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.

Ancient, Medieval and Early Modern periods

Antiquity

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. : 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. : 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. : 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. : 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". 115–117 AD: The Roman suppression of the Diaspora Revolt in Cyrenaica, Egypt and Cyprus led to the near-total expulsion and annihilation of Jews from these regions. 132–136 AD: During the Third Jewish-Roman War, Roman forces under the command of Hadrian killed over 580,000 Jews and razed over 985 Judean villages. The campaign has been described as an act of ethnic cleansing and genocide. The Jews are again expelled from Israel. Jews were prohibited from entering Jerusalem on pain of death. 350 AD: Ancient Chinese texts record that General Ran Min ordered the ethnic cleansing and extermination of the non-Han ethnic groups known as the Five Barbarians, especially the Jie people, during the Wei–Jie war in the fourth century AD.《晉書·卷一百七》("Jìnshū Juǎn Yī Bǎi Qī") Jin Shu Original text 閔躬率趙人誅諸胡羯，無貴賤男女少長皆斬之，死者二十余萬，屍諸城外，悉為野犬豺狼所食。屯據四方者，所在承閔書誅之，于時高鼻多須至有濫死者半。(Mǐn gōng lǜ zhào rén zhū zhū hú jié, wú guìjiàn nánnǚ shǎo cháng jiē zhǎn zhī, sǐzhě èrshí yú wàn, shī zhūchéng wài, xī wéi yě quǎn cháiláng suǒ shí. Tún jù sìfāng zhě, suǒzài chéng mǐn shū zhū zhī, yú shí gāo bí duō xū zhì yǒu làn sǐzhě bàn.)

Medieval period : A group of Ancestral Puebloans were massacred in an early genocide in the American Southwest. 11th to 16th century AD: In the Inca Empire, the mitma was a policy of forced resettlement employed by the empire. It involved the forceful migration of groups of extended families or ethnic groups from their home territory to lands recently conquered by the Incas. The objective was to transfer both loyalty to the state and a cultural baggage of Inca culture such as language, technology, economic and other resources into areas that were in transition. 1069 - 1070 AD: The Harrying of the North resulted in as much as 75% of the Anglo-Saxon population of Northern England being killed in massacres or the ensuing famine, or expelled, leading several academics to call it a genocide. 1071 - 1453 AD: The Turkish invasion and settlement of Anatolia (now Turkey), caused the partial displacement of the previous Greek and Armenian inhabited populations of Anatolia.:"Anatolia had been the homeland of many peoples, the scene of many civilizations, and had served them as a bridge between three continents" "After the battle of Manzikert, there were swift and sudden changes in the ethnic features of Anatolia. Because the great Turkish migration and colonization were neither studied nor understood, the process of Turkification in Anatolia remained an enigma, and some historians ascribed these changes to the annihilation or mass conversion to Islam of the local population. While there were indeed conversions and losses of population on both sides, the inaccuracy of such conjectures, which fail to take about of migration and ethnic changes, is shown even by a general picture of events as drawn above."

1200s - 1368 AD: The Mongol Empire laid waste to large parts of Eurasia, leading their actions to be called genocidal.Jones, Adam (2006). Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction. Routledge/Taylor & Francis Publishers. ISBN 978-0-415-35385-4. p.3The Encyclopedia of Genocide, ABC-CLIO, 1999, p. 48, article "Afghanistan, Genocide of" The British historian John Joseph Saunders called the Mongol Empire "the most notorious practitioners of genocide". 1202 AD: After defeating the Tatar confederation, Genghis Khan had every Tatar male taller than a linchpin executed.The Secret History of the Mongols: Translated, Annotated, and with an Introduction by Urgunge Onon (2001). pp. 53-54, 57, 61, 111-135, 205 1290 AD: Edward I of England expelled all Jews living in England in 1290 (see Edict of Expulsion). 1250–1500 AD: From the 13th to the 16th centuries many European countries expelled the Jews from their territory on at least 15 occasions. Spain was preceded by England, France and some German states, among many others, and succeeded by at least five more expulsions.

Early modern period 1492–1614 AD: As a result of religious persecution, up to a quarter million Jews in Spain converted to Catholicism, those who refused (between 40,000 and 70,000) were expelled in 1492 following the Alhambra Decree. Those who did convert were subject to legal discrimination under the Limpieza de sangre system, which privileged Old Christians over New Christians. Many of the converts continued practising Judaism in secret, leading to the Inquisition. Shortly after, the practice of Islam was outlawed and all of Spain's Muslims became nominally Christian.A brief History of Ethnic Cleansing, by Andrew Bell-Fialkoff, p. 4 The descendants of these converted Muslims were called Moriscos. After the 1571 suppression of the Morisco Revolt in the Alpujarras region, almost 80,000 Moriscos were relocated to other parts of Spain and some 270 villages and hamlets were repopulated with settlers brought from other regions. This was followed by a general Expulsion of the Moriscos between 1609 and 1614 which was nominally applied to the entire Spanish realm, but was carried out most thoroughly in the eastern region of Valencia. Although its overall success in terms of implementation is subject to academic debate and did not involve widespread violence, it is considered one of the first episodes of state-sponsored ethnic cleansing in the modern western world. 1492 - 1800s: Indigenous Americans of North America and South America were dispossessed and killed (or died by introduced diseases) by British, Spanish and Portuguese colonialists and become a minority in their homelands. Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term "genocide", considered the displacement of Native Americans by American settlers as a historical example of genocide. Others, like historian Gary Anderson, contend that genocide does not accurately characterize any aspect of American history, suggesting instead that ethnic cleansing is a more appropriate term. 1556–1620: Plantations of Ireland. Land in Laois, Offaly, Munster and parts of Ulster was seized by the English crown and colonised with English settlers. Ireland has been described as a "testing ground" for British colonialism, with the confiscation of land and expulsion of native Irish from their homelands being a rehearsal for the expulsion of the Native Americans by British settlers.

1652 AD: After the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland and Act of Settlement in 1652, the whole post-war Cromwellian settlement of Ireland has been characterised by historians such as Mark Levene and Alan Axelrod as ethnic cleansing, in that it sought to remove Irish Catholics from the eastern part of the country, but others such as the historian Tim Pat Coogan have described the actions of Cromwell and his subordinates as genocide. 1755–1757 AD: The Dzungar genocide () was the mass extermination of the Mongol Dzungar people by the Qing dynasty. The genocide was perpetrated by Manchu generals of the Qing army, supported by Turkic oasis dwellers (now known as Uyghurs) who rebelled against Dzungar rule. Some scholars estimate that about 80% of the Dzungar population, or around 500,000 to 800,000 people, were killed by a combination of warfare and disease during or after the Qing conquest. 1755–1764 AD: During the French and Indian War, the Nova Scotia colonial government, aided by New England troops, instituted a systematic removal of the French Catholic Acadian population of Nova Scotia – eventually removing thousands of settlers from the region and relocating them to areas in the Thirteen Colonies, Britain and France. Many eventually moved and settled in Louisiana and became known as Cajuns. Many scholars have described the subsequent death of over 50% of the deported Acadian population as an ethnic cleansing. 1788 - 1900s: Indigenous Australians are dispossessed and killed (or die of introduced diseases) by British colonialists and become a minority in their homelands.

19th century

1804 Haiti massacre, genocide of Haiti's white population on the orders of the Haitian black general Jean-Jacques Dessalines.