— · every conflict, one spiral
Three centuries of war
Start at the centre in 1700 and read clockwise: one full turn is 25 years, and the years in the margin mark where each turn begins; the small grey numbers on the rim count years into a turn. Every arc is one conflict, drawn from its first year to its last and thicker when more states took part. The brightest knots are the years when — conflicts burned at once.
Conflicts begun, decade by decade
The ring of decades
Each spoke is a decade, its length the number of conflicts that began in it, split by kind. The busiest was the —.
Russia · China · Europe
Three powers, three centuries
For each decade, the bar is the share of years its states spent at war: Russia's successive states (Tsardom to Federation), China's (Qing to People's Republic), and all European states together. Lines on top count the conflicts they entered. Russia's states were at war in — of all years since 1700, China's in —; Europe's share fell from — in the 1700s to — after 1945.
Wikidata records who took part in a war, not who started it, so this cannot separate wars of expansion from wars of defence. A state's lineage is its Correlates of War code in the HistWarDB crosswalk; "Europe" is COW codes 200–395 without Russia. Very long items (the Sino-Japanese Wars of 1894–1945, the Kashmir conflict) inflate the share for the states in them.
Every state, every year
The barcode of nations
One thin row for each of the — states and empires in the data, one column per year. Bright marks are years at war, brighter when several wars overlapped; the faint line is the state's lifespan. — spent the most years at war.
The longest stretches without war
The long peace
After its first recorded war, each state's longest run of years with no war at all, for the twenty longest. —. Bars that reach the right edge are still unbroken.
From first shot to last
How long wars last
Every conflict as a dot on a logarithmic scale of its length, sized by the states that fought it. Half of all wars are over within —; the longest, —, ran for — years.
"Series of wars" items are left out. Conflicts with no recorded end date are drawn hollow; their length is an estimate.
Who was fighting, by kind of war
Rivers of war
The width of the river is the number of state participations in each year, split by the kind of conflict. It swells to — in —.
Before 1800 much of the flow is "series of wars" items, which Wikidata types as wars but which group several separate wars.
1914–1918 · 1939–1945
Two world wars, two constellations
Each star is a state, each thread a pair of states on opposite coalitions. The Second World War pulls in — as many opposing pairs as the First.
The most war-active states
Bound by war
Ribbons join the — states with the most years at war, as thick as the number of conflicts they took part in together, as allies or enemies. The strongest bond is —.
Fronts, campaigns and theatres
Wars within wars
Every large circle is a war that Wikidata breaks into parts; the circles inside are its fronts and campaigns, sized by the number of states fighting in them. — holds the most.
Month of the year
The war clock
Red bars count wars that started in each month, blue bars wars that ended, for conflicts whose dates Wikidata records to the month. — is the most common month to go to war.