AHC: 200 Years of Peace

This year, Sweden celebrates 200 years since it last fought a war. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to beat that record. With a POD at any time, anywhere in the world, give a geopolitically significant country (i.e., no microstates, although minor powers are fine) more than 200 years of uninterrupted peace.
 
I believe this is actually OTL. There are probably a couple contenders, but off the top of my head, I *think* that Tokugawa Japan lasted most, if not all, of the era without war, which would certainly break Sweden's record.
 
I believe this is actually OTL. There are probably a couple contenders, but off the top of my head, I *think* that Tokugawa Japan lasted most, if not all, of the era without war, which would certainly break Sweden's record.

Your right. The Tokugawa Japan was basically at peace for 253 years, if one ignores minor uprisings, and even then at least 220. Apparently closing yourself off from most of the world does have some benefits.
 
I believe this is actually OTL. There are probably a couple contenders, but off the top of my head, I *think* that Tokugawa Japan lasted most, if not all, of the era without war, which would certainly break Sweden's record.

Your right. The Tokugawa Japan was basically at peace for 253 years, if one ignores minor uprisings, and even then at least 220. Apparently closing yourself off from most of the world does have some benefits.

Hmmm, yeah, I think you've got me. All right, then - beat Tokugawa Japan. 254 years or more without warfare.
 
Hmmm, yeah, I think you've got me. All right, then - beat Tokugawa Japan. 254 years or more without warfare.

Hm, honestly I'm not sure if any country could beat Japan. No European country can at least, since all were involved in some way with the Napoleonic wars, which ended 200 years ago this year. No American nations either, as none besides the US is old enough. Maybe Tibet before the Chinese invasion in the '50s? IDK but it would have to be either an Asian or African country.
 
Or pre-Columbian/Polynesian, and I'm not recalling where I should look off the top of my head, but I feel like there might be another potential contender there, somewhere...
 
Hm, honestly I'm not sure if any country could beat Japan. No European country can at least, since all were involved in some way with the Napoleonic wars, which ended 200 years ago this year. No American nations either, as none besides the US is old enough.

A POD that butterflies the Napoleonic Wars or involves older New World states (whether through earlier colonization or surviving indigenous kingdoms) is fine.

Maybe I can stumble toward a list of qualifications. One is being geographically isolated or at least on the margins: it's easier for an island or peninsular nation, or one protected by mountains or desert, to stay at peace than one that's on all the invasion routes. The country in question would have to be strong enough to deter would-be conquerors, or else the peace would end the way it did for the Moriori or Ryukyu Kingdom. And they would have to be uninterested in territorial expansion, whether out of a desire for social stasis, fear of what might happen if they try to play in the big leagues, or something entirely different.

I'm thinking that a surviving Inca empire, once it reached its natural borders and worked out a method of avoiding succession wars, might have followed the Tokugawa model. Alternatively, a mountain Asian country might pull it off - maybe one of the Himalayan Buddhist kingdoms could stay out of its neighbors' quarrels.
 
At least one problem with the Incans was a repeated stalemate with the Mapuche to their south. Even forgoing that, their most famous war outside of the conquest was a civil war related to a succession, so while that's easy enough to wave away once, I suppose it might be a repeatable problem. It's not like they had been around for that long before the Conquest, anyways
 

SunDeep

Banned
It's going a long way back, but what about the Kingdom of Nri, in the Igboland region of Nigeria? It endured in some form for almost a thousand years, with the extent of its territory expanding and declining vastly over that time. However, due to its unique status as a religio-political theocracy, and their religious pacifism, rooted in the belief that violence was an abomination which polluted the earth, the Kingdom of Nri never fought a single war over the course of its existence, from its formation in 948 until its eventual forced dissolution by occupying British troops in 1911- 963 years in total. Even if you count uprisings of the sort that the Tokugawa shogunate had to face pretty regularly as 'war', then it'd still be 731 years of unbroken peace. :cool: You're going to have a challenge beating that record.
 
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This year, Sweden celebrates 200 years since it last fought a war. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to beat that record. With a POD at any time, anywhere in the world, give a geopolitically significant country (i.e., no microstates, although minor powers are fine) more than 200 years of uninterrupted peace.

I think I have found a country that beats even Tokugawa Japan. It's a micro-state yes, but I believe it still works. The Republic of San Marino hasn't been involved in a war since at least the 13th century! So that would mean San Marino has been at peace for over 800 years. Pretty much beats out anything else.
 
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Without Rome being around, Carthage might have done it, Syracuse was on the decline and would probably have been taken eventually, and then they would have no real contenders on their side of the Mediterranean, unless someone like Athens decides to fight them but that seems unlikely. Without Pyrrhus (who would probably be long butterflied with this PoD) the rest of Magna Graecia might have fallen not long afterward. As an uncontested military power that also is heavily involved in trade I could see the Carthaginians doing very well for themselves while rarely lifting a sword.
 
I think I have found a country that beats even Tokugawa Japan. It's a micro-state yes, but I believe it still works. The Republic of San Marino hasn't been involved in a war since at least the 13th century! So that would mean San Marino has been at peace for over 800 years. Pretty much beats out anything else.

San Marino, while technically not a belligerent, was pretty much involved in WWII, and in several stages of the Italian wars of Independence earlier.
 
Has Sweden really been at peace since 1814? "Truth be told, Sweden did support neighboring Denmark in the 1848-1850 First Schleswig War when an uprising by Schleswig-Holstein's German majority fought for independence from Denmark. " http://www.thelocal.se/20060605/3993

See also: "...in 1849 the First Schleswig War broke out. The Swedish–Norwegian King Oscar, in an act of solidarity with Denmark, sent Swedish and Norwegian troops." http://books.google.com/books?id=AlaiAgAAQBAJ&pg=PT106

"The war, which lasted from 1848–1851, also involved troops from Prussia and Sweden." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Schleswig_War (though the article does not include Sweden in the list of belligerents)

I'm not even counting the involvement of Swedish UN troops in Katanga in 1961...
 
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