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Fifty six facts about wars and conflicts in this atlas are marked debated, and every single one of them is one of exactly two questions asked over and over: how many people died, and whether religion actually caused the fighting.

A Death Toll, Argued Twice

Twenty conflicts carry a debated minimum death toll and twenty carry a debated maximum, the same twenty pairs in most cases: the American Civil War, the Crimean War and the Central African Republic Civil War are three of them. A war's death toll is rarely one number in the source record; it is a range built from incompatible contemporary counts, later revisions and, for older conflicts, estimates with no census behind them at all, and the atlas records the argument rather than picking a side of it.

Sixteen Wars, One Recurring Question

The remaining sixteen debated facts are all the same property, Religious Dimension, asked of sixteen very different conflicts across a thousand years: the Reconquista and the German Peasants' War, the English Civil War and the Thirty Years War, the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre and the Taiping Rebellion, the Partition of India and the Troubles. In every case the argument is not about what happened but about how much of why it happened was genuinely religious, as against economic, dynastic or ethnic causes a later historian is more comfortable naming. That single recurring question, asked of conflicts as different as a sixteenth century European religious war and a twentieth century sectarian one, is the whole of what the atlas currently marks as debated about religion and violence.

Where To Read More

• English Civil WarCarries a debated Religious Dimension fact, one of sixteen conflicts asked the same question.
• ReconquistaCarries a debated Religious Dimension fact spanning centuries of the Iberian peninsula.
• German Peasants' WarCarries a debated Religious Dimension fact, alongside its own debated death toll.
• St. Bartholomew's Day MassacreCarries a debated Religious Dimension fact, the sixteenth century French wars of religion at their sharpest.
• Taiping RebellionCarries a debated Religious Dimension fact on a nineteenth century Chinese rebellion led by a self-declared brother of Christ.
• The TroublesCarries a debated Religious Dimension fact, the most recent conflict on this list.