The invasion of Ukraine may give us some insight into the causes of war, with the help of experts.
I recently shared Jeremy Black’s view of why wars happen.[1] High on his list are two explanations: humans are inherently warlike and we idolize war heroes. But after I wrote about Black, I was urged (by Mark Brady) to read a more classic treatment by Geoffrey Blainey, a prominent Australian historian. He wrote The Causes of War in 1973 and updated it in 1988.[2]
Blainey was not interested in fundamental psychological causes but, rather, in finding specific patterns of how wars get started and how they stop. His book, he said, was based on a study of all international wars since 1700.
Blainey’s most important claim is that war starts when “two nations disagree on their relative strength.”[3] The leaders of each nation weigh their chances of winning or obtaining a goal (which might be maintaining independence). The decision to go to war is based on at least seven factors, he says. Continue reading “Why Do We Have Wars? Part II”
Last year, during the height of agitation over whether or not to tear down statues, the Emancipation Memorial in Washington, D.C.’s Lincoln Park came under scrutiny. The statue, dedicated in 1876, shows Abraham Lincoln freeing a slave who is crouched below him.
The statue’s subordination of the slave to a white man has spurred calls for its removal. And those calls led to the discovery of a previously unknown letter from famed orator Frederick Douglass.
Some research projects just don’t pan out. I’m going to tell you about one of mine.
Several years ago, for a course on the High Middle Ages, I decided to study primogeniture—the custom of handing property and titles down to the elder son (if there is a son). Primogeniture expanded across Europe in the Middle Ages. In many cases it replaced partible inheritance, in which property was divided among offspring, with daughters sometimes included.
Here are two more stories about history I found in recent articles:. One is about the Chinese family, one about the fall of Rome.
The End of the Chinese Extended Family
Nick Eberstadt argues in Foreign Affairs that the past kinship patterns of Chinese will be forced to change. Surprisingly, they haven’t yet.
Reliance on an extended family has been a fixture of Chinese history over 2500 years, he says, and the change will be “absolutely momentous.” In spite of the well-known one-child policy (which ended in 2015), he doubts that the Chinese Communist Party realizes how severe the impact will be on economic growth. Eberstadt is a respected writer about population and demographics who works for the American Enterprise Institute.
Recently, I have been unable to do the kind of research I need in order to prepare features for this blog. But I do have the time and inclination to share with you some of the interesting stories about history that I see around me. Here are two, one a biblical controversy and one about a smallpox discovery.
A Precursor to the Book of Deuteronomy?
The New York Times has written a fascinating story about a discovery even more exciting than the Dead Sea scrolls found in 1947—unless this discovery is a fake! The story goes back to 1883, when a dealer in antiquities claimed to have found fragments of the original book of Deuteronomy—far older than the Dead Sea scrolls, which go back to the third century BC. Continue reading “A Biblical Mystery . . . A Slave’s Early Prevention of Smallpox . . .”
