Azar Gat, War in Human Civilization, Oxford University Press, 2006
ISBN-13: 978-0199262137
The book is long (800+ pages) and contains a lot of extremely interesting material, primarily about ancient warfare. I would recommend it as a useful substitute to J. Keegan book (John Keegan, “A History of Warfare”), which in a fashion, typical of English social sciences, mixes brilliant writing with superficial scholarship as predictably as English lunches wash down awful food with excellent tea.
In particular, he puts forward an amazing idea that war as a human institution may be at its historic end. In the technological society where competition for resources becomes obsolete, it does not serve any useful function, remaining simply a blood sport for channeling innate male aggression. This idea appeals to me very much and I plan to elaborate on it more in the future.
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Azar Gat, War in Human Civilization, Oxford University Press, 2006
The book is long (800+ pages) and contains a lot of extremely interesting material, primarily about ancient warfare. I would recommend it as a useful substitute to J. Keegan book (John Keegan, “A History of Warfare”), which in a fashion, typical of English social sciences, mixes brilliant writing with superficial scholarship as predictably as English lunches wash down awful food with excellent tea.
In particular, he puts forward an amazing idea that war as a human institution may be at its historic end. In the technological society where competition for resources becomes obsolete, it does not serve any useful function, remaining simply a blood sport for channeling innate male aggression. This idea appeals to me very much and I plan to elaborate on it more in the future.
And what American political scientist can put forth marvelous sentences such as that: “Rather than the cost of war becoming prohibitive (it changed little, relative to population and wealth), it was mainly the benefits of peace that increased dramatically once the Malthusian trap was broken, tilting the overall balance between war and peace for economically ever-growing, market-oriented, increasingly interdependent, industrializing and industrial societies, regardless of the regime, for which wealth acquisition ceased to be a zero-sum game.” All right.
However, Azar Gat’s book is marred by the imposition of a number of neocon clichés, of which, judging by his latest piece in “Foreign Affairs” (to be reviewed), he became now a full-fledged convert. In particular, while New Age thinkers regard nature as a bountiful fairy, the neocons tend to describe nature and biological instincts as a perpetual menace more in tune with De Sad than Darwin. For conservative thinkers at least since late XIX century (after Haeckel) identification of human warfare with animal predation became standard.
Because this idea has become stale, Azar Gat tries to shift origins of war to animal cannibalism. The latter, being a well-documented phenomenon, is also very peculiar. If we name animals, for which cannibalism is typical, as well as animals which engage in other instances of reported non-feeding lethal aggression—grizzlies, lemurs, great apes, tigers and dolphins—this list would roll into the compendium of endangered species. Observing the list of species with marked lethal aggression within one’s own kind, one easily concludes that it is less helpful for survival than fast breeding of rabbits. Cannibalism, contrary to the author’s premise, can hardly be considered a biologically valuable habit.
For author’s notice, not every genetically predetermined trait, for instance, our predisposition to back pain or weak hips in purebred dogs is useful adaptation. Some species incur random genetic penalties and cannibalism of great apes may just be one. Mass suicides are also well-observed animal behaviors, especially among marine mammals, proverbial lemmings and human cultists but nobody views them as beneficial for the species at large.
In general, Gat tends to look for genetic explanations of any persistent social behavior. Well, wearing bikini and thongs on a beach can attract a mate—usually a wrong kind—but skimpy beach outfits are not evolutionary adaptations. Neither is monarchy, which has been a predominant form of social organization throughout recorded history, yet, suddenly in the last 150 years it ceased to be such.
Some anthropological studies of the primitive tribes, observing extremely high incidence of violent behavior: the only comparable military conflict in modern history is USSR losses in 1942, the year of Stalingrad, are rightfully agnostic as to whether these tribes fairly represent early human societies or they are “history’s D-students.” As well as being good proxies for pre-historic behaviors, modern “primitive” tribes could have remained locked in their own past precisely because they did not develop proper techniques of conflict mitigation. And, yet, his free-wheeling identification of “tribal warfare” with “war” is misleading. Gat does not seem to distinguish war from other acts of deadly violence (crime, urban riots, mass terror and genocide, reprisals, etc.). [1] While all these behaviors can take place during wars, sometimes they do not, and they have social dynamics of their own.
Poor differentiation of war from other social phenomena leads to another weakness of Gat’s treatment. Namely, he proposes that war preceded formation of states. While one can argue this case ad nauseam thus falling into chicken-egg problem, it is hard to agree with Gat that war as a phenomenon is much older than the state itself.
Tribal subsistence societies did not possess a sense of territory, which was amply demonstrated by early pilgrim-Indian relations, and they had little economic use for slaves because they were, well, subsistence. Because of persistent threat of inbreeding, primitive tribes organize raids to kidnap women and girls but progeny of the captives rarely forms a separate slave class, which can be exploited economically, before the advent of quasi-state organization.
Obviously, all human behavior uses previous biological and historical template, war is no exclusion. However, “warfare” of primitive tribes is not a war. It has few goals, besides procuring food and mates, and it cannot be distinguished from random acts of hunting and rape by the members of the tribe. It does not involve political control over certain territory, since there is none; no discernible beginning, which marks departure from the acknowledged state of “peace” and no end signifying its reestablishment.
Before I read his opinion piece in “Foreign Affairs,” I thought that this questionable material was some neocon garbage sprinkled over otherwise fascinating narrative to insure its English-language publication. I was wrong but the book is worth reading anyway.
[1] For definitions of war see the book by Neff, S. C., War and the Law of Nations: A General History, reviewed by me in Aug. 2007
Mean-variance estimates Azar Gat uses to prove that self-sacrifice sometimes may be biologically justifiable for the community as a whole is based on the so-called theory of group adaptation.
This theory of group adaptation, which he uses to is a complete bunkum unsupported by empirical evidence. There is no proof that animals including us behave as long term mean-variance optimizers. The ability of some individuals to sacrifice their own life has to be a result of game-theoretic equilibrium in the system roughly idealized as the community of "wolves" and "sheep" (or "Vikings" and "Slavs", or "Mongols" and "Han.") Namely, some individuals love the fight so much, they either win or die. Other individuals always flee. It is possible to prove using argument similar to the prisoner's dilemma, that the community consisting of only one type of these individuals is usually unstable under any reasonable probability/utility distribution for sanctions/rewards
(This reasoning has been borrowed from Dawkins, "The selfish gene").
There is a further step ought to be taken. Because predators are carnivores, while the prey is herbivorous, due to the primacy of
the photosynthesis in a food chain,
a given territory can sustain much fewer predators than prey. Of course, an individual animal cannot adapt its sexual behavior. But through generations, selection will prefer predators with fewer offspring and less interest in polygamy. Vikings preferred to sow their wild oats outside of their community thus infusing victimized societies with their aggressive genetic makeup.
Application to human society makes this argument even more stark.At any given level of technology, agriculture can benefit more from extra labor effort than animal husbandry and children/female participation is much more useful there (in management parlance, agriculture is "scalable"). Hence, the equilibrium between predators and prey in human society heavily favors prey in terms of overall numbers.
Another main weakness of the A. Gat's treatment is his confusion related to feudalism and class society, in general. This is quite excusable for an American or an Israeli who did not have any history to fall back on. But for the sake of accurate research one must dwell on it a little bit longer.
Gat equates feudalism with the rule of a mounted aristocracy, which received land for service.
Thus, he finds "feudalism" in Zhou China (??-?? Centuries B.C.E.) and Macedonian Greece.
Of course, overlordship by mounted, land-tenanted aristocracy is a necessary characteristic of feudalism but it is far from sufficient. In fact, all pre-industrial states were built on two main templates. One, most frequent and most prosperous, was ruled by economic elite, which hired dregs of society to perform military and police functions for monetary reward (Greek city-states, Roman and Chinese Empires, etc.). Another was a government of and by the mounted band, which extorted its livelihood directly from producers (Medieval Europe, Japanese Shogunates but also Huns, Mongols, etc. etc.) Sometimes it was "feudal" but not always.
The main difference between general second model, which may, or may not have included Zhou China-- there is not enough evidence-- and the feudalism is the class structure based on vassilage. The society was governed a militaristic order, in which the king was not a deity, but the primus intera pares with respect to the upper strata of nobility. Unlike Hellenistic and Middle Eastern "companions" and "big men", which were not related to the king by reciprocal obligations and in the view of the law were ordinary subjects. They served entirely at king's pleasure and could be demoted at his slightest whim and destroyed with their families.
On the contrary, feudal monarchs had a miriad of obligations with respect to the nobility and sometimes could be vassals and tenants of their subjects in certain feudal jurisdictions. In their turn mounted aristocrats, which we shall call below by Latin word "nobility" as to distinguish it from Greek-nicknamed "aristocracy" for Hellenistic and Asiatic nobles, were related by reciprocal obligations to their serfs and tenants. Understandably, the asymmetry of forces between the nobility and serfs created multiple instances of arbitrary tyranny but up to XVth century, force asymmetry favored nobility and their abuses as a group vs. royal power.
To understand this difference in palpable terms I point on the fate of "big families" in the Hellenistic world after the fall of the founding head of the family from power. Sextus Pompei seemed to be a quite singular example. On the contrary, feudal monarchs sometimes went out of the way to demonstrate that the attainder concerned only the person in question rather than the entire noble family.
Loius XIV's armies were commanded by Prince Conde and Count Turenne, both prominent seditionists, and he never seemed to be bothered by the possibility of them threatening his absolute power. Sedition, at the time could only mean support of one pretender of royal lineage against the other and never the occupation of the throne by a successful general.
Moreover, the participation of the Great Conde in Fronde did not impugn the status of Condes as one of the most prominent lords of the realm behind only the royal princes. "The Sun King" had nothing to fear from their position as army commanders. A single unsuccessful example of Wallenstein, himself a great lord, to become a sovereign in his own right based on his military prowess, ringed through Europe for two centuries. He was dispatched by his staff officers faster than Imperial Jesuit spies could ever get to him.
In Nicolas' Russia, brothers? Muraviev were hanged for their role in Decembrist uprising, which became the only political execution in Russia between 1775 and 1881, while another Muraviev graduated from one important court and administrative position into another. Wiseacres of the time even called the serving Count Muraviev the Hangman as to ostensibly distinguish him from Muravievs, "the hanged." If the estates were confiscated from the nobles deemed particularly unworthy, such as Marquis De Sade, they reverted to the family, not to the king or the state. Even the history of the De Sades' title is prominent in this respect. Neither father, nor the son, despite their brushes with the law, were ever reminded that technically their mark was never confirmed by the royal patent. It was generally decided upon that the ancient families of France such as Counts de Sade could name themselves Marquis by simply acquiring title to several counties, without any official proclamation. Yet, their heirs themselves reverted to Counts out of personal modesty. None of this and many other singularities involving serfs, commoners and Jews had any parallel outside of Europe and, may be Japan.
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