Wouldn't the Clone Wars count as being the first Galactic Civil War?

Or am I missing something?

 

The way they were portrayed in both EU and the films, I would definitely classify it as being the first Galactic Civil War. It's certainly more accurate than "Clone Wars."

 

Short answer: no, because it's not called that. There were wars before World War I that could be classified as "world wars", but since they're not called such it doesn't change the numbering of the two World Wars.

 

The thing to remember about the bulk of the Clone Wars...it was fought by "elites", mercenaries, and specially created armies...it is not a war of overwhelming scope to the public.

Civil Wars are usually defined by their interruption to the lives of citizenry...even if the GCW didn't bother EVERYONE, there were considerably more recruits from the public, more traumas to systems, races, societies then in the Clone Wars. In fact, the bulk of those incidence are being played out before us because they provide the color to the Clone Wars.

Clones vs. Droids gets monotonous.

But where incidents of the war causing strain to the daily routine of the galaxy are rare (relatively speaking) in the Clone Wars, in the GCW, it is the norm (caused, most obviously, by the imbedding of Imperial order in the lives of the galaxy)

 

Shouldn't the Whiskey Rebellion count as the first American Civil War?

 

And shouldn't the American Revolution be the Second English Civil War?

 

Not to mention that it's hardly the first such war. The New Sith Wars basically count as a millennium-long Galactic Civil War, and a number of other conflicts, including Revan's invasion, do as well.

 

Yeah, when you're dealing with a galaxy-spanning government almost every war is a civil war.

 

America may have been a British colony, but it wasn't technically in England.

 

No, but the American's were British subjects...many historians consider the American Revolution a "civil war" in all but name.

 

Indians living in India were still Indians rather than British when India was part of the British Empire as far as I know. Ok so they didn't have British ancestery which makes a difference.

 

Short answer: no, because the nomenclature of wars are the result of historian labels. Even if it is called 'a' civil war it wouldn't be the Galactic Civil War because no one calls it that. Not to say that designations can't change; World War I obviously wasn't called that until after WWII.

 

Though it was called the "First World War" as early as 1914. "World War I" apparently was first used right before WWII started, since people were anticipating it already. I'm getting this from Wikipedia, but it's sourced.

 

True, but usually "The Great War" shows up in most sources.

But man, those people using 'The First World War' in 1914 must've been spectacular optimists...

 

I think they changed it from Great War to World War because the Napoleonic Wars tended to be refered to as the Great War.

 

We've been over this. There's a real, substantive difference between the Clone Wars and the Galactic Civil War -- the Separatists were fighting merely to *secede* from the Republic, while the Rebels were fighting to *overthrow* the Imperial government and replace it with their own.

The latter more closely fits the proper definition of a "civil" war (i.e. a fundamental political dispute being resolved by violence); the latter is merely a regional conflict where one of the sides claims sovereignty over the other. The question of where the line of demarcation is between the two is often highly political -- but see, for instance, why the Union repeatedly referred to the 1861-1865 war as the "American Civil War" whereas the Confederacy rejected that term and called it "The War Between the States".

Indeed, you can also say the Galactic Civil War is different from wars like the Sith Wars in that the Rebels in the Galactic Civil War, unlike in other wars, actively claimed political legitimacy for their government -- that their government was the rightful and legitimate continuation of the Old Republic -- rather than openly claiming to be a new government that wanted to *secede from* or *conquer* the old government, which is a different kettle of fish entirely, politically speaking.

Hence why the English Civil War is the English Civil War -- a war between political parties for control of the existing government -- and the American Revolution hardly counts, the Americans merely wanting to be separate from England rather than taking it over, and the Americans eventually coming to see themselves as non-Englishmen wanting to be freed from English rule rather than Englishmen with a political disagreement with their fellow Englishmen.

 

I don't see why they they would see themselves as Englishmen if they didn't live in England. They may have seen themselves as British Colonials but that's a different kettle of fish.

 

Because that's what they legally were: Englishmen. The point, in any case, is that the difference is between a war of secession and a war to overthrow/change the government.

(Which, of course, raises the point that the American Civil War sort of... wasn't. It was a war of secession that the losing side lost.)

 

They were citizens of British America, but they weren't English. Bear in mind also that not all the emmigrants to the Americas were actually English in the first place. In fact from the beginning of 18th century English emmigrants were in the minority.

 

i've sometimes wondered the opposite, should the Clone Wars be considered a Sith War?

 

Well, similarly, the CIS wasn't in the Republic anymore, so why should it be a "civil war"?

 

The Rebel Alliance didn't consider themselves to be citizens of the Empire either, in much the same way.

 

British doesn't equal English. There are plenty of Scotish people who would beat you up for claiming so. The "English Civil War" took place after the unification of the Scotish and English thrones but was about control of England. The War of Independence/whatever you want to call it was never about control of England.

The CIS don't want to take over the Republic, the Rebel Alliance does and that's why the Clone Wars isn't a Galactic Civil War.

 

I think the CIS's agenda wasn't so black and white. The fact that Dooku claimed that the Republic would bow to any demands made by the CIS due its huge droid army, seems to suggest that the CIS, though not wishing to take over the Republic, certainly was considering territorial gain. It wasn't just a matter of seceding. That's why the Jedi struck when they did at Geonosis.

 

England =/= Britain.

And it was a civil war in the sense that loyalists and revolutionaries were massacring each other in the South. A colony fighting for independence is generally not called a civil war.

And yes, a separatist movement is not a civil war in the sense that the rebels aren't trying to take control of the whole nation. They're just trying to go their separate way. For this reason, people often claim that the American Civil War is not a true civil war.

It's the same way for the Clone Wars. The Separatists were trying to become independent from the Republic. On paper anyways, they just wanted to be left alone. In the Galactic Civil War, the Rebels forced their way to Coruscant and set themselves up in the Imperial Palace.