I admit it, I’m part of a generation that is impatient, a child of the google age- but google can’t do everything. I type in ‘complete history of war’ in an advanced search, and all that comes up is a thempak for a cd-rom that covers every war of the past 500 years, I believe, which is great. But I’m looking for a book, something like ‘Complete Gigantic Idiot’s Guide to Every Military Conquest in Recorded History’, something that includes a blurb that summarizes not only the major wars that everyone knows in 6,000 years of civilization- romans vs. gauls, athens vs. spartans, ww1 and2, crusades- but other military endeavours that are not declared wars, such as the wars between tribes in the middle east that occured in old testament times and the invading of SE asia and africa and slaughters by england and france in the 1700s/1800s, current conflicts, etc. This theoretical book would even include a chapter on wars that we aren’t sure existed, such as the Hebrew invasion of Palestine in the old testament or the- well, the trojan war was pretty much all real, right? Obviously, the book would just give a brief title, the years, nations involved, numbers killed on sides, weapons, reasons, dates, treaties, etc., something anyone could read and make thousands of notecards out of.
Such a book can’t exist. Even if it included only the names and dates of every known war, it would have to be a many volumes encyclopedia.
6,000 years of wars would make a huge document! Even if one allowed just one page for each of the last 2,000 years we are still talking about a big book, and one page per year would barely enough to just list conflicts. Pushing the history back significantly further than 2,000 years or so is going to be pretty difficult.
In thinking about what such a document would be like, what strikes me is the depressing thought of just how dull it would be. Apart from the major conflicts, history is full of minor, petty wars that would quickly all start to seem essentially identical. Such a document would, however, be a valuble monument to the stupidity of humanity.
Anyway, it seems that Wikipedia has made a start.
Thanks, that is a great resource. They list 572 wars going back to 1600 b.c., and that’s a good start. Infoplease website also has a good almanac listing of current conflicts, but nothing as good as this one.
There are a few books that make a stab at a broad-based coverage, like A Dictionary of Military History and the Art of War, edited by Andre Corvisier and John Childs, translated by Chris Turner (1994, Black Well Publishers ) or J.F.C. Fuller’s old narrative classic in two volumes , A Military History of the Western World ( 1954, Llloyds PFC ).
But as clairobscur noted it is impossible for any such volume to come remotely close to definitive. Fuller’s books for example only cover Europe and the Mediterranean up to Waterloo in a total of near 1200 pages and they still don’t come very close to being encyclopedic.
- Tamerlane
I guess that the official order of battle for the Punic Wars was never published.
From an academic point of view, it is easy to see why nobody has attempted to write such a book. It’d be useless. The information included would be required to be so brief that it wouldn’t advance the knowledge of the subject of war in any real way, other than as a reference tool.
Of course, you could go study war at a good university and write it.
And if I might ask, what is your interest in such a comprehensive volume? What would you get out of it that do not think you’d get out of your own self-guided review of the relevent literature?
A complete summary of every conflict in the last 6000 years would be incredibly long; even Onwar, which limits itself to the last 200 years, has a bunch of material.
I’m surprised to see that no one has, to this point, mentioned how long the book would have to be.
I know; the thing would have at least many volumes!
Don’t listen to the nay-sayers. It’s possible to write a complete list of every war known to history and it’s been done. Granted, the level of detail isn’t what you’d get from a more focused work but if it’s a complete list you want, you can get one.
The Harper Encyclopedia of Military History: From 3500 B.C. to the Present by Ernest Dupuy and Trevor Dupuy (1376 pages) is probably the most thorough reference. Unfortunately it’s out of print. Amazon has an original edition from 1977 for sale at $55, but most people prefer the 1993 revised edition.
The Dictionary of Wars by George Childs Kohn (614 pages) is also a good work. The detail is lessened but it does at least name pretty much every war there’s a historical record of. And the good news is that not only is it in print, a used copy is available at Amazon for under three dollars.
To answer Ravenman’s question, I do plan on spending my entire life busting my hump to learn all I can about history- I’m willing to go to great lengths as it’s my lifetime passion. But over the next four to seven months, I’ll be reading and studying a whole lot on my own to gain an overall grasp of history, and I have various resources to do so. As a basic start to my study, I’ll be making many hundreds of notecards for wars, just to learn the names and dates and other basics. The resources I’ve gotten here have been really good, and now you understand that I’m young and looking for a ‘history starter kit’ of sorts- but from a war jump off, because as we’ve discussed, most of history has been that.
Then I would not recommend the two books I mentioned in my previous thread. You’ll get entries like:
American Civil War - War between the United States of America and eleven states that seceded from the United States to form an independant nation called the Confederate States of America. The conflict began in April 1861 and ended in April 1865 with a complete Confederate defeat. Major battles were First Bull Run, Second Bull Run, Shiloh, The Seven Days, Antietam, Vicksburg, Gettysburg, Chancellorsville, and the Siege of Petersburg. Casualties are estimated at 360,000 USA and 200,000 CSA.
As you can see, the bare facts are there, but as a resource to learn about the war it’s almost useless. For the purpose you mentioned, I’d recommend instead J.F.C. Fuller’s A Military History of the Western World which Tamerlane mentioned.
That’s probably the most concise explaination of Wikipedia I’ve ever seen.
[QUOTE=Little Nemo]
Then I would not recommend the two books I mentioned in my previous thread.
[QUOTE]
I dunno. My dad used to have the Dupuy & Dupuy book you mentioned, and it was exactly what I thought of when I read the OP. (I couldn’t recall the title or authors though, so thanks!) It has, IIRC, a year-by-year breakdown of individual campaigns within wars in addition to the type of summary you mention.