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.

But I don’t just have a top ten. As usual for my top tens, I have a whole host of special mentions. My usual rule is twenty special mentions – where the subject matter is prolific enough, as it is here – which I suppose would usually make each top ten a top thirty. My special mentions are also where I tend to have some fun with the subject category and splash out with some wilder entries.

 

 

(1) DECLINE & FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE

 

The decline and fall of the Roman Empire – that “melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, retreating to the breath of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear and naked shingles of the world”.

I don’t think it is overstating it to describe the decline and fall of the Roman Empire as the PTSD of western civilization. Europeans looked to the Roman Empire as their state or imperial model, with kingdoms or states purporting to succeed or revive it in one form or another thereafter.

Even now, the decline and fall of the Roman Empire informs much modern discourse about state failure – from Edward Gibbon onwards, “we have been obsessed with the fall: it has been valued as an archetype for every perceived decline, and, hence, as a symbol for our own fears”.

I would rank it in my top ten wars but for the lack of a definitive war – although my top ten entry for the Hunnic Wars comes closest – hence the special mention, albeit god-tier. And also as decline and fall, it involved the former as much as the latter. The Romans were consistently their own worst enemies – not just in their relentless civil wars but also in aspects of internal decline that were observed even as early as the second century – at its peak! – by contemporaries such as the historian Cassius Dio, who lamented the decline “from a kingdom of gold to one of rust and iron”.

But our interest here is its external fall or military defeats, most notoriously at the hands of barbarians at the gates – the Germanic tribes that swept over the empire in what history calls the Barbarian Invasions or Migration Period.

The empire was shocked to its core with the sack of Rome itself – twice, firstly by the Visigoths in 410, and secondly by the Vandals, who thereafter lent their name to wanton destruction, in 455. These sacks of Rome were still shocking even though the imperial capital had been moved to Ravenna in 402, such that the Roman Empire might more accurately be styled as the Ravennan Empire instead.

And there’s something about the Romans desperately trying to hold one line after another in that “melancholy, long, withdrawing roar” that resonates with me. Indeed, any last stand or waning force often invokes the fall of the Roman Empire, both in history, and as we shall see, in fantasy or science fiction.

And there’s certainly plenty to choose from with the fall of the Roman Empire in the century from the disastrous defeat in the battle of Adrianople against the Goths in 378, which opened the floodgates to barbarians invading and setting up kingdoms within the Empire itself, varying between alliance with and opposition to the Empire, until the Germanic leader Odoacer decided it would be easier not to have a puppet emperor and deposed him instead in 476.

Of course, what history tends to forget is that the proverbial decline and fall of the Roman Empire was of the western Roman Empire – the eastern Roman Empire survived and even thrived for another millennium after the fall of the western empire. It even had a damn good shot at recovering the western half of the empire under Justinian and his legendary general Belisarius, before receding again, and it then ebbed and flowed, until its final decline over two centuries before its conquest by the rising Ottoman Empire in 1453. So there’s plenty to choose from there as well.

Indeed, the decline and fall of both western and eastern Roman Empires was invoked by Tolkien in The Lord of the Rings with Gondor – the eastern half of the Numenorean states that survived the fall of the western half Arnor. Of course, that would make Gondor correspond to the Byzantine Empire, increasingly focused on its capital city Minas Tirith corresponding to Constantinople making its last stand against Sauron – who would correspond to, ah, the Ottoman Turks?!

Anyway, the decline and fall of the Roman Empire – and the Great Migrations or Barbarian Invasions – might be considered to be on the scale of a world war, but is a little too piecemeal in space or time.

And one can argue we are still living in the decline of the Roman Empire. Or on our Third or Fourth Rome (or more), going by all the countries that have claimed the succession to the Roman Empire. Or the Empire never fell…according to P.K. Dick. Or something like that

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****

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(2) FIRST WORLD WAR (1914-1918)

 

Before it was known as the First World War, it was the Great War – “the biggest, bloodiest, most expensive, most disruptive, most damaging and most traumatizing war the world had ever seen up to that point”.

It also tends to be seen in almost entirely negative terms, as one of the most unpopular and pointless wars in history, particularly when compared to its successor.

In the words of the Encyclopedia of Fantasy, “both World Wars were tragic, but World War I was remembered as an unmitigated tragedy, a grinding apocalyptic process whose outcome was always foreseeable, even though some of the details (like the USA’s entry into the conflict) might have been unexpected at the time”.

“World War II, on the other hand, has been remembered as a melodrama, full of strange and uncanny ups and downs, with terrifying new weapons galore, feats of derring-do on a daily basis, and protagonists who were not only monsters in real life but also, in fictional terms, highly effective icons of villainy”.

It does not help that the First World War was hailed at one point as “the war to end all wars” – an epithet doomed to fail and be replaced by the jaded cynicism that has seen the international agreement that brought it to an end dubbed as “the peace to end all peace”.

A slur for which, as a Treaty of Versailles fan, I will not stand! Well, perhaps fan is overstating it, but I do think the Treaty of Versailles is unjustly maligned, a topic worthy of its own top ten. To put it simply, the Treaty of Versailles was not that bad – while Germany should have spent a lot more time sucking it up and a lot less time bitching about it.

Much the same goes for the First World War itself, particularly in comparison to the Second World War – albeit the former is not so much unjustly maligned, as it earns much of its claim to futility and pointlessness. And much of that is of course the Western Front, the relentless slogging match that remained largely static despite millions of casualties.

Even that, however, is somewhat unfair to the Western Front, which finally showed some dynamism in 1918, although one might observe that took long enough.

More fundamentally, it is the Western Front that provides the enduring imagery of the war, and for that matter of modern war itself, of total war and trench warfare. Its battles, as costly and futile as they were, still read like a roll call of modern military history – with perhaps Verdun and the Somme as the most definitive. Not to mention much of the definitive technology of modern war had its debut or development in the Western Front – notably tanks and aircraft.

There is also the cultural impact of the Western Front – not least on modern literary fantasy (hence the Encyclopedia of Fantasy entry), notably through J.R.R. Tolkien. Such is the cultural impact that it might be summed up by the title of Paul Fussell’s The Great War and Modern Memory.

And speaking of modern memory, it is the First World War that looms larger in national commemorations honoring the day of its armistice – not to mention, nations such as Australia, for whom their national identity was essentially shaped in battle, even in defeat, during the war at Gallipoli, commemorated by Anzac Day.

The static stalemate of the Western Front obscures the war’s more dynamic nature elsewhere – on the Eastern Front (including the Russian Revolution), in the Balkans, in the Middle East (including the Arab Revolt), at sea, in the air, and my favorite as well as the most impressive military achievement through the entire war, the German guerilla warfare led by von Lettow-Vorbeck in Africa.

Arguably, the Germans fought better in the First World War than they did in the Second, despite succeeding in 1940 where they had failed in 1914 – while the Americans also arguably waged a better war, despite failing to do what they should have done in the peace after the First what they did after the Second. Japan and Italy also chose the better side in the First than in the Second, although that might be attributed more to failures in the interwar years.

But I stand by the First World War being unfairly contrasted with the Second World War – usually in terms of the comparison of casualty rates, with the former seen as pointlessly higher without the greater mobility or movement of the latter to show for it.

Firstly, that is not quite true. In blunt terms, the Western Front was just as static for most of the Second World War – it’s just that the trench was bigger, in the form of the English Channel. And also that the Western allies effectively outsourced their casualties to the Eastern Front, where casualty rates could be very high indeed. Even on the Western front from Normany onwards, casualty rates at the sharp end could also be high enough to compare to the First World War.

And in the air for that matter – it’s ironic that Bomber Harris saw the bombing campaign as a way of avoiding the high casualty rates of the Western Front in the First World War, only for the allies to replicate those rates during the bombing campaign.

Secondly, this comparison belies that, if anything, it was the Second World War that was anomalous, while the First World War was more truly characteristic of twentieth century wars as static wars of attrition – as reflected by my favorite historian, H.P. Willmott, when he quipped, seemingly as a paradox, that WW2 might be regarded as the last war of the nineteenth century and WW1 as the first war of the twentieth century. Partly this is that for a brief shining moment, the technology and technique of offensive mobility won out over defensive firepower, but as Willmott observed, it started swinging back as defensive firepower rebounded from 1942 onwards.

The Encyclopedia of Fantasy continues that “despite the attempts of propagandists on both sides, no wholly evil figure emerges from World War I to occupy the world’s imagination, no one of a viciousness so unmitigated that it seems almost supernatural; Hitler, on the other hand, has all the lineaments of a Dark Lord, and the Reich he hoped to found was a parody of the true Land”.

But it’s the Germans as bad guys – I’m a fan of the Fischer thesis.

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****
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(3) AMERICAN REVOLUTION & CIVIL WAR (1775-1783 & 1861-1865)

 

That’s right – two wars for the price of one in this special mention, the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783) and the American Civil War (1861-1865). Also two wars that could be described as the commencement of modern history – and certainly of the predominant superpower of modern history, the United States.

These two wars earn their special entry mention for a number of reasons – firstly as representative of those categories of war that deserve (and will get) their own top ten (and special mentions), revolutions and civil wars.

Of course, those two categories tend to be overlapping, as revolutions tend to evolve (or devolve) into civil wars – that is, if they don’t start out that way. For that matter, we often forget the American revolution was itself a civil war between British subjects – loyalists and revolutionaries.

And the American Civil War has also been seen as the unfinished business of the American Revolutionary War, with the victor of the American Revolution effectively as the South (or what Gore Vidal called the Virginian junta). Indeed, some have seen both as part of series of Anglo-American civil wars back to the English civil war. Not to mention the American Revolutionary War’s loose sequel, the War of 1812.

However, both are more than representative – each earn top entry in those categories. In large part that’s due to their iconic predominance in American history and therefore in the American popular culture that is to a large extent global popular culture.

But more so because I categorize the American Revolution as the best revolution – firstly, because it succeeded, and secondly that it did not collapse into despotism like other revolutions. Pro tip – revolutions are best when they are limited. The more radical the revolution’s goals – the more it seeks to overturn and upend – the more likely it is to fail, or worse, succeed as despotism. Also – shout-out to the American Revolution’s good fortune in its quality of leadership, particularly Washington (with his only rival in popular American reverence being its Civil War president Lincoln).

Secondly, these two wars also earn their special mention in another category of wars that will get their own Top 10 – American wars. Although in that case I do cheekily profess to rank them by their art of war – and the American Revolutionary War ranks up there with the best American wars in art of war.

In large part, that is because it is almost unique among American wars as the Americans fought it as underdogs, against the largest and most powerful maritime empire in history (of course, that is, apart from their own subsequent modern maritime empire)

And they won it through the tried and true art of war for states weaker than their adversaries (as well as Americans generally in their bigger wars) – having others do the fighting for you. In particular, the French – but also the Spanish and Dutch in what was effectively a world war against Britain.

Not so much the American Civil War of course, which was fought entirely between themselves without foreign allies or intervention – and remains, not coincidentally, the American war with the highest American casualties.

Thirdly and finally, these two wars earn their special mention for their own significant impact in history, military or otherwise.

The American Revolution looms larger here, inspiring as it did the Haitian and Latin American revolutions. And it not only inspired the French revolution, but directly led to it as the French monarchy had bankrupted itself fighting the American revolution – literally two revolutions for the price of one.

The American Revolution also not only saw the United States gain independence from the British maritime empire, but ultimately supplanting it as world power, fuelled by their territorial expansion across the continent that also originated with the American Revolution.

And perhaps Europeans – particularly Germans, who were unified under Bismarck at about the same time – might have paid more attention to the American Civil War as more indicative of the attrition, industrial mobilization and general slog-fest of modern warfare, as opposed to, say outliers like the Franco-Prussian War.

Lest we do too much cheerleading for the American revolution, let’s remember its losers, apart from the British (as well as French and Spanish) monarchy. British loyalists – many of whom fled to Canada or elsewhere. Those native Americans allied with the British or who otherwise sought to thwart the growing United States. And of course slaves and women, as the new American republic deprived both of liberty or representation, uncannily echoing classical Athenian democracy.

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****
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(4) FRENCH REVOLUTION & NAPOLEONIC WARS (1789-1815)

 

Cue the La Marseillaise!

The wars that made the modern world – and the modern world wars. Indeed, I’ve seen it persuasively argued that the Napoleonic Wars should outrank the First World War as the more genuinely global conflict. And the French Revolution – along with its subsequent wars – are generally regarded as the landmark of modern political history, hence the god-tier special mention entry.

Napoleon needs little introduction – the Corsican artillery officer who commandeered the French Revolution and crowned himself Emperor of France to dominate Europe.

Napoleon distinguished himself as one of the most brilliant military commanders of history. Under his leadership, the French armies repeatedly defeated numerically superior Austrian, Prussian and Russian armies – outfighting coalition after coalition led and financed by Britain.

The French in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars were not the cheese-eating surrender monkeys of the modern joke – a somewhat unhistorical slur in any event given France’s military history, although the Book of Lists did rank France among its Top 10 Most Defeated Nations in Modern History – but the armies that forged a French empire across Europe from Spain to Russia and from Italy to Denmark.

But in the end Napoleon lost his Napoleonic wars – his empire dismantled, France completely defeated (once and for all in a battle subsequently commemorated by Abba) and Napoleon himself exiled to progressively more pathetic islands.

Despite his strategic and tactical brilliance, Napoleon was undermined by his own flaws. One basic flaw was his nepotism in handing out kingdoms or nations as prizes to his relatives – most critically in giving the kingdom of Spain to his brother Joseph, which prompted Spain to rise up against France in the Peninsular War, the running sore or “Spanish Ulcer” of Napoleon’s empire

Of course, it didn’t help that Napoleon was relentlessly opposed by the British, who were unparalleled in magnificent bastardry – with their most cunning aspect to pose as being nice, as if they were just going about playing cricket rather than taking out almost every country on earth in the name of empire.

In fighting the world’s greatest maritime power, Napoleon was handicapped by his lack of understanding of naval strategy (or his navy’s lack of ability) as well as geopolitics. It was trying to fight outside Europe (and on the seas) that Napoleon met with his earliest (and most consistent) defeats.

For all his romping around Europe, he effectively was bottled up in Europe by the British navy, unable to project his power into the world. All his victories in Europe did not change the basic fact that true world power had moved from the center of Europe to its edges – to the maritime empire of Britain and the continent-spanning empire of Russia, which ultimately crushed him between them. And in the end, all Napoleon’s wars achieved was handing world empire over not to himself, but to two successive Anglo-Saxon powers, Britain and the United States (the latter not least through the Louisiana Purchase) – the real winners of the Napoleonic Wars.

The Napoleonic Wars also initiated the rise of Germany under Prussia – with Prussia reforming itself militarily, and then, as part of the Congress of Vienna seeking to beef it up for a better balance of power, acquiring industrial regions in Germany that transformed agrarian Prussia into an industrial leader in the nineteenth century.

Of course, Germany was to have the same fatal flaw as that of Napoleon before them, bottled up between Britain and Russia as well as misjudging the extent to which world power had moved beyond Europe. Actually, their situation was even worse, as world power to their west had moved across the Atlantic to the United States, well beyond their reach. Indeed, only twenty years after Waterloo, another Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville predicted Russia and the United States as the two global powers – a process that visibly took shape during the Napoleonic Wars.

The French Revolutionary Wars and Napoleonic Wars saw the transformation of Europe and the world – spreading revolutionary principles over much of Europe (then identified as liberal with the same distaste as a subsequent era was to identify socialist or communist).

Those principles saw the transformation of formerly aristocratic armies into the beginnings of modern warfare, not least the levee en masse or mass conscription of armies – which saw the French revolutionary army achieve objectives that had eluded the French monarchy for centuries

It also saw the beginnings of total war – with the dawn of industrial warfare (with the Industrial Revolution lending Britain the ability to punch above its demographic weight) and the dawn of ideological warfare, as well as the emergence of nationalism (or “people’s wars”) and militarism in the culture of war

“The wars had profound consequences on global history, including the spread of nationalism and liberalism, the rise of Britain as the world’s foremost naval and economic power, the appearance of independence movements in Latin America and subsequent decline of the Spanish Empire and Portuguese Empire, the fundamental reorganization of German and Italian territories into larger states, and the introduction of radically new methods of conducting warfare.”

To which might have been added other things, such as the relative peace in continental Europe during the nineteenth century, and the territorial expansion of the United States with the Louisiana Purchase. And my own pet theory that the destruction of indigenous nations or peoples in the Americas and Australasia can be traced to Napoleon. Not directly, of course, but indirectly through the Louisiana Purchase, consolidation of British “settlement” in Australia and Latin American revolution or independence, which accelerated the impending destruction of indigenous peoples or nations.

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****

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(5) RUSSIAN REVOLUTION & CIVIL WAR (1917-1922)

 

That’s right – it’s the communist revolution, as in THE communist revolution. The origin or archetype of all subsequent communist revolutions, which in turn have made the word revolution itself virtually synonymous in modern history with communist revolution.

“Civilization is being completely extinguished over gigantic areas, while Bolsheviks hop and caper like troops of ferocious baboons amid the ruins of cities and corpses of their victims.”

I’ve included the two great eighteenth century revolutions or revolutionary wars – the wars of the American Revolution and the French Revolution – in my god-tier special mentions as wars that made the modern world.

However, they are only two of the four revolutions I rank as the god-tier revolutions of history pursuant to adding the two definitive twentieth century revolutions. I was going to reserve the latter two revolutions for my top ten revolutions but consider that they simply have too great a scale and impact, particularly in the fascinatingly convoluted civil wars fought because of them, to omit from special mentions for my top ten wars.

So following on from my special mentions for the American and French Revolutions, this is my special mention for the third of my four great revolutions or revolutionary wars – the Russian Revolution and Civil War, evolving from and overlapping with the Eastern Front of the First World War.

Whereas the American Revolution and French Revolution had been the vanguard of modern liberalism and nationalism, the Russian Revolution was the vanguard of modern Marxist socialism – literally in the ideology of its chief revolutionary Lenin, for which its strand of socialism came to be named as Marxist-Leninism.

Or in other words, communism, although technically communism was its professed theoretical end state – or rather, end-statelessness, since Marxism proclaimed its ‘temporary’ authoritarian state, the dictatorship of the proletariat, would wither away.

However, the Marxist authoritarian state proved much more durable than Marx had anticipated, particularly the new communist government or Soviet Union that emerged from the Russian Revolution and Civil War.

It also proved to provoke much more fervor, both for and against it, in a manner similar to Marx’s opiate of the masses, religion. I sometimes like to quip about the four great evangelizing or missionary religions in history – Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, and Marxist-Leninism. And of the other three, the Bolshevik revolutionaries in the Russian Revolution and Civil War most closely resembled the militancy of Islam – as observed by Paul Johnson, although Johnson also thought Lenin even closer to Jean Calvin, “with his belief in organizational structure, his ability to create one and then dominate it utterly, his puritanism, his passionate self-righteousness, and above all his intolerance”.

It tends to be forgotten that there were in fact two revolutions in the Russian Revolution, resulting in one of my pet peeves of history with the popular misconception that the Bolsheviks overthrew the Russian monarchy of the Tsar.

They did not. The first revolution or February Revolution did, instituting the new Provisional Government in the style of a parliamentary republic and closer to the liberalism or nationalism of the American and French Revolutions.

What the Bolsheviks overthrew, in the second revolution or October Revolution that is generally remembered as the Russian Revolution, was the first revolution’s Provisional Government – capitalizing (heh) on that Government’s single biggest weakness, the continuation of Russia’s war effort in the First World War.

Surprisingly, the Bolsheviks did this by mostly bloodless coup – at least at the outset. The resistance to their revolution and their reaction to that resistance proved very bloody indeed. The new Bolshevik regime, which ultimately became the Soviet Union, pulled out of the world war but fought a far-flung civil war on an even larger scale. It always seemed to me ironic that Russian war-weariness from the casualties of the First World War played such a large part in the revolution led by the Bolsheviks, only for the Bolsheviks to fight a civil war which involved even more casualties in the former Russian empire than the First World War.

And it’s that civil war which is particularly fascinating, albeit incredibly convoluted, as far removed from the more straightforward civil wars fought (at least largely) between two opposing sides. Instead, the Russian Civil War was what Wikipedia describes as a “multi-party civil war” and what I would describe as an all-out battle royale or pile-up.

Sure, there were the two largest combatants – the Bolsheviks or Reds, and the so-called Whites, “the loosely allied forces” in opposition to the Bolsheviks. Beyond the opposing Red and White Armies, there were the Blacks or anarchist forces, particularly those led by Makhno in Ukraine, and the non-ideological Greens or nationalist forces. Not to mention a Blue Army in there somewhere, rival militant socialists, village peasant factions, Baltic and Caucasian nationalist separatists, Poland, and more.

And beyond them were the foreign forces – the Allies intervening for the Whites or against the Red Army, “whose primary goal was re-establishing the Eastern Front of World War 1” and the Central Powers, chiefly Germany, intervening for the Reds or “rivalling the Allied intervention with the main goal of retaining the territory they had received in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Soviet Russia”.

While the Allied intervention extended to a dozen or more nations depending on how you reckon them, it is another one of my pet peeves of history when people, usually left wing, bring this up as an indictment of capitalist states going all-out attempting to crush “the revolution”. While the Allies no doubt hoped to reopen the Eastern Front and therefore opposed the Reds, they were even less united than the Whites they ostensibly supported, and with a few notable exceptions never committed forces on any decisive scale – mostly more in the nature of a few guys as advisors or sitting around docks to protect them or the materiel they had shipped to their former Russian ally.

Ultimately the Bolsheviks or Reds won against all other combatants, among other things from their greater unity and fanatical purpose, as well as a greater ability to make promises and break them later – particularly the longstanding ability of communists to stab anarchists in the back. “Some historians have determined that the Black Army saved the entire war from the Whites at several points…However, they were betrayed three separate times by the Bolsheviks and defeated finally when they could turn their full force onto them”

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****

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(6) CHINESE REVOLUTION & CIVIL WAR (1911-1949)

 

That’s right – it’s the other definitive communist revolution, and arguably the true model of communist revolution or insurgency in the Global South.

The fourth of the four revolutions I rank as the god-tier revolutions of history and include in my special mentions for my top ten wars from sheer scale and impact – but also in this case as it was more civil war than revolution.

It naturally follows on from my special mention for the Russian Revolution and Civil War, not least because of the role Soviet assistance played in it but also because it replayed many of the same beats, albeit over a much more protracted period – in at least two phases, or three if you count the initial warlord period.

Of course, the original Chinese Revolution – of which both the two largest warring parties in the civil war, the Communists and the Nationalists or Kuomingtang (KMT) saw themselves as the true successors – the one led by Sun Yat-sen (or Sun Yuxian) that overthrew the Qing dynasty as China’s last imperial dynasty, was in 1911-1912 and hence preceded the Russian Revolution in 1917.

However, as was often the case with the collapse of central state authority in China (or the mandate of heaven), it devolved into the usual competing warlords or warring states from 1916-1927 – in an exotic multi-party battle royale that might be compared to the Russian Civil War at the height of all its chaotic glory.

It even had foreign intervention, albeit on a smaller scale than the Russian Civil War. The Soviets assisted the main warring party, the Nationalists seeking to reunify China under their Republic, as the Soviets saw them as the necessary prelude to socialism. Intriguingly, the Germans also assisted the Nationalists – and more intriguingly, that assistance continued from the warlord period to the first genuine phase of the Chinese Civil War, by both the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany.

It is intriguing to ponder how world history might have turned out if Nazi Germany had continued to support Nationalist China, but they swapped to the foreign power that ominously loomed over China to exploit its weakness and ultimately was the one to intervene most decisively of all – Japan.

The warlord period is generally considered to have transitioned to the first phase of the Chinese Civil War proper from 1927 “when Chiang Kai-shek led the Socialist-Nationalist two thirds of the KMT’s military forces against Wang Jingwei’s Socialist-Communist/Internationalist third…the first time in the Republic’s history that two organisations with sufficient bases of popular support and military-economic power to potentially unify the country had fought one another”.

Wang Jingwei was subsequently eclipsed by the new Chinese communist leader who became virtually synonymous with the Chinese Civil War and for whom Chinese communist ideology was named – Mao.

However, the Chinese communists did not do too well in this first phase, with effective control of less than a twentieth of the population (compared to the third controlled by Chiang’s Nationalists) and were on the brink of complete extinction. “Their doom was, historians agree, imminent and inevitable” – until they were effectively saved by the Japanese in the Second Sino-Japanese War from 1937.

The Japanese had already indirectly given the Chinese communists some much needed reprieve with their invasion of Manchuria in 1931. In an episode which also showed that some of the warlord period chaos lived on in the Nationalists, the Xian Incident, two of Chiang’s generals kidnapped him to force him to form a united front with the communists against the Japanese.

Chiang subsequently reneged on the united front with renewed hostilities against the communists but the Sino-Japanese War from 1937 forced his hand again to put those hostilities on hold for a second united front against Japan, even if both he and the communists increasingly paid lip service to it in preference to the inevitable renewal of civil war against each other.

Despite the united front, Chiang’s Nationalists bore the brunt of Japan’s war in China, which arguably dealt them their mortal wound in China’s civil war. In 1944, Japan launched its last major offensive, Operation Ichi-go – the last successful offensive by it or any Axis power towards the end of the Second World War and yet largely unknown outside specialist historians – which severely weakened Chiang’s forces (as well as an economy increasingly ravaged by hyper-inflation). In general, “the demands of fighting the war essentially destroyed the KMT’s capacity to function as an administration”.

The civil war resumed “as soon as it became apparent that Japanese defeat was imminent” (at the hands of the Americans) “with the communists gaining the upper hand in the second phase of the war from 1945 to 1949, generally referred to as the Chinese Communist Revolution”.

This again saw foreign intervention along predictable Cold War lines – the Soviets on the side of the Communists and the Americans on the side of the Nationalists.

The Americans were notoriously cautious in their intervention – subsequently giving rise to accusations of “losing” China and communist infiltration of the American government. What is interesting is that the Soviets were equally cautious in their own intervention, perhaps from Stalin’s intuition that a united communist China would be their rival in the long term. Hence the Soviets consistently urged restraint on Mao to accept the north-south partition that was all the vogue in Cold War Asia – between a Communist north and a Nationalist south.

Mao ignored this and the Communists gained control of mainland China anyway, proclaiming the People’s Republic of China. However, the Communists ultimately had to accept a residual partition of a different kind with the Nationalists retreating to the island of Taiwan to proclaim their Republic of China there, as the Communists had no means to pursue them – particularly after the US gave their naval support to Taiwan. That partition of course continued even until today, remaining as a source of tension with no armistice or treaty signed between them.

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****

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(7) BRONZE AGE COLLAPSE

 

Styled as World War Zero by some historians.

The Bronze Age Collapse – or more precisely Late Bronze Age Collapse – was the widespread societal collapse of Mediterranean Bronze Age civilization in the 12th century BC, argued to be worse than the collapse of the western Roman Empire or even the worst case of societal collapse in human history.

Minoan Crete and Mycenaean Greece – the Greeks of the Trojan War – were among the most famous casualties, ushering in the Greek Dark Ages for a few centuries.

However, they are among about a dozen ancient civilizations that collapsed or declined – foremost among them the Hittite Empire that collapsed in Anatolia, while Egypt’s New Kingdom and the Assyrians clung on by the skin of their teeth, in decline or weakened. “Almost every significant city in the eastern Mediterranean world was destroyed, many of them never to be occupied again.”

I don’t know much about the finer details of the Bronze Age Collapse, but then neither does anyone else ultimately, as it remains the subject of argument and theory.

However, war is often cited as the main culprit, typically at the hands of the mysterious and to some extent still hypothetical “Sea Peoples”, seaborne raiders to rival the more usual horse blitzkrieg of nomadic herding tribes in civilization-crushing effect.

I certainly think war played a major part, hence this special mention, although am less clear whether it was the cause of the collapse or an effect – with the latter involving the Sea Peoples and others effectively moving into the void left by collapsing civilizations.

Interestingly, the Sea Peoples are proposed to include a number of ethnic groups – one of which is identified as the ancestors of the Philistines faced by the Israelites in the Bible. The Israelites themselves rose in the vaccuum left behind by the retreat or collapse of Hittites, Egyptians and Assyrians – so that the Bible itself has origins in the Bronze Age Collapse, as does that other landmark of western culture, the Iliad and the Odyssey.

Apart from Sea Peoples and war, other causes are proposed for the collapse – political fragmentation or rebellion within societies, drought or famine, natural disasters such as earthquakes or volcanic eruption, plagues, and the collapse of trade for manufacture of bronze (or the emergence of iron among adversaries).

Or a combination of all of these – “the civilizations could have endured any one disaster, but not multiple at the same time, especially not when they were feeding into one another”.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

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(8) PELOPONNESIAN WAR (431-404 BC)

 

Greek against Greek – Athens vs Sparta.

There was a point when I cracked during the film 300. It was when Leonidas spoke about the necessity of Sparta fighting Persia because even “those boy-loving philosophers” in Athens were fighting Persia. “Screw you, Leonidas”, I yelled “the Peloponnesian War isn’t over!” And after the ushers bounced me from the cinema, I ruminated on this slur on the Athenians. There was of course the fact that they were the true Greek heroes of the Persian Wars.

But there was also, you know, the Peloponnesian War of Athens against Sparta (or Peloponnesian Wars, as there was first and second war with a brief peace between them).

And we’re still fighting it, in that the war between democratic Athens and oligarchic Sparta underlies the grand ideological conflict in Western civilization. Few things may actually have an ideal Platonic form, but Sparta did – Plato’s Republic, with its philosopher-kings or guardians who perceive the Forms of the true reality, trained from childhood to govern in the interests of the polity (by physical and moral regimen) and bound by stricter rules than the rest of the populace.

It has been argued that Plato’s Republic was a dystopian satire rather than a utopian ideal, but it is difficult not to see it intended as the latter – or worse, as Plato’s distaste for his own democratic Athens (which after all, executed his beloved teacher and philosophical mouthpiece Socrates) and idealization of a philosophical version of Athens rival, Sparta, although he and his ideas didn’t do too well when put into practice with attempts at a philosopher-king in Syracuse.

And so we are still fighting the Peloponnesian War against Plato’s mystical fascism or totalitarian Spartanism as it has recurred throughout Western political ideology – the General Will of Rousseau, the dictatorship of the proletariat and its revolutionary vanguard in Marxism or communism, the Fuhrerprinzip of fascism or Nazism, and so on.

Of course, I know this is mostly my projection. I’m not sure if Western political ideology has actually been influenced by Sparta or even Plato and his Republic to that extent (or how much Sparta and Plato influenced each other for that matter). But I’m not the only one to see such parallels and I’m sticking with it – it has a certain mythic resonance. Hence its god-tier special mention entry second to the Trojan War, which might otherwise seem extravagant for a war between Greek city-states.

And what about, you know, the historical Peloponnesian War, you ask? To paraphrase Martin Prince’s sneer from The Simpsons, I’m aware of its work – namely, that Sparta won, with a little help from their Persian friends, albeit to be humbled later by Thebes, before the Macedonians and Romans swept over all the Greek city states.

And that Athenian political ideas didn’t work too well in Syracuse either, with the disastrous Athenian Syracuse Expedition sometimes likened to the American experience in Vietnam, only a lot worse for the ultimate defeat of Athens in their not so cold war against Sparta.

As I said previously, Plato’s ideas – and Plato himself – didn’t fare too well in Syracuse, when he came closest to implementing his Republic and its philosopher-kings in practical reality through Syracuse and its tyrant. Closest that is, as in not at all, founding the time-honored tradition of how intellectuals fare when courting people in power or political tyranny – running afoul of tyrants and narrowly avoiding execution or literal slavery and imprisonment.

Of course, history is a lot messier than our black and white projections of it. Lest we think of the Spartans too much as the bad guys, while their allies wanted Athens destroyed and its population enslaved after its defeat, it was the Spartans with their warrior code of honor who declined to do so – particularly as they regarded that all of Greece owed Athens a debt of honor for its role in the Persian War. And screw you, Thebes and Corinth! I’ve got a letter for the Corinthians and this time there’s no love in it. I’m an Athenian fan.

And for that matter, even the Spartanism or mystical fascism of Plato in my projection may be more nuanced than that, given it has a recurring appeal to or arguments for it. Even I’m a fan of one of the many pop culture versions of Plato’s Republic – Judge Dredd’s Mega-City One. Mega-City One is essentially Plato’s Republic in twenty-second century America, with the Judges as its philosopher-kings or guardians and the Law as its Forms. Judge Dredd – he is the Forms!

 

RATING: 4 STARS****
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(9) CRISIS OF THE THIRD CENTURY (235 – 284 AD)

 

Before the Fall came the Crisis…

With the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire deserving first special mention, is it any surprise that the Crisis of the Third Century, that dress rehearsal of the fall, is far behind?

The Crisis of the Third Century – also known as the Military Anarchy or Imperial Crisis – had much the same scope as the decline and fall. Indeed, the Crisis of the Third Century was part of the decline, even if the empire narrowly forestalled its fall for another two centuries. Many of the fundamental problems of the empire from the Crisis endured to the fall, even when in muted form.

Narrowly forestalled its fall, that is, as in the empire “nearly collapsed under the combined pressure of repeated foreign invasions, civil wars, and economic disintegration” – “at the height of the crisis, the Roman state had split into three distinct and competing polities”, the so-called Gallic Empire and Palmyrene Empire vying with the central Roman Empire in its western and eastern provinces respectively.

Indeed, had it collapsed – or fragmented – it is hard to imagine the eastern half of the empire enduring in quite the same durable form as it did two centuries later. For one thing, the empire was divided into thirds rather than halves – with what was to become the eastern empire, that is, apart from the Palmyrene Empire, more resembling a quarter than half, albeit not unlike the eastern empire after it had rebounded from Arab conquests. It also lacked the capital founded by Constantine – Constantinople, with its nigh impenetrable defenses against all but the most overwhelming siege – or indeed the seat of imperial government founded as its own distinctive new Roman empire.

Although mind you, the eastern empire pulled off its own near miraculous recovery from crises – note that plural, crises – to rival that of the third century, like it looked back at the classical empire’s direst crisis and said hold my beer.

Two things saved the classical empire in the Crisis of the Third Century, even if it went from classical to late empire.

The first was that, as fearsome as the foreign invasions were, they lacked the ability or even intent to conquer territory or form their own states within the empire, rather than raiding it for plunder albeit on a larger scale than ever before. Even the Sassanid Persian Empire – the closest adversary the Roman Empire had to a rival peer state – for all its successes only raided Roman provinces and moved its border slightly away from its capital.

The second was a series of soldier emperors or barracks emperors – mostly the so-called Illyrian emperors originating from that region as the then heartland of the Roman army – who managed to hold the line and turn the tide to restore the empire, “an accomplishment many historians regard as about as unlikely and impressive as any of Rome’s Golden Age achievements in building the empire in the first place”.

Foremost among them of course was Aurelian – Restitutor Orbis or Restorer of the World, who reunited the empire by defeating the rival Palmyrene and Gallic Empires – but he built on the achievements of the emperors who came before him, Claudius Gothicus and arguably also Gallienus, and had successors who consolidated his achievements, notably Probus and the emperor who is credited with finally ending the Crisis, Diocletian.

At the core of the Crisis was the political instability of imperial succession (and usurpation) suggested by the other names used for the Crisis (Military Anarchy and Imperial Crisis).

Tacitus had observed that the ‘secret of the empire’ had been exposed with the succession crisis after Nero in the first century – “that emperors could be made elsewhere than in Rome”, a secret that excited “all the legions and their generals”.

Despite this observation, those legions and their generals had mostly followed the various imperial dynastic successions for the first two and a half centuries of empire – its founding Julio-Claudian dynasty, the Flavian dynasty, the adoptive succession of the Five Good Emperors, and the Severan dynasty.

In the Crisis, however, the legions and their generals had become very excited indeed – as one so-called barracks emperor succeeded another, usually by usurpation. And that’s just the line of imperial succession generally regarded as legitimate – beyond that there were literally countless usurpers, some of which we are still discovering through archaeology or coins.

Indeed, it often seems from the Crisis that where even the most minor commanders of a legion or legions had even the barest degree of military success (or were just left outside or stranded by the ebbing tide of imperial authority), they would proclaim themselves as emperor – or their legions would.

Not surprisingly, with Roman commanders and their legions marching either to advance their own imperial claims or against those of others, that saw them abandon the defense of the empire’s borders.

That was compounded by drain on population by the Cyprian Plague that raged through the empire, and which struck military barracks or manpower particularly hard – indeed the capture of Emperor Valerian by the Persians, the first time an emperor was captured by foreign forces, was attributed to his army being laid waste by plague.

The population decline of the empire also compounded its economic instability, characterized by the collapse of its currency and trade.

Through the gaping holes left in the imperial borders poured the empire’s recurring foreign enemies to raid it – further compounding the empire’s economic decline as the empire’s problems became an intense feedback loop as each problem cranked up the others.

Foremost in notoriety as the empire’s recurring enemies were the German barbarian tribes – who had grown in military capability (and relative population) through two centuries of contact with the empire, although they were not yet as capable as they were when they brought about the fall (and mostly replaced those Roman commanders and their legions vying within the empire).

The capabilities of the Germans were increased by forming new tribal coalitions or confederations – particularly the Franks, who raided across the Rhine through Gaul as far as Spain, and the Alemanni, who raided through the Alps into Italy, even threatening the city of Rome itself (the first external threat the city had faced for centuries) and giving Aurelian himself pause, inflicting his only defeat before he rallied to victory against them.

And across the Danube came the Germans who were ultimately to do more than anyone else to bring about the fall of the empire – the Goths, raiding as far as Greece and even Asia Minor because they managed to get themselves a fleet and there’s nothing worse than barbarians with boats.

All these German raiders paled in comparison to the Sassanid Persians – which as I noted was the only state on Rome’s borders that came close to being Rome’s peer – as they raided deep into Rome’s eastern provinces, particularly Syria.

As was typically the case, Rome’s worst enemy was itself as it fractured into three rival empires fighting among themselves. The core empire remained around Italy, fortunately including the Illyrian military heartland of the empire and its breadbasket in north Africa – but it lost its western provinces to the Gallic Empire led by usurpers, and its eastern provinces to the Palmyrene Empire, essentially a client state that had loyally led the defense against the Sassanid Persians but had gone rogue under its queen Zenobia.

Fortunately, along came Aurelian – breathing two centuries of life into the empire before the fall.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

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(10) GERMANIC & GOTHIC WARS

 

“Give me back my legions!”

The Roman-Germanic Wars – the longest wars fought by the Roman Republic, Roman Empire and eastern Roman Empire, both in space and time, the wars of the crisis and fall of the classical empire.

In space, they were fought along Rome’s northern frontier from the Rhine through the Alps to the Danube. I’ll see Turner’s Frontier thesis about the frontier defining American history and raise it with the Roman-German frontier defining world history.

In time, they exceeded even the seven centuries of Roman-Persian Wars, extending both before and after the latter if you count them extending through the Gothic Wars and Lombard Wars fought by the eastern empire.

And yes – I’ve effectively featured Roman-Germanic and Roman-Gothic wars in my special mentions for the Crisis of the Third Century as well as the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, with the Goths playing the leading role in the latter. It’s not overstating it to attribute the fall of the Roman Empire to the Goths, even if as Youtuber Tominus Maximus quips, they’d didn’t mean to do it.

However, the Roman-Germanic wars date back before the empire to the republic, prior to the Republic’s wars with Persia, with the Cimbrian War in 113-101 BC – a war often overlooked for the more glamorous Punic Wars, despite a Roman defeat in the Battle of Arausio exceeding that at Cannae and the first threat to Italy or Rome itself since the Second Punic War.

The Republic saw more Roman-Germanic Wars with Caesar’s Gallic Wars – which despite being primarily directed at the conquest of Gaul also had campaigns against Germanic tribes such as the Suebi or across the Rhine, even if the latter weren’t much more than skirmishes compared to the subsequent wars.

When it comes to the classical empire, the Roman-Germanic Wars might be classified as falling into three phases.

The first phase was essentially when the Roman Empire held the initiative against the Germans – to the extent that there was the serious possibility of the empire incorporating Germania as a province or provinces, potentially pushing the imperial border from the Rhine to the Elbe or Weser. Famously that possibility was lost with Varus and his three legions in the Roman defeat at the Battle of Teutoburg Forest at the hands of Arminius, German turned renegade from his Roman citizenship.

Despite this defeat, the Roman Empire still (mostly) held the initiative against the Germans, although they used it more for pre-emptive or punitive expeditions, not least to avenge the defeat at Teutoburg Forest, rather than imperial expansion.

The second phase might be considered as one in which the initiative oscillated between the Romans and the Germans in clashes at and over the frontier. The Romans were mostly robust enough to retain both the initiative and frontier, but from the Marcomannic Wars in 161-180 AD onwards Germans and Goths were able to make substantial incursions within the empire – as in the Crisis of the Third Century or the invasions of the western empire fought by Julian or Valentinian.

The third phase is that of the decline and fall of the classical empire, when the Germans – particularly the Goths – increasingly held both the initiative and territory within the empire itself, from the Gothic War of 376-382 and the Roman defeat at the Battle of Adrianople in 378 onwards. Ultimately, the western empire and Rome itself fell to the Germans and Goths.

The fall of the classical or western empire wasn’t the end of Roman-Germanic and Roman-Gothic Wars, as the eastern empire continued fighting them – against the Vandals in north Africa, against the Visigoths in Spain, and above all against the Ostrogoths in the Gothic Wars of 535-554 in Italy.

The Byzantine-Gothic Wars were initially very successful against the odds under the leadership of Belisarius, but bogged down with an impressive revival by the Ostrogoths and ultimately ended with a Pyrrhic victory for the Romans – (re)conquering Italy from the Ostrogoths but then left desperately clinging on to increasingly small parts of it against a new Germanic invader, the Lombards.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

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(11) ROMAN-PERSIAN WARS

 

The first world war, fought intermittently on the frontier between successive Roman and Persian polities over almost seven centuries.

No, seriously. Well, half seriously.

The Roman-Persian Wars were a world war, or war between two different worlds – that might have been fought on the frontier between them, a little like the Western Front writ large (and long) but had ramifications or repercussions throughout both empires that extended across Eurasia from Britain to India.

And that comparison to the First World War’s Western Front writ large and long stands. Despite seven slugging centuries of grinding war, the Roman-Persian border remained remarkably stable.

“One has the impression that the blood spilled in the warfare between the two states brought as little real gain to one side or the other as the few meters of land gained at terrible cost in the trench warfare of the First World War.”

That is, until the last dramatic phase of the wars, the Byzantine-Sasanian War of 602-628 – which might be compared to the similarly abrupt and dramatic reversals of fortune in 1917-1918 that ultimately saw the end of the First World War. However, even that last war of the Roman-Persian Wars effectively ended with the restoration of the status quo (and border) between the two empires.

The Roman-Persian Wars are an interesting contrast to those other Persian Wars of antiquity, the Greek-Persian Wars, in lacking the same existential stakes or outcomes – with the Greek city-states desperately defending themselves from outright conquest by the Achaemenid Persian Empire in the classical Greek-Persian Wars, and Alexander the Great conquering that same empire outright in his Macedonian-Persian Wars.

The latter always struck me as incredible in contrast to the failure of the Romans, more powerful and commanding more resources than either Alexander or their own Persian adversaries, to achieve anything like Alexander’s decisive defeat and conquest of Persia. That is despite the Romans, at least emperors Caracalla and Julian, expressly seeking to emulate Alexander. The reality seems to have been that for the most part neither side did little more than essentially raid each other over the frontier, with the Romans famously sacking the Persian capital Ctesiphon numerous times.

The Roman-Persian Wars might be classified into four phases, corresponding to three successive Roman polities and two Persian ones – not to mention Armenia bouncing back and forth between the two empires as client state or protectorate.

First, there was Roman Republic against the Parthians – initiated by the invasion of Mesopotamia by Roman general Crassus, which saw one of the Republic’s most crushing defeats at the Battle of Carrhae in 53 BC. However, the Parthians did nothing to exploit this defeat or the subsequent civil wars of the Republic with one notable exception, as they generally sought to remain on peaceful terms with the Romans. That notable exception was their support of the so-called Liberators – the assassins of Julius Caesar – and invasion of the Roman eastern provinces after the Liberators’ defeat. The Romans defeated the Parthian invasion, but the Parthians then defeated the retributive campaign by Mark Antony against them.

Second, there was the Roman Empire against the Parthians, which saw five major wars between them, mostly to the defeat of the Parthians with their capital Ctesiphon sacked three times and four Roman emperors claiming the title of Persicus Maximus. Those wars were the Roman-Parthian War of 58-63 AD (with the Roman campaign led by the general Corbulo under emperor Nero), Trajan’s campaign into Parthia, the Roman-Parthian War of 161-166 AD under Roman emperor Lucius Verus (the co-emperor of Marcus Aurelius), the campaign of Roman emperor Septimius Severus in 195-197 AD, and finally the Parthian War of Caracalla in 216-217 AD.

Third, there was the Roman Empire against the Sassanids or Sasanians, successors to the Parthians. The Sassanids were very different to the Parthians in hostile character towards Rome – in the words of Youtuber Tominus Maximus, “Sassanid Persia was like Parthia…on cocaine and mixed with crystal meth”. Most famously, there were the Sassanid incursions deep into the Roman eastern provinces during the Crisis of the Third Century, after fighting between them during the reign of Roman emperor Severus Alexander.

However, the Romans subsequently defeated the Sassanids, sacking Ctesiphon a further two times in campaigns led by Roman emperors Carus in 283 AD and Galerius (with Diocletian holding his hand) in 298 AD. The latter was the most decisive Roman victory against the Sassanids, enduring for decades until hostilities resumed in the Perso-Roman Wars of 337-361 AD under Roman emperor Constantius III and the ill-fated expedition by Roman emperor Julian.

Surprisingly, the Sassanids mellowed in the fifth century, remaining mostly peaceful with the Roman Empire while the latter’s western half fell to barbarian invasions. In part that was due to the Sassanids facing off their own barbarian threats, but it was instrumental in the survival of the eastern Roman Empire. Which brings me to…

Fourth, there was the eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire against the Sassanids or Sasanians. While the Persians were only peer state the Romans had as adversary, the classical empire had the advantage in population and resources, albeit that advantage was diluted by more far-flung commitments. After the fall of the western empire, the eastern empire and the Sassanids were much more closely matched.

Not surprisingly then, this saw the most dramatic and mobile phase of the Roman-Persian Wars from the preceding centuries of effective stalemate – with the Byzantine-Sassanid War of 602-628. First the Sassanids almost decisively defeated and conquered the eastern empire, even besieging Constantinople, but were then decisively defeated in turn by a near miraculous eastern Roman recovery under emperor Heraclius – albeit the eastern Roman empire was too weakened to exploit its victory other than regaining its lost territory and effectively restoring the status quo between them.

The ultimate futility of the Roman-Persian Wars came in their aftermath with the event that decisively ended them altogether – the Arab conquests, achieved in large part from both empires being so weakened fighting each other that they were unable to resist their new adversary, with one being completely conquered and the other barely surviving defeat as well as the loss of much of its former territory.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

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(12) ARAB CONQUESTS (622 – 751 AD)

 

The Arab conquests were a nigh-unstoppable historical explosion, once previously divided tribes in a historical backwater had been united under Mohammed – conquering one of history’s largest pre-modern empires (indeed the seventh or eighth largest in all history) on three continents in a little over a century, a blitzkrieg by horse, sail…and camel!

 “In speed and extent, the first Arab conquests were matched only by those of Alexander the Great, and they were more lasting.”

Mohammed had essentially conquered the Arabian peninsula, but his death left his successors – the three great Arab caliphates – only at the start of extending his empire to even wider conquests.

The Rashidun Caliphate, immediate successors to Mohammed, did most of the heavy lifting to break out of the Arabian peninsula. Two formidable empires blocked their path, the Persian Empire and the eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire, but the Arabs conquered the former and routed the latter back to Anatolia.

However, it was under their successors, the Umayyad Caliphate, that Arab conquests reached their greatest extent, westwards from the north African shore to Europe itself – conquering Spain (well, not quite all, in a manner similar to the famous caveat to the Roman conquest of Gaul in Asterix comics) and famously invading France before being turned back at Tours by Charles Martel.

Eastwards, the Umayyads also extended beyond Persia through central Asia to the fringes of India and China – the latter of which presented even the Tang Empire some difficulty resisting their advance.

The Umayyads were overthrown by the Abbasids in 750 AD and the Abbasids then formed the third great Arab caliphate, the Abbasid Caliphate, who then presided over what is often regarded as the Golden Age of Islam from their capital in Baghdad. The surviving Umayyad dynasty fled into exile across the Mediterranean to Spain, continuing their Caliphate as the Emirate of Cordoba independent from the Abbasids, even with their own rival golden age of Islam in the fabled Al-Andalus of Spain.

Although the Abbasids made some more territorial gains – notably Sicily and Crete – their Caliphate saw an end to the rapid Arab conquests, albeit with victory against Tang China in the Battle of Talas in 751 AD as a postscript:

“Muslim armies had come against a combination of natural barriers and powerful states that impeded any further military progress. The wars produced diminishing returns … The priorities of the rulers also shifted from conquest of new lands to administration of the acquired empire … the period of rapid centralized expansion would now give way to an era when further spread of Islam would be slow and accomplished through the efforts of local dynasties, missionaries, and traders.”

One is spoilt for choice for wars in the century and more of Arab conquests, but if one were to choose the wars that best encapsulate them as a whole, it would be the Arab-Byzantine wars from 629 AD to 718 AD.

The Byzantine or eastern Roman empire was the first state of substance that the Arabs faced when breaking out from their peninsula. It seemed incredible that the Arabs could defeat such a firmly established state, even when that state was weakened from recent war with Persia, yet they did – routing it back to Anatolia as they conquered its other territory in Asia and Africa, which then became their springboard for further conquests.

Ironically, it then seemed incredible that the Byzantines could hold the line or withstand complete defeat or conquest by the Arabs as the latter went from one victory to another – yet they did, from Arab attacks by land and by sea, even as the Arabs besieged Constantinople twice, in 674-678 AD and in 717-718 AD. Among other things, the Byzantine superweapon Greek fire was instrumental in their success.

The frontiers of Arab conquest finally stabilized between them in Anatolia, as it did elsewhere under the Abbasid caliphate at about this time, until from about 863 AD when the Byzantines – incredibly again – were able to regain both the initiative and some of their former territory, in wars usually reversed in name to the Byzantine-Arab wars to signify Byzantine ascendance.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

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(13) CRUSADES

 

The Crusades – giving religious warfare a bad name for a millennium!

But seriously, the Crusades had everything – not surprisingly, as they took place at the crossroads (heh) of history, three continents and three major world faiths (with almost every variant of sect and some other faiths thrown in).

There’s the Crusades themselves, from which there are a number to choose. Eight or nine of them, counting the more formal crusades identified as such in the Middle East (by subsequent historians), but not counting all the pseudo-crusades or quasi-crusades in the Middle East and elsewhere, as well as weird and generally disastrous spinoffs such as the People’s Crusade or the Children’s Crusade. If you throw in things like the Reconquista of the Iberian peninsula, Northern Crusades, crusades against heretics like the Albigensian or Cathar Crusade – “kill them all and let God sort them out” – and the crusading rhetoric of the Ottoman Wars, then you could easily just compile a Top 10 Crusades.

There’s the wider theme of religious warfare, beyond the crusades to other wars, exemplified by wars fought by, between or within monotheistic religions, such as the wars fought as part of the Protestant Reformation. That theme arguably also extends to wars of modern political ideology or moral causes, including religious or ideological terrorism. It’s not without reason Eisenhower called his memoirs of the Second World War “Crusade in Europe”.

And there’s the metaphorical use of crusade – as well as analogous forms of crusading movements – for ideological, moral or social movements, the paradigm of crusading as a metaphor for military or political campaigns fought for a belief or ideal.

Back to the more formal Crusades in the Middle East, on the European or ‘Western’ side, you have the Roman Empire coming together, in both its major western and eastern successors – the Catholic Church represented by the Pope in Rome answering the call for aid of the eastern Roman empire, which history disguises as the Byzantine Empire.

And answer the call they did, most famously with the knights of military orders – with my favorite the Templars or Knights Templar, which became rich and powerful, but ultimately ran afoul of the French monarchy and the Pope. Also worshipping Baphomet if you believe the medieval gossip.

Of course, the Crusaders were styled more as the Holy Roman Empire, or the founders of that empire, the Franks (despite the Franks increasingly being, you know, French) – and indeed Europeans in general continue to be called some derivative of the term Frank throughout Asia even today.

There were also Vikings, or rather their adventurous successors, the Normans, as well as those scheming Venetians, who ultimately succeeded in diverting the Fourth Crusade to attack their rival, the Byzantine Empire itself (whose claims to the Holy Land were conveniently forgotten by the Crusaders).

That was to prove one of the most short-sighted schemes of history, fatally wounding the empire that had long stood as the southern bulwark of Europe against Islamic invasion. Do you want Ottomans besieging Vienna? Because that’s how you get Ottomans besieging Vienna. Twice

And on the ‘Eastern’ side, you have a whole host of Islamic combatants, kicked off by the Seljuk Turks taking most of what is now known as Turkey from the Byzantine Empire (leading to that call for aid that started the whole Crusades), but most famously personified by Saladin (albeit he was of Kurdish ethnicity).

My favorite in the whole Crusades remains the Order of Assassins, who derived their name from the hashish with which their founder Hassan al-Sabbah doped them up and who in turn lent their name to our term for assassins.

Lacking the force for more conventional military campaigns, the Assassins focused on – you guessed it – targeted assassination as they infiltrated everyone, Muslim or Christian, until they were defeated by an enemy that came from too far away to have been infiltrated, the Mongols.

That’s right, the Mongols pop up in the Crusades, as they popped up virtually everywhere at that time. Even more interestingly, the Crusaders and Byzantines sought out the Mongols as allies against the Muslims.

This lent itself to the legend of Prester John, a mysterious Christian sovereign whose kingdom moved about Asia and Africa, much like the land of the Phantom – playing its part, as the Crusades did in general, in subsequent European maritime exploration and empire.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

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(15) CHINESE CIVIL WARS – TAIPING & BOXER REBELLIONS
(1850-1864 & 1899-1901)

 

China has such a long history of wars within itself that one really could do a Top 10 list merely for Chinese civil wars or rebellions. Indeed, one could round up a Top 10 for rebellions in Qing China alone. Few things were as spectacular in modern history – or loom as large in the hindsight of a Chinese revolutionary regime succeeding it – as the decline and fall of the Qing Empire, fighting endless rebellions within itself, until it was ultimately overwhelmed by the final one.

And by spectacular, I mean on a scale of international wars for casualties, or even world wars in the case of the Taiping Rebellion. The Taiping Rebellion might well be styled China’s world war, in the same way that the Second Congo War is styled as Africa’s world war. It was effectively a world war fought within China – on a scale of casualties exceeding the First World War, or even matching the Second World War by some estimates. Although characteristically of Chinese wars, the overwhelming majority of casualties was not from actual violence in war, but from the famine and disease that invariably accompanied the disruption of the delicate balance or supply chains of Chinese peasant agriculture.

I’ve heard it said that the Qing Empire literally faced a peasant rebellion an average of every hour or so. I don’t know the truth of that assertion, which probably tallies up the hours in the numerous historical rebellions against the Qing, although I also suspect that many or most rebellions were too limited or localised to have any serious consequence.

 

 

Not so the Taiping Rebellion. I’ve always been fascinated by millennialist or messianic movements – and it fascinates me that Qing China, formerly one of the most powerful imperial states in the world, if not the most imperial state, would find itself struggling and slogging it out for over a decade (or two if you count holdouts until 1871) with…a cult.

That’s right – a cult, one with a leader who proclaimed himself the younger brother of Jesus and declared his own Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. A cult which one would not anticipate to be particularly convincing or credible, but obviously tapped into popular unrest against the Qing.

It’s also amusing that this cult leader was effectively the equivalent of a university dropout, failing the examination for the imperial state bureaucracy. Declaring yourself the messianic leader of a heavenly kingdom and waging war against the state that failed you sounds totally like an admirable career goal in those circumstances. Why don’t more guidance counsellors recommend it?

The Taiping Rebellion marked the inexorable decline of Qing China, which was to prove terminal within half a century – and helped inspire the revolution that terminated it.

 

 

I also find the Boxer Rebellion almost as interesting as the Taiping Rebellion, because it fascinates me that Qing China could again find itself thrown into turmoil by…a secret society of mystical martial artists, generally known in English as the Boxers, but known in Chinese by the even more awesome name of the Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists.

It’s like that mysterious secret organization under crime lord Han in the Bruce Lee film Enter the Dragon – which seemed to spend all its time pointlessly drilling in martial arts to take over the world, rather than, you know, training with guns or something, existed in historical real life.

Or perhaps the Jedi in Star Wars, as like the Jedi, the Boxers claimed magical force or supernatural power, particularly invulnerability to bullets (much like the Jedi deflecting lasers)

Unlike the Taiping Rebellion which pitted itself against the Qing state and was inspired by foreign influences, particularly Christian missionaries, the Boxer Rebellion declared its slogan of supporting the Qing state and exterminating foreigners, particularly Christian missionaries.

One might consider the Boxing Rebellion as essentially the Chinese version of its near contemporary by eerie coincidence, the Ghost Dance (although the Taiping Rebellion could also be argued to be a Chinese Ghost Dance).

The Qing state found itself on the horns of a dilemma, but with those Righteous and Harmonious Fists stroking its ego, sided with the Boxers – at least by the decree of the Imperial Dowager. The Chinese imperial officialdom and military were more split, some supporting the decree and others opposing it.

The Boxer Rebellion and the Qing imperial state that supported it did as well as might be expected for combatants who placed their faith in their invulnerability to bullets. That is to say, they lost – handily defeated by the Eight Nation Alliance of Britain, France, Russia, the United States, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Italy and Japan, who found rare solidarity with each other in curb stomping the Qing Empire and the Boxers.

My friends and I had a joke that it’s ironic that China, the nation of Sun Tzu and The Art of War, should have such a consistent lack of military competence (similar to Italy, the nation of Machiavelli and The Prince, with its consistent lack of political competence).

Like most jokes, it’s an overstatement – but China did top The Book of Lists’ 10 Most Defeated Nations in Modern History, and about half of its entry was Qing China. So not surprisingly its wars against rebellions were slogging matches.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****
A-TIER (TOP TIER)

 

 

(15) BRITISH COLONIAL WARS –
ANGLO-ZULU & ANGLO-ZANZIBAR WARS (1879 & 1896)

 

The Battle of Rorke’s Drift.

That’s it – that’s the entry. Well that and the 1964 film Zulu which depicted it.

Also not quite, as British colonial wars are the archetypal wars fought by European maritime empires as they carved up the world, with the British Empire coming out in the top spot. Don’t worry – we’ll get back to Rorke’s Drift, but Britain fought numerous colonial wars.

Arguably, the most decisive colonial war or wars fought by Britain were the Napoleonic Wars. For one thing, with all the focus on their European theaters, we forget how much of the Napoleonic Wars were fought beyond Europe – and just how much of those were in essence colonial wars, with Britain coming out on top. For another, Britain’s victory in the Napoleonic Wars laid the foundations for its naval supremacy, Pax Britannica and what is sometimes called the second British Empire (to distinguish it from the first British empire until American independence).

Although its naval supremacy was the primary instrument of its empire, Britain was surprisingly versatile with a colonial army that tended to punch above its weight in numbers, which were surprisingly small, in part of course due to superior firepower (and plain old firing drill) over its colonial adversaries.

In the words of Hillaire Belloc –
“Whatever happens, we have got
The Maxim gun, and they have not”

So which of Britain’s prolific colonial wars to pick for this entry? As you can see, I’ve gone with the Anglo-Zulu and Anglo-Zanzibar Wars, firstly because I like the alliterative effect, but also because they are aptly representative of Britain’s colonial wars.

The Anglo-Zanzibar War is, however, the archetypal British colonial victory through superior firepower. Not coincidentally, it also holds the title of the shortest war in history – 38 minutes to 45 minutes, depending on which record you go by.

It was proverbial gunboat diplomacy – bonus points for involving actual gunboats, two craft with that designation, among the five British ships. Essentially, the wrong sultan succeeded to the Zanzibar Sultanate. Wrong, that is, from the perspective of the British, who preferred another one – so they simply rolled up in their ships and shelled the palace until they got the right one. Yes – they also stormed the palace with a contingent of marines or sailors and pro-British Zanzibaris. The British suffered one casualty – a wounded sailor – to about 500 Zanzibari casualties.

And with remarkably wry humor, the British billed Zanzibar for the shells the British used, among the other terms of surrender, because the British built their empire on a budget. With its puppet sultan, Zanzibar continued to be absorbed into the British Empire, and was subsequently merged with the former German colony of Tanganyika to become British Tanzania.

Now back to Rorke’s Drift, if you’re a fan of the Battle of Helm’s Deep in The Lord of The Rings film (The Two Towers), then you’re a fan of the Battle of Rorke’s Drift, as the former was filmed in a manner deliberately reminiscent of the film Zulu according to Jackson.

Indeed, Rorke’s Drift was seen at the time as the Helm’s Deep of the British Empire, a victory snatched from the jaws of the crushing defeat by the Zulus at the Battle of Isandlwana (as well as the seedy origins of the Anglo-Zulu War).

Even if contemporary observers might see Britain and its empire more as Mordor (or Isengard to America’s Mordor) rather than the Shire as Tolkien did.

If anything, Rorke’s Drift was even more epic than Helm’s Deep – as a small company of less than 150 soldiers attached to the Royal Engineers (including a substantial number of sick and wounded) fought off a force of about 3-4,000 Zulus.

Taking a step back, Rorke’s Drift was a small albeit highly celebrated part of the Anglo-Zulu War, with the British soldiers finding themselves in the path of a Zulu force in the aftermath of the opening Zulu victory at Isandlwana.

The Anglo-Zulu War itself might be seen as the last of a series of Zulu wars, from the foundation of the Zulu Kingdom as a formidable military power under Shaka. Unfortunately for his successors, the Zulu Kingdom found itself against a bigger and even more aggressive tribe – the Anglo tribe of the British Empire – and Isandlwana proved itself to be the Zulu high point of the war.

Back to Rorke’s Drift, I tend to default to its depiction in the film Zulu, which while generally accurate to the historical battle, does of course have inaccuracies (with perhaps the most egregious involving the depiction of Private Hook, a model soldier, as a rogue redeemed in the battle). The film may also be seen as somewhat problematic in these times given its celebration of British imperial victory – I don’t care.

Indeed the film tends to glamorize both sides in the battle – with the Zulus depicted as a brave, intelligent, capable, resourceful and ultimately honorable adversary. And if anyone can resist the stirring orchestral theme by John Barry, I don’t know what to say.

The British soldiers were led by Lieutenant Chard, portrayed by Stanley Baker, and his second in command Lieutenant Bromhead, portrayed by a young Michael Caine in his breakthrough film role. Deciding that retreat isn’t an option as they will move too slowly with their sick or wounded and the Zulus will catch them out in the open, they have no option but to stand and fight behind improvised barricade defenses.

Throughout the day and night (into the following day) after the Zulu force surrounds them, wave after wave of Zulu attackers are desperately and narrowly repelled by the British defenders. At one point, the Zulus succeed in setting fire to the field hospital, leading to tense scenes of the evacuation of patients under fierce attack by Zulu warriors – and British Surgeon-Major James Henry Reynolds calmly continues his surgery on a wounded soldier with fighting all around him. And yes – he got a Victoria Cross.

The British defenders retreat to the shortened lines of their inner barricades. One tactic you see through the film is the use of multiple ranks of soldiers to maintain a nearly continuous volley of fire with their bolt-action rifles. None more so than the climactic scene with three such ranks used (after falling back from desperate hand-to-hand combat at an outer barricade) to defend a massive assault by Zulu warriors. And as the camera pans back, you see the fallen Zulu warriors mere inches away from the front rank of breathless British soldiers – an impressive feat of holding the line.

That’s when you start to think from the preceding sense of overwhelming doom that hangs over the British soldiers – holy crap, they’re actually going to make it! And then – no, holy crap, they’re not…as the Zulu force masses on the hill overlooking Rorke’s Drift, seemingly barely diminished, while the British are exhausted and running low on ammunition. Lieutenant van den Burgh, their Afrikaaner advisor serving with the Natal Native Contingent, sinks to his knees and rebukes the British officers (and arguably their imperialism as well) – “Haven’t you had enough? We’re all dead!”

And then, holy crap again – as the Zulus chant, raising their spears. “They’re taunting us!” Michael Caine’s character exclaims. Van den Burgh laughs – “You couldn’t be more wrong – they’re saluting us as fellow braves!”. And then the Zulus slowly turn and walk away, still chanting, until a lone warrior is left, before he too turns and leaves.

Sadly, the historical battle ended in a more prosaic way, without the Zulus saluting the British (but more withdrawing from strategic sense and an advancing British relief column). I prefer to think it ended the way it did in the film.

11 Victoria Crosses were awarded to the defenders of Rorke’s Drift, with 17 killed and 11 wounded from their number in the battle – having inflicted 20 casualties for every one of theirs, with 351 confirmed killed from the Zulu forces (and about 500 wounded).

Britain’s colonial wars – and European colonial wars in general – exemplified the less gallant but undeniably effective side of the art of war, picking curb stomp battles, albeit usually through superior firepower rather than superior numbers. All nations would like wars like the Anglo side of the Anglo-Zanzibar War, whether or not they like to admit it – they just usually lack the means. And even if the British occasionally got stomped rather than doing the stomping, as in the Anglo-Zulu War (although they ultimately won that too).

 

RATING: 4 STARS****
A-TIER (TOP TIER)

 

 

(16) WARS OF YEARS & DAYS

 

Yes – all wars are literally wars of years or days (well, except for the Anglo-Zanzibar War of forty minutes or so) but this special mention is for the wars named by historians as such for their duration.

Of course, those titles may not be exact – the Hundred Years War lasted 116 years (intermittently).

Speaking of which, the Hundred Years War between England and France from 1337 to 1453 is one of the most prominent wars named for their duration, at least by years, famed for such things as Joan of Arc and the Battle of Agincourt.

Another would be the Thirty Years War, a war I have to concede that I know less well than I should, given that it is the definitive war of early modern history, largely ending wars of religion in Europe while also the origins of modern international law between states with the Peace of Westphalia.

There’s also the Seven Years War, which I similarly have to concede I know less well than I should, as no less than Winston Churchill claimed it as the first world war.

However, the Hundred Years War and Thiry Years have particular resonance as some historians have argued for a second Anglo-French Hundred Years War from 1689 to 1815, for no less prize than global predominance, while others have argued for the two world wars as the Second Thirty Years War from 1914 to 1945.

As for the most prominent war of days (or is that day war), the prize would have to go to the Six Day War, the third Arab-Israeli War in 1967 – in which Israel won a crushing victory and one which still shapes the Middle East today, among other things through the territory obtained by Israel from it.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

X-TIER (WILD TIER)

 

 

(17) WARS OF INDEPENDENCE & SUCCESSION

 

The archetypal wars of political states.

Admittedly wars of independence require a state to actually survive after it is subjugated by or subject to another state. Or rather, the concept of a people or nation to at least survive or remain intact – let alone emerge or aspire to its own state – when subjugated by or subject to another state. In modern parlance, the concept of national self-determination.

So you don’t see too many of them in pre-modern history, when states or peoples fought more for stakes of survival from being absorbed – or dismembered or destroyed altogether.

On occasion, there were peoples or nations approximating the modern concepts of national self-determination that rose up against the states that ruled them – although such pre-modern conflicts tend to be styled as rebellions or revolts rather than the more modern style of revolutions or wars of independence, not least because they tended to lose.

The Roman Empire offers the example par excellence – the various Jewish revolts, among the best known of their type because of their religious significance, particularly for Christianity as hints of it seeped into the New Testament. Also notable is the Iceni revolt led by Boudicea in Britain.

However, for your definitive war of independence – the one that both defined and started the wave of modern wars of independence – you have to go to none other than the American War of Independence. There were wars of independence before it, but without the same profile, influence or effect – although the Eighty Years War is an arguable close contender. It’s odd to think that before the Dutch war for independence, it was the Spanish Netherlands.

But as I said, the American War of Independence ushered in the various waves of modern wars of independence styled as such in name and effect. The first wave was in the same hemisphere, with the Haitian War of Independence following close behind it, and the various larger Latin American wars of independence in the early nineteenth century. But the other hemisphere soon followed, particularly with the various European wars of independence against the Ottoman Empire.

Of course, the high tide of wars of independence came with the wave of decolonisation in the European empires from the Second World War onwards.

On the other hand, wars of succession may well predate sophisticated political states or concepts of nationhood, perhaps back to rivals contending for prehistoric tribal chiefdoms, although the wars themselves may well lack the same depth or sophistication. More like palace coups – or duels.

But wars of succession certainly are a recurring feature upon the emergence of political states – namely political states of absolute monarchy, as a “war of succession is a war prompted by a succession crisis in which two or more individuals claim the right of successor to a deceased or deposed monarch”.

The insanely convoluted Wars of the Diadochi – or Wars of Alexander’s Successors – are some of the most famous wars of succession, and most of the endless Roman or Byzantine civil wars were essentially wars of succession.

Where wars of succession become more complicated is when foreign powers intervene, allying themselves with a faction. Such was the case in the heyday of wars of succession, the wars titled as such but that were effectively global conflicts between rival European powers, in early modern history – wars such as the War of the Spanish Succession or the War of the Austrian Succession.

My personal favorite, however, is the more metaphorical uses of the term, not for nations vying against each other for the successor to the throne of a nation, but as claimants in the vacuum or void left by the collapse or decline of a great power or multinational empire.

Herman Wouk’s duology of The Winds of War, and War and Remembrance, featured excerpts from the memoirs of fictional German general von Roon – who styled the Second World War as the War of British Succession, with Germany vying for world power from the decline of the British Empire, only of course to lose to the United States (and with the Soviet Union to expend so much blood only to transfer world power from one Anglo-Saxon power to another).

In a less fictional and more historical sense, historian J.M Roberts styled most Middle East wars as wars of Ottoman Succession, over national boundaries in the wake of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire – including the Arab-Israeli wars and the Gulf War prompted by Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait.

Most recently, I’ve seen reference to a quite a few wars between and within the post-Soviet republics styled as wars of Soviet Succession.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****
X-TIER (WILD TIER)

 

 

(18) WORLD WAR

 

World wars are a recurring theme in history beyond the wars designated as such, the First and Second World Wars – which might also be considered as a continuation of the same world war with Germany. To the extent that I like to quip about world wars from World War Zero to World War X, while ranking my top 10 entries on the scale of world war.

On the World War X-side of the equation, the Third World War loomed – and still looms – large in popular imagination, indeed larger than it did in history. Of course, in popular imagination, the Third World War evokes or is synonymous with the omnipresent (and omnicidal) threat of worldwide nuclear destruction that underlay the Cold War (and beyond). Although some argue that the Cold War WAS the Third World War, aptly enough as its actual fighting was in the Third World, with the War on Terror as the Fourth World War.

Other wars with the world war label have included the First and Second Congo Wars, particularly the latter, which has been described as Africa’s world war – for the scale of casualties and number of African nations drawn into it.

The World War Zero side of the equation – involving at least proto-world wars – is even more persuasive. I’ve read one historian argue persuasively that the Napoleonic Wars were more global than WW1, while no less than Winston Churchill claimed the Seven Years War as the first world war. I like to observe that the American Revolutionary War was in effect a world war against Britain.

Really, any war involving one or more European states from the Spanish Conquest of the Americas onwards might be labelled a world war, once those European states acquired substantial maritime empire and power in continents beyond Europe.

However, it becomes a little trickier prior to the emergence of European maritime power or empires beyond Europe. An archaeologist has controversially dubbed the Late Bronze Age Collapse as World War Zero, but this seems a little bombastic – the Muslim or Mongol conquests seem better claimants.

Indeed, the casualties of the Mongol conquests exceed those of the First World War and come close to the Second in absolute terms, while substantially exceeding even the latter in relative terms of percentage of world population.

But yes – there are no world wars to rival the wars that are officially known as such, particularly the Second, which was more destructive, extensive and pervasive than the First, despite largely being a continuation of it.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

X-TIER (WILD TIER)

 

 

(19) EMU WAR

 

The “war” the Australian army lost to flocks of flightless birds, since immortalised in meme. Although groups of emus are more commonly known as herds – or mobs.

The Australian army was the best in the world, man for man, as it had demonstrated in the First World War, and would demonstrate by stopping the German army at Tobruk and the Japanese army at Kokoda in the Second World War, but it lost to emus in 1932.

Of course, it wasn’t an actual war – the Emu War or Great Emu War was just the humorous tag given to it by the media – but a nuisance wildlife management military operation to curb the population of emus, apparently as many as 20,000, damaging farmland in Western Australia.

And there’s the rub, as the Australian army undertook a task it was not designed for, despite taking to it with machine guns – having seen their effectiveness in the First World War. Unfortunately, the emus didn’t charge at guns like the human soldiers of that war, but evaded or fled from fire.

Calling it a defeat, however, is unfair – the army did kill and wound a substantial number of emus, particularly as their skill at hunting them improved, such that by the end they were killing approximately 100 emus a week, ultimately killing almost 1,000 emus at the rate of ten rounds per confirmed kill, while also claiming 2,500 emus as wounded.

It just wasn’t economic – the emus were difficult to locate in substantial numbers and keep within range as well as scattering and evading pursuit. Even mounting a gun on a truck wasn’t effective – it wasn’t able to gain on fleeing emus and the roughness of ground prevented the gunner from firing.

And so the state and federal governments resisted further calls for military culls (in 1934, 1943 and 1948), resorting instead to the far more effective means of bounties to professional hunters.

So why the special mention amidst actual wars in history?

Well, because it does illustrate a number of themes, some of which are of note or interest for historical wars.

One is humanity’s hubris in waging war on nature, albeit more metaphorically rather than literally, not least in pest or nuisance wildlife management. Interestingly, Australia wasn’t the only nation to be “defeated” waging war against birds. Famously, China waged war against sparrows as part of its Four Pests Campaign to much more disastrous results – as the loss of crops to insects spared from sparrow predation was a contributing factor to the catastrophic famine of the Great Leap Forward.

Another is the military forces of humanity being humbled by the forces of nature in historical wars – most of all weather, which has swept away what have otherwise seemed overwhelming military forces, particularly in war at sea. It also applies to terrain – John Keegan in A History of Warfare notes how terrain (and climate) has been a limiting factor in wars throughout history, such that the majority of battles occur in surprisingly small or narrow territories on a global scale.

Occasionally, those forces of nature have included animals – with two of the most famous occurring in the Second World War, although unfortunately both are somewhat inflated and one almost so apocryphal as to be urban legend. The first involved sharks preying on the sailors from the cruiser Indianapolis when it was sunk by Japanese submarine in July 1945, made famous by iconic narration of it in the film Jaws.

The other involved crocodiles preying on Japanese soldiers trapped in mangroves by the British in the Battle of Ramree Island in Burma from January 1945 to February 1945. At one stage, they were reported to have killed all but twenty of a thousand Japanese soldiers, but sadly for fans of crocodile horror such as myself, this has been discounted to almost the reverse – at most they killed up to twenty soldiers, although they may also have scavenged on the bodies of Japanese soldiers killed by other causes.

Of course, the true unsung champions of animal destruction of human forces at war are insect vectors and the diseases they carry, which have been as effective as hostile weather in wiping out whole armies.

And then you have the theme of humanity’s use of animals in or for war or military operations. Of course, the horse is standout here, but war has seen a whole range of animals used in it – from more commonplace ones such as elephants, camels, donkeys or mules, oxen or cattle, dogs and pigeons, to more exotic animals such as pigs, moose, rats, dolphins, sea lions and others. And then you get to the truly bizarre, such as entomological warfare or animal-borne bombs – with my personal favorite as the American bat bomb project against the Japanese, taking my quip that the Americans fight wars like Batman to a literal extreme

To that you can add wars named for animals, of which there are a surprising number, albeit including similarly non-military conflicts such as the Cod Wars over fishing between the United Kingdom and Iceland, or border conflicts or near-war situations such as the Crab Wars or Pig War – with perhaps the Beaver Wars being the most intense actual wars named for animals.

And finally you have the military approximations from the Emu War itself, particularly for guerrilla war.

As one ornithologist observed, “The machine-gunners’ dreams of point blank fire into serried masses of Emus were soon dissipated. The Emu command had evidently ordered guerrilla tactics, and its unwieldy army soon split up into innumerable small units that made use of the military equipment uneconomic. A crestfallen field force therefore withdrew from the combat area after about a month”

And the commander of the operation, Major Meredith, observed after their withdrawal – ” If we had a military division with the bullet-carrying capacity of these birds it would face any army in the world … They can face machine guns with the invulnerability of tanks. They are like Zulus whom even dum-dum bullets could not stop”.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****
X-TIER (WILD TIER)

 

 

 

(20) OPIUM WARS

 

Two wars in which China got pawned by European powers – the first Opium War in 1839-1842 saw China defeated by Britain (resulting in Hong Kong being ceded to Britain among other things) and the second Opium War in 1859-1860 was slightly less humiliating for China as at least it got defeated by Britain and France rather than a solo British effort.

The nineteenth century was…not a good century for China, as the commencement of what later became known as the Century of Humiliation by foreign powers. The Qing dynasty, formerly one of the most powerful states in the world and used to styling itself as the Middle Kingdom of the world, now became the punching bag of the new European world powers. Qing China was humbled and humiliated as it was easily defeated by European modern military technology and techniques. Ultimately that dealt the death knell to the Qing dynasty, which crumbled amidst a revolution and civil war that spanned decades.

And it was all pretty sordid by the European powers as well, with the Opium Wars being fought by Britain for free trade – its free trade of opium to China, that is. The Opium Wars saw the first of the so-called Unequal Treaties between China and Western powers – as an impotent China was forced to concede territory, privileges, concessions and reparations to one European power after another in a form of de facto colonization.

De facto colonization, that is, because China was too big for actual colonization by any one European power, particularly as rival European powers were concerned with maintaining a balance between themselves in China. Indeed, the European powers were remarkably cooperative between themselves when it came to their common purpose of pawning China.

Ironically, it was a newly admitted Asian power to the European circle of world power that upset this balance and came closest to colonizing China in the twentieth century – Japan. Although of course this was the final straw of humiliation for China. It was one thing to be humbled by European powers with their new industrial and military technology. It was quite another to be humbled by an upstart smaller Asian neighbor, particularly a former tributary state.

The Opium Wars earn their special mention particularly for my fascination with the interconnection between drugs and war. It is the closest thing to a war fought over drugs like the modern stereotype of wars fought for oil – in this case, a war fought over Britain smuggling opium into China. Beyond that, it is fascinating to think how much of European colonialism (and slavery) was born from the plantation production of drugs – tobacco, coffee and tea. Even more so if you count sugar as a drug.

Of course, modern drug smugglers or cartels tend not to have the force of the world’s largest maritime empire behind them, but often play a role in more low-level war or insurgency as in Colombia. And notoriously, drug smuggling – particularly in cocaine and opium – has often laid beneath the surface of larger modern conflicts.

There is also the use of drugs in war. I’ve read that narcotics have been as much a part of war as bullets and bombs. While that appears to be an overstatement, historically drug use was often sanctioned and encouraged by militaries including alcohol and tobacco in troop rations. Of course, alcohol is something of a law of diminishing returns – what it adds in ‘Dutch courage’, it can often take away in effectiveness, famously as in the Russo-Japanese War on the Russian side.

Nazi Germany was also notorious for drug use in the Second World War, notably for amphetamine use by its armed forces, but also drug use by its leadership. However, stimulants such as cocaine and amphetamine were widely used by belligerents in both World Wars to increase alertness and suppress appetite. Drug use was also notorious in American forces in Vietnam – and has been a feature of other conflicts

And then you have the more trippy use of drugs – the Viking berserkers possibly as a result of agaric “magic” mushrooms, the Assassins named for hashish, even MK-Ultra by the CIA in the Cold War.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****
X-TIER (WILD TIER)

 

WARS: TOP 10 (SPECIAL MENTION) – TIER LIST

 

S-TIER (GOD TIER)

(1) DECLINE & FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE

(2) FIRST WORLD WAR

(3) AMERICAN REVOLUTIONARY & CIVIL WARS

(4) FRENCH REVOLUTIONARY & NAPOLEONIC WARS

(5) RUSSIAN REVOLUTION & CIVIL WAR

(6) CHINESE REVOLUTION & CIVIL WAR

 

A-TIER (TOP TIER)

(7) BRONZE AGE COLLAPSE

(8) PELOPONNESIAN WAR

(9) CRISIS OF THE THIRD CENTURY

(10) GERMANIC & GOTHIC WARS

(11) ROMAN-PERSIAN WARS

(12) ARAB CONQUESTS

(13) CRUSADES

(14) BRITISH COLONIAL WARS – ANGLO-ZULU & ANGLO-ZANZIBAR WARS

(15) CHINESE CIVIL WARS – TAIPING & BOXER REBELLIONS

 

X-TIER (WILD TIER)

(16) WARS OF YEARS & DAYS

(17) WARS OF INDEPENDENCE & SUCCESSION

(18) WORLD WARS

(19) EMU WAR

(20) OPIUM WARS