HIS3124 The History and Sociology of Genocide PDF

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Lecturer- Simon Stevens...

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HIS3124 The History and Sociology of Genocide Lec 2 The Roman Destruction of Carthage

Genocide pre 1944/45 

Lemkin recognised that genocide existed in antiquity

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If we use the Genocide Convention as out guiding definition, it is not to assert that regimes in antiquity broke a law that didn’t exist at the time

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Nullum crimen, nulla poena sine praevia lege poenali Latin: No crime (can be committed), no punishment (can be imposed) without (having been prescribed by) a previous penal law

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Here, the convention will be used as a conceptual, not legal definition

Ancient Carthage Carthage 

Carthage was once a city state that grew into a vast Mediterranean empire

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It exploited the resources of gold, silver, copper and tin mines in the Western Mediterranean

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It had a sophisticated culture for the time, and made significant advances in shipbuilding, navigation and agriculture

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Yet there is so much about Carthage, its history, culture and beliefs that is unknown

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The Roman Empire deliberately wiped them out so that we would not know

The Carthaginian Empire 

In 500 BC, Carthage was the capital of the mightiest empire in the Mediterranean

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It had the largest navy and controlled the main sea and commercial routes of the Western Mediterranean, along with vast fields of olives and figs, and mines of gold, silver, copper and tin

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They also sold limestone for buildings and roads, along with pottery, metalwork, etc

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They maintained control of strategically important areas, including all the main islands of the Western Mediterranean

Carthaginian Empire 265-219 BC

Rome 

By the middle of the third century BC, Rome has risen to become a middle- sized power, but nothing to match the might of the Carthaginians

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Their main strategy aims were to conquer the entire Italian Peninsula, and to create a seabased empire within the Mediterranean

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To that end, Rome coveted Sicily

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They began a war with Carthage over Sicily

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The war became known as the First Punic War

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The term Punic relates to the term Phoenician

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The Phoenicians founded the city- state of Carthage in the 9th century BC

The Punic War 

Rome and Carthage fought 3 major wars known as the Punic Wars

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1st Punic War, 264-241 BC

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2nd Punic War, 218-201 BC- Hannibal attacks

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3rd Punic War, 149-146 BC- Carthage attacked

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In the 3rd Punic War, Rome destroyed Carthage

First Punic War, 264-241 BC 

At the time of the 1st Punic War, Rome was a small city- state empire on the rise

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Carthage was the mightiest empire in the Mediterranean

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Rome invaded Sicily in 261 BC, precipitating war with Carthage

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The bloody war lasted 25 years

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Rome had the advantage on land, and the Carthaginians had the advantage at sea

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Given the war was primarily a war over control of an island in the Mediterranean (Sicily), the Carthaginians had the overall advantage

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At first the romans lurched from disaster to disaster, losing almost their entire navy in several engagements

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2 developments changed the war in Rome’s favour

Carthage’s flat-pack navy 

The Romans had a lucky break

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In 261-260 BC, a lone Carthaginian hip strayed too close to Rome and was captured

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The Romans took it apart, and to their amazement they found that it was made in kit-form

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The Carthaginians labelled every piece of wood, with instructions of where it should go

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This meant the Carthaginians could build ships quickly and easily in kit-form that were easy to assemble

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The Romans copied the design and created 200 ships in 45 days

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So in under 2 months they rebuilt their navy. The Carthaginians were taken completely by surprise

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They never expected the Romans to bounce back so quickly, and thus they were caught with their guard down

Trireme The corvus 

The Romans invented the corvus- an assault bridge mounted to the prow of their battleships

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When their ships rammed the enemy, the corvus was lowered

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This enabled roman legions to cross the bridge and kill the crew of the opposing vessel

A Roman victory 

Despite these developments, the war dragged on for approximately 20 more years

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It was a war of attrition

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Eventually, the Carthaginians sued for peace, believing that the ongoing war was hurting commerce

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The Romans terms for peace were the Carthage surrender Sicily and pay reparations (for a war that Rome started)

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With the Romans now in charge of Sicily, with a new flat-pack navy, and some extra cash, the became a major power in the region, thus altering the balance of power in the region

Second Punic War 

23 years after the war ended, Carthaginian ruler in Spain, who had expanded their empire sought to take revenge for their earlier defeat

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A Carthaginian general, Hannibal, marched on Rome with a vast army

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He was not supported in this endeavour by Carthage itself, but by the regional leaders in New Carthage in Spain

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Hannibal went through Gaul (modern-day France), crossed the Swiss Alps with his war elephants, and marched on Rome

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The Roman general played a cat-and-mouse game with Hannibal retreating from any major battle in Italy

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Hannibal wanted a decisive victory

Hannibal The Battle of Cannae 

Hannibal and his army remained on the Italian peninsula for 15 years, without ever matching on Rome

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He and his army won a series of military victories, the largest and most important of which was at the Battle of Cannae in 216 BC

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At Cannae, Hannibal defeated Roman army twice the size of his own force

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The Romans expected him to march on Rome. To their surprise he did not

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Historians have long speculated why

Rome attacks Carthage 

The Romans sought to divert Hannibal’s attention by directly attacking Carthage

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This was a risky move by Rome

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It meant that their capital was vulnerable, but they banked on Hannibal withdrawing to save Carthage. And that’s precisely what he did

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Yet Hannibal was not welcome as a hero back in Carthage, but treated as a general on the make, who started all the trouble in the first place

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The final battle that Hannibal looked for, was not Italy, but in Zama on the outskirts of Carthage, where the Roman legions destroyed Hannibal’s army

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Hannibal escaped and was hunted by the Romans for the rest of his life. He eventually committed suicide

Another Roman victory 

The Romans did not conquer Carthage itself or destroy the city

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They simply made another peace treaty, this time with harsher terms

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The price for peace was that Carthage dismantle its navy and hand over most of its empire and wealth over to the Romans

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Carthage itself was spared

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Every now and then the Romans altered the terms

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Rome was now the major superpower in the Mediterranean, and mainly due to learning the secret of Cartage’s flat-pack navy

Third Punic War 

When Hannibal was making his way through Italy, a then 17 year old lad named Marcus Porcuis Cato was a soldier in the Roman army

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He eventually rose to the ranks of senator in the Roman Republic, but he never forgot the horror or fear that Romans felt about the onset of Hannibal

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Cato the Elder or Cato the Censor, as he became known made a lot of political mileage out of his humble origins

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He was also a xenophobic war hawk who vented fury against the Carthaginians for daring to be alive

Cato the Elder Delenda est Carthago 

Cato talked up war with Carthage whenever he could

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He even ended every speech he made, no matter what the subject was, with Delenda est Carthago- Carthage must be destroyed

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He argues that Carthage was becoming too prosperous, was undoubtedly breaking her treaty with Rome, despite having no evidence of this, and should therefore be dealt with once and

for all- and that meant total destruction, wiping Carthage, the Carthaginians and their culture, off the face of the Earth The destruction of Carthage Carthage sacked 

In 149 BC Rome launched an attack on Carthage, starting the 3rd Punic War

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The Romans blockaded the city and began to starve it of trade and supplies

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The citizens began to starve. Then when the city was at its most vulnerable, the Romans delivered an ultimatum to Carthage to disarm or face destruction

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Carthage disarmed. Then the Romans demanded that Carthaginians abandon their city forever and essentially hand over their entire empire

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At this the Carthaginians refused. So Roman legions, under the command of Scipio Africanus, attacked and sacked Carthage

Destruction of Carthage 

The Roman legion razed the city to the ground, killed most of its inhabitants, sold the survivors into slavery, and forbade anyone to live there

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To reinforce the point, legend has it that the Romans sowed the surrounding land with salt so as prevent the production of crops and thus render the region inhabitable

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They then spent a year smashing the city up, including all its statues, religious icons and buildings

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This was genocide!

Romanisation 

During the slaughter, Carthaginians pleaded with Scipio to spare their lives

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Scipio Africanus agreed. And so 50 000 Carthaginian survivors were sent into slavery, not as Carthaginians, but as Roman slaves. That is, they were Romanised

Obliteration 

Almost all of Carthage’s culture was lost, including its literature, history, religion, philosophy, myth, legends

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The little that we do know about Carthage has been gleaned mostly from Roman sources, not Carthaginian

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Even the name Carthage is Roman (Latin for New City)

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We know only craps of information. For example, they worshipped a deity named Tanit (a moon goddess). She’s not as famous as Hera or Aphrodite, or Minerva

Genocidal narrative 

The destruction of Carthage was not spontaneous, spur-of-the-moment lusting for revenge, but a cold and calculated destruction that was argued for and planned years before it happened

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Roman propaganda depicted the Carthaginians as aliens, worshippers of dark gods, practitioners of evil arts, deceptive and treacherous by nature, etc

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They even accused them of having a perverted religion that required the sacrifice of their own children to appease their principal god. The smear campaign went on before the genocide and continued long after it

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That is, the destruction of Carthage was preceded by a genocidal narrative- an argument of genocide was built

Cato the Elder 

The destruction of Carthage was the life’s dream of Cato the Elder, a powerful Roman senator. He would end every speech with “Delenda est Carthago” (Carthage must be destroyed)

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In response to this, Scipio Nasica would argue that Carthage must be allowed to live

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Genocide is always possible (usually by a tiny minority). It is never unchallenged

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Reference: Miles, R. (2010). Carthage must be destroyed: The rise and fall of an ancient civilization. London: Penguin Books.

New Carthage 

The Romans eventually built a new Carthage, which later became part of the modern city of Tunis

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But this new city bore no relation to the one that was destroyed

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Since then the history of the Roman destruction of Carthage has inspired empires and leaders, from the British Empire to the Nazi Germany

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Some of those leaders followed the examples set by Rome

The destruction of Corinth 

Rome destroyed the Greek city- state of Corinth in 146 BC, the same year as Carthage

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The pretext of the destruction was that Greeks had insulted Rome envoys

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The destruction of Corinth was carried out with the same ferocity as Carthage

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All the men were executed, the women and children sold into slavery, and the city demolished

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The Roman victory signalled their domination over Greece

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The Romans used the destruction of Carthage and Corinth as examples of what could happen to any power that would challenge roman rule

Nazi Germany and Carthage Mein Kampf

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In Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler warned that Germany faced that fate of Carthage, to be destroyed by others. That is, unless she became a new Rome and set about conquering her would-be conquerors, and destroy those would destroy her

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Hitler re-iterated the ‘lesson’ of Carthage in speeches

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Nazi Germany partly modelled itself on the Roman Empire. Much of Berlin was torn down and rebuilt in a classic style imitative of Roman imperial architecture

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The Nazis also sought to obliterate entire peoples

Hitler: “Rome and Carthage?” 

Hitler argued that there were important lessons to learn from the Romans and Carthaginians

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He argued that the Jews were responsible for the Armistice that paved the way for Germany’s destruction along the lines of Rome’s destruction of Carthage

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To avert that fate, he argued that Germany needed to learn from Rome, of how Rome ruled. He wanted Berlin to be the new Rome, not a Carthage of the modern era, that was what awaited others who would oppose them

Lidice 

In June 1942, Hitler ordered the SS to razor the Czech village of Lidice and eliminate its inhabitants

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The Einsatzegruppen (SS death squads) killed all the adult men, sent the women to concentration camps, and removed the children to live the members of the SS where they would be Germanized

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They then razed every building and removed the rubble so that nothing remained

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Once this was done they planted grain (not salt)

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They even set about destroying maps that contained the name of the village, and printed new ones without any mention of it. The village was to be completely erased

Why destroy Lidice? 

Why? It was on the outskirts of Lidice that British-trained Czech agents assassinated Reinhard Heydrich, a leading member of the Nazi Party.

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Hitler looked upon Heydrich as a potential successor.

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The destruction of Lidice was meted out as punishment, and a warning to all who would oppose the Nazis.

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It was inspired by, and modelled on, the Roman destruction of Carthage.

Reinhard Heydrich 

SS-Obergruppenführer

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A senior member of the Nazi Party who was second-in-command to Heinrich Himmler, the principal organiser of the Holocaust.

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Heydrich founded the SA (fore-runner of the SS). His main task was to exterminate enemies of the Nazi Party.

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He held senior positions in the SA, SS, and Gestapo.

The wolf and the lamb

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The SS also rounded up around 500 Jews and sent them to concentration camps as further punishment.

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“Any excuse will serve a tyrant.”

Lidice shall live! 

On 6 Sep. 1942, Barnett Stross, a British doctor and politician from Stoke-on-Trent, hearing of the massacre and the destruction of Lidice set up the Lidice Shall Live campaign.

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In a Britain still at war, he raised the modern-day equivalent of £1 million.

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After the war, Lidice was rebuilt and some of the survivors returned to live there.

Week 2- questions 1. What are some of the main historical features of genocide throughout history? Provide examples. 2. What makes the Roman destruction of Carthage a genocide? 3. Why didn’t the Roman’s simply invade and colonise Carthage? 4. How can we call it genocide when the term was coined in 1944? 5. What were the main features of the genocide (e.g. mass killing, etc.)? 6. What part does destruction of knowledge and culture play in genocide?

7. What was, and still is, the legacy of the genocide?...