Civil Wars: A Global History, 1917 to the Present

Civil war was the most extreme, cruel and widespread form of violence during much of the 20th century.Its hurricane-like vortex devastated countries, split nations and destroyed communities in Europe, Asia, Africa and America.No other tool worked better for unleashing revolutions or repelling them, building nations, expelling ethnic or political minorities, securing territorial domains and economic resources, annihilating internal enemies, creating orphans and widows and generating human suffering.With the era of major international conflicts ending in the middle of the 20th century, civil wars are now the most recurrent type of armed conflict in the world.With more than 20 million victims and 65 million refugees since 1945, it is difficult to dispute their primacy in the hierarchy of contemporary terror. Civil Wars traces the history of civil wars in the 20th and 21st centuries, arguing that civil wars have played a key role in shaping the world in which we live today.It analyses a mu