The Art of Memory, by John Willis, and it appears to have been first published in 1618.

I haven't gotten very far.  Sure enough, he starts off with Simonides.  But the next story I hadn't heard before, at least not in connection with memory enhancement.  It's the story of the election of Darius, in which the contenders all agree that the person whose horse neighs first the next morning will be King.  The night before, Darius's groom ties a mare up at a place along the road on which the contenders will travel, and gives Darius's horse the opportunity to have his way with her.  The next day, when the horses pass that point, Darius's horse has a memory, and neighs. Everyone immediately acknowledges Darius as King.  In other words, back then the craftiest and most underhanded politicians were typically the most successful as well.  Anyway, here's who Willis tells it:

Another singular example correspondent in some sort to this, is the Election of Darius to the Persian Monarchy; Cambyses being dead (as saith Herodotus) it was concluded among the seven Persian Princes, next morning to take horse together, and to ride forth of the City, unanimously agreeing the chief soveraignty, without any further contest, should reside in him whose Horse first neighed. Darius one of the seven, through the craft of his Groom Oebares, obteined the Supremacy. Oebares was a subtil wilie fellow, to whom Darius discovered the whole business, and warned him to use all diligence to prevent his Competitors: Oebares desired him to take no care, for he would effectuate his so much desired design: Before night Oebares led forth a Mare, chiefly affected by Darius his Horse, and tied her in the high-way, through which the Princes were to ride next morning; afterward he brought forth Darius his Horse, and leaving him at liberty, suffered him to cover the mare. At Sun-rising the seven Princes of Persia mounted together, and rode forth of the City; when they came to the place where Oebares had tied the Mare the night before; immediately Darius his horse began to neigh, and presently the other Princes, as hearing some divine Oracle, alighted, and saluted him King. This example, if I am not deceived, doth sufficiently evince the utility of Places to rouse up Memory, seeing even bruit beasts remember things placed by the place. 

It turns out (as one can see) he got this example from Herodotus, but as far as I can see, Willis is the guy who observed that this is a significant point for the study of memory.  For the record, here's how Herodotus tells the story:

.How Darius was chosen king:  (Hdt. 3.84-7)

84) The rest of the seven then considered what was the fairest way of making a king; and they decided that if another of the seven than Otanes should gain the royal power, that Otanes and his descendants should receive a yearly gift of Median clothing and everything else that the Persians hold most valuable. The reason for this decision was that it was he who had first planned the matter and assembled the conspirators. [2] For Otanes, then, they choose this particular honor; but with regard to all of them they decreed that any one of the seven should, if he wished, enter the king's palace unannounced, except when the king was sleeping with a woman; and that the king should be forbidden to take a wife except from the households of the conspirators. [3] As for the making of a king, they decided that he should be elected whose horse, after they were all in their saddles in the suburb of the city, should first be heard to neigh at sunrise.

85)  Now Darius had a clever groom, whose name was Oebares. When the council broke up, Darius said to him: “Oebares, we have resolved to do as follows about the kingship: he shall be elected whose horse, after we are all mounted on our horses in the suburb of the city, neighs first at sunrise. Now if you have any cunning, figure out how we and no one else can win this prize.” [2] “Master,” Oebares answered, “if this is to determine whether you become king or not, be confident for this reason and have an easy mind, for no one else shall be king before you, such are the tricks I have.” “Then,” said Darius, “if you have any trick such as you say, use it and don't put it off, for tomorrow is the day of decision.” [3] When Oebares heard that, he did as follows. At nightfall he brought one of the mares which Darius' horse particularly favored, and tethered her in the suburb of the city; then bringing Darius' horse, he repeatedly led him near the horse, bumping against the mare, and at last let the horse mount. 

86) At dawn of day the six came on horseback as they had agreed. As they rode out through the suburb and came to the place where the mare had been tethered in the past night, Darius' horse trotted forward and whinnied; [2] and as he so did there came lightning and thunder out of a clear sky. These signs given to Darius were thought to be foreordained and made his election perfect; his companions leapt from their horses and bowed to him. ...

87) So Darius son of Hystaspes was made king, and the whole of Asia, which Cyrus first and Cambyses after him had conquered, was subject to him, except the Arabians; these did not yield as of slaves to the Persians, but were united to them by friendship, having given Cambyses passage into Egypt, which the Persians could not enter without the consent of the Arabians. [2] Darius took wives from the noblest houses of Persia, marrying Cyrus' daughters Atossa and Artystone; Atossa had been a wife of her brother Cambyses and afterwards of the Magus; Artystone was a virgin. [3] He also married a daughter of Cyrus' son Smerdis, whose name was Parmys, and the daughter of Otanes who had discovered the truth about the Magus; and everything was full of his power. First he made and set up a carved stone, upon which was cut the figure of a horseman, with this inscription: “Darius son of Hystaspes, aided by the excellence of his horse” (here followed the horse's name) “and of Oebares his groom, got possession of the kingdom of Persia.”

Interestingly, Darius's Wikipedia entry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darius_I) tells the same basic story, but in it the groom touches the mare, and then lets Darius's horse smell his hand, prompting the neighing.  Not nearly as interesting, and also less believable.  Wikipedia attributes that story to Darius the Great, by Poolos (2008), which turns out to be a children's book with an introduction by Kennedy apologist Arthur Schlesinger.  I wonder how much of what we read in Wikipedia actually comes from children's books.

I am going to keep plowing through this book -- it's only 49 pages -- and write down my observations here.  Here's another passage that resonates with modern memory books:

Lastly it is a common thing, even amongst illiterate and ignorant men, to remember things by Idea's. One being to keep in mind the name of a certain man called, Fisher, to imprint this name deeper in memory, thinketh of a Fisherman placing his Nets. Another having some business committed to his care, which he feareth to forget, bindeth a Ribbon or Thred about his little finger, by sight of which visible Idea he is admonished of his charge. Whence it is apparent, that the excogitation of Idea's to fix things in memory, is in some sort natural, seing Nature it self hath taught men, destitute of Learning, to use the same. 

 So the whole thing of tying a string around your finger has been around a long long time, even amonst "illiterate and ignorant men."  I do that myself sometimes, usually with a rubber band, and the bottom line is that it works better than anything else I know for ensuring that I don't forget something.  And of course, every memory book ever written has a chapter that starts off explaining how we never remember names, and that's because we weren't listening when they were told to us.  The "solution" is exactly the same as the one Willis cites -- try to draw some connection between the name of the person, and the person him or herself.  The name "Fisher" is pretty easy, but actually, so are most names, if you use a little imagination.

Soon comes a passage that agrees with contemporaneous critiques of aggressive use of the loci method:

Now there onely remaineth Answers to Objections, by which the Adversaries of this Art indeavour to obumbrate the lustre, and diminish the credit thereof.

First they object, that the faculty of Natural Memory and Ingenuity, by use of this Art, is unmeasurably impaired; for such Authors as have treated of this Art, do usually prescribe provision of a multitude of Places, wherein occurring Idea's of Memorandums may be distributed to remain alwaies, with a weekly, or at least monthly perusal, or over-looking of them all, least at any time they should be forgotten, which is certainly a transcendent labour, and must needs dull the edge of humane understanding. To which I answer, I am of the same opinion; to wit, that if any man indeavour to retain all things he desireth to remember by Places and Idea's, to be reviewed once a month, he undertaketh a work that would weary the dullest witted men, much more ingenious persons, who loath nothing more then frequent meditation of things formerly learned; It is also unnecessary, because
writing of things worthy, memory in books, is much easier, more certain and readier for use. 

Quick side-note:  I first assumed that "obumbrate" was some kind of a type-setting error.  But in fact, it's a word, albeit an obsolete one.  It means "darkened by or as if by shadow," and it comes from the latin obumbratus (past participle of obumbrare: to overshadow), which in turn combines ob (to, over) with "umbrare":  to shade (from umbra shadow).  And this also reminds us where umbrella and maybe umbrage come from.

So I don't know about you, but I'm going to try to revive that word.  Obumbrate.

I like the way that Willis explains that the work of using loci would "weary the dullest witted men," and that "much more ingenious persons" simply write down what they want to remember.  I suppose if you have a goal in mind -- like competing in a memory championship -- using the loci method to remember everything wouldn't be completely dull.  But in general, it's probably not how you want to spend your time.   I wonder what he has to say about writing things down.  He goes on:

Moreaver it is certain, that the virtue of natural Memory is very much corroborated by this way of Remembring proposed in this book: For the mind being daily accustomed to Revocation of sentences slipped out of Memory, and that of thy a word or two, is more enabled in discharge of its office, then is credible to one unexperienced, whereby also wit is more and more exacuated. 

Again, I assumed exacuated was a typo, but what could it have been for?  Evacuated doesn't make sense there.  And guess what. It's a word.  "Exacuate: (obsolete) To whet or sharpen."

And there's probably where we get the term "Exacto-Knife", something I've always wondered about.

It seems quite obvious that I myself am unwittingly applying his memory technique of writing things down by esssentially writing down my thoughts on his book.  So be it.

Secondly, they say it is a great trouble, in the Roposition of one Idea, to enter upon two or three considerations. I answer, that they which speak Latine, observe a manifold construction of words, yet do readily pronounce each word in its case, gender, number, person, and tense, without study; nor is the Memory thereby any way confounded, because they are frequently conversant in practice of Grammar rules; In like manner, when all the rules of the Art of Memory are exactly known, it will not be difficult to attire all Idea's with their proper circumstances.

I wasn't planning on putting the whole book in here (and I've already skipped good amounts), but I also don't want to miss anything.  "Roposition" is NOT a word, so maybe that's supposed to be "proposition".  But even so I don't really understand it.  I think the point is he is going to teach us as some rules of memory that are going to become as habitual as rules of grammar in a language.  That would be very nice -- that's always been my problem with memory techniques -- I have never been able to make any of them into a real habit.  Maybe I'll try it for this one.  It's the least I can do for "exacuate" and "obumbrate."

He goes on:

If any man blame or accuse me as dissenting from Logicians, who affirm that any thing may be kept in memory by help of Logical method, he is much mistaken; for it is evident they speak onely of long speeches; But no sober man did ever ascertain that method was sufficient to remember common businesses, words, phrases, numbers, and particular sentences, all which things are faithfully kept in memory by Idea's aptly disposed. The dignity of method reserved (which I acknowledged to be very great) it cannot be denied, but the very method of a long Oration partly forgotten, may be recalled to mind, by the order of disposed Idea's. 

Great stuff!  I like the "no sober man" ever saw the "logical method" (which I believe is probably the loci method0 as useful to remember everything.  Some books do try to use loci for everything, and maybe Willis is saying that's just not right.

And now, the author's justification for writing the book:

Lastly if any man ask, what cause moved me to divulge this Art, my answer is, that having diligently read over all the books, I could procure of this Art, and bestowed much labour, with great loss of time, besides great defatigation of mind, in practising other mens precepts, when I perceived some things impious, obscure, and superfluous admitted in this Art; also many things very necessary quite omitted, with so much confusion and disorder, that scarcely any certainty could be found wherein to insist, I did heartily desire to raise this excellent Art out of the thick fogge wherein it was inveloped, and eliminate all its superfluities wherewith it was defiled. Accordingly I undertook it at leisure hours, and by dismissing superabundancies, and supplying defects, have reduced it into a new and (if I be not deceived) much better form, which experience having proved very beneficial to my self, I conceived might also profit others, and therefore have boldly published the same. 

This quote puts me in mind of the following from PG Wodehouse:

It was one of the dullest speeches I ever heard. The Agee woman told us for three quarters of an hour how she came to write her beastly book, when a simple apology was all that was required.

It also reminds me of Tony Robbins's very early claim to have read hundreds of books on personal achievement in a hotel room (in Russia of all places, I think), and that's what got him started "helping" others the way he does.

But in any event, it's quite nice to see how here, somebody is going to summarize for me the state of the memory art as of 1618.

His chapter on remembering ordinary affairs is very short, and here's the bulk of it:

Concerning the former of these two I will onely adde one precept, omitting such as are in frequent use, Provide an Almanack with blank pages, in which every evening, against the proper day of the moneth, set down your chiefest business of that day, and also the names of such persons as you have conversed with about any serious affair, either at home or abroad. Though the utility hereof be not presently conspicuous, yet many times afterward, it is of great consequence to resolve difficulties of very great importance. Suppose that after some revolution of time, three months, a year or more, question arise about the very day whereon such or such a thing hapned, an exact knowledg whereof will be very profitable; the certain day you have forgotten, but well remember it was on the same day your sheep were shorn, or the day after such friends dined with you; this being considered, your Almanack will exhibit the particular day. Moreover by the mens names with whom you spake that day, haply you may learn many things most necessary to be known in the present cause.

So that's not a bad tip.  Just write down the barest details at the end of the day -- e.g. just the names of the people you talked with.  Then later, when you look back, you'll remember a lot more about what happened when.

The chapter on Words is hard for me to parse, because I think the original had pictures or symbols (the stuff missing from the brackets), which don't come through in my copy.  But I still see a resonance with modern day memory texts:

Improper Derivation, is a strained interpretation of a word; as [...] drunkenness, [...], because after sacrifice they feasted their pallates; [...] smoke, as it were [...], the steam of something burning; [...] : Lachrimae à lacerando, so Tears in English, of tearing the heart: Monumentum quasi monens mentem; Domus ex do & mus; Cottage as it were a coat for age: Beer as it were Bee-here; Gossip of go-sip; Simony as it were See-mony; and Derivation howsoever absurd or wrested, printeth words in Memory; yea the further it is fetched, the deeper impression it maketh

This last part: "howsoever absurd or wrested, printeth words in Memory; yea the further it is fetched, the deeper impression it maketh" appears in all current books -- if you're trying to remember something, the more absurd you make your mental picture, the more deeply it gets imprinted in your memory.

Here is chapter III in toto:

CHAP. III. Of remembring Phrases.

A Phrase may be committed to memory, by accommodating it to some fit subject; as if this phrase were to be remembred, Very much estranged from filthy affections; I apply it to a Christian Souldier, as to a meet subject in this manner, A Christian Souldier ought to be very much estranged from all filthy and sordid affections of mind.

Or this example, To forgoe manhood through effeminate delicacy, may be fitly accommodated to Sardanapalus King of Assyria; thus Sardanapalus by effeminate delicacy and luxury, lost all manhood, and led a Womanish life.
Again, this example, A man furnished with abundant store of Learning, may be thus applyed; Usher the renowned Bishop of Armagh, was furnished with abundant store of good Literature, and manifold Learning; so that he did justly bear the prize from most [...] relates of the World.

This manner of applying Phrases, is principally necessary in learning the Elegancies of any Tongue, and is very well worthy to be more frequently used in publike Schools: I confess Masters do usually command their Schollars to collect phrases and elegant sentences out of their Lectures, and to write their gleanings in Books, not in loose Papers, which is somwhat; but if they did, also urge them to refer every phrase by them collected, to some friend or acquaintance, they would by this means reap a far greater Harvest of Learning: For phrases thus accommodated, sink deeper, and continue longer in memory.

So that's a regrettably lost art -- i.e. the art of learning elegant phrases for later use.  Nobody does that any more as far as I can see.  A quick check on Amazon tells me that there isn't anything quite like that today (there's are books with phrases for leaders and for small talk, and a dictionary of phrases targeted primarily at ESL learners), but nothing, as far as I can tell, that is attempting to help someone learn the "elegancies" of the English Tongue.  

And now comes chapter IV, on memorizing sentences:

CHAP. IV. Of remembring Sentences.

Sentences worthy of Memory, are either frequently or seldom used: Sentences of common use (I mean such as we desire to preserve not onely in paper, but in our hearts, because of their singular Elegancy, serious Gravity, concise brevity, or witty ingenuity) are to be stored in a Manual every kind in a peculiar place: Epigrams by themselves, Anagrams by themselves, so Proverbs, Epitaphs, Jests, Riddles, Observations, &c. by themselves: This Enchiridion wherein you write such remarkable sentences, ought always to be carryed about you, (and may therefore be called, Vade mecum) that you may peruse the same at leisure-hours when you are abroad, not having other employment; by which means, Time, most precious of all things, will not be unprofitably spent: And hereby you will keep in mind things worthy remembrance, better, safer, sooner, more certainly, profitably, and delightfully, then by that monstrous repetition, prescribed by some Authors in this Art of Memory, which nevertheless cannot be effected without long study, very great defatigation of the understanding & pernicious damage of the memorative faculty; besides, a perpetual Oblivion of some Idea's, occasioned by so long space of time interposed.

A sentence seldom used, is either an interpretation of some Classick Author, or a common Observation; by Classick Books or Authors, I mean those which are accounted Authentick by common consent of professors in every Science; such are the Scriptures among Divines, Decrees and Statutes among Lawyers, the works of Hypocrates, Galen, or Paracelsus, among Physicians: Euclids Elements among Mathematicians, &c.

If you meet with any memorable interpretation of a Classick Book, note it down in short hand in the Margent, near the Text to which it properly relateth; or if you had rather, cause clean paper to be bound between every leaf, to receive such Comments: Or, (which is better) have plenty of white Paper bound at the end of the Book, in which write your Interpretation, and relate them to the text by like numbers or letters prefixed before the Notes and Text.

So he had the same problem that we do: sometimes we have time -- "most precious of all things" -- on our hands, and no productive way to use it.  He recommends bringing your little compilation of sentences along with you everywhere you go, so if you find yourself waiting somewhere, you can use the time profitably by studying your book.  Makes sense to me.  It's so much easier for us today, since all of this information could be stored on our phones, which we have with us anyway.  The trick is to use them for study, not for playing angry birds.  Willis obviously prefers this kind of ad hoc repetition to the "monstrous" understanding-defatigating repetition recommended by memory expers of the day. 

Also the idea of binding blank pages in a book -- either between the existing pages or at the end -- is quaint.  Back then, books were valuable, scarce, and treasured.  Today, if you're not too selective, you can buy used books for about fifty cents each at library book sales.  So many of us have more books than we will ever read, much less bind pages into.  And I don't think today's binding is particularly conducive to adding blank pages in the manner suggested.  But the point is well-taken; there's a lot to be said for having your reactions to a book in the book itself.  Perhaps a way to achieve a semblance of this is to glue a few foldout blank pages to the back cover, and take your notes on those.

And now for the gist of Chapter V, on remembering speeches -- of others and yourself

If the Speech you desire to preserve be verbally pronounced, you must take it in short-hand, if you have skill; otherwise in long hand, with as much celerity as you can: If you be at any time left behind through nimble volubility of the Speakers tongue, it will be sufficient to write onely the essential words of every Sentence (as for the most part are Substantives and Verbs) leaving vacant spaces, in which either words of less weight may be interposed, which must be supplyed immediately after the Speech is ended.

That's an interesting approach to notetaking that I hadn't heard before.  He is advocating transcribing the whole speech.  If you know shorthand, great; but otherwise, you can just write down the subjects and verbs and fill in the rest later.  Not bad.

Four things must be observed, that speeches contrived by our selves, may be deeply fastened in memory; Method, Writing, Marginal Notation, and Meditation; the Method ought to be so disposed, that every part of an entire Speech, and every sentence of those parts, precede according to their dignity in nature; that is, that every thing be so placed, that it may give light to understand what followeth: Such a method is very effectual to ease the memory both of Speaker and Hearer; for in a speech methodically digested, each sentence attracteth the next, like as one link draweth another in a Golden Chain, therefore Method is called the Chain of Memory: For this cause let every former sentence so depend on the latter, that it may seem necessarily related thereunto.

This is a key to good writing as well -- let every sentence flow from the previous one and into the next one.  And if you're not going to do that, be sure to have an appropriate transition.  The reference to the "golden chain" anticipates the "link" system, where the idea is to "link" pieces of information together by association.  Whereas current books have you imagine bizarre pictures linking on item to the next (which might be the best way to do it if the items are unrelated), when you're dealing with a speech, it makes sense to let the natural associations carry you through.

In writing a Speech, let your first care be, that your Lines extend not too far, but that space enough be left in the Margent: In the next place, that your whole speech be distinguished into heads; for a distinct mind apprehendeth better then one confused. After you have compiled a Speech you are shortly to deliver, do not transcribe it, though it be both blotted and interlined, lest you lose as much time in new Writing, as would suffice to learn it: Besides the blots and interlining do more firmly fasten in mind the sentences so blotted and interlined, then if they were otherwise. This is also to be noted, that although it be necessary to write over the intire Speech, or at least, brief notes thereof, before it be publikely pronounced; yet ought that Transcription by no means to be seen publikely, unless Memory languish, and be weak: For the mind doth better recollect it self in the absence of Notes, and by united force is better prepared to speak.
Marginal Notation is when one or two chief words of every sentence is placed in the Margent, which so soon as seen, (which is with the least cast of an eye) revoketh the whole sentence to mind: As if this ensuing small Treatise of the Resurrection were to be learned by heart; I distinguish the sentences thereof by words placed in the Margent, by which means they are speedily remembred.

And this is good advice against bringing your notes to the podium, or at least having them out when there: "For the mind doth better recollect it self in the absence of Notes, and by united force is better prepared to speak."  

The "method and margin" tip is also good.  Even if your drafting on a computer, eventually you'll want to print your speech out.  Make sure you do it while leaving plenty of space in the margin.  And note the key points in the margin.  When you practice your speech, focus on those.
As you can see from the last sentence above, Willis then embarks on a demonstration involving a multi-pronged "proof" that eventually, there will be a resurrection, in which our original corporeal bodies are restored to us.  Because it is so unpersuasive (it sort of comes down to "God can do anything" but he also has analogies to seeds, and the like, to explain how our bodies might nevertheless grow back out of our long-decayed remains), I'm omitting it here. Suffice it to say, the demonstration is about what you would expect.

And of course, meditation makes good sense in speech preparation, as discussed in Can. 1 below:

Can. 1. After you have copied over your whole Speech or Sermon, aptly divided into heads, and marked the principall words of each sentence in 24 the Margent, go diligently to meditation, trying whether you can repeat all the Sentences in their order by bare sight of the Marginall notes. You need not be sollicitous of every word, so that you do accurately remember the sense or scope, because the minde esteemeth it an unworthy thraledom to be obliged to every conceived word; Horace hath most truly said,

Rem bene praevisam verba haud invita sequentur.

The scope foreseen, words readily occur.

Well said, Horace.  He's right that if you know what you're talking about -- the point you're trying to convey -- the words will come.

But if you stick at any place, read over the sentence (which the Marginall note doth not suggest) with no lesse diligence and attention of minde, than if you had never seen the same. I dare promise such manner of proceeding in Meditation will produce more happy success, then Opinion can readily conceive: If you do not benefit your self by Marginal notes either in Learning a Speech or Sermon, you will make slow progress, and be sensible of very great trouble in Meditation; whereas by their help, you may fix sentences in Memory with great celerity (not to say, with pleasure) as you may make an experiment, if you please, in the foregoing Tractate.

He is saying here that the "marginal notes" idea really is indispensable, and that if you can't remember a line based on the marginal notes, you should look at the sentence as if you'd never seen it before. Again, I'm sparing you the "foregoing Tractate," but it has arguments, plus marginal notes.

Can. 2. The manner of Meditating, is to learn by parts; That is, First to commit the first Section to Memory, then the Second, afterward the Third, and so forth; the rest in their order: When you have dispatched all the heads severally, apply your self to repeat the whole, observing Quintilians method, to learn with low voice and soft murmure, whereby Memory is benefitted with the double motion of speaking and hearing. This counsel seems especially appropriated to such whose minds are slippery, and subject to wander, starting presently aside, if they be not thus restrained; on the contrary, fixed stable minds will experience silent Meditation the more speedy and efficacious way to imprint Notions in Memory.

So here he is proposing something for those of us with ADD or ADHD -- you're best off actually saying the speech, in low tones.  I actually think that's good for anyone, because it goes out your mouth and into your ear again, which is much better than just having it all in your mind.  But if you have a "fixed, stable" mind, perhaps silent meditation is best for you.

Can. 3. Furthermore seeing a vehement and earnest application of mind is required in Meditation, whereby the spirits are much exhausted, you must be careful to avoid longer study then agreeth with your health, least your spirits fail through too great intention of mind: And beware you do not lose a moment of that little time you assign unto Meditation; when you must meditate, let it not be with weariness, but do that willingly, which you must do necessarily.

Mediation (as he calls it) is hard work -- don't overdo it, but don't waste time while you're meditating.

Can. 4. The first and last hours of the day are most apt for Meditation; that is, immediately before and atfer sleep: Let your first Essay in Learning your task be at Evening, about an hour after Supper, reading over twice or thrice what you intend to commit to Memory against the next day, your study being finished, betake your self to your rest, that your mind (no other ways diverted) may repose upon your Evening Meditation. In the morning so soon as you have shook off drowziness, and prepared your self, repeat those things diligently you meditated the night before. It is to no purpose to study before sleep, unless in like manner you ruminate after sleep.

Words to live by:   "It is to no purpose to study before sleep, unless in like manner you ruminate after sleep."  I agree with that.  If you read before going to sleep, be sure to stay with the same subject when you get up in the morning.

Can. 5. All that speak publickly, especially Dispensers of the Word, ought to make it their great care, not to utter things disorderly, but throughly digested by Meditation; lest they be be like such Cooks as buy good meat in the Shambles, but marr it in the Dressing, sending it raw, or half-boiled to the Table. Besies, if any man appear publickly, either in Pulpit, or otherwise, before he is provided what to say, he becometh timorous, and the vital spirits (the eies of reason) have recourse tot he heart through fear, whereby he is rendred much more unapt to speak then before.

And again, be prepared, or you come across as fearful and ineffective.

Can. 6. Lastly, which is peculiar in delivering Sermons, let Speakers apply more general Doctrines to themselves jointly with the rest, in Confession, Petition, Deprecation, imprecation, intercession, thanksgiving or praising God, as occasion is given by the Doctrines themselvs; so they shall not onely remember all things better, but also edifie their own consciences; Nay further, frequent use of this ioint-application, proveth finally a Manuduction to speak with sense of Divine grace and evidence of Spirit, which is the most excellent ornament of a Preacher.

I think he is saying that if you're a preacher, you better practice what you preach.  And another new word for me although it's not obsolete, and I could have guessed its meaning:  

Manuduction:  the act of guiding or leading (as by the hand)

:  something that guides or leads :  introduction

Ok, so that's how to remember stuff WITH writing.  He then goes on about how to do it without writing:

HAving dispatched vulgar ways of Memory, I descend to helps conducing to the same purpose without Handwriting, which is then most pleasant, when we are destitute of the aid of Paper, Ink, or Table-Books, or when by some obstacle we are debarred the free use of them. This consisteth of two operations, Reposition and Deposition.

Reposition is the manner of charging Memory with Note-worthy things; herein it is not to be expected that each particular word of every sentence be retained; but onely, that the general sence be fastened in mind. At all times when a man is about to commit any thing in custody to his Memory, first let him study to drown all unnecessary thoughts in  oblivion, that he may perfectly intend the things he is to learn; Oblivion being such a principle of Memory, as Privation is of Generation; and a ready remembrance most commonly proceedeth from right understanding the thing in hand; therefore a man must prepare himself diligently, and so unite the force of his imagination, that he may as it were engrave and imprint occurrent things in his Memory. Lead doth facily receive impression, because it is tenacious, which Quick-silver cannot admit, by reason of its Fluxibility: In like manner fleeting inconstant minds continually hurried into new & strange cogitations, is far from gathering fruit by any thing heard. The method of a speech is chefly to be observed, regarding seriously what is the general subject thereof; Secondly, the greater parts, and with what Logical Arguments each part is handled; the perfect Method of a speech doth much conduce to remember the whole; or if the Contexture thereof be inartificial, imperfect, and unsatisfactory, comprehending many things forcibly applied, rejecting things of a like kind, yet a strong Memory will 30 retain the same by observation of the absurdities and rude Artifice of the whole.

So reposition is "charging the memory" and the way to do that when in a learning mode is to consign all other thoughts to oblivion.  Your mind must be prepared to learn and absorb, to be imprinted like lead, not quicksilver.  Worth repeating: "[A]nd a ready remembrance most commonly proceedeth from right understanding the thing in hand; therefore a man must prepare himself diligently, and so unite the force of his imagination, that he may as it were engrave and imprint occurrent things in his Memory." You've observed this too -- if you prepare for class by doing the reading, you don't even have to take notes -- you understand what's going on.  You can write out your notes later.  If you don't know what's going on, and are only taking notes, it takes a lot more effort to reconstruct and understand what is going on.

Deposition is when we recollect things committed to memory; and having transcribed or transacted them, discharge our memories of them, which is alwayes to be practised at the first opportunity: Things charged in Memory by day, are to be deposited at least before sleep, if not sooner; things charged by night, are to be deposited immediately after sleep, that the mind be no longer burthened then is convenient, and that things negligently laid up in mind, be not forgotten, Writing being the faithfullest Guardian of Memorandums. If in disburthening your Memory, something charged happen to be forgotten, shut your eyes, that no no external obiect may divert your mind, and try to recall it by importunate scrutiny; which operation may be called Revocation, and is an Art that by help of certain Rules teacheth the investigation of things lapsed out of memory.

To conclude, Deposition, or discharging things committed to mind, is not unlike expunging writing out of TableBooks: If therefore there be any Art of Oblivion (as some affirm) it may be properly referred hither. So much in general; now to explicate the particular species thereof. 

I'm looking forward to the explication of the species, because I have no idea what he just said.   I think he is saying write down the important things at the end of the day.  But I almost think he is drawing a distinction between memory and mind.  I.e. he makes it sound like deposition is the process of getting information from your mind into your memory, but I'm not at all sure that's what he means to say.  The sentence "Writing being the faithfullest Guardian of Memorandums" sort of throws me (seems to come out of nowhere), and then I'm truly confused by the second paragraph, where he is saying something about the "art of oblivion" that suggests removing information from one's mind.

THe method of charging Memory without writing, is twofold, Poetical and Ideal.
The Poetical way of remembring, is accomplished by virtue of Poetry, either by Verses purposely afore-composed, or ex tempore. The manner of remembering by Verses already composed, is when a man doth excogitate or retain remarkable things by repetition of Verses provided to that purpose. Suppose an Attorney be to wait upon Judges riding the Circuits from one County to another, it may be worth his labour to repeat these verses at leaving his lodging, least he forget some necessary thing, which we may imagine formerly framed by him to this end.

Scalpellum, calami, cornugraphium{que} libelli,

Charta, pugillares, capitalia, cera, sigillum,

Sic crepide, gladius, cultellus, pugio, burssa,

Muccinium, indusium{que} monilia,

penula, pecten Fascia cruralis, cruralia, dactylothece.

Pen-knife. Quills, Ink-horn, Books, Paper,

Table-Books, Caps; Take 

Wax, Seal and Slippers, Sword, Knife and

Dagger, safe make 

Purse, Handkerchiefs, Shirts, Rings, Coat, 

and for your own sake,

Comb, Garters, Stockins, Gloves.

O-kay.  that looks like a list of things, in latin, and then in English, to me.  Where are the verses?  And just because Latin words all end with um, us, a, o, doesn't really mean they all rhyme.  I guess adding the "ake" words makes it memorable.

Thus a Carpenter oft employed to work abroad, may ingenuously make the Tools and Instruments belonging to his Art, in Verse; by repetition of which on occasion, he may be admonished what Tools to take along with him: In like sort all ordinary business frequently incumbent upon any man, may be conveniently committed to memory in Verses, which may advertise him to omit nothing.

Here I have thought expedient to propose certain Verses lately composed by my self, that they may be beneficial to others (if they please) as they have sometimes been to me, which are these.

An? Quis quid? cujus? cui? quo? quibus? auxilijs? cur? Quomodo? circa quid? qualis? quantum? ex, in & a quo? Quamdiu? ubi? quando? quoties? quotuplex? quot & unde?
If? who? what? whose? to what? whether? why? about what? How? what fashion? how much? by, of, in, and from what? How long? how often? how manifold? whence came that? Where? when? how many?

These Verses (craving the Readers pardon for the ruggedness) contain twenty two Questions of excellent use to invent, retain, as also to recall to minde things of great concernment and worthy memory in urgent affairs; which being prudently applyed by way of interrogation, do necessarily extort the answer of all Logical places, which (though I suppose no man will deny) may be thus illustrated.

 • 1. If there be any such thing? [ Note: If? ] This question is referred to an indefinite argument.
• 2 Who was Author of the
• Motion, [ Note: Who? ] • Work, • Fact, • Saying, • Writing, • Counsel.
This question respecteth the efficient Cause. Definition.
• 3. What
• it is? Effects.
• doth it contain? Effects. • doth depend on it? Effects. • is moved? Effects.
• is done? [ Note: What? ] Effects. • is spoken? Effects. • is written? Effects.
• is consulted? Effects. • 4: Whose it is? [ Note: Whose? ] • 5. To what it is compared, [ Note: To what? ] either in • quantity • equal, • greater. • lesser. • quality • like, • unlike.
35
• 6. Whither it tendeth? [ Note: Whether? ] • 7. Why the final Cause? [ Note: Why? ] • 8. About what subject or object [ Note: About What? ] in • procreating? • conserving? • abolishing? • destroying? • 9. How was it done, • naturally? [ Note: How? ] • purposely? • necessarily? • accidentally? • carelesly? • 10. VVhat fashion
• form, • connexion, [ Note: What Fashion? ] • description? • 11. How much quantity? • 12. By what? whether • alone? as principal equal, [ Note: How Much? By what? ] inferior • with others? as principal equal, inferior • with instruments? as principal equal, inferior • 13. Of what matter? [ Note: Of what? ] • 14. In what it
• is contained? [ Note: In what? ] • is exercised?
36 • 15. From what it is is distinguished, as • diverse, • unlike, • related, • contrary, • contradictory, • privative. • 16. How long? • 17. How often?
• 18. How manifold? distribution
• of causes, • of whole into parts • of effects, • of genus in species • of subjects,
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• of accidents.
• 19. Whence
• came it?
• is it derived?
• is it proved? • 20. VVhere?
• 21. VVhen? • 22. How many? induction of
• causes, • parts, • effects, • species, • subjects, • accidents.
37
Hereby it doth accidentally appear, these Verses are both useful to recollect things slipt out of memory, and also to invent new; in handling any subject, many things may escape our scrutiny, which a careful repetition of these Verses, and prudent application, may prompt the mind: As for example, suppose a learned Counsellor were to be consulted about some difficult nice Case, in which a man would not willingly omit any material business, lest his labor be frustrated; let the Interrogations included in these verses, be severally applied to the cause in controversie, viz. asking,
• 1. If such a suit be triable in such a Court· • 2. Who are the adversaries Counsellors? Who his Witnesses? Who enjoined to him in a strict tye of friendship? Who did, spake, writ this or that? Who is Tenant of the controverted form? • 3. What is exhibited in the Adversaries Declaration? What he thinketh they do now deliberate? • 4. To what Mannour, the Farm in question appertaineth? • 5. To what case this is like?
38 • 6. How far he hath proceeded in the business, and how far he is like, till the suit be determined? • 7. Why he said, or did such a thing? • 8. About what the controversie chiefly dependeth? • 9. How he must proceed in the cause? • 10. What is the condition of the Judges? • 11. How much cost the drawing of the Reply or Declaration? • 12. By what means the possession was regained?
The most material passages in any depending cause, may be investigated by propounding such like questions: I hope no man will repent his labour in committing these lines to Memory, whereby he may reap so much benefit in his studies and common affairs.
Whereas I first made mention of an indefinite Argument, I shall entreat the Readers patience, whilest I declare the cause thereof, not finding any sufficient Reason to banish or expel an Indefinite Argument out of the Logical Commonwealth, and admire that Ramus hath pretermitted it: I think (reserving place for better Judgment) an argument absolutely 39 consentaneous, is branched more artificially in this manner.
An argument absolutely consentaneous, is indefinite, or definite; indefinite is that which argueth a thing indefinitely, as, God is. There is a fift Essence; Definite is that which argueth a thing definitely: Definite is the cause and effect.
Now in this axiome (God is) we do not affirm that God is this or that, but simply, that he is: And when we say (there is a fift Essence in rerum natura) we do not shew what causes it hath, or what effects, subjects or adjuncts, onely indefinitely pronounce, there is such a thing. To conclude, it is manifest, that an indefinite argument is sufficiently distinguished from all other arguments, because it doth properly answer this peculiar question (If it be?) which yeildeth very profitable use in Discourse: This by the way.
Lastly, In this way of remembring by Verses formerly excogitated, both the parts, Reposition and Deposition, are dispatched in like manner as before; for like as by one repetition of the Verses we charge the memory; so by another we discharge it: Whence there is no need here of any Rules of Revocation, seeing that if the 40 Verses be once firmly fixed in memory, no part of them will be to seek.
This may suffice for the first Poetical way of remembring, that is by Verses provided before-hand: Now I will pass to the next way of Remembring by extemporary Verses.
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ISIS v. Rwanda v. Bosnian Genocide v. Armenian Genocide v. Cambodian Genocide v. Hitler v. Moses v. Genocides in History

ISIS is just a symptom of the basic problem -- that the instinct to kill, maim, rape, torture others who do not share our beliefs or racial traits remains alive and well in the human race.  We are all kidding ourselves if we don't think it's in there somewhere, deep within us; the only reason we can say "I would never do something like that' is because we -- the privileged ones -- have grown up in environments in which such things are unthinkable.  But not everyone in the world is that lucky.  ISIS's particular reason for doing what it does -- a warped understanding of the Muslim faith -- is somewhat beside the point (although of course, I propose a scientifically religion-based solution to the ISIS problem here).  The point is that under the right conditions, it's not all that hard to convert otherwise normal human beings (well, mostly men and boys) into depraved murderers.

And of course, Muslims don't have anything near a monopoly on the idea that their "God" wants them to murder others.  You don't have to look any farther the Old Testament, Book of Numbers, Chapter 31, to see God instructing Moses to avenge the children of Israel on the Midianites, which Moses takes to mean killing off all the men of the defeated Midianites, and then killing off all the women who had been with men, and all the boys, leaving only girls who had not been with men as plunder for the victorious Israelites.  God didn't seem bothered by this, so presumably it's what He wanted.  Of those 32,000 girls, it sounds like 32 may have been sacrificed to God himself.  I wonder what he did with them.

Here is Numbers 31, in its entirety:

1  And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying,

2  Avenge the children of Israel of the Midianites: afterward shalt thou be gathered unto thy people.

3  And Moses spake unto the people, saying, Arm some of yourselves unto the war, and let them go against the Midianites, and avenge the LORD of Midian.

4  Of every tribe a thousand, throughout all the tribes of Israel, shall ye send to the war.

5  So there were delivered out of the thousands of Israel, a thousand of every tribe, twelve thousand armed for war.

6  And Moses sent them to the war, a thousand of every tribe, them and Phinehas the son of Eleazar the priest, to the war, with the holy instruments, and the trumpets to blow in his hand.

7  And they warred against the Midianites, as the LORD commanded Moses; and they slew all the males.

8  And they slew the kings of Midian, beside the rest of them that were slain; namely, Evi, and Rekem, and Zur, and Hur, and Reba, five kings of Midian: Balaam also the son of Beor they slew with the sword.

9  And the children of Israel took all the women of Midian captives, and their little ones, and took the spoil of all their cattle, and all their flocks, and all their goods.

10  And they burnt all their cities wherein they dwelt, and all their goodly castles, with fire.

11  And they took all the spoil, and all the prey, both of men and of beasts.

12  And they brought the captives, and the prey, and the spoil, unto Moses, and Eleazar the priest, and unto the congregation of the children of Israel, unto the camp at the plains of Moab, which are by Jordan near Jericho.

13  And Moses, and Eleazar the priest, and all the princes of the congregation, went forth to meet them without the camp.

14  And Moses was wroth with the officers of the host, with the captains over thousands, and captains over hundreds, which came from the battle.

15  And Moses said unto them, Have ye saved all the women alive?

16  Behold, these caused the children of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to commit trespass against the LORD in the matter of Peor, and there was a plague among the congregation of the LORD.

17  Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him.

18  But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.

19  And do ye abide without the camp seven days: whosoever hath killed any person, and whosoever hath touched any slain, purify both yourselves and your captives on the third day, and on the seventh day.

20  And purify all your raiment, and all that is made of skins, and all work of goats' hair, and all things made of wood.

21  And Eleazar the priest said unto the men of war which went to the battle, This is the ordinance of the law which the LORD commanded Moses;

22  Only the gold, and the silver, the brass, the iron, the tin, and the lead,

23  Every thing that may abide the fire, ye shall make it go through the fire, and it shall be clean: nevertheless it shall be purified with the water of separation: and all that abideth not the fire ye shall make go through the water.

24  And ye shall wash your clothes on the seventh day, and ye shall be clean, and afterward ye shall come into the camp.

25  And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying,

26  Take the sum of the prey that was taken, both of man and of beast, thou, and Eleazar the priest, and the chief fathers of the congregation:

27  And divide the prey into two parts; between them that took the war upon them, who went out to battle, and between all the congregation:

28  And levy a tribute unto the LORD of the men of war which went out to battle: one soul of five hundred, both of the persons, and of the beeves, and of the asses, and of the sheep:

29  Take it of their half, and give it unto Eleazar the priest, for an heave offering of the LORD.

30  And of the children of Israel's half, thou shalt take one portion of fifty, of the persons, of the beeves, of the asses, and of the flocks, of all manner of beasts, and give them unto the Levites, which keep the charge of the tabernacle of the LORD.

31  And Moses and Eleazar the priest did as the LORD commanded Moses.

32  And the booty, being the rest of the prey which the men of war had caught, was six hundred thousand and seventy thousand and five thousand sheep,

33  And threescore and twelve thousand beeves,

34  And threescore and one thousand asses,

35  And thirty and two thousand persons in all, of women that had not known man by lying with him.

36  And the half, which was the portion of them that went out to war, was in number three hundred thousand and seven and thirty thousand and five hundred sheep:

37  And the LORD's tribute of the sheep was six hundred and threescore and fifteen.

38  And the beeves were thirty and six thousand; of which the LORD's tribute was threescore and twelve.

39  And the asses were thirty thousand and five hundred; of which the LORD's tribute was threescore and one.

40  And the persons were sixteen thousand; of which the LORD's tribute was thirty and two persons.

41  And Moses gave the tribute, which was the LORD's heave offering, unto Eleazar the priest, as the LORD commanded Moses.

42  And of the children of Israel's half, which Moses divided from the men that warred,

43  (Now the half that pertained unto the congregation was three hundred thousand and thirty thousand and seven thousand and five hundred sheep,

44  And thirty and six thousand beeves,

45  And thirty thousand asses and five hundred,

46  And sixteen thousand persons;)

47  Even of the children of Israel's half, Moses took one portion of fifty, both of man and of beast, and gave them unto the Levites, which kept the charge of the tabernacle of the LORD; as the LORD commanded Moses.

48  And the officers which were over thousands of the host, the captains of thousands, and captains of hundreds, came near unto Moses:

49  And they said unto Moses, Thy servants have taken the sum of the men of war which are under our charge, and there lacketh not one man of us.

50  We have therefore brought an oblation for the LORD, what every man hath gotten, of jewels of gold, chains, and bracelets, rings, earrings, and tablets, to make an atonement for our souls before the LORD.

51  And Moses and Eleazar the priest took the gold of them, even all wrought jewels.

52  And all the gold of the offering that they offered up to the LORD, of the captains of thousands, and of the captains of hundreds, was sixteen thousand seven hundred and fifty shekels.

53  (For the men of war had taken spoil, every man for himself.)

54  And Moses and Eleazar the priest took the gold of the captains of thousands and of hundreds, and brought it into the tabernacle of the congregation, for a memorial for the children of Israel before the LORD.

So let's think about this a little bit.  If there were 32,000 girls that age (probably mostly 15 and under, given the times), that means about 32,000 (probably a few more, given the times) boys 15 and under were slaughtered.  About 8000 of those were under 4.  So how many adults were killed?  Well, today the 0-18 age group is about 25% of the US population.  Chances are the Midianites had more kids, and chances are we're are talking about a smaller age group  (0-15 or less, as posited above).  Maybe those facts cancel each other out and bring us back to 25% -- impossible to know.  But if that's right, that means there were about  64,000 "kids", and three times that many adults -- 192,000.  That means at least 96,000 women were killed.  And then don't forget about the 32,000 boys.  So a fair guess is that Moses -- acting on orders from an uncomplaining God -- had about 128,000 women and children specifically killed, out of a total of 224,000 people killed.  The rest were, of course, men, but many of these were doubtless mere civilians, elderly and infirm.

- - - - - -

What follows are some Wikipedia excerpts, with light introductory commentary by me, regarding the motivations underlying various past genocides.  And yes, Barack, the Armenian massacre by the Turks was a genocide, even if you can't say so anymore, because you need the Turks to help prevent other genocidal-type activity.  For a literary take on this, read about the Turkish slaughter of Dr. Philobosian's Smyrna family in Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides.

Note:  I am not making any judgments here.  As you can see below, the jury may still be out on whether some of the listed events qualify as “genocide.”  But at least from my read, they are all examples of “man’s inhumanity to man,” and my overall point is that no particular group of people is immune to genocidal tendencies.

1.  Bosnian Genocide.  Here, the murderers were Christians of the "Eastern Orthodox Church," and the victims were mostly Muslim (and also some Christian Catholics):

The ethnic cleansing campaign that took place throughout areas controlled by the Bosnian Serbs (majority Orthodox) through the VRS targeted Bosniaks (majority Muslim) and Bosnian Croats (majorityCatholic). The ethnic cleansing campaign included unlawful confinement, murder, rape, sexual assault, torture, beating, robbery and inhumane treatment of civilians; the targeting of political leaders, intellectuals and professionals; the unlawful deportation and transfer of civilians; the unlawful shelling of civilians; the unlawful appropriation and plunder of real and personal property; the destruction of homes and businesses; and the destruction of places of worship.

. . . .

If a narrow definition of genocide is used, as favoured by the international courts, then during the Srebrenica massacre, 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were murdered and the remainder of the population (between 25,000 and 30,000 Bosniak women, children and elderly people) was forced to leave the area. If a wider definition is used, then the number is much larger. According to the ICTY Demographic Unit, an estimated 69.8% or 25,609 of the civilians killed in the war were Bosniak (with 42,501 military deaths), with the Bosnian Serbs suffering 7,480 civilian casualties (15,299 military deaths), the Bosnian Croats suffering 1,675 civilian casualties (7,183 military deaths), amounting to a total of 104,732 casualties, spread between the Bosnian Croats (8.5%), Bosnian Serbs (21.7%), Bosniaks (65%), and others (4.8%). In January 2013, the Sarajevo-based Research and Documentation Center (RDC) published its final results on the most comprehensive research into Bosnia-Herzegovina's war casualties: The Bosnian Book of the Dead – a database that reveals "a minimum of" 97,207 names of Bosnia and Herzegovina's citizens killed and missing during the 1992–1995 war. The head of the ICTY Demographic Unit, Ewa Tabeu, has called it "the largest existing database on Bosnian war victims".  

More than 240,000 pieces of data have been collected, processed, checked, compared and evaluated by an international team of experts to produce the final number of over 97,000 victim's names of all nationalities. According to the RDC, 82 percent or 33,071 of the civilians killed in the war were Bosniak, with a minimum of 97,207 casualties, military and civilian, for all sides involved: Bosniaks (66.2%), Serbs (25.4%) and Croats (7.8%), as well as others (0,5%).  In a statement on 23 September 2008 to the United Nations, Dr. Haris Silajdžić, as head of the Bosnia and Herzegovina delegation to the United Nations 63rd Session of the General Assembly, said that "according to ICRCdata, 200,000 people were killed, 12,000 of them children, up to 50,000 women were raped, and 2.2 million were forced to flee their homes. This was a veritable genocide and sociocide". However, such estimations have been criticized as highly inaccurate and analysts such as George Kenney have accused the Bosnian government and the international community of sensationalism and of deliberately inflating the number of fatalities to attract international support for the Muslims.

 2.  Rwandan Genocide

The Rwandan Genocide was a genocidal mass slaughter of Tutsi  and moderate Hutu in Rwanda by members of the Hutu majority. During the approximate 100-day period from April 7, 1994, to mid-July, an estimated 500,000–1,000,000 Rwandans were killed, constituting as much as 20% of the country's total population and 70% of the Tutsi then living in Rwanda. The genocide was planned by members of the core political elite known as the akazu, many of whom occupied positions at top levels of the national government. Perpetrators came from the ranks of the Rwandan army, the National Police (gendarmerie), government-backed militias including the Interahamwe  and Impuzamugambi, and the Hutu civilian population.

 3.  Cambodian Genocide

The Khmer Rouge regime arrested and eventually executed almost everyone suspected of connections with the former government or with foreign governments, as well as professionals and intellectuals. Ethnic Vietnamese, ethnic Thai, ethnic Chinese, ethnic Cham, CambodianChristians, and the Buddhist monkhood were the demographic targets of persecution. As a result, Pol Pot is sometimes described as "the Hitler of Cambodia" and "a genocidal tyrant." Martin Shaw described the Cambodian genocide as "the purest genocide of the Cold War era."

Ben Kiernan estimates that about 1.7 million people were killed.Researcher Craig Etcheson of the Documentation Center of Cambodiasuggests that the death toll was between 2 and 2.5 million, with a "most likely" figure of 2.2 million. After 5 years of researching some 20,000 grave sites, he concludes that, "these mass graves contain the remains of 1,386,734 victims of execution." A UN investigation reported 2–3 million dead, while UNICEF estimated 3 million had been killed. Demographic analysis by Patrick Heuveline suggests that between 1.17 and 3.42 million Cambodians were killed, while Marek Sliwinski suggests that 1.8 million is a conservative figure. Even the Khmer Rouge acknowledged that 2 million had been killed—though they attributed those deaths to a subsequent Vietnamese invasion. By late 1979, UN and Red Cross officials were warning that another 2.25 million Cambodians faced death by starvation due to “the near destruction of Cambodian society under the regime of ousted Prime Minister Pol Pot,” who were saved by international aid after the Vietnamese invasion.

4.   The Holocaust

The Holocaust (from the Greek ὁλόκαυστος holókaustos:hólos, "whole" and kaustós, "burnt"), also known as the Shoah (Hebrew: השואה, HaShoah, "the catastrophe"), was a genocide in which approximately six million Jews were killed by the Nazi regime and its collaborators.  Some historians use a definition of the Holocaust that includes the additional five million non-Jewish victims of Nazi mass murders, bringing the total to approximately eleven million. Killings took place throughout Nazi Germany and German-occupied territories.
From 1941 to 1945, Jews were targeted and methodically murdered in a genocide, one of the largest in history, and part of a broader aggregate of acts of oppression and killings of various ethnic and political groups in Europe by the Nazis. Every arm of Germany's bureaucracy was involved in the logistics of the genocide, turning the Third Reich into "a genocidal state". Non-Jewish victims of broader Nazi crimes include Gypsies, Poles, communists, homosexuals, Soviet POWs, and the mentally and physically disabled. In total, approximately 11 million people were killed, including approximately one million Jewish children. Of the nine million Jews who had resided in Europe before the Holocaust, approximately two-thirds were killed. A network of about 42,500 facilities in Germany and German-occupied territories were used to concentrate, confine, and kill Jews and other victims.  Between 100,000 and 500,000 people were direct participants in the planning and execution of the Holocaust.

5.  Sudan/Darfur.  I need to read up some more on this one.  It seems to be Muslim on Muslim genocide, with ethnic cleansing of the Fur, Masalit, and Zaghawa tribes.

The War in Darfur is a major armed onslaught in the Darfur region of Sudan. It began in February 2003 when the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army (SLM/A) and Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) rebel groups began fighting thegovernment of Sudan, which they accused of oppressing Darfur's non-Arab population. The government responded to attacks by carrying out a campaign of ethnic cleansing against Darfur's non-Arabs. This produced the deaths of tens to hundreds of thousands of civilians and the indictment of Sudan's president Omar al-Bashir for genocide and crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court.

One side of the conflict was composed mainly of Sudanese military and police and the Janjaweed, a Sudanese militia group recruited mostly among Arabized indigenous Africans and a small number of Bedouin of the northern Rizeigat; the majority of other Arab groups in Darfur remained uninvolved.  The other side was made up of rebel groups, notably the SLM/A and the JEM, recruited primarily from the non-Arab Muslim Fur, Zaghawa, and Masalit ethnic groups. Although the Sudanese government publicly denies that it supported the Janjaweed, evidence supports claims that it provided financial assistance and weapons and coordinated joint attacks, many against civilians.

Estimates of the number of human casualties range up to several hundred thousand dead, from either combat or starvation and disease. Mass displacements and coercive migrations forced millions into refugee camps or across the border, creating a humanitarian crisis. Former US Secretary of State Colin Powell, described the situation as a genocide or acts of genocide.

6. Turkish Genocide

The Armenian Genocide (Armenian: Հայոց ցեղասպանություն Hayots tseghaspanutyun), also known as the Armenian Holocaust, the Armenian Massacres and, traditionally by Armenians, as Medz Yeghern (Armenian: Մեծ Եղեռն, "Great Crime"), was the Ottoman government's systematic extermination of its minority Armeniansubjects inside their historic homeland, which lies within the territory constituting the present-day Republic of Turkey. The total number of people killed as a result has been estimated at between 800,000 to 1.5 million. The starting date is conventionally held to be 24 April 1915, the day Ottoman authorities rounded up and arrested, subsequently executing, some 250 Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople.

The genocide was carried out during and after World War I and implemented in two phases: the wholesale killing of the able-bodied male population through massacre and subjection of army conscripts to forced labour, followed by the deportation of women, children, the elderly and infirm on death marches leading to the Syrian desert. Driven forward by military escorts, the deportees were deprived of food and water and subjected to periodic robbery, rape, and massacre.  Other indigenous and Christian ethnic groups such as the Assyriansand the Ottoman Greeks were similarly targeted for extermination by the Ottoman government, and their treatment is considered by many historians to be part of the same genocidal policy. The majority of Armenian diaspora communities around the world came into being as a direct result of the genocide.

And now some excerpts from Wikipedia's list of genocides in history:

7.  The Greeks at Melos and the early Assyrian rampages

Scholars of antiquity differentiate between genocide and gendercide, in which males were killed but the children (particularly the girls) and women were incorporated into the conquering group. Jones notes, "Chalk and Jonassohn provide a wide-ranging selection of historical events such as the Assyrian Empire's root-and branch depredations in the first half of the first millennium BCE, and the destruction of Melos by Athens during the Peloponnesian War (fifth century BCE), a gendercidal rampage described by Thucydides in his 'Melian Dialogue'".

8.  Moses (see also above transcription of Numbers 31)

The Old Testament documents the destruction of the Midianites, taking place during the life of Moses in the 2nd millenium BC. The Book of Numbers chapter 31 recounts that an army of Israelites kill every Midianite man but capture the women and children as plunder. These are later killed at the command of Moses, with the exception of girls who have not slept with a man. The total number killed is not recorded but the number of surviving girls is recorded as thirty two thousand [elsewhere, Wikipedia tells me that these girls were kept as plunder, so even though spared, the rest of their lives were probably not entirely pleasant.  Elsewhere I also see that this was carried out on God's -- the instructions.  Those who think the Bible contains the literal truth should think hard on this].

9.  The Romans at Carthage

Ben Kiernan, a Yale scholar, has labelled the destruction of Carthage at the end of the Third Punic War (149–146 BC) "The First Genocide".

10.  An early non-white massacre of American Indians

A 2010 study suggests that a group of Anasazi in the American Southwest were killed in a genocide that took place circa 800 AD.

11.  Genghis Khan

Quoting Eric Margolis, Jones observes that in the 13th century the Mongol horsemen of Temüjin Genghis Khan were genocidal killers (génocidaires) who were known to kill whole nations, leaving nothing but empty ruins and bones. He ordered the extermination of the Tata Mongols, and all Kankalis males in Bukhara "taller than a wheel" using a technique called measuring against the linchpin. Rosanne Klass referred to the Mongols' rule of Afghanistan as "genocide".

12.  Tamerlane

Similarly, the Turko-Mongol conqueror Tamerlane was known for his extreme brutality and his conquests were accompanied by genocidal massacres.  William Rubinstein wrote: "In Assyria (1393–4) – Tamerlane got around – he killed all the Christians he could find, including everyone in the, then, Christian city of Tikrit, thus virtually destroying Christianity in Mesopotamia. Impartially, however, Tamerlane also slaughtered Shi'ite Muslims, Jews and heathens."

13.  The Zulus in Zimbabwe -- killing everybody including the dogs

Between 1810 and 1828, the Zulu kingdom under Shaka Zulu laid waste to large parts of present-day South Africaand Zimbabwe. Zulu armies often aimed not only at defeating enemies but at their total destruction. Those exterminated included prisoners of war, women, children and even dogs. (Controversial) estimates for the death toll range from 1 million to 2 million.

14.  The Germans against the Herero and Namaqua -- German South-West Africa (now Namibia)

The Herero and Namaqua Genocide in German South-West Africa (present-day Namibia) occurred between 1904 and 1907.  Eighty percent of the Herero population and 50 percent of the Nama population were killed in a brutal scorched earth campaign led by German General Lothar von Trotha. Between 24,000 and 100,000 Herero perished along with 10,000 Nama.  A copy of Trotha's Extermination Order survives in the Botswana National Archives. The order states "every Herero, with or without a gun, with or without cattle, will be shot. I will no longer accept women or children, I will drive them back to their people [to die in the desert] or let them be shot at." Olusoga and Erichsen write: "It is an almost unique document: an explicit, written declaration of intent to commit genocide".  These mass killings were named as the first example of a 20th-century genocide in the 1985 Whitaker Report, commissioned but never adopted by the now defunct United Nations subcommittee ECOSOC.

15.  "Genocide" of the Indigenous Americans. It's not clear whether we should call this a genocide, since it wasn't all necessarily intentional, but there were doubtless incidents of ethnic cleansing, and, as far as the effect on the indigenous population (i.e. those who were here first), it was pretty much the same.

From the 1490s when Christopher Columbus landed in the Americas to the end of the 19th century, the indigenous population of the Western Hemisphere declined, mostly from disease, to 1.8 million from around 50 million, a decline of 96%. In Brazil alone, the indigenous population declined from a pre-Columbian high of an estimated 3 million to some 300,000 (1997). Estimates of how many people were living in the Americas when Columbus arrived have varied tremendously; 20th century scholarly estimates ranged from 8.4 million to 112.5 million.

However, Robert Royal stated, "estimates of pre-Columbian population figures have become heavily politicized with scholars who are particularly critical of Europe and/or Western civilization often favoring wildly higher figures."  Epidemic disease was the overwhelming direct cause of the population decline of the American natives. 

After first contacts with Europeans and Africans, the death of 90 to 95 percent of the native population of the New World was caused by Old World diseases such as smallpox and measles.  Some estimates indicate that smallpox had a 80–90% fatality rate in Native American populations.

British commander Jeffery Amherst may have authorized the intentional use of disease as a biological weapon against indigenous populations during the Siege of Fort Pitt.  It was the only documented case of germ warfare and it is uncertain whether it successfully infected the target population.  Some historians argue that genocide, as a crime of intent, does not describe the colonization experience.

 Stafford Poole, a research historian, wrote: "There are other terms to describe what happened in the Western Hemisphere, but genocide is not one of them. It is a good propaganda term in an age where slogans and shouting have replaced reflection and learning, but to use it in this context is to cheapen both the word itself and the appalling experiences of the Jews and Armenians, to mention but two of the major victims of this century."

Holocaust scholar and political scientist Guenter Lewy rejects the label of genocide and views the depopulation of the Americas as "not a crime but a tragedy".  Likewise, Noble David Cook writing about the Black Legend wrote "There were too few Spaniards to have killed the millions who were reported to have died in the first century after Old and New World contact."  By contrast, David Stannard argued that the destruction of the American aboriginals from 76 million down to a quarter-million over 4 centuries, in a "string of genocide campaigns", killing "countless tens of millions", was the most massive genocide in world history. Several works on the subject were released around the year 1992 to coincide with the 500th anniversary of Columbus' voyage.

In 2003, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez urged Latin Americans to not celebrate the Columbus Day holiday. Chavez blamed Columbus for leading to the alleged genocide. David Quammen likened colonial American practices toward Native Americans to those of Australia toward its aboriginal populations, calling both genocide.

16.  Argentina's conquest of the desert in the 1870s

The Conquest of the Desert was a military campaign directed mainly by General Julio Argentino Roca in the 1870s, which established Argentine dominance over Patagonia, then inhabited by indigenous peoples, killing more than 1,300.  Contemporary sources indicate that it was a deliberate genocide by the Argentine government.  Others perceived the campaign as intending to suppress only groups of aboriginals that refused to submit to the government and carried out attacks on European settlements.

17.  Haitis's 1804 killing of French creoles

Jean-Jacques Dessalines, the first ruler of an independent Haiti, ordered the killing of the white population of French creoles on Haiti which culminated in the 1804 Haiti Massacre. According to Philippe Girard, "when the genocide was over, Haiti's white population was virtually non-existent."

I've stopped editing below this line.  Maybe will return to it one day.  But the basic point is that in each of these genocides, many perfectly ordinary people (well, men and boys, as I noted above) have become vicious killers of innocent victims.  And my point again is that one can't blame any particular religion for being more prone to it than any other.

18.  The Crusades -- there seems to be a debate about whether one should consider the Crusades as a whole to have been a genocide.  But it certainly had its genocidal moments, including the taking of Antioch, and the massacre of thousands of its Muslim and Christian inhabitants (it was too hard to tell them apart, apparently). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Antioch.  

And then there was the siege of Maarat, or Maara:

On the morning of December 12, the garrison negotiated with Bohemond, who promised them safe conduct if they surrendered. The Muslims surrendered, but the crusaders immediately began to massacre the population. Meanwhile, Bohemond seized control of the walls and towers while Raymond of Toulouse took control of the interior of the city, continuing their dispute over who would rule conquered territories.

Maarat was not as rich as the crusaders had hoped and they were still short of supplies and food as December progressed. Most of the soldiers and knights preferred to continue the march to Jerusalem, caring little for the political dispute between Bohemond and Raymond, and Raymond tried to buy the support of the other leaders. While the leaders negotiated away from the city, some of the starving crusaders at Maarat reportedly resorted to cannibalism, feeding on the dead bodies of Muslims.

A chronicler, Radulph of Caen wrote (in 1107, 9 years after the fact):Some people said that, constrained by the lack of food, they boiled pagan adults in cooking-pots, impaled children on spits and devoured them grilled.

These events were also chronicled by Fulcher of Chartres, who wrote:I shudder to tell that many of our people, harassed by the madness of excessive hunger, cut pieces from the buttocks of the Saracens already dead there, which they cooked, but when it was not yet roasted enough by the fire, they devoured it with savage mouth.

19.  Mexico -- The Caste War of Yucatán (approx. 1847–1901)

The Caste War of Yucatán (approx. 1847–1901) against the population of European descent, called Yucatecos, who held political and economic control of the region. Adam Jones wrote: Genocidal atrocities on both sides cost up to 200,000 killed."

 20.  Mexico – Scalping Apache children (1835-1837)

In 1835, Don Ignacio Zuniga, commander of the presidios of northern Sonora, asserted that since 1820 the Apaches had killed at least five thousand settlers. The state of Sonora then offered a bounty on Apache scalps in 1835. Beginning in 1837 Chihuahua state also offered a bounty of 100 pesos per warrior, 50 pesos per woman and 25 pesos per child.

 21.  Peru -- The rebellions of Túpac Amaru II and Túpac Katari against the Spanish (1780-1782)

The indigenous rebellions of Túpac Amaru II and Túpac Katari against the Spanish between 1780 and 1782, cost over 100,000 colonists' lives in Peru and Upper Peru (present-day Bolivia)."

22.  United States – Trail of Tears, etc.

Further information: Genocide of indigenous peoples § United States colonization and westward expansion.  Chalk and Jonassohn claimed that the deportation of the Cherokee tribe along the Trail of Tears would almost certainly be considered an act of genocide today.  The Indian Removal Act of 1830 led to the exodus. About 17,000 Cherokees—along with approximately 2,000 Cherokee-owned black slaves—were removed from their homes. The number of people who died as a result of the Trail of Tears has been variously estimated. American doctor and missionary Elizur Butler, who made the journey with one party, estimated 4,000 deaths.

23.  Newfoundland – the Beothuks – possible genocide

The Beothuks attempted to avoid contact with Europeans in Newfoundland by moving from their traditional settlements. The Beothuks were put into a position where they were forced from their traditional land and lifestyle into ecosystems that could not support them and that led to undernourishment and eventually starvation.  While some scholars believe that the Beothuk primarily died out due to the elements noted above, another theory is that Europeans conducted a sustained campaign of genocide against them. They were officially declared "extinct" after the death of Shanawdithit in 1829 in the capital, St. John's, where she had been taken.

24. Russians in Siberia.  We tend to forget that for the Russians, the “East” was like the “West” was for the United States. From: Genocide of indigenous peoples § Russian Empire's conquest of Siberia:

The Russian conquest of Siberia was accompanied by massacres due to indigenous resistance to colonization by the Russian Cossacks, who savagely crushed the natives. At the hands of people like Vasilii Poyarkov in 1645 and Yerofei Khabarov in 1650 some peoples like the Daur were slaughtered by the Russians to the extent that it is considered genocide. 8,000 out of a previously 20,000 strong population in Kamchatka remained after being subjected to half a century of Cossacks slaughter. The Daurs initially deserted their villages since they heard about the cruelty of the Russians the first time Khabarov came. The second time he came, the Daurs decided to do battle against the Russians instead but were slaughtered by Russian guns. In the 17th century, indigenous peoples of the Amur region were attacked by Russians who came to be known as "red-beards".  The Russian Cossacks were named luocha (羅剎), after Demons found in Buddhist mythology, by the Amur natives because of their cruelty towards the Amur tribes people, who were subjects of the Qing dynasty during the Sino–Russian border conflicts.

In the 1640s the Yakuts were subjected to slaughters during the Russian advance into their land near the Lena river, and on Kamchatka in the 1690s the Koryak, Kamchadals, and Chukchi were also subjected to slaughters by the Russians.  When the Russians did not obtain the demanded amount of yasak from the natives, the Governor of Yakutsk, Piotr Golovin, who was a Cossack, used meat hooks to hang the native men. In the Lena basin, 70% of the Yakut population died within 40 years, and rape and enslavement were used against native women and children in order to force the natives to pay the Yasak.
In Kamchatka the Russians savagely crushed the Itelmens uprisings against their rule in 1706, 1731, and 1741, the first time the Itelmen were armed with stone weapons and were badly unprepared and equipped but they used gunpowder weapons the second time. The Russians faced tougher resistance when from 1745-56 they tried to exterminate the gun and bow equipped Koraks until their victory. The Russian Cossacks also faced fierce resistance and were forced to give up when trying unsuccessfully to wipe out the Chukchi through genocide in 1729, 1730-1, and 1744-7.

After the Russian defeat in 1729 at Chukchi hands, the Russian commander Major Pavlutskiy was responsible for the Russian war against the Chukchi and the mass slaughters and enslavement of Chukchi women and children in 1730-31, but his cruelty only made the Chukchis fight more fiercely.  A genocide of the Chukchis and Koraks was ordered by Empress Elizabeth in 1742 to totally expel them from their native lands and erase their culture through war. The command was that the natives be "totally extirpated" with Pavlutskiy leading again in this war from 1744-47 in which he led to the Cossacks "with the help of Almighty God and to the good fortune of Her Imperial Highness", to slaughter the Chukchi men and enslave their women and children as booty. However the Chukchi ended this campaign and forced them to give up by killing Pavlitskiy and decapitating his head. The Russians were also launching wars and slaughters against the Koraks in 1744 and 1753-4.

After the Russians tried to force the natives to convert to Christianity, the different native peoples like the Koraks, Chukchis, Itelmens, and Yukagirs all united to drive the Russians out of their land in the 1740s, culminating in the assault on Nizhnekamchatsk fort in 1746.  Kamchatka today is European in demographics and culture with only 2.5% of it being native, around 10,000 from a previous number of 150,000, due to the mass slaughters by the Cossacks after its annexation in 1697 of the Itelmen and Koryaks throughout the first decades of Russian rule.  The genocide by the Russian Cossacks devastated the native peoples of Kamchatka and exterminated much of their population.  In addition to committing genocide they Cossacks also devastated the wildlife by slaughtering massive amounts of animals for fur.  90% of the Kamchadals and half of the Vogules were killed from the eighteenth to nineteenth centuries and the rapid genocide of the indigenous population led to entire ethnic groups being entirely wiped out, with around 12 exterminated groups which could be named by Nikolai Iadrintsev as of 1882. Much of the slaughter was brought on by the fur trade. 

The Aleuts in the Aleutians were subjected to genocide and slavery by the Russians for the first 20 years of Russian rule, with the Aleut women and children captured by the Russians and Aleut men slaughtered.

The regionalist oblastniki in the 19th century among the Russians in Siberia acknowledged that the natives were subjected to immense genocidal cruelty by the Russian colonization, and claimed that they would rectify the situation with their proposed regionalist polices. The Russians used "slaughter, alcoholism and disease" to bring the natives under their control, who were soon left in misery, and much of the evidence of their extermination has itself been destroyed by the Russians, with only a few artifacts documenting their presence remaining in Russian museums and collections.

25.  China – Qing dynasty’s massacre of the Zunghars (Dzungars) (I cobbled the below together from two different Wikipedia sources: Genocide of indigenous peoples § Vietnamese conquest of Champa and the Central Highlands and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dzungar_genocide

Some scholars estimate that about 80% of the Dzungar (Western Mongol) population (600,000 or more) were destroyed by a combination of warfare and disease in the Zunghar Genocide during the Qing conquest ofZunghar Khanate in 1755–1757, in which Manchu Bannermen andKhalkha Mongols exterminated the Dzungar Oirat Mongols.  Mark Levene, a historian whose recent research interests focus on genocide, has stated that the extermination of the Dzungars was "arguably the eighteenth century genocide par excellence.". . .After the Qianlong Emperor led Qing forces to victory over the Dzungars in 1755, he originally planned to split the Dzungar Khanate into four tribes headed by four Khans, the Khoit tribe was to have the Dzungar leader Amursana as its Khan. Amursana rejected the Qing arrangement and rebelled since he wanted to be leader of a united Dzungar nation. Qianlong then issued his orders for the genocide and eradication of the entire Dzungar nation and name, Qing Manchu Bannermen and Inner Mongolian bannermen enslaved Zunghar women and children while slaying the other Zunghars.

The Outer Mongol Khalkha Prince Chingünjav conspired with Amursana to revolt against the Qing in 1755. Chingünjav then started his own rebellion in Outer Mongolia against the Qing in 1756 but it was crushed by the Qing in 1757. Chingünjav and his entire family were executed by the Qing after the rebellion was put down. He is now revered as a hero by Khalkha Mongols today.
The Qianlong Emperor issued his commanders with direct orders to "massacre" the Zunghars and "show no mercy". Rewards were given to those who carried out the extermination and orders were given for young men to be slaughtered while women were taken as the spoils of war. The Qing extirpated Zunghar identity from the remaining enslaved Zunghar women and children.  Orders were given to "completely exterminate the Zunghar tribes, and this successful genocide by the Qing left Zungharia mostly unpopulated and vacant.

Qianlong ordered his men to- "Show no mercy at all to these rebels. Only the old and weak should be saved. Our previous campaigns were too lenient." The Qianlong Emperor did not see any conflict between performing genocide on the Zunghars while upholding the peaceful principles of Confucianism, supporting his position by portraying the Zunghars as barbarian and subhuman. Qianlong proclaimed that "To sweep away barbarians is the way to bring stability to the interior.", that the Zunghars "turned their back on civilization.", and that "Heaven supported the emperor." in the destruction of the Zunghars.

According to the Encyclopedia of genocide and crimes against humanity, Volume 3, under Article II of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Qianlong's actions against the Zunghars constitute genocide, as he massacred the vast majority of the Zunghar population and enslaved or banished the remainder, and had "Zunghar culture" extirpated and destroyed.

26.  Japanese colonization of Hokkaido

The Ainu are an indigenous people in Japan (Hokkaidō).  In a 2009 news story, Japan Today reported, "Many Ainu were forced to work, essentially as slaves, for Wajin (ethnic Japanese), resulting in the breakup of families and the introduction of smallpox, measles, cholera and tuberculosis into their community. In 1869, the new Meiji government renamed Ezo Hokkaido and unilaterally incorporated it into Japan. It banned the Ainu language, took Ainu land away, and prohibited salmon fishing and deer hunting."  Roy Thomas wrote: "Ill treatment of native peoples is common to all colonial powers, and, at its worst, leads to genocide. Japan's native people, the Ainu, have, however, been the object of a particularly cruel hoax, because the Japanese have refused to accept them officially as a separate minority people." In 2004 the small Ainu community living in Russia wrote a letter to Vladimir Putin, urging him to recognize Japanese behaviour against the Ainu people as genocide, which Putin declined to do.

27.  Australia

Further information: Australian genocide debate and Genocide of indigenous peoples § Colonization of Australia and Tasmania.  According to research published from 2009, in 1789 the British deliberately spread smallpox from the First Fleet to counter overwhelming native tribes near Sydney in New South Wales. In his book "An Indelible Stain", Henry Reynolds described this act as genocide.  Many scholars disagree that the initial smallpox was the result of deliberate biological warfare and have suggested other causes.

The Black War was a period of conflict between British colonists and Tasmanian Aborigines in Van Diemen's Land(now Tasmania) in the early 19th century. The conflict, in combination with introduced diseases and other factors, had such devastating impacts on the Tasmanian Aboriginal population that it was reported the Tasmanian Aborigines had been exterminated. Historian Geoffrey Blainey wrote that by 1830, "Disease had killed most of them but warfare and private violence had also been devastating." In the 19th century, smallpox was the principal cause of Aboriginal deaths.

Lemkin and most other comparative genocide scholars present the extinction of the Tasmanian Aborigines as a textbook example of a genocide, while the majority of Australian experts are more circumspect.  Detailed studies of the events surrounding the extinction have raised questions about some of the details and interpretations in earlier histories.  Curthoys concluded, "It is time for a more robust exchange between genocide and Tasmanian historical scholarship if we are to understand better what did happen in Tasmania."
On the Australian continent during the colonial period (1788–1901), the population of 500,000–750,000 Australian Aborigines was reduced to fewer than 50,000.  Most were devastated by the introduction of alien diseases after contact with Europeans, while perhaps 20,000 were killed by massacres and fighting with colonists.

28.  New Zealand

In the early 19th Century Ngāti Mutunga and Ngāti Tama (local Māori tribes) massacred the Moriori people. The Moriori were the indigenous people of the Chatham Islands (Rekohu in Moriori, Wharekauri in Māori), east of theNew Zealand archipelago in the Pacific Ocean. These people lived by a code of non-violence and passive resistance (see Nunuku-whenua), which led to their near-extinction at the hands of Taranaki Māori invaders in the 1830s.  In 1835, some Ngāti Mutunga and Ngāti Tama from the Taranaki region of North Island invaded the Chathams. On 19 November 1835, the Rodney, a European ship hired by the Māori, arrived carrying 500 Māori armed with guns, clubs, and axes, followed by another ship with 400 more warriors on 5 December 1835. They proceeded to enslave some Moriori and kill and cannibalise others. "Parties of warriors armed with muskets, clubs and tomahawks, led by their chiefs, walked through Moriori tribal territories and settlements without warning, permission or greeting. If the districts were wanted by the invaders, they curtly informed the inhabitants that their land had been taken and the Moriori living there were now vassals."

A council of Moriori elders was convened at the settlement called Te Awapatiki. Despite knowing of the Māori predilection for killing and eating the conquered, and despite the admonition by some of the elder chiefs that the principle of Nunuku was not appropriate now, two chiefs—Tapata and Torea—declared that "the law of Nunuku was not a strategy for survival, to be varied as conditions changed; it was a moral imperative."  A Moriori survivor recalled: "[The Maori] commenced to kill us like sheep.... [We] were terrified, fled to the bush, concealed ourselves in holes underground, and in any place to escape our enemies. It was of no avail; we were discovered and killed – men, women and children indiscriminately." A Māori conqueror explained, "We took possession... in accordance with our customs and we caught all the people. Not one escaped..."  After the invasion, Moriori were forbidden to marry Moriori, or to have children with each other. All became slaves of the invaders. Many Moriori women had children by their Maori masters. A small number of Moriori women eventually married either Maori or European men. Some were taken from the Chathams and never returned. Only 101 Moriori out of a population of about 2,000 were left alive by 1862.  Although the last Moriori of unmixed ancestry, Tommy Solomon, died in 1933 several thousand mixed ancestry Moriori are alive today.

29.  France -- Mass shootings at Nantes, 1793

In 1986, Reynald Secher argued that the actions of the French republican government during the revolt in the Vendée (1793–1796), a popular mostly Catholic uprising against the anti-clerical Republican government during the French Revolution was the first modern genocide.  Secher's claims caused a minor uproar in France and mainstream authorities rejected Secher's claims.  Timothy Tackett countered that "the Vendée was a tragic civil war with endless horrors committed by both sides—initiated, in fact, by the rebels themselves. The Vendeans were no more blameless than were the republicans. The use of the word genocide is wholly inaccurate and inappropriate."

However, historians Frank Chalk and Kurt Jonassohn consider the Vendée a case of genocide. Historian Pierre Chaunu called the Vendée the first ideological genocide. Adam Jones estimates 150,000 Vendeans died in what he also considers to be genocide.

30.  Ireland -- War of the Three Kingdoms

Toward the end of the War of the Three Kingdoms (1639–1651) the English Rump Parliament sent the New Model Army to Ireland to subdue and take revenge on the Catholic population of the country and to prevent Royalistsloyal to Charles II from using Ireland as a base to threaten England. The force was initially under the command of Oliver Cromwell and later under other parliamentary generals. The Army sought to secure the country, but also to confiscate lands of Irish families involved in the fighting.

This became a continuation of the Elizabethan policy of encouraging Protestant settlement of Ireland, because the Protestant New Model army soldiers—could be paid in confiscated lands rather than in cash.  During the Interregnum (1651–1660), this policy was enhanced with the passing of the Act of Settlement of Irelandin 1652. Its goal was a further transfer of land from Irish to English hands. The immediate war aims and the longer term policies of the English Parliamentarians resulted in an attempt by the English to transfer the native population to the western fringes to make way for Protestant settlers. This policy was reflected in a phrase attributed to Cromwell: "To Hell or to Connaught" and has been described by historians as ethnic cleansing, if not genocide.

31.  Great Irish Famine – This one seems a bit debatable – I guess the argument is that it would have been easy to keep the Irish fed by shutting off exports, and then letting the local market (Ireland) drive prices down so that everyone could eat.  So it’s the act of not engaging in the protectionist policy of shutting down exports that was the cause of all those deaths.  So it’s kind of a genocide by laissez faire/free enterprise/capitalism, more than a deliberate genocide.  You’d think this would be used more frequently as an indictment of unrestrained capitalism.

During the Irish Potato Famine (1845–1852), approximately 1 million people died and a million more emigrated from Ireland, causing the island's population to fall by between 20% and 25%. The proximate cause of famine was a potato disease commonly known as potato blight.  Although blight ravaged potato crops throughout Europe during the 1840s, the impact and human cost in Ireland – where one-third of the population was entirely dependent on the potato for food – was exacerbated by a host of political, social, and economic factors which remain the subject of historical debate.  

During the Famine, Ireland produced enough food, flax, and wool to feed and clothe double its nine million people. When Ireland had experienced a famine in 1782–83, ports were closed to keep Irish-grown food in Ireland to feed the Irish. Local food prices promptly dropped. Merchants lobbied against the export ban, but government in the 1780s overrode their protests. There was no such export ban in the 1840s. Some historians have argued that in this sense the famine was artificial, caused by the British government's choice not to stop exports.

Francis A. Boyle claimed that the government violated sections (a), (b), and (c) of Article 2 of the CPPCG and committed genocide in a formal legal opinion to the New Jersey Commission on Holocaust Education on May 2, 1996. Charles E. Rice issued another formal opinion, also based on Article 2, alleging that the British had committed genocide.

The claims were contested by Peter Gray, who concluded that UK government policy "was not a policy of deliberate genocide", but a dogmatic refusal to admit that the policy was wrong. James S. Donnelly, Jr., split the difference, writing, "while genocide was not in fact committed, what happened ... had the look of genocide to a great many Irish".  Cecil Woodham-Smith claimed that while the export policy embittered the Irish, this did not implicate the policy in genocide, but rather in excessive parsimony obtuseness, short-sightedness, and ignorance.  Irish historian Cormac O' Grada rejects the term, stating that the English exhibited no desire to exterminate the Irish and that the challenges for providing relief were enormous.  W.D. Rubinstein also rejected the genocide claim.

32.  Russia – killing the Circassians

Main article: Ethnic cleansing of Circassians.  The Russian Tsarist Empire waged war against Circassia in the Northwest Caucasus for more than one hundred years, trying to replace Circassia's hold along the Black Sea coast. After a century of insurgency and war and failure to end the conflict, the Tsar ordered the expulsion of most of the Muslim population of the North Caucasus. Many Circassians, Western historians, Turks and Chechens claimed that the events of the 1860s constituted one of the first modern genocides, in that a whole population was eliminated to satisfy the desires (in this case economic) of a powerful country.[citation needed]  Antero Leitzinger flagged the affair as the 19th century's largest genocide.  Some estimates cite that approximately 1-1.5 million Circassians were killed and most of the Muslim population was deported. Ossete Muslims and Kabardins generally did not leave. The modern Circassians and Abazins descend from those who managed to escape the onslaught and later returned another 1.5 million Circassians and others. This effectively annihilated (or deported) 90% of the nation.  Tsarist documents recorded more than 400,000 Circassians killed, 497,000 forced to flee and only 80,000 were left in their native area.  Circassians were viewed as tools by the Ottoman government, and settled in restive areas whose populations had nationalist yearnings- Armenia, the Arab regions and the Balkans. Many more Circassians were killed by the policies of the Balkan states, primarily Serbiaand Bulgaria, which became independent at that time.[citation needed] Still more Circassians were forcefully assimilated by nationalist Muslim states (Turkey, Syria, Iraq, etc.) who looked upon non-Turk/Arab ethnicity as a foreign presence and a threat.In May 1994, the then Russian President Boris Yeltsin admitted that resistance to the tsarist forces was legitimate, but he did not recognize "the guilt of the tsarist government for the genocide." In 1997 and 1998, the leaders ofKabardino-Balkaria and of Adygea sent appeals to the Duma to reconsider the situation and to apologize, without response. In October 2006, the Adygeyan public organizations of Russia, Turkey, Israel, Jordan, Syria, the USA, Belgium, Canada and Germany sent the president of the European Parliament a letter with a request to recognize the genocide.[citation needed]On 5 July 2005 the Circassian Congress, an organisation that unites representatives of the various Circassian peoples in the Russian Federation, called on Moscow to acknowledge and apologize for the genocide.

33.  Turkification of the Dersim Kurds

The Dersim Massacre refers to the depopulation of Dersim in Turkish Kurdistan, in 1937–38, in which approximately 65,000–70,000 Alevi Kurds were killed and thousands more were driven into exile. A key component of the Turkification process was a policy of massive population resettlement. The main document, the1934 Law on Resettlement, was used to target the region of Dersim as one of its first test cases, with disastrous consequences for the local population. Many Kurds and some ethnic Turks consider the events that took place in Dersim to constitute genocide. A prominent proponent of this view is İsmail Beşikçi. Under international laws, the actions of the Turkish authorities were arguably not genocide, because they were not aimed at the extermination of a people, but at resettlement and suppression.  A Turkish court ruled in 2011 that the events could not be considered genocide because they were not directed systematically against an ethnic group.  Scholars such as Martin van Bruinessen, have instead talked of an ethnocide directed against the local language and identity.

34.  Soviet Union – see the links

Main articles: Human rights in the Soviet Union, Population transfer in the Soviet Union, Famines in Russia and USSR, Decossackization, Great Purge, Gulag, Holodomor, Sürgün and Polish operation of the NKVD.  Multiple documented instances of unnatural mass death occurred in the Soviet Union. 
These include Union-wide famines in the early 1920s and early 1930s and deportations of ethnic minorities.Soviet diplomatic efforts removed the extermination of political groups from the United Nations Convention on Genocide. This left many of the Soviet atrocities outside the United Nations definition of genocide, because the atrocities targeted political or economic groups rather than the ethnic, racial, religious, or national groups listed in the UN convention.

35.  Decossackization

During the Russian Civil War the Bolsheviks engaged in a genocidal campaign against the Don Cossacks. The most reliable estimates indicate that out of a population of three million, between 300,000 and 500,000 were killed or deported in 1919–20.

36.  Holodomor

During the Soviet famine of 1932–33 that affected Ukraine, Kazakhstanand some densely populated regions of Russia, the scale of death in Ukraine is referred to as the Holodomor and is recognized as genocide by the governments of Australia, Argentina, Georgia, Estonia, Italy, Canada, Lithuania, Poland, the USA and Hungary. The famine was caused by the confiscation of the whole 1933 harvest in Ukraine, Kazakhstan, the Kuban(a densely populated Russian region), and some other parts of the Soviet Union, leaving the peasants too little to feed themselves. As a result, an estimated ten million died, including over seven million in Ukraine, one million in the North Caucasus and one million elsewhere.  American historian Timothy Snyder wrote of "3.3 million Soviet citizens (mostly Ukrainians) deliberately starved by their own government in Soviet Ukraine in 1932–1933"  

In addition to the requisitioning of crops and livestock in Ukraine, all food was confiscated by Soviet authorities. Any and all aid and food was prohibited from entering the Ukrainian republic. Ukraine's Yuschenko administration recognised the Holodomor as an act of genocide and pushed international governments to acknowledge this.  This move was opposed by the Russian government and some members of the Ukrainian parliament, especially the Communists. A Ukrainian court found Joseph Stalin, Vyacheslav Molotov, Lazar Kaganovich, Stanislav Kosior,Pavel Postyshev, Vlas Chubar and Mendel Khatayevich posthumously guilty of genocide on 13 January 2010.  As of 2010, the Russian government's official position was that the famine took place, but was not an ethnic genocide;  former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych supported this position.  A ruling of January 13, 2010 by Kyiv's Court of Appeal declared the Soviet leaders guilty of 'genocide against the Ukrainian national group in 1932–33 through the artificial creation of living conditions intended for its partial physical destruction.'"

37.  Polish Russia

Main article: The Polish Operation of the NKVD (1937–1938)A few scholars argue that the killing, on the basis of nationality and politics, of more than 120,000 ethnic Poles in the Soviet Union during 1937–38 was genocide.

38.  Chechnya

Main article: Operation Lentil (Caucasus)On February 26, 2004 the plenary assembly of the European Parliament recognized the deportation of Chechen people during Operation Lentil (23 February 1944), as an act of genocide, on the basis of the 1907 IV Hague Convention: The Laws and Customs of War on Land and the CPPCG.  The event began on 23 February 1944, when the entire population of Checheno-Ingushetia was summoned to local party buildings where they were told they were to be deported as punishment for their alleged collaboration with the Germans. The inhabitants were rounded up and imprisoned in Studebaker trucks and sent to Siberia.

• Many times, resistance was met with slaughter, and in one such instance, in the aul of Khaibakh, about 700 people were locked in a barn and burned to death. By the next summer, Checheno-Ingushetia was dissolved; a number of Chechen and Ingush placenames were replaced with Russian ones; mosques and graveyards were destroyed, and a massive campaign to burn numerous historical Chechen texts was nearly complete.

• Throughout the North Caucasus, about 700,000 (according to Dalkhat Ediev, 724297, of which the majority, 412,548, were Chechens, along with 96,327 Ingush, 104,146 Kalmyks, 39,407 Balkars and 71,869Karachais). Many died on the trip, of exposure in Siberia's extremely harsh environment. The NKVD, supplying the Russian perspective, gives the statistic of 144,704 killed in 1944–1948 alone (with a death rate of 23.5% for all groups). Estimates for Chechen deaths alone (excluding the NKVD statistic), range from about 170,000 to 200,000, thus ranging from over a third of the total Chechen population to nearly half being killed (of those that were deported, not counting those killed on the spot) in those 4 years alone. Both the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria and the European Union Parliament marked it as genocide in 2004.

39.  Deportations of Lithuanians, Latvians and Estonians

The mass deportations of up to 17,500 Lithuanians, 17,000 Latvians and 6,000 Estonians carried out by Stalin were allegedly the start of another genocide. Added to the killing of the Forest Brethren and the renewed Dekulakization that followed the Soviet reconquest of the Baltic states at the end of World War Two, the total number deported to Siberia was 118,559 from Lithuania, 52,541 from Latvia, and 32,540 from Estonia. The high death rate of deportees during the first few years of exile, caused by the failure of Soviet authorities to provide suitable clothing and housing at the destination, led some sources to label the affair an act of genocide. Based on the Martens Clause and the principles of the Nuremberg Charter, the European Court of Human Rights held that the March deportation constituted a crime against humanity. According to Erwin Oberlander, these deportations are a crime against humanity, rather than genocide.

Lithuania began trials for genocide in 1997. Latvia and Estonia followed in 1998. Latvia has since convicted four security officers and in 2003 sentenced a former KGB agent to five years. Estonia tried and convicted ten men and is investigating others. In Lithuania by 2004 23 cases were before the courts, but as of the end of the year none had been convicted.

In 2007 Estonia charged Arnold Meri (then 88 years old), a former Soviet Communist Party official and highly decorated former Red Army soldier, with genocide. Shortly after the trial opened, it was suspended because of Meri's frail health and then abandoned when he died.  A memorial in Vilnius, Lithuania, is dedicated to genocidal victims of Stalin and Hitler, and the Museum of Genocide Victims in Lithuania, which opened on 14 October 1992 in the former KGB headquarters, chronicles the imprisonment and deportation of Lithuanians.

40.  Japan

During the Nanking Massacre in the period of the Second Sino-Japanese War, the Japanese engaged in mass killings against the Chinese. Bradley Campbell described the Nanking Massacre as a genocide, because the Chinese were unilaterally killed by the Japanese en masse during the aftermath, despite the successful and certain outcome of their battle.

 41.  Ancient Rome

Ben Kiernan states in his book Blood and Soil that imperial powers have often resorted to genocidal massacres to control difficult minorities within their empires. He gives as an example the actions by two Roman legions who were sent in 68 AD to quell Jews rioting in Alexandria in support of Jews taking part in the First Jewish–Roman War. The Roman governor Tiberius Julius Alexander ordered two legions to massacre the inhabitants of the Jewish quarter, which was carried out to the letter, sparing none whatever their age or sex. The massacre ended after about 50,000 had been killed when Alexander, listening to the pleas of some yet to be killed, felt pity for them and ordered an end to the killings.

Here's how Josephus describes it:

[Alexander] then let loose among them the two Roman legions, and with them 2,000 soldiers who happened to have come from Libya, with fearful consequences for the Jews. He gave the men leave not merely to kill them but also to plunder their property and burn down their houses. The soldiers rushed into the area called Delta where the Jews were concentrated, and proceeded to carry out their orders, but not without bloodshed on their own side; for the Jews stood shoulder to shoulder with their most heavily armed men in front and held their ground magnificently, but when once the line gave they were destroyed wholesale. Death came upon them in every form; some were overtaken in the open, others driven into their houses, which the Romans first looted and then burnt down. They felt no pity for infants, no respect for the aged; old and young were slaughtered right and left, so that the whole district was deluged with blood and 50,000 corpses were heaped up: even the remnant would not have survived had they not begged for mercy till Alexander, pitying them, ordered the Romans to retire.