Which continent has seen the most war?

[Blaze86420]

No its not.
I'm of korean descent and I can tell you that korean culture (non-modern) is very similar to Chinese culture. I mean, for a very significant time, Korea was considered to simply be a fringe kingdom of China. That was until the battle of salsu .

Japanese is very similar to Korean/Chinese too.

Siamese is very distinct, but due to the heavy jungle it has very few opportunities to heavily interact with Asia or India.

That's only one part of Asia. Alright, Far Eastern cultures are similar, I get that. But there are many other regions with completely different cultures. You got the Fertile Crescent, the Arabian peninsula, Iran, Central Asia, India, South East Asia, and you get the picture. You won't find this variety in Europe, and that's due to geography. Asia is huge, and as you've said, there are many geographical barriers to allow independent cultural development.

Then look at Europe. I can assure you that Celtic culture is very very different from Roman culture which is very different from Phoenician culture.

a-Celtic culture no longer exists outside of the British Isles.
b-Like someone already said, the Phoenicians were certainly not Europeans.

And the geographical barriers are large enough to create numerous sub-cultures, but not so enormous as to completely isolate them (compare that to the Gobi Desert, Himalayas, Dense Jungles of Indochina). Therefore, you get tension by that exposure among diverse cultures.

Fair point, but you did not say this in your first post. You only said that Europe was diverse, as if its exclusive to Europe.

[ChivalrousKiller]

I have to agree with (almost) everyone else here. It might be because that is what I am most familiar with, but for me, there's no doubt that Europe has always been the continent of war.

[Watchman]

Diversity had NOTHING to do with the issue - just ask the Japanese...

[SPECTREtm]

Europe, without a doubt!

[The_Fan]

I would have to say a tie goes to Europe and Asia. There as been a steady pace of war going on in both as long as we have any recorded history.

[Mr. Scott]

That's only one part of Asia. Alright, Far Eastern cultures are similar, I get that. But there are many other regions with completely different cultures. You got the Fertile Crescent, the Arabian peninsula, Iran, Central Asia, India, South East Asia, and you get the picture. You won't find this variety in Europe, and that's due to geography. Asia is huge, and as you've said, there are many geographical barriers to allow independent cultural development.


a-Celtic culture no longer exists outside of the British Isles.
b-Like someone already said, the Phoenicians were certainly not Europeans.


Fair point, but you did not say this in your first post. You only said that Europe was diverse, as if its exclusive to Europe.

What I'm saying is that although both Asia and Europe have geographical limitations, Europe's aren't so severe as to completely isolate the cultures.

For example, the French and the Russians have gone at it many times.
However, how many times have the Indian or the Chinese?
There are three general cultures in Asia (very broad, keep in mind)
Indian, Arabic, and Chinese (Indochina is a straddler)

The Chinese/Far East culture has had very little contact with the other two, which is why I'm saying, relative to size, Europe experiences far more war.
Europe has nothing as immense as the Himalayas/Tibetan Plateau, the super dense jungles of Indochina, the wide swath of Siberia and the Mongol plains, the vast and arid Gobi Desert.
These things almost completely isolate cultures, while things such as the Alps, Pyrenees, or Rhine, slightly limit, but do not prevent interaction.

Now Asia is simply larger so the sheer number of casualties is far more extraordinary than those of Europe. But Asia has almost 3 times the population of Europe so this is to be expected.

Think about this.
East Asia from about the 15th century to the 19th century, experienced very few wars.

From the 15th century to the early 19th century, Europe was almost always embroiled in some major war.

East Asia really only has four clearly defined ethnic groups (even then its not immensely defined)
Chinese (Han, etc.), Mongolian/Manchurian, Korean, and Japanese. The latter, prior to industrialization, has only had brief confrontation with the other three.
Then take Europe.
Italian, French, English, Scottish, Irish, Spanish, Dutch/German/Austrian, Polish, Russian, Magyar, Turkish, Greek, Scandinavian

[cenkiss]

'There are three general cultures in Asia (very broad, keep in mind)
Indian, Arabic, and Chinese (Indochina is a straddler)'

This is why you don't know asia.

[nemr]

I think middle east ( from egypt to persia ).

maybe because of your education system , your information about history circle around europe

from beginning of civilization iraq , turkey , egypt , levant , persia . where homes of deadliest

wars .

its mentioned even in bible (:

[irontaino]

Europe has the most recorded wars but I think Asia takes the cake.

[Manuel I Komnenos]

Europe of course. And even if it's Eastern Asia, who cares about the Chinese/Indian wars?

[Wegen7 die Große]

Yes we Europeans like to go to war with each other, even the French have practice this ancient custom, there not good at it but at least they tried.

[Watchman]

European history claims different.

Anyway, why the Hell do people keep spouting nonsense about cultures here? Those have jack all to do with the matter; it's *political organisation* that makes the difference. The Chinese and Koreans for example were - partly for geostrategic reasons - rather better at setting up and maintaining unified, coherent empires that were basically peaceful domestically; but when *those* fell, the resultant mess of ambitious warlords, successor kingdoms, peasant rebels, barbarian invaders and God knows what else were at each others' throats with a gusto that would get the seal of approval from a half-mad Viking berserker. Shared culture or no. (And *before* the emergence of "one ruler under the heavens" overlords it was, naturally, a merry free-for-all...)
Ditto the Japanese, who after running out of indigenous barbarians to fight cheerfully spent centuries slaughtering each other for teh powar and phat lewts.

India is rather more akin to Europe when it comes to geographic obstacles, and unsurprisingly boasts a *very* long history of multitudous princedoms fighting each other tooth and nail (with occasional special guests from Central Asia featuring). That most of the lot belonged to the same cultural-religious complex was clearly not considered much of an obstacle.

As for Europe, yeaaaaahhhhhhh. I've already pointed out that most wars the Ancient Greeks fought were against each other, and it's worth adding that the Romans had no shortage of domestic strife either. That's more or less what their empire collapsed of, in fact. And the generally rather warlike "northern barbarians" cheerfully expended much of their energy in internecine fighting, already for the simple fact that most of the time there weren't any other easily accessible targets anyway. Why cross the Rhine when loot&pillage can be found far closer to home in the neighbouring chiefdom? And it is from amongst this lot that the post-Roman ruling class emerged; between their mostly shared Germanic roots and the internationalism of the Church the Medieval warrior aristocracy had fairly little meaningful cultural difference amongst themselves, nevermind now that geography to a large degree limited period warfare to a number of regional "theatres" inside which the endemic fighting was quite cheerfully conducted *within* a shared cultural-linguistic framework...

Srsly, spare me the "clash of civilisations" BS.

[Mr. Scott]

European history claims different.

Anyway, why the Hell do people keep spouting nonsense about cultures here? Those have jack all to do with the matter; it's *political organisation* that makes the difference. The Chinese and Koreans for example were - partly for geostrategic reasons - rather better at setting up and maintaining unified, coherent empires that were basically peaceful domestically; but when *those* fell, the resultant mess of ambitious warlords, successor kingdoms, peasant rebels, barbarian invaders and God knows what else were at each others' throats with a gusto that would get the seal of approval from a half-mad Viking berserker. Shared culture or no. (And *before* the emergence of "one ruler under the heavens" overlords it was, naturally, a merry free-for-all...)
Ditto the Japanese, who after running out of indigenous barbarians to fight cheerfully spent centuries slaughtering each other for teh powar and phat lewts.

India is rather more akin to Europe when it comes to geographic obstacles, and unsurprisingly boasts a *very* long history of multitudous princedoms fighting each other tooth and nail (with occasional special guests from Central Asia featuring). That most of the lot belonged to the same cultural-religious complex was clearly not considered much of an obstacle.

As for Europe, yeaaaaahhhhhhh. I've already pointed out that most wars the Ancient Greeks fought were against each other, and it's worth adding that the Romans had no shortage of domestic strife either. That's more or less what their empire collapsed of, in fact. And the generally rather warlike "northern barbarians" cheerfully expended much of their energy in internecine fighting, already for the simple fact that most of the time there weren't any other easily accessible targets anyway. Why cross the Rhine when loot&pillage can be found far closer to home in the neighbouring chiefdom? And it is from amongst this lot that the post-Roman ruling class emerged; between their mostly shared Germanic roots and the internationalism of the Church the Medieval warrior aristocracy had fairly little meaningful cultural difference amongst themselves, nevermind now that geography to a large degree limited period warfare to a number of regional "theatres" inside which the endemic fighting was quite cheerfully conducted *within* a shared cultural-linguistic framework...

Srsly, spare me the "clash of civilisations" BS.

Yes, but the degree of fighting was different.
Asia did not experience entire, distinct, and vivid cultures being wiped almost completely off the map.

Even when China or Korea did collapse, it usually was only for brief periods.
Compare the collapse of the Han dynasty, and then compare the collapse of the Roman Empire.
China recovered, and then became stronger than ever.
Europe remained fractured, well, indefinitely.

The chaos that Europe experienced during the Dark ages and early Medieval Period are the reason for Christianity's ascension. European life was terrible and Christianity provided the prospect of salvation to those loyal to it.

Then look at East Asia where religion never played a central role.

Now the one point in time that I would say East Asia truly experienced a destruction of unprecedented scale was that of the An Lushan Rebellion

India would be an exception though. India acted much in the same way as Europe, except with a bit more cohesive culture. But the fighting was no less severe. But remember that we're referring to Asia in general, and East Asia has significant eras of unprecedented peace.

The poll really should separate East Asia from the rest of Asia. It is culturally different and geographically isolated.

[Watchman]

...you're not all that well read on European history, are you? Plus you seem to be cheerfully ignoring the bit where the Chinese and Japanese (at least) merrily absorbed, assimilated and/or annihilated any number of "indigenous" cultures during their lenghty expansion phases... some of those are still puttering about in the godforsaken backwoods you know.

Anyways, the point stands; *cultures* are irrelevant (most were only too happy to ally with funny foreigners against a 'cultural relative' they had an axe to grind with, anyway), *political unification* is the key difference. And when the latter crumbles, it's Conan tiem - if only because the race is on to see who will become the *next* One Ruler Under The Heavens.

[Mr. Scott]

...you're not all that well read on European history, are you? Plus you seem to be cheerfully ignoring the bit where the Chinese and Japanese (at least) merrily absorbed, assimilated and/or annihilated any number of "indigenous" cultures during their lenghty expansion phases... some of those are still puttering about in the godforsaken backwoods you know.

Anyways, the point stands; *cultures* are irrelevant (most were only too happy to ally with funny foreigners against a 'cultural relative' they had an axe to grind with, anyway), *political unification* is the key difference. And when the latter crumbles, it's Conan tiem - if only because the race is on to see who will become the *next* One Ruler Under The Heavens.

Oh
Word of advice: Please don't disrupt a proper debate with petty insults. k thx.

China's absorption of other cultures was not intensely bloody.
They did not exterminate the other cultures and re-populate the area (which you seem to think), rather they merely assimilated the other cultures. The other cultures were, due to the lack of any severe geographical separation, very similar. The only real vivid difference between Northern Chinese and Southern Chinese was the level of organization.

China had nothing like the diversity between the German Celts and the Italians/Greeks. While the Chinese states shared a broad general culture, the Celts and Southern Civilizations, shared very very little. On many levels, they hardly even knew of the existence of the other.

If you don't think cultural friction causes more war...

[Watchman]

Yeah. You don't know your European history. PROTIP: the Celts traded *very* extensively with the Mediterraneans, nevermind now cheerfully hiring themselves out as mercenaries for the wars of the southerners. And of course raided them just as readily as each other if they happened to be close enough.

And pretty much the only case of a genuine wipeout of previous inhabitants during conquest I can think of out of hand in premodern Europe would be the Roman depopulation of Dacia - AFAIK present-day Romanians are to a fairly large degree descended from the colonists the Empire settled there after the three wars. Otherwise, well, conquerors generally realised that land is worthless without someone to work it and hence preferred to leave the previous inhabitants in place as much as possible.

You also don't seem to be all that hot on Chinese history either; I'm not talking about Northern and Southern Han Chinese for the rather obvious reason they're regional divergences of a single complex. I'm talking about the guys the Han to varying degrees conquered, assimilated and/or extinguished (by violence or more peacefully via assimilation) waaaaaaay back when bronze was still cutting edge and the ethno-cultural makeup of geographic China looked rather different from the present day. You know, the assorted folks of whom most of these guys are remnants of. Early Chinese history isn't my strong suit, but what I *do* know of those ancient accounts rather suggests said "barbarians" were *at least as* alien to the Han as the Germanics were to Romans.

More or less the same deal with the slow conquest of the Japanese archipelago by the burgeoning Yamato empire - though AFAIK most of the "northern barbarians" they were subduing and assimilating were *also* 'Yamato' Japanese who, in the usual fashion of tribal societies and chiefdoms, weren't particularly thrilled by the idea of bending knee to some neighbour with delusions of grandeur. The Ainu and Emishi at the north were bona fide "Others" however.

Again, the point is that "cultural fiction" was pretty much a total nonissue everywhere, unless it now was something along the lines of inveterately pugnacious raiders living near considerably more peaceable folks. (This was rather rare however, or in any case tended to *become* so in very short order for the fairly obvious reason that in such circumstances the warlike dudes tended to end up as the overlords of the pacifists...) Just about everyone everywhere tended to be entirely willing to make war on their neighbours at the drop of the hat if they thought it looked profitable, and in the vast majority of cases those neighbours were for all practical intents and purposes culturally indistinguishable ("foreigners" after all tended to live further away...) - the key ingredient was always belonging to different political framework. People within the same polity conversely did not normally wage war on each other irrespective of cultural differences, already because whoever now was calling the shots tended to view such disturbances of law and order dimly indeed (and per definitionem could do something about it, too).
Well, revolts and civil wars aside of course, but those were hardly unusual in "monocultural" polities either and again normally cleaved along entirely different fault-lines than "culture" (though it of course also happened that overlapped other issues, eg. in the case of uprisings against overlords who happened to be of "foreign" background).

Case in point, Rome and the numerous different incarnations of Persia both ruled over a positively mind-boggling diversity of peoples and cultures; and neither saw much of, say, Gauls going on war footing with Iberians or Babylonians marching against the Phoenicians (or starting large-scale fights amongst themselves, for that matter), for the fairly obvious reasons of the whole lot being imperial subjects and accountable to Rome, Emperor or King of Kings (and their *armies*) for any troublemaking. Both, on the other hand, saw only too many civil wars stemming from power struggles among the ruling elite who either all belonged to more or less one culture or were "honorary members" thereof, in which the squabbling potentates cheerfully recruited every soldier they could find entirely regardless of their specific background. When Cyrus the Younger made his bid to wrest the Persian throne from his kinsman Artaxerxes II in 401BC, for example, he raised his army from what he had to work with; Asia Minor which he was the Satrap of, and any mercenaries he could draw to his banner including a rather large bunch of Greeks (among whom was one Xenophon you may have heard of)...

Similarly the dynasties ruling the Successors of Alexander's empire had culturally FAR more in common with each other than their diverse subjects (AFAIK Cleopatra VII - the famous one, and the last of the Ptolemies - was the very first of her line to deign to learn the language of her subjects...), which in no way kept them from cheerfully bleeding their realms try in savage struggles for supremacy. The Egyptians, Syrians, Phoenicians, Medians, Bactrians and whoever for their part did not seem to care overmuch about what lingo their overlords used among themselves and how they dressed, as long as they did halfway decent job running the realm. Might as well have been Mandarin Chinese for all the difference it made to most people.

You get the idea. The TL;DR is "political affiliation > cultural affiliation".

[Copperknickers II]

Africa, seeing as large swathes of it have been at war more or less constantly since humanity has existed. In fact the only true wars going on right now are in Africa and Asia.

[Blaze86420]

What I'm saying is that although both Asia and Europe have geographical limitations, Europe's aren't so severe as to completely isolate the cultures.

For example, the French and the Russians have gone at it many times.
However, how many times have the Indian or the Chinese?
There are three general cultures in Asia (very broad, keep in mind)
Indian, Arabic, and Chinese (Indochina is a straddler)

Then take Europe.
Italian, French, English, Scottish, Irish, Spanish, Dutch/German/Austrian, Polish, Russian, Magyar, Turkish, Greek, Scandinavian

Yes, very broad, too broad. "Arabic", for example, should be split into Moorish, Mashriqi, Iranian, Turkic, etc. I don't get why you generalize with Asia, but not with Europe. I can do the same with Europe to be honest, why can't I just say Europe is basically made up of Germanics, Latins, and Slavs for example?

The Chinese/Far East culture has had very little contact with the other two, which is why I'm saying, relative to size, Europe experiences far more war.

Some of China's inner conflicts and civil wars alone resulted in millions of casualties.

Europe has nothing as immense as the Himalayas/Tibetan Plateau, the super dense jungles of Indochina, the wide swath of Siberia and the Mongol plains, the vast and arid Gobi Desert.
These things almost completely isolate cultures, while things such as the Alps, Pyrenees, or Rhine, slightly limit, but do not prevent interaction.

Fair point, but again, it does prevent contact completely. The Mongol invasions are an excellen example of this, and these were among the most destructive conflicts in history.

Now Asia is simply larger so the sheer number of casualties is far more extraordinary than those of Europe. But Asia has almost 3 times the population of Europe so this is to be expected.

Then that is more of an issue with the OP being a little vague.
Think about this.

East Asia from about the 15th century to the 19th century, experienced very few wars.

From the 15th century to the early 19th century, Europe was almost always embroiled in some major war.

I'll admit, I don't know about the Far East as much as I should, but the rest of Asia has seen some pretty brutal wars.

Europe of course. And even if it's Eastern Asia, who cares about the Chinese/Indian wars?

There's that eurocentrism again. Why might I ask? Its because those never involved the Greeks right?

[Tiberios]

Yes, very broad, too broad. "Arabic", for example, should be split into Moorish, Mashriqi, Iranian, Turkic, etc. I don't get why you generalize with Asia, but not with Europe. I can do the same with Europe to be honest, why can't I just say Europe is basically made up of Germanics, Latins, and Slavs for example?

Iranians aren't Arab and I don't really believe you can use that term to describe them at all.

[snuggans]

pity to those who claim we aren't animals.