The war record.
Humanity has kept books on its own wars for six centuries, and this report reads them whole: a conflict catalog reaching back to 1400, every named war since 1816 with its participants and sides, and — from 1989 — every recorded battle event at true coordinates. The atlas below plays the whole record across a world map, year by year. The record's own arithmetic says three things at once: the long peace is real — the last eighty years sit below the six-century norm — war changed species — the interstate wars of the history books nearly vanished after 1945 — and 2022 put the old kind back on the chart. Every figure is computed from the records at render time.
published 2026-08-28 · data cutoff 2024 (latest UCDP year) · edition 1 — updated only by a new dated edition · sources: Brecke · COW · UCDP · SIPRI · EI
Six hundred years, played on the map.
Press play. The year is the biggest thing on the exhibit; beneath it, the dominant conflict of the moment, with its sides. Countries at war take color — opposing sides of an interstate war take opposing colors, civil wars burn a single amber — and from 1989 the map gains true battle events, dot by dot. The record's precision improves as it approaches you, and the era banner says which kind of truth you are seeing.
Six centuries of violence, one line.
Brecke's catalog as an annual death rate, on a log scale the axis states. The great spikes have names — the Thirty Years' War, the Taiping era, and the twin peaks of the twentieth century. And the last eighty years sit below the six-century norm — the long peace is a measured thing, not a mood.
War changed species.
Deaths by the kind of war, 1989 onward. Interstate war — the kind with flags and fronts — is the thin sliver; the modern record is intrastate war and one-sided violence against civilians. Then 2022 puts the old species back on the chart at a scale unseen in the series.
The oil thread, and the price of readiness.
Two threads the record ties to war, each labeled as what it is. Every major oil shock has a war at its door — 1973, 1979, 1990, 2022 — and the correlation runs price←war far more legibly than the reverse; this page says exactly that. Beneath it, world military spending: readiness and violence do not track each other neatly, and the chart is honest about it.
The wars, named.
The eighty deadliest named wars of the mapped record, 1816 onward — the verification surface: every row is a COW war with its recorded battle deaths, exactly as the catalog states them.
| WAR | YEARS | KIND | BATTLE DEATHS |
|---|
Where every number comes from.
The three-era architecture is the method. The record's precision changes with time, and this page states it rather than blurring it. Era I, 1400–1815: Brecke's Conflict Catalog (via Our World in Data) — an annual global death rate; participants are not mapped, and the atlas says so on its banner. Era II, 1816–1945: the Correlates of War project — every war with named participants, sides and battle deaths; countries are painted whole. Era III, 1946→: UCDP/PRIO armed conflicts, and from 1989 the UCDP GED — individual events with coordinates and death estimates; events of 25 deaths and above are drawn.
What a battle death counts. COW's battle deaths are combatant deaths in battle — not famine, not disease, not civilian totals. WWII's full mortality is several times its battle-death figure; the ledger states the catalog's number and this definition, never a blend.
Borders. Present-day polygons are used for all eras — the Ottoman Empire paints as Türkiye, Austria-Hungary as Austria and Hungary, the USSR as Russia. Historical borders are a cartographic research project this edition does not claim; the caveat rides the exhibit.
The title card's ranking allocates a war's recorded deaths evenly across its years — an allocation, stated as one. From 1989 the card uses UCDP's own per-year sums and names.
What this page does not do. No causes-of-war narrative beyond a correlation labeled as a correlation. No forecast. No side-taking: post-1989 parties carry UCDP's names verbatim.