Open Questions

Open The Persecution of Christians in Nigeria's Middle Belt

Why It Is Open USCIRF and other monitors document individual attacks and community-level deaths from Fulani militant violence against Nigerian Christians in the Middle Belt in detail, but no monitor separates a religiously motivated death toll from Nigeria's wider, overlapping farmer-herder and insurgent violence, so no campaign-wide aggregate isolated to religious persecution exists.

What Would Settle It A researcher or monitoring organization's systematic count of deaths in Middle Belt violence specifically attributable to religious targeting, distinguished from farmer-herder land disputes and from Boko Haram or ISWAP insurgent violence further northeast.

Expertise Needed Human rights documentation, conflict studies specific to the Nigerian Middle Belt.

Question posed in Nonstate Violators of Religious Freedom in Nigeria: Fulani Militants, United States Commission on International Religious Freedom.

Open White Lotus War

Why It Is Open The figure most often repeated, roughly one hundred thousand rebel dead, circulates in general reference works without a traceable scholarly derivation, and no historian, including Dai's recent archival study, has reconciled it against Qing military records or attempted to add the civilian toll of the pacification campaign's scorched earth tactics and the famine that followed in its wake.

What Would Settle It A study working systematically from surviving Qing provincial and military archives, of the kind Dai draws on for the campaign's administrative history, extended specifically to build a reconciled casualty count across both combatant and civilian deaths for the war's full eight years.

Expertise Needed Late imperial Chinese history; Qing administrative and military archives

Question posed in The White Lotus War: Rebellion and Suppression in Late Imperial China, Yingcong Dai.

Open Persecution of Christians in North Korea

Why It Is Open The United Nations Commission of Inquiry and other outside monitors document the North Korean state's treatment of Christians in detail, arrests, detentions, camp imprisonment and collective punishment of family members, but the country's total closure to independent verification means no monitor has ever published a defensible aggregate count of deaths tied specifically to religious persecution, as distinct from the wider political prison camp population.

What Would Settle It Independent access to North Korea's prison camp system, or a systematic accounting by a body with reliable access to defector testimony, that separates deaths attributable to religious persecution from the general political prisoner population, comparable to the disaggregated reporting already possible for detention and camp population estimates.

Expertise Needed Human rights documentation, North Korean studies.

Question posed in Report of the Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, United Nations Human Rights Council Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

Open Bishops' Wars

Why It Is Open The only substantial engagement, the Battle of Newburn, is recorded only as a combined casualty figure of roughly three hundred that does not separate killed from wounded, the First Bishops' War produced no significant battle at all, and no historian has estimated the mortality from disease in the two large armies mustered for the campaigns, which was often the larger cause of death in musters of this period.

What Would Settle It A study working from English and Scottish muster rolls, parish burial records and military pay records for 1639 and 1640, of the kind Fissel's archival research draws on for the campaigns' administration, extended specifically to separate combat deaths from wounded at Newburn and to estimate camp mortality across both musters.

Expertise Needed Early modern British history; military demography

Question posed in The Bishops' Wars: Charles I's Campaigns against Scotland, 1638 to 1640, Mark Charles Fissel.

Open The Crackdown on House Churches in China

Why It Is Open Open Doors and ChinaAid document the crackdown on unregistered house churches in detail, raids, fines, arrests, imprisonments and building demolitions, but neither organization nor any other monitor of the campaign publishes a running or aggregate count of deaths tied to it, unlike the detention and demolition statistics both organizations do track case by case.

What Would Settle It A systematic count, by a monitoring organization or researcher, of documented deaths in custody or otherwise directly tied to raids, detention or demolitions against China's unregistered house church movement, comparable to the detention and demolition statistics these organizations already track.

Expertise Needed Human rights documentation, contemporary Chinese religious policy studies.

Question posed in China, Open Doors World Watch List Country Page, Open Doors research staff.

Open Mahdist War

Why It Is Open Sudan's population collapse during the Mahdist period is well attested, but it combines the war's own combat deaths, the Mahdist state's internal campaigns against rival Sudanese groups, the 1888 to 1892 famine, and the disease that followed it, and no modern historian has disaggregated a war caused figure from the rest.

What Would Settle It A modern demographic or historical study working through Sudanese provincial and Mahdist state records to separate combat and internal campaign deaths from the famine and disease mortality of the same years.

Expertise Needed Sudanese history; historical demography

Question posed in The Mahdist State in the Sudan, 1881-1898: A Study of Its Origins, Development and Overthrow, P. M. Holt.

Open Camisard Rebellion

Why It Is Open Monahan's archival study documents village level destruction and individual engagement casualties across the Cevennes but reports no total figure for the war's dead, and no later historian has aggregated the surviving parish, garrison and property destruction records into one count.

What Would Settle It A systematic tally from the parish, garrison and property destruction records Monahan's own research draws on, combined into a single war wide casualty estimate of the kind no historian has yet published.

Expertise Needed Early modern French history; historical demography

Question posed in Let God Arise: The War and Rebellion of the Camisards, W. Gregory Monahan.

Open Panthay Rebellion

Why It Is Open Yunnan's population fell steeply during the Panthay Rebellion, but that collapse combines the war's own combat and reprisal deaths with a major plague epidemic that swept the province in the same decades, and no modern historian has disaggregated a war caused figure from the rest.

What Would Settle It A modern demographic or historical study working through Yunnanese provincial and Qing administrative records to separate combat, reprisal and famine deaths tied directly to the fighting from the mortality caused by the era's plague epidemic.

Expertise Needed Chinese history; historical demography

Question posed in The Chinese Sultanate: Islam, Ethnicity, and the Panthay Rebellion in Southwest China, 1856-1873, David G. Atwill.

Open Munster Rebellion

Why It Is Open Surviving accounts of the Munster siege report starvation deaths during the blockade, combat deaths in the final storming, and post-capture executions as separate, unreconciled figures rather than a single running total, and no modern historian has combined them into one reliable death toll for the episode as a whole.

What Would Settle It A demographic or archival study working from Munster's own municipal and parish records, where they survive, to establish the city's population immediately before the siege and reconcile the chronicle accounts of starvation, combat and execution deaths into a single disaggregated total.

Expertise Needed Reformation history; historical demography

Question posed in In the Shadow of "Savage Wolves": Anabaptist Munster and the German Reformation during the 1530s, Sigrun Haude.

Open Poso Conflict

Why It Is Open Official registers were incomplete for a conflict fought partly in remote villages across a large rural regency over three separate episodes; Human Rights Watch's field investigation and van Klinken's comparative study both work from local reporting and testimony rather than from a single comprehensive census, and their figures have not been formally reconciled against each other or against each community's own, generally higher, local counts.

What Would Settle It A study working systematically from Poso Regency hospital, police and village-level records surviving from 1998 to 2001, cross-checked against Muslim and Christian community-held counts, to build one reconciled casualty estimate across all three episodes of the conflict.

Expertise Needed Southeast Asian history; Indonesian regional studies

Question posed in Communal Violence and Democratization in Indonesia: Small Town Wars, Gerry van Klinken.

Open 1860 Mount Lebanon and Damascus Massacres

Why It Is Open Fawaz's Mount Lebanon estimate and Rogan's Damascus estimate come from two separate archival reconstructions written thirty years apart, each focused on a different phase and place; no single study has combined them into one reconciled figure for the whole 1860 violence, and the much higher contemporary press and missionary claims that circulated at the time remain uncorrected in some popular accounts.

What Would Settle It A study working from Ottoman provincial and central archives, European consular correspondence and the records of the 1860 international commission of inquiry, applying a consistent method across both Mount Lebanon and Damascus, to produce one combined, reconciled casualty estimate for the whole episode.

Expertise Needed Ottoman and modern Middle Eastern history

Question posed in An Occasion for War: Civil Conflict in Lebanon and Damascus in 1860, Leila Tarazi Fawaz.

Open Maitatsine Risings

Why It Is Open The 1981 federal tribunal of inquiry investigated only the December 1980 Kano rising, and even for that episode its civilian count of 4,177 sits beside a separately reported, less formally sourced figure of about 5,000. The four later risings at Bulumkutu, Rigasa, Jimeta and Gombe were never subject to a comparable tribunal, and no historian has combined all five episodes into one reconciled total.

What Would Settle It A study working systematically from Nigerian federal and state records, hospital and mortuary registers where they survive, and local press archives for the 1982, 1984 and 1985 risings on the same footing as the 1981 tribunal covered the 1980 Kano rising, to build one casualty estimate across all five episodes.

Expertise Needed Nigerian and West African history; the sociology of religious movements

Question posed in The Maitatsine Risings in Nigeria 1980 to 85: A Revolt of the Disinherited, Elizabeth Isichei.

Open Hellenic Polytheism (Hellenismos)

Why It Is Open Greece's 2017 court recognition of Hellenismos as a known religion created no accompanying census requirement, and the Greek government has published no official count of its followers. Every figure reported in the press, from roughly two thousand to five thousand committed practitioners up to a much larger circle of one hundred thousand to two hundred thousand people described as having some interest, traces back to estimates offered by the movement's own leadership, the Supreme Council of Ethnic Hellenes, rather than to an independent survey or government body.

What Would Settle It A Greek national census question on religious affiliation fine grained enough to separate Hellenismos from the ninety eight percent Greek Orthodox majority, or an academic survey of Greek Hellenic polytheists conducted by a body outside the movement's own leadership.

Expertise Needed Sociology of religion, religious demography

Question posed in Wikipedia, "Hellenism (Religion)", Wikipedia contributors.

Open Kemeticism

Why It Is Open Kemeticism has never been independently counted. No government census records religious affiliation at this level of detail, no recognized religious-statistics body has surveyed it, and its own reference literature, including its English-language Wikipedia treatment, states no membership figure of any kind. The 1994 United States federal recognition of Kemetic Orthodoxy as a tax-exempt religious organization established legal standing, not a headcount.

What Would Settle It A dedicated survey of Kemetic practitioners conducted by a body independent of the movement's own clergy, or a government religious-affiliation census large enough to sample reconstructionist Egyptian religion as its own category rather than folding it into a broader Pagan or Other total.

Expertise Needed Sociology of religion, religious demography

Question posed in Wikipedia, "Kemetism", Wikipedia contributors.

Open Sokoto Jihad

Why It Is Open Only one battle of the jihad, the December 1804 defeat at Tsuntua, carries a specifically sourced casualty figure, and no historian has reconciled or extended that single data point into a war-wide total across the four years of campaigning that followed against Kebbi, Katsina, Daura, Kano and Gobir.

What Would Settle It A study working systematically from surviving Arabic-language chronicles of the jihad, including Muhammad Bello's own history of his father's campaigns, cross-checked against Hausa oral and written tradition, to build a reconciled casualty estimate across the war's major engagements and its civilian displacement.

Expertise Needed West African Islamic history; Hausa and Fulani chronicle sources

Question posed in The Sword of Truth: The Life and Times of the Shehu Usuman dan Fodio, Mervyn Hiskett.

Open Padri War

Why It Is Open Surviving casualty figures cover only individual sieges and engagements within the Dutch military campaigns after 1821, and no historian has reconciled these into a total for the whole thirty four year conflict, nor extended any estimate back to cover the internal Minangkabau religious civil war of 1803 to 1821, for which Dutch records do not exist.

What Would Settle It A study working from surviving Dutch colonial military and administrative archives for the 1821 to 1837 campaigns, cross-checked against Minangkabau oral and written tradition for the earlier internal conflict, to build a reconciled casualty estimate across both phases of the war.

Expertise Needed Southeast Asian colonial history; Dutch East Indies archives and Minangkabau oral tradition

Question posed in Islamic Revivalism in a Changing Peasant Economy: Central Sumatra, 1784-1847, Christine Dobbin.

Open Moplah (Malabar) Rebellion

Why It Is Open The only systematically compiled figure is the British government's count of rebels killed in action or executed, drawn from military and administrative reports; no historian has reconciled it with civilian and communal violence deaths, on both the Mappila and Hindu sides, across the affected taluks, or with the disputed higher figures in Mappila oral tradition.

What Would Settle It A study working systematically from surviving colonial revenue, police and court records for the Ernad and Walluvanad taluks, cross-checked against local Mappila and Hindu community records where they survive, to build a reconciled casualty estimate covering combat deaths, communal killings on both sides and deaths in custody across the whole rebellion.

Expertise Needed South Asian colonial history; Kerala regional and agrarian history

Question posed in The Moplah Rebellion and Its Genesis, Conrad Wood.

Open 1915 Sinhalese Muslim Riots

Why It Is Open Reported killed figures range from the twenties into the low hundreds across different secondary sources without a consistent breakdown between rioters, bystanders and those killed restoring order, and the standard academic reconstruction concentrates on the riots' course and the government's martial law response rather than compiling a reconciled total.

What Would Settle It A study working systematically from the colonial government's martial law court records, coroners' inquests and provincial administrative reports for the Central, Western and Sabaragamuwa provinces to build a reconciled count distinguishing rioters, bystanders and those killed or executed by government forces.

Expertise Needed South Asian and Sri Lankan colonial history

Question posed in The Action Phase of the 1915 Riots, Charles S. Blackton.

Open Noakhali Riots

Why It Is Open Contemporary local police and administrative records for Noakhali and Tippera were extensively lost or destroyed in the displacement and administrative change that followed, so reported figures rest on later witness testimony and compilation rather than a contemporaneous count, and estimates in the secondary literature range from a few hundred to several thousand with no reconciled total.

What Would Settle It A study systematically cross-checking surviving colonial police, relief camp and missionary records against local Hindu and Muslim community testimony collected in the years immediately after the riots, of the kind that has been done for the Great Calcutta Killings but not yet completed for Noakhali specifically.

Expertise Needed South Asian colonial history; Bengal regional history

Question posed in Communal Riots in Bengal, 1905 to 1947, Suranjan Das.

Open The First Jewish-Roman War (66 to 73 CE)

Why It Is Open Josephus's own account gives a total near 1.1 million dead in the siege of Jerusalem alone, a figure the Roman historian Tacitus's separate report of 600,000 under siege does not resolve, and modern historians agree first century Judea's population could not have sustained losses on either scale, without offering a reconciled replacement figure of their own.

What Would Settle It A demographic and archaeological reconstruction of first century Judea's total population and its capacity, of the kind that would let historians test Josephus's and Tacitus's figures against an independent ceiling rather than against each other.

Expertise Needed Roman-era historical demography; classical archaeology

Question posed in The Jewish War, Flavius Josephus.