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Revision as of 13:23, 11 October 2002 by Isis~enwiki (talk | contribs)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)A civil war is a war in which the parties are segments of the same country or empire. The contention is often over matters of religion, ethnicity, or politics, but is sometimes simply a struggle for power between two or more rival groups.
There were several major civil wars in the Roman Empire. The United States Civil War was fought ostensibly over the institution of slavery, but the underlying cause of the dispute was the issue of "states' rights": the conflict between the rights of the individual states versus the power of the federal government.
Other civil wars include:
- The Anarchy, 1135-1153
- Wars of the Roses, ~1455-1485
- English Civil War, 1642-1649
- Russian Civil War, 1917-1921
- Chinese Civil War, 1928-1937, 1945-1949
- Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939