Significant Wars/Conflicts Since 1600
Submitted by baker on Fri, 02/25/2005 - 11:36
Tags:
- The Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648)
- Frederick’s Silesian Wars (1740-1745)
- French and Indian War (1754-1763)
- The Seven Years’ War (1756-1763)
- French Revolution (1789-1793)
- Napoleonic Wars (1796-1814)
- American Revolution (1776-1783)
- War of 1812 (1812-1814)
- The Mexican War (1846-1848)
- Taiping Rebellion (1851-1864)
- American Civil War (1861-1865)
- The Crimean War (1854-1856)
- The Seven Weeks’ War (1866)
- The Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871)
- Spanish-American War (1898-1902)
- Philippine Insurrection (1898-1903)
- The Boer War (1899-1900)
- The Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905)
- Russian "October Revolution" (1917)
- The Great War [World War I] (1914-1918)
- Spanish Civil War (1936-1938)
- World War II (1939-1945)
- Korean War (1950-1952)
- Vietnam War (1963-1974)
- The Six-Day War (1967)
- The Yom Kippur War (1973)
- Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988)
- Soviet-Afghanistan War (1979-1988)
- The Falklands (1982)
- Operation Urgent Fury, Grenada (1983)
- Operation Just Cause, Panama (1989)
- Gulf War (1990-1991)
- Bosnia-Herzegovina (1991- )
- Operation Restore Hope, Mogadishu, Somalia (1992)
- Operation Enduring Freedom, Afghanistan (2001- )
- Operation Iraqi Freedom, Iraq (2003- )
Author Comments:
I use 1600 as a benchmark year because the 17th century marked the proliferation of muskets and tactics that made medeival fortifications obsolete. This began the era of Western dominated warfare.
If I may offer a comment, your view on significant wars/conflicts might be based a little too much on an american point of view... if you include the american revolution, you might just as well include the french revolution (1789-1793), the russian "october revolution" (1916), the Phlippines independance insurrection (1898-1903) and most of all the Spanish Civil War (1936-1938) who was the first open battle between left-wing europeans (Communists and Socialists) and right-wing europeans (Fascists and Nazis) and is rightfully considered as a rehearsal for WWII.
Those are good additions I'll add to the list. Thanks.
Does anyone think that large scale war is a thing of the past? Do you think terrorism and small-scale urban conflicts are most of what we'll see in the future?
Does this mean that you think that the War on Iraq is a small conflict? Or that the so-called "War on Terror" is a collection of small military actions along a theme? I ask not to politicize but to get an idea of what you think "large scale" is in military conflicts.
We have seen ethnic cleansing in Bosnia et al, genocide in the Sudan et al, starvation on a horrific scale in North Korea et al, police actions in Somalia et al... and so on. I see no signs of an abatement in "conflict." There is only one nation on earth that has been convicted of commiting terrorism. Victors do not use terrorism, only losers do and they do not write history. If killing over 800,000 people in a matter of months with machetes doesn't prove that warfare remains relatively rural I don't know what will. People in cities are very reluctant to start and fight wars.
The Romans ended "large scale" conflicts in their time. So did Alexander the Great. The British Empire, the Dutch, the French, the Spanish.... "The War to End All Wars" worked for under two decades before the great nation states returned to their bloodshed. Churchill kicked off The Cold War less than a year after the Second World War ended. It is still under two decades since the end of The Cold War.
I hope that this so-called Armistice holds.
By "large scale war" I meant warfare in which the two sides consist of actual states with an organized military and are relatively equal in power/capability. Iraq may have been classified as the fifth strongest Army in the world before the first Gulf War took place, but the U.S. showed just how much of an uneven match it was.
My question was also intended to generate opinions on which country will be the first to rival U.S. power in the near future (e.g. China).
As for "urban warfare," if you'll look at your examples (Bosnia, Sudan, Somalia, etc.), you'll see that all this fighting is in the population centers. There is no warfighting in empty towns, open fields, or jungle canopy anymore. This goes back to the point that there haven't been any "large scale" conflicts with tanks vs. tanks, air-to-air fighting, or massive infantry engagements.
I agree with your last point, that throughout history, people often thought that "large scale" fighting was a thing of the past after a big war. History indeed tends to repeat itself. Can anyone in America seriously believe the U.S. would need to engage in a military draft in the near future? Certainly not. However, how long can we go on, indulging ourselves with entertainment and the importance of our own lives, before the problems of the rest of the world show up on our doorstep? September 11th was a gruesome wake-up call, similar to Pearl Harbor. Yet, now that Saddam is caught, and only a few U.S. soldiers die each week, everything is well and we can all go back to ignoring the rest of the world. For some reason, the "war" on terror is gauged by how fast we can set up a stable democracy in Iraq.
Lastly, I'll just ask whether or not you feel the definition of "war" has changed in the past 50 years. It used to take approval from Congress to declare war on another country. But we're seeing more instances where the enemy isn't another country, but rather a regime or faction. Military actions have come to be defined as "war" these days (e.g. the "war on terror").
The October Revolution was 1917. I know from Eisenstein films.
And I don't see the bloodiest war ever, the Taiping Rebellon (1851-1864)
Thanks for the additions!