War in Human Civilization

by Azar Gat

In this truly global study, major military historian Azar Gat sets out to unravel the "riddle of war" throughout human history, from the early hunter-gatherers right through to the unconventional terrorism of the twenty-first century. In the process, the book generates an astonishing wealth of
original and fascinating insights on all major aspects of humankind's remarkable journey through the ages, engaging a wide range of disciplines.

Genres: History, War, Nonfiction, Anthropology, Military History, Military Fiction, Science

848 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2006

Reviews

[Andrés Astudillo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Holy shit. What an amazing book.
This is a full-length, page by page book in small letters full of politics, evolution and a lot, a lot of history. There is no simple way to describe the contents of this book, such as there is no way to define human history in one simple ideology. The main thesis for this book, is that human beings are the product of evolution, and societies, and the way societies inflict violence, or what they think about it, is not a moment, is not an event, it is a gradual process that takes place in many places at different times; it could be considered as the statistical constructs of moments that create history.

The book is separated in three parts, the first one is the one that I personally enjoyed the most, which is the evolutionary background of human beings and warfare. The second part is mostly documented history, and the final third part, is the historical analysis that lets the reader understand the reasons of most conflicts. The third part helps you understand a lot of politics, power, warfare, economics and political ideology. It really makes me sad that I just have moments to write this -relatively small review- for such a grandiose book that this one is.

Azar Gat is the author of another book that I read called “Ideological fixation”, and by having read this book, I totally understand his idea of ideological fixation, by uniting history with evolutionary thought. That’s how you can understand documented history without taking sides. Every economical model or ideology is an evolutionary novelty, seeking to unify human desires at a large scale. What we are living right now, no one can predict its consequences, everyday cultural evolution takes us further and further away from what was our evolutionary environment of adaptation, not only when it comes to what we eat (as Michael Pollan would say) but also in how politics adapts to our consumer behavior. Trends like threads, or tik tok are really new to our brain wiring, and we can’t know for sure how this is gonna affect us, woke politics, and conservative issues are a whole other theme, in which the view of war and violence is there, already to be launched, just waiting the order of the –ones who make politics- to write history once again.
He mentioned something really important, without knowing almost quoting Jonathan Haidt and Bradley Campbell on "victimhood culture", stating that physical pain was replaced by angst, stuff we see today when we hear "safe spaces" and "trigger warnings". There was a time in which human beings were worried about being killed, now we are worried even by how people make eye-contact. We are living in a more secure world and we just don't see it.
This is one of those books that really open up your mind to what is going on, near your surroundings.

[Joseph Stieb · Rating 4 out of 5]

In War in Human Civilization, Azar Gat tackles two major questions about war. First, what are the essential reasons why humans fight wars? Second, how have the motivations, practices, and lethality of war changed as human civilization has transformed over time? Although the book is a challenging read given its length and dense writing, Gat offers much illumination on these and other questions.
Gat received his Ph.D in history and he now teaches political science at Tel Aviv University. War in Human Civilization reflects his interdisciplinary career by employing ideas and methods from a variety of science and social science disciplines. Gat needs this expansive toolkit because his essential questions cross disciplinary lines and many of his topics cannot be accessed with only the standard methods of history and political science.
The book moves chronologically through different stages of humanity’s natural and cultural evolution. Gat begins with hunter-gatherers and proceeds to the development of tribes, agriculture, chieftainships, states, and ultimately modern forms of politics, economics, and warfare. The examination of hunter-gatherers is especially crucial in establishing his thesis. He grants great significance to hunter-gatherer warfare because Homo sapiens has spent the vast majority of its existence in this mode and the evolutionary mechanisms we developed in this state of nature still deeply influence our behavior today. Employing insights from archaeology, animal behavior, and modern observations of hunter-gatherers, Gat shows that hunter-gatherers used violence to steal women, kill male competitors and their offspring, and access crucial resources and territory.
During his discussion of hunter-gatherer warfare, Gat presents his thesis: the essential reason why humans fight wars is to obtain and/or protect access to food and sex, what he calls an evolutionary motivational complex. Gat believes that violence is “innate, but optional,” meaning that human beings have evolved mechanisms to facilitate the use of violence but that violence is not an inevitable product of our evolutionary heritage (36). Rather, violence is one of many tactics humans can employ to satisfy the evolutionary complex, and humans will deploy more or less violence depending upon a variety of factors.
This last point leads us to Gat’s second major objective: to explain how changes in human civilization have transformed warfare throughout recorded history even though the essential motivation for violence has not changed. Gat shows how key developments in human cultural evolution, such as agriculture, states, and industrial production, transformed the ways those societies fought. For example, he shows how the development of gunpowder, ocean navigation, and the printing press in the 15th century triggered a tangle of interconnected developments that heralded the start of modernity: centralized state authority, infantry centered armies, urbanism, the “commercial-financial revolution,” and nationalism (480).
Gat maintains that throughout the cultural evolution of warfare violence has remained instrumental to human goals rather than an end in itself. He posits that human beings will be more or less violent based on the utility of violence in achieving basic evolutionary goals in different civilizational conditions. In this vein, he concludes that the frequency and relative lethality of wars has declined in the past few centuries not just because of democratization and shifting values, but because the incentives for using war have lessened under modern civilizational conditions. These conditions include nuclear weapons, global trade, and reduced tie between force and wealth procurement in the industrialized world.
Gat’s book is highly successful in addressing the questions of why humans fight wars and how war has evolved. One of his greatest strengths is his ability to break down false dichotomies that have obscured debates about the motivations behind human violence. The most important of these is the debate between social constructionist and biological frameworks. Gat shows that social constructs over which people may fight are derivative of and subordinate to the central objectives of the evolutionary complex. Humans pursue wealth or political power, for instance, ultimately because they consciously or unconsciously want to secure access to food and reproduction. Achieving wealth or power are means to those ends. Political authority, ideologies, and wealth may be constructed differently in different societies with deeply important consequences for scholars, but these constructs rest on a “deep core of innate human propensities and predispositions, which represent evolution-shaped basic needs” (422). Future debates on the riddles of war will be far more productive if they follow Gat’s lead in synthesizing “nature and nurture” rather than putting them in a false rivalry.

[Robert Jeens · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book because it was beside the last book that I read on the library shelf, and it looked interesting, so here it is. There has been a movement among people who study these things, popularized by people like Steven Pinker, Ian Morris, and Niall Ferguson, to say that human violence has decreased greatly over the centuries. One of the books they read to arrive at this conclusion is Azar Gat’s War in Human Civilization. Gat takes a multi-disciplinary approach based upon the theory of evolution to study war as a totality and how it has emerged in human civilization. The main idea is that human violence is a strategy that humans, like other animals, use to get what they want when the advantages of using it outweigh the risks. War emerges from this.
Gat begins by looking in detail at violence among our hunter-gatherer ancestors, which means for 90 - 95% of the time that modern human beings have existed. He takes a materialist approach, in that he sees human intra-species violence as one of a range of strategies to accomplish the goal of reproduction. Generally, violence has been something done by males. As with our chimpanzee cousins, young human males commit about 90% of the violence, a rate unchanged over the centuries. They do it for one of two reasons, access to food and resources (particularly meat and water, but also whatever happens to be scarce) and access to females. The other reasons that hunter-gatherers give for violence, such as revenge, status, and the supernatural, are essentially, in the end, based upon food or sex. Also, Gat recounts how such violence was carried out. Formal battles, with massed groups opposing each other, often did not result in death. The participants engaged in formal rituals and catcalls, and generally tried not to get hurt. Most deadly violence occurred when the overwhelming odds were in the favour of the aggressors; either a large group came upon a small group or individual from the opposing side, there was a surprise attack at, for example, a feast that was supposed to bring peace, or a large group attacked an opposing camp in the predawn darkness without warning. Generally, the aim of violence was genocide, though circumstances rarely led to this, and death rates from violence probably ranged from 10 to 20% of the population, with most of the casualties being young males.
Our hunter-gatherer ancestors lived in a wide variety of environments, with a resulting wide variety of cultures, from widely dispersed, relatively egalitarian small groups living in harsh environments such as the Canadian Arctic, to fortified villages with much social stratification in relatively densely populated areas with very rich resources in places like the North American Pacific Northwest. This indicates that there was much cultural evolution at that time, and with the coming of agriculture, cultural evolution both accelerated and gained in importance.
The author examines war as the major factor bringing about social change and as an expression of that social change, after the emergence of agriculture. He follows the procession from village to town to city-state, empire, and feudal societies of the past. He uses a cross-cultural, multi-disciplinary approach, using historical, archaeological and anthropological sources. He compares, for example, city-states in Ancient Greece, Mesopotamia, Mexico, Africa, and Medieval Italy using ancient sources such as the Roman and Greek historians, modern systems-analysts such as Marx and Weber, archaeology, and translations from ancient temple walls and tombs. The links between social institutions, available technology and the forms of warfare that were expressed are examined in detail. Generally, as society became more complex, organized, and hierarchical, so did war. Genocide continued to occur, but slavery and subjugation were also practised, as it could be more profitable to appropriate people and their labour rather than kill them. The paradox is that, as that occurred, fewer people died in war because societies that were larger and better organized to prepare for war were also more peaceful internally and could defend themselves better against predators. Thus, war and preparations for war, made people safer.
The author analyzes the modern period, when Europeans became dominant, and the reasons for this. He provides an analysis of the rise of the European nation-states, capitalism, industrialization, free trade, and imperialism, What was the impact of these on the various European countries, the countries they colonized, and the old empires that were slow to adapt? War was the most important, but not the only force that led to greater social complexity; also, technology, economics, religion, and social institutions. One of his surprising findings is that the wars of the twentieth century, that we associate with so much death, were not really more intense, based upon the size of the population, the economy, and the technology available, than earlier wars in Europe such as the Thirty Years War or the Seven Years’ War, or worldwide such as the Taiping rebellion in China.
Gat has more counter-intuitive findings. He claims that the liberal democracies had structural advantages over the Communist systems, but not over the fascists. Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan were able to very efficiently mobilize resources from their conquered countries, and had it not been for the facts that the U.S. happened to be a liberal democracy and extremely powerful, the World Wars could have ended very differently. On a related note, one of the reasons for the end of empires, besides the empires being broke, was that liberal democracies were not willing to do the things to keep their empires that they had done to win their empires in the first place. Had Ghandi faced Hitler, the result would have been very different. He looks at the idea of the “democratic peace,” the idea that democracies inherently don’t go to war with each other, and says that it is much more complicated than that. Economic development has increased the advantages of peace; if we are fighting for resources and live in an age of abundance, then there is less reason for war, and there are other considerations as well. It is only in modern, economically developed, liberal societies that war has come to be seen as something unnatural and abhorrent. For most of history, it was considered normal and terrible.
Lastly, I will list a grab-bag of positives and negatives of the book. Gat is not an exciting writer; you will look in vain for humour or wit or scintillating prose. The book is generally well-organized, though he repeats himself fairly often – the book is a bit of a plod: you need to have some reason to really get to the end. His method has the advantage of distance: you can see the forest, not just the trees, but the disadvantage of detail and specialist knowledge. He can give you a paragraph that consists really of the work of tens of specialists working in their different fields for their lifetimes, who would all probably quibble over some of the details, and yet he has to incorporate it into an analysis that makes sense. He wrote the book in 2006, and he described adequately the problems at the time, particularly the problems of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, but couldn’t see the fallout from future events like the great recession of 2008, the Arab Spring, or the rise of an authoritarian China, though he did list that as a real possibility. Finally, biological and cultural evolution are non-teleological – they lead to greater complexity, but not to “progress” or “well-being” or anything like that. They are simply adaptations to an environment and have no particular direction before that direction emerges. By looking at war as a product of human evolution rather than a “problem of the nation state” or from a liberal or realist perspective, he has given us much to think about.

[Matas Maldeikis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Epinis darbas kodėl ir kaip mes kariaujame. Ir kaip karai sukūrė mūsų visuomenes.

[محمد حمدان · Rating 3 out of 5]

الحرب في حضارة الإنسان – عزار غات

عزار غات هو باحث وكاتب إسرائيلي من مواليد عام 1957 ويعمل حالياً كبروفيسور متخصص في الأمن القومي في جامعة تل أبيب وهو في ذات الوقت برتبة مايجور في الجيش الإسرائيلي. اشتهر ككاتب في شؤون الحرب بسبب كتابه هذا "الحرب في حضارة الإنسان" والذي اختارته دورية التايمز للأدب كواحد من أفضل كتب عام 2006.

أذكر جيداً حين كنتُ لا زلتُ في الجامعة وقد دسّ في عقلي أستاذ لي فكرة أن هناك شبهاً ما بيني وبين كافكا.. موحياً لي بأن أكتب عنه بحثاً. في ذلك الوقت لم أكن أعرف عن كافكا شيئاً، ولم أكن أعرف بكل تأكيد حقيقة كونه يهودياً. وقد ترددتُ جداً قبل أن أتخذ قرار الكتابة عنه حينها خاصة بأن حرب جنين كانت لا تزال حية وساخنة. وها أنا مرة أخرى أكرر الأمر، ولم أكن أعلم بأن الكاتب عزار غات هو كاتب إسرائيلي إلا بعد أن قمتُ بعملية بحث عنه بعد أن قطعتُ نصف الكتاب تقريباً. ولا أنكر أن حقيقة الكاتب وكونه لا يزال فاعلاً في الجيش الإسرائيلي قد تركت أثراً سيئاً في نفسي. لكنني ارتأيتُ أن البحث العلمي لا يعرف صديقاً من عدو. ولا يدين بديانة ولا يملك عرقاً أو لغة بعينها. ومن يتعفف عن قراءة علم ما بسبب دين أو جنس أو عرق أو لغة الكاتب.. فهو الخاسر وحده. ولا خاسر سواه.

الحرب، هي واحدة من أهم المشاكل التي يواجهها الإنسان الحديث.. وقد كانت نشأة الحرب في حضارة الإنسان هي أحد المعضلات الأهم التي حاول الإنسان أن يجد لها إجابة ما.. وقد انقسمت الإجابات كالتالي:

ذهب هوبس إلى أن الحرب هي سلوك أصيل لدى الجنس البشري. وأن الإنسان قد عرف الحرب أو أعمال العنف القاتلة ضد بني جنسه منذ أن وجد الإنسان نفسه. بينما ذهب جان جاك روسو إلى أن الحرب هي إختراع الحضارة. أي أن الإنسان لم يعرف الحرب إلا بعد أن عرف الحضارة.. وأن الإنسان الأول المعروف بالصياد الجامع للطعام لم يعرف الحرب لأنه وبكل بساطة لم يجد لها سبباً. بينما وبعد أن تطورت الحضارة بدأت النزاعات بين بني البشر بالظهور وظهرت معها أشكال الإقتتال الحربية. وقد تبنى الشيوعيون إجابة روسو.. حتى أنهم ادعوا بأنه في داخل نظام شيوعي كامل.. ستزول أسباب النزاع البشري وبالتالي ستزول الحروب. وقد مالت البشرية إلى ذلك إلى ستينات القرن الماضي.

ناقش غات هذه المعضلة كما يتوجب عليه أن يفعل بالضبط. بأسلوب أكاديمي رزين. وقد قدم تسلسلاً تاريخياً لكل محاولات الإجابة على ذلك السؤال.. وحسم النزاع ما بين روسو وهوبس. ولذلك كان سرد الأفكار بطيئاً جداً.. ومثيراً للملل إلى حد كبير جداً..

الكتاب مقسم إلى ثلاث أقسام تاريخية؛ الأول وهو عن الحرب عند الإنسان الأول "الصياد، جامع الطعام"، الثاني؛ الحرب في أول أشكال الحضارة إلى العصور الوسطى، والثالث؛ الحرب في العصور الحديثة.

وبكل تأكيد فإن إجابة السؤال المطروح تكمن في القسم الأول من الكتاب.. حيث يتبين للقاريء الكريم بأن هوبس كان هو الأقرب للصواب. فيقول غات: هل الشدة والعنف المميت، سلوك فطري في الطبيعة الإنسانية، هل هي في جيناتنا، وإن كانت كذلك، فبأي طريقة ؟ الإجابة عن هذا السؤال هي نعم، هي كذلك. لكن، فقط كـ"مهارة، موهبة، إمكانية، ميول". وهذا يذهب إلى ما وراء الحقيقة، ويتم التأكيد عليه بشكل لا متناهي من العلماء؛ بأن الجينات ليست أكثر من تصاميم خطة عامة، ومفتوحة للتأثيرات البيئية، أكثر من كونها خطة عمل جاهزة وملزمة. وكثيراً ما كان يفترض بأن العنف إما أن يكون إختراعاً بشرياً -وبالتالي فهو شيء يمكن تعلمه وهو اختياري بالضرورة-. أو أنه فطري -كغريزة أساسية تتم برمجة الإنسان عليها مسبقاً ومن الصعب للغاية مقاومتها-. وفي الواقع، العنف هو مهارة تكتيكية، –من النوع الخطير- فطرية واختيارية في ذات الوقت. وللتأكيد، إنها المهارة الأكثر أساسية ومركزية لأهميتها الإعتيادية في الصراع من أجل الوجود. ولهذا السبب هي فطرية في الكائنات الحية، ومن ضمنها الإنسان؛ فقد تم ذلك من خلال ضغوط الإنتخاب الطبيعي الهائلة عبر ملايين السنين. ولا بد هنا، من التأكيد على أنه وعلى الرغم من كون العنف مهارة إختيارية، إلا إنها لطالما كانت خياراً أساسياً مهماً، ولهذا السبب فهي قريبة جداً من سطح النفس البشرية ويسهل جداً تفعيلها. وفي ذات الوقت، عندما تكون الظروف التي يمكن أن تفعل العنف هي أقل إحتمالاً، أو يوجد هناك بدائل سلمية تلبي الأهداف المرجوة، عندها تقل مستويات العنف إلى مستوى يمكن لهذا النمط السلوكي بأكمله بالكاد أن يتم تفعيله على الإطلاق. أي أن مستويات العنف تتذبذب استجابة للظروف. انتهى الإقتباس.

وبهذا فإن غات يفند كل الأقوال السابقة التي كانت تدعي بأن العنف هو غريزة إنسانية تماماً كالجنس والطعام وغيرها.. ووضعها في مكانها كآلية يلجأ إليها الإنسان متى ما اضطر لذلك. وهي بكل تأكيد ليست إختراعاً حضارياً كما يقول روسو.

بعد ذلك يبدأ غات في نقاش الأسباب والمبررات لسلوك العنف في حضارة الإنسان في تسلسل تاريخي على الأقسام الثلاثة كما أشرت سابقاً. ويمكننا أن نلاحظ بأن تلك المبررات كانت لدى الصياد جامع الطعام في الغرائز الأساسية؛ أي الجنس والغذاء. ويتمثل ذلك في الحصول على مصادر طعام الآخرين والسطو على نسائهم أو الثأر من غارات سابقة. ومن المهم هنا أن نلاحظ بأن النساء في تلك الفترة كانت تعد مجرد مؤونة. يمكن السطو عليها تماماً كأي نوع آخر من المؤونة. وكثيراً ما كانت عمليات العنف ما تشمل سبي النساء واغتصابهن. وفي القسم الثاني، نلاحظ تطور تلك المبررات مع ظهور الزراعة وبداية استقرار الإنسان وتحوله من حالة اللا استقرار والترحال الدائم إلى الإستقرار والمدنية.. فنلاحظ مثلاً وجود أريحا كأول مدينة مسورة وهذا لا يعني عدم وجود مدن أقدم منها. لكنه يعني أنها أول مدينة اتخذت تدبيرات عسكرية دفاعية كبناء سور حولها للدفاع عنها ضد هجمات الآخرين وغاراتهم. وفي هذه الفترة نجد بأن الحضارة الإنسانية احتفظت بالأسباب التي ورثتها من الفترات السابقة والمتمثلة بالغذاء والنساء وأضافت إليها مبرراً مهماً؛ وهو السيادة.

مع ظهور الدول المدنية -أو الدولة المدينة- بدأت تظهر فكرة الزعامة والسيادة للفئة الحاكمة لهذه الدولة.. وقد تعلم الإنسان بأن حصوله على مقعد في هذه الفئة أدى به إلى الحصول على امتيازات مهمة من الغذاء والنساء.. ونجد هنا تطور السلوك البشري العنيف لتعزيز هذا الحس بالزعامة والسيادة.. ومن المهم هنا، أن نؤكد على أن السيادة والزعامة كانت موجودة بالفعل في فترة الصيادة الجامع للطعام لكنها كانت أقل حدة من الفترة التي تلتها ولم تكن هي الدافع الرئيسي للحروب. على عكس هذه الفترة التي أصبحت فيه دافعاً قوياً. ولربما نجد من هنا مبرراً قوياً لوجود إجابات كإجابة روسو بأن الحروب ليست سوى إختراع حضاري. رغم أننا وجدنا خطأ هذه الإجابة.. إلا أننا نرى في هذا الفترة الزمنية المبرر الذي دفع روسو كي يجيب بإجابته هذه.

مع تطور الحضارة الإنسانية ودخولها في مرحلة العصرية والدولة الحديثة نلاحظ أن مبررات الحروب احتفظت بكل الإرث الماضي من المبررات وأضافت إليها مصادر الإنتاج.. ومن المهم هنا أن نلاحظ بأن غات يؤكد أن المرحلة التي نعيشها اليوم هي أقل مراحل الحضارة الإنسانية عنفاً وحروباً. ويعزو غات ذلك إلى أن الإنسان الحديث قد بدأ ينقم على الحروب لأنها أصبحت ذات تكاليف فادحة من ناحية مادية ودموية.. فتطور التكنولوجيا جعل الإنسان يطور من فعالية قدراته على القتل.. لذا فإن لجوءه للحروب أصبح أقل.. لأنه يعلم عواقب الدخول في الحرب بشكلها الحديث.

مما لا شك فيه أنه كتاب مهم، بغض النظر عن مدى إتفاقنا أو اختلافنا مع غات. وأعتقد أن هذه ستكون البداية فقط لي مع هذا الموضوع الشيق فعلاً.
للمناسبة، لم أجد نسخة عربية من الكتاب. فاضطررتُ لقراءته بالإنجليزية..

[Jeff · Rating 4 out of 5]

A massive tome that cuts through all of human history, "combining biology, anthropology, archaeology, history, sociology, and political science - and ranging from the origins of our species to the current threat of terrorism." Conclusion: War has always been with us from the depths of pre-history until the ultra-peaceful democracies of today. Its not going away despite the best intentions and hopes of peace loving modern society. However, the dawn of the Industrial Age has wrought amazing changes on our "cultural evolution" and the future remains murky regarding the dangers and possibilities moving forward. This monster articulates an insightful understanding of the root causes of war and the necessity of continuing to study this field if we are to prevent and/or prepare for war in the future. (after finishing all 673 pages of this very dense book, mind collapses in a puddle in order to rest and contemplate.)

[Laika · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is my first big history book of the year, and one I’ve been rather looking forward to getting to for some time now. Its claimed subject matter – the whole scope of war and violent conflict across the history of humanity – is ambitious enough to be intriguing, and it was cited and recommended by Bret Devereaux, whose writing I’m generally a huge fan of. Of course, he recommended The Bright Ages too, and that was one of my worst reads of last year – apparently something I should have learned my lesson from. This is, bluntly, not a good book – the first half is bad but at least interesting, while the remainder is only really worth reading as a time capsule of early 2000s academic writing and hegemonic politics.

The book purports to be a survey of warfare from the evolution of homo sapiens sapiens through to the (then) present, drawing together studies from several different fields to draw new conclusions and a novel synthesis that none of the authors being drawn from had ever had the context to see – which in retrospect really should have been a big enough collection of dramatically waving red flags to make me put it down then and there. It starts with a lengthy consideration of conflict in humanity’s ‘evolutionary state of nature’ – the long myriads between the evolution of the modern species and the neolithic revolution – which he holds is the environment where the habits, drives and instincts of ‘human nature’ were set and have yet to significantly diverge from. He does this by comparing conflict in other social megafauna (mostly but not entirely primates), archaeology, and analogizing from the anthropological accounts we have of fairly isolated/’untainted’ hunter gatherers in the historical record.

From there, he goes on through the different stages of human development – he takes a bit of pain at one point to disavow believing in ‘stagism’ or modernization theory, but then he discusses things entirely in terms of ‘relative time’ and makes the idea that Haida in 17th century PNW North America are pretty much comparable to pre-agriculture inhabitants of Mesopotamia, so I’m not entirely sure what he’s actually trying to disavow – and how warfare evolved in each. His central thesis is that the fundamental causes of war are essentially the same as they were for hunter-gatherer bands on the savanna, only appearing to have changed because of how they have been warped and filtered by cultural and technological evolution. This is followed with a lengthy discussion of the 19th and 20th centuries that mostly boils down to trying to defend that contention and to argue that, contrary to what the world wars would have you believe, modernity is in fact significantly more peaceful than any epoch to precede it. The book then concludes with a discussion of terrorism and WMDs that mostly serves to remind you it was written right after 9/11.

So, lets start with the good. The book’s discussion of rates of violence in the random grab-bag of premodern societies used as case studies and the archaeological evidence gathered makes a very convincing case that murder and war are hardly specific ills of civilization, and that per capita feuds and raids in non-state societies were as- or more- deadly than interstate warfare averaged out over similar periods of time (though Gat gets clumsy and takes the point rather too far at times). The description of different systems of warfare that ten to reoccur across history in similar social and technological conditions is likewise very interesting and analytically useful, even if you’re skeptical of his causal explanations for why.

If you’re interested in academic inside baseball, a fairly large chunk of the book is also just shadowboxing against unnamed interlocutors and advancing bold positions like ‘engaging in warfare can absolutely be a rational choice that does you and yours significant good, for example Genghis Khan-’, an argument which there are apparently people on the other side of.

Of course all that value requires taking Gat at his word, which leads to the book’s largest and most overwhelming problem – he’s sloppy. Reading through the book, you notice all manner of little incidental facts he’s gotten wrong or oversimplified to the point where it’s basically the same thing – my favourites are listing early modern Poland as a coherent national state, and characterizing US interventions in early 20th century Central America as attempts to impose democracy. To a degree, this is probably inevitable in a book with such a massive subject matter, but the number I (a total amateur with an undergraduate education) and more dammingly that every one of them made things easier or simpler for him to fit within his thesis means that I really can’t be sure how much to trust anything he writes.

I mentioned above that I got this off a recommendation from Bret Devereaux’s blog. Specifically, I got it from his series on the ‘Fremen Mirage’ – his term for the enduring cultural trope about the military supremacy of hard, deprived and abusive societies. Which honestly makes it really funny that this entire book indulges in that very same trope continuously. There are whole chapters devoted to thesis that ‘primitive’ and ‘barbarian’ societies possess superior military ferocity and fighting spirit to more civilized and ‘domesticated’ ones, and how this is one of the great engines of history up to the turn of the modern age. It’s not even argued for, really, just taken as a given and then used to expand on his general theories.

Speaking of – it is absolutely core to the book’s thesis that war (and interpersonal violence generally) are driven by (fundamentally) either material or reproductive concerns. ‘Reproductive’ here meaning ‘allowing men to secure access to women’, with an accompanying chapter-length aside about how war is a (possibly the most) fundamentally male activity, and any female contributions to it across the span of history are so marginal as to not require explanation or analysis in his comprehensive survey. Women thus appear purely as objects – things to be fought over and fucked – with the closest to any individual or collective agency on their part shown is a consideration that maybe the sexual revolution made western society less violent because it gave young men a way to get laid besides marriage or rape.

Speaking of – as the book moves forward in time, it goes from being deeply flawed but interesting to just, total dreck (though this also might just me being a bit more familiar with what Gat’s talking about in these sections). Given the orientalism that just about suffuses the book it’s not, exactly, surprising that Gat takes so much more care to characterize the Soviet Union as especially brutal and inhumane that he does Nazi Germany but it is, at least, interesting. And even the section of World War 2 is more worthwhile than the chapters on decolonization and democratic peace theory that follow it.

Fundamentally this is just a book better consumed secondhand, I think – there are some interesting points, but they do not come anywhere near justifying slogging through the whole thing.

[Truls Ljungström · Rating 5 out of 5]

Detta är en fantastisk översikt över krigets sociala historia - i termer av vad som orsakar krig, och hur den mänskliga arten agerar under det. Huvudargumentet är Malthus - att ett befolkningsöverskott förr eller senare driver fram ett sådant armod att det behöver åderlåtas, och då helst på främmande lands territorium. Det är definitivt så att boken är faktarik, och om man behöver ett mentalt standardverk över krigsföring från stenåldern och framåt kan man välja sämre böcker.

Jag kan inte låta bli att ställa denna bok jämte Peter Turchins, och den jämförelsen är skrämmande i sina slutsatser.

[Serg Borovkov · Rating 5 out of 5]

Скажу чесно, це було не легко, проте книжка однозначно варта тих зусиль. Також із задоволенням перечитаю, коли з'явиться український переклад.

[Savyasachee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Works of history which aim to understand world systems are difficult to read, to say nothing about writing them. But Azar Gat's magnum opus is an incredibly well-written answer to the question of why and how conflict has shaped human society.

He begins with war in prehistoric societies. Unlike what Roussites would have one believe, war is not a m0odern phenomenon. Detractors would quibble about definitions, but in my opinion Gat has been able to square that circle fairly well. He picks up narratives and pieces of evidence from multiple societies; Papua New Guinea, Aboriginal Australia and Eskimo Canada are the ones which I remember most clearly. He leans a bit on biological determinism, but not to the extent of weakening his arguments.

He then goes on to settled societies and then trawls on through history to reach the atomic age. He narrows his focus at each step, starting with the whole world, then narrowing his focus down to the old world, then Eurasia, and finally Europe. The narrowing of focus is not because of any ideological reasons. The art of war developed differently in different places, and the analysis of both factors and advances in the area whose doctrine ended up dominating the warfare of its time makes a lot of sense.

Of course, the history of war is not limited to the battlefield. Warfare has a habit of affecting things far beyond its purview. As Clausewitz once wrote, war is merely politics by another means. The art of war, therefore, is the art of politics. Gat leans into this and goes into detail about the relationships between war, power structures and the development of institutions. Questions about limited war, centralisation, and institutional development all get asked and answered within this book. Is it comprehensive? Yes. Is it complete? Certainly not. There is always more to be said. Yet, Gat has said more than most and enriched us for it.

Another very thoughtful decision was the inclusion of a section which talks about why talk of war is primarily talk about men. War has typically been an activity in which men participate, but its effects are felt by everyone. Gat links this to biology, but not in a men are strong women are weak kind of way. His argument centres more around the idea of one man being able to sire multiple babies in a short time (a biological syllogism) and "big men" being able to take multiple wives (a political syllogism) leading to sexually frustrated young men abounding in most societies. The entire argument is worth reading in full, but I shall mention a sentence here which has stuck with me. "There is a view that has gained much currency in modern discourse, according to which rape is an act of violence, humiliation, and domination, rather than of sex. However, this false dichotomy is deeply misleading, because rape is precisely violently forced sex." The parts of this book which link sexual urges to war have been the most interesting to read. And that is saying something because this book is brilliant from cover to cover.

So all in all, 5/5 with no reservations. It's a brilliant book which will advance your knowledge of human society and warfare in ways you did not think possible.

[Eric · Rating 5 out of 5]

Azar Gat takes on one of the most fundamental questions regarding human history and nature: why do we fight? In trying to find an answer, Gat covers a broad range of disciplines (history, archaeology, psychology, sociology, genetics). He clearly demonstrates that war, contrary to being an aberration brought on by civilization, has been a part of humanity's existence since the beginning. Even though the weapons and the nature of war's destructiveness have changed, the underlying motivations have stayed the same.

[Nico · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great book for anyone who seek to have a better grasp of millitary history as a whole but also of human nature and behavior as to why we are so keen to fight and kill each other for ressources or divergences in views. Azar Gat spend a great deal (with reason) of the book exploring how the motivation behind going to war and killing each other is first and foremost greatly influenced by our biological nature. War is not a social construction, it is an adaption directly influenced by our mechanism of survival. In the first part of the book there is a whole display of evidences debunking and adressing the false idea (which is is still greatly believed) of the myth of the peaceful savage, or how supposedly the first humans groups in prehistory were unwarlike in nature and did not fought for profits and domination, that war only came much later in history when humans started gathering large ressources and building massive settlements and started agriculture/animal domestication.

In response to this widely accepted notion Azar Gat offer us with a gathering of evidences and analysis proving how every single “primitive society” encountered and studied while still living in the old way of humanity (from Australian Aborigines to Papuans) are violents and conflict-seekers for the sake of profits and conquest. Humans do not need per-see ressources necessity to fight, but the lure of women and profit is enough. Indeed Azar Gat explain very proficiently how the prisoner dilemma dictated primitive relationships.

Biologically humans groups are driven by the need of ressources accumulation but also of assuring total domination over their lands. As Azar Gat explain, humans are naturally driven to only seek the survival and profit of their own blood and in second hand their own group or clan, which ensure in the long term the survival and evolution of their genes but also of their shared culture and indentity. As such humans are always establishing a relationship of subtle (or not so subtle) dominance with other humans groups which will either translate in a alliance or union with them (via mariages and mixing) or in a state of cold war, in which the groups will only prevent themselves from attacking each other if they see that the risk is greater than the rewards. The mere possibility of an external group not being a hundred percent trustwhorty or in line with the goals and best interest of your own group is enough reason for our insctincts of survival to push us to go to war and to destroy or beat into submission say other group.

Humans act first and foremost to satisfy the drive of having the strongest community and the best chances of survival of the shared gene/shared culture of the said community (as in identity) this means that just as much as in a group a hiearchy of the strongest is always going to exist (the leader/strongest males having the most females and ressources) this hiearchy of social domination will also apply in the relationship between different human groups coming from different background and environments and as such share a different cultural and genetic connexion. Meaning that humans communities will always try to dominate each other and eventually go into armed conflict to ensure their domination (and hence best chances of survival) unless there is enough risks doing so, resulting in the reward of the fighting being lesser than the risk of the consequences of said fighting.

The behavior of chimpanzees and other apes (which share genes with us ) is used as the introduction and primary example of how our nature push us to use violence and killing in order to climb the social ( and survival) ladder among our kin and thus assure the survival and strengthening of our genes. The strongest chimp dominate the rest of the males chimps and have the most acces to female and thus the greatest reproduction pool. Sometines, other males chimps are going to challenge the leader and either resulting in a new social hiearchy (in which the offsprings of the previous leader is going to be killed and his females taken) or in the affirming of the already established order. Chimps are also proven to be extremely territorial animals and very possesives over their so-call lands, to the point that they have organized patrols and much like humans organized conflicts (although rares) with other chimps groups which threaten their way of life. The domination of the kin (group) and the domination of their territory is what matter, they are willing to go to war for that.

Humans function exactly the same way as far as our so-call insctincts goes, the difference is how much humans unlike chimps can adapt and contextualize the nature due to our cultural and social uprising. We are capable of influencing our insctincts to a much greater degree than animals. But in the end of the day, the nature of warfare and of violence in general generate from the same biological vein.

Women and ressources in order to strengthen ourselves and our genes. Once again by taking many examples of primitive warfare in diverses societies Azar Gat show how much our natural insctincts still subtly guide us. Using the reports of many cultures Azar prove that much like chimps humans are driven usually to seek a conflict in which they know they can win with the less damage possible even if it means that the war is going to last for generations. This is why so many cultures have very similar “ritual warfares” in which basically the two opposite forces are going to face each other in a open field and throw projectiles at themselves with little if possibly any deaths before going both home. Most of the killing is not going to happen on the field of battle but during the skirmishes and small encounters waged all over the year between those battles. However the true butchery is going to happen either when one of the two forces have the possibility to lay ambush to the other and as such be assured of victory with little casualities or when one of the two force manage to take totally by surprise the other in their own home and basically butcher everyone save for the women who are going to be forced to join the victors. Obivously, there is exceptions to the rules and some primitives pitched battles which were quite bloody as hell. But overall across the globe the same pattern always followed, humans are going to fight in expended conflicts and only put an end to it when they are sure that they can be victorious without too much casualities. Throwing ourselves in a promising bloody battle with uncertain results while definitely possible under certain circumstances is not the human first insctinct.

This base of combat was the cornerstone of how human waged war throughout the ages with adaptations and circumstances changing throughout time (a pattern very reflected in how most antiquity and medieval pitched battles were waged), but as society and weaponry evolved and cultures changed this was more or less mitiged and sometines the drive to fight with the goal of putting yourself and your group in the less risk of dying as possible while running away/breaking when the losses start to bear weight relative to your numbers sometimes simply did not came to be.

Also, Azar Gat adress a whole lot of interesting and fundamental topics for the reader to understand the “logic of war” some controversial ones (such as the place of women in both warfare and society) but overall he always strike to the point and is capable to deliver a very impressive work on the subject filled with sources and references. A great part of the book is centered around the evolution of warfare and how culture and different civilizations shaped it differently or how the technological/social human evolution changed over time the way warfare was waged. For example a very interesting part of the book is when Azar Gat demonstrate how the evolution and growth in power of urban population and the decline of peasants-based armies (rise of great cities in abundance with the rural population declining) resulted in the domination of infantry over cavalry and the end of the aristocratic dominance on the field of battle and how infantry forces surpassed cavalry on the battlefield across different theaters resuling in a great decline of aristocratic power overall.

In short, if you want a book to help you understand millitary history in general, this is the way.

[Gary Reger · Rating 3 out of 5]

Azar Gat's War in Human Civilization begins by promising to discover whether "war is grounded, perhaps inescapably, the human nature? Does it have primordial roots in humans' innate violence and deadly aggressive behavior against their own kind?" (p. 3). These are obviously major questions, pondered I suppose for millennia. It would be important to have definite answers.

Alas, we don't really get answers. There are, as I see it, two problems with Gat's approach. First, he seems to count most any intra-species violence as war. So small-scale inter-tribal belongs in the same category as World War II. This strikes me as a category mistake--is an attack by a small group on another really the same thing as massive, inter-state slaughter? Second, Gat soon veers off from the basic issue into a very lengthy discussion of wars across time and space. But does the fact that, say, Sumerian city-states and European nation-states fought each other really help us understand whether war inheres in human nature? I trawled through hundreds of pages of essays on military technology and the emergence of nation-states, waiting for the answer, and it never really came. We get it that the desire for wealth, power, territory, and women has driven war--but how is this evolutionarily inbred? Indeed, when Gat comes down to his conclusions, having again asserted it' evolution, he undercuts his thesis by implying that it's socio-economic matters that drive war, and that's why starting with the Enlightenment some folks, like Kant, argued strongly against it (see p. 662). One asks: if war is inbred, how can changing social circumstances turn us against it?

Finally, when I came to his discussions of matters about which I knew something, I was too often surprised that he didn't consider the context and circumstances of the historical events. Too many broad generalizations, rather easily queried if you know the details.

is a massively ambitious book, and you have to admire Gat's diligence and the time and energy that must have been required to write it. But if you're looking for a satisifying explanation for why we fight, I, at least, didn't find it.

[André Nordin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought this dense book (almost a thousand pages) back in 2006 only because of a small chapter on the Mongols. That same year, this became the first ever academic book that I read from cover to cover. My 18 year old self thought this was the most intellectually stimulating book I'd ever read. It also pushed me into wanting to study History. Looking back on it now, it's easy to pick out its flaws (it's quite deterministic, reductionist, and written within the framework of evolutionary biologism!), which is hard to avoid when trying to cover the whole extent of human history covering a vast amount of disciplines in a single volume (the author himself is just a military historian). Gat's main argument is that war has been on the decline since prehistoric times (an idea that ultimately stems from Norbert Elias "The Civilizing Process"). Still, I treasure this book like nothing else. It's extremely well written and packed with useful references. I'd definitely recommend it if you read it with a critical eye.

[Winston B-S · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's rare that a book can impress you by being exactly what it says on the tin, but that's exactly what Gat does. This is an extremely ambitious work and excellent. It is both in-depth and easy to read. A worthy gift for the history lover in your life looking to tackle something deeper than your run-of-the-mill presidential biography

[Liquidlasagna · Rating 2 out of 5]

War is not only about the quest for power, or security dilemmas, or deterrence, or trade, or ideology.

Instead, it is about leaders choosing war to resolve conflicts characterized by the presence of any number of secondary causes, which in turn intimately implicate an interrelated set of primary causes.

Gat analyzes significant amounts of data (some of which are newly presented) on the way to dismissing democratic peace theory, capitalist peace theory, liberal peace theory, and war weariness brought about by the destructiveness of contemporary conflicts as primary explanations.

The first three, he holds, are only partially true: there has been a relative embrace of peace by states which are not democratic, liberal, or capitalist as well as those which are.

The latter he dismisses with arguments holding that contemporary wars, on a relative scale, have been less destructive and bloody than previous conflicts.

Gat acknowledges the contemporary role played by nuclear deterrence and the concept of mutually assured destruction in discouraging a general war, but argues that this factor is insufficient to account for the relative paucity of major wars.

The better answer, he argues, is that people have come to realize that the rewards of peaceful development are larger and more certain than the rewards of war.

Economic development has largely solved the Malthusian puzzle which has dominated human history.

For scholars of international relations and peace studies, it is perhaps more suggestive than persuasive.

David Lorenzo

................


on a bad day, i might consider giving this a one out of ten

and if i were generous, for seven seconds i would give him a four out of ten for thinking out of the box.

Basically his oversimplification with grand novel solutions to every problem under the sun really irks me.

The Security Dilemma is the name of the game and to dimiss that makes me want to give this a negative 70.

And to say that 'contemporary wars, on a relative scale, have been less destructive and bloody than previous conflicts', just doesn't wash for me.

When you want to compare ancient history with modern warfare, i think it's more about trying to compare Apples and Oranges, and technology i think overwhelmingly makes the comparison a bad one.

Technology changes how you want to to kill the other side, and how you can stop your own side from being slaughters like in the days of the Romans, or the Middle Ages, or the Napoleonic Era.

Tactical Nuclear Warfare might change the comparisons again, if it were a low-risk strategy.

[Kyle · Rating 5 out of 5]

A truly fascinating read through humanity's history of war-making. Gat starts from the animal kingdom and outlines the evolutionary basis for violent conflict, and extends this analysis from prehistoric humanity to the present day. This includes hunter gatherers, to farmers in early states, to feudalism, empires, European imperial powers, and modern liberal-democratic states.

The book has an extensive notes section with a large number of references and sources listed for each chapter. The main thesis is that war is one strategy choice "built in" by nature that will be chosen when the circumstances for it to profit (that is through direct or indirect somatic and reproductive benefits) are there. This means humanity can be put in situations where war is less likely and less deadly, but that these are contingent factors and will not necessarily hold when changes are made to the system. Gat stresses the multi-variable non-linear process of change, with no single variable driving history, but causes and effects reinforcing and affecting each other leading to trends.

The book has both a grand sweep, but is not afraid to get into details of each era, contributing to its length. Gat is a good writer, and I didn't feel bored when reading it at any time. The topic of why do humans go to war is a timeless one, and the author makes a compelling case for his arguments.

[Tyler Carter Mills · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is more than I asked it to be, and that's wonderful. I walked into this expecting a chronological breakdown of wars in history and how they evolved in scale and technology. I got that, but I also got an anthropological, biological, historical, economic, and philosophical overview of war and the human condition. This is a book that brilliantly outlines the movement of human history not in a jumbled and "scratching the surface" kind of way, but in a narrowed focus on war which paradoxically explains human civilization better than a general study could ever do. It is true that the final portion of this book on terror and WMDs have not held up well, but I'm willing to excuse it as a product of it's time and appreciate what a great history book this is. I'd recommend this to anyone, particularly those interested in history.

[Jan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a book that sets out to explain war, not describe it, so it may contain more archaeology, political science, evolutionary theory and economics than most readers expect. I will recommend it to anyone who wants to understand why humans wage wars, from the brutal daylight raids that dominated pre-state human societies (almost all of history!) to the massive high tech conflicts of today.

It's a bit more of a brick than I knew when I started reading it (a disadvantage of eBooks), and I think ti could have been successfully edited down a bit. It is, however, unusually dense of facts by a very knowledgeable author.

[Cory · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was full of TIL's; in particular I found the discussion of war among hunter gatherers quite fascinating and educational. For example, how it led to a vicious cycle of female infanticide which in turn let to more war for stealing women. How strict geographical borders of tribes existed. On and on and on.

Despite loving what I did read, this is a DNF because while the whole book is quite academic, Gat really steps up the dryness of the book about halfway through. So much inane detail on and specificity and discussing sources... it was obviously very well researched and cited but I'd rather get the cliff notes/pop sci version of the second half if I can find it.

[Anjar Priandoyo · Rating 4 out of 5]

I always have mixed feeling when giving a review for this kind of book. First I did read everything but not paying 100% attention, some part just skimming, so maybe only around 30% comprehension of this book. This book has an interesting idea, that war is the biggest force in human advancement transition, it provides detail evidence since the first Homo 2 million years ago to nuclear war and biological weapon. I am pretty sure will read this more than once and used it as a reference to understand the war in human culture. Maybe the only problem is this book is too big.

[Zumzaa]

This is hands down the best history I’ve read. Definitely long but filled with so much interesting stuff because as prefaced every is related to war and war is related to everything else. You get a broad history of violence but also incredible insights into the three epochs of history and the dramatic effects of cultural innovation. I’m not very well read but it is nonetheless significant that this book is responsible for some of the more interesting analyses I’ve learnt of both pre-agricultural and modern history.

[Phallus · Rating 4 out of 5]

A magnificent synthesis of intelligent scholarship across paleontology, anthropology, archaeology, political science, and sociology, this book eruditely traces the history of war—overlapping with the history of civilization consequently serving as a valuable history more broadly—while firmly grounding warfare in the evolutionary consequences of the age-old competition for food and sex. Ultimately, however, the book can be fatiguing, as it often lapses into tiresome repetition of points already made.

[Patrick Soares · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very very interesting read.
The first section dedicated to hunter-gatherers and evolutionary theory from a belligerent viewpoint was rather insightful.
The rest of the book wasn't as interesting to me unfortunately, as the author spent more and more time in futile intellectual debates and the closer look on 'cultural evolution' felt a lot more simplified and reductivist.
Still highly recommended.

[Sam · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoy reading books that try to explain the grand sweep of human history, and while Azar Gat’s attention to detail and willingness to deal with made this a slower read than books aimed at a popular audience, it was good to know the limitations of any claims. And the overall synthesis worked very well to explain war across a very long time scale.

[Austin Waung · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best books I've read; this book focuses on the history of war and how it might have arisen from an evolutionary perspective. While not long, this book is extremely dense and has undoubtedly shifted my understanding of the world. A must read.

[Stephen Gill · Rating 5 out of 5]

An enlightening examination of war.

[Patrick O'Mara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredible

[Kavan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting, however its too academic in my opinion to read casually. My review isn't based on the academic value more for a casual reader

[Josh · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a massive and fatiguing book to read. Weighing in at 673 pages it is definitely an endurance test to make it all the way through. Azar Gat admits in the preface that he designed this book not only for scholars but also for the interested reader walking into Barnes and Noble or shopping on Amazon for a book on war. I'm sure this book has made wide circulation among scholarly circles. However, I doubt seriously that many other readers will take the time and energy to make it past the first 100 pages. That's not to say that the book is poorly conceived or executed—it's simply too overwhelming for anyone but the dedicated minority.

This is essentially a book about human history that uses an evolutionary framework to explain the origins of violent competition (i.e. war) between human beings. As the book progresses, Gat transitions from biological evolution/natural selection into cultural evolution—that is, primarily, the emergence of various polities and their elaboration across the centuries. Gat actually advances a fairly simple argument for why humans often resort to violence (well, it seems simple and I hope I don't oversimplify his argument). Humans are hard-wired through the calculus of survival and reproduction (the unforgiving essence of natural selection) to pursue an array of strategies to secure resources, women, and the survival of their species. Peaceful means certainly exist to achieve these ends. But Gat focuses instead on how humans (especially humans in nature—the 95% of human history that occurred before the advent of agriculture) often resorted to aggressive tactics to secure water, food, and fertile women. All other motives for war—including honor, nationalism, religion and ideology, etc.—are secondary to these core constituents of survival. In modern times, though, these secondary elements have become more salient while resource abundance has obscured for a contemporary audience the fundamental rationale for war. Increasing globalization of the economy and economic interdependence have made the benefits of peace outweigh the potential rewards of warfare and have, especially within liberal democracies of the west, exercised a depressing effect on the occurrence and duration of wars.

Throughout the book Gat's writing is precise and clear. He does has a tendency to repeat himself throughout the various chapters and section introductions and conclusions. I feel certain that Gat could have written this book in 300-400 pages, rather than 673. You'll find that in the beginning chapters he draws mostly on evolutionary theory, anthropology, and archaeology while in the later chapters he pulls heavily from international relations, political science, and sociology to explain political developments. Still, many undertreated civilizations and empires are treated throughout his book to advance his thesis—I particularly enjoyed his sections on Australian Aborigines, Native Americas (Aztec, Maya, Inca), and the Safavid/Mughal Empires of Eurasia.

A more specific review will likely follow....4.5 stars and recommended for anyone with a deep interest in military history.