The Civil War in the United States was a civil war.
Before entering fully into the meaning of civil war , we are going to discover the etymological origin of the two words that give it shape:
– Guerra , first of all, we can establish that it derives from Germanic. Specifically, it comes from werra , which can be translated as “disorder” or “fight.”
– Civil , secondly, emanates from Latin, more precisely from civilis , which means “relative to citizens” and which is the result of the sum of two lexical components of said language: the noun civis , which is synonymous with “citizen.” , and the suffix -ilis .
Civil war concept
The most common use of the concept of war is linked to an armed confrontation between two or more sides. Civil , for its part, is that linked to citizenship or that which does not belong to the ecclesiastical or military sphere.
According to the dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy ( RAE ), a civil war is a conflict that confronts the inhabitants of the same country or nation . It is a violent fight between people who live in the same territory but have different interests or ideologies that they seek to impose by force.
A civil war can break out for political, ethnic, religious or other reasons . On many occasions, foreign forces end up getting involved and providing support to one side or the other.
A civil war broke out in Syria in 2011.
The case of Spain
The Spanish Civil War , for example, took place between 1936 and 1939 . The conflict pitted the national or rebellious side (made up of the military high command, Carlists and fascists) and the republican side (made up of leftist sectors and those who defended the continuity of the republic).
This civil war, which left some 500,000 dead , ended with the victory of the national side, which marked the beginning of the dictatorship of Francisco Franco.
The civil war in the United States
In the United States, for example, there was also another civil war, which was called the Civil War . It was produced between the years 1861 and 1865 and had its origin, among other things, in the existing controversy regarding slavery. Specifically, it was launched once Abraham Lincoln became president of the country and the Republicans, represented in him as leader, supported the prohibition of slavery throughout the country.
In that contest, the Northern States , known as the Union and which proclaimed their loyalty to the Constitution, faced the Confederate States of America , which were eleven Southern states that proclaimed their independence and wanted to maintain their rights to be able to expand the slavery. They were the first to achieve victory in this war whose first act was the Confederate assault on Fort Sumter .
Conflicts in Guatemala and other countries
The Guatemalan civil war , meanwhile, took place between 1960 and 1996 . In this conflict between guerrilla groups and the armed forces, there were nearly 200,000 dead and 45,000 missing .
Currently there are also civil wars in different parts of the world . Since 2011 , in Syria , the armed forces have faced rebel movements and terrorist groups, to name one example.