Dataset Description
What years and countries are covered?
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"Wars that occurred during the last two hundred years" (Dunnigan and Martel 1987: 6).
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1786–1987 (Dunnigan and Martel 1987: 207, 250)
Which conflicts are covered?
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"War is organized violence caused by national governments" (Dunnigan and Martel 1987: 11).
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"Traditional Wars. [...] Two nations gather up their armed forces and go after each other" (Dunnigan and Martel 1987: 11).
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"Colonial Wars. A broad category of conflicts best described as a major power going to war with a significantly weaker power on the defender's own territory. This does not always involve actual colonies, just big guys beating up on little guys. [The major distinguishing characteristic is the great disparity in military power between the two combatants. [...] What is most important about this type of war is that only one side, the major power, can escalate the war to include nuclear weapons or other combat between superpowers" (Dunnigan and Martel 1987: 11).
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"Civil Wars. A nation at war with itself, with both sides deploying armed forces. This category includes insurrections, separatist movements, persistent terrorism and rebellions in general" (Dunnigan and Martel 1987: 11-12).
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"Civil Terrors. A nation goes to war against its own people. Many of these wars are very similar to civil wars, except that the "rebels" are not organized well, if at all. [...] The most prominent examples are the Stalinist Terror in Russia during the 1930s, the Communist Terror in China during the 1950s [...]" (Dunnigan and Martel 1987: 12).
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"Began: Year in which the war began. Sometimes it differs from the official starting date. We used the date at which hostilities or large-scale unrest began" (Dunnigan and Martel 1987: 180).
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"We categorized wars into the following groups: C— Civil terror[;] R—Social revolution[;] S—Secessionist movement[;] T—Territorial conflict" (Dunnigan and Martel 1987: 184).
Which deaths and casualties are covered?
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Probably deaths; military and civilian combined; direct and indirect combined.
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"Losses: Military and civilian" (Dunnigan and Martel 1987: 185).
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"Keep in mind that it is often difficult to separate them. A further complication is that civilian losses are often not noted in histories" (Dunnigan and Martel 1987: 185).
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'Losses' used, which probably means deaths: "nearly half the deaths in all wars" made up by the Napoleonic Wars, the Taiping Rebellion, and the World Wars — which is half of all the losses of the 163 million they list.
How did they construct the data?
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"our information was collected for each participant of the war" (Dunnigan and Martel 1987: 6).
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"One source that was quite useful is The Encyclopedia of Military History (New York: Harper & Row, 1977) by R. E. Dupuy and T. N. Dupuy. The detailed accounts of wars provided a starting point for identifying wars" (Dunnigan and Martel 1987: 275).
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"An important reference was The Wages of War, 1819-1965 (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1972) by J. David Singer and Melvin Small. [...] It is also a good source of data on the size of the combat forces for each nation, and estimates of the casualties. Singer and Small, however, tend to generate statistics of dubious value, such as battle deaths per month of the war" (Dunnigan and Martel 1987: 275).
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"There is considerable uncertainty about the number of people who are killed in a given war, especially as one proceeds further into the past" (Dunnigan and Martel 1987: 275).
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"Some other sources for data on combat casualties are Statistics of Deadly Quarrels (Pittsburgh: Boxwood Press, 1960) by Lewis Frye Richardson; Social and Cultural Dynamics (New York: American Book, 1937) by Pitirim A. Sorokin; Losses of Life in Modern Wars (London: Oxford University, 1916) by Gaston Bodart; Losses of Life Caused by War (London: Oxford University, 1920) by Vedel and Petersen. Military Balance (Letchford, England: The Garden City Press Ltd., 1985), which is published annually by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, is a good source for the size of armed forces in the contemporary period" (Dunnigan and Martel 1987: 276).
How did we construct it?
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We used to access the book here; the access since seems to have become restricted, we have purchased a used copy; the quotes above are from that copy.
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We extracted conflicts as well as deaths and casualties from the list in their book, starting at page 207.
This dataset provides information on military and civilian deaths from wars, drawn from the book by Dunnigan and Martel (1987).