Military Spending Across Civilizations (Modern Proxies)

Compares SIPRI (1960+) and COW NMC (1816-1948) military spending for states used as civilization proxies; pre-1816 spending is NOT covered.

Details

Series: data-war-spending-<civ>-proxy in series.war-gap.json. Each civilization is represented by one or more modern states (judgement call; flagged estimated). Values are SIPRI via Our World in Data (constant 2024 US$; % of GDP), sampled at 1960, 1970, ... 2020 where the state has data (China only from 1989; Kazakhstan from 1993; Mongolia from 1987).

Pre-1949: see Military Expenditure Before 1949, Civilization Proxies (COW NMC v7) (COW NMC v7; current GBP to 1913, current USD from 1914; do not splice).

Not covered: any pre-1816 spending series. Candidate sources (not fetched): Brewer 1989 for English state spending; Roman army cost literature. These remain BLOCKED pending library access and page-level checks.

Citations

• sipri-milex-database [formal] Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (2024). SIPRI Military Expenditure Database. SIPRI. https://www.sipri.org/databases/milex. Verified 2026-10-11 (resolves).
• owid-military-spending-sipri-data [formal] SIPRI via Our World in Data (2024). Our World in Data grapher: Military spending (constant USD; SIPRI Military Expenditure Database) - CSV. Our World in Data. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/military-spending-sipri. Verified 2026-10-11 (resolves).
• owid-military-spending-gdp-data [formal] SIPRI via Our World in Data (2024). Our World in Data grapher: Military expenditure as a share of GDP (SIPRI) - CSV. Our World in Data. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/military-expenditure-as-a-share-of-gdp. Verified 2026-10-11 (resolves).
• cow-nmc-v7-data [formal] J. David Singer, Stuart Bremer, John Stuckey (2025). Correlates of War: National Material Capabilities v7.0 (milex, 1816-2022). Correlates of War Project. https://correlatesofwar.org/wp-content/uploads/NMCv7.zip. Verified 2026-10-11 (resolves).
• brewer1989-sinews-of-power [formal] John Brewer (1989). The Sinews of Power: War, Money and the English State, 1688-1783. Alfred A. Knopf. https://openlibrary.org/works/OL261966W. Verified 2026-10-11 (Open Library record found; edition exists, page-level not checked).

Review status

SOFT draft; not Official.