I would not want to draw a firm conclusion from this, though. It says that "in Europe the second half of the 20th century was extraordinarily peaceful", but that particular graph only counts wars between nations, not civil wars, guerilla wars and terrorism.
There's a lot of data in that page, though, so I can't really compress it into a HN comment.
Well, the wars in this time may be fewer by number, but not by impact. In this time period, the first truly global conflict was fought. The "Seven Years' War" (1756–1763) was a war between european colonial powers over maritime and colonial hegemony. Some historians call it the "true first world war", because battles took place on all colonial and native frontiers of the participating parties.
This was truly a change of paradigm, regarding the scale of conflicts, not unlike the real first world war.
Also, the two wars that really changed the world (on a ideological level) took place in this time: The American war of independence and the French revolution.
I would not want to draw a firm conclusion from this, though. It says that "in Europe the second half of the 20th century was extraordinarily peaceful", but that particular graph only counts wars between nations, not civil wars, guerilla wars and terrorism.
There's a lot of data in that page, though, so I can't really compress it into a HN comment.