Pater Familias » History

A CHART OF ATROCITIES.

Philip — Sat, 19 May 2012 00:22:54 +0000

A CHART OF ATROCITIES. In connection with my posts on Steven Pinker’s theory that human violence has declined over time, Dick Weisfelder sent me a hard copy of a graphical display of the 100 greatest atrocities in history. This link is from the New York Times, but the Times gives credit to Matthew White’s THE GREAT BIG BOOK OF HORRIBLE THINGS. World War II still accounts for the most deaths (66 million). The Atlantic slave trade is 10th with 16 million deaths and the Mideast slave trade is 8th with 18.5 million deaths. Despite Mary Beard’s suggestion that gladiatorial contests were rigged, deaths of gladiators rank 26th with 3.5 million deaths, and these deaths occurred one at a time. There are surprises because we don’t know about a lot of horrors. The Bengali genocide ranked 5th in deaths per year with 1.5 million deaths in the single year of 1971. In 1971! I remember no mention of it in the news. Six of the ten events with the largest percentage of the world population that was killed took place in China. I know nothing about them. It’s a fascinating and appalling timeline.

THE LACK OF PRIMOGENITURE AND THE FALL OF ROME.

Philip — Tue, 15 May 2012 00:59:41 +0000

THE LACK OF PRIMOGENITURE AND THE FALL OF ROME. In Mary Beard’s review in the London Review of Books (April 26) of CALIGULA: A BIOGRAPHY by Aloys Winterling, she says that Augustus failed to create a reliable system of monarchical succession, in part because Rome did not have a system of inheritance such as primogeniture. I posted here about Adrian Goldsworthy’s theory that Rome fell because emperors were preoccupied with attempts on their lives; Goldsworthy says that starting from 180 A.D. every adult emperor faced at least one attempt to depose him. Mary Beard says that there are claims that every member of the first dynasty of Roman emperors was murdered. I can explain the quiet period in the middle as being primarily the period when each emperor adopted as a son his chosen successor. When Marcus Aurelius, the last of the Five Good Emperors, died in 180 A.D. he returned to the hereditary principle of naming his genetic son as his successor, and the bloody battles for succession began again.

Mary Beard also ventures an explanation for why the Roman historians portray emperors as monsters. If an emperor has been killed in a coup, men who were courtiers in the old regime may curry favor with the successor by speaking ill of the previous emperor. And those contemporary histories are the basis for modern histories.

IS HEREDITARY GOVERNMENT GOOD?

Philip — Mon, 14 May 2012 00:43:53 +0000

IS HEREDITARY GOVERNMENT GOOD? In his review in the Wall Street Journal (May 11) of THE CREATION OF INEQUALITY by Kent Flannery and Joyce Marcus, Felipe Fernandez-Armesto says that his students in global history at Notre Dame have trouble understanding “societies that esteem birth more highly than wealth and rate breeding above achievement.” He begins the review by telling a story about the first Japanese ambassador to the United States in 1860 who was baffled that George Washington’s descendants were not “revered above all other families.” I have the same American preconception as his students. Choosing leaders by birth seems absurd to me. I am grateful for the society that produced Abraham Lincoln and Harry Truman. I think of Henry III and Henry VI in English history as examples of the misfortunes a hereditary system can produce. Fernandez-Armesto praises heredity as rational and scientific. He doesn’t mention ancient Rome, but although Rome had elections and checks and balances, the leadership for hundreds of years came from the same aristocratic families. While I am thinking better of the Dark Ages, I will try to give some thought to the advantages of heredity.

ARGUING THAT THE DARK AGES WEREN’T SO DARK.

Philip — Sun, 13 May 2012 01:53:06 +0000

ARGUING THAT THE DARK AGES WEREN’T SO DARK. Nick, knowing that I am interested in the transition between the Roman Empire and the Middle Ages, gave me last Christmas BARBARIANS TO ANGELS: The Dark Ages Reconsidered by Peter S. Wells. It seems to me that the chief reason why the Dark Ages are considered dark is that there was not much literacy. The chief texts for the period relate to the church so that there is not much written information about how people lived. Wells is an archaeologist, and he argues that there is an increasing amount of archaeological information which suggests that people in the Dark Ages lived better than is usually portrayed. Measurements on skeletal remains are evidence that people in this period lived well. For example, measurements in southwestern Germany and in Denmark show average heights of 5 feet eight inches or 5 feet nine inches for men and five feet four inches for women. Wells notes that these average heights were not reached again until the twentieth century. Wells stresses the importance of technological improvements during this period and by this he means the moldboard plow: “Of fundamental importance was the development of new technology of agriculture—the moldboard plow—which vastly increased the efficiency of food production beyond anything in Roman times.”

How you evaluate the Dark Ages may depend on the weight you give the material standard of living of the ordinary man against things like literacy.

MY OPINIONS ON PINKER’S HISTORY OF VIOLENCE (COMMENT).

Philip — Sun, 06 May 2012 21:13:44 +0000

MY OPINIONS ON PINKER’S HISTORY OF VIOLENCE (COMMENT). I have revisited Pinker’s arguments on violence because I have been thinking about it a good bit. My thoughts at this point (before reading the book): First, the most important thing about the book is its originality. Pinker asks a very important question in a way that has not been asked before. Next, I agree with Dick’s rejection of Pinker’s argument that the last hundred years reflect a decline in violence. It is not legitimate to exclude outliers by saying that “except for…..” The same argument could be used to exclude major tragedies in other centuries. Then, Pinker’s summary of the archaeological evidence that savages weren’t noble and that human nature was violent from the beginning is persuasive to me. Finally, I find comfort in Pinker’s hopeful analysis of the restraints on violence that have developed—what erik calls argumentation.

EXPLAINING DECLINES IN VIOLENCE (COMMENT).

Philip — Sat, 05 May 2012 21:11:55 +0000

EXPLAINING DECLINES IN VIOLENCE (COMMENT). When I first posted three months ago on Pinker’s contention that human violence has declined, “erik” commented that rather than changes in human nature, “The most likely explanation would be that modern culture gives us another way to resolve our difficulties namely, argumentation.” In this interview, Pinker advances some explanations for the decline in violence that he thinks has occurred. He first mentions the outsourcing of revenge to government—”a more or less disinterested third party”. Second, he mentions the growth of commerce—”When it’s cheaper to buy something than to steal it….” Pinker also gives weight to Norbert Elias’ theory that people became more civilized—knights could succeed at court by being courtiers rather than fighters. Pinker says that his best guess to explain the “humanitarian revolution” of the 17th and 18th centuries is increased literacy. He gives the example of slavery: “…If you start to argue with someone, if someone says, ‘Hey, slavery really can’t be defended,’ and you try to defend it, you’re eventually going to lose the argument, just the way you’d lose a fallacious mathematical argument.” “Argumentation” is not a bad one-word summary of Pinker’s explanations.

RANKING THE VIOLENT EVENTS OF HISTORY (COMMENT).

Philip — Fri, 04 May 2012 21:26:31 +0000

RANKING THE VIOLENT EVENTS OF HISTORY (COMMENT). I posted here about Steven Pinker’s new book arguing that in the course of human history violence has declined. In Dick Weisfelder’s comment on that post, he said: “…the argument also appears to rest primarily on the exponential growth of global population that causes the per capita incidence to decline.” Pinker does rely on a table showing the scale of various historical atrocities after adjustment for the the size of the population. Here is a version of the graph that Pinker used. In the ranks of atrocities, Genghis Khan is a clear winner, with the Mideast Slave trade coming in second. The Second World War comes in 11th on the list, with Mao 15th, Stalin 17th and the First World War 18th. Notice that the time scale for the different atrocities is not adjusted for; the deaths accounted for by the Mideast Slave trade cover 13 centuries and the deaths for the Atlantic Slave trade cover 5 centuries while the First World War lasted five years. Dick’s summary: “in absolute terms the 20th century was by far the most violent in human history fueled by the rapid escalation of the technologies of violence and the decline of the distinction between combatants and civilians.”

HAVING A BEER WITH STONE-AGE MAN.

Philip — Thu, 03 May 2012 22:29:44 +0000

HAVING A BEER WITH STONE-AGE MAN. A remarkable sentence in Terborgh’s article describes an extraordinary experience: “One starry evening, after we both had a few beers, an Amazonian acquaintance of mine loosened up and recounted to me the life he … Continue reading →

THE VIOLENT LIFE OF EARLY MAN?—EVIDENCE FROM TODAY.

Philip — Wed, 02 May 2012 22:22:08 +0000

THE VIOLENT LIFE OF EARLY MAN?—EVIDENCE FROM TODAY. John Terborgh had a review in the New York Review of Books (April 5) of Scott Wallace’s THE UNCONQUERED: IN SEARCH OF THE AMAZON’S LAST UNCONTACTED TRIBES. Terborgh has been conducting research in the Amazon in Peru since 1973. It is thought that there are still about 15 uncontacted groups in Peru—groups that have no regular contact with the modern world. They have few manufactured tools, and most speak languages that no outsider knows. An acquaintance told Terborgh about his life before he had contact with the outside world. His group took elaborate precautions—moving frequently, destroying evidence of campsites, erasing their footprints—to leave no trace behind them. The reason was that: “Anyone they might chance to meet who wasn’t one of their little group was assumed to be a mortal enemy.”

This fear of strangers might be taken as supporting Pinker’s thesis about the great violence of early humans—evidence that early humans were violent out of fear.

However, there is an exception that casts doubt on Pinker’s argument that people have become less violent. Terborgh says that these groups live in fear of modern white men, based on atrocities committed about a hundred years ago during the rubber boom.

GLADIATORS AND PROFESSIONAL WRESTLING.

Philip — Wed, 02 May 2012 00:51:51 +0000

GLADIATORS AND PROFESSIONAL WRESTLING. My first post on Steven Pinker’s book asked: “Are people less violent?” It grew out of comments by Dick Weisfelder and Nick that, as I summarized, “people today are more concerned about injuries in sporting events than in the days of gladiatorial combats and bare knuckle fighting.” However, the National Hockey League playoffs have shown that there are a lot of people who value the danger and physical courage that are displayed in hockey violence.

And maybe the gladiatorial battles were not that dangerous. In this interview in the Guardian, the classicist Mary Beard says: “We’re more brutal than [the Romans] were in many respects. Gladiatorial combat in the Colosseum was more like modern wrestling than boxing – all show and not much pain.” I have read arguments that the death toll in gladiatorial combats has been exaggerated because it would have been uneconomic to lose a high percentage of highly-trained gladiators, but I had thought that this would result in more thumbs up than thumbs down votes. It had not occurred to me that gladiatorial contests could have been rigged.

1850—AVERTING WAR IN CALIFORNIA.

Philip — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 21:22:18 +0000

1850—AVERTING WAR IN CALIFORNIA. I posted here about revisionist views of the Civil War, and whether the most important issue was the preservation of the Union or the future of slavery. I have come to realize—long after my high school history classes—that had the Union not been preserved, the two countries would likely have fought a series of land wars, with slavery serving as a flashpoint. David S. Reynolds had a review in the Wall Street Journal (April 22) of AMERICA’S GREAT DEBATE by Fergus M. Bordewich which makes my image of the land wars much more vivid. Bordewich writes about the Compromise of 1850, which delayed the Civil War by 10 years. What struck me was this passage from Reynolds: “The source of the conflict was the question of what to do with the vast expanse of territory that the U.S. had won in its war against Mexico, a swath of land stretching from Texas to current-day Utah and west to the Pacific. For Southern extremists, this territory raised the bright possibility of a powerful western slave empire….” Before Henry Clay and Stephen A. Douglas fashioned the compromise, there were Southern states preparing to send troops to Texas. My image of the land wars that were averted now includes battle after battle on the Western frontier. If this alternative history was mentioned in my history textbooks, I missed it.

AMERICA’S ROLE IN UNIFYING EUROPE.

Philip — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 02:10:16 +0000

AMERICA’S ROLE IN UNIFYING EUROPE. Tony Barber had an article in the Financial Times (April 24) about what he views as a current crisis of legitimacy in the European political system. American journalists seem to me to mention only infrequently that one of the unifying forces for the European Union has been the feeling that being European is a way of rejecting a common adversary. Barber stated this clearly: “The myth of the dumb and dangerous Other across the ocean served a transparent purpose in the elite European project of building a common supranational identity.”