This article lists incidents that have been termed ethnic cleansing by some academic or legal experts. Not all experts agree on every case, particularly since there are a variety of definitions of the term ethnic cleansing. Definitions cluster around the forced removal of all or a large number of an ethnic population from an area, or rendering an area ethnically homogenous. See the main article for further information. When claims of ethnic cleansing are made by non-experts (e.g. journalists or politicians) they are noted.
There is significant scholarly disagreement around the definition of ethnic cleansing and which events fall under this classification.
The resettlement policy of the Neo-Assyrian Empire in the 9th and 7th centuries BC is considered by some scholars to be one of the first cases of ethnic cleansing.
c. 597 BC: When the Neo-Babylonian Empire conquered the Kingdom of Judah in modern-day Israel, tens of thousands of Jews were expelled from Israel, representing the first waves of the Jewish diaspora. This is referred to as the Babylonian Captivity.
416 BC: During the Peloponnesian War the Athenians had the neutral island polis of Melos destroyed, with the men of fighting age being killed, and the women and children sold as slaves. Athenian colonists were moved in afterwards. This is considered an important example of an ancient genocide.
353 BC: After the polis of Sestos refused to submit to Athens, the Strategos Chares of Athens killed the entire adult male population and sold the women and children into slavery, replacing them with Athenian colonists.
c. 149-146 BC: The Sack of Carthage resulted in the city being destroyed, its population expelled or massacred, and any rebuilding forbidden. It is called a genocide by some scholars.
c. 88 BC: The massacres of Romans living in Anatolia ordered by Mithridates VI Eupator. These were known as the Asiatic Vespers and are considered to be a genocide by some scholars.
58-50 BC: The Gallic Wars resulted in large amounts of the Gallic population being massacred or enslaved by the Roman Army. It has been called a genocide by some scholars.
c. 53-51 BC: Caesar claimed that he burnt all Eburones village he could find, his men ate all their grain, and drove away their animals. Caesar said he aimed to make the Eburones starve to death, and believed he succeeded. Daniel Chirot and Jennifer Edwards described this as a genocide. However, Johannes Heinrichs argues that such a genocide was impossible due to many of the areas the Eburoneans sought refuge in were impenetrable to the Roman Army, and cites Caesar's second campaign against them in 51 BC as proof that the Eburoneans weren't exterminated. Nico Roymans argues that the reason why the Eburoneans disappeared from history was due to "a policy of damnatio memoriae on the part of the Roman authorities, in combination with the confiscation of Eburonean territory".
The Indian Wars encompass more than three centuries of armed conflict between the United States government, American settlers, and Indigenous nations — from the Powhatan Wars of the 1620s through the final Plains campaigns of the late 19th century. The eastern conflicts — King Philip's War (1675–1676), the Tuscarora War (1711–1715), and the Creek and Seminole Wars — largely ended organized Indigenous resistance east of the Mississippi by the 1840s. On the Great Plains, the Sioux Wars (1854–1890), Red River War (1874–1875), and Nez Perce War (1877) followed the displacement wrought by the transcontinental railroad and the near-extinction of the American bison — an estimated 30 to 60 million animals reduced to fewer than 1,000 by 1890. The Ghost Dance religious movement and the massacre at Wounded Knee (December 29, 1890), in which US cavalry killed approximately 250 Lakota men, women, and children, marked the effective end of armed resistance. The Dawes Act (1887) allotted reservation land to individual families, opening millions of acres to white settlement and reducing Indigenous landholdings by about two-thirds over the following decades.
This page covers Camp Grant Massacre (April 30, 1871). A full Aubrey report for the area pulls together this battle alongside historic sites, land records, and everything else the record holds within a few miles:
Every location is different. Not every section appears for every place, only what the historical record actually holds turns up in a report.
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