Ethnic Cleansing: Part 1

Ethnic cleansing, religious cleansing and genocide are not random events. They do not happen because some dictator wakes up in the morning and decides to kill an ethnic minority that day. These things occasionally happened in tribal societies and aristocrat peasant societies. Democratic market societies try to integrate minority groups into the mainstream and encourage them to become productive and prosperous citizens.

That leaves oligarchic society, especially countries that are in the early stage of nation-state development. This is when most episodes of ethnic cleansing, religious cleansing and genocide occur. It is all very well for Western nations to oppose the horrors and brutality of ethnic and religious cleansing but the well documented evidence of history is very clear on this subject. Most Western nations also made use of horrific episodes of ethnic and religious cleansing in the development of their own nation-states. The historical data is there for anyone who cares to investigate. Ethnic and religious cleansing has been regularly used as a common occurrence in the process of nation-state development.

The United States was the third modern nation-state. It still holds the world record for the most acts of ethnic cleansing perpetrated over the longest period of time. For two and a half centuries, from 1630s to 1890s, European colonist to North America evicted the native Indian tribes from their homes and forced them westward. As the settlers pushed west themselves, the Indians were cleansed again and again. Some of the most worthless land in the west was set aside for their use as Indian Reservations. Most reservations were little more than death camps where Indians were sent to starve.

To be continue...... part 2