  It has been claimed and disputed that World War II has been followed by a
`long peace', an unprecedented decline of war. We conduct a full changepoint
analysis of well-documented, publicly-available battle deaths datasets, using
new techniques that enable the robust detection of changes in the statistical
properties of such heavy-tailed data. We first test and calibrate these
techniques. We then demonstrate the existence of changes, independent of data
presentation, at around 1910 and 1950 CE, bracketing the World Wars, and around
the 1830s and 1994 CE. Our analysis provides a methodology for future
investigations and an empirical basis for political and historical discussions.
