World War I
The 1914-1918 industrial war that broke empires, enfranchised mass mourning, and left a peace that did not hold.
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2World War II
A global industrial war, 1939-1945, that killed tens of millions and remade borders, law and nuclear politics.
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KKorean War
A 1950-53 peninsula war, still without a peace treaty, that fixed two Korean states and a US-ROK alliance.
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VVietnam War
A 1955-75 Indochina war that fused decolonisation, civil war and US intervention -- and remade English-language memory of limited war.
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NNapoleonic Wars
Coalition wars of 1803-1815 that spread conscription, the Code, and a British sea-power order -- ending at Waterloo.
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AAmerican Civil War
The 1861-65 US war over union and slavery that killed more Americans than any other US war and remade the Constitution.
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TThirty Years' War
A 1618-1648 Central European catastrophe of religion, dynasty and famine, ended by the Peace of Westphalia.
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IIran-Iraq War
A 1980-88 war of trenches, cities and tankers that killed hundreds of thousands and ended with UN Resolution 598 -- no triumphant peace.
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CChinese Civil War
A 1927-49 struggle between Nationalists and Communists that, after Japan's war, produced the PRC and a Republic of China on Taiwan.
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MMongol conquests
Thirteenth-century conquests that built the largest contiguous land empire and left a death toll still argued in wide scholarly ranges.
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