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By searching on variations of "longest war" and hunting through the military history categories in Yahoo!, we learned that there's little agreement on the answer to your question. So we'll let you decide for yourself. The Hundred Years War was a series of battles between England and France from 1337 to 1453, thus lasting 116 years. It began when King Edward III of England claimed the throne of France and invaded the northwest of France. Edward's successor, Richard II, continued fighting, as did Henry IV, who deposed Richard. Henry V took on the war,
defeated the French at the Battle of Agincourt (made famous by Shakespeare's play), and became the regent of France. But the war didn't stop there. King Charles VII of France kept fighting with help from the Scots. Led by Joan of Arc, the French eventually won several decisive battles in 1429. However, it wasn't until 1436 that Paris was liberated from English rule, and in 1453, the French finally kicked the English out. Sources disagree on the length of the Aceh War between the Acehnese of Indonesia and the Dutch. The Netherlands formally declared war in 1873, and the fighting continued
on and off for years. Some say the war ended in 1903, but the Dutch didn't officially withdrew from the area until 1942, so the Aceh War lasted either 30 years or 69 years. The longest war of the 20th century is still raging. The Sudanese Civil War began in 1955 as a conflict between the Arab Muslim north and the mostly Christian, black African south. The war has changed over time, and now the fighting is between the Islamic fundamentalist government in Khartoum and several
rebel groups, including the Sudan People's Liberation Army. Religion, race, and ethnicity still pit the two sides against each other. The fighting lessened somewhat in the 1970s, but guerrilla warfare continued. The 47-year civil war has even lead to a resurgence of slavery. Guatemala experienced nearly 36 years of continuous civil wars that ended in 1996. The conflict was rooted in the country's colonial past, ethnic divisions, and a militarized government, among other factors. Sadly, the history
of the world is littered with lengthy wars, from the Peloponnesian War in Ancient Greece (27 years) to the Vietnam War (18 years) to the ongoing "troubles" in Northern Ireland (33 years and counting). In our humble opinion, they're all too long.
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