As a percentage of total planetary population, a large number of historical wars were worse than any 20th century atrocity. Pinker has a list in his book, and there are enough that they include wars most modern people have barely heard of.
I’m trying to compare apples to apples here. Wars are not like ideological purity exercises, nor are they like internal political control struggles (i.e. suppressing a peasant revolt, starving the Kulaks).
I’d have to get a better sense of historical wars before I could confidently opine on the relative suffering of the military portions of WWII vs. the military portions of some ancient war. And then I’d have to decide how to compare similar events that took different amounts of time (e.g. WWI v. Hundred Years War)
As a percentage of total planetary population, a large number of historical wars were worse than any 20th century atrocity. Pinker has a list in his book, and there are enough that they include wars most modern people have barely heard of.
I’m trying to compare apples to apples here. Wars are not like ideological purity exercises, nor are they like internal political control struggles (i.e. suppressing a peasant revolt, starving the Kulaks).
I’d have to get a better sense of historical wars before I could confidently opine on the relative suffering of the military portions of WWII vs. the military portions of some ancient war. And then I’d have to decide how to compare similar events that took different amounts of time (e.g. WWI v. Hundred Years War)
The line between these is not always so clear. Look at the crusade against the Cathars or look at the Reformation wars for example.
I agree that the categories (war, ideological purification, suppression of internal dissent) are not natural kinds.
But issue is separating the effects of ideological change from the effects of technological change, so meaningful comparisons are important.