What do historians understand by the term "genocide"?

Answer 1

Genocide...the planned extermination of an entire national, racial, or ethnic group, carried out in a systematic way..
Genocide can also refer to a political group...for instance, the French Revolution was a type of genocide.

Answer 2

The intentional and planned killing of a large defined group of people. Membership of the group is defined by the perpetrator of the genocide. The group can be defined by religion, nationality, ethnicity, social class, culture or politics.

Historians often to take a slightly broader view of genocide than the legal definition, which tends to concentrate on national, ethnic or religious groups, rather than social classes or political groups. There is a good section on the controversy on the Wikipedia page. I've linked directly to the debate below.

Answer 3

Historians understand the term "genocide" in the same way as most other people.

Genocide is the deliberate and systematic destruction of a group of people defined by their nationality, or by their ethnic, cultural, or religious background.

Answer 4

Genocide has a specific legal definition, as spelled out in Article 2 of the Convention on Genocide.

Article 2
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

http://www.hrweb.org/legal/genocide.html

Answer 5

The term 'genocide' refers to the killing of 'a people'. Meaning the killing of a race, or alot of people. I dont have a dictionary on hand, but, that is what it means.

Answer 6

killing someone