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The BBC reports on a Dutch company that has created an algorithm to rip data about battles from Wikipedia, and display the results on a map of the world.

http://battles.nodegoat.net/viewer.p/23/385/scenario/1/geo/fullscreen

The automatic process has made a number of errors, for example, the inclusion of the "Battle of Piccadilly" a riot between British and Russian football fans that took place in Manchester, north-west England, in 2008.

The projec has been criticised for not taking its data from a reliable source like historians, and for not defining a "battle". Even so, it's quite interesting and fun to look at.

The map will be updated with new information as the company refines its algorithm.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
The BBC reports on a Dutch company that has created an algorithm to rip data about battles from Wikipedia, and display the results on a map of the world.

http://battles.nodegoat.net/viewer.p/23/385/scenario/1/geo/fullscreen

The automatic process has made a number of errors, for example, the inclusion of the "Battle of Piccadilly" a riot between British and Russian football fans that took place in Manchester, north-west England, in 2008.

The projec has been criticised for not taking its data from a reliable source like historians, and for not defining a "battle". Even so, it's quite interesting and fun to look at.

The map will be updated with new information as the company refines its algorithm.

I wonder which country has seen the most battles over the years?

It's got to be a 4-way fight between Germany, Belgium, Britain, and France, with Spain and Italy honourable mentions.

USA (East coast) has seen a fair bit, looking at that map. But without a doubt, Europe takes the crown for "most battles"

As it apparently counts football riots as "battles", the UK should be on top by a clear margin

 Nostromodamus wrote:
As it apparently counts football riots as "battles", the UK should be on top by a clear margin

True, and I wonder if they'll give this map the British option of showing how many battles we've fought in different countries?

I remember a newspaper article that said that Britain has invaded 90% of all the world's nations at one time or another, with only Sweden, Mongolia, and Andorra or something, being the exception


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 angelofvengeance wrote:
USA (East coast) has seen a fair bit, looking at that map. But without a doubt, Europe takes the crown for "most battles"

I often wonder where humanity would be, if Europe hadn't fought so many battles...probably exploring the stars, star trek style.

Zooming in, the European hotspots seem to be France and Germany, not surprising really when you consider that the former spent several centuries in basically constant on-off war with Britain and then another 30-odd years with the Revolution/Napoleon then two German invasions, and the other was rather heavily involved in a couple of world wars... Outside of Ireland, the British Isles are pretty clear actually from about 200AD onwards, which is interesting but not overly surprising when you consider that we haven't actually been invaded since 1066.

Africa is surprisingly clear, I appreciate that huge swathes of it are inhospitable at the best of times, but with the amount of empires that had a go at Egypt in the Ancient period I expected more there.

One interesting thing that stood out (just because I've been researching the subject recently) is how frankly pitiful the Nazi gains into the USSR were. It's all very well to say Operation Barbarossa stalled at Moscow/Stalingrad/Leningrad, but seeing basically nothing east of that line (about 75% of Russia) really puts things in perspective.

Thanks for sharing, KK! Fascinating stuff!

Can't access map at work.....is Waco TX in there?

Outside of Ireland, the British Isles are pretty clear actually from about 200AD onwards, which is interesting but not overly surprising when you consider that we haven't actually been invaded since 1066.

Still a ton of battles from Viking invasions, Middle Ages, War of the Roses, Civil War, and Jacobite rebellions.

Yeah, we've hardly had a perfect clean slate, but compared to the European concentrations in central France and Germany and the pretty heavy gathering along the Alps/southern France, it's doesn't look anywhere near as bad.

We should all move to Greenland. Nice and peaceful there.....

Really cool, but remember its certainly woefully incomplete. Its more like a mapping of all known battles ever.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Really cool, but remember its certainly woefully incomplete. Its more like a mapping of all known battles ever.

Well if it were accurate the whole world would pretty much be covered. How much of history has gone undocumented, or sites left unexplored? It'd be a joke to think that so much of Africa, China and Russia haven't seen wars considering that the first two had so many empires and there's been invasions which ran the whole width of Russia. That's not including all the small scale WWI-II naval battles between convoys (though what size is considered a battle, or are we excluding skirmishes, though looking at what's been included there that seems to be fluid).

Take what you can get though.

Is it bad that I opened it, touched the icon and the first thing that comes up is battle of Megiddo? Yikes!!!

I don't see anything about the mythical 2015 Battle of the Bands where Cedar Park high school again went through everyone else like a Texan through a polite English tea party.

Awesome resource - don't care if it's relevant, showing this to my class tomorrow.

I'm glad to see we (Scotland) hasn't let the side down.

Why does the date slider go all the way to Dec31 2918?

 Grey Templar wrote:
Why does the date slider go all the way to Dec31 2918?

Because Wikipedia knows all that is past and all that is to come...

Then its missing the Battle of Anchorage at the very least

Apparently a massacre of some protesters by Mandela's government actually happened along the West Australian coast. They've probably got a bit of refining to do to their algorithm.

But an awesome resource all the same.

 Wyrmalla wrote:
Well if it were accurate the whole world would pretty much be covered. How much of history has gone undocumented, or sites left unexplored? It'd be a joke to think that so much of Africa, China and Russia haven't seen wars considering that the first two had so many empires and there's been invasions which ran the whole width of Russia. That's not including all the small scale WWI-II naval battles between convoys (though what size is considered a battle, or are we excluding skirmishes, though looking at what's been included there that seems to be fluid).

Yeah, it's interesting to note that if you follow drag the slider from the beginning to the end, watching battles appear, what you see is more or less the development of civilisation. Early battles in China and the Mid East, moving through Mediterranean and so on. This isn't because civilisation creates war, but because the only wars we know about are the ones where someone at the time could write something about them, leave some kind of record.

 Ratius wrote:
We should all move to Greenland. Nice and peaceful there.....

Pfft that's because nobody lives there and nobody finds it worth fighting over ;P. Least the other nations have something to be had.

Last I checked the population of Greenland was in the thousands so please don't complain about me teasing.

This is a very interesting idea. I didn't look in detail, but I bet a lot of the battles are around the same kinds of strategic resources, like Tiberium deposits (whoops, wrong universe...).

 Ratius wrote:
We should all move to Greenland. Nice and peaceful there.....

As long as Rugby takes root there instead of football/soccer it'd remain that way



Anyhow... While I think it's cool, I would personally much rather see the colors of dots based on long conflicts than on a range of years. For instance, WW1 and WW2 could have similar shades of red/orange while the 30 Years War and 100 Years' War have varying shades of blue (yes, I know 100 years' war and TYW have nothing to do with each other). This is because I personally think it'd be cool to see just how big/small a scope certain conflicts truly had.

Youtube has had a more dramatic map of wars over the last thousand years. This one is fairly eurocentric and leaves out a lot of stuff from Asia as well as Africa and the Americas.

 ZergSmasher wrote:
This is a very interesting idea. I didn't look in detail, but I bet a lot of the battles are around the same kinds of strategic resources, like Tiberium deposits (whoops, wrong universe...).

The city of Adrianople, now called Edirne, in north-west Turkey is such a strategic crossroads that there have been about 15 battles and sieges around it since Roman Empire times.

 Paradigm wrote:
Zooming in, the European hotspots seem to be France and Germany, not surprising really when you consider that the former spent several centuries in basically constant on-off war with Britain and then another 30-odd years with the Revolution/Napoleon then two German invasions, and the other was rather heavily involved in a couple of world wars... Outside of Ireland, the British Isles are pretty clear actually from about 200AD onwards, which is interesting but not overly surprising when you consider that we haven't actually been invaded since 1066.

1688 was actually the last time Britain was succesfully invaded, when a Dutch army put William of Orange on the British throne. And there were a few more unsuccesful invasions after that.

 Paradigm wrote:
One interesting thing that stood out (just because I've been researching the subject recently) is how frankly pitiful the Nazi gains into the USSR were. It's all very well to say Operation Barbarossa stalled at Moscow/Stalingrad/Leningrad, but seeing basically nothing east of that line (about 75% of Russia) really puts things in perspective.

Pfft. Weak Western Nazis were pushover compared to Mongols.

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 Paradigm wrote:
Zooming in, the European hotspots seem to be France and Germany, not surprising really when you consider that the former spent several centuries in basically constant on-off war with Britain and then another 30-odd years with the Revolution/Napoleon then two German invasions, and the other was rather heavily involved in a couple of world wars... Outside of Ireland, the British Isles are pretty clear actually from about 200AD onwards, which is interesting but not overly surprising when you consider that we haven't actually been invaded since 1066.

1688 was actually the last time Britain was succesfully invaded, when a Dutch army put William of Orange on the British throne. And there were a few more unsuccesful invasions after that.
...

That only succeeded because the British Army paved the way for the invaders in order to get rid of an unpopular Roman Catholic king.

 Ratius wrote:
We should all move to Greenland. Nice and peaceful there.....

IIRC the only case of a Axis soldier dying in battle on the North American continent, excluding naval battles, occurred in Greenland. The Nazis were using the place to record weather reports for their subs, so were dropping a handful of troops there at a time to set up weather stations. So yes quiet, apart from random spouts of gunfire along the coasts before the enemy disappears into the snow/ out to their U-Boat, not bad. Oh, and ignoring the whole Northlanders going Viking on the place thing.



Speaking of going Viking, I see the islands to the North of Scotland are missing a few raids. More than a few settlements there were wiped off the map by either the Northlanders, or the mainlanders years later after the invaders had created their own settlements. Not to speak of later conflicts between what was to be Britain and more established Northern European Kingdoms.

Edit:

Hah, zoom in over Israel. One site has 7 battles in the past 50 years, another has 11. I'm not even going to bother looking at Jerusalem...

 Breotan wrote:
Youtube has had a more dramatic map of wars over the last thousand years. This one is fairly eurocentric and leaves out a lot of stuff from Asia as well as Africa and the Americas.

Very interesting video. Thanks!