I’ve always thought of Nov. 11, 1918 as the day World War I ended. But now I’m reading a book about cargo cults in Melanesia and it talks about the “1914-1919 war”. So what parts of the war lasted past 1918?
Ugly site, but appears to address the question.
From the site’s introduction (emphasis added):
Frankly, I don’t see any compelling argument for calling the 1919 stuff part of World War 1, but I’m a not a military historian.
Weren’t there some British forces somewhat involved in the White Russian conflict? An old book I have about biplanes has a photo with a caption that suggests it. Don’t know how accurate that is.
November 11, 1918 was just an armistice – a general cease fire. The war officially ended with the Treaty of Versailles on June 28, 1919.
Well, that does make sense. 
The United States was involved too, with the 27th and 31st Infantry Regiments being sent to Siberia from 1918-1920 to protect parts of the Siberian railway. They (and the remainder of the Allied force) were withdrawn when the Whites were defeated by the Reds in the Russian Revolution.
I like to consider the wars between the former Yugoslavian states to be the last battles of WWI. but time will tell.
The civil war in Russia isn’t typically regarded as a part of WWI, nor is internal strife elsewhere (i.e. in Germany).
I don’t recall much happening on the Melanesian Front either.
That’s kind of what I thought. I guess certain authors may have a different view because of cause and effect. Like how WWI and WWII added to the issues causing the Vietnam War, but the US involvement in Vietnam is not a direct continuation of the two world wars.
There were several “follow-on” conflicts arising from the end of World War 1 - notably the Polish-Soviet War and the Greco-Turkish War, but these are not usually regarded as part of World War 1 itself.
Most historians pragmatically mark the end of WW1 as the Armistice of November 1918. If you’re going to be pedantic and insist that a war only ends when the peace treaty is definitively signed, then WW1 only ended with the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923 - and WW2 and the Korean War haven’t ended yet.
And if you’re really pedantic, you’ll recall that military powerhouse Andorra 
did not end its state of war with the Kaiser’s Germany until either 1939 or 1957, depending on which source you believe.
Wikipedia has a cited entry on the List of wars extended by diplomatic irregularity suggesting WWI only ended for Costa Rica in 1945 and Andorra in 1958.
Canada also had troops involved in the British intervention in the Russian Civil War. The date 1919 seems to have been used more commonly as the terminus date back then. For instance, our local cenotaph in Regina, dedicated in 1926, has the following inscription:
I think it’s been more in retrospect that the 1918 armistice has been seen as the end date.
I count myself out-pedanted, by both you and Pushkin. But Lausanne was a bit more than a diplomatic irregularity - it made changes of thousands of square miles to the previous Treaty of Sevres, and this was the consequence of some very bloody fighting in 1920-22. However this fighting is generally regarded as seperate from WW1 even though the state of war had never officially ended.
For the purposes of veterans’ benefits, the U.S. government considers World War I to have ended on November 11, 1918. However, they also lump veterans who served with the United States military forces in Russia in with World War I, and the period for that is extended to April 1, 1920. (Although WWI is considered to have ended at the Armistice–unless you were fighting the Bolsheviks in Russia–World War II didn’t officially end until December 31, 1946.)
Well the Australians occupied German New Guineaand the surrounding islands.
Other than that I can’t think of much. I think Von Spee’s East Asian Squadron passed well to the north of Melanesia. ANd the Emden mainly operated in the Indian Ocean.
My grandad was given one of these:
It was his reward for fighting in the Great War. It reads “The Great War for Civilisation 1914-1919”. There seem to have been 13m+ of the things churned out. Wikipedia has the following, baffling explanation:
“The dates of the war were in every case 1914 to 1918, except that of the British Empire, which gave the dates as illustrated (1914 to 1919 with 1921 being the year in which the war ended in point of Parliamentary law but in 1919 under common law relating to the status and functions of the monarchy).”
Thank God civilisation was saved, eh?
Maybe they couldn’t impose the harsher treaty conditions on the Germans without the threat of armed retaliation that still being in an open state of war could threaten? I’m really just WAG-ing here.
According to Sinclair’s Only Yesterday, the US Army casualty list was still appearing in American papers in 1919.
I’ve seen war memorials in towns in Australia and New Zealand referring to “The Great War Of 1914-1919”, FWIW. But mostly WWI is acknowledged to have ended 11/11/1918, as has been mentioned.