Military History

List of Wars — Wars in History

Ancient Greek Wars · Roman Wars · Medieval · World Wars · Cold War · Modern Era

War is a reciprocated, armed conflict between two or more non-congruous entities, aimed at achieving a subjectively designed, geo-politically desired result. In his book On War, Prussian military theoretician Carl Von Clausewitz calls war the "continuation of political intercourse, carried on with other means." A civil war is a dispute between parties within the same nation. A proxy war results when two powers use third parties as substitutes for fighting each other directly.

War is also a cultural entity, and its practice is not linked to any single type of political organization or society. As discussed by John Keegan in his History of Warfare, war is a universal phenomenon whose form and scope is defined by the society that wages it. The conduct of war extends along a continuum, from the almost universal tribal warfare that began well before recorded human history, to wars between city states, nations, or empires.

Ancient Greek Wars

  • 1200 BC — Trojan War (believed by many historians to be a mythical event)
  • 499–479 BC — Persian Wars
  • 431–404 BC — Peloponnesian War
  • 334–323 BC — Wars of Alexander the Great
  • 300s BC — Samnite Wars between Rome and Samnium

Ancient Roman Wars

  • 264–241 BC — First Punic War
  • 218–202 BC — Second Punic War
  • 149–146 BC — Third Punic War
  • 215 BC, 197 BC, 168 BC — Macedonian Wars
  • 91–88 BC — Social War
  • 82–81 BC — Sulla's civil war
  • 58–50 BC — Julius Caesar's Gallic Wars
  • 49–45 BC — Caesar's civil war
  • 48 BC — Battle of Pharsalus
  • 31 BC — Battle of Actium
  • 291–306 — War of the Eight Princes in China
  • 533–534 — Vandal Wars

Medieval European Wars

  • 1096–1291 — Crusades
  • 1337–1453 — Hundred Years' War
  • 1420–1436 — Hussite Wars
  • 1455–1485 — Wars of the Roses
  • 1454–1466 — Thirteen Years' War (Poland vs. Teutonic Knights)

Pike and Shot

  • 1568–1648 — Eighty Years' War (Dutch independence)
  • 1588 — Defeat of the Spanish Armada
  • 1618–1648 — Thirty Years' War, ends with the Peace of Westphalia
  • 1639–1652 — English Civil War
  • 1648–1660 — The Deluge/Northern War (Poland, Sweden, Prussia, Russia, Transylvania, Denmark)
  • 1652–1654 — First Anglo-Dutch War
  • 1664–1667 — Second Anglo-Dutch War
  • 1672–1674 — Third Anglo-Dutch War
  • 1672–1678 — Franco-Dutch War
  • 1680–1684 — Fourth Anglo-Dutch War
  • 1689–1698 — War of the Grand Alliance
  • 1700–1721 — Great Northern War
  • 1710–1711 — Russo-Turkish War
  • 1701–1714 — War of Spanish Succession
  • 1736–1739 — Russo-Turkish War
  • 1739–1742 — War of Jenkins' Ear
  • 1740–1742 — 1st Silesian War
  • 1740–1748 — War of the Austrian Succession
  • 1744–1745 — 2nd Silesian War
  • 1756–1763 — Seven Years' War (French and Indian War)
  • 1768–1774 — Russo-Turkish War
  • 1775–1781 — American Revolutionary War
  • 1787–1792 — Russo-Turkish War
  • 1789–1815 — French Revolutionary Wars / Napoleonic Wars

Age of Rifles

  • 1806–1812 — Russo-Turkish War
  • 1808–1809 — Finnish War (Russia vs. Sweden)
  • 1812–1814 — War of 1812 (US vs. Great Britain)
  • 1821–1829 — Greek War of Independence
  • 1839–1842 — First Anglo-Afghan War
  • 1846–1848 — Mexican War (US vs. Mexico)
  • 1850–1865 — Taiping Rebellion
  • 1854–1856 — Crimean War
  • 1861–1865 — American Civil War
  • 1866 — Austro-Prussian War (Seven Weeks War)
  • 1870–1871 — Franco-Prussian War
  • 1877–1878 — Russo-Turkish War
  • 1894–1895 — First Sino-Japanese War
  • 1898 — Spanish-American War
  • 1899–1902 — Boer War in South Africa

World War Era

  • 1905 — Russo-Japanese War
  • 1912–1913 — Two Balkan Wars
  • 1914–1918 — World War I
  • 1917–1918 — Russian Revolution
  • 1918 — Finnish Civil War
  • 1918–1922 — Russian Civil War
  • 1918–1920 — Estonian Liberation War
  • 1919–1921 — Polish-Soviet War
  • 1935–1936 — Second Italo-Abyssinian War
  • 1936–1939 — Spanish Civil War
  • 1937–1945 — Second Sino-Japanese War
  • 1939–1941 — World War II: Poland, British Empire, France vs. Germany, Italy, Soviet Union
  • 1941–1945 — World War II: Allied coalition vs. Axis powers

Cold War Era

  • 1945–1949 — Chinese Civil War
  • 1946–1954 — First Indochina War
  • 1947–1949 — First Kashmir War (India vs. Pakistan)
  • 1948–1949 — First Arab-Israeli War
  • 1950–1953 — Korean War
  • 1956 — Suez Crisis (Second Arab-Israeli War)
  • 1962–1963 — Sino-Indian War
  • 1964–1973 — Vietnam War
  • 1965 — Second Kashmir War
  • 1967 — Six-Day War (Third Arab-Israeli War)
  • 1971 — Bangladesh War of Independence
  • 1973 — Yom Kippur War (Fourth Arab-Israeli War)
  • 1974–1991 — Ethiopian Civil War
  • 1975–1991 — Lebanese Civil War
  • 1979–1989 — Soviet-Afghan War
  • 1980–1988 — Iran-Iraq War
  • 1982 — Falklands War (UK vs. Argentina)

Post-Cold War Era

  • 1989–1990 — Operation Just Cause (US invades Panama)
  • 1991 — Gulf War (Iraq vs. UN coalition)
  • 1991 — Slovene War of Independence
  • 1991–1995 — Croatian War of Independence
  • 1992–1995 — Bosnian Civil War
  • 1994–1996 — First Chechen War
  • 1998–1999 — Kosovo War (NATO vs. Yugoslavia)
  • 1999 — Second Chechen War
  • 2001 — Invasion of Afghanistan
  • 2003 — Invasion of Iraq