Wars & battles

In-depth guides that start simply enough for children and go deep enough for researchers.

54 articles

• War · 1899–1902Second Boer War (South African War)From 1899 to 1902 the British Empire fought the two Boer republics of southern Africa for control of the region and its gold; Britain won, but only after a long guerrilla war, the burning of farms and concentration camps in which tens of thousands of Boer and Black African civilians died.Map
• War · 1904–1905Russo-Japanese WarThe Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905) was fought between the Russian and Japanese empires over control of Manchuria and Korea; Japan’s victory shocked the world, helped spark revolution in Russia, and allowed Japan to make Korea a protectorate.Map
• War · 1910–1920Mexican RevolutionBeginning in 1910 as a revolt against the long dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz, the Mexican Revolution became a decade of civil wars among many armies and ideas, costing hundreds of thousands to more than a million lives and producing the 1917 Constitution and the modern Mexican state.Map
• War · 1914–1918World War IWorld War I (1914–1918) was a war between two groups of powerful countries, centred on Europe but reaching Africa, the Middle East, Asia and the oceans, in which new industrial weapons killed millions of soldiers and civilians and brought down four empires.Map
• War · 1937–1945Second Sino-Japanese WarFrom 1937 to 1945 the Empire of Japan waged a full-scale war of invasion against China that killed millions of Chinese civilians and soldiers, included atrocities such as the Nanjing Massacre, merged into the Second World War, and ended with Japan's surrender in 1945.Map
• War · 1939–1945World War IIWorld War II (1939–1945, and from 1937 in China) was the deadliest war in history, in which Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and imperial Japan tried to build empires by conquest and were defeated by an alliance led by the Soviet Union, the United States, Britain and China, at a cost of some 60–75 million lives, including six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust.Map