NSF Award
2313819
Understanding the causes and frequency of war is a central mission in the field of international relations. However, data-driven work on conflict prior to the early 20th century is centered on Europe and ignores hundreds of independent states in other parts of the world. This project will create comprehensive global data on interstate and intrastate war back to 1750. The project will research three important questions: (1) Has the frequency of war declined over time? (2) Are some regions more peaceful than other regions of the world? (3) Has interstate war declined historically while intrastate war has increased? The findings will contribute to addressing broader questions such as whether certain historical regions were more violent and whether wars have become less deadly over time. <br/><br/>The project has two goals. The first goal is to create a comprehensive historical and publicly available conflict dataset. The current datasets in the field need to be improved with respect to temporal reach, regional coverage, the identity of combatants, and battle deaths. This project will address these problems by expanding and building out the International System(s) Dataset with detailed historical data on combatant and battle fatalities for all states since 1750. The second goal is to quantitively examine the relative frequency of intrastate and interstate war across time and space to test theories on the onset of war. The results of the project will contribute to scholarship on understanding the causes of war and long-term historical trends in warfare.<br/><br/>This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
