# Most important historical battles **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 10, 2013, 8:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-important-historical-battles/663115 "2013-07-10T08:37:56Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Tamerlane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tamerlane/32/7602_2.png) [@Tamerlane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tamerlane)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2013, 2:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-important-historical-battles/663115/41 "2013-07-11T02:30:29Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > All credit to Alexander for conquering the Persian Empire but he would have now been fighting beyond Persia. It would have been interesting to see how he’d have fared against Chandragupta and the emerging Mauryan Empire. A bit more interesting to me is what would have happened if Alexander had bought another 15-20 years of life. The inferences are he was interested in campaigning in the west. Not only would Sicily and Magna Grecia been natural targets, but one can easily envision Rome and Carthage having to come to grips with him as well. At the outer limits of speculation we could have had a unified Hellenistic super-empire from the Indus to the western Mediterranean, with an orderly succession to his son Alexander IV. One doubts such a colossus could continue intact for very long, but it might have had a massive impact on western history vis-a-vis Rome. > [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > The best possible chance for him to win the throne was for him to win decisively in that first battle _and_ for Harold to be killed. And not just Harold, but also his grown brothers Gyrth and Leofwine, both very well landed [earls/dukes](http://www.englandandenglishhistory.com/images/stories/england1066.gif) and either of whom could have been a rallying voice. Meanwhile brother Tostig had died at Stamford Bridge and youngest brother Wulfnoth had been ( and would remain ) a prisoner of William. William was a very capable man, but it is no insult to say he was also very lucky as well. ---
**Author:** ![etv78](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/d78d45/32.png) [@etv78](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/etv78)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2013, 2:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-important-historical-battles/663115/42 "2013-07-11T02:40:02Z")
Unless “siege of Vienna” is synonymous, I nominate Tours. Prevented the Muslim domination of Europe. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2013, 2:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-important-historical-battles/663115/43 "2013-07-11T02:54:01Z")
> [@Tamerlane](#): > > A bit more interesting to me is what would have happened if Alexander had bought another 15-20 years of life. The inferences are he was interested in campaigning in the west. Not only would Sicily and Magna Grecia been natural targets, but one can easily envision Rome and Carthage having to come to grips with him as well. At the outer limits of speculation we could have had a unified Hellenistic super-empire from the Indus to the western Mediterranean, with an orderly succession to his son Alexander IV. One doubts such a colossus could continue intact for very long, but it might have had a massive impact on western history vis-a-vis Rome. But keep in mind this was the fourth century BC. Rome was still a local power in central Italy at this point. After conquering all of Persia, Alexander probably wouldn’t have even seen Rome as a worthy target - he probably would have delegated Italy’s conquest to one of his generals. Carthage was a major power in this period. But I don’t think it would have represented a real challenge to Alexander either. Carthage was a predominantly economic empire - their business was trade not fighting. Alexander would have been attracted towards them by their wealth but I don’t see how Carthage could have offered anything more than brief resistance. In my opinion, after Persia, the Mauryan Empire in India was the only power that could have stood a chance against Alexander. Especially if he had spent five or ten years mopping up in the west first. ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2013, 5:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-important-historical-battles/663115/44 "2013-07-11T05:12:52Z")
> [@etv78](#): > > Unless “siege of Vienna” is synonymous, I nominate Tours. Prevented the Muslim domination of Europe. It was a raid. So no. If you really want Christian v Muslim, Lepanto was far more important. Also, Yarmouk ---
**Author:** ![Max\_the\_Immortal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/6de8d8/32.png) [@Max\_the\_Immortal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_the_Immortal)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2013, 5:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-important-historical-battles/663115/45 "2013-07-11T05:30:17Z")
> [@aNewLeaf](#): > > Neanderthals vs H. sapiens sapiens > > Not so much of a battle as a feast followed by bestiality. > > But still decisive. Fun fact: _Homo sapiens sapiens_ is most correctly used when referring to Neanderthals as _Homo sapiens neanderthalensis_ i.e. as a subspecies of our species (in which case interbreeding with them could hardly be characterized as bestiality). Those who contend that Neanderthals were a separate species most correctly refer to them as _Homo neanderthalensis_ and to us simply as _Homo sapiens_. ---
**Author:** ![Latro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a87d85/32.png) [@Latro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Latro)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2013, 6:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-important-historical-battles/663115/46 "2013-07-11T06:14:39Z")
> [@etv78](#): > > Unless “siege of Vienna” is synonymous, I nominate Tours. Prevented the Muslim domination of Europe. > [@AK84](#): > > It was a raid. So no. I know this is a popular view, but I think it’s a bit of an overcompensation of the importance Poitiers held before in the Western mind. Yes it was a raid, but a raid in force, and unchecked others would have followed. That was one of the ways Islam rule spread, encroaching bit by bit. I do feel that without that victory the South of France would have slowly become Muslim and I doubt there would have been a reconquista in that case, with the Spanish also having a northern front. > [@](#): > > If you really want Christian v Muslim, Lepanto was far more important. But the Westerners didn’t exploit the victory and the fleet was soon rebuilt. After all, the Turks made it all the way to Vienna, regardless of Lepanto. > [@](#): > > Also, Yarmouk That one, yes. ---
**Author:** ![the\_diego](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7bcc69/32.png) [@the\_diego](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/the_diego)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2013, 6:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-important-historical-battles/663115/47 "2013-07-11T06:32:32Z")
The answer for this may be too easy or too hard: Why was there hardly any historically significant battle during the western roman empire’s breath, 100BC to say 410 AD, discounting Caesar’s battles and Actium? For battles beginning in AD1900, my nominee is the Marne. ---
**Author:** ![pancakes3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ba9def/32.png) [@pancakes3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pancakes3)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2013, 3:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-important-historical-battles/663115/48 "2013-07-11T15:41:42Z")
> [@Longshanks](#): > > Slightly deviating from my OP but what do you guys think would have happened if Alexander hadn’t died so young and his men didn’t refuse to continue going eastwards. Equally deviating, what would have happened if Alexander had decided to conquer his way westward towards Gaul and the nascent Roman empire? > [@CJJ](#): > > I’m not sure that many battles really affect the wide scope of history. For example, Ancient Rome is a subject I know very well, and IMO the transition from Republic to Empire was inevitable, regardless of the outcome of a famous battle like Actium. Certainly the details might be different if Antony and Cleopatra had won (e.g. the eighth month of the year might be named Anton), but the general scope of Roman history would probably remain the same (just different emperors–no Nero probably, but who’s to say an equally corrupt emperor wasn’t lurking in Antony’s family line?). Agreed. The foundations was set by men like Marius. Plus there were 2 Triumvirates. There was no shortage of ambitious Romans clamoring to become at least dictator-for-life if not flat out Emperor. As for other battles? China’s naval fleet that got Kamikaze’d under Kublai Khan was a battle against the elements… ---
**Author:** ![Ambrosio\_Spinola](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9de0a6/32.png) [@Ambrosio\_Spinola](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ambrosio_Spinola)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2013, 4:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-important-historical-battles/663115/49 "2013-07-11T16:16:04Z")
It would be interesting to see what would have happened if Hernan Cortes had just been eradicated by the Tlaxcala in their first fight rather than them choosing to ally with him. The Spanish conquest might have happened anyway, but if Cortes had just vanished into Mexico, would-be conquistadores might have been much more leery about it. ---
**Author:** ![FoieGrasIsEvil](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foiegrasisevil/32/16638_2.png) [@FoieGrasIsEvil](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FoieGrasIsEvil)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2013, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-important-historical-battles/663115/50 "2013-07-11T17:52:17Z")
The Thousand Pyschic Wars. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2013, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-important-historical-battles/663115/51 "2013-07-11T18:33:16Z")
> [@the\_diego](#): > > For battles beginning in AD1900, my nominee is the Marne. I’d agree on the Marne being the most important. (I assume we’re both talking about the 1914 battle and not the 1918 one.) But for most overlooked I’d go with Tsushima. Very important battle in the history of the 20th century and its impact is mostly ignored. ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2013, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-important-historical-battles/663115/52 "2013-07-11T18:41:09Z")
A clearly decisive battle of the non-European variety was Sekigahara. Ensured the dominance of the Tokugawa Shogunate with all this implied - Japan went decisively anti-Christian and anti-Foreigner, closed itself off for two centuries, deliberately gave up guns and foreign adventurism, etc. If Tokugawa had lost, it is entirely possible that Japan would have turned mostly (or all) Christian and started imperalistic expansion throughout SE Asia, displacing the Western imperialists, in the 16th century; completely changing world history in the process. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2013, 12:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-important-historical-battles/663115/53 "2013-07-12T00:30:12Z")
This is the kind of question that needs one of those “elimination vote” threads where we start with a few dozen candidates and whittle them down. ---
**Author:** ![the\_diego](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7bcc69/32.png) [@the\_diego](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/the_diego)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2013, 6:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-important-historical-battles/663115/54 "2013-07-12T06:36:31Z")
^ as a counter-proposal, discuss the earliest known conflicts and test them for future significance. assuming that’s what we’re really doing here. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2013, 9:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-important-historical-battles/663115/55 "2013-07-12T09:13:42Z")
> [@Ambrosio\_Spinola](#): > > It would be interesting to see what would have happened if Hernan Cortes had just been eradicated by the Tlaxcala in their first fight rather than them choosing to ally with him. The Spanish conquest might have happened anyway, but if Cortes had just vanished into Mexico, would-be conquistadores might have been much more leery about it. Nah, the more machito ones would have seen it as a provocation to their manhood… and Cortes was among the less machito ones. For Spanish history, what’s considered the “turning point” of the Reconquista and therefore essential to everything that came to happen in the following centuries is the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212. It’s important both because it got the Christian realms to stop bickering with each other for once and because it’s perceived as being closely related to the breakup of the Cordobese Caliphate into Taifas. I think that if Andalusia didn’t get opened in 1212 it would have been a few years later, but IANAHistorian. The whole political, economical and military situation spent a couple of centuries shifting from “a bunch of small Christian countries vs a large Muslim one” to “three large Christian countries (and some guests cheering from the peanut gallery) vs a bunch of small Muslim countries”, Las Navas simply happens to be easy to pinpoint. ETA: wiki says it’s called Al-Uqab (معركة العقاب) in Arabic. ---
**Author:** ![Malacandra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Malacandra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malacandra)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2013, 6:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-important-historical-battles/663115/56 "2013-07-13T06:57:49Z")
> [@Longshanks](#): > > There would have always been an American Revolution regardless. It may have happened a couple of years later but as long as Britain didn’t fairly represent the colonist there would be perpetual discontent and sooner or later a revolution. That’s debatable. With a French-controlled Canada to the north and a real risk that the French might want to add some of the territory to the south of theirs, it might have been a case of “better the English devil you know than the French you don’t”. The colonists’ lot didn’t suddenly become unbearable in the late 1700s, but the English had obligingly made it much _safer_ for them to rebel. ---
**Author:** ![Crane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crane/32/3495_2.png) [@Crane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crane)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2013, 5:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-important-historical-battles/663115/57 "2013-07-13T17:09:28Z")
Depends on what you mean by “battle”. Actium, in example, may have involved all of the naval resources of both combatants, so constituted a war. The outcome changed the political structure of both combatants. In that context the combined WW1-2 could be considered a “battle”. World literacy went from 25% in 1900 to the current 84%, largely as the result of breaking up empires and their associated political systems. The resulting industrial boom created the modern world. The US lost the ‘battle’ of Pearl Harbor and the Japanese lost at Midway, but the war was lost by industrial attrition. Both sides recovered from ‘battles’ no matter how destructive. With the possible exception of the Mongol expansion, I doubt that any battle has ever changed our underlying economic structure. Consider that even through WW1-2 no major corporation on either side went bankrupt - Mitsubishi, Toshiba, Kawasaki, Yakolev, Tupolev, Fiat, Krupp, IG Farben, Siemens, GMC, Ford, Boeing - still a familiar cast of characters. Crane ---
**Author:** ![the\_diego](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7bcc69/32.png) [@the\_diego](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/the_diego)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2013, 8:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-important-historical-battles/663115/58 "2013-07-15T08:53:54Z")
Are Messerschmitt, Fokker, Blome und Voss and Junkers still around (Fokker I think is)? What about Supermarine, Boulton Paul, and Hawker? Stateside, I don’t think you still have North American, Brewster, and Curtiss. ---
**Author:** ![Latro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a87d85/32.png) [@Latro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Latro)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2013, 9:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-important-historical-battles/663115/59 "2013-07-15T09:48:58Z")
> [@the\_diego](#): > > Are Messerschmitt, Fokker, Blome und Voss and Junkers still around (Fokker I think is)? What about Supermarine, Boulton Paul, and Hawker? Stateside, I don’t think you still have North American, Brewster, and Curtiss. I don’t think the poster will be too happy with you responding, now that he has sobered up. ---
**Author:** ![Crane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crane/32/3495_2.png) [@Crane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crane)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2013, 2:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-important-historical-battles/663115/60 "2013-07-15T14:47:00Z")
diego, Thanks for the response. You raise some interesting points. Blohm und Voss built aircraft post WW2. I remember an excellent example at the entrance of the Deutsches Museum in Munich. Today they are a shipbuilder. Messerschmidt is now part of BMW. They produced small cars and some aircraft after WW2. Fokker was a minor participant in WW2, on the allied side. They produced aircraft after WW2 but were not financially viable. Supermarine was a design group within Vickers-Armstrong. The company was nationalized decades after the war. You could name American Bantam (designed the jeep), Higgins Boat Co., Vultee, Consolidated etc, but their demise was financial or due to post war industrial consolidation, not the result of battles. Even Gotha Wagonfabrik survived the war and produced heavy industrial equipment in East Germany. Crane [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-important-historical-battles/663115.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-important-historical-battles/663115.md?page=4)