"Potential 19th Century Conflicts List" Topic

Good day to all

For those of you that are always looking for potential military conflicts to war-game in the 19th century , this list contains pairs of states that engaged in a militarized dispute that did not, but could had, escalated to war.

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With Respect
KTravlos

Thatīs cool! Thanks very much for posting

Good list -er I see France against Empire of Germany 1871 surely not!!

It was the ruckus over the reparations after the final peace treaty I believe.

I did something similar as a teenager for a European campaign set in the 1880s/1890s. I worked out a table based on all the same kind of recent conflicts and potential flashpoints as in the MID table, and from that came up with a way to roll dice to see who went to war with who and which battle we should fight next.

The table may have been a bit flawed – I seem to remember Britain had a war with its oldest ally, Portugal – possibly the only time my 1891 Portuguese army ever got used.

Chris

Bloody Big BATTLES!
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ChrissBBB

Cool.

If you want to really build a rigourous table, what you do is use the Senese and Vasquez 2008 Steps to War book, especially chapter 5.

He gives the average predicted probability of war incurring at least once in the history of two in the 1816-1945 period by types of issues (territorial, regime, policy) and the presence of war-inducing factors (alliances, rivalry, arms race, reccuring MIDs). It ranges from .201 (no fostering factors preent) to .931 if all the war fostering factors are there.

You could then produce predicted probabilities for specific dyads and compare them to the average.

An easier and less statistical path would be to build a table with the MIDs, and in each case note if the following conditions were present during and in the 5 year period before the MID

A) Territorial issues (you can get that from the Issue Correaltes of War dataset)

B) Outside Alliances (you can get that from either the COW alliance datasets or the Allaince Treaty Obligations project)

C) Arms races or mutual buildups (A bit more tricky as you have to code it, but Horn already has those coded for the period)

D) Rivalry (from either the Thompson list or the Diehl list)

E) Repeated Crises

Depending on the number of factors present you could then have x number of pluses to a base roll of 20% for MID or dyad to go to war.

From the table, your Portugese war, while imprombable, is not impossible

France Kingdom of Portugal 1831 1831 4 0
United King. King of Portugal 1831 1831 3 0
Spain Kingdom of Portugal 1840 1841 3 1
Spain Kingdom of Portugal 1840 1841 3 1
France Kingdom of Portugal 1857 1858 4 1
France King of Portugal 1857 1858 4 1
United King King of Portugal 1889 1890 3 0
United King King of Portugal 1889 1890 3 0

Repeated Crisis. Probably a regime or policy issue. So 20-30% chance of war in dyad in the period, but only 7%-10% of specific crisis escalating.

Ah yes Chapter 6 is better for this, as it has predicated probability of escalation of MID.

In this case in 1816-1945 the average predicted probability of a crisis escalating to war is between 7% for all fostering factors missing, and regime MID, and 92% for all factos present and territorial mid.

I always thought that a war between Britain and Russia in 1877 would be interesting – brought on by Russian aggression against the Ottomans and aggravated by Russian intrigues in Afghanistan.

Lots of those would be an absolute blast to game. Thanks for the list.

Unfortunately, I didn't see the US versus Paraguay in 1858. That came very close to a shooting war.

Well its coded as a 2 (threat of force), probably because Lopez Senior quickly accommodated the US.That is why its not on the list.