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A Chronology of Conflict | |
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A Chronology of Conflict
American military actions, large and small, throughout history.
1622-44 Powhatan Wars
1636 Pequot War
1675-76 King Philip's War
1676 Bacon's Rebellion
1677-79 Culpeper's Rebellion
1689-97 King William's War
1689-91 Leisler's Rebellion
1702-13 Queen Anne's War
1711-13 The Tuscarora War
1715-16 Yamasee War
1739-42 War of Jenkins' Ear
1744-48 King George's War
1754-63 French and Indian War
1760-62 Cherokee Uprising
1763-66 Pontiac's Rebellion
1763-64 Paxton Boys Uprising
1765-66 Stamp Act Revolt
1768-71 Regulator War
1770 Boston Massacre
1773 Boston Tea Party
1774 Lord Dunmore's War
1775-83 American Revolution
1786-87 Shay's Rebellion
1790-1812 Ohio Valley Campaigns
1794 Whiskey Rebellion
1798-1800 Quasi-war with France
1801-05 First Barbary War
1812-15 War of 1812
1815 Second Barbary War
1817-1819 First Seminole War
1831-1832 Black Hawk War
1835-1842 Second Seminole War
1836 War of Texas Independence
1838-39 Trail of Tears
1839 Aroostook War
1839-46 Anti-Rent War
1841 Dorr Rebellion
1846-48 Mexican War
1846-68 Navajo Wars
1848-58 Third Seminole War
1857-58 Utah War
1860-1900 Plains and Western Indian Wars
1861-65 American Civil War
1866-71 The Fenian War
1898 Spanish-American War
1899-1902 Philippine Insurrection
1900 Boxer Rebellion
1901-34 The Banana Wars
1916-17 Pancho Villa Expedition
1917-18 World War I
1919-20 Russian Revolution
1941-45 World War II
1946-91 The Cold War
1948-49 Berlin Airlift
1950-53 Korean War
1954-75 Vietnam War
1962 Cuban Missile Crisis
1980 Operation Eagle Claw
1983 Beirut attack
1983 Operation Urgent Fury
1989-90 Operation Just Cause
1986 Operation El Dorado Canyon
1990-91 The Gulf War (Operation Desert Shield/Storm)
1991-present Operation Provide Comfort II/Northern Watch
1992-94 Operation Restore Hope
1992-present Operation Southern Watch
1992-present Balkans peacekeeping
1994 Operation Vigilant Warrior
1994-95 Operation Uphold Democracy
1996 Khobar Towers
1998 Operation Desert Fox
2000 USS Cole
2001-present Operation Enduring Freedom
—Mark Haviland
For five steps to discover the stories behind your ancestors' military history, see the April 2002 issue of Family Tree Magazine.
English settlers at Jamestown and Indians of the Powhatan Confederation clash several times. Most notably, two Indian massacres (1622, 1644) leave 847 settlers in the Virginia and Maryland dead. In 1623, settlers Captain Willam Tucker and Dr. John Potts poison 250 Powhatan Indians during peace negotiations. The capture and murder of Chief Opechancanough ends hostilities.
Pequot Indians and Puritans settlers clash in the Connecticut River Valley region. By 1638, the tribe is completely wiped out.
Indian leader Metacomet, known as King Philip, organizes several New England tribes in a revolt against colonial expansion.
Nathaniel Bacon leads two unauthorized expeditions against Indians, and forces the governor to flee Jamestown twice before he eventually burns the capitol.
Colonists in the Albemarle, Carolina, area imprison the deputy governor, convene their own legislature, and run the government for two years.
The French and their Indian allies attack settlements in New York, New Hampshire and Maine. British colonial forces capture Port Royal, Acadia (Nova Scotia) and attack Quebec.
Jacob Leisler, a local militia captain, proclaims himself governor of New York and tries to organize an expedition against French Canada. He's arrested, tried for treason and executed.
The French and Indians attack the American frontier, including a raid on Deerfield, Mass. The British capture Acadia. Fighting also occurs at Charleston and St. Augustine.
Tuscarora Indians attack settlers along North Carolina's Neuse and Pamlico Rivers. Aided by troops and Yamasee Indians from South Carolina, the colonists end the uprising.
Fed up with unscrupulous deerskin traders, the Creek, Yamasee, Apalachee, Savannah and Sarraw Indians attack settlements in South Carolina.
England declares war on Spain and both countries attempt to expand their interests in Colonial America. Fighting in Florida and Georgia claims many colonists but ends in a stalemate.
Battles rage from French Canada to the Caribbean Sea as the French, Indians and Spanish fight the British colonial forces.
British regulars and colonials square off against the French and their Indian allies. The capture of Quebec ends French rule in Canada.
A breakdown in relations between the British and the Cherokees leads to a general uprising in present-day Tennessee, Virginia and the Carolinas.
Led by the chieftain Pontiac, the Ottawas, Wyandots, Potawatomis and Ojibwas launch a campaign to drive British settlers out of former French territories.
Pennsylvania frontiersmen march on Philadelphia. The group also raids the peaceful Conestoga Indians, killing all but 14 men, women and children.
The Sons of Liberty resist the implementation of the Stamp Act by persuasion and violence. The British repeal the Stamp Act in March 1766.
Colonists in western North Carolina fight government officials and militia troops.
British soldiers kill five townsmen in Boston.
Colonists dressed as Indians board ships in Boston harbor and dump 342 chests into the water.
Expansion into the Appalachians causes this war between Shawnee Indians and Virginia settlers.
The 13 colonies fight for independence from Britain.
Suffering from a harsh economy, Massachusetts farmers march on courthouses and the Federal Arsenal at Springfield. More than 4,000 militiamen defeat the uprising.
Broken treaties and white expansion into present-day Ohio, Indiana and Illinois lead to sporadic fighting with the Miami, Shawnee and other tribes. The US wins major victories at the Battles of Fallen Timbers (1794) and Tippecanoe (1811).
People in all western counties south of New York protest the government's new tax on whiskey. The worst violence occurs in Pennsylvania.
French privateers prey on US merchant vessels, prompting an undeclared naval war between the United States and France.
The US refuses to pay tribute to pirates in the Barbary state of Tripoli and sends naval forces to blockade and attack the enemy.
The United States takes on Britain. Expeditions against Canada are largely unsuccessful and the British burn Washington.
Algiers declares war on the US.
Seminole Indians attack white settlers in Georgia. US troops move south, capturing the British and burning Spanish forts in Florida, which is ceded to the US in 1819.
Militia, supported by the US Army, take on the Sauk, Fox, Winnebago, Sioux and Chippewa tribes in Illinois and Wisconsin.
Seminole chief Osceola refuses to honor treaties agreeing to the movement of the tribe to the west and launches a general war. More than 60,000 militiamen, volunteers and regulars participate in the campaign; 41 percent become casualties.
More than 30,000 American settlers in Texas fight Mexico for independence.
More than 7,000 soldiers relocate Cherokee, Choctaw, Creek and Chickasaw Indians from their lands in North Carolina and Georgia to territory in present-day Oklahoma. More than 4,000 Indians die during the journey.
Maine farmers and Canadian lumbermen clash over disputed territory along the border.
Farmers in nine New York counties rebel against a feudal landowner system.
A peaceful attempt to reform the 1663 colonial charter of Rhode Island, which gives only landowners the right to vote, becomes an armed uprising.
Mexico is defeated and present-day California, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, Utah and Nevada ceded to the United States.
A series of treaties with Navajo chieftains fail to keep the peace. In 1863, Col. Kit Carson begins a scorched-earth policy that forces the Indians to surrender.
Seminole warriors are defeated and moved from Florida.
President James Buchanan sends US troops to Utah when he learns the Mormons are disobeying Federal laws.
Broken treaties, continued westward expansion and atrocities committed by both sides lead to some form of conflict with Native Americans in every western state.
The struggle over states' rights and slavery comes to a head, as Southern states secede and the North battles to keep the Union intact.
An Irish-American movement launches five unsuccessful raids into Canada.
America declares war on Spain and launches offensives in Cuba and the Philippines. The Treaty of Paris grants freedom to Cuba and transfers Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines to the US
Filipino freedom fighters take on the US. More than 4,000 Americans are killed.
US Marines relieve the besieged city of Peking.
US Marines deploy to suppress bandits and quell revolts in Haiti, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, Panama and Cuba.
More than 70,000 US troops enter Mexico in pursuit of the notorious bandit Pancho Villa.
More than 4 million Americans serve in the "The Great War."
US forces deploy to Vladivostok and Siberia to support White Russians in the fight against revolutionaries.
More than 16 million Americans fight in the Pacific, Europe and North Africa.
The US attempts to contain the spread of Communism.
Soviets blockade the divided city of Berlin. The fledging US Air Force breaks the blockade by airlifting more than 1.5 million tons of cargo.
United Nations and Communist forces fight for the Korean peninsula.
America's most unpopular war starts as a revolt against French Colonial rule. More than 3 million US troops deploy to Southeast Asia.
The US and USSR face off over missiles in Cuba.
US forces launch a disastrous attempt to rescue hostages held in Iran.
A terrorist attack in Beirut, Lebanon, kills 241 Marines.
A combined force of US and Caribbean troops invades the island nation of Grenada.
US forces invade Panama to capture Panamanian president Manuel Noriega and restore stability to the Panama Canal region.
Air Force and Navy aircraft attack military targets in Libya in response to a state-sponsored terrorist attack in Germany.
The US leads a multinational coalition against Iraq following its invasion and annexation of Kuwait.
US troops, together with Turkish and British allies, enforce the United Nations mandated no-fly zone above the 36th parallel in Iraq. Strikes continue against Iraqi military targets that threaten ONW aircraft.
A US-led coalition deploys to Somalia to protect international famine relief efforts from clan violence.
US, British and Saudi Arabian forces enforce the United Nations mandated no-fly zone below the 32th parallel in Iraq. Strikes continue against Iraqi military targets that threaten OSW aircraft.
US troops continue to support United Nations' operations in the region.
Iraqi troop movements south toward Kuwait prompt US and coalition forces to deploy troops back to Southwest Asia.
A US-led multinational force invades the Caribbean nation of Haiti to remove the military government and restore stability.
Terrorists attack a military housing complex in Saudi Arabia, killing 19 US airmen.
US and British aircraft strike military and security targets in Iraq in response to the country's failure to support United Nations weapons inspectors.
Terrorists attack the USS Cole, killing 17 crewmembers and wounding 39 others.
US and British forces battle terrorism in Afghanistan.
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