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Rebel Uprisings
For decades before 1776, colonists rise up in periodic rebellion, repeatedly defeating small forces of British soldiers and controlling massive stretches of land, as well as courthouses, tax collection, and armories for years at a time. The Regulators are a notable example. Many also serve as combatants in raids against Indians and as soldiers under English commanders in the various French-Indian Wars, gaining military experience and a pretty dismal view of life under close British rule.

American Revolutionary War
1775 to 1783 : The United Colonies, Caribbean, and British Coast
Originally hoping to find a compromise, quickly realizing that this will be as total a war as the respective forces can manage, The War of American Independence changes the world, showing for the first time in the modern world that a group of rebels can hold off a great empire and then successfully declare themselves independent.
With fronts reaching well into territory held by others, from contested Indian lands to Spanish Florida, to Canada, the war is intermittent but bloody.
1775: United Colonies: Rebels organize under the Continental Congress and formally create a military. First large scale combat of rebels against British troops, including the siege of Boston.
Bermuda - U.S. ships seize New Providence island, headquarters of the British forces in the Caribbean. They seize supplies and arms, including cannon, that prove crucial to early battles of the Revolutionary War. Later in the war they go back and do it again.
1776: Crossing of Delaware River-Christmas 1776-Washington captures Trenton on December 26th
1777: Princeton-Washington defeated British on January 3, 1777.
Saratoga-British Burgoyne was defeated and surrendered on October 17.
Oriskany-British St. Leger was defeated on August 6.
France recognizes the 13 colonies.
1778: France ally with the rebels, providing crucial arms, troops, and funding. British capture Savannah on December 29th.
1779: Spain joins American Revolution vs. England. September 23,-Benedict Arnold’s plot to surrender West Point to the Brits was revealed.
1780:
1781: British Cornwallis surrenders on October 19 in Virginia.
1782:
1783: Treaty of Paris signed-September 3rd.

Quasi-War with France
1779 to 1802: Caribbean and Atlantic
As a result of the ongoing Napoleonic Wars, both France and England declare that all shipping worldwide must declare its allegiance to one or the other and that thus unallied U.S. shipping is subject to seizure. Both nations seize U.S. ships in transit. France then seizes all U.S. ships in French ports, sells their cargoes, and begins to attack American vessels wherever they find them. The U.S., having disbanded its navy at the end of the Revolutionary War, has no way to fight back, thereby resulting in the first Congressional debates about defense funding and the creation of the Constitution-class warships.
To everybody’s amazement, U.S. ships proceed to engage and frequently defeat French vessels, both merchant and military, winning scores of naval battles and seizing over 80 vessels before the French apologize, pay damages, release the ships they hold, and back down.

1786: United States
Shay’s Rebellion
Fundamentally a fight about what the U.S. government would be, pitting U.S. troops against anarchists and other libertarians, this rebellion has attained a repute disproportionate to its size.

1794: United States
Whiskey Rebellion
This rebellion got its name from local fury at new taxes on whiskey, which, for backwoods folk, served less as drink than as currency. After all, carrying a grain crop out to market from the deep hills was ruinously expensive; converted to mash and sold by the jar, the same crop was transportable, storable, and more valuable.
Considered by many the final confrontation between believers in a loose confederacy and backers of a strong federal government, this series of pitched battles, mostly in the Pennsylvania hills, is led personally at some points by George Washington and involves as large a uniformed U.S. military force as the War of Independence.

1800: Haitian coast
Ten ships of pirates attack a U.S. naval vessel which just barely holds its own.

First Barbary War
1801 to 1805 : Algeria, Libya, Tunisia, Morocco
See our note on piracy.
Since the days of the late Roman Empire several city states along the coast of North Africa had demanded that all shipping passing their land must pay them heavy, or even exorbitant duties. All major trading nations reached accommodations with each local ruler, paying tribute directly to each and everybody in authority.
After the Revolutionary War, U.S. ships are subjected to raiding by crews from Algiers, Morocco, Tripoli, and Tunis, who take cargo, ships, even crews, who are then held for ransom or sold into slavery. U.S. diplomats, amateurs all, try and fail to figure out who and how to pay in the every-shifting regional mix of brothers, viziers, and “people with influence at court”, in the process spending millions of dollars and never long achieving protection anywhere for U.S. ships or even the return of hostages.
Finally, using the experience not only of combat with France and England, but just as importantly, a hundred and fifty years of smuggling past British patrols, U.S. forces go to war with Tripoli.
Ship to ship battles are mixed in with shore raids, a gradually more effective blockade and tepid attempts at bombardment. The Kingdom of Naples allies with the U.S. and the combined ships along with the seizure of the port town of Derna and threat of taking Tripoli finally gets treaties signed, indemnities paid, Americas freed, and promises to leave U.S. ships alone.

1806 to 1810: Gulf of Mexico
Various combat actions are carried out against privateers, including one platoon crossing the Rio Grande, where they are captured and later released.
In colonial days people spoke of “the Floridas” since the territory was considered so fragmented. Under first Spanish and then briefly French rule, what is now Florida, as well as the area around New Orleans, and what is now southern Georgia, was a patchwork of fiercely-held Seminole territory, settlements of Europeans, enclaves of fugitive former slaves, and pirate bases. No area on the east coast saw so much combat or had it last so long.

1810: Florida
U.S. troops occupied Spanish territory from the Mississippi to the Pearl River.

1812: Florida
Amelia Island and other territory occupied by order of President Madison. Later irregularities by troops caused Madison to disavow their actions.

War of 1812
With the United Kingdom having never entirely accepted the separation of the United States, and the U.S. at war with British-supported and having territorial aspirations on the lucrative resources available in Canada, periods of cool interspersed with small acts of hostility finally became full-fledged war in 1812. Officially, with the end of the Napoleonic wars, the U.K. ended impressment from American ships, the ostensible reason for the war in the first place, though a great deal of time was actually spent in the U.S.-U.K. negotiations on agreements on arming of and trade with Indian tribes.

1813: Florida
Mobile Bay seized by U.S. troops, thus advancing to the territory sought in the 1810 fighting.

1813-14: Marquesas Islands
As a part of the War of 1812 a small squadron of ships of ships was sent to patrol the Chesapeake Bay and oppose British vessels where they found them. Their orders said that if they missed their rendezvous they were authorized to go further in search of opponents. So they did - much, much further. In fact, all the way to Asia. So they pretty much went from Maryland to Delaware by way of Indonesia, wreaking havoc on British ships along the way.
After much hard voyaging, they stopped, along with their British prizes and prisoners, at the Marquesas to finally recuperate and rebuild their ships, working well with one local society but staving off periodic attacks from another by beaching one of their ships for use as a fort. Most of the naval group then left to pursue and attack British shipping. Holding their ground for about a year and briefly declaring the island to be American territory, the remaining sailors were eventually reduced to a force of seven men, who made their desperate way 2,500 miles to present-day Hawaii, where they were seized by British forces.

1813, 1814: Chile
Sea battles between British and American forces off the Valparaiso coast result in the eventual defeat of U.S. forces.

1814: Florida
Hostilities between natives and U.S. troops worsen.

1814-25: Gulf of Mexico
Assorted incidents between pirates and U.S. ships (both merchanters and military).

1815: Algeria
A U.S. fleet defeated Algerian forces and then carried out a show of force at Tripoli - both local governments capitulated, agreed to no longer seek U.S. tribute, and paid indemnities for earlier actions.
In other words, while the U.S. was busy with the War of 1812 the pirates of the Barbary Coast stopped keeping the terms of their treaty and went back to stealing and pillaging. So once things settled down the U.S. sent a force to remind them of their promise.

Note: Seminoles: Every time that you see incidents of U.S. actions versus the Seminoles you should keep in mind that the Seminoles, themselves former Creeks and refugees from earlier wars, had long provided refuge for runaway slaves, intermarrying and bringing them into the culture.
This being the case, the fierce and bitter fighting, endorsed by the federal government, was in a very real sense, a United States military effort to preserve slavery, as well as a continuing effort to seize rich farmland then in Indian lands.
See our note on Indian wars.

1816: Florida
U.S. soldiers attacked and destroyed Nicholl’s Fort, known as Negro Fort, on grounds that it had served as a base for raiders.

1816 to 1818: Florida
First Seminole War
See our note on Indian wars.
A force of 3,000 U.S. soldiers, led by Andrew Jackson, marched into Spanish territory, taking Amelia Island, Pensacola and a succession of Spanish forts. What they don't do is capture or defeat significant numbers of Seminoles, who all melt into the swamps whenever U.S. forces reach and destroy a Seminole settlement.

Note: Beginning of west coast activity Russia had ships going as far south as present-day California while Spanish ships went as far north as Washington. Local Indians dealt with both. Our childhood tales of Lewis and Clarke raised us on the false premise that they were the first “civilized” people ever to voyage out west. In truth, once out of the interior, their trips had a lot more in common with Marco Polo then they did Neil Armstrong.

1818: Oregon
The U.S.S. Ontario sailed to the base of the Columbia River, contesting Russian and Spanish claims to the region.

1822 to 1824: Cuba
The U.S. navy repeatedly lands on the northwest coast in pursuit of pirates. Just in 1823, actions occurred on April 8th and 13th as well as October 23rd and 24th.

1824: Puerto Rico
U.S. forces land at Fajardo, where a force of 200 men attacked the town to reach pirates and force an apology from the town for having insulted U.S. officers.

1825: Cuba
U.S. and British forces land together at Sagua LaGrande to capture pirates.

1827: Greece
In October and November, the U.S. landed forces on several Greek islands in pursuit of pirates.

1831 to 1832: Falkland Islands
Repeated landings during an investigation of the capture of three U.S. sealing ships in the area.

1832: Sumatra
Four days of assaults to punish the town of Quallah Battoo for their support of pirates.

1832: United States - South Carolina
Following the South Carolina legislature claim that they could overrule and disregard Federal law, President Jackson sent a naval unit in a show of force and threatened a full-scale occupation with mass execution of anti-federal agitators.

1833: Argentina
A force landed at Buenos Aires to protect U.S. interests during civil disorder.

1835 to 1842: Florida
Second Seminole War
See our note on Indian wars.
Five thousand Seminoles, fighting from the protection of the deep swamps and with the support of many non-Seminole locals, fight off the U.S. Army, Marines, and Navy. This battle is noteworthy for such unique ventures as the only naval assault by an Indian force against U.S. troops. Eventually the U.S. forces break the tribe and three thousand Seminoles are forcibly moved to Oklahoma, enduring terrible conditions as they create their own Trail of Tears. Many refuse to surrender and move to Mexico, where they remain for generations but eventually mostly emigrate back to the United States. The U.S. spends over forty million dollars on this war, which played a large role in American perception of Indian resistance at the time.

1835 to 1836: Peru
Marines are posted in Callao and Lima to protect U.S. interests during a period of civil disorder.

1836: Mexico
U.S. forces occupy disputed territory around Nacodoches during the Texas War of Independence, with orders to attack south in the event of any Indian attack

1838 and 1839: Sumatra
More attacks on Quallah Battoo and Mukki in retaliation for local pirate activity.

1839 to 1842: U.S.-Canada Border
From the days of the War of Independence on, questions remain about the location of the U.S.-Canada border. In 1839, debates gets hot on both sides and the Maine government raises money to pay for ten thousand troops to hold the line. The British start to post redcoats on their side while the U.S. sends federal troops backed by Congressional approval. Things don’t settle down until the Webster-Asburton Treaty is signed in London, settling the eastern section of the border once and for all. (The western border dispute, over cosovereignty with the British Empire over the Oregon Territory, is settled at last in 1846, with the Oregon Treaty. This territorial squabble gave rise to James K. Polk’s campaign slogan “54-40 or Fight!” in 1844.)

1840: Fiji Islands
Retaliation for attacks on U.S. exploring and surveying parties.

1841: Pacific Islands
Landing and assault to avenge the killing of a U.S. sailor by locals; this incident followed a landing on Upola Island, Samoa.

1842: Mexico
A squadron patrolling the California coast occupies first Monterey and then San Diego, in each case in the mistaken belief of an ongoing war.

1843: China
Marines and sailors land after a conflict at the Canton trading post.

NOTE: Chinese combat: From this period forward we see repeated brief landings, postings, and “retaliation”. This is in large part due to two accelerating phenomena -- the rapid increase of American trade, and a steady influx of missionaries. Seeing locals as “degenerate heathens”, missionaries regularly assault priests, break up funerals and weddings, burn down temples, and bludgeon locals who are considered “insolent.” When this activity exists side by side with American traders actively encouraging the opium trade, it is not difficult to see how American citizens frequently get themselves into situations requiring the U.S. Marines to prevent their death by mob assault, if not summary execution by local authorities.
Over the next hundred and ten years our soldiers, in particular our Marines, who are almost always vastly outnumbered and trekking deep into territory unknown to them, compile, by the standards of the time and place, a record of honor, stalwartness, and bravery. Unfortunately the citizens and officials they are defending do not.

1844: Mexico
U.S. forces used to bulwark Texas against Mexico. Irregularities of the action later lead to a Senate inquiry.

1845: Vietnam
On a regional goodwill tour, the U.S.S. Constitution stops in Da Nang, loading supplies and meeting with local rulers. The captain, informed of an imprisoned French missionary bishop, demands his release, shelling Da Nang, taking three local mandarins hostage, and sending troops into the city. The government stands firm and when Vietnamese troops arrive, holding the high ground around Da Nang harbor and pointing heavy guns at the lone American warship, the mandarins are released and the Constitution sails off.
Years later the U.S. government apologizes and pays reparations.

First U.S.-Mexican War
1846 to 1848
From the founding days of the United States on, there was always debate about how far U.S. boundaries should extend and how aggressively these boundaries should be moved. In fact, (former Senator and Vice-President) Aaron Burr’s real offense, in the eyes of many of his contemporaries, was his role in an attempt to create another nation along the borders of “Spanish Florida”.
When the United States government declares Texas independent of Mexico, supporting a claim that Mexico considers utterly invalid, war is inevitable. Over the next year, both the U.S. and Mexico move forces into position, staking out claims to not just Texas, but all of what is now California, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, and, in fact, much of the American southwest.

1849: Greece
After extensive attempts at negotiations, a naval force rescues Martin Koszta, a naturalized American seized by Austrians for political crimes.

1851: Johanns Island
An attack in retaliation for the imprisonment of a U.S. ship’s captain.

1852 to 1853: Argentina
A Marine presence is maintained in Buenos Aires during a period of civil disorder.

1853 and 1854: Japan
Admiral Perry’s mission
Long held off and limited to absolute minimal interactions, the U.S. becomes ever more determined to open Japan to Western ships, not only for trade but to get coaling stations for the new formidable but voracious steam ships. Admiral Perry’s show of force followed by negotiations includes building not only a telegraph system but an entire small railroad to show the court both our military might and the advantages of our trade. The Shogun eventually concedes but it will take decades of shows of force and military action to turn this treaty to reality.

May, 1854: United States - Boston
Following passage of the slavery-expanding Kansas-Nebraska Act, enraged Bostonians try to keep a slave from being shipped south. It takes police, local militia, Marines, and an artillery batallion to keep him from being freed.

1854: China
Presence in various locations during civil disorder for about two months.

1854: Nicaragua
San Juan del Norte razed to avenge an insult to the U.S. Minister to Nicaragua.

1855: China
Troops posted during civil disorder in Shanghai as well as multiple encounters with pirates near Hong Kong.

1855: Fiji Islands
Troops land seeking reparations for attacks on U.S. citizens.

1855: Uruguay
Forces are posted in Montevideo during civil disorder.

1856: Panama
Forces are posted during another civil disturbance.

1856: China
Marines are posted for two months at Canton during civil disturbance as well as retaliation for an attack on a U.S. vessel.

1857: Nicaragua
U.S. Navy and Marines protect the retreat of William Walker, the Vanderbilt-backed, would-be absolute ruler of Nicaragua. Later U.S. forces intercept Walker’s second attempt.

1857 to 1858: U.S. Territories
Utah (“Deseret”) Occupation
See our note on occupations.
After years of mutual disregard and growing U.S. rhetorical belligerence, U.S. troops occupy the territory claimed by the Mormons as their sovereign nation of Deseret. Many Mormons retreat out of Salt Lake City and other centralized areas, destroying their own farms as they retreat, leaving U.S. troops occupying mile after mile of abandoned, smoking ruins. The U.S. enforces laws against polygamy and other “blasphemies”, U.S. and Mormon forces each engage in occasional small raids, and after a year the Mormons concede conditional defeat and U.S. troops withdraw.

1858: Uruguay
Marines are posted in Montevideo during civil unrest.

1858: Fiji Islands
Troops land and attack in retaliation for the deaths of two U.S. citizens.

1859: Mexico
200 U.S. troops cross into Mexico in pursuit of Cortina, an outlaw.

1859: Paraguay
A show of force to get redress for a U.S. survey vessel attacked in 1855.

1859: China
One month posting near Shanghai during a civil disturbance.

1859: United States: Virginia, Harper's Ferry
John Brown's abolitionists seize the Federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry and must be dislodged by U.S. troops.

1860: Zaire
An anti-slave trader patrol seizes several ships.

1860: Angola
A brief posting at Kissembo during civil disturbance.

1860: Colombia
Postings at the Bay of Panama during a revolution.

The Civil War
(also known as The War Between The States)
1861-1865: United States, U.S. territories, and along shipping lanes worldwide
Long foreshadowed, after Abraham Lincoln is elected president the southeastern U.S. states seceded. The resulting conflict was the most lethal ever on American soil. While the Confederates fought the Union armies the Union fought the Confederate nation with an increasingly effective blockade, pressure on other countries not to offer support, and a military strategy that combined severing the Confederacy into isolated fragments, a building relentless willingness to grind through human lives in massive-scale combat, and seizing the moral high ground with the long-awaited commitment to end slavery.
While fought primarily on U.S. territory, the sea battles of the Civil War stretched all over the world, exhibiting the truly cosmopolitan nature of U.S. interests. Confederate commerce raiders, most spectacularly the British-built and crewed Alabama, sought to cripple union trade. This forced U.S. naval ships into a worldwide game of cat and mouse. Meanwhile the initial Union blockade escalated into bombarding enemy strongholds and riverine advances up into enemy territory, working with land forces to chop away the South's ability to move troops, sell goods, or hold territory.
1861: Alone and in groups, the states of the southeast secede. For much of the year the south is busy creating a government while the north builds a military. Southern aversion to centralized authority greatly impedes their task. Meanwhile, President Buchanan insipidly stands by as southerners seize most southern Federal property, including forts and arsenals, southern officers desert to join Confederate forces, and local militias fight increasingly brutal battles against each other in the struggle to determine which border states will secede or stay Union.
In March, Lincoln takes office. Union troops lock down Baltimore and overall keep Maryland and Delaware, both slave-holding, in Union hands. A massive Union blockade over the entire Confederate coastline grows from ineffectual to comprehensive while Confederate-backed privateers attack Union shipping, fishing, and whaling all over the world. At long last, Union troops move against the massed Confederate armies near Washington. The armies meet in the First Battle of Bull Run, where the Union's initial successes collapse into a rout as tens of thousands of civilians in uniform are thrust into brutal warfare. The men of both armies are left stunned, disorganized, and fragmented, but it is clear to all that the Confederates hold the field.
In Missouri and Kentucky actions between local militias escalate with growing rancor and the arrival of regular troops. To the south, the Union campaign to gain control of the coastline builds as, one by one, they conquer the forts protecting New Orleans and the Carolina coast.
1862: The Confederates concentrate their western forces at Pea Ridge, Arkansas, where they are defeated by Union troops. The next day, the Union ironclad, Monitor, pushes back the Confederate ironclad, Virginia, itself a rebuilt Union warship. These actions notably improve confidence in Union military strength.
Meanwhile over half of the eastern Union forces were routing around the Confederate armies threatening Washington in an ambitious attempt to defeat the core of the southern military and seize Richmond, the Confederate capital. Southern forces nimbly blocked the attempt, reducing Union armies to a slow, measured retreat, with a succession of major battles along the way.
Shiloh U.S. takes New Orleans Second Bull Run Late Dec.Murfreeboro
1863: Murfreesboro Gettysburg New York City draft riots
Chicamauga Creek Chattanooga A small Confederate force raids St. Albans, Vermont and retreats over the Canadian border.
1864:
1865 to 1875: Occupation. With combat ended and the bitterness of the war deepened by Lincoln's assassination, Union troops settle in for the comprehensive restructuring of the states of the former Confederacy, much of it now in ruins. For years after Union forces enforce a grudging and minimal compliance while southerners flock to join secret organizations like the Klu Klux Klan dedicated to reversing Federal actions and bringing southern life back to its prewar “ideal”.

1862: United States
Sioux (Santee) Uprising (Minnesota)
See our note on Indian wars.
After decades of yielding and agreeing to ever more extreme treaty terms and the hunting out of their remaining lands, the Sioux, near starvation, rose up in lightning-fast rebellion, themselves slaughtering settlers all across their territory. Settlers fought back and U.S. troops moved in. For a few weeks Sioux fighters aggressively attacked farms, columns of soldiers, and several forts. At first Indian forces won battle after battle but soon government forces overwhelmed them. The entire war had lasted forty-one days.
303 Indians were sentenced to death in the following procedings, in trials lasting from one to fifteen minutes. President Lincoln stepped in and only 38 were actually executed.

1863, 1864: Japan
Retaliation at Simonoseki for forts and ships having fired upon a U.S. vessel, then a further show of force so that the Prince of Nagato would allow the usage of the Shimonoseki Straits by Western vessels as specified in earlier treaties.

1864: United States
Sand Creek Massacre
See our note on Indian wars.
About one hundred Cheyenne families camped near a U.S. fort during extended negotiations are massacred by eight hundred troops, killing everybody they can, mutilating as they go. Perhaps a fifth of the Indians escape. The rest die.
The commander of the attack becomes a local hero, giving speeches at which he shows off trophies, including pubic hairs of Sand Creek dead. He is stripped of rank, forced to resign from the cavalry, and summoned to testify before a congressional commission that declares the attack planned, unmerited, and unjustified. However nobody is ever charged with any crimes. The massacre and its aftermath would serve for decades among native tribes as justification for war.

1865: Colombia
A posting during a period of civil violence.

1866: China
An action in retaliation for an attack on the U.S. consul at Newchwang and as a “protective force” during unrest. Forces land three times this year, at Chwang, Tung Chou Foo, and Shanghai.

1866: Mexico
100 troops cross the border to obtain the surrender of Matamoras (an outlaw). This act was later repudiated by the U.S. government and an apology tendered.

1867: Nicaragua
U.S. forces occupy the cities of Managua and Leon.

1867: Taiwan
A attack in retaliation for the suspected killing of the crew of a U.S. ship.

1868: Japan
Extensive postings during the revolution that raised the emperor over the Shogun, creating the Meiji power structure later to rise to nationalistic heights in the overrunning of much of Asia during World War II.

1868: Uruguay
A posting during a civil disturbance.

1868: Colombia
Posting at Aspinwall during civil disturbances after the death of the Colombian President.

1870: Mexico
See our note on piracy.
U.S. forces travel 40 miles inland along Rio Tecapan in pursuit of and assault on outlaw ship Forward.

1870: Hawaii
Troops are sent in to reach the local U.S. consulate to ensure the lowering of the flag to half-mast after the refusal of the local consul to do so.

1871: Korea
Korean Expedition
Eleven years after the crew of the merchant ship General Sherman was seized and killed for trespassing, a squadron was sent. After an initial attempt to create a treaty of the sort in force with Japan, U.S. troops land under fire, U.S. soldiers march inland, and conquer five coastal forts, seizing arms and supplies.

1872 to 1873: U.S. California and Oregon Territories
See our note on Indian wars.
Modoc tribes resist resettlement, fighting small battles from concealed caves until their resources give out.

1873 to 1896: Mexico
Numerous border crossings are made in both directions in pursuit of outlaws. These actions are legitimized by both sides after a 1882 treaty.

1873: Colombia
Several postings at the Bay of Panama during civil disturbances.

1874: Hawaii
A posting to protect U.S. interests during the coronation of the king.

1876: Mexico
A very brief posting to maintain control of the town of Matamoras.

1877: United States
Nez Perce War a.k.a. Chief Joseph’s War
See our note on Indian wars.
After gold is found on Nez Perce lands, the U.S. yet again “renegotiates”. A number of bands, led by the twenty-three year old Chief Joseph, declare that they were not aware of the latest treaty talks, were not represented there and are not bound by the new terms. When told to comply anyway they take up arms and soon resolve to travel to possible allies and men, women, children, and all, engage in a 1,300 mile journey, fighting periodic battles with intercepting forces of cavalry and civilian volunteers.
They do remarkably well but thirty miles south of the Canadian border they are caught by surprise and decimated by an assault by the combined forces of the several cavalry troops. Promised the chance to return to near his homelands, Joseph surrenders, citing the risk the tribe's vulnurable position, and they spend the rest of the century in exile, first at Leavenworth, Kansas, then in dry eastern Washington, only a few hundred miles from their lush former territory.

1876-1887: United States - the Dakotas
See our note on Indian wars.
In a fierce and extended campaign, the Sioux Confederacy, under Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, fought what may have been the largest gathering of troops in all the Indian wars. Once again the discovery of gold brings a rush of treaty-breaking white settlers and government demands for Indian withdrawal. An imposing U.S. force discovers Crazy Horse's own encampment and reduces it to ash, whereupon the Indians attack from cover, tearing at U.S. troops, regaining their just-captured horses, and forcing a U.S. retreat. best known for Custer's Last Stand at Little Big Horn, TK.

1877: United States
Federal troops combat strikers against railroad companies and attempt to quell associated riots. The first combat, in Pittsburgh, leaves 26 demonstrators dead.

1882: Egypt
A posting (primarily at Alexandria) during civil disturbances and warfare between Egyptians and the British Empire.

1885: Panama
Extensive military presence throughout the country to guard valuables in transit across Panama and on Panama Canal Co. grounds during civil disturbances.

1888: Korea
A posting in Seoul during an expected period of unrest.

1888 to 1889: Samoa
A four month posting during a civil disturbance and to counter a potential German seizure. Tensions rise and U.S., German, and British fleets increase in both size and belligerence until a hurricane comes and destroys all three fleets, leaving only one German and one British ship afloat. This disaster brings all sides to their senses and, hence to the treaty table.

1888: Haiti
An action to force the Haitian government to free a U.S. ship seized for violation of an ongoing blockade.

1889: Hawaii
A posting during a revolution as forces hoping to preserve Hawaii’s autonomy battle forces, funded and supplied by large growers, backing a more commercial orientation and more U.S.-looking government.

1890: Argentina
A naval force lands at Buenos Aires to protect the consulate.

1891: Chile
Forces land at Valparaiso during civil disturbance surrounding a United States ship Baltimore.

1891: Haiti
Posting to protect U.S. interests at Navassa Island, a source of guano used as fertilizer.

1891: Hawaii
Marines land to support the “provisional government” under control of Sanford Dole (yes, of Dole Fruit), fronting for a coalition of American and British agricultural interests angry at the “uncooperative” attitude of the Hawaiian monarchy - an action later repudiated by the U.S. government.

1891: Bering Seas
Three U.S. warships with sizable Marine detachments patrol the region to prevent seal poaching by ships from several countries, most notably Britain.

1892: United States
Johnson County War
Conflicts between an alliance of large cattle ranches and various independents, rustlers, and “troublemakers&rdquo builds until a three day battle between the outlaws and a three hundred man army is broken up by the arrival of the 6th Cavalry, sent to intervene by President Harrison.

1894 to 1895: China
Marines land at Tientsin and advance all the way to Beijing under light fire during the Sino-Japanese War. A naval ship is beached and used as a fort at Newchwang.

1894: Nicaragua
A posting in Corinto during civil disturbances.

1894: United States
Troops occupy Chicago as the city collapes into near anarchy, working with local police and militias of irregulars during rioting surrounding the Pullman railroad strike.

1894 to 1896: Korea
Marines are posted at the U.S. legation for the duration of unrest surrounding the Sino-Japanese War.

1894: United States
Marine and Army troops guard the Southern Pacific Railroad during a strike.

1894: Nicaragua
U.S. forces land at Bluefields (a strategic port) during a civil disturbance.

1895: Colombia
Troops land to protect U.S. interests at Bocas del Toro during an attack by outlaws.

1898: Nicaragua
A posting during civil disturbances at San Juan del Sur.

Spanish-American War
1898-1902: Cuba, Guam, Puerto Rico, the Philippines
See our note on occupations.
Seeking to flex new military might, eager to fulfill its “Manifest Destiny” of bringing modern Christian democratic principles to the world, the U.S is eager for an excuse to attack the remaining territories of a Spanish Empire many Americans had long considered to be decadent, slothful, not to mention Popish,” and fully in need of a strong, firm American hand up. Several years of increasing rebellion within the Spanish territories raise the level of Congressional debate about what form U.S. involvement should take.
When the U.S.S. Maine explodes while anchored in Spanish waters (for reasons still unproven, though current evidence suggests a coal explosion) the U.S. promptly declares war and sets out to correct what is seen as a long-standing and eminently fixable problem.

1898: Cuba
The U.S. has considerable trouble taking Cuba, losing more troops to disease then combat. This part of the Spanish American War is best known as the site of charge of The Rough Riders, Teddy Roosevelt’s famed collection of heroes and oddballs. More recent analysis suggests that much of the record of this invasion was grossly distorted, including the Rough Riders’ charge.

1898: Puerto Rico
Taken by American forces and a U.S. protectorate ever since.

1900 to 1916: Philippines
Philippine Campaigns
Promising to back Philippine independence during the Spanish American War, the U.S. reneged after Spain’s defeat, provoking fierce resistance and widespread U.S. opposition. Over 70,000 U.S. troops endured intense jungle combat, defeating independence fighters in most of the country by late 1901 but continuing to face resistance, mostly in Muslim Mindanao, which did not taper off until 1903, and continued with flare-ups until the 1930’s.

1898 to 1899: China
Four months of postings at the legation in Beijing and at the consulate at Tientsin during a power struggle between the Dowager Empress and her son.

1899: Nicaragua
Soldiers posted at San Juan del Norte and later at Bluefields (a key coastal area) during civil disturbances connected to an uprising led by General Juan Reyes.

1899: Samoa
Posting during a civil disturbance due to a struggle over the throne.

1901: China
anti-western uprising known as the Boxer Rebellion
Thousands of resentments boil over as the peasant movement known as the Boxers rises in arms against Europeans, Japanese, Americans, and Russians throughout northern China. With the intermittant and half-hearted support of the imperial Chinese court, local groups riot, attack, and generally erupt into anti-Western rage as well as violence towards Chinese Christians. For almost two months With the arrival of combined

1901 and 1902: Colombia
Postings at Bocas del Toro, with the U.S. military used as armed guards for two months on all trains crossing the Isthmus, and other postings during a civil war.

1903 - 1904: Ethiopia
A force of twenty-five Marines act as a guard and escort for the Consul during treaty negotiations.

1903 - 1914: Panama
See our note on occupations.
Ostensibly to protect U.S. concerns during the war of independence from Colombia, U.S. troops also serve as support for Panamanian forces, preventing any significant actions by the Colombian military. With the entire independence movement coordinated from the White House and a declaration of independence and constitution both written in Washington D.C., little attempt is made to portray the action as anything but a seizure of the region by the U.S. after decades of failed negotiations relating to the building of the Panama Canal.
Years later the U.S., under President Wilson, eventually pays a twenty-five million dollar compensatory claim, but, of course, keeps the canal.

1903: Dominican Republic
Posting during a civil disturbance.

1903: Honduras
Postings to create protected zones at the U.S. consulate and steamship wharf.

1903: Syria
Posting during a civil disturbance.

1904: Algeria
Show of force to obtain the release of a U.S. citizen held by local outlaws.

1904: Dominican Republic
Postings at Puerto Plata, Sosua, and Santo Domingo City during civil disturbances.

1904 to 1905: Korea
A twenty-three month posting at the U.S. legation at Seoul during the Russo-Japanese War.

1906 to 1909: Cuba
See our note on occupations.
A major U.S. intervention and three year occupation following local civil disturbances.

1907: Honduras
Three months of postings throughout the country during a war between Honduras and Nicaragua.

1910: Nicaragua
A reconnaissance mission to Corinto during the civil war, later postings at Bluefields.

1911: China
Brief postings at the Hankow consulate, Shanghai cable stations, and assorted other locations as the nationalist revolution begins.

1912: Honduras
U.S. troops land during and after the civil war to prevent the seizure of a U.S.-owned railroad by the government. Troops pull out when the action is disapproved by the U.S. government

1912 - 1941: China
U.S. forces are maintained at numerous points during the Kuomintang-Imperial and Sino-Japanese hostilities. With a peak strength of over 5,700 soldiers and 44 vessels, major postings included the route from Beijing to the sea, Beijing itself, and treaty ports. In several cases U.S. forces take fire from Japanese aircraft and troops.
Various factions vied for legitimacy from the populace, determined in large part by effective opposition to “treaty ports”. Meanwhile the US decided they were willing to negotiate the treaties, but only once one had emerged and was stable.

1912: Panama
U.S. troops oversee a local election, including troops on the stand during the later swearing-in.

1912: Cuba
See our note on occupations.
When a revolution sweeps the country, U.S. Marines move in and garrison twenty-six towns around Guantanamo and Santiago, as well as serving as railroad guards. Postings in Oriente and Havana complete the steps to restore order. All Marines are withdrawn within three months as the area quiets down.

1912 to 1925: Nicaragua
See our note on occupations.
Troops are posted during an uprising. A small part of the U.S. force remains until 1925 in periodic combat (including air sorties and regular use of artillery) against the forces of General Sandino.

1912: Turkey
A brief posting at Constantinople during the Balkan War.

1913: Mexico
Marines land at Ciaris Estero to cover evacuation of U.S. citizens and others from a civil disturbance in Yaqui Valley.

1914: Haiti
A posting during a civil disturbance.

1914 - 1917: Mexico
Extended hostilities along the U.S.-Mexico border are set off by the overthrow of the government by General Huerta, whose regime the U.S. refuses to recognize. Initial raiding into U.S. territory by Pancho Villa results in a fruitless march by Pershing well into Mexico. U.S. forces land at the port of Vera Cruz, routing the local military and capturing the city.

1914: Dominican Republic
U.S. naval vessels fire on local forces to halt the bombardment of Puerto Plata and maintain Santo Domingo as a neutral zone.

1914: United States
A seven month coal mine strike in Ludlow, Colorado had included small pitched battles between strikers blockading the mine and state troops. On April 20th, militia and company-paid irregulars assault the striker’s camp, killing 33. After ten days of widespread fighting, federal troops move in and enforce order.

1915 to 1934: Haiti
See our note on occupations.
When violence again swells up, putting U.S. citizens as well as U.S.-owned businesses at risk, the U.S. military moves in in force, occupying the country, and reorganizing it to a considerable degree. Reducing the local government to a puppet status, the U.S. does not withdraw until President Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor Policy declares a less hands-on approach.
In the years of the occupation, U.S. troops fight an increasingly organized resistance with expeditions out into the hills, during which U.S. forces and forces of locals under U.S. command engage in banditry, summary execution without trial, and looting. Later court inquiries disavow the actions but allow the primary U.S. commanding officer to remain on active duty.

World War One
1918: Belgium, France, Germany, Italy
See our note on occupations.
Starting as the “War to End War”, the pomp and glory of the vast new armies was quickly eviscerated and dropped into blood-soaked trench mud. In a time when guns could reach far but troops could not, the combat soon ground down into a war of sheer bloody-minded refusal to give in as hundreds of thousands of soldiers at a time were torn to pieces across lengthy, ever-shifting front lines.

The U.S. came in late in the war, initially active only as a naval force protecting convoys, then bringing fresh but undertrained troops who first joined existing battle lines and eventually helped lead the advance against German forces. The only combat on American soil occurs when a German sub lays mines along the coast of Long Island, one of which sinks the cruiser San Diego, killing six.
With the war over, U.S. troops occupy parts of Germany, an occupation that did not entirely end until 1923.
1918 to 1920: Panama
Troops act as a stabilizing force at Chiriqui during rioting and disorder linked to local elections.

1918 to 1920: Russia
Opposing the communist Russian revolution
Following the Bolshevik takeover in Russia, U.S. troops joined English, French, and others in fighting Red forces, both through direct combat and in support of Czarist, Kerenskyite and other indigenous factions. Combat initiated from bases at Archangel (past Finland) and Vladivostok (north of Japan), pressing in from the Northern regions of both the Atlantic and Pacific borders of Russia. With over 11,000 U.S. soldiers, U.S. combat actions continued for over 2 years.

1919: Dalmatia
Troops act as a neutral force during unrest at Trau between Italians and Serbs

1919: Honduras
Marines posted at a neutral zone during an uprising.

1919: Turkey
Marines serve as a guard at the U.S. consulate during the Greek occupation of Istanbul.

1920: Guatemala
Forces are landed to protect the U.S. legation and trade-related assets such as the telegraph cable station during civil disturbances.

1920: United States
In a far larger repeat of the Ludlow violence, West Virginia miners and company men engage in ever more deadly confrontations including over a hundred small skirmishes and several battles, peaking in the four day Battle of Blair Mountain, as thousands of rebels face off against 1,300 militia and irregulars. 2,100 federal troops move in and the rebels fade back into the hills.

1932: United States
As the Great Depression worsens, protests by the unemployed occasionally turn violent, but the military plays no role until troops led by Douglas MacArthur and including a unit led by George Patton, attacked an encampment of 20,000 WW I veterans demonstrating for early payment of the bonus previously promised to them by Congress.

NOTE: The Phony War - During this period, though Germany had declared their intent to conquer Europe and establish a thousand year racialist empire and reduce much of Europe to client states, in fact they had bullied their way at the treaty table to eastern borderlands, merged with Austria, seized Poland, and then stopped. For most of two years the nations of northern Europe crouched behind their defenses and waited, debating more and more about whether or not war would even come. All while the Soviet Russians were waging a brutally violent war with the Finns, the fascists consolidated their gains in Spain, and the Italians continued their gruesome fighting in Ethiopia.
In Asia, the situation looked much the same, as the Japanese, having declared their intent to create a massive thousand year empire, waged a nightmarish campaign in China, occasionally threatening and very occasionally shooting at U.S. troops who might be in the way.

1940: Antigua, Bahamas, Bermuda, British Guiana, Jamaica, Newfoundland, St. Lucia, Trinidad
Troops are posted at air and naval bases, known as lend-lease bases, transferred to U.S. hands from Great Britain. One issue is possible assault of U.S. territories being mounted from Vichy-controlled French Caribbean territory.

1941: Greenland
Taken under U.S. protection against possible Axis attack, keeping it from being used as a forward base by the Nazis.

1941: Iceland
A sizable force, including 4,000 Marines scheduled for Pacific combat, are sent here to prevent use of the territory as an advance base by the Nazis to attack North America.

1941: Germany
Starting in July, U.S. warships convoyed merchant ships in European shipping lanes, first firing on German subs in September.

1941: Dutch Guiana
Occupied by U.S. troops, by agreement with the Netherlands government in exile. The U.S. also worked with Brazil to protect the aluminum ore supply from the Suriname mines.

World War Two
The largest, deadliest, and broadest warfare in the history in the world, World War Two pitted three fascist empires against the Soviet Union, the British Empire, the United States, dozens of guerrilla forces, and just about everybody else on Earth north of the equator.
Though Japan bombarded Hawaii's Pearl Harbor and seized the tip of Alaska, combat only reached the forty-eight states as combat with Axis submarines and ineffectual bombing of the Pacific Northwest with balloons. But U.S. troops in combat in Africa, Europe, and the Pacific, after an initial comprehensive defeat and withdrawal, paused on the refuge of U.S. soil, rearmed, reequipped, reorganized, and with a vastly increased and newly-trained military, cut away, piece by piece, the newly created fascist empires.
The war was characterized by frequent use of amphibious assault. Wading ashore from unstable, pitching landing craft, frequently in foul weather, into sometimes massive enemy fire, U.S. troops took hundreds of heavily defended positions and then fought their way, a yard at a time, across innumerable Pacific islands and up the beaches of Italy and France.
Technology defines every stage as fortified bunkers are assaulted with compact explosives and flamethrowers while both sides use radios to swiftly coordinate strikes at any vulnerable spot. As deadly as trench warfare, as unforgiving as Vietnam, called “the meat grinder” by many, it was also the only effective way found to take the territory back.
Working in concert with allied forces, most notably Russians, British, British Empire, Free French, and various resistance groups, U.S. forces engage in coordinated worldwide combat to halt, push back, defeat, and occupy the Axis Powers.
1932-1940:Germany, hit hard by a worldwide depression and demoralized by both defeat in World War I and the punitive terms of their loss, comes under the grip of the Nazi Party, and under Nazi control remilitarizes. The new regime, through a series of astounding pressure plays, manages to take over parts of Poland, then Czechoslovakia, and prepares openly for all-out world conquest, while also attempting to gain surreptitious staging areas as far away as Latin America.
Italy, also under a fascist regime, allies with the Nazis, creating a unified front. Fascist nationalist groups also come to dominate governments and ruling structures through much of Europe, most notably Hungary. Their sympathisers and enthusiasts stretch worldwide, including, in the U.S., Charles Lindbergh, many of the founders of New York’s Museum of Modern Art, and the Ford Motor Company. IBM, Ford, and General Motors subsidiaries play key roles in building the Nazis and unprecedenctedly sophisticated and high-tech war machine.
Japan's hypernationalist regime, having taken Taiwan back in 1895, defeated the Russian Navy in 1904, taken Korea in 1905, and gained control of several Pacific islands, begins a bloody advance into Manchuria in 1931, then China by 1937. By 1938 they have taken Shanghai, Beijing, and Nanjing and announced their intention to conquer all of Asia.
1941: On December 7th Japan attacks Pearl Harbor, crippling the U.S. Pacific Fleet, and swiftly overruns every U.S. base east of Midway, taking all China bases, the Philippines, and pretty much the entire Pacific island region north of Australia. Through May of 1942, Japanese forces advance and advance and advance again. But on May 4th U.S. and Japanese fleets
1942: With the war in the Pacific centering on “island-hopping”, the U.S. fights its way closer to the Japanese home islands, with each battle meant to take ground for the airfields and bases needed for the next advance.
1943:
1944:Among the actions in Asia, our Marines have considerable success training rebels in Japanese-held territory to fight the Japanese. A particular success is a former academic called Ho Chi Minh.

Normandy Invasion: U.S., British, and Canadian troops wade ashore
1945:
Aftermath:With the war over, the United States emerged as the world’s strongest military power, a condition never truly matched in the sixty years since. As the war drew to a close, enormous attention was paid by the U.S., Soviets, and remaining European powers to who would advance where, not just on grounds of military advantage, but to determine who would control what territory when the war ended. This played a key role in the monumental decision to use nuclear weapons in Japan, thereby not only preventing a land invasion but forestalling a massive imminent Soviet invasion.

1945 to 1947: China
Fifty thousand additional Marines are sent to bolster the sixty-thousand man existing U.S. force in North China as they assist in demobilization and repatriation of Japanese forces and providing extensive support for various non-Communist factions, primarily those under Chiang-Kai Shek, in the fast-reigniting civil war. Repatriation is surprisingly peaceful but otherwise the venture is a humiliating failure as Nationalist forces are driven back and back by the canny, persistant, and locally-supported communists.

NOTE: 1945 to 1989 Cold War Actions: Europe and Russia
While thought of as a period of war by proxy between the NATO Powers (The U.S., England, France, etc.) and the communist bloc (the Soviet Union, China, and their dependencies and satellites) occasionally open combat would occur, or at the least shots would be fired. Best known of these was the continual efforts of Soviets to shoot down U.S. surveillance planes, with the bringing down of Gary Powers’s U2 being the best known. Occasionally shots would be fired across various East-West borders, which resulted in casualties and, rarely, deaths.

U.S. and Soviet fleets also engage in constant feints into each other's territory, seeking intelligence, positioning forces about in case of nuclear war, and otherwise manuevering for advantage, with each side dropping depth charges onto each other's subs and otherwise engaging in low-level, unacknowledged harassment and warfare. Meanwhile Chinese and later Vietnamese forces periodically take shots at U.S. vessels, claiming territorial limits far beyond those of international law.
As in the air, fatalities are rare on each side, but quite sufficient to qualify these actions as hostilities.
1945-47: Italy
In the poverty and turmoil of post-war conditions, the local communist party, with some help from Russia, seeks to get elected as or simply take over the possible government. The U.S. takes a very active hand in preventing this, including covert actions.

1945-48: Germany
See our note on occupations.
Though it later settled into the serene peace we now know, the occupation of Germany initially involved periodic violent skirmishes with resistant groups of fascists and others. It took years for the new structures to take hold and prosperity to begin to return.

1945-48: Japan
See our note on occupations.
As in Germany, the first months of the occupation saw periodic acts of resistance. U.S. forces quickly allied themselves with a number of nationalist factions, working with those factions, later the core of the Yakuza, to impose order in populated areas, obviating the need for “mopping up” in all but the most remote areas.

1946 to 1949: Greece
United States troops and intelligence take an active role in the Greek civil war, seeking to prevent the establishment of a communist government - the first example of Truman’s “Containment Doctrine”

1946: Philippines
After the withdrawal of Japanese troops, there was a period of considerable reshuffling of powers. Our troops strongly backed the right wing factions who eventually created the totalitarian regime of Ferdinand Marcos.

1948 - 1949: Germany
The Berlin Airlift
When Soviet forces seal off Berlin, Western nations create an unprecedented air supply system, bringing in food, medicine, and everything else needed to keep the city running. Operating on short, improvised runways with heavy loads and terrible weather, pilots risk death with every load, with thirty-one U.S., thirty-nine British, and five German pilots dying.

1950: Latvia
A U.S. Navy privateer airplane flies from Wiesbaden, West Germany, to spy over the Soviet Union with ten people on board. Soviet reconnaissance spots the plane over Latvia and shoots it down.

1950: Puerto Rico
Jayuya Uprising
See our note on occupations.
Expecting a crackdown, nationalist forces strike first, seizing a police station. Fighting spreads quickly across the island. Local forces declare martial law and attack Nationalist strongholds but it takes U.S. troops to suppress the rebellion.

Korean War
1950 - 1953: Korea and China
Responding initially to internal fighting and going in under the United Nations flag, U.S. soldiers are involved in a bloody campaign fought mostly against Chinese troops. Pitting relatively small numbers of U.S. soldiers against “human wave” attacks by literally millions of North Korean and Chinese, the U.N. forces at first are overwhelmed, losing ground until most of the country is in communist hands.
The initial attack by North Korean forces sweeps down, utterly routing local troops and overwhelming an ill-prepared and vastly outnumbered U.S. force. Almost the entire country is in communist hands by the time sizable U.S. forces arrive who then press North against crumbling resistance, taking back territory as swiftly as it had previously been lost. The U.S. forces, split in two on opposite sides of a line of mountains, advance almost to the Chinese border, seeming unstoppable until four armies of Chinese troops suddenly materialize out of hiding, utterly destroy the most forward elements, and batter U.S. forces south again in the Chosin Reservoir campaign, fought in a succession of mountain passes and ridges in temperatures typically far below freezing, with both sides poorly equipped, ill-fed, and taking almost no prisoners. U.S. fatalities are brutal. Chinese ones are far greater.
The tide turns with the second landing at Incheon (also spelled Inchon), as U.S. forces press back to the Demilitarized Zone and establish the separate nation of South Korea. At the DMZ, intermittent sniping across boundaries continues to result in periodic casualties and deaths right up to today.

1951 - 1956: Latvia
The U.S. for the first time drops armed agents into a Soviet bloc country with the express mission of undermining the government. Due to intelligence failures, the agents are expected by the Soviets who track them down or lure them in, swiftly killing all of them. Only after five years of failures do the U.S. and Britain determine that their entire intelligence network in Latvia is dead or subverted and shut the project down.

1952: China
Two U.S. agents are shot down while attempting to retrieve another agent. One is a POW until 1971, the other until 1973.

1953: Nicaragua
A protective force is posted during yet another civil disorder.

1954: Southeast Asian Islands
As the posturing between the Maoist government and the United States continues, periodically each side comes right to the edge of open conflict. In a rare case of actual combat, Chinese aircraft fire on U.S. planes searching for survivors of a passenger plane shot down by the Chinese two days earlier. The U.S. craft return fire and down both Chinese planes.

1954: Guatemala
In May the U.S. Navy stops the Dutch ship Alfhem and forces it to Florida to search it for arms - this was in truth retaliation for the Alfhem having just delivered heavy guns and machine guns to the Guatemalan government the week before. In June the CIA begins small-scale bombing raids in support of a CIA-backed “revolution”.
A CIA pilot is shot down and has to crash land in Mexico. Another U.S. plane bombs and sinks the British freighter Springfjord, for which the U.S. eventually pays 1.5 million dollars to Lloyds as an apology.

1956: China
A U.S. military reconnaissance plane is shot down by the Chinese while flying over international waters.

1956: Suez Crisis
When the battle over the Suez breaks out, pitting Middle Eastern hopes of self-determination against the forces of the fast-fading British Empire, U.S. forces move in and evacuate over two thousand Americans from Egypt, Syria, and Israel.

1957-58: Indonesia
When PEMESTA forces plan a revolution to overthrow their socialist government, the CIA funds and organizes an air force and army, providing transport planes, 15 B 26 bombers w/ 50 caliber guns, 300-400 mercenaries (from the U.S., Taiwan, and the Philippines) and help with logistics. All of this is backed by two U.S. Navy destroyers & several submarines.

1957: China Coast, Quemoy and Matsu
Chinese forces start to subject the Nationalist-held islands of Quemoy and Matsu to artillery barrages. Eisenhower treats this as a major test of U.S. anti-Communist (resolve and sends the Seventh Fleet to interpose, providing a six carrier battle group that has orders to attack with force to defend any further action against the islands. The Mao government ceases the attacks.

1958: Lebanon
As the factionalism that will eventually destroy Lebanon first breaks down into civil war and surrounding countries threaten to invade, the local government seeks and gets U.S. assistance. Moving in with three Marine battalions, an airborne brigade, a strike group, and three carriers providing close support, the U.S. creates a show of force that stops the civil war and buys some more years of peace.

The War in Indochina
(Including the Vietnam War and warfare in Laos, Cambodia, and the surrounding region)
(1959-1975)
See our note on occupations.
U.S. Indochinese involvement increased by fits and starts, frequently grudgingly, always under the limiting control of a Washington D.C. command wary of inciting direct war with China or Russia, queasily uncertain of the competence or will of the South Vietnamese governing groups, and determined to find quick, straightforward means of achieving comprehensive victories.
Until the comprehensive defeat of elite French forces at Dien Bien Phu, the focus continued to be on support of the French. After that, training and support of forces of the South Vietnamese regime gradually shifts to accompanying South Vietnamese units into combat though most U.S. soldiers still work with CIA and other non-uniformed services to train, coordinate propaganda, create and run infiltration units, and otherwise attempt to weaken and undermine communists, insurgent nationalists, and other enemies. U.S. soldiers do not take the field on their own for almost ten years.
At all phases, the U.S. is enmeshed between the South Vietnamese regular army (ARVN), South Vietnamese special forces, South Korean troops, North Vietnamese troops, South Vietnamese Vietcong irregulars, and various private armies, from the Cao Dai and Buddhist militias to the crimelords of the B XiTK. The accelerating coups and reorganizations also meant that a given South Vietnamese commander might go from ally to enemy to ally again within the course of a month.
1958-1962: U.S. soldiers, while officially only technical advisors, increasingly take combat roles, most notably accompanying small units in the field to call in air support and artillery, a job sure to put them in harm‘s way. Little by little, acknowledged troop levels rise from 50 to 150, to 400, and on up.
1963: With up to 12,000 U.S. troops in Vietnam, American involvement intensifies.
1964: Troop levels in Vietnam rise to 23,000, while U.S. airbases in Laos are active around the clock. When a U.S. warship coordinating South Vietnamese raids is attacked by North Vietnamese gunboats, the U.S. begins the long escalation, starting what would be eight years of periodic bombing of Hanoi, the North Vietnamese capital, Haiphong, the primary northern port, and stepping up bombing of the many-stranded Ho Chi Minh Trail, a vast network of pathways through Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos used to move materiel and troops to South Vietnam.
1965-1967: For the first time, U.S. ground troops land in force as 3,500 Marines deploy around Da Nang air bases, quickly shifting from a strictly defensive role to preemptive actions against enemy units. 200,000 troops soon follow as the U.S. attempts to defeat their enemies in Vietnam with massive firepower, “search and destroy” missions, and somehow luring the Vietcong and North Vietnamese into large concentrated battles. Instead, the U.S. troops are tied up in endless miserable, demoralizing patrols through pestilential jungles and muddy farmland, subject to death and mutilation by mines, booby traps, and thousands of skirmishes with enemies who emerge from and disappear into surrounding countryside at will.
1968: U.S. troop levels having passed 500,000, at least within major cities and the far south, the communists seem reduced to constant small terrorist acts in an otherwise U.S. and ARVN-controlled realm. Until, that is, the communist carry out their laboriously-prepared Tet Offensive, taking advantage of the laxity of new year celebrations to fiercely overrun strongholds throughout the south, holding some areas for weeks and even penetrating the U.S. embassy compound. They are absolutely defeated everywhere and the attacks leave North Vietnamese and Vietcong forces decimated throughout the south, but as a propaganda victory it turns the tide of the war, demoralizing their enemies from Saigon to Washington, D.C.
1969: U.S. forces finally shift tactics to smaller units using guerrilla tactics as well as the vicious but effective Phoenix Program to identify, interrogate, and then turn or kill communist agents.
1970: American troops back up long-standing bombing against targets in Cambodia with ground assaults to seize enemy base camps as well as yet another attempt to shut down the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
1971: A U.S. supported South Vietnamese attack against locations in Laos is a dismal failure
1972: Renewed bombings of North Vietnam reach unprecendented levels of violence as U.S. forces try one last time to break the communist military machine.
1973: Fi
1975: A massive advance by the communists surprises even the North Vietnamese in its effectiveness and in one last swift push, they drive down through the country, taking Saigon almost a year ahead of schedule. The few remaining U.S. soldiers carry out an orderly though badly planned withdrawal and abandon their final strongholds mere hours ahead of the arrival of enemy forces.

1960: Zaire
Joseph Mobutu launches a coup backed by the United States government. U.S. military forces provide key assistance.

1960: Guatemala
A rebellion by the local military is suppressed by Camp Trax (Bay of Pigs trainees) troops backed up by a U.S. helicopter carrier, 5 destroyers, Amphibious Squadron 10, and 2000 U.S. Marines.

1961 - 1963: Cuba
After the totalitarian Batista regime was overthrown, U.S. forces, mostly by proxy, attempted to set off a counterrevolution, most notably with the famously fumbled Bay Of Pigs landings. These actions faded down to periodic harassment as it became clear that a direct military assault would require sizable U.S. troop commitments and involve great risk of escalation.
With the discovery of Soviet nuclear missiles being based in Cuba, the U.S. demands the removal of the missiles and institutes a blockade. This blockade continues until June of the next year.

1964: Panama
See our note on occupations.
Massive riots cross over into the Canal Zone as Panamanians protest U.S. dominance of the area -- later negotiations set the stage for the eventual transfer of the Canal Zone to Panama.

1965 - 1966: The Dominican Republic
See our note on occupations.
U.S. forces invade and seize control during “civil disturbance”, in reality preventing an election expected to result in victories by leftist candidates. These occupation forces are later reenforced because of claims that locals are Communist-dominated.

1964: Laos
First bombing is done to protect reconnaissance flights.

1967: Congo
Three transport planes provide logistics support to the local government during a period of increased unrest.

1967: Israel
Intelligence ship U.S.S. Liberty is attacked by off the Gaza coast by Israeli gunboats and aircraft on the fourth day of the Six-Day War, killing 34 Americans and injuring 171 others. The reasons are disputed to this day.

1968: North Korea
North Korea troops attack and seize the intelligence ship U.S.S. Pueblo, holding the crew for over a year and torturing some. To this day the Pueblo is held by the North Koreans as a museum of “anti-imperialist warfare”.

1969: North Korea
North Korea shoots down a U.S. Navy surveillance plane, killing all 31 crewmen aboard.

1968 - 1975: Cambodia
As an adjunct to the Vietnam war, saturation bombing, though mostly directed at communist forces near the Vietnamese border, spread to periodically include much of the country.

1974: Cyprus
The U.S. Navy evacuates U.S. citizens during Greek-Turkish Cypriot hostilities. Soon thereafter the U.S. embassy is bombed by nationalists, killing the U.S. ambassador.

1974 - 1977: Korea
Increased hostilities along the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) with frequent shots fired across the border, including two soldiers shot while attempting to cut down a tree (‘76), which then resulted in an increase in U.S. forces.

1975: Cambodia
The S.S. Mayaguez, previously seized by Cambodian navy, is recovered by the U.S. military; as they board without opposition, the S.S. Mayaguez crew pull alongside, having been released earlier that day. Meanwhile U.S. soldiers had assaulted the island where they had expected the crew to be. Fifteen soldiers died and fifty were wounded as they held their beach positions and waited to be evacuated.

1976: Lebanon
The U.S. Navy evacuates approximately 250 U.S. and European citizens during a civil disturbance.

1978: Zaire
U.S. transport aircraft provide logistics support to Belgian and French forces during rescue operations.

1980: Iran
The Hostage Crisis
Iranian revolutionaries, initially without any ties to the government, seize and hold the United States embassy, quickly releasing women and non-whites, but holding the remaining hostages for well over a year, humiliating the United States and paving the way for the election of Ronald Reagan. There are only eight U.S. deaths, almost all during a failed rescue attempt that collapsed in the desert, as one helicopter crashed in a sandstorm, leaving the rest of the force, now below striking strength, to retreat.

1979: Pakistan
When Muslim extremists briefly but successfully seized the Great Mosque in Mecca, Muslim nationalist forces around the world took note. Following the execution of the leader of the takeover a rumor spreads that U.S. troops had been part of the force driving the rebels out of the Great Mosque. Amid massive and widely violent demonstrations in Islamabad, the U.S. embassy is attacked. Security holds, but four U.S. embassy employees die.

1981 - 1991: El Salvador
U.S. military advisors increase to a peak acknowledged number of 55 as response to a major guerilla offensive. Whether U.S. troops ever engaged in combat is still in dispute, as is the actual deployment.

1981: Libya
U.S. fighter jets clash with Libyan craft over the Gulf of Sidra in a dispute about the borders of Libyan territory, shooting down two Libyan fighter jets.

1982 - 1985: Lebanon
Marines are posted to Lebanon to serve in multinational observer and peacekeeping force tied to the withdrawal of the PLO from Beirut.

1983: Grenada
See our note on occupations.
As Maurice Bishop, the recently elected president, publicly contemplates a profoundly socialist reorientation of the local government and allows Soviet advisors to help build infrastructure, the White House declares that in fact the true and secret purpose of the aid is to build an airstrip for potential Soviet action against the United States. When minor civil unrest breaks out, the U.S. declares this sufficient grounds to invade and overthrow the government on the grounds of protecting U.S. citizens enrolled at a Grenada medical school. While the medical students repeatedly phone to say that they are fine, the U.S. mounts a massive invasion during which they, not surprisingly, first destroy the suspect airstrip and later reclaim it for U.S. use.

1983 - Present: Honduras
Extensive intermittent support including helicopters and crews, training, facilities, and possibly combat personnel assigned to assist Honduran troops along the Nicaraguan border and in drug interdiction efforts.

1983: Chad
AWACs, eight F-15 fighter planes, and ground logistical support are provided to the Chad government in their actions against Libyan-backed insurgents.

NOTE: The “War On Drugs”: The Reagan Administration declares a “War On Drugs”. At first almost entirely domestic, it swiftly expands to assistance to foreign governments and more aggressive action by U.S. agents and agencies overseas. Establishing many precedents later incorporated in the “War On Terror”.
With the differences between drug smugglers and rebels genuinely nebulous, the U.S. finds it easy to justify increasingly military aid, up to and including use of U.S. soldiers as “advisors” throughout Latin America, the Caribbean, and south Asia. Efforts ramp up greatly in the Clinton years, with increasing reports of U.S. soldiers involved in logistics, combat, and interrogations, especially in Colombia, Honduras, and Peru.

1985: Italy
U.S. fighters force down an Egyptian airliner carrying hijackers of the cruise ship Achille Lauro.

1986: Bolivia
U.S. troops and aircraft aid in local anti-drug efforts.

1986: Libya
U.S. and Libyan military jets exchange missile fire over Gulf of Sidra; three weeks later U.S. air and naval forces -- in declared retaliation for Libyan support of terrorist activities -- carry out bombing raids on assorted targets within Libya, striking close to the home of head of state Muammar Qadaffi

1987: Persian Gulf - Iraq
The U.S.S. Stark is fired upon by an Iraqi fighter jet, killing 37 sailors. Iraq, then a U.S. ally against Iran, declares the attack an accident and apologizes.

1987: Persian Gulf - Iran
In connection to the Iran-Iraq War, Iran attacks oil tankers and mines the area. U.S. forces move in as escorts, soon engaging in combat with Iranian forces and later obliterating a key Iranian oil platform. Open combat is rare but lethal, though mostly for the Iranians, who lose half a dozen gunboats, two frigates and various aircraft. (At the height of hostilities, half an hour after a battle, U.S. forces shoot down an Iranian civilian passenger jet which they have mistaken for another attacker. The U.S. apologizes.)

1988: Honduras
In response to increased activity by the Nicaraguan military near the border, the U.S. sends troops to deploy along the border in a show of force.

1989: Libya
During yet another round of posturing by Qaddaffi, U.S. fighters over the Mediterranean shoot down two Libyan fighters suspected of hostile intent.

1989: The Philippines
U.S. fighter jets assist in repelling an attempted coup, Marines are also posted to the U.S. embassy for the duration of the emergency.

1989 - 1992: Panama
See our note on occupations.
On April 11-12, the first shots in this skirmish were fired, resulting in one casualty, a U.S. soldier, killed by “friendly fire”. On December 20, 1989, U.S. forces deposed the government of Manuel Noriega after he disregards elections (but mostly refuses to continue his heretofore lucrative alliance with U.S. intelligence), the U.S. invades and seizes power, torching neighborhoods believed to back the current government, putting U.S.-backed officials in place including installing opposition candidate Guillermo Endara as the new leader and brings back the Panamanian head of state to the U.S. where he is put on trial and convicted under U.S. law as a drug smuggler. (Panama becomes an unofficial U.S. protectorate, giving the U.S. back control of the Canal for a few more years. Rioting and looting following the U.S. action, lead some 60 Panama-based companies to file a lawsuit for damages in New York City, alleging negligence on the part of U.S. forces.


The First Gulf War
1990 - 1991: (Including the retaking of Kuwait, combat versus Iraq, defense of Israel and Saudi Arabia, and widespread regional postings)
The Iraqi government, its long-standing conflict with Iran inconclusive and having long coveted the Kuwaiti oil fields, decides to invade Kuwait. When the Iraqis mention this possibility to a U.S. envoy, her response is nebulous but is taken by the Iraqis as assent. However when Iraq actually invades the White House swiftly demands that Iraq withdraw.
An unprecedented coalition of forces is assembled as everybody from Turkey to Albania to Norway offers assistance. In a vast, overwhelming advance of first aerial barrage followed by ground assault, coalition forces drive Iraqi forces back all through Kuwait and back into Iraq in a matter of days. Iraq responds with missile attacks against coalition forces as well as civilian targets in Israel and Saudi Arabia. U.S. anti-missile defenses somewhat ineffectually attempt to prevent Iraqi missiles from reaching their targets. While almost no coalition troops die, Iraqi soldiers die by the hundreds of thousands, many while trying to surrender or retreat. A still controversial decision is made to halt coalition forces part way into Iraq and not advance into Baghdad for a killing blow. Forces retreat back to the Iraqi border and terms of surrender are laid before the Iraqi regime.

1992 - 1994: Somalia
See our note on occupations.
U.S. troops are sent to Somalia to join a United Nations sponsored effort to protect food shipments and attempt to restore order. After some initial successes, including the distribution of much of the initial food and supplies, U.S. actions bog down in attempts to seize and put on trial local warlords, power brokers, and administrators, reaching a particular low when U.S. troops are cornered by a local warlord, with two helicopters shot down, soldiers’ bodies paraded through the streets, and several dozen additional fatalities, not to mention at least five hundred Somali deaths, many of civilians.

1992-Present: Iraq
See our note on occupations.
After a brief period of uncertain circumstances and claims of possible detente, coalition forces placed Iraq under increasingly bitter siege, eventually, in 2003, leading to the overthrow of the Saddam Hussein regime and occupation by a force now almost exclusively made up of U.S. troops. While the occupational government has since been officially been succeeded by one of by and for Iraqis, in almost every sense that matters, Iraq is still an occupied country, wrenched by a constant violence both crippling for Iraqi society and lethal for U.S. forces.
August, 1992: Gulf War coalition declares a no-flight zone around an area defined as the site of the Shiite minority, soon thereafter a U.S. F-16 shoots down first Iraqi MiG-25 violating the zone.
January 1993: Gulf War coalition shoots down a second jet, followed by U.S./UK/French attacks on six missile and missile radar sites.
June 1993: Missile strike in retaliation for alleged Iraqi assassination plot against President Bush.
As the Monica Lewinsky scandal breaks, President Clinton orders renewed bombing.
September, 1996: Two days of cruise missile attacks on Iraqi airbases in retaliation for Iraqi attacks on Kurdish territory.
Constant air sorties and occasional bombings continue, with the largest being ordered by newly-installed George Bush one week after he entered the White House in 2000.
Soon after the Al Queda attacks of September 11th, 2001, the White House blames Iraq and prepares a full-scale invasion.
February 2003: As preparations increase for a potential invasion of Iraq, U.S. forces expand hostile attacks against Iraqi targets. Declaring their activities part of no-fly zone enforcement, radar and weapons emplacements are attacked and destroyed.
March 21, 2003: The U.S. begins its full-scale invasion of Iraq, backed up by a thin smattering of coalition allies. The initial invasion is brief, intense, and overwhelmingly effective against Iraqi bases.
May 1, 2003, President George W. Bush declares “major combat” over in Iraq. Since this official declaration of “Mission Accomplished,” over 3,000 coalition troops have died.
Assault on Falluja:

1992 - Present: Peru
The United States commits increasing arms and troops to local efforts against insurgents and drug smugglers, the two being frequently hard to tell apart.

1994 - 1995 : Haiti
See our note on occupations.
The United States sends in troops for the long haul, claiming that they will only be there for a year, but settling for extended operations as violence surrounding the attempted Aristide election underscores the level of chaos in Haiti

1995: Korea
A U.S. pilot is shot down.

1995 - 1996: Saudi Arabia
The U.S. Khobar Towers embassy compound is bombed by forces allied to Al Queda. Hundreds die, almost all non-U.S. administrative personnel.

1996 - Present: Former Yugoslavia
See our note on occupations.
With the breakup of the Soviet bloc, Yugoslavia divides into Bosnia, Macedonia, and Serbia. As parts of the former Yugoslavia drift ever further into genocidal violence, the U.S. finally commits to sending troops, which then sweep the affected areas of opposing forces through saturation bombing and considerable use of ground forces. Joining a UN coalition force that is itself in large part a creation of U.S. maneuvering, U.S. and allied forces dismember the Serb forces and oversee the reorganization of the region so as to start repairing the damage. U.S. and allied forces continue to be posted in Bosnia, Macedonia, and other countries of the region today.

1998 - present: Latin America
Anti-drug efforts are further increased throughout Latin America

1998: Kenya
The U.S. embassy is bombed by forces now thought to be linked to Al Quada and Osama Bin Laden. 247 die, including 12 Americans.

1998: Tanzania
The U.S. embassy bombed by forces now thought to be linked to Al Queda and Osama Bin Laden. Ten people die.

1998: Afghanistan
U.S. forces bomb an industrial site thought to be linked to Al Quada.

1998: Sudan
U.S. forces bomb industrial sites thought to be linked to Al Quada.

2000: Yemen
The U.S.S. Cole is bombed by a group now known to be connected to Al Quada.

2001: China
The Chinese government declares that their borders extend to two hundred miles beyond their coastline, far beyond the international standard of twenty miles, turning away a U.S. naval survey ship. A week later Chinese craft cripples a U.S. military intelligence aircraft causing it to make a forced landing on Chinese-held territory. The Chinese hold the crew, treating them as guests (private rooms, house arrest conditions) but legally declaring them prisoners of war. After several weeks of tense negotiations, the crew is let go and the aircraft, having been completely disassembled and studied by Chinese technicians, is returned as a collection of crated parts.

“War On Terror”
September 11th, 2001
Following the destruction of New York City's World Trade Center and one section of the Pentagon, as well as a suspected attempt on the White House, all by aircraft hijacked and flown by members of the terrorist group, Al Queda, the U.S. moves swiftly to invade Afghanistan and overthrow the Al Queda-allied Taliban, while also conducting joint operations in The Philippines and Yemen.
These actions and many others are referred to by the Bush White House as a “War On Terror”, taking the attacks of September 11th as grounds for a new doctrine that the U.S. declares the right to attack any nation or group considered by the U.S. government to be a potential threat to the United States.

2001: Afghanistan
See our note on occupations.
A small force of U.S. troops, along with a few soldiers from other nations and backing a coalition of local military forces, utterly if temporarily routs the Taliban government and originally plans to settle in for a long stay of reorganization, nation-building, and pursuit of Al Queda terror suspects. This grand plan fizzles as resources are diverted for the invasion of Iraq, resulting in the ending of Operation Anaconda and the escape of most of the Taliban and Al Queda forces.
Since then U.S. forces have engaged in a limited campaign to hold key locations, engage in carefully calibrated small combat actions, and, hopefully, undermine and supplant the existing morass of warlord-run fiefdoms. Some progress has been evident in the genuine resurgence of Afghan civil society, the gradual legitimizing of democratic government, and the slow restoration of some infrastructure. But the recent re-appearance of the Taliban has served as a frustrating sign of how far from success this campaign still is.

2001: Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan
The placement of airfields and other strategic bases for deployment to Afghanistan and area of operation, extensive training and support of the local totalitarian governments.

2001: Georgia
“Train and Equip” mission focusing on the Pankisi Gorge area, said to be the hideout of a few dozen Al Queda-backed Muslim rebels.

2001 - 2002: Philippines
Troops sent to the Philippines for alleged counterterrorism operations, likely a misparsing of the situation. U.S. troops involved total 1,650, including 150 special forces members.

2001- 2002: Yemen
Soon after September 11th, U.S. forces join with Yemeni to pursue Muslim militants and track down possible Al Queda leaders. Late in 2002 U.S. forces return, both as part of offshore patrols, and taking a new, more aggressive role in training, equipping, and perhaps leading Yemeni soldiers as they confront Islamic militants once more.

2002: African coast, Djibouti region
During a period of accelerating local disorder, the Marine assault ship Belleau Wood is posted off the coast near Djibouti. U.S. vessels have been an intermittant presence along this coast ever since.

2002: (June) Pakistan
A bomb blast at the U.S. consulate kills 12.

2002: Ivory Coast
Until a few years before a rare bit of stable territory in the region, in 1999 this country experienced a coup. Since then, conditions have deteriorated, reaching a new low point in the fall of ‘02 as pitched battles made their way through urban and suburban areas. As French troops moved in throughout the area, 600 U.S. Marines took and held a key airport long enough for U.S. citizens, mostly children of missionaries, to be brought to the airport and evacuated.

2003: Iraq Invasion (see Iraq: 1992 to Present)

2003: North Korea
In the midst of rising tensions, North Korean combat aircraft pursue a U.S. surveillance aircraft flying in international airspace (over international waters) and indicate that it is to land. They then establish radar lock on the plane, the last step needed before missiles are fired and long taken as the modern equivalent of a “shot across the bow.” The U.S. plane aborts its mission and returns to base.

2003: Liberia
After years of civil war, the capital finally falls to rebel forces. U.S. troops are briefly posted to protect U.S. citizens and assets.

2004: Haiti
Troops yet again land to reduce disorder and re-install President Aristide after he is ousted by competing factions.

2005: Jordan
Multiple missiles, suspected to be U.S.-made missiles once given by the C.I.A. to the Taliban, are fired at a U.S. military vessel. None hit but defensive postures are taken.

2005: Somalia
Anti-piracy patrols start at the end of the year with the first seizure done by the U.S.S. Winston Churchill of a 26-man dhow on January 22nd, 2006.

2006: Pakistan
U.S. aircraft bomb Pakistani villages suspected of being the hideout of a key Al Queda figure. A month later, as tensions rise, a bomb detonates in front of the U.S. consulate in Karachi, killing one U.S. official and three locals, injuring an estimated fifty people.

2007: Greece
An anti-development terrorst group, as part of an extended series of attacks on corporate and governmental targets, fires a missile into the U.s. consulate. Damage is slight and casualties minor.

Notes and Appendices

Bias and Accuracy (see also Sources)
CIA Actions
Cold War crossovers
Dates
Fatality and Casualty Counts
Indian Wars
Language Choices (Includes discussion of location names and terminology of ethnicity and race.)
Length of Entries
Mindanao and Related Areas
Occupations
Piracy
Posse Comitatus
Steam Ships and What They Implied
Sources
Which events are in this timeline
Where to find more information

Bias and Accuracy:
We have worked as hard as we can to present an unbiased view of the events listed here. We have also striven to make this list as accurate as we can manage. At one point, when this was still a one person project, I hired a fact checker with decades of experience to double check my conclusions. He both worked from the main New York City reference libraries, his own books, and from the two full milk crates of books that I loaned him. He had suggestions but no major concerns. Those suggestions have long since been incorporated. I also paid him to compile his list of major relevant sources; I hadn't missed any.
As you can see from our Sources overview as well as the More Information section below it, we have read primary documents, spoken with veterans, and read through a broad range of books, articles, and monographs from sources as diverse as Annapolis, major universities, and various peace groups.
Keep in mind that balance does not mean bureaucratic blandness. We use strong language throughout, as befits the discussion of massive destruction, nations being overthrown, and millions of deaths.
If you feel that you are finding a bias in our documents, then please do email me and if your point is substantive, I’ll be glad to look into it.

CIA Actions:
As many of you will have noticed, this chronology, with some few exceptions, does not contain the actions of the non-uniformed arms of U.S. policy, most notably the Central Intelligence Agency. Undoubtedly a full understanding of the implications of U.S. policy since World War II requires a knowledge of such actions. However, for purposes of brevity and due to the terrible lack of reliable documentation, we have decided that covert actions in general are not within the scope of this document.

Cold War crossovers:
A distinctive characteristic of Cold War actions is the level of overlapping personnel and arms between actions.
The most visible “Where’s Waldo” of the period was the strange and extended saga of the denizens of Camp Trax. Camp Trax was set up to train Cuban refugees for the eventual military overthrow of the Castro government. However, having trained them, and the retaking of Cuba not being imminent, Trax men were used in a number of regional actions, while the aircraft prepared for them made its way as far as the PEMESTA rebellion in Indonesia.
With transportation cheap and reliable soldiers valuable, it frequently made more sense to ship troops in for one engagement and then ship them back out again.
In some cases troops from distant locations were used to muddy the trail of who had been where when. During the Indochina wars, U.S. troops would be picked up at a base in Vietnam, flown into Cambodia for combat, and returned before their next paychecks were due, reducing the paper trail to almost nothing. On a related front, training sometimes took surreal turns, including Tibetan (anti-Chinese) rebels flown to the United States for brief covert training sessions and then flown back to Tibet.

Dates:
Date Formats: We list only starting dates in most cases. Yes, in an ideal world all events would not only be listed with both dates, but even less likely, would even have clean end dates. Also, since World War II, increasingly days or even weeks of lethal covert operations preceed the publicly acknowledged beginning of combat.
Missing Events: The careful observer will note that the chronology above is far from complete, most obviously leaving out several of our most famous “unofficial” cold war postings (who else remembers the CNN footage of troops firing in the jungle while Reagan spoke of “advisors”?), and many of the incidents like Detroit and Kent State where our soldiers went into combat right on our own streets.
The only incidents listed are those that combine four things.
1.) Our uniformed forces must have played a key role, which must include the real risk of those soldiers facing combat.
2.) There must have been a true combat-level involvement overall, with fingers held to triggers and guns loaded. Thus rear-echelon support to an ally like provision of arms or intelligence do not qualify.
3.) There must be reliable sources who can provide at least a basic level of detail about the event.
4.) The troops must have been operating under the orders of the federal government. (This condition rules out many events within the United States, such as Kent State, where National Guard troops were acting on the orders of their governor.)

If you have a particular event you feel we missed, then by all means, let us know. If it pans out we’ll include it as soon as we can and give you credit as the person who brought it to our attention.

Give us time. I, and the other folks on this project are more than eager to fill in the gaps. Personally I'm looking forward to giving our activities in Tibet in the 1950’s their due. Behind the scenes we are hard at work building the combination of database structures and web site capabilites to bring all of our history to this site.

How can you speed this up? Buy stuff from us. Or just tell your friends about our products and our site.

Fatality and Casualty Counts:
In almost all incidents listed here only U.S. military fatality and casualty counts are given. This is not our preference, but merely an artifact of limited space and the difficulty of obtaining reliable figures for enemy and civilian casualties. Keep in mind that not only did much fighting take place against people not likely to have kept reliable numerical records we can access, but also for every death or significant injury claimed among American forces, a person had to be presented. A lieutenant in Vietnam might get away with claiming thirty utterly falsified enemy dead, but every U.S. casualty claimed, even one so minor as a broken finger, must be documented as to which soldier, where, and how it was treated.
There is no doubt that our figures contain errors somewhere. If you know of any and have solid documentation then please do contact us with that information. For now we will continue to include what generally reliable numbers we can, as they do give a sense of scale, of public reaction, and of the impact an incident will have had on those involved in it.

Indian Wars:
Wars between American aborigines (“Indians”) and emigrants and the descendants of emigrants occupy a special sordid place in U.S. military history. Fundamental cultural differences (what is “property”? What is “war”?) guaranteed a dismally misleading start. Genuine belief by many of the settlers that they were chosen by God to get whatever they could take certainly didn’t help.
Indians and settlers both frequently engaged in torture, looting, rape, and desecration of enemy bodies. Indians and settlers both committed surprise attacks against undefended villages, killing women and children. Indians and settlers both spoke of holy justification and a desire to utterly wipe out their opponents. Indians and settlers both kept slaves, stole each others animals, and engaged in endless varieties of behavior we find reprehensible.
But there the seeming equivalency ends. Over and over, representatives of native tribes negotiated in earnest across from white men who, even in the rare cases that they were personally honorable, would still never ever keep the terms of their agreements. For the first three hundred years native tribes simply lived saner lives then whites, a thing so obvious then that for a settler to “go native” and join the local Indian tribe was a serious crime, usually punishable by death. Only by such extreme measures were whites prevented from wholesale desertion of their freezing, stinking, starving settlements.
A solid case can be, and has been, made that many of the famous Indian criminal behaviors were new to them and encouraged by white interlopers. Scalping, for example, was strongly encouraged by British agents who paid a per-scalp bounty, thereby keeping better track of how many enemy deaths they were paying for.
We're not going to go case by case, treaty by treaty in a chronology like this to enumerate all the reasons the Indians had to rise up in arms, sometimes only after generations of attempts at cooperation or simply appeasement. But you, the reader, should always take it as a given that the first time a native took up weapons on the scale to end up in this chronology, there was a long chain of thefts, deceits, and willful impoverishments before white blood was shed.
Further, it is crucial to note that in many cases, natives were on both sides of these conflicts, either as combatants or, more typically, a few tribes in arms with the rest waiting things out. In quite a few cases the “Indian tribe&rdquo that attacked consisted only of dissatisfied young men, angry as young men always are, and without the support of the majority of their own society.
Lastly, keep in mind that the tribes we hear about were rarely more than a few generations old either in composition or location. By the time a group of natives rose up in arms they had typically been decimated by disease, driven off their traditional lands, and forced into alliance with others against stronger enemies.

Language Choices:
Location Names: Modern place names and borders are used where practical to increase comprehension. In a few cases, such as Panama, all of which was formerly part of Colombia, we have generally chosen to use the name of the nation of which it was part when the incident took place.

“Outlaws”: We make frequent use of the term “outlaw”. By that we mean nothing whatsoever more or less than people outside the law. There is no judgement implied as to the validity of their cause or the nature of the ruling government. After all, Thomas Jefferson was an outlaw.

Race: We refer throughout to American aborigines as “Indians”. We also refer to “blacks” rather than African Americans or, for that matter, Blacks with an initial capital. In each case disagreement within the community is considerable, and, in fact, no racial term is ever entirely precise. There was documented intermarriage between “Europeans” and “Native Americans” at least eight hundred years ago and everybody who could reach the Mediterranean, from the Norse to the Ibo, did by about the same time. Hence, with rare exceptions, for reasons of brevity we use the term in most common usage.
In the case of Native American names the situation is somewhat more troubling as most of the names in common usage (Such as Seminole, Black Feet, Sioux, etc.) are either corruptions of European terms or derogatory terms that have become accepted. For now, again for reasons of brevity and reader comprehension, we have used the names best known. We're not any too thrilled with this and welcome your suggestions.

Length of Entries:
We have attempted to have the comparative length of our entries proportional to both the objectively judgeable scale of the engagement and the admittedly subjective factors of importance and ease of explanation. In some cases we give less attention to a subject already well known and more to a significant event that is more obscure.
If you feel that a given entry is shorter than it should be, then please feel free to provide us with multiple, documented, reliable sources of more detailed information and we will be more than willing to look into providing a longer entry in our next edition.

Mindanao and Related Areas:
When U.S. forces first began military actions in the Philippines at the end of the Spanish-American War, they were warned about Mindanao. A cluster of islands along one side of the Philippines, Mindanao has never truly acknowledged the rule of any outsider. Amidst areas of dense jungle and with a culture that, still slave-holding as of the mid-twentieth century, and fiercely independent, values resistance over technique and victory over all, Mindanao is, along with the Ghurkas, rural Afghanistan, and the eighteen hundreds Seminoles and Cajuns, a society that is little tempted by “modern” material goods (beyond those they can get on their own). Deeply entrenched in a region that rewards deep local knowledge and can readily kill the unwary and ignorant, they are fully willing and able to resist conventional armed force with a deadliness and toughness that make them an ill-chosen target for tactics of submission.
The reason that Marines are known as Leathernecks is that, in their thirty years of intermittant combat in the Mindanao region, they soon learned that it was worth enduring a heavy, tall, reenforced leather collar while marching in tropical heat so as to be more protected from sudden sword attacks from out of a seemingly empty jungle. Those not so protected were sometimes decapitated in a blow or two before they were even able to draw weapons.
As we again move into a combat posture versus Muslims in the Philippines, we have once again, as of late 2001, found our troops going into Mindanao. Let us hope that they do better this time.

Occupations: Afghanistan, Cuba, Deseret (Utah territory), Dominican Republic, Haiti, Iraq, Japan, Nicaragua, Panama, Philippines, Puerto Rico, Samoa, Somalia, West Germany
Declaring risks to U.S. citizens and U.S.-owned businesses, as well as ethical concerns, the United States occupied all or part of each of these nations, usually after sustained local unrest. In all cases but Germany and Japan, the U.S. swiftly routed the local military. From then on the occupation has always followed the same pattern. U.S. forces create a semi-autonomous occupation authority while announcing a plan to create a new government and constitution based on democratic lines. Military, police, customs, elections, tax laws, industry, and transportation are then restructured to U.S. specifications under close U.S. guidance.
In each case key industries are restructured in ways that greatly ease U.S. access to those industries and to the goods that they produce. When the setup is declared stable and equitable, the U.S. withdraws, leaving coastal and consular garrisons. Rarely has the US seized permanent control, preferring to leave long-term relationships in private, mercantile hands, the exceptions being Puerto Rico and Samoa. The initial seizures of a good deal of U.S. territory, most notably Florida and Hawaii, followed similar patterns.

Local resistance usually starts out sporadic and minor but builds as insurgents gain skill, resources, and more local support. In some cases, most famously Sandino’s forces in Nicaragua, small bands of fighters eventually grow to become the new government.

In the Dominican Republic, Germany, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Panama, these occupations have later been repeated.

Piracy:
From Maine-based whaling to Mississippi river boats, much of the America’s trade has always been water-based. The United States economy from the beginning depended on imported finished goods and revenue from exported crops. That one early symbolic act of the Revolution was the Boston Tea Party, an assault upon trading ships, was no coincidence. This left much of our survival subject to the dangers of the opens seas and, after the Revolution, no longer protected by the might of the British Navy, American ships were considered easy targets.
Piracy was deadly, of worldwide scope, and able to reduce the economy of a town to ruins by seizing one ship sailing off an obscure Caribbean Island. However, contrary to media images, most pirate ships were not self-contained. They worked together and were closely tied to secret, or not so secret, ports. Those ports were their quartermaster corps, providing food, water, repairs, and as much of a home as could be managed. In some cases, as in the domain of Jean Lafitte, these ports became tiny empires, with rulers, laws, and distinct cultures.
Understanding this explains why U.S. troops were so frequently found in places far from home attacking villages and asserting “respect”. These were almost always attempts to convince a group of people that helping pirates just wasn’t worth the costs. These actions varied from marching in and just looking impressive to reducing villages to smoking ruins, killing anybody who resisted.
The U.S. fought pirate ships and bases from the Florida Keys and West Indies to Turkey and even Sumatra, working at times alongside English, Spanish and other navies. One anti-piracy squad alone, with 28 ships, saw action over 35 times.
In recent decades the threat of piracy has arisen into relevancy again, but now primarily as a threat to our allies and to citizens of more impoverished places. Most recent has been the anti-piracy patrols off the coast of Somalia that started in December of 2005.

Posse Comitatus:
At the end of the Revolutionary War there was some question as to what form the new government would take. Many suggested that George Washington, and perhaps even the other military commanders, be given powers we would now regard as king-like. In a crucial event in United States and, in fact world history, Washington gathered his commanders and required that they form a new brotherhood, the Order of Cincinatus, named after a Roman general who, having saved Rome, refused the crown and returned to his farm.
The commitment of the Order of Cincinatus is enshrined in United States law as the posse comitatus, only passed into law in the 1870’s, which forbids the military to act as a domestic force.
While this doctrine is still officially federal law, the "War on Drugs" and the “War On Terror” have increasingly been used to weaken this principle as a growing range of exceptions bring the domestic use of federal troops ever further into the realm of the acceptable and routine.

Steam Ships and What They Implied:
Around the middle of the 1800’s we see a new source of friction between Americans and islanders around the world, most notably in the Pacific. With the introduction of steam ships passage becomes safer, faster, and able to choose routes with less attention to season and winds. However, these new wonders consume vast amounts of coal and cannot carry enough along with them for long voyages. This requires the creation of coaling stations, regularly spaced outposts along the sea lanes where coal is stored, along with other supplies for the new, less self-contained ships. The placement and effectiveness of a country’s coaling stations are swiftly recognized as key factors in military and commercial power.
Suddenly the United States, which has long treated the very idea of colonies with dismissive distaste, needs strategically-placed land that they hold, control, and that can support the staff and garrisons to maintain that control. This trend accelerates as many America public officials, most famously Theodore Roosevelt, adopt the aggressive philosophy of Alfred Thayer Mahan, who declares that a nation’s power and prosperity depend on the ability to project naval force. Since politicians and naval officers from England to Japan were also reading Mahan, key locations such as Samoa and the potential trans-isthmus canal sites in Nicaragua and Panama saw ever more face-offs between the assorted imperial and would-be imperial powers, with the locals caught between.
With the concurrent rise in missionary activity and all of its ability to alienate, U.S. clashes around the world rise considerably relative to the number of Americans abroad.

Sources:
Sources include but are not limited to: The Official Marine Corps Chronology, Contested Plains by E. West, Endless Enemies by J. Kwitney, Semper Fidelis by Allan R. Millett, and American Naval History by J. Sweetman.

Original inspiration came from a Doonesbury comic strip by Garry Trudeau.

Our military history source matter page provides more information, including a detailed overview of our sources, both listed by subject and with extended commentary.

United States Sectarian Conflict:
mobs, militias, and military dynamics
In every major conflict beween Americans the violence started and escalated for years, if not decades, before actual battles involving uniformed soldiers took place. This includes the Revolutionary War, Civil War, Utah Occupation, anti-union conflicts, and civil rights movements.
Colonists had raised militias, held off British troops for months at a time, and taken over local government functions, from tax collection to courts. Long before 1776, in what is now called Vermont, the Green Mountain Boys were, in effect, a military of their own, with uniforms, command structure, distinctive weapons and tactics, and, sometimes, pay.
Many of the militias so key in early western battles of the Civil War arrived fully formed from the bloody disputes in Kansas about which areas would be declared slave, and which free.
The Mormons had their own military and those who fought them frequently did so under the banner of a formal command.
The 1892 Johnson County War was, in many ways just a bigger case of a typical progression of a conflict.
Until after World War I, it was all too common for local disputes over land, ideology, race, and class to run through a consistant pattern starting with grumbling and discontent, rising through street brawls and bar fights, to face-offs between rival groups with those groups incrementally organized into militias with a recognized chain of command, a name, musters, and many of the characteristics of a full-fledged military. For every Indian war, range war, or union dispute listed here, there were far more going on which simply never involved official involvement by soldiers under Federal command.
Because of this, the reader is advised to assume that, as noted above about Indian wars and our actions in China, that the first events listed here usually occurred years after the initial expressions of hostility and that by the time Federal troops got involved there was a lon history of strike and counterstrike, assauls and paybacks. When our soldiers have found themselves thrust into the role of peacemakers, they have all too frequently found themselves trying to reconcile appallingly simplistic cries of but he hit me first!



Future Directions:
As with so many such projects, the more we look, the more we find we do not yet know.
Future directions for us split into five directions. In all cases our ability to carry these things out is limited by our finances, which have never yet been better than paltry. However, these five directions are:
- Creation of more products for use in schools,
- Creation of more localized versions of our existing products, such as a poster dealing only with one region, such as Latin America or the Pacific, as well as versions in different languages,
- Pursuing research into incidents we have heard of but cannot sufficently document (of which notable examples are various 1970s and 1980s covert actions and alleged widespread Persian Gulf actions in the days before Desert Storm),
- More products such as pocket guides, maps and large-format posters, that help bring this and related subjects into useful focus,
- And returning to our original project of taking this chronology and the mountains of data related to it and building it into a fully relational and interactive database. (Properly tying all incidents to GIS data could itself keep several people busy for a year.)
Of course, should you know of somebody with deep pockets who might want to get involved, we would certainly be glad to hear from you.

Overall, we are well aware that this chronology is far from what it could be and, as Janet reminds me periodically, it is itself a rather small aspect of a project that, having been ongoing since 1996, may at best reach maturity in thirty or forty more years. We hope that it is both of use in your decision-making and intellectually satisfying.

In the meantime, I wish all of us clear minds, productive days, and serene nights.

Rustin H. Wright, archivist, writer, and official Reed and Wright voice of informed cynicism.


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Reed&Wright web site and publications, both text and graphics, are copyright Rustin H. Wright, 2006