Conflict Events Worldwide Since 1468BC: Introducing the Historical Conflict Event Dataset

Abstract

Quantitative datasets of international conflict skew temporally to modern times and geographically and culturally to the West. Yet post–1815 conflicts featuring Western actors are only a small part of the history of warfare. Many scholars have bemoaned the potential selection bias which this introduces to studies of the causes and effects of military conflict, but as yet quantitative datasets which remedy both these temporal and geographic shortcomings have been lacking. Some datasets have expanded the scope of existing offerings temporally and others spatially, while others have attempted to expand both but with an important lack of detail in terms of location, participants, timing and outcomes. This dataset sets out to remedy the deficit. Using military history’s most extensive encyclopedia of conflict events, we have created a dataset of conflict events spanning the globe and a timescale from 1468BC to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, complete with precise geographic coordinates, year, participants and outcome. We demonstrate the promise of this data-set by using it to assess the frequently asserted relationship between conflict history and economic development, combined with Nordhaus’ GECON sub–national wealth data and historical data on population density from the Netherlands Environmental Agency.