National trauma

A national trauma is a crisis or a tragic experience which affects the spirit of a nation or an ethnicity, sometimes for generations to come. Large-scale disasters like war or genocide inevitably have this effect, but in an otherwise stable and prosperous country even a specific event (like an assassination of the leader or a transport disaster) can be traumatic.

Examples of national traumas

• Australia: Defeat in the Dardanelles Campaign (Gallipoli), ongoing threat of invasion during Pacific War during World War II (in particular the Bombing of Darwin by Imperial Japan), 2002 Bali bombings
• Argentina: Dirty War
• Armenia: Armenian Genocide
• Bangladesh: 1971 Bangladesh genocide
• Bosnia and Herzegovina: Bosnian genocide
• Cambodia: Cambodian Genocide
• Chile: Human rights violations in Pinochet's Chile (Operation Condor)
• China: Century of humiliation
• Denmark: Second Schleswig War, Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy
• Dominican Republic: El Trujillato
• France: Dreyfus affair, Loss of Alsace-Lorraine, Vichy regime, Algerian War, November 2015 Paris attacks
• Germany: Treaty of Versailles, defeat in World War II, Berlin Wall
• Haiti: 2010 Haiti earthquake and 2010 Haiti cholera outbreak
• Hungary: Treaty of Trianon 1920 and Treaty of Paris 1946
• India: 2001 Indian Parliament attack, 2006 Mumbai train bombings, 2008 Ahmedabad blasts
• Indonesia: 30 September Movement, May 1998 riots, 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami
• Iraq: 2003 Invasion of Iraq
• Ireland: Great Famine, Irish Civil War
• Israel: Holocaust, 1982 Lebanon War, Assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, Second Intifada, Israeli disengagement from Gaza
• Japan: Black Ships, Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami and Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster
• Netherlands: the German occupation during World War II (including the Dutch famine of 1944–45 and the deportation of most Dutch Jews), the North Sea flood of 1953, the Assassination of Pim Fortuyn and Assassination of Theo van Gogh, the 2014 Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crash
• Norway: 2011 Norway attacks
• Pakistan: Assassination of Benazir Bhutto, 2014 Peshawar school massacre, Drone strikes in Pakistan
• Palestine: Nakba
• Peru: War of the Pacific, Internal conflict in Peru
• Portugal: Battle of Alcácer Quibir, 1755 Lisbon earthquake, 1890 British Ultimatum, Portuguese Colonial War
• Romania: Romanian Revolution, Colectiv nightclub fire
• Russia and Soviet Union: Russo-Japanese War, World War I, Russian Civil War, Great Purge, Operation Barbarossa, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Beslan school siege
• Rwanda: Rwandan genocide
• South Africa: Apartheid
• South Korea: KAL 007, Gwangju Uprising, April Revolution, Suicide of Jeon Tae-il, Sampoong Department Store collapse, Seongsu Bridge collapse, Sinking of the MV Sewol
• Spain: Spanish–American War, Spanish Civil War, 2004 Madrid train bombings
• Sweden: Treaty of Fredrikshamn, Assassination of Olof Palme, M/S Estonia shipwreck, Gothenburg riots, Gothenburg discothèque fire, 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami
• Turkey/Ottoman Empire: Treaty of Sèvres, Greco-Turkish War
• United Kingdom: Battle of the Somme, Death of Diana, Princess of Wales, Iraq War
• Northern Ireland: The Troubles
• United States: American Civil War, Assassination of Abraham Lincoln, Attack on Pearl Harbor, Assassination of John F. Kennedy, Vietnam War, September 11 attacks