This was a very intriguing book -an intriguing argument- that is well put together and argued. It is a disturbing thought that wars, of a certain kind anyway, might be ultimately useful and ultimately responsible for modern societies with all their goods. It isn't a theory that can, in my mind, ever be really tested (we can't rerun human history), but it does serve as a very enlightening alternative view. Perhaps war is not *solely* terrible and perhaps war does not serve 'no purpose'.

Of course, one can easily see how this same argument could be used to justify almost anything... as long as a government does't jail and/or execute too many protesters, apostates, minorities, etc. then it is arguably a 'good' government as long as it delivers lower violence and increased wealth and health to everyone else. Basically, a version of the argument/though experiment leveled against Utilitarianism (or, at least, naive Utilitarianism.)

But still very interesting. Five stars. ( )

Is all of war all bad? That is a sensitive question. Most of us will agree that war includes atrocities at a level we are not ready to accept, but what if we elevated ourselves from the personal level to something else? That is what Ian Morris attempts to do with this book.

The book is divided into chapters focusing on different eras in human evolution but with many comparisons and jumps both backwards and forward and notices that the world seen over tens of thousands of years has become less and less violent, even including the wars. The author then tries to build an evolutionary explanation that includes the effect of wars so that wars, and death and violence can sometimes (far from always) result in less death and violence.

There is a lot of interesting material in the book and I don't doubt that he has more right than wrong (and if I understand him correctly, that should be enough to make him happy). There is also a lot to discuss and argue about in this book, especially so when he ends by trying to predict the next 30-50 years. I guess we will see if he is right.

In total the book is well worth reading as a very high level history lesson, focused on conflicts and long term civilization building and as a introspective analysis of humans as a species. ( )

Ian Morris has tackled a taboo subject here. "Everybody" seems to agree that war is; undesirable, causes immense suffering, disruption of societies, destruction of lives, families and property....in fact, there are no winners and everyone loses in a war. But Morris steps back from the picture of war as experienced from those involved and takes the big-history view. His main thesis is that stone age man (read persons) ....maybe 10,000 years ago had a 10-20% chance of dying a violent death. During the period of the ancient empires .....around 2000BC to 600AD the chance of dying a violent death had dropped to around 2-5% and in modern times, despite the carnage of WW1 and WW2, the chances of dying a violent death have dropped to around 1-2%. He then pursues the question; Why? what has happened to drop the violent death toll?
He concluded that there have been (what he terms) "productive wars" where the "winner" has been able to unite a large number of previously warring tribes or states. These smaller warring states were rather dangerous for individuals.....with high rates of violent deaths. But the peace brought by a larger, united empire (and the need to tax the empire and gain benefits from it) meant that international trade could expand, agriculture could be developed, cultural accomplishments were expanded, travel was safer, investment could be made in infrastructure, ...roads water supplies, irrigation etc. The Pax Romana is the archetypal example of this. On the other hand, there have been unproductive wars where the reverse happened: central authority broke down, war-lords emerged, travel was unsafe, trade plummeted, wars increased in frequency, investment in infrastructure declined.
He refers frequently...maybe too frequently to the Hobbsian idea of Leviathan.....a super powerful monarch or leader...who could intimidate all the would-be threats to their power. Ideally they would be elected by consensus. It is this state of Leviathan that leads to the benefits described by Morris.
But the path to these states has not been smooth nor continuous. The ancient empires; Assyrian, Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Mauryan, Han. All seemed to fall prey to nomadic tribes without fixed headquarters.....which subsequently brought about the collapse of these empires.
There are some real issues with Morris's methodology. He acknowledges that his numbers for just about all the "violent-death-rates" are pretty much speculative. He also (conceptually) averages out death rates over a long period. So death rates from a medieval siege, for example, might have been very high....especially when the Mongols killed every living thing in the city....but Morris tends to estimate them over the lifetime of the empire that emerged from such conflict. Likewise, Australian deaths, in WWI were about 62,000, and wounded gassed etc., were about 156,000 from a population of 5 million. (Or a simple death rate of 1.2% but if you include injuries it rises to over 4%...and Australia had no civilian casualties). Mind you, if you were around 18-44 years old in Australia in 1915 then your chances of a violent death would have been much higher. Some 39% of the male population between the ages of 18 and 44 enlisted for service in WWI and 65% of those who "embarked" were killed or injured. This would indicate a killed or injured rate of around 25% for this group. The injury figure is interesting because, presumably, a number of the injured later died from their war wounds (it has been estimatesd as around 60,000)...and certainly the "cost" to the nation in terms of the personal trauma, and shell-shock etc, was probably as significant as the direct deaths on the battlefields. Morris also makes the point that the majority of deaths in war were often caused by disease (dysentry, cholera, plague, etc.) and I wonder how these are accounted for. Are they regarded as "violent deaths? Basically, his numbers look very "approximate" to me. They are both difficult to define and difficult to measure. However, one curious thing is, that even with the deaths of, say, 75-85 million people in WWII, ..this only represented about 3% of the world population at that time. Though Belarus lost about 25% and USSR lost about 12%. The UK only lost about 0.8% and USA only 0.3%....Australia 0.4%. And, of course, Morris takes the long term average say of somebody born in 1900 and having a life expectancy (at that time) of say 60 years....and calculates their chances of a violent death over that period. So the world's population approximately doubled over that time from 1.6 Billion to 3 Billion (despite two world wars) ...and Morris, of course is looking at the chance of a violent death with this vastly increased population. Anyway, despite dodgy data he is talking about order of magnitude differences so probably the basic thesis is reasonable.
He manages to encapsulate a lot of really interesting facts, including such things as the development of the first guns and their rapid spread throughout the world.The fact that the world was very close to nuclear annihilation in 1983 when a Soviet Deputy Chief for combat algorithms named Stanislav Petrov took the decision that their early warning system (showing a missile launch by the US and recommending that they launch a counter attack) was a false alarm. They guy basically saved us all. But it highlights the extreme danger that we all live under from the nuclear weapons available and the fallible humans with their fingers on the trigger. One other interesting section was about the decline of the UK as a "Global cop" and its replacement by the USA.
He also suggests that all areas of the world went through roughly similar stages of development with warfare:
1. Cultivation
2. Domestication
3. Fortification
4. Cities-states-bronze
5. Discipline (phalanxs etc.)
6. Chariots
7. Empires and massive numbers (Though the americas (pre-Columbus) hadn't reached stages 5-7).
He is a bit repetitive ...his diagram of death rates over time is repeated at least three times. And I found myself scratching my head and wondering whether he was putting forward a recommendation for wars. Though, I guess, what he would say he is doing is taking a completely objective view of wars and concluding that there have been "productive" wars that have led to long term peace and prosperity...and there have been unproductive wars that have led to the opposite effects. He also ranges into a bit of speculative forecasting about what might happen in the future in terms of conflicts and the role of the USA. I guess, this is to be expected but it's no longer history.....it's prophecy!
Quite a thought provoking book with a lot of interesting information ...and close to 100 pages, of notes, further reading and bibliography. Happy to give it 4.5 stars. ( )

Outstanding and thought provoking ( )

Krieg ist gut! Zumindest wenn man auf die Anzahl der gewaltsamen Tode schaut. Das ist die Conclusio von Ian Morris in diesem Buch. Zwar sorgen Kriege für kurzzeitig höhere Raten, aber danach sinken sie dauerhaft ab. Und das mit jedem Krieg.

Das mag nicht intuitiv sein, manche mögen sich diesem Argument aus Verblendung ganz versperren, aber die würden das Buch ja eh nicht angreifen, könnte es doch ihr Weltbild zerstören. Da bleiben sie lieber in ihrer Blase.

Alle anderen bekommen ein gut lesbares Buch mit spannenden Aussagen und Futter zum Nachdenken.

Da es doch ein Wälzer ist und man nicht immer durchgezogen wird, "nur" 4/5. ( )