[Adrien]

It was Britain and France,constitutional monarchies

Well, yes and no, at the time of the Crimean War, Napoleon's Empire was in its authoritarian period, democratisation only starting in the 1860's. In fact, at the time, it was a disguised constitutional monarchy.

Aaah poor Napoleon III, still lost in England... I wonder when they will take him back here!

[Gothmog]

I was referring to the American War Between the States.

-Well, it was a civil war, and I don´t know if the Confederacy was a
-democracy. Anyway, while the US civil war killed 500,000 people,
-the Taiping revolution killed 20-30million people.

[Erik of NKP]

This whole discussion is futile.

Before you can start a discussion like this, ome must start by giving a definition of the idea "democracy". Ofcourse people will disagree on the definition, but you must have one if you are to start a discussion like this.

Was ancient Athens a democracy? No, only a minority of the actual population had a say in society matters.
I heard mention of Rome being a democracy, which is a horribly wrong claim, no matter WHAT definition you have of democracy basically.
And them, jumping to our days, in the western world. Are these democracies? The majority of the people can vote, but does this make the society democratic? For example, which is my greatest argument against this idea, is that in the places where people spend almost one third of their lives (sure, minus holidays, weekends etc) the people have basically no influence; namely in the schools and work places.

But no matter what definition you have of the word democracy (unless you have one where you can claim that no democracies have yet existed) I am quite certain you WILL find wars between states which, according to your own definition, are "democratic".

[jaakko]

Was ancient Athens a democracy? No, only a minority of the actual population had a say in society matters.

First of all, "democracy" isn't some special type of society, there can't be a country which was "a democracy". Democracy can be exercised in any class society. Athens is known to be the first. There indeed was democracy in Athens. But at the same time, there was dictatorship (all state is dictatorship). All democracy (and not just dictatoship) has a class essence, democracy can't exist without dictatorship. In Athens it was slave owners' democracy. Now the dominant type of democracy is bourgeois democracy, where bourgeois parties compete with each other. That democracy stays only as long as it serves the interests of the ruling capitalist class. When it doesn't or when it threatens not to serve longer, it immediately becomes visible which organs of the bourgeois state are the most essential: army, police etc. In some cases, when it's appropriate, bourgeois democracy is replaced by fascism (a form of openly terroristic dictatorship of the capitalist class), first example being in Italy. In Italy the Socialist Party had betrayed the struggle of the striking workers, thus being unable to secure any longer the mass basis among the workers for the policies of the capitalist class.

In short: democracies can't have a war with each other. But states that exercise a form of democracy or another, can have a war. There are a lot of examples of such wars.

[LordofTheNipplerings]

The first democracies in the world probably fought one another as city-states and they have fought one another ever since then. However we could debate what constitutes a democracy stating a democracy isn’t a democracy until they abolish slavery, allow women to vote, or allow minorities to vote and so on and so on. You could say a democracy isn’t a democracy if it exercises executive powers that violate its own constitution or when its leaders win votes by reason of fraud or by being appointed.
But by restricting the definition of democracy you make it rather mathematically difficult for any two democracies to do anything in relation to another especially war.
For Instance some people may or may not believe Sparta preceded Athens in field of democracy.

http://www.elysiumgates.com/~helena/Revolution.html

Although it was more democratic than Sparta, Thucydides didn’t even think Athens was a democracy saying "It was in theory, a democracy but in fact it became the rule of the first Athenian."

http://www.historyguide.org/ancient/lecture6b.html

By playing around with the definition of democracy, democracy becomes rarer and rarer.
Here is a list of so-called democracies that have gone to war with each other.

http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/demowar.htm

Since competition between city-states is a constant, or today, competition between nation-states it is difficult to believe that nations that have competing interests would somehow restrain themselves from attacking or overthrowing a leader just because he or she was freely elected. The above posts made by others in the forum have already suggested just that. Modern historians may like to believe that the Peloponnesian war was caused due to irreconcilable differences between democratic states and authoritarian ones but that’s debatable. Thucydides gave us insights into the causes of the Peloponnesian war but democracy versus authoritarian was not what he concluded. According to the Melian dialogue, and his other interpretations, Thucydides sees the war as one where city-states, democratic or not used their own powers to advance over others.

http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/class ... /thuk5.htm

http://www.shsu.edu/~his_ncp/Melian.html


He believed that Sparta started the war because of their fear of Athenian expansionism. If Athens hadn’t colonized other city-states or if Sparta could turn a blind eye to Athenian policy, the Peloponnesian war could have been avoided.


http://www.laconia.org/gen_info_literat ... an_war.htm

[The Apostate]

The Athenian expedition to Syracuse.

Carthage had a governmental system akin to Republican Rome's. The Achaean Federation was essentially democratic in nature, they too fell to Republican Rome (indeed, it is worth noting that the semi-democratic Republic was far more imperialistic than the empire ever was).

Wars between the Italian Republics of the 15th and 16th centuries

The War of 1812

Just to name a few instances...

I think you've entered the realm of pure speculation when you refer to the Harappan (Indus Valley) civilization as a "democracy." We know absolutely nothing about their system of government; we can't even decipher their script, much less make sweeping statements about their political organization. We can say that Harappan civilization was NOT destroyed by the Aryans, who swept into the region in their chariots centuries after the collapse of the Indus Valley civilization.

[Putinist]

Didn't Adrian warn you against using that dancing "Hitlar" as a signiture in another thread?

Just an administrative note:

The "No Racism" caption to this forum does not mean that discussions on the issue of race are not permitted in this forum. It means that this forum is not to be used as an excuse for racist abuse and that such 'abuse' is not acceptable on this forum.

[The Apostate]

Not that I'm aware of. I'll go check.