One of the most iconic photographs of war – Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima by Joe Rosenthal of the Associated Press

I’ve always found wars a fascinating subject of history, from the comfortable armchair of hindsight and the fortunate perspective of being well removed from any firsthand experience of them. History, particularly military history, has always been something of a hobby of mine. So of course I have ranked my Top 10 Wars of history.

Just some notes – these are not ranked by scale of destruction or historical impact, although I’d like to think that most or all of these entries would rank highly by those criteria. They are also not ranked by moral justifiability or in terms of being ‘good’ wars, to the extent that such a term can be used for wars, if at all. Rather, they are ranked in terms of historical interest to me – and I tend to be interested in the broader themes of history, so I have preferred a broader classification of the wars in each entry, although I do nominate individual wars (or conquests or invasions) within each entry.

Just some further notes – I have some ratings within each entry:

ART OF WAR

Rating the wars by the art of war shown in them, typically by the victors of course, albeit based on my more idiosyncratic application of Sun Tzu’s Art of War.

WORLD WAR

Rating the wars by their scale – some wars might well be considered world wars (or at least part of world wars) beyond the two twentieth century wars formally designated as such, from World War Zero to World War X.

STILL FIGHTING THE WAR

Rating the wars by their span, particularly for those wars we are arguably still fighting.

GOOD GUYS VS BAD GUYS

Rating the wars by taking a shot at choosing moral sides or nominating the good guys and bad guys – or not, since history usually does not repay moral judgements.

So these are my top ten wars in history. You know the rules – this is one of my deep dive top tens, counting down from tenth to first place and looking at individual entries in some depth or detail of themselves.

But wait – there’s more! The subject is prolific enough for my usual twenty special mentions per top ten and for honorable mentions beyond that.