Category: Military Spending

When the great powers met in Vienna in 1815 to redraw the map of Europe, they hoped to make another Napoleon impossible. In one sense they succeeded: for almost forty years Britain, France, Russia, Austria and Prussia did not fight each other. But peace did not mean disarmament. Each kept an army large enough to worry its neighbours, and the money they spent on it tells a story that the textbooks usually skip.

The surprise is who spent the most. Britain had the biggest navy and the biggest empire, and in 1816 it also had the biggest military budget, about $2.2 billion in today’s money. Within six years it had lost that place to France, which went on to hold #1 for 36 of the 55 years to 1870.

Britain stands down

Britain came out of the Napoleonic Wars with enormous debts and a public that wanted lower taxes. It cut its army quickly and relied on the Royal Navy, which was expensive to build but needed relatively few men. British military spending fell from $2.2 billion in 1816 to about $1.5 billion by 1819 and stayed close to that level for the next two decades.

France moved the other way. Allied occupation troops left French soil in 1818, and the restored monarchy rebuilt its army. In 1823 it sent an army across the Pyrenees to put the Spanish king back on his throne, and French spending that year jumped to $2.2 billion, overtaking Britain. The two traded places for a few years; from 1828, France stayed ahead.

The French half-century

Two things kept the French budget high. The first was the army itself: France raised soldiers by conscription and kept a standing force far larger than Britain’s. The second was Algeria. The conquest that began in 1830 turned into a long, expensive colonial war, and French spending rose from $1.9 billion in 1830 to $2.5 billion in 1831.

Diplomatic crises show up too. In 1840 France backed the ruler of Egypt against the Ottoman Sultan and found itself isolated against Britain, Russia, Austria and Prussia. War talk filled Paris for months. It never came to fighting, but the bill did: French spending climbed from $1.8 billion in 1839 to $3.1 billion in 1842 and stayed there. Throughout the 1840s France spent roughly half as much again as Russia and nearly twice as much as Britain.

The chart above uses a logarithmic scale, where each gridline is ten times the one below. It is the only way to fit both stories on one picture: the slow climb of the European budgets, and the American line, which sits below a billion dollars for decades and then shoots straight up.

Russia’s three years, and the Crimean War

Russia had the largest army in Europe, but its soldiers were cheap: serfs conscripted for very long terms of service and paid very little. In money terms, that kept Russia mostly in second or third place. It reached #1 only three times, in 1850, 1853 and 1856, each time as tension with the Ottoman Empire and the Western powers rose.

The Crimean War (1853–1856) is the first time in this race that the great powers fought each other. Britain, which had spent less than $2 billion a year for decades, spent $11.3 billion in 1854, more than double anyone else, as it shipped an army to the Black Sea. In 1855 the three main belligerents were almost level.

An American interruption

The United States spent very little on its military before 1861, usually a billion dollars a year or less in today’s money. The war with Mexico in 1846 pushed it to $1.5 billion, enough to put it in the top four for the first time. Nothing suggested what was coming.

When the Civil War began, the Union had to build a mass army almost from nothing. Its military spending went from $1.2 billion in 1860 to $15.2 billion in 1861, $22.2 billion in 1862, and $26.7 billion in 1864, six times France’s budget that year. No European power had ever spent on that scale. The figure counts only the Union; the Confederacy’s spending is not in the dataset. When the war ended in 1865, the army was sent home almost at once, and by 1866 the United States had dropped out of the top four. (It returned to #1 for a single year in 1867, at $4.6 billion, narrowly ahead of France.)

Prussia does more with less

The last years of the period belong to Prussia, and they are a lesson in how little a budget can tell you on its own. In 1859 France fought Austria in northern Italy and spent $5.4 billion, its highest figure since the Crimean War. In 1866, when Prussia defeated Austria in just seven weeks, the biggest spenders that year were France, Austria and Italy; Prussia was not even in the top four.

In 1870 the ranking finally showed Prussia at #2, with $6.8 billion, behind France’s $9.4 billion. France declared war that July. Within weeks its main army was surrounded at Sedan, and Napoleon III was taken prisoner. In January 1871 the German Empire was proclaimed at Versailles, and the next era of the race began.

The period in numbers

• Years at #1: France 36, the United Kingdom 10, the United States 6, the Russian Empire 3.
• Changes at the top: 15.
• Total spending, 1816–1870: France $162 billion, the United Kingdom $133 billion, the United States $128 billion, the Russian Empire $127 billion, Austria $71 billion.
• Biggest single year: the United States, $26.7 billion in 1864.

Questions readers ask

Which country had the biggest military budget in the 19th century?

For most of 1816–1870 it was France, at #1 in 36 of the 55 years and about $162 billion in total (2024 dollars), ahead of Britain’s $133 billion. Britain had the bigger navy, but France kept a far larger conscript army.

How much did the Union spend on the American Civil War?

Union military spending rose from about $1 billion in 1860 to $26.7 billion in 1864, in 2024 dollars, six times France’s budget that year. The Confederacy’s spending is not included.

Did France or Prussia spend more on the Franco-Prussian War?

France. In 1870 it spent $9.4 billion against Prussia’s $6.8 billion, and lost the war within months.

About the numbers

Figures are military expenditure from the Correlates of War National Material Capabilities dataset (v7), converted to constant 2024 US dollars. Amounts recorded in pounds are adjusted with British prices. All figures for this period are estimates; Ottoman figures start only in 1851, and the US Civil War counts the Union only.

More from the series

• The full story, 1816–2025
• Next: the race to 1914, 1871–1913
• Two world wars, 1910–1945
• The Cold War, 1946–1991
• After the Cold War, 1992–2025

In 1816, the year after Waterloo, the biggest military budget in the world belonged to Britain: about $2.2 billion in today’s money. Its nearest rivals, Russia and France, spent around $1.4 billion each. Two centuries later, in 2025, the United States spent roughly $906 billion, more than 400 times Britain’s 1816 figure and more than the next seven countries combined.

Between those two years, the title of the world’s biggest military spender changed hands 41 times. Six countries held it: Britain, France, Russia (as an empire, and later as the Soviet Union), Prussia and Germany, Japan, and the United States. The changes were rarely gradual. A war would start, one country’s budget would jump tenfold in two years, and then it would fall back just as fast. Our chart race replays all 210 years in 15 minutes. This piece tells the stories behind the bars.

All figures here are military expenditure in constant 2024 US dollars, so a year in the 1830s can be compared with a year in the 2020s. They come from the Correlates of War project’s National Material Capabilities dataset, extended to 2025 with figures from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). The older the number, the more it is an estimate; we come back to what that means at the end.

1816–1860: France’s long lead

It is tempting to assume that Britain, with the largest navy and the largest empire, was also the biggest spender of the 19th century. For the first few years it was. But Britain demobilised quickly after 1815, and by 1822 France had moved ahead. Apart from a few short interruptions, France held the top spot from 1828 until the American Civil War: 36 of the 55 years between 1816 and 1870.

The reason was the army. France kept a large standing army raised by conscription, and from 1830 it was fighting a long, expensive war of conquest in Algeria. Britain, by contrast, spent most of its money on ships, which are expensive to build but need far fewer men. A war scare between the two countries over Egypt in 1840 is visible in the data: French spending rose from $1.8 billion in 1839 to $3.1 billion by 1842.

These were small numbers by later standards. In 1840 the ten biggest military budgets in the world added up to about $8 billion, less than Germany alone spends today. What changed them was war. When Britain, France and Russia fought each other in Crimea, Britain’s spending jumped to $11.3 billion in 1854, more than double anyone else’s, and in 1855 France, Russia and Britain were separated by barely a billion dollars.

1861: The war that broke the chart

Nothing in the first half of the century prepared the chart for the American Civil War. In 1860 the United States spent a little over $1 billion on its military, less than a third of France, and it was nowhere near the top of the ranking. A year later the Union was spending $15.2 billion. By 1864 it was spending $26.7 billion, six times as much as France, the next country on the list.

The figure covers only the Union. The Confederacy’s spending is not in the dataset, so the true cost of the war to Americans was higher still. More than two million men served in the Union armies, and almost all of them were sent home within months of the surrender in 1865. The series shows the collapse: by 1866 France was back at #1.

1870: The cheaper army wins

The wars that unified Germany are a reminder that the biggest budget does not always win. In 1866, when Prussia defeated Austria in seven weeks, it was not even among the four biggest spenders that year; Austria and Italy were. In 1870, the year of the Franco-Prussian War, France spent $9.4 billion and Prussia $6.8 billion. Prussia won anyway, and in January 1871 the German Empire was proclaimed in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles.

1871–1913: An armed peace

For the next four decades the great powers of Europe did not fight each other, but they never stopped preparing to. This is the closest stretch of the whole race. Russia led for 16 years, France for 13, Britain for 6 and Germany for 2, and in many years the top four were within a billion or two of each other. In 1890 Germany led with $6.4 billion, just ahead of France ($6.3 billion), Russia ($5.2 billion) and Britain ($5.1 billion).

The spikes in this period came from wars fought far from Europe. Russia’s war with the Ottoman Empire took its spending to $12 billion in 1877. The United States briefly led in 1898, the year of its war with Spain. Britain’s war against the Boer republics in South Africa pushed its budget to $19.7 billion in 1900, almost three times anyone else’s. And in 1904, for the only time in the whole race, Japan held #1, as it went to war with Russia. Russia answered with $27.6 billion in 1905, the highest figure of the period.

After 1906, when Britain launched HMS Dreadnought and made every older battleship obsolete, the race became a naval one as well. By 1913 four countries were spending more than $10 billion a year, and Germany, after a large army expansion that year, took the lead with $13.6 billion, just ahead of Russia’s $13.2 billion.

1914–1918: The scale changes

World War I did not just reorder the ranking; it changed what the numbers meant. Germany spent $55.9 billion in 1914 and $155.6 billion in 1915, more than ten times its peacetime budget. Britain, which had always preferred a small army and a big navy, raised mass armies for the first time and overtook Germany in 1916 with $179 billion. In 1918 Germany led again with $183 billion, with Britain, France and the United States all above $145 billion.

The United States entered the war in 1917, and its bills kept coming after the fighting ended: American budgets ran on a fiscal year that began in July, and spending peaked at $203 billion in 1919, the year the United States reached #1 for the first time in the 20th century. A year later it had fallen to $26 billion.

1919–1937: The leader nobody saw

The interwar years produce the race’s biggest surprise. With the Western democracies cutting their armies and signing naval limitation treaties, the country at the top from 1921 to 1937 was Soviet Russia, and then the Soviet Union. By these estimates, Soviet spending rose from about $15 billion in the mid-1920s to $66 billion in 1930, as Stalin’s Five-Year Plans built a war industry, and to $126 billion in 1935.

Those Soviet figures deserve caution. The Soviet Union did not publish honest defence budgets, and converting roubles into dollars at official exchange rates is a rough method; historians disagree about the true size of Soviet military effort in this period. What the data does show clearly is the trend: while Britain spent about $10 billion a year and the United States about $13 billion, the Soviet state was building one of the largest armed forces in the world.

Germany’s rearmament began in earnest after Hitler took power in 1933. German spending went from $11 billion that year to $72 billion in 1937 and $165 billion in 1938, enough to take the top spot a year before the war.

1939–1945: Total war

By 1940 Germany was spending $475 billion, and in 1942 $709 billion. But the decisive line on the chart is the American one. The United States spent $134 billion in 1941, the year of Pearl Harbor; $499 billion in 1942; and $1.31 trillion in 1943, when it overtook Germany. In 1945 it reached $1.57 trillion, the highest figure for any country in any year of our 210-year dataset.

On one scale, World War I shrinks to a small hill. Britain’s wartime peak of $296 billion in 1945 was higher than any country’s spending in 1914–1918, yet the United States spent more than five times as much that year. The Soviet figure, around $150 billion a year throughout the war, is almost certainly too low for a country that fought the largest land war in history; it is another case where the exchange-rate method understates Soviet effort.

1946–1991: Two superpowers

American demobilisation was even faster than after the Civil War. Spending fell from $725 billion in 1946 to $143 billion in 1948, and for three years, from 1948 to 1950, the Soviet Union was back at #1. Then came Korea. In 1950 the National Security Council’s NSC-68 report called for a massive build-up, and the outbreak of the Korean War that June made it happen: US spending roughly tripled in three years, to $582 billion in 1953. The United States led for the next two decades.

The Vietnam War pushed the American figure to $728 billion in 1968. As the war wound down, spending fell, while the Soviet budget kept rising steadily. In 1970 the two were almost level ($629 billion against $624 billion), and from 1971 to 1988 the Soviet Union led every year by these estimates, peaking at $843 billion in 1988. Ronald Reagan’s build-up in the 1980s narrowed the gap, with the United States reaching $760 billion in 1986, but did not close it.

Then the Soviet line falls off a cliff: $843 billion in 1988, $302 billion in 1989. That is too abrupt to be literal. Spending was falling under Gorbachev, but the size of the drop most likely reflects a change in the underlying estimates, as the Soviet government began publishing its own defence figures. Either way, 1989 is the year the United States took the top spot back, and it has not given it up since.

1992–2025: One superpower and a challenger

For the last 34 years the race for #1 has not been a race. American spending fell to a low of $538 billion in 1998, then rose with the wars that followed September 11 to almost $1 trillion in 2010. Budget caps brought it back below $800 billion in the mid-2010s, and it has climbed again since.

The real contest has been for second place. Russia held it through most of the 1990s, with a spike during the first Chechen War. In 2000 Russia, Japan and China were all between $75 billion and $95 billion. Since then China has pulled steadily away: $110 billion in 2010, $193 billion in 2015, $229 billion in 2020 and $286 billion in 2025. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine pushed its own spending back up to $143 billion, and Ukraine itself entered the world’s top ten.

Europe is moving again too. In 2025 NATO members agreed to raise defence spending towards 5 percent of their economies over the next decade. Germany is already back at #4. If the pledges hold, the next decade of this chart may look more like the 1900s than the 1990s.

Two centuries added up

Add every year from 1816 to 2025 and the United States has spent about $57.8 trillion on its military, almost twice as much as Russia and the Soviet Union combined ($29.7 trillion). Germany ($9.8 trillion), Britain ($9.0 trillion) and China ($8.9 trillion) follow, with France, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Italy and India completing the top ten.

Questions readers ask

Which country spends the most on its military?

The United States. In 2025 it spent about $906 billion (in 2024 dollars), more than the next seven countries combined, and it has been the world’s biggest military spender every year since 1989.

Which country has spent the most on its military in history?

The United States. Adding every year from 1816 to 2025, it spent about $57.8 trillion, almost twice as much as Russia and the Soviet Union combined ($29.7 trillion). Its peak, $1.57 trillion in 1945, is the highest single year for any country.

Did the Soviet Union ever spend more on its military than the United States?

By these estimates, yes: from 1948 to 1950 and from 1971 to 1988, peaking at about $843 billion in 1988. Soviet figures are estimates converted at official exchange rates, so the exact years are uncertain.

Which countries had the biggest military budgets in 2025?

The United States ($906 billion), China ($286 billion), Russia ($143 billion), Germany ($97 billion) and the United Kingdom ($93 billion), all in 2024 dollars.

About the numbers

The main source is the Correlates of War National Material Capabilities dataset, version 7. For 2023–2025 we use the SIPRI Military Expenditure Database, joined to the older series at 2022. Amounts recorded in pounds before 1914 are adjusted with UK prices; later years with US consumer prices; everything is shown in 2024 dollars.

• Figures before 1949 are estimates, and many countries’ series begin late: Ottoman figures start in 1851 and Qing China’s in 1896.
• The US Civil War counts the Union only.
• Soviet figures are converted at official exchange rates, which most historians think understates Soviet military effort. The series also shows abrupt breaks, such as 1988–1989, that reflect changes in the estimates rather than overnight changes in policy.
• In 2005 the source’s figures for China and Russia drop by more than half in a single year and recover only slowly. Neither country cut its budget like that; it is a break in the estimates, and we show it as recorded.
• Russia, the Russian Empire, Soviet Russia and the Soviet Union are one line, renamed as history goes; so are Prussia and Germany.

The series in five chapters

Each short covers one era in more depth:

• After Napoleon, 1816–1870: how France came to lead, and the Civil War spike
• The race to 1914, 1871–1913: the closest race in two centuries
• Two world wars, 1910–1945: from $14 billion to $1.57 trillion
• The Cold War, 1946–1991: the 18 years the Soviet Union led
• After the Cold War, 1992–2025: the race for second place