This year it seems people will pick an event from history and start debating if it's genocide or not, so, was the Harrying of the North genocide?

Edited 7/14/2015 00:18:20

Article II: In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

- Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, 1948

What a lot of people don't realize is that the legal definition of genocide is very strict and imposes a burden that's very tough to meet (somewhat appropriate as genocide is the worst crime you can be convicted for). It's much easier to prove a charge like "mass killing" or "ethnic cleansing" than it is to claim that genocide occurred, which is also why it's such an uphill battle to prove that the Armenian Genocide was a genocide (even though it obviously was).

Similarly, the Harrowing of the North doesn't look like it perfectly fits this definition, as it was done with the intent to subjugate Northern England through total war (a more extreme version of what that Unionist brute Sherman did to the great state of Georgia) and not specifically to exterminate any racial/ethnic/national/religious group in its entirety.

Edited 7/14/2015 02:54:23

I would agree, this wasn't even close to genocide, this was done to reduce the resources and capability of the North, weakening it's position, rather than destroying their culture or populus directly.

Or was it a culling of t' Yorkshire people?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_of_Yorkshire

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yorkshire_dialect

You could count Yorkshiremen (and Yorkshirewomen) as a group. On a side note, this Wikipedia page exists: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Republic_of_South_Yorkshire

Odd word to use but I suppose it was a kind of cull.

It was more than that though really, as well as reducing the population, the main crux was the destruction of farmland, aimed to weaken the productivity of the North and so reduce it's ability to revolt. The resulting famines are what caused most of the deaths.

The destruction also occured well past the borders of Yorkshire, as far up as the River Tees. The attack was never direct at the culture of Yorkshire, or anywhere else for that matter, rather to weaken the position of the North, and reduce it's power. William the Conqueror did not want Edgar to be able to enforce his claim to the throne. In fact the only reason for the harrowing is because Edgar fled into Scotland and mounted a rebelion from the North to take York. In fact in my opinion had he not fled North, and submiteed to William in London like his advisors did then it would have caused a lot less destruction of lives overall. Pretty selfish really, Edgar was Hungarian too, not like he was even an Englishman. He even ended up submitting to William years later and even fighting for him in Italy.