Timeline of human history
version 2 -
by Finn Sivert Nielsen

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Timeline 16 - 700 BP to Present
War and Rebellion in Europe since the Black Death. From local to global war

We now narrow down our focus to the last 700 years BP, the time since the Black Death. However, we do more than pull closer. We focus on a single aspect of the web of history - that of war and rebellion. On the timeline, I have attempted to mark as many as possible of the somewhat larger wars that have been fought in Europe during this period (wars shorter than 1 year in duration have been consistently ignored and there are no doubt important wars that I have omitted).  

Some interesting observations have resulted from this approach:  

i) After the predations of the Mongols, who killed perhaps 30-40 million worldwide, and the devastation of the Black Death, which killed another "75-200" million, one might reasonably suppose that the appetite for death and destruction would abate for a while. But no. The Hundred Year War continued right through it, and although the frequency of war may have abated for a short while, that may just have been due to the reduced population. Otherwise, business as usual. War after war.

ii) War has been common in most of Europe throughout the 700 years here reviewed. There have been periods and places where war was more likely than in others, but few places have been able go on for generations without experiencing war at all. Moreover, even if you and your family did not live or fight in a war zone, the likelihood of being conscripted and sent off "to the war, me love, in High Germany," is attested to in countless folksongs and tales.

iii) There are different kinds of war. First, there are differences deriving ultimately from technological change. Thus, after the wreckage of the 30-year war, a new species of war seems to have been born in Europe - the global war. The 9-Year War of 1688-97 is often mentioned as the first global war, and involved fighting in both India and America. Such wars were obviously dependent on sophisticated global communications, and could not have been fought effectively at an earlier stage in history. Secondly, wars are differently positioned. In the period we are dealing with, there is a lot of warfare going on along the margins of Europe: the Reconquista of the Iberian Peninsula from the Moors, the ousting of the Ottomans from the Balkans, the Golden Horde from Russia, and the securing of Russia's borders with the politically volatile steppe peoples to the East, and with the amorphous Polish-Lithuanian-German polities to the West. These were long-term military campaigns conducted over hundreds of years, in sharp contrast to the shorter wars (global or not) that were often fought to obtain limited political, economic or prestige gains.  

iv) Finally, there are wars and there are rebellions - raising the question of what a rebellion is. Clearly the French, Russian and American revolutions all qualify, as do any number of workers' and peasant uprisings. Then there are the national uprisings that tore through Europe, particularly the Balkans, in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars. Finally, there are civil wars, some with an initial revolutionary agenda, most, however, degenerating eventually into chaos. I have decided to group most of all this together, since it all offers some kind of resistance to the established webs of power - if nothing else, then the resistance of chaos.


© 2018 Finn Sivert Nielsen (fsnielsen.com)