Historical examples of energy wars

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Prior to the Industrial Revolution, the world's only significant sources of Energy were manual and animal labour fueled by food supplies. In much of the Third World today that statement remains true. Therefore any distinction between Wars over food resources and other sources such as Oil and Coal is an artificial one, and equivalent to Wars between modern industrial countries, and their clients, post-1740 or so.

Given that, one is probably left with:

  1. First Gulf War (explicitly about Kuwait);
  2. Second Gulf War (unfinished business from FGW);
  3. the Iran-Iraq war;
  4. U.S. entry to World War 2 (conflict over access to Indonesian oil after embargo of U.S. oil);
  5. The War of Austrian Succession (conflict over Silesian Coal),
  6. The Seven Years War (simply a continuance of the latter).

Update:
This atlas of Belgium (Austrian Netherlands) prepared by Ferraris between 1770 and 1777 for Marie Antoinette shows numerous small coal mines. There are several between Ligny and St. Amand on map #97 - Gembloux, and another south of the village of Waterloo, in the woods west of the main road. As the infamous Sand Pit near La Haye Sainte does not exist on these maps, it s possible that it too was a small coal mine excavated between 1777 and 1815. The size is right.

The small-scale mining of coal at this time was for use in the small steam engines of the day, and for home heating (probably derived from the similar use of peat). Silesia, like Belgium , had numerous seams of coal near the surface. Watt's steam engine hadn't been invented yet but Newcommen's was already about 30 years old. All of this Frederick would have known about Silesia by 1740.

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If one accepts long-term strategy and geopolitical interests (as opposed to immediate "grab this oil field"), most of the wars in Middle East since 1920 are ultimately over oil interests.

For example, most Israel-Arab conflicts are driven by British screwing things up half-way as far as Baldur and subsequent Mandate handling, all of which was because they became vitally interested in Arab oil and thus unwilling to give the entirety of Palestine to Jews as they originally wanted.

Most of the Sunni/Shia conflict can also ultimately be traced to oil access (Iran wants Saudi oil).

Most of the Western and Soviet meddling in Arab world and Arab/Israeli conflicts also stem from oil.

Most of Chinese meddling in the area, as well.

Heck, even American conflicts with Iraq were somewhat related to oil, though not in the idiotic way progressives portrayed them (Bush didn't invade Iraq over giving oil to Haliburton; but he did invade in part because strategically, Saddam was a threat to the stability of the region and thus long term oil supply). One of the reasons why the French and NATO were so gung-ho to help in Libya and so reluctant in Syria was that Syria has no oil to bother about.

Also do be included are Kurdish conflicts in Iraq post-Saddam (access to oil in Kurdish areas); Libyan civil war. Had other reasons but oil was up there.

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Another famous war for resources (including but not limited to energy), was expressed in 5 words:

Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere

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Yes, there are several conflicts like that.

There are also civil conflicts like for example in Nigeria that is about oil.

Note that these are not about energy per se, but about money, and is therefore not really anything different from any war over resources or trade.

I might have missed some, and you will also hear many other examples of wars over oil, but most of those are not direct wars over who should control an energy resource, instead it's only a part of the conflict, or more commonly oil is being only an indirect reason.

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