9. A New History
or, If You Want to Know the Score … Do the Numbers
“As a college freshman, I had a professor (the late physicist Richard Feynman) who drummed into me the precept that if one had an explanation that no facts could prove wrong, then one did not have a triumph, but a tautology. For a theory to be right, it must be able to withstand being confronted with facts that could decide whether the theory is right or wrong. I hold to a certain satisfaction that the explanation offered in this book can be tested, and therefore could possibly be right.”
– Jack Goldstone, in the Preface to Revolution and Rebellion in the Early Modern World
In the February 2010 issue of the science journal Nature there appeared a letter that had been written by a researcher and author named Peter Turchin. Under the headline “Political instability may be a contributor in the coming decade” it stated the following:
“Quantitative historical analysis reveals that complex human societies are affected by recurrent – and predictable – waves of political instability … In the United States, we have stagnating or declining real wages, a growing gap between rich and poor, overproduction of young graduates with advanced degrees, and exploding public debt. These seemingly disparate social indicators are actually related to each other dynamically. They all experienced turning points during the 1970s. Historically, such developments have served as leading indicators of looming political instability.
“Very long ‘secular cycles’ interact with shorter-term processes … these cycles look set to peak in the years around 2020.”
The events that actually came to pass commenced with the election of wealthy television showman Donald Trump as U.S. President in 2016 (a result unprecedented for a candidate with no experience in public office or military command), which was soon followed by numerous (but not substantially supported) charges of “Russian interference” that supposedly decided the election, and even went so far as to accuse Trump of being a “Russian agent”; these efforts to discredit his Presidency culminated in his impeachment in 2019, which, however, failed to convict. Then, after Joe Biden defeated Trump in the election of 2020, the latter claimed the result had been “stolen” by widespread fraud (again without substantial evidence), leading to a number of “alternate electors” being advanced to overturn the result, and rioters running rampant through the Capitol building on January 6 – which resulted in a second impeachment of Trump, that again failed to convict him.
These unparalleled instances of instability in the electoral process seemed, at first, to be followed by a rematch of Trump versus Biden in 2024, which opened with a series of efforts to prosecute Trump, accompanied by two attempts to assassinate him(!); but in the end, it was Biden who was eliminated from the race, after exhibiting signs of mental incompetence(!) during a public debate (though he was nevertheless judged “competent” enough to continue in the office of the Presidency, it would appear). And so Vice-President Kamala Harris was summarily installed (with scarcely even perfunctory process) as the candidate of the Democratic Party to oppose Trump, against a background of serious questions regarding the sitting administration’s handling of domestic price inflation, and its policies regarding Russia, China, and Israel – positions which Harris nevertheless continued to support (even seeking – and receiving – the endorsement of leading neoconservative Dick Cheney). In the election that followed she was defeated, with Trump winning both the electoral college and popular vote, and the Republicans gaining control of the Senate, while retaining control of the House of Representatives.
After his election, Donald Trump immediately pursued an exceptional expansion of presidential power, claiming the existence of “emergencies” to justify the haphazard imposition of drastic increases in tariffs, to deport aliens without due process, to capriciously send the National Guard into cities at his whim, to impose large fines on universities based on sham charges of “anti-semitism”, and to create a “Department of Government Efficiency” under the authority of a private individual with billions in government contracts – in probable violation of the appointments clause of the U.S. Constitution. He also showed no hesitation to indulge in schemes of personal enrichment, particularly through exploitation of “cryptocurrencies” associated with his public office.
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In the late 1970s a graduate student named Jack Goldstone became interested in the question of why political revolutions occur; he had originally studied physics, but later switched to social sciences, and wanted to find out if mathematical models could help explain such events. He noticed that past instances of serious unrest had been clustered in time around the world, as he later related in his article “Demographic Structural Theory: 25 Years On”, published in the journal Cliometrics in 2017:
“There had been a series of revolutions and rebellions across Europe, the Ottoman Empire, and China in the mid-17th century, made famous by Geoffrey Parker and Leslie Smith (1978) as “The General Crisis of the Seventeenth Century." Then another series of revolutions arose in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, made famous by R.R. Palmer (1964) as “The Age of Democratic Revolutions” and by Eric Hobsbawm (1962) as “The Age of Revolution.” So it seemed that some broadly synchronous force was at work. But what hidden force could be strong enough to simultaneously drive state crises, elite divisions, and multiple kinds of popular grievances across many different countries and regions at certain times but not others?”
It was a perplexing question, but by pure chance Goldstone happened to become a teaching assistant in a class on demography, which dealt with the effects of the “baby boom” – the elevated birth rate in the U.S. during 1946-64. It provoked a crucial development in his thinking:
“I was stunned to discover two things. First, how pervasive the effects of demographic changes could be. The “baby boom” affected everything in America – the demand for housing, the demand for education, the growth of cities and suburbs, the age structure (creating a surge of youth in the 1960s and 1970s), and the balance of government spending versus revenues. Second, I found that the baby boom in America had created, on a smaller scale, the exact same trends that I had identified as leading to revolutions in pre-industrial societies: a surge of youth open to new ideologies and widely mobilized for protest, a suddenly larger population raising the costs of everything, pressures on the labor market from a sudden increase in workers looking for jobs, and a major increase in higher education enrollments.”
But was there substantial evidence of demographic changes that could have seriously affected other societies, in earlier times? Again, fortune favored his line of inquiry:
“In another stroke of great good luck, the study of historical demography was just starting to bloom with new data. The Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure, under the leadership of Sir Tony Wrigley, Roger Schofield, and Peter Laslett, had been gathering and publishing data drawn from a national sample of parish registers, and was just about to publish their monumental The Population History of England 1541–1871 (1981). In France, Louis Henry had also developed a school of historical demography based on local sources, building on the Annales tradition, which had just led to Jacques Dupaquier’s path-breaking thesis La Population rurale du Bassin parisien a l’epoque de Louis XIV (1979a) and the first general works on France’s population in the two centuries before the French Revolution (Dupâquier 1979b). In part due to the inspiration of the Cambridge Group and Louis Henry, and in part drawing on their own academic traditions, authors working on Latin America (Sanchez-Albornoz 1974), Germany (Lee 1977), Japan (Taeuber 1948), and the Ottoman Empire (Barkan 1970) had all recently produced data on population history for their regions. For China, William Skinner, Ted Telford, William Lavely, James Lee, and Wang Feng were working on their path-breaking revisions to Chinese population history and starting to publish (e.g. Skinner 1977; Lee 1982).”
Analyzing the newly available information, he made a pivotal discovery:
“As I gathered up the data, a clear pattern emerged. Before every major revolution or rebellion between 1500 and 1900, I found that indeed, population had grown substantially in the prior half century. This was true for the European countries involved in the “General Crisis of the 17th Century” (Portugal, Spain, England, Italy, France), the Ottoman Empire during the Celali Rebellions, and China prior to the collapse of the Ming Dynasty. It was also true for the Atlantic Revolutions of the late 18th century (America, France, the Netherlands), the European revolutions of the 19th century (in 1830 and 1848), the Ottoman Empire in the 1830s and 1840s, and prior to the Taiping Rebellion in China. Even more important, during the periods in which revolutions and major rebellions were absent in Europe, the Ottoman Empire and China, roughly from 1450 to 1550 and from 1660 to 1760, population growth was almost nil.”
A number of historians had earlier observed the effects of demography on the particular revolutions they studied, but none had seen the possibility of its profound influence on political and social unrest across history and around the entire world. So Goldstone attempted to take his inquiry further:
“With the data strongly supporting my theory, I wrote up a lengthy, detailed dissertation proposal to research the relationship between population growth and revolutions. It was flatly rejected.”
The problem was that the field of study of revolutions was already dominated by two opposing schools of thought, neo-Marxist versus a political culture approach, which were engaged in heated debate. There appeared to be no room for a radically different methodology proposed by a graduate student new to the study of history, with even less experience in demography.
However, Goldstone was convinced of the importance of his ideas, and decided to persevere. He made a new, scaled back proposal to a more sympathetic dissertation committee:
“Instead of analyzing population and revolution across history, I proposed to focus on one particular case – the English Revolution of 1640 – and explicate in detail every step of the causal argument for that case. I felt that for England, thanks to the Cambridge Group, I was on solid ground with data for population and wages. There was also solid data on elite mobility and elite relationships and on royal finances for the century before and after the Revolution.”
This new proposal was accepted, and he was off and running on his thesis.
“Most scholars relied on religion, or constitutionalism, or battles between the King and Parliament over finances, to explain the revolution. Yet these explanations failed to make sense of several striking features of the Puritan Revolution. First, as with many revolutions, the divisions between the supporters of the King and Parliament did not follow any simple lines of class, or region, or religion. Instead, partisans on both sides came from the same regions, the same economic and legal classes, and on many occasions even the same family! This was spurred by competition for preference that penetrated through every level of the elites … The traditional Parliamentary and land taxes failed badly to keep up with inflation, forcing the King to add new expedients and to try to squeeze more revenue out of elites by pushing or going around Parliament. During the sixteenth century, much inflation was arguably due to debasing the currency; but prices kept rising and inflation accelerated in the seventeenth century after the silver content of the pound was stabilized. It was difficult to explain this without referencing the pressure of population growth on England’s agrarian economy.
“In my doctoral thesis, I was able to use econometrics to demonstrate the close relationships among population growth, rising prices, urbanization, falling real wages, rising land rents, declining real royal revenues, and elite social mobility. Bringing together numerical proxies for state fiscal distress, elite competition, and mass mobilization potential (combining real wages, urbanization, and youth bulge) into a function I labeled the “Political Stress Indicator” (PSI) I was able to show that PSI was low and stable prior to the 17th century, rose sharply to a peak in 1640–1660, then declined, giving an excellent account for the timing and magnitude of the English Revolution.”
The result gained Goldstone his PhD. However, an attempt to publish an account of his dissertation in the journal Theory and Society was at first rejected; but again he persisted, refining his arguments, and the article was finally published two years later in 1983. He continued to develop his ideas in the 1980s, taking advantage of new research on the Ottoman and Chinese Empires to extend to them his work on the English Revolution, resulting in an article submitted to the journal Comparative Studies in Society and History, which, following the now familiar pattern, was once again immediately rejected, but eventually published two years later, in 1988, after considerable persistence by its author. Finally, he assembled everything he had developed in his Demographic Structural Theory of state collapse and revolutions – “demographic” in its underlying driver of population growth, and “structural” in the effect of such growth on social structures and institutions – and put it into a new book:
“By 1988 I had completed my manuscript for Revolution and Rebellion in the Early Modern World, which thoroughly explained the structural demographic theory of social order and instability, and which showed that the PSI function based on the theory accurately identified the timing of the English Revolution, the French Revolution, the English Reform Movement, the Revolutions of 1830 and 1848, and that the theory further explained the onset of the Ming-Qing transition and the Taiping Rebellion, the Celali and Balkan revolts in the Ottoman Empire, and – with a twist – the Meiji Revolution in mid-19th century Japan. I proudly submitted the manuscript to Cambridge University Press, who quickly rejected it.”
Fortunately, the University of California Press, on the other hand, accepted the book, but problems developed due to an ideological clash with an editor there, which delayed its actual publication to 1991. When it finally appeared it was favorably received by sociologists, but mostly rejected by historians, and was given a particularly negative appraisal in the New York Review of Books. As a result, it received very little promotion from its publisher.
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To understand the relationship between demography and social unrest that Goldstone uncovered, it is necessary to grasp the effect of demographic change on marginal populations – that is, people who may be pushed off their tenuous position on the “margins”, and thus lose their place in society. This would include elites threatened with a slide into the masses of commoners, commoners threatened with a descent into poverty, and the poor threatened with the loss of existence altogether.
A simple thought experiment will most effectively illustrate the point. If there is sufficient land to support nine peasants, but ten peasants exist, then one (at the margin) will have to go without land, and thus may become disaffected from the existing order (or alternatively, all ten may suffer a lesser shortfall of land, and become disaffected to some extent). However, if the population increases by one more peasant – that is, by ten percent – then two peasants will be without land and disaffection may double (or alternatively all may suffer a similarly increased shortfall and disaffection). If the population increases by 20 percent disaffection may thereby triple, and so forth. In other words, a seemingly moderate increase in population may produce a vastly larger increase in disaffection at the margins, possibly leading to unrest, or even revolution. And as for elites, they may be similarly affected by an increase in their numbers if they must strive for limited resources or positions.
This thought experiment was indeed a simplistic and purely Malthusian one; if the land under cultivation could have been increased, or productivity improved, then an increase of the peasantry would not necessarily have had any ill effects. However, it has been far too common in history for such improvements to be outstripped by increases in population. Malthus argued that a prominent result of population increase would be an inflation in the price of food, and without a corresponding increase in food production, this would indeed be the case – a direct result of supply not increasing in step with demand. It would also be coupled with a general fall in wages, due to a growing supply of workers not matched by demand for agrarian labor; while the price of land would rise, due to increasing demand for it, as would rents paid for the use of the land.
However, while the driver of the Demographic Structural Theory of Goldstone is essentially Malthusian, in the sense of being defined by a population increase that is not adequately accommodated by an increase in production, the theory’s predicted effects on society and its institutions are considerably more elaborate and profound, involving not only the common people, but the elites of society, and the state.
For elites the result of a population increase would be variable, depending on their situation. In societies where primogeniture prevailed (as in England), the eldest son was privileged to inherit the family estate, leaving younger sons to obtain positions as best they could, through competition or even conflict – and as there can be only one eldest son in a family, the rate of growth in the number of younger sons would be greater than that for elites as a whole. In societies where the family estate was divided equally by inheritance, that division would be into increasingly smaller parts with increasing population. Elites whose income depended on receiving fixed or traditional rents would suffer during a period of price inflation, but those who could demand current terms would prosper, as would anyone who could produce food in excess of what they needed, due to high prices – including wealthy peasants, who might aspire to higher status. Finally, if positions for elites in government or other institutions were not to increase as fast as their number, then there would be rising competition for those positions. In short, there would tend to be increased tumult among the elite.
As for the state, the effect of an unaccommodated population increase (that is, not accommodated by increasing economic production) would in many respects be negative, and perhaps catastrophic. The largest item of expenditure for an early modern state was typically for its military, and a generally increasing population would produce an increase in the size of armies (including enemy armies). However, military expenditures would be further compounded by increases in the price of food, necessary to maintain an army. Since the state also provided positions and maintenance for many of the elites of society, the growing numbers of younger sons, along with gentry threatened with falling status, would result in increasing demand for state support. To all this must be added the necessity of dealing with rising levels of unrest, which would further increase expenditures. But on the other hand, the taxation rates of the early modern state were often fixed or traditional, which meant that they failed to keep up with the general rise in prices, much less the rapidly growing demands made upon the state, thus forcing it to seek non-traditional means of revenue, which would further amplify disaffection and unrest.
All of these postulated effects of an unaccommodated increase of population may be plausible, even common sense, but what evidence might exist to confirm their reality? In Chapter 2 of Revolution and Rebellion in the Early Modern World Goldstone reprised much of his doctorate dissertation on the English Revolution of 1640, and this initial centerpiece of his argument may be examined as a prime exhibit of evidence.
A rebellion in Scotland that erupted in 1639 resulted in a defeat of the army of England’s king Charles I, and the bankruptcy of the state. Rebellion also broke out in Ireland in 1641, and in response the king and parliament raised their own separate armies, which came into direct conflict in 1642 in civil wars which swept Britain. Charles was eventually defeated and then executed in 1649, with England declared a Commonwealth, Oliver Cromwell elevated to the position of “Lord Protector”, and the House of Lords and the authority of the Church of England abolished. Such radical changes were not generally popular, however, and after Cromwell’s death in 1658 the monarchy was restored under Charles II.
According to Goldstone’s Demographic Structural Theory, the basic driver that underlay these events was an increase of population in England, which more than doubled during the period of 1500 to 1650, going from just over 2 million (which was little different from the population in 1300) to 5.2 million. At the same time, excess population migrated from the countryside to cities and towns, with the number of London’s inhabitants surging from 50,000 to 400,000. However, food production failed to keep pace with the population, resulting in grain prices that increased by 600 percent. There was indeed a “price revolution” of inflation during the period, with workers’ wages and the price of manufactures increasing by some 200 percent, but obviously the growth in the price of grain was triple these, with dire implications for the wellbeing of the common people. As Goldstone put it in Chapter 2 of Revolution and Rebellion in the Early Modern World:
“The demographic and price changes were gradual: total population increased by about 1 percent per year, and grain prices by 2 percent. Yet, the cumulative effect from 1500 to 1640 – a rise in population from roughly two to over five million and a rise in grain prices of 600 percent, in just over four generations – was massive, shifting resources and creating challenges throughout English society.”
As for elites, their numbers also experienced huge increases, with the number of noble families doubling and gentry families tripling in the century before the revolution. However, the “marginal population” of younger sons and daughters grew more rapidly still, by a factor of four to six according to Goldstone. To this must be added the effect of the inflation of the price revolution, which created severe problems for those unable to adjust to the new circumstances, but opportunities for those who could exploit them, causing elevated levels of turmoil among the elite. A measurable result was an increase in civil litigation, which hit a peak in 1640 – but then, after population stabilized, fell to a new low in 1750, in spite of commerce rapidly expanding after 1660. Similarly, enrollments at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and at the Inns of Court, grew by 400 percent from 1540 to 1630, evidence of a “credentialing crisis” as competition increased for official positions, and the upwardly mobile sought social status; but after this peak enrollments fell, to some 50 percent of their former level by 1750.
But whatever stresses might have been experienced by the elite, those of the state were more serious. Military expenses soared, due to the increasing size of armies (in parallel with population growth) and price inflation – accompanied by rapidly growing demands for royal patronage for an expanding elite (and even more rapidly expanding population of younger sons), again compounded by inflation. However, traditional sources of state revenue were not adjusted to keep pace with these costs. Rents generally rose by 600 to 1000 percent from the 1540s to the 1640s, but this increase in the income of elites was not captured by royal taxation, due to under assessment of their land. Customs duties depended on trade, but this stagnated in the period after the 1550s. Crown lands were a source of regular income, but some 80 percent of them were sold off from the 1530s to the early seventeenth century, in order to cover expenses. As a result, more and more debt had to be taken on, increasing under every monarch, until loans were necessary to support even peacetime expenditures. Attempts were eventually made to increase Crown income through a variety of novel means, including expansion of Ship Money levies, sales of offices and titles, fines from old royal claims to forest lands, and charges for merchants to operate with royal monopolies; however, these generated much resentment. The ultimate result was a tottering state fiscal structure, which collapsed into bankruptcy under the demands of a relatively modest war to quell a Scottish rebellion.
Just as interesting as the state’s breakdown is the story of what happened after the English Revolution ran its course. In the ensuing period population stabilized, with agricultural production and real wages increasing, entries into the nobility and gentry sharply declining, and civil litigation and university enrollment of elites decreasing, as already remarked upon – an altered state of affairs which also saw the restoration of the monarchy under Charles II and a repair of the state’s finances with the cooperation of Parliament. In other words, once the pressure of an unaccommodated population increase subsided, a return to basic features of the old order was possible. Thus, in the English Revolution and its aftermath, the fundamental influence of demographics on the general patterns of history can begin to be seen; to be sure, ideology, religion, political organization, war, class structure, and personalities play their part in determining events, but all may be floating on a sea of population, whose tides rise and fall with irresistible force.
What have been dealt with so far are the qualitative effects of population increase on the structures of society, but in Chapter 2 of Revolution and Rebellion in the Early Modern World Goldstone also attempts to quantify these effects, coming up with a “Political Stress Indicator” abbreviated as “PSI” (after the Greek letter), indicating a potential for serious unrest or revolution. More precisely, PSI is defined as the product of a “Fiscal Distress” factor, multiplied by a “Mobility/Competition” factor, multiplied by a “Mass Mobilization Potential” (MMP) factor. The Fiscal Distress factor is determined by an equation involving the rate of inflation versus the practical rate at which the state can increase revenues; the Mobility/Competition factor is a measure of potential elite conflict, in the case of the English Revolution being based on known rates of civil litigation and university enrollment; while the MMP factor is given by an equation involving the level of real wages multiplied by factors for urban growth and the age structure of a population (youth being more prone to active rebellion). According to Goldstone’s calculations, the PSI factor remained low from 1520 to around 1570, rose rapidly to a peak just before the English Revolution, and afterward fell sharply.
At the end of Chapter 2 of his book Goldstone examines political unrest in France and Spain during the 1640s and 50s, paralleling the English revolution. In this period France experienced the “Fronde”, a series of noble rebellions and peasant uprisings, that took place after the population increased from twelve or thirteen million in 1500 to twenty million by the mid-seventeenth century, accompanied by a drastic rise in grain prices, a fall in real wages, and a huge increase in the population of Paris. As in England, an outdated system of taxation did not keep pace with a price revolution, which produced rising levels of state debt and fiscal distress, while inflation also caused turmoil among elites, some being crushed and others exploiting it. However, certain structural differences in the French state produced a less drastic outcome than in England. The English Crown required the cooperation of the gentry and Parliament in order to effectively govern, and when this collapsed the state broke down; but the French king, with a standing army and the ability to govern by decree, could manipulate differences between the great nobility of old standing, new nobility in state offices, and the peasantry, preventing an outright revolution.
Unrest in Spain followed a different pattern. The population of the core region of Castile increased substantially in the early sixteenth century, but its growth then slowed to peak at 6.7 million in 1590, and actually declined to 5 million by 1665. As a result inflation was much less severe than in England or France, and real wages did not drop as sharply, leading to lower levels of elite turmoil and state fiscal distress. However, in Spain’s outlying possessions in Catalonia and Italy, population did increase sharply over the period; which, coupled with increasing levels of taxation, produced serious rebellions. Thus, while Spain enjoyed relative stability in its core of Castile, it suffered unrest in its periphery.
In Chapter 3 of Revolution and Rebellion in the Early Modern World Goldstone turns to the subject of the French Revolution. As in England, the population of France ceased increasing after 1640 (actually falling for a time due to higher mortality), and was at essentially the same level a century later in 1740. However, growth then resumed, going from 24.6 million to 28.1 million by 1790. The size of this increase was not extreme, but France was already the most densely populated nation in Europe, and it was not accompanied by a correspondingly large increase in agricultural production, with the result that the price of wheat rose nearly 70 percent during the eighteenth century, accompanied by falling real wages and rising unemployment. Manufacturing, on the other hand, grew strongly during the century, by some 80 percent, and trade more strongly still, but together they made up only a quarter of the economy in 1700, and their biggest gains typically went to those of the elite who were positioned to exploit them, rather than the common people.
Further, though industry and commerce substantially increased, they did not make a similar contribution to the revenues of the Crown – the outmoded fiscal system of the French state still relied heavily on taxes on land and an overburdened peasantry, producing an insufficient income that was badly eroded by inflation. At the same time, ordinary peacetime expenditures for administration, patronage, pensions, poor relief, and interest on the state debt rose steadily, but the scale of such fiscal difficulties remained concealed from public view. As a result, when bankruptcy finally occurred in 1787, it was a shocking event that seemed inexplicable to contemporaries. That the incessant and hugely expensive wars of Louis XIV during 1689-1714 had finally produced bankruptcy was only to be expected, but French intervention in the American War of Independence had ended in 1783 and was of a relatively modest scale, costing perhaps half as much, in real terms, as the Seven Years War of 1756-1763.
Thus many attributed the bankruptcy of 1787 to corruption or incompetence on the part of the Crown, and an attempt to raise new taxes provoked a demand to convene the Estates General, which was to be made up of representatives from the First Estate (clergy), Second Estate (nobility), and Third Estate (bourgeoisie). The number of nobles had more than doubled during the eighteenth century, but demand for noble status had increased much faster still, and this, combined with turmoil due to rising and falling fortunes in an inflationary environment, resulted in increasing conflict among elites – in the Estates General itself, conflict between resentful old nobility on the one hand, and struggling lesser clergy and frustrated bourgeois aspirants on the other. The latter group, with a few nobles, eventually broke away to form the National Assembly (which became a direct rival to the authority of the monarchy), while in the army the same kind of elite conflicts were mirrored in the officer corps. So it was that a structure for revolution was prepared.
As he did for the English Revolution of 1640, Goldstone calculates PSI values for the years preceding the French Revolution, which began rising rapidly after the 1750s, and reached a peak in the 1780s when the revolution commenced. And in a further parallel, as the revolution produced radical political change, it eventually brought about the rule of Napoleon Bonaparte, in much the same manner as revolution brought about the rule of Oliver Cromwell in England. However, the influence of Napoleon was more fundamental; under his reign state finances were reorganized and put on a much sounder footing, a huge expansion of the state itself provided many more opportunities for elite advancement, and his wars provided ample prospects for promotion in military careers. Nevertheless, when Napoleon was finally brought down, the old monarchy was restored, just as it had been in England after the death of Cromwell.
Unfortunately, population pressure in France did not abate after Napoleon (as it had in England after its revolution), while the possibilities for elite advancement were reduced. Thus the nation remained vulnerable to serious unrest, which could be ignited by economic downturns and harvest failures, culminating in revolutions in 1830 and 1848 – not as severe as the revolution of 1789 (since state bankruptcy was avoided), but which overturned the existing political order all the same, and finally produced the rule of Napoleon III. After 1850, accelerating industrial growth and agricultural output brought greater stability to France.
In contrast, Britain did not suffer nearly as much political unrest during the period in question, even though the population of England and Wales almost tripled, going from 5.7 million to 16.5 million in the century from 1750 to 1850. This was largely due to the fact that the portion of the British economy devoted to trade and industry, already proportionately larger than in France in 1750, grew very rapidly (by 1850 agriculture accounted for only 20 percent of Britain’s economic output, while in France it was still at 50 percent in 1830). In other words, in spite of the fact that Britain experienced a very large increase of population, that increase was better accommodated by a corresponding increase in overall economic production, due in great part to the industrial revolution that had commenced. Furthermore, after the reorganization of its fiscal structure, trade and industry were taxed much more effectively by the British government, averting the possibility of its bankruptcy. A significant amount of social and economic distress still persisted in Britain, particularly in the agricultural sector, but the most severe political disaffection was dealt with by governmental reform in the years 1828-32. Afterward, a huge expansion of the civil service system provided opportunities for advancement by elites.
In the remainder of Chapter 3 of his book, Goldstone treats the situation of Prussia and the German states in the period leading up to 1848, and then in Chapter 4 deals with major state breakdowns that took place in Asia, beginning with two during the “general crisis of the seventeenth century”: the Ottoman crisis in Asia Minor, and the Ming-Qing transition in China. As in the West, these crises were followed by a period of relative stability, only to be succeeded by further breakdowns in the late eighteenth to mid nineteenth centuries, namely the regional independence movements in the Ottoman Empire and the Taiping rebellion in China. The dynamics of all these crises in Asia tended to follow the patterns previously described in Europe: of population increases unaccommodated by similar increases in economic production, of economies racked by inflation which produced popular unrest and elite tumult, of outmoded state fiscal systems that were evaded by elite wealth and strained by escalating expenditures, finally resulting in bankruptcy and breakdown.
The last part of Chapter 4 examines the Meiji Restoration in Japan in the 1860s, which ended the Tokugawa shogunate after a brief civil war, and reinforced the emperor’s position as figurehead ruler of the nation – under whom an authoritarian oligarchy actually governed, in pursuit of a program of modernization in response to the challenge of foreign incursion. It turns out to be an exception to the examples above, but one which proves the rule, in its way. From 1721 to 1846 Japan’s population was quite stable, but rice production experienced a substantial increase, causing the price of rice to fall in relation to other goods and labor. However, under the Tokugawa regime taxes were not collected in money, but in kind, as a traditional, fixed amount of rice production, which resulted in falling income and rising debt for the state, as well as many elites, thereby increasing elite turmoil. In other words, instead of state breakdown due to inflation, Japan experienced a crisis that was largely caused by deflation, and an outmoded fiscal system that could not adequately respond to it.
Goldstone then takes up the relationship of ideology and culture to revolution in Chapter 5 of his book. Revolutions are described as having three phases: a pre-revolutionary phase which sees the origins of state breakdown, followed by a revolutionary struggle to establish a new state, and finally a post-revolutionary stabilization of authority. As Goldstone notes, his Demographic Structural Theory deals with the first phase, the origin of a revolution, in the sense of establishing the conditions that make it a likely outcome; while the direction a revolution takes in the succeeding phases will, instead, be mainly determined by ideological and cultural factors. The goals of revolutionaries will often be moderate in the first phase, reforming rather than radical, but tend to be radicalized by the struggle to shape a new state in the second phase, becoming more extreme in response to forces of counter-revolution. Further, the necessity for gathering support will bring calls for redistribution or appeals to nationalism to gain followers for the revolutionary cause, setting the stage for increasing confrontation with domestic opposition or foreign nations.
Finally, in Chapter 6 Goldstone proceeds to conclusions that might be gained from the material that has been presented. As he relates:
“My primary conclusion is quite beautiful in its parsimony. It is that the periodic state breakdowns in Europe, China, and the Middle East from 1500 to 1850 were the result of a single basic process … The main trend was that population growth, in the context of relatively inflexible economic and social structures, led to changes in prices, shifts in resources, and increasing social demands with which agrarian-bureaucratic states could not successfully cope.
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“This basic process was triggered all across Eurasia by the periods of sustained population increase that occurred in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries and again in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, thus producing worldwide waves of state breakdown. In contrast, in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries populations did not grow … Political and social stability resulted.
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“After 1850, most western European states had increased the flexibility of their economies through industrialization, and of their administrative and social structures through political revolution or reform; thus, population growth lost its ability to trigger the processes that earlier had led to state breakdown. Russia, China, and the Ottoman Empire, however, with their still largely traditional economic, political, and social structures, remained vulnerable to population pressures, which continued through the nineteenth century and led to state breakdown in the early years of the twentieth.
···
“Thus, we clearly and repeatedly find that revolution and rebellion were not due to excessively high taxation by rulers, or to a simple lack of social mobility, or chiefly to class conflict, or to general impoverishment of society as a whole. Instead we find consistently that fiscal crises were due to undertaxation as elites systematically evaded taxes, so that state revenues barely kept pace with inflation, and hence never kept pace with the increasing real wealth of their societies. We find everywhere that high social mobility – high rates of turnover and displacement – preceded crises, while low social mobility characterized times of stability. Rapid turnover among high officials, strains on elite education and recruitment, and conflicts over patronage are seen in all states and empires approaching crisis. Factional conflict within the elites, over access to office, patronage, and state policy, rather than conflict across classes, led to state paralysis and state breakdown. We also find consistently that elites succeeded in shifting the burden of taxation to the middling classes, and that the conditions of the working classes and peasants declined while elites and commercial classes grew richer. Thus, we consistently see a polarization of social wealth in the generations preceding crises. And the combination of declining state effectiveness, heightened conflicts over mobility, and increasing poverty at the bottom of the social scale raised the salience of reformist, disciplined, heterodox moral and philosophical schools, a salience that faded rapidly when these social trends ended.”
Goldstone goes on to consider the question of whether population growth could have the same destructive effects in our own age as it did in the early modern, and concludes that it need not, so long as polarization is avoided through constructive policies – for instance, that the wealth produced by economic growth does not become excessively concentrated in the hands of narrow interests. Due to their economic situation, developing nations are particularly vulnerable to the effects of rapid population growth, and the case of Iran is examined, a nation in which the population increased from 20 million to 35 million in only two decades, from 1956 to 1976. Unfortunately, misguided policies of the Shah’s government only exacerbated the dire problems that resulted, provoking the Iranian Revolution of 1978-79. On the other hand, effective policies of real reform (the English Reform Movement of 1828-1832 being cited) are described as providing constructive solutions to the pressures of demographic and economic change, whereas revolutions, in contrast, tend to produce little more than dislocation and destruction in their immediate aftermath. Thus we are presented with at a final warning: that it is those elites who seek only their own wealth and power, while blind to reform, who ultimately bring about the breakdown of states – and the United States can be no exception.
********
Peter Turchin was born in Russia in 1957, coming to the United States in 1977 when his father, dissident Valentin Turchin, was exiled from the Soviet Union. He successfully pursued a career in theoretical biology in the field of population dynamics, becoming a tenured professor at the University of Connecticut; and in 2003 he produced Complex Population Dynamics: A Theoretical/Empirical Synthesis, a classic work on the rise and fall of animal abundance in nature, which combined an in-depth examination of the mathematical modeling of population dynamics with an overview of data fitting and various case studies.
However, he had also come to feel that he had accomplished all that he reasonably could in his field. Already, by 1997, he had decided, like Jack Goldstone, to switch to the social sciences, in particular to apply a mathematical approach to the study of history. In fact, Goldstone personally encouraged him in this, and given the importance of populations in Goldstone’s demographic structural theory, Turchin’s expertise in complex population dynamics was to prove a natural asset.
Thus a second book authored by Turchin also appeared in 2003, titled Historical Dynamics: Why States Rise and Fall. Its goal is summarized in the opening paragraph of its Preface:
“Many historical processes are dynamic: growth and decline of populations, territorial expansion and contraction of empires, trends in political centralization/decentralization, and the spread of world religions, to name just a few examples. A general approach to studying dynamical systems is to advance rival hypotheses based on specific mechanisms, translate the hypotheses into mathematical models, and contrast model predictions with empirical patterns. Mathematical modeling is a key ingredient in this research program because quantitative dynamical phenomena, often affected by complex feedbacks, cannot be fully understood at a purely verbal level … This general approach has proved to be extremely successful in natural sciences. Can it be instrumental in increasing our understanding of historical processes?”
The first two chapters of Historical Dynamics are devoted to setting out its basic concepts, such as the rationale for a quantitative approach to history, the book’s focus on the territories of agrarian states (which have been numerous and often have useful historical records, but are not so complex as industrial states), and a discussion of mathematical models for systems that are dynamic (that is, changing with time). Simple, first-order dynamic models, which are functions of a single variable, can depict growth that, due to negative feedback, eventually reaches a limit – more growth induces more feedback, until they balance at a final and permanent equilibrium. In reality, however, when states grow to reach a limit, do not remain at that point of equilibrium indefinitely. (As the subtitle of the book puts it, the question being examined is “Why States Rise and Fall”.) The problem with first-order models of limited growth is that they assume a negative feedback that operates immediately, without a time lag. But when a second variable is brought in, that introduces such a lag (and with it “overshoot”, allowing a level to be reached that exceeds that possible with immediate feedback – a “boom”), a mathematical model can produce a rise to a peak and subsequent fall (a single “boom and bust”), or produce continuing cycles of boom and bust.
The influential geopolitical theory of Randall Collins is then considered, and translated by Turchin into a mathematical model. Collins’ theory describes a state that increases its territory through war, which increases the resources available to it, which in turn improves its ability to wage more war and gain further territory. However, such territorial growth is limited by the negative feedback of “logistical constraints”– with more territory, military power must be projected further from home base, becoming more costly, and more resources must be used to control populations – an effect that can be called “imperial overstretch”. Another negative feedback comes from “marchland position”, as greater territorial size means contact on the border with a greater number of enemies. In Turchin’s mathematical model, the negative feedbacks of logistical constraints and marchland position are treated as if they operate quickly, since their effects would be felt soon after greater territorial size is achieved. However, without a substantial lag for the feedbacks, the model cannot produce the fall of the state – thus the Collins geopolitical theory can describe the growth of a state to an eventual territorial limit, but cannot account for its collapse, something that Collins himself realized. Since the rise and fall of a state is a process that can last for centuries, the negative feedback that produces its collapse must operate with a lag on the order of decades or generations.
Positional effects on territorial expansion are also examined in the second chapter of Historical Dynamics, in particular the mathematical simulation of Artzrouni and Komlos. In that simulation an arbitrary grid of 200 x 200 km squares was imposed on a map of Western Europe, each square representing a hypothetical emerging state. The states were assumed to make war on their neighbors, attempting to absorb them, the power of each state increasing with larger area, but decreasing with larger perimeter (which meant more enemies). Additionally, a coastal boundary was considered easier to defend (by a factor “f”), and the Alps and Pyrenees were treated as impenetrable barriers. The behavior of the simulation was governed by relatively simple equations of only five parameters (including “f”), and runs were made, by trial and error, to determine values for the parameters that might produce something that would resemble a political map of modern Europe. In fact the simulation proved capable of generating a result, after 13 simulation “centuries”, that depicted fairly close approximations of France, Spain, Britain, Italy, and Greece. Borders on the interior of Europe were more confused, but this might relate to the relatively late formation of Germany as a nation. It is true that the simulation’s parameters were arbitrarily chosen to produce a particular result, but its performance was nevertheless impressive, considering the simplicity of its purely mathematical approach, without regard to actual social or historical factors.
In the third chapter of his book, Turchin discusses social groups and their relation to the rise and fall of states. The important concept of solidarity, or devotion to the welfare of the group, is introduced, and the reason for its emergence in large groups is theorized to be due to success in competition or confrontation between groups. Solidarity acquires a particular importance in ethnic groups, whose boundaries are defined by language, religion, race, customs, and territory – establishing a sharp demarcation between “us” and “them”.
Next is described a sophisticated theory of solidarity that was proposed by Ibn Khaldun, a fourteenth century Arab philosopher and administrator. “Asabiya” was his term for solidarity or cohesive spirit, and he discussed it in regard to the societies of medieval North Africa, a situation he knew well. According to his theory, asabiya arose in the desert peoples of the region due to the harsh conditions and the necessity of group cooperation to survive. Their hardiness and solidarity would allow a force of them to conquer the decadent civilization of the coast, after which they in turn adopted civilized ways. However, this way of life led them to seek luxuries, competition for which resulted in a decline of asabiya; further, prosperity encouraged population growth, which in turn caused increasing conflict over limited resources, again resulting in a destruction of asabiya. Thus, after perhaps four generations, Ibn Khaldun observed that the recently civilized conquerors would themselves become decadent, and vulnerable to a new wave of conquest from the desert, at which point another turn of the cycle would commence.
The third chapter finishes with a discussion of more recent theories of solidarity, in particular that of “social capital”. In its aspects of mutual support, cooperation, social trust, and collective action, social capital appears to be broadly similar to asabiya, a form of it applicable to modern societies. Thus Ibn Khaldun may have been prescient indeed.
Chapter four of Historical Dynamics introduces Turchin’s Metaethnic Frontier Theory. After establishing some basic concepts concerning ethnicity and social status, three factors influencing the growth of group solidarity are identified: competition between groups (its most intense form being warfare, and requiring solidarity for success), availability of resources within a group (serious shortages encouraging competition for such resources, reducing group solidarity), and, most interestingly, ethnic differences between groups. A large ethnic difference is defined as a metaethnic fault line, and it is this which is said to precipitate the formation of large groups – a small group, in the vicinity of such a fault line, will be faced with highly dissimilar “others”, and in the event of conflict with them will be motivated to join forces with neighbors of its own ethnicity. Indeed, conflicts across a metaethnic fault line are apt to be particularly violent, even genocidal. Thus solidarity may rise in such a situation, as a large group forms from smaller ones of similar ethnicity, due to the challenge of antithetical “others”.
A metaethnic fault line is described as acquiring particular importance at the boundary zone of a large empire. On the other side of such an imperial frontier may be a stateless tribal area, or perhaps another empire. In a tribal area, such warfare as occurs between the tribes will encourage internal solidarity within each of them, and this warfare will tend to limit population, thus reducing competition for resources, also promoting solidarity; while the presence of the nearby imperial frontier constitutes a metaethnic fault line, which will provide motivation for tribes of similar ethnicity to combine in opposition to the empire, perhaps to loot or invade it, or prevent its encroachment. Of course, the same metaethnic fault line will also promote solidarity in the area on the empire’s side of the frontier (though perhaps not in its more distant core), which applies, too, when the frontier is between two empires. In an old empire, a frontier region may come to have a different identity from both the central home area and the opposition on the other side, promoting solidarity within itself, and eventually leading it to break away and establish its own empire.
Thus the Metaethnic Frontier Theory presents a picture of cyclic empire. At a metaethnic fault line, a large ethnic group forms and comes into dominance as the result of particularly high solidarity and the chances of fate. It grows, assimilating similar groups into an even larger ethnic core, which then continues to grow, by conquering other ethnic groups, into an empire. The empire enjoys internal peace, as a result of which its population increases, to the limit that can be supported by economic production, which in turn produces increasing competition for resources. This competition, along with an absence of external threat in the imperial core, causes a fall in solidarity, reducing the strength of the empire. Meanwhile, a dissimilar ethnicity has formed a group of growing size and solidarity on the imperial frontier, which waxes in strength, and ultimately conquers the old empire, continuing the cycle.
Having established the basic premises of his theory of metaethnic frontiers, Turchin then goes on to translate it into mathematics, in order to better understand its dynamical characteristics. Two basic equations are developed for a theoretical state, which describe the behavior of two variables: for the territory and solidarity of the state. The equations are governed by simple relations for power derived from territory, ability to project power over distance, power projected against the state from the hinterland around it, the maximum growth rate of solidarity at the state’s border, and the width of the border. It turns out that this simple model of two equations is capable of producing a single boom-bust cycle of state territory (though not repeated cycles, due to the hinterland’s power versus the state being constant). Thus loss of solidarity is seen to be plausible, at least, as a possible cause for the collapse of the state, given its long lag time (of generations) as a negative feedback.
Next, the mathematical model of state growth is further developed to take on a spatial dimension, which somewhat resembles the simulation of Artzrouni and Komlos, described earlier. Territory consisting of a grid of cells is assumed, with each cell representing a single tribe or a province in an empire; solidarity is taken to grow to a maximum in a cell on an imperial frontier, but declines to a minimum elsewhere. Every tribe or empire of cells attempts to conquer the cells around it, success being determined by the relative powers of the combatants, as governed by territorial size, average solidarity, and the distance between an empire’s center and the site of conflict (logistical constraints). A particular “run” of this model over time is described, which starts with a single empire surrounded by a tribal hinterland. The result is fascinating: the empire expands until halted by logistical constraints, and remains in this situation for a time; but then four smaller empires form on the frontier zone, which grow and eventually destroy the initial empire. After a period of relative stasis, two of the new empires grow at the expense of the other two, but after a time the winners themselves decline, and are overtaken by the former losers. And so on and so forth, with empires appearing and disappearing, waxing and waning.
An important result of the new spatial model is that boom-bust cycles become possible, due to the fact that the power exerted against an empire is no longer assumed to be constant, but may have its source in other empires that are themselves growing or diminishing. Thus an empire may decline, only to eventually recover and grow again. Further, the shape of the periods of boom and bust are interesting: growth and decline are relatively rapid, with extended periods of stability in between. In fact, when a plot is made of territory versus time for the various theoretical empires of the model run described above, it is shown to have an amazing general similarity to a plot for historical empires of East and Central Asia from the seventh through thirteenth centuries. And finally, as possibly related to the course of history, it turns out that the spatial model is highly chaotic – that is, very slight changes in its initial conditions tend to produce wildly varying sequences of empires.
Of course, as Turchin points out, what has been presented so far is theory: that large empires have their origin at metaethnic frontiers. The next step is to test the theory, which he proceeds to do in chapter five, using Europe as the subject (from the British Isles to the Urals and Black Sea, with Asia Minor included as well). For purposes of the test Europe’s area is divided into 50 cultural regions, taking into account major features of terrain and ethnic divisions.
A numerical score for frontier intensity is assigned to each cultural region, depending on several factors. For religion, a score of 3 is assigned for a region where Christianity and Islam interact with each other or with paganism, 2 for major opposing divisions within Christianity or Islam (Catholic versus Orthodox or Sunni versus Shiite), and 1 for different sects within the same religion (Catholic versus Protestant or for different versions of paganism). For language, a score of 2 is assigned to one language group versus another (such as Romance, Germanic, Slavic), and 1 for different languages within the same group. For economic way of life, a score of 2 is assigned to settled agriculturalists versus nomadic pastoralists, and 1 for agriculturalists with an urbanized culture versus those which lack it. For the effect of war on demography, 2 is assigned for intense warfare which results in depopulation, and 1 for warfare which does not cause a significant fall in population. Thus the total score for intensity can range from 0 to 9. A “frontier” region is considered to be one where the intensity is 5 or higher (by comparison, a frontier region of the early Roman Empire would typically have an intensity of 5).
The Metaethnic Frontier Theory proposes, then, that regions on the frontier (intensity 5 or higher), for 3 centuries or longer (since solidarity increases on a long time scale), will be the source of sizable empires or states (larger than 100,000 square kilometers). During the era from the sixth through tenth centuries, Turchin identifies 11 such regions, all originally on the frontier of the Roman Empire; the largest empires thus produced were the Frankish and Byzantine. Only the Duchy of Aquitaine is found to depart from this pattern, but as it was principally a relict between the Merovingian and Carolingian Empires, it is not seen as an important exception. In contrast, no region in the heartland of the former Roman Empire (such as in Italy and Spain) was the source of a large empire during the period in question, nor was any region in the tribal hinterlands far from the Roman frontier.
A later period in Europe, from the eleventh through nineteenth centuries, is considered next, and proves to be considerably more complex, as there are many more frontier regions, with 22 being the source of sizable empires or states. But in any case, all the “Great Powers” of the era – England-U.K., Castile-Spain, France, Brandenburg-Prussia-Germany, Austria, Lithuania-Poland, Byzantium, the Ottoman Empire, and Muscovy-Russia – are identified as originating from intense frontiers. Three possible anomalies are found, in the form of states not produced by frontier regions, these being medieval Poland, the Duchy of Burgundy, and the nation of Italy. The anomaly of Poland is seen as relatively unimportant, as it was a high intensity frontier for two centuries (not meeting the condition of a full three), and Burgundy collapsed as a state rather quickly, but Italy remains a notable exception.
Nevertheless, Turchin demonstrates that the Metaethnic Frontier Theory has considerable support, and indeed does much to explain the formation of modern Europe. From the Rhine frontier of the Roman Empire sprang the empires of the Merovingians, Carolingians, and Ottonians; as this succession of Germanic empires aged and decayed, its urbanized core region lost solidarity, becoming politically fragmented (to be reunited as a German nation only in the nineteenth century). However, in the ninth and tenth centuries, under assault from Vikings, Saracens, Magyars, and Polabian Slavs, the frontiers of the Carolingian Empire – its defensive “marches” – saw the germination of powerful new states, in the west France and Spain, in the east Prussia and Austria (with England also rising in the wake of various invasions). Italy, on the other hand, as the core of the old Roman Empire, remained, like Germany, in a fragmented condition until the nineteenth century.
The next chapter of Historical Dynamics considers the issue of ethnic divisions within a state or empire, given its crucial importance for solidarity, and the possibility for assimilation to the core ethnicity of the state. To this end some possible dynamic models of ethnic change are examined, concentrating on religious conversion (rather than linguistic assimilation, given the data at hand). In particular, an autocatalytic model of conversion is developed, based on the influence of social networks of personal relationships – a greater number of people who have converted increases the likelihood that any given individual will convert, which implies that conversion will tend to accelerate at low levels. (The term “autocatalytic” is borrowed from chemical reactions in which the rate of formation of a compound is accelerated by the presence of the compound itself.) Further, the nature of autocatalytic conversion will depend on the character of the social network involved – if the intensity of contact between people declines rapidly with social distance (a “thin-tailed” distribution), then conversion will proceed in a relatively orderly way, within close circles of friends and relatives; but if contact intensity does not decline so rapidly with social distance (in a “thick-tailed” manner), then long-distance acquaintances who convert may establish entirely new centers of conversion, widely “seeding” the process.
The mathematical models of conversion are then empirically tested, using the historical data available for the spread of Islam in medieval Persia and Spain, Christian conversion in Egypt during the late Roman Empire, and conversion to the Mormon sect worldwide. It turns out that the autocatalytic model can match up with the observed data to an amazing degree of precision (even by the standards of the physical sciences). Further, the nature of the model can explain the sudden upsurge of Christianity in the latter part of the third century, seemingly unexpected in view of how few Christians there apparently were in the preceding two centuries. A book by Rodney Stark, The Rise of Christianity, is referred to, which describes how a hypothetical community of 1000 Christians in the year 40, growing at the relative rate of 40 percent per decade, would result in only 0.36% of the Roman Empire’s population being Christian by the year 200, but 1.9% by 250, 10.5% by 300, and 56.5% by 350. In other words, the dramatic expansion of Christianity between the years 250 and 350 could have been produced without any change in the relative rate of conversion, or some otherwise unaccountable mass conversion event.
In chapter seven of Historical Dynamics the demographic structural theory of Jack Goldstone is introduced. As Turchin indicates, it treats population change as an essentially exogenous factor – that is, determined by causes external to the system being considered, such as changes in climatic favorability and waves of epidemic disease. The Black Death of the fourteenth century would certainly seem to be this kind of external cause. However, Turchin goes on to consider the possibility that the demographic structural theory can be expanded into a dynamic system, in which population change also acquires an endogenous character that is influenced by the system itself – in particular, that there can be a feedback effect of political instability on demographics. Thus a weakening or collapse of the state might produce population decline due to crime and internal or external warfare, a falling birth rate, and spread of disease through refugee movement. Further, the absence of an effective state might negatively affect population by causing people to concentrate in defensible strongholds, reducing the area of land that can be effectively cultivated, while also severely restricting the development of essential infrastructure such as roads, canals, and flood control measures.
A basic demographic-fiscal model is then developed to explore the mathematical implications of a relationship between the condition of the state and population size. The two variables involved are the population density for a state of fixed size, and state resources as measured in an amount of grain (since an agrarian state is assumed in which food is the primary product). The population is also assumed to produce a surplus of grain which becomes revenue for the state. As population grows from a low level, so do revenues for an emergent state; and growth of the state facilitates further growth of the population. However, as population increases the surplus produced per capita decreases, since the amount of land is fixed, and increased labor on it is affected by diminishing returns. Eventually the total surplus available begins to decrease (the larger population needs more for itself), and so revenues for the state decline. However, state expenditures continue to increase with population size, as they are needed to maintain its military, administration, and infrastructure. The final result becomes insolvency as expenditures relentlessly exceed revenues, and the state collapses. The collapse of the state also precipitates a fall of population, to the level that can be maintained in a stateless condition.
Thus a single boom-bust event, involving population and the state, can be mathematically produced. After the bust, another boom becomes possible for the model if it is perturbed by an exogenous factor of modest magnitude; thus a continuing cycle of booms and busts can take place. Interestingly, it turns out that for a maximum population growth rate of 1 percent per year, which is historically possible, the model predicts cycle durations of about two to three centuries. Also, an implication of the model is that if population growth can be restricted, so that the system does not deteriorate beyond the point where state expenditures are matched by revenues, then stability can be achieved without a bust.
Next, the demographic-fiscal model is expanded through the addition of class structure, dividing the populace into commoners and elites, following Goldstone’s demographic structural theory. Thus the model now involves three variables: commoner population, elite population, and state resources. Growth in the number of commoners is governed by the resources available to them, which is true for elites as well; however, resources for elites are obtained by extracting them from commoners. As elites grow in number they are able to extract more, but this is subject to diminishing returns, so that resources available to elites per capita eventually decline. As in the previous model, resources for the state are governed by revenues and expenditures, but now revenues are divided between elites (as rents) and the state (as taxes). As elites grow in number and the rents they extract per capita decline, they begin to divert an increasing amount of the state’s taxes to themselves. However, the state’s expenditures also increase in line with the increasing number of elites, and the resulting insolvency once again produces state collapse.
The model is then modified to depict the effect of the state on elite numbers – that is, that a strong state imposes peace on elites, while a weak or absent one will result in deadly competition between them. The final result that is produced is a boom-bust episode similar to that for previous model; for a time, the commoner and elite populations grow in tandem with state resources, but then the number of commoners begins to fall after burdensome exactions are made upon them, the state collapses as described above, and in the ensuing anarchy the commoner population plummets under intense exploitation, while elite numbers are devastated by lethal conflict. As before, this single boom-bust can be extended into a series of cycles by external perturbation.
Turchin next goes on to examine how the characteristics of differing elite societies can affect the results produced by his models. The first society considered is that of medieval North Africa, as studied by Ibn Khaldun, in which desert tribes would periodically conquer the civilized coastal region – the commoner population would be little changed, but subjected to new elite rulers with each conquest. An interesting feature of this society is the practice of polygamy, which leads to a very rapid rate of growth of elite numbers, taken to be four times the growth rate for the commoner population – which in turn causes boom-bust cycles to be quite short, on the order of a century or so (4 generations), thus increasing the fluctuation rate of instability. A model for the tribal nomad empires outside the border of Imperial China is also examined; the object of these nomads is to extort tribute from China, rather than conquer territory, and the element of their solidarity is introduced. As one of the nomad empire grows it is able to exact more tribute, but diminishing returns eventually begin to limit the amount – while elite numbers continue to increase, resulting in plunging solidarity due to elite competition, finally bringing about the dissolution of the empire. Again, since the nomads practice polygamy, their boom-bust cycles are short.
Since the cycles predicted by the aforementioned models are relatively long, on the order of one to three centuries, the term secular cycles is proposed to apply to them, as the term “secular” refers to very long term effects.
The application of Goldstone’s demographic structural theory to the English Revolution of the seventeenth century is then examined in some detail, and it is concluded that it is solidly supported by evidence. However, it is once more suggested that it could be made more complete by the addition of a feedback effect of political stability on population. In this regard reference is made to the ideas of David Hackett Fischer in his book The Great Wave: Price Revolutions and the Rhythm of History. Fischer proposed that there were four great waves of social and economic change in Europe during the era from 1200 to 2000, in which periods of price stability – Renaissance, Enlightenment, and Victorian – alternated with periods of rapid inflation, during the price revolutions of the thirteenth, sixteenth, eighteenth, and twentieth centuries. The Great Wave asserted that during the latter part of a period of stability, improving conditions led to increasing optimism and a higher birth rate. However, the growing population also caused demand to rise faster than supply, resulting in price inflation, social disaffection, and decreasing state solvency. Eventually a crisis would develop that produced civil disorder, lethal conflict, and reduced population. In the aftermath prices would stabilize due to decreased demand, social conditions would improve, and the cycle would commence once more. Obviously, Fischer’s crisis episodes are generally consistent with Goldstone’s analysis of state breakdowns in the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, and his ideas also suggest an endogenous mechanism for the population changes of the demographic structural theory.
The end of chapter seven discusses the effect societal differences can have on demographic changes, in particular concerning the aftermath of the Black Death of the fourteenth century. In England, the drastic reduction in population caused grain prices to fall and wages to rise; landlords made attempts to oppose this, but their lack of solidarity, and peasant flight to those offering better terms, caused the attempts to fail. In Egypt, however, the story was completely different. It was ruled by the Mamluks, warriors who had been recruited from Christian and pagan boys bought as slaves. Rather than independent landholders, they acted in a highly unified manner, their ranks being filled by recruitment instead of descent (their children could not become Mamluks). Thus grain prices rose and wages fell in Egypt after the Black Death, the reduced population of peasants being exploited all the more heavily to support the Mamluk elites in their accustomed manner. These conditions persisted until the Ottoman conquest of 1517.
The eighth chapter of Historical Dynamics deals with the identification of cycles in human population numbers, employing concepts similar to those used for studying natural cycles in animal populations, as in Turchin’s Complex Population Dynamics. Of key importance is the length of human generations, around 20 to 30 years. A possible first order cycle in population, caused by relatively rapid feedback, would typically have a period of two generations – a low population generation would have elevated wages, due to labor shortages, and produce an increased number of children, which would cause the next generation to have a higher population with lower wages and fewer children, and so on. Second order cycles in population, caused by slow, delayed feedback, would be much longer, of multiple generations; in fact, given the historical rate of human population growth, models for animal populations would suggest that second order cycles might have a period of roughly two to three centuries, in line with the demographic structural theory. Over the very long term of millennia, there has been a general trend for increasing human population – sparked by the agricultural revolution (beginning perhaps 10,000 years ago) and continued by incremental improvements in agricultural techniques – which resulted in an estimated population doubling time of around 1000 years. In the wake of the industrial revolution the rate of increase has become even more spectacular.
The population of England and Wales during the years 1080 to 2000, for which particularly good historical data exists, is then examined. It displays a general long term upward trend, as mentioned above; but once the data is mathematically de-trended and analyzed, a distinct pattern of cycles of about 300 years in length emerges, which is imposed on the trend. Further, such data as is available for six other European countries during the same time period is considered, and again there is seen a similar pattern of three secular cycles. The historical data for China’s population is not as reliable as that for Europe, nevertheless it definitely displays the existence of second order cycles. Given this information, and what is known about population levels for the rest of the world, it becomes apparent that human population growth has not been steady, but rather subject to major oscillations.
Another approach to gathering population data, aside from historical records, is then discussed, namely archaeological evidence. Such evidence is indirect, being inferred from such things as the number of houses or settlements in an area, or pollen from food crops. However, it can be particularly useful for indicating relative changes in population, which is of primary interest, rather than absolute numbers. An application of archaeological evidence for the Roman Empire indicates the existence of two population cycles of about 250 years in length, while evidence in the New World for the platform mounds of Georgia, and Mesa Verde in Colorado, also reveals the existence of secular cycles.
At the end of chapter eight historical evidence for the effect of political instability on population growth is examined, in the case of ancient and medieval China. Political instability was determined by information regarding internal warfare (peasant rebellions and so forth), and mathematical analysis indicates that its effect on population growth was indeed significant.
In chapter nine of Historical Dynamics Turchin undertakes case studies of two nations at opposite ends of Europe, France and Russia, examining how models and theories of the preceding chapters might apply to them – first in the matter of solidarity and ethnic frontiers, and then in the effects of secular cycles.
The story of France begins with the incorporation of Gaul into the Roman Empire. During the third century northern and eastern Gaul became an intense frontier as the Empire experienced a period of state collapse, the region being subjected to incursions by Germanic tribes. The Empire restabilized for a time during the fourth century, but under the influence of the imperial frontier the Franks arose as a united people, amalgamating German tribes such as the Chamavi, Chattuari, Bructeri, Amsivarii, and Salii. And so, after a second collapse of the Roman state, the Franks moved in to incorporate northern Gaul into their own Merovingian Empire, later succeeded by the Carolingian. The area remained an intense frontier, as the Franks confronted Bretons and invading Northmen. In fact, the region that became northern France constituted an intense frontier for some eight hundred years, until the end of the tenth century, arising as the core of the modern nation only under the Capetian dynasty in the thirteenth century – an indication of how long it can take for frontier conditions to generate an important new state.
Turchin identifies six secular cycles of growth and decline for France, terming them the Principate wave of the Roman Empire, the Dominate-Merovingian wave of the late Empire, the Carolingian wave that peaked under Charlemagne, the Capetian wave that established the modern nation, the Valois wave that ended with the dawn of the early modern era, and finally the Bourbon wave.
During the Principate wave of the first and second centuries, Gaul, and the other western provinces of the Empire, experienced a large population increase, which eventually resulted in serious inflation, state insolvency, and collapse, as predicted by demographic structural theory; to be followed by a fall in population caused by famine, the Antonine plagues, internecine fighting, and barbarian incursions. The demographic situation recovered to an extent, along with the Empire, during the Dominate-Merovingian wave, but later collapsed along with the Empire itself. Population peaked again around 800 under the Carolingians, but fell after the fragmentation of their empire, and did not reach another peak until 1300 during the Capetian wave, the long period between these two maximums having an intercycle phase from the tenth through twelfth centuries, during which no unified state of substantial size was established that could facilitate growth. After 1300 population began to collapse as a result of famine and the Black Death, and remained in a depressed condition due to the Hundred Years War. However, the war also eliminated much of the French nobility, leading to decreased competition and increasing solidarity among them, which set the stage for the recovery and expansion of the state during the Valois wave. The population of France then commenced to double, with the number of elites increasing faster still, which eventually brought about political instability that featured the religious wars, the Fronde, and serious demographic decline. This was followed by the onset of the Bourbon wave, which ended with the French Revolution and its aftermath.
It is noted that during the “decentralization” (collapse) phases of the cycles, conditions were not uniform, instead exhibiting particular periods of acute crisis – around 1360 and the 1420s for the Hundred Years War, the 1590s and circa 1650 after the end of the Capetian wave, and 1790 and the revolutions of 1830 and 1848 after the Bourbon wave. These may indicate a first order cycle of relatively rapid feedback, with a period of two generations – after an episode of especially destructive instability, the generation that experienced it seeks greater stability at any cost; but the next generation that follows, lacking this experience, courts a return of instability (in other words, a “fathers and sons” cycle). This could possibly align with the low population/high population two-generation cycle mentioned earlier.
Turchin then goes on to examine the history of Russia, which had its genesis in the border between the woodlands and steppe grasslands of Eurasia, the former being populated largely by settled agriculturalists and the latter by nomadic pastoralists – which alone created a metaethnic frontier between the two, but was later intensified by the adoption of Christianity by the settled peoples and Islam by the nomads. The state of the Kievan Rus, which had its core in the Ukrainian region, was finally destroyed by the Mongol horde in the thirteenth century, which led to the area being abandoned by agriculturalists; while the northeastern borderland of the Rus, which was to become central Russia, was subjected to a metaethnic frontier of the highest possible intensity, 9 according to Turchin’s calculation. This intense pressure for solidarity led to the rise of the Principality of Moscow (Muscovy), which was faced with slave-raiding from the Khanates of Kazan and Crimea after the breakup of the Golden Horde, and confrontation with both a large Lithuanian state and the crusader states of the eastern Baltic. Russia thus remained a frontier state until the eighteenth century, when the Crimean Khanate was finally conquered, and Poland and Finland were acquired.
After the splintering of the Golden Horde in the mid-fifteenth century Muscovy commenced a long period of expansion, absorbing lands of the former Kievan Rus, and conquering the Khanates of Kazan, Astrakhan, and Siberia. Population grew rapidly, with the number of elites increasing faster still, but with this eventually came skyrocketing grain prices and tax rates. Thus the collapse phase of a secular cycle set in during the late sixteenth century, with a defeat being suffered in the Livonian War versus Poland-Lithuania and Sweden, accompanied by destructive internal instability during the Oprichnina years of elite strife, and followed by the Time of Troubles, which saw the rule of four Czars in rapid succession, and finally an interregnum.
Another expansion phase commenced during the mid-seventeenth century under the new Romanov dynasty. Rivals such as Sweden and the Ottoman Empire were defeated in the eighteenth century, while the Crimean Khanate and Poland were conquered. The rich, thinly populated black-earth lands that were acquired accommodated a huge increase in population, from perhaps 10 million in 1600 to 100 million by 1900. Thus Russia reached a peak in an extended expansion phase during the first half of the nineteenth century, while powers in the West (such as France) were still in decline. However, during the second half of the nineteenth century increasing population pressure caused food prices to rise and shortages to develop, which saw the beginning of Russia’s own decline after the Crimean War; while competing powers, on the other hand, had begun imperialist expansions. Russia’s collapse phase finally culminated in the revolutions of 1905 and 1917, and the ensuing civil war.
In the tenth and final chapter of Historical Dynamics Turchin summarizes the material presented in the earlier chapters, and concludes that an application of mathematical models to historical situations, combined with a comparison of various models, and empirical tests of model results, can in fact lead to a better understanding of why states rise and fall. (Thus it might be noted that a crucial insight – that the decline of a state requires negative feedback with a long lag time – was suggested by mathematics.) Turchin points out that an advantage of the dynamical systems approach is that it involves a serious consideration of the temporal scales involved, from human generations and two generation cycles, to secular cycles of 200-300 years, to the three to ten centuries required for incubation of sufficient solidarity for the formation of a large new empire at a metaethnic frontier.
In fact, it is suggested that the secular cycle appears to be a particularly appropriate for measuring the longevity of empires, for these typically endure for two or three such cycles, and suffer a final and fatal collapse at the end of a cycle, during a demographic structural crisis. Thus the Roman state experienced three cycles, the Republic, Principate and Dominate; the Frankish Empire two cycles, the Merovingian and Carolingian (and perhaps a third Ottonian/Salian); the French nation underwent Capetian, Valois, and Bourbon cycles before embarking on a fourth and current one; and Russia saw two cycles, Muscovy and Imperial/Romanov, before its revolution. China has seen a whole succession of cycles, such as East and West Han, then a long intercycle of fragmentation, followed by Early and Late Tang, another intercycle, Sung and Southern Sung, Mongol or Yuan Dynasty, and then Ming and Qing cycles.
Of course, as Turchin points out, any of the theories he has presented, such as the Metaethnic Frontier Theory, may be eventually superseded by newer ones that better explain the course of history. Further, that there are many areas of interest that require further investigation, such as the question of why world religions such as Christianity and Islam appear and spread (so important in the creation of empires); the nature of thalassocratic empires, which are sea-based rather than land-based, such as classical Athens, medieval Venice, and early modern Holland; and the relation of the cycles of agrarian empires, the main subject of interest in Historical Dynamics, to modern states – for although the economies of nations are no longer completely dependent on agriculture, the issue of elite overproduction may have a direct bearing on current conditions.
Finally, Turchin suggests a name for the modeling/empirical approach taken in his book, namely cliodynamics – taken from Clio, the classical Muse of History, and related to the earlier term “cliometrics”, the use of quantitative methods and mathematics to study economic history, or simply history itself. Cliodynamics would thus take the crucial data supplied by cliometrics and subject it to dynamical analysis, to create a better understanding of the rise and fall of states, and perhaps even the human condition in its historical aspect.
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Historical Dynamics presents the ideas that underlie all of Turchin’s further work – thus the extensive discussion of them above. His subsequent books expand upon these ideas, and often attempt to bring them to the attention of a general audience. Therefore less comprehensive summaries will be presented for these later books (worthy of interest though they certainly are), concentrating on the new material offered in them.
Historical Dynamics was followed in 2007 by War and Peace and War: The Rise and Fall of Empires, which largely reprises the ideas of metaethnic frontiers and secular cycles presented in the earlier volume, but in narrative form with much greater historical detail. The first part of the book is devoted to the rise of empires, and opens with the story of the development of the Russian nation (illustrated with fascinating accounts), describing its origin in an exceptionally intense metaethnic frontier that involved a struggle of several centuries against nomads of the Eurasian steppes. Turchin then goes on to compare the Russian case with the experience on the American frontier, which involved an essentially genocidal conflict between native peoples and European colonists. Interestingly, he points out that the conflict may have furthered the American “melting pot” by maximizing the difference between the newcomers and the natives (who became detested “others”), while minimizing the differences between the nationalities of the European immigrants. Thus, in America, the ethnic divide between “us” and “them” was principally based on the insuperable barrier of race (which of course also applied to slaves imported from Africa as “them”), while in Russia the most important divide was due to religion, between Orthodox Christianity and the Islamic faith of the steppe nomads – those who converted to Christianity could effectively become Russian.
War and Peace and War then proceeds to describe the process by which new empires came to form on the frontiers of the Roman Empire, after its collapse – not only in the west, arising from the amalgamation of Germanic tribes, as outlined at some length – but also in the east. Thus, though the Byzantine Empire called itself “Roman” (like the Holy Roman Empire), and has sometimes been portrayed as a decayed relic, it is described as actually being a new state in its own right, that rose on the old imperial frontier at a metaethnic fault line.
Next we are given a biography of Ibn Khaldun, and his concept of “asabiya” is discussed. This is followed by the story of the emergence of Islam, and its crucial importance in creating solidarity among its followers, thereby helping to fuse warring desert tribes into an Arab caliphate. Turchin then turns to a more general consideration of collective action in social groups, putting forward, in some detail, a history of ideas that have been advanced in that regard. Of special interest is the concept of “moralists” who ensure that cooperation prevails – that is, people (perhaps a majority) who will cooperate for a common purpose so long as most do, and are prepared to punish those who don’t cooperate. Another key concept is that of symbols for defining cooperating groups, such as totems, flags, anthems, national ideology, and so on, which create an idea of widespread solidarity that goes far beyond interpersonal contact, and thus permit very large groups to exist.
It is in the sixth chapter of War and Peace and War that the rise of the Roman Empire is considered, first as a regional state that grew up at the frontier between the Latins and Etruscans, then as a great power than came into being at an intense metaethnic fault line with the Celtic Gauls, becoming what might be called a “society organized for war”. Again, the long conflict with the Gauls maximized the difference between them and the Mediterranean peoples they faced, while minimizing the difference between the Romans and other civilized states of Italy, which encouraged the latter to join with the Romans against the common enemy. The importance of solidarity within Rome itself is discussed, with the richest one percent of the early Republic having perhaps 10 to 20 times the wealth of the average citizen, which was remarkably low for any sizable society, even in comparison with contemporary America, for which the ratio is around 200 to 1 (though by the time of the Roman Empire’s collapse, the difference may have soared to as much as 200,000 to 1). The early Republic’s policy of incorporating other states of Italy into itself is contrasted with the behavior of Sparta and Athens, which, in the absence of an intense frontier of long standing (the incursions of Persia being quickly repulsed), simply exploited the other Greeks that they conquered or dominated, who of course revolted at the first opportunity.
Part one of War and Peace and War then closes with a discussion of the rise of great powers on the frontiers of the Carolingian Empire: first Spain, at an intense frontier with Islam, which became a leading empire after the Reconquista; then France, whose northern region, at a metaethnic fault line between Franks and Bretons and Northmen, came to be the core of a great nation; next Prussia, which rose in the wake of a Drang nach Osten of Germans against Slavic tribes east of the Elbe; and finally Habsburg Austria, which was molded into an empire at a frontier with the nomadic invaders of the Hungarian plains. It is noteworthy that the expansions of these new nations were often decentralized, long term efforts by locals, rather than something directed by a central authority. In other words, they had become, like Rome, societies organized for war.
In connection with the ascent of the new Western powers, an explanation is offered for the failure of any successor to the Carolingian Empire to come into being, as a single united realm of Europe’s peoples: the “centrifugal” orientation of the states which formed on the Carolingian frontiers, expanding away from the old core as they also came to fight among themselves, having no common enemy – with the old center disintegrating into a collection of petty German principalities. This is contrasted with the situation of China, whose regional power centers continuously had a common enemy in the form of the nomad empires of the east Asian plains, which encouraged them to unite in opposition to the nomads, forming a succession of “universal” Chinese states.
Whereas the first part of War and Peace and War dealt with the rise of empires (through the lens of metaethnic frontier theory), part two goes on to the next phase, their fall (as explained by secular cycles). Medieval France and England are the first subjects to be examined in their various turns of fortune. Between 1100 and 1300, as the West ascended to new heights in the wake of the Carolingian collapse, the population of England almost tripled, and that of France more than tripled. In line with demographic structural theory, however, this tremendous growth eventually produced serious problems. Forests were felled to create more arable land, and improvements were made to agricultural techniques, such as the replacement of two field with three field crop systems; even so, food production failed to keep pace with the burgeoning population, resulting in plummeting conditions of life for the common people, who became vulnerable to any further deterioration in their marginal existence. Thus unfavorable weather at the beginning of the fourteenth century, which caused a series of harvest failures, was followed by terrible famines, a tragedy succeeded by the onslaught of the Black Death.
At the same time, many elites of the West enjoyed advantageous conditions during the thirteenth century – falling wages for an oversupply of workers provided cheap labor, and rising rents greater income. Yet the rapidly growing number of elites eventually produced problems for them too, as competition between them intensified for limited sources of wealth and position, made all the more serious by a reversal in their fortunes (rising labor costs, falling rents) after the Black Death. In France competing groups coalesced into hostile factions, their opposition erupting into open fighting during the Hundred Years War – one faction or another would actually invite English power into the fray. As a result France was devastated, with much of it coming under English rule at various times. The reduction in population pressure produced by the Black Death brought about rising wages and falling food costs for French commoners, at least during relatively peaceful intervals, but the general violence and destruction of the Hundred Years War prevented any rise in their numbers. Nevertheless, a drastic reduction in the number of French elites caused by intense fighting and a falling birth rate finally reduced the motivation for conflict between them, permitted the recovery of the state, and helped bring about the end of the war – after which, in the mid-fifteenth century, the population of France began to steadily increase once more.
In England the story was much the same at first, since the same factors of population pressure applied. However, during the Hundred Years War it was able to effectively “export” some of its excess elites to France, which helped to mitigate conflict between them, to a certain extent. With the end of the war, though, this pressure valve disappeared, and the result was the episode of deadly elite strife that became known as the Wars of the Roses. Thus the population of England only began to recover at the beginning of the sixteenth century, after the political instability following in the wake of the Black Death, and open internal warfare, had finally ceased, accompanied by a sharp fall in the number of elites.
In Chapter 10 of War and Peace and War an important cause of the fall of empires is examined, in the form of inequality – which not only incites class conflict between commoners and elites, but also conflict within the ranks of commoners and elites themselves, thus bringing about a general fall in solidarity. Yet in spite of the great importance of inequality and the complexity of its effects, it seems that its sources can be relatively simple. One such source is described by Turchin as the “Matthew Principle”, after a passage in the New Testament – that possession of wealth tends to increase opportunities to amass further wealth, while lack of wealth reduces such opportunities; thus, there is an overall tendency for the rich to get richer, while the poor get poorer.
In an agrarian society, the principal source of wealth is land, and a model is considered in which a fixed amount of land is initially divided equally among families. If equal shares of land are then inherited by the individual offspring of each family, the shares for the children of a large family will be much smaller than those for a family with few children, and substantial inequality will have already arisen in the first generation after the original. If primogeniture is the custom, in which the eldest son inherits all the land and the other children none, then inequality will be further increased; and the tendency of better-off individuals to marry others who are better-off will tend to increase inequality as well. A factor that powerfully influences the trajectory of inequality in the model is population density, the ratio of available workers of the land to the amount of land itself. If the density is low, wages will be high and rents low, due to plentiful land and few workers – thus a family wealthy in land, with more than it can work itself, will not receive a substantial advantage for it. However, if the population density is high, then wages will be low and rents high, so that a family with a lot of land can derive a great profit by hiring laborers to work it, the profit only increased by the fact that in such a situation the price of food, the produce of the land, will also tend to be high. Finally, in a high population density environment those poor in land will not have enough to feed themselves from it, while any wages they can earn will be low, so they may be forced to sell what land they have (or, more likely, lose it after falling into debt) to those who are already rich in it. In such circumstances inequality will obviously skyrocket.
Such are the results of the model, which does seem to explain how extreme inequality could arise in historical situations for which sufficient data exists for purposes of quantification. The example of England in the year 1300 is presented, around which time a high point in its population had been reached. Not only was there a huge difference in circumstances between the low and high classes, but wealth within each class had become stratified. Thus about 3 percent of peasants had come to have substantially more than 30 acres of land, while 20 percent had 30 acres, enough to produce a surplus, 30 percent had 15 acres, enough for bare subsistence, and almost half had even less than that. Interestingly, similar forces seemed to be at work among the elite, for the incomes of the greatest nobles had increased by perhaps an order of magnitude, compared to a century before – wealth was becoming ever more concentrated in the hands of the wealthiest. The chapter goes on to discuss how inequality then fell in England after the population collapse caused by famine and plague and the decline of elites in the wake of the Wars of the Roses; only to begin increasing again, with population, after 1500. Finally, similar patterns for France are presented.
Part two of War and Peace and War then closes with a discussion of the secular cycles of the Roman Republic and Empire, and the Empire’s fall. These matters are presented with a great deal of illuminating historical detail.
The book’s third and final part begins by considering the possibility of a new science of history, based on an approach that deals with large collections of individuals in a quantitative manner, much as the science of physics deals with the behavior of gases as large collections of individual molecules – behavior that is quite predictable in the aggregate. Of course, human beings are not as uniform in their characteristics as molecules of a given substance, and unusual individuals can have a discernable effect on the course of events. Still, it would seem that predictable patterns of behavior for large populations can be seen in history. As quoted from The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte of Karl Marx: “Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.” What Turchin calls the science of “cliodynamics” is a framework that deals with the making of history by populations in the aggregate, under already existing circumstances that inexorably influence their actions.
Declining solidarity or social capital in our own times is then examined as an issue of cliodynamics, first in southern Italy (where the decline has long been severe), and then in the contemporary United States. In the U.S. there has been a steady deterioration of involvement in civic organizations and social interaction in general, along with decreasing trust in institutions of government and media. Coupled with this is persistent inflation, rising economic inequality, and a credentialing crisis produced by increasingly expensive education. Though it is made clear that there are many differences between modern societies and the pre-industrial ones that the book has discussed, it is seen that these trends might indicate the onset of the disintegrative phase of a secular cycle.
War and Peace and War ends with the examination of imperial structures in our own time, and the conflicts they are involved in, particularly between Islam on the one hand and Russia and the West on the other. In this regard, Turchin makes a fascinating prediction (as of 2006): “If the Russians succeed in reincorporating the Chechens within the Russian federation, my guess is that Russia will regain its status as world empire.” He seems to have been remarkably accurate in this assessment (though he made no explicit mention of the possibility of a coming conflict between the West and a resurgent Russia). The possibility for the internet and mobile phones to have a positive effect on the course of world events is also discussed, but almost two decades after the book’s publication, their effects by no means appear to have been uniformly positive.
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2009 saw the publication of Peter Turchin’s next book, Secular Cycles, co-authored with Sergey A. Nefedov. As its title implies, it concerns itself with the idea of secular cycles that had earlier been described in Historical Dynamics, examining eight cases of these in some detail.
The first chapter of Secular Cycles once again presents the theoretical background of the cycles. The Malthusian effects of population change are described, but it is also noted that a purely Malthusian approach cannot explain certain observed phenomena, such as the different social courses that eastern and western Europe followed after the demographic crash caused by the Black Death (with serfdom disappearing in the west, while strengthening in the east); or the fact that population did not immediately rebound in France and England after the Black Death had run its course, instead taking a century or more to begin to recover.
The demographic structural theory of Jack Goldstone is offered as a possible solution to such riddles, with its treatment of the effect of demographic changes on the structures of society and the state, and the relative conditions of elites and commoners. A population of commoners that is high in relation to resources, translated into Malthusian conditions of low wages and high rents, may create a “golden age” for elites in a position to exploit such a situation; however, these favorable conditions will also tend to cause elite numbers to rise, eventually resulting in intensifying competition – and conflict – between them over their own resources. So long as elites remain unified, they can usually suppress whatever disorders (such as peasant rebellions) that might arise among disaffected commoners, but when strife develops among themselves, a breakdown of society, perhaps accompanied by revolution, may occur. The Hundred Years War and Wars of the Roses can be seen as episodes of such elite strife, which tended to prevent any general resumption of population growth until they finally ended, accompanied by a drastic fall in elite numbers. As for the Black Death itself, the elite “golden age” that preceded it fueled an expansion of trade, as demand for exotic items and foreign luxuries increased; but this trade also increased the possibility of importing a plague from distant lands, and the rising wages and falling rents that followed in the wake of the Black Death’s population crash only exacerbated elite strife in the West.
Chapter one of Secular Cycles also introduces a more detailed description of the structure of a secular cycle, dividing it into integrative and disintegrative phases, with the integrative phase in turn divided into expansion and stagflation sub-phases, and the disintegrative phase into crisis and depression sub-phases. The integrative phase is characterized by unified elites, a strong state, internal stability, and increasing population; during its expansion sub-phase population growth is vigorous and prices and wages are relatively stable, while during the stagflation sub-phase prices are rising and wages falling, with population growth slowing as the maximum “carrying capacity” of the land is approached – leading to deteriorating conditions for commoners, but a “golden age” for elites. The disintegrative phase, on the other hand, is characterized by divided elites (having grown to an excessive number and fighting over limited resources), a weak state, internal disorder, and population stagnation or decline; its crisis sub-phase may feature pandemics, severe famine, state collapse, and/or civil war, typically accompanied by a drastic fall in population, while the during the depression sub-phase excess elites engage in endemic civil warfare until their numbers are sufficiently reduced to mitigate competition between them.
Chapters two through nine then proceed to the treatment of eight secular cycles: England’s Plantagenet Cycle of 1150-1485 and Tudor-Stuart Cycle of 1485-1730, France’s Capetian Cycle of 1150-1450 and Valois Cycle of 1450-1660, Rome’s Republican Cycle of 350-30 BC and Principate Cycle of 30 BC-385 AD, and Russia’s Muscovy Cycle of 1460-1620 and Romanov Cycle of 1620-1922. All of these took place in agrarian societies (with the late Romanov Cycle beginning to be affected by industrialization), for which sufficient data existed for useful quantitative analysis.
Of special interest is the effect that the Second Agricultural Revolution of the seventeenth century had on the Tudor-Stuart Cycle. Among other innovations, it saw the introduction of crop rotation in place of fallowing, the result being greatly increased food and animal fodder production. This, in turn, reduced population pressure, accompanied by rising wages and relatively stable food prices – in spite of the fact that population did not experience a general decrease after mid-century, but only stabilized. Thus the drastic fall in population typically seen in the latter part of a secular cycle did not take place, replaced by a fall in population pressure through other means; which also helped to bring about a normalization of the political situation with the Restoration, after the crisis of the English Revolution. This illustrates the point that Malthusian effects depend on the relation of population to available resources, not on population alone.
The chapter on Rome’s Republican Cycle notes the interesting possibility of an earlier secular cycle that preceded it during 650-350 BC, though the fragmentary data available prevent it from being much more than a reasonable hypothesis. The unusual nature of the Roman state during the Republic is also discussed, in that it scarcely existed apart from the elites of the senatorial class – to a great degree the state was not an independent agent, distinct from elites, and so its fiscal condition or bankruptcy did not play a typical part in the secular cycle. Another modifying factor in the Republic’s cycle was its staggering territorial expansion, going from a city-state to much of the extent of the Empire that followed, which often permitted elites to substitute loot gained from conquest for taxes or rent extracted from commoners.
The final chapter of Secular Cycles opens with a discussion of its goal, which was to determine how well demographic structural theory described the histories of the societies it studied, as measured by four primary variables: population in relation to carrying capacity, the status of elites, the condition of the state, and socio-political stability. It is concluded that, within the limits of the data available, the agreement between theory and history was generally quite good, although one notable surprise developed, concerning the ability of the state to collect revenue during a disintegrative phase. Theory predicted the inability of the state to raise such revenue, but in reality it sometimes did, though typically not for long, resulting in wild swings of the state’s situation. There were also a few crises that developed in the studied periods that were not of a demographic structural nature (such as Rome’s “year of the three emperors” of 68-69), but these were also not of the same seriousness or duration, evidently arising from exceptional circumstances.
The book then ends with a discussion of the possibility of developing general laws of historical dynamics. Given the condition that such laws would describe fundamental forces underlying the course of history, but not predict specific or exceptional events (due to the unpredictability of influences such as personality and exogenous factors), it is offered that such laws are indeed possible, and that three such have in fact been demonstrated for agrarian societies: the result of falling wages and rising prices and rents in the Malthusian situation of a population increase not accommodated by a similar increase in production; elite exploitation of such a Malthusian situation, leading to an increase in their number and consumption levels, that also comes to exceed available resources, causing competition and conflict among them; and finally the rise of disintegrative instability, caused partly by overpopulation in general and a fiscal crisis of the state, but primarily by increasingly destructive conflict among an excessive population of elites.
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Peter Turchin’s Ultrasociety: How 10,000 Years of War Made Humans the Greatest Cooperators on Earth, published in 2016, takes up the question of how and why very large societies (“ultrasocieties”) have arisen, proposing that it was due to a process of cultural evolution ultimately driven by forces of warfare.
The book begins with a description of how the size of human societies has increased over time, going from foraging bands of hunter-gatherers to chiefdoms, then to archaic states, and finally to large nations and empires. It is noted that the development of agriculture was a necessary condition for this increase, as it permitted a much higher density of population; however, it also submitted that it was not sufficient, as it does not account for why the institutional costs of increasingly larger societies have been borne – substantial costs such as central government, the military, organized religion, and so on. The theory of cultural multilevel selection is advanced as an explanation, in that it presents a mechanism of competition between societies, those with more effective institutions crowding out or eliminating others – often through war. In this regard reference is made to a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science in 2013: War, space, and the evolution of Old World complex societies, by Turchin, Currie, Turner, and Gavrilets.
In the paper a mathematical model was described that dealt with the growth of large societies in the landmasses of Eurasia and Africa during the era after 1500 BC (when horse-based warfare involving chariots and cavalry began to be important) but before 1500 AD (after which gunpowder warfare became important). In the model, the landmasses were divided into 100 km wide squares, with each square classified as desert, steppe, mountain, coast, riverine, or cultivated – the squares where agriculture was practiced as of 1500 BC were identified, and the historical spread of agriculture over time taken into account. Each of the agricultural squares was assumed to be occupied by a hypothetical community that had a chance of possessing “ultrasociality” traits that could contribute to increased cooperation within it (a trait would equal 1 if present or 0 if absent). Military technology traits could also be possessed – a trait equal to 1 was initially present in every agricultural community adjacent to a steppe square, due to the development of horse-based warfare by steppe nomads; this military technology then slowly diffused outward to other communities. The agricultural communities could attack one another, and if successful assimilate the target into a larger territorial unit, the chance of success depending on size and ultrasociality traits possessed, with mountain terrain giving an advantage to the defender. Further, it was possible that a conquered community would be socially assimilated, with its ultrasociality traits changed to those of the attacker, depending on the military technology traits possessed by the attacker, as these could tend to make victory more decisive. Finally, there was a chance that an “empire” of conquered communities would disintegrate, a chance which increased with the size of the empire and decreased with ultrasociality traits possessed.
The model was run 20 times for each of three periods, the periods being one millennium in length, and the averaged result at the end of each period compared to the actual historical situation. For the first period of 1500-500 BC the model accurately predicted the rise of large states in Mesopotamia, Egypt, and North China; with state formation spreading to the Mediterranean area, India, and South China during the second period of 500 BC-500 AD; and further spreading to northern and eastern Europe, Japan, and Southeast Asia during the final period of 500-1500 AD. The correlation of the model to history was by no means perfect, but it did indicate where large states would arise with an amazing degree of accuracy. It also demonstrated a possible connection between the formation of increasingly large states and the spread of more intensive, horse-based military technology.
Returning to the book, Ultrasociety then proceeds to discuss the issue of violence in early foraging and agricultural societies – increasingly, forensic archaeology has revealed that death by violence was much more common in those societies than in our own today. It is suggested that the cause of this fall in the rate of violence has been due to the increase in the size of societies that has taken place over time, since a large society must encourage cooperation and maintain internal peace in order to retain cohesion (and thus continue its very existence), while such warfare as does occur will most often take place on borders far from the society’s core. But paradoxically, it is advanced that organized violence itself has encouraged the growth in the size of societies – in war, victory favors the big battalions, and the bigger the society, the bigger the battalions can be. And in a further, double paradox, cooperation is a factor that permits greater effectiveness in war.
Concerning cooperation, sports teams and the infamous Enron corporation and are presented in the book as illustrations of its relationship with competition in organized groups. As Turchin later put it in an interview with David Sloan Wilson:
“A key theoretical insight that we gained studying models of multilevel selection is that competition between groups (including whole societies) promotes cooperation, while competition within groups/societies destroys it.”
In other words, competition between sports teams promotes cooperation within each team – better “teamwork” will increase the likelihood of victory over other teams – while competition within a given team tends to destroy cooperation, since the team members will primarily seek to promote only their own success. Likewise, extremely intense competition within Enron itself helped fuel the fraud and dysfunction which eventually brought it down. This idea of the relationship between cooperation and competition is developed as a product of the theory of cultural multilevel selection, which holds that traits can be transmitted culturally as well as genetically, and that selection for these traits can act on both individuals and groups (in contrast to the idea of the “selfish gene” which involves only the genetic traits of individuals, and perhaps biological relatives).
Non-cooperative individuals avoid the costs of cooperation, and may thereby gain a competitive advantage over cooperators; however, a group that has a high proportion of cooperators will tend to be more successful in competition with a group that has a low proportion of cooperators, and of course all the individuals in the groups will be affected. Thus selection for a trait of cooperation will tend to be governed by the relative strengths of the consequences of competition for individuals and groups. Variation between groups is another factor that is important; if there is a large difference between the amount of cooperation within different groups, then selection for a trait of cooperation will be strengthened, as high cooperation groups will be that much more successful than others. Such variation between groups is promoted by culture and its transmission, since the culture of a group settles on a “norm” that is adopted by most individuals, or assimilated by newcomers – and the cultural norms for various groups can be quite different, the differences perhaps even being emphasized to distinguish themselves from the “others”.
Ultrasociety next goes on to consider projectile weapons in regard to cooperative behavior, from thrown objects (humans are vastly better at throwing than other simians) to bow weapons to firearms. Egalitarianism promotes cooperation, and projectile weapons (like the Colt .45) are “equalizers” which reduce the importance of brute strength in confrontations, and thus assist in the control of overbearing and formidable individuals, even to the extent of their elimination. The fact that projectile weapons facilitate ambushes also promotes the formation of coalitions, in order to forestall “backshooting” through warning, mutual defense, or threat of vengeance. Finally, the development of projectile weapons has had a profound effect on warfare, as attested by the success of English foot archers, Mongol and Parthian horse archers, and the complete domination established by ever more effective firearms and artillery. The principle of Lanchester’s Square Law is eventually brought up, which describes how projectile weapons multiply numerical superiority on the battlefield, since they can, in theory, be brought to bear at a distance by all of the forces present, while melee weapons can only be brought to bear by forces in actual contact. Thus the effect of superior numbers – produced by a society of superior size – will be multiplied.
Another factor that determines success in warfare is the effectiveness of military leadership. If a temporary coalition of social groups is formed to produce superior numbers on the battlefield, the coalition’s military force would be most effective under a single, unified command exercised by a “war leader”, as often seen in history. However, such a war leader may be reluctant to surrender authority after the war is over, and the threat that encouraged the coalition to form has ended. Further, the followers of a war leader may also wish to see the leader’s authority continue. Thus, over time, successive war leaders may come to extend their authority until that authority, and the coalition it presides over, finally become permanent. Such is the mechanism by which the first archaic states could have formed from amalgamations of tribes or chiefdoms, led by absolute rulers who claimed power through divine right or even as gods on earth (but whose authority was actually of military origin) – states of despotic hierarchy that often featured institutions of slavery and human sacrifice. In actual fact, the example of the amalgamation of Germanic tribes during the Roman Empire is presented in the book, the tribes forming periodic coalitions under war leaders in opposition to the Empire, until, after a period of centuries, the Merovingian Kingdom was finally produced.
However, the evolution of societies continued after the emergence of archaic states. The concept of the “Axial Age” (first proposed by Karl Jaspers) is introduced, a period beginning around 500 BC in which new religions and moral ideas became important: Zoroastrianism, Judaism and its descendants Christianity and Islam, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, and Greek philosophy. It is suggested that the principles of social justice and egalitarianism that these ethical systems embodied, in place of sheer despotism, were essential to the promotion of cohesion and order within large new empires (much larger than archaic states and generally multi-ethnic in makeup), such as the Persian, Roman, Mauryan, and Chinese empires. It is also advanced that these new empires had, in turn, come about in reaction to an increased intensity in warfare that largely stemmed from innovations introduced by steppe nomads, namely cavalry and composite bows (as modeled in the PNAS paper described previously). Such innovations produced a great advantage in mobility for raiders, who could strike at will. On the other hand, this advantage could be offset by increased size for the defending empire, since its area (and military resources) increased as the square of the length of the borders to be defended (which could even include “long walls”, such as the Great Wall of China). Thus, in yet another paradox, developments in human ethics, made necessary by the increase in the size of societies, may have been indirectly induced by developments in warfare.
The final chapter of Ultrasociety features a long discussion of Steven Pinker’s book The Better Angels of Our Nature, describing what are seen as its merits and faults, and criticizing in particular its dismissal of the idea of cultural evolution. The chapter then closes with a proposal to employ scientific methods to investigate human cooperation and the prospects for a better society, essential to which would be improved data. To this end, Turchin describes the data collecting project he has helped institute, the Seshat Global History Databank (named for the Egyptian deity of scribes), which aims to gather and organize as much quantitative historical data as can be found. An ambitious goal, and surely a very useful one for a scientific approach to history.
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Peter Turchin’s next book, Ages of Discord: A Structural-Demographic Analysis of American History, appeared in 2016 – a year which also saw, as it happened, the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States. Indeed, the book’s purpose, as stated in its opening pages, was to present an analysis of the increasingly serious challenges facing the nation.
Part One of Ages of Discord discusses the importance of history – in particular, a scientifically based and quantitative history – for understanding the issues of the present, and in that regard once again introduces the principles behind demographic structural theory and secular cycles. However, it then goes on to reformulate, for industrial societies, the three general demographic structural laws for agrarian societies that were developed at the end of the book Secular Cycles.
The first, “Neo-Malthusian” law of Secular Cycles stated that a population increase unaccompanied by a similar increase in agricultural production would lead to falling wages and rising prices and rents (in other words, popular immiseration). In an agrarian society, production is essentially determined by available land and incremental improvements in farming techniques, while in an industrial society the situation is much more complex, being dependent on such factors as technological advances, investment, demand for goods and services, immigration, and international trade. Nevertheless, in accordance with the basic principle of supply and demand, it is proposed that the Neo-Malthusian law can be restated as a “Labor Oversupply Principle” which also would apply to industrial societies: that when the supply of labor outstrips demand (due to whatever cause, which might include deindustrialization or large scale immigration), then wages will fall, and the living standards of the common people will fall with it.
The second general law of Secular Cycles stated that exploitation by elites of a Neo-Malthusian situation of falling wages and rising prices and rents (as employers, merchants, and landlords) would bring about an increase in both their number and consumption levels, which in turn would eventually cause their consumption to exceed available resources (derived from the common people), leading to competition and conflict among them. Growth in the elite population due to biological reproduction would be more important in pre-industrial times, but in both agrarian and industrial societies their numbers would be increased by capable or fortunate commoners who prove to be upwardly mobile, and in both societies their consumption levels would tend to rise, escalated by competition for status. Thus an “Elite Overproduction Principle” could be said to apply to industrial societies.
Finally, the third general law of Secular Cycles stated that agrarian societies would, after a time, tend to be subject to disintegrative instability, caused partly by overpopulation in general and a fiscal crisis of the state, but primarily by increasingly destructive conflict among an excessive population of elites. In an industrial society popular disaffection would arise from falling living standards due to labor oversupply, and there might also be a fiscal crisis of the state, but again the primary cause of disintegrative instability would be conflict among elites, since popular uprisings have little chance of success as long as elites remain unified. In particular, elite conflict would arise from agitation by disaffected elites (“counter-elites”) who have been unsuccessful in competition for limited resources and status. An “Instability Principle” could thus be formulated for industrial societies.
The remainder of Part One of Ages of Discord is devoted to developing and analyzing mathematical models for demographic structural processes, building upon principles developed earlier in Historical Dynamics.
In Part Two the situation of the United States during its history (1780-2010) is brought into focus, presenting an overview of the four fundamental variables of demographic structural theory: the general population, elites, the state, and socio-political instability.
The population dynamics of the United States before the closing of the frontier (around 1890) were primarily governed by two factors, the first being the fact that, in comparison to Europe, the nation was sparsely settled, so that endogenous population growth could be readily accommodated; and the second being periodic waves of mass immigration which could result in an oversupply of labor, particularly in the Northeast. The net endogenous population growth rate (immigration excluded) was quite high at about 3 percent per year in 1780, slowly fell over time to around 1 percent by the late 1930s, rebounded to close to 2 percent during the height of the “baby boom” of 1946-64, then resumed its decline to reach the lowest levels on record. On the other hand, immigration was low in the first decades of the U.S. as a nation, with around 2 percent of the population being foreign born, but then began to rapidly increase after 1830, maintaining a high level between 1860 and 1920 in which the proportion of foreign born approached 15 percent. After 1920, with the passage of legislation restricting immigration, it fell off rapidly, with the result that less than 5 percent of the population was foreign born by the end of the 1960s. Immigration then began to surge once more, in response to legislation liberalizing national policy, so that, including illegal immigration, the proportion of the foreign born population of the United States is once again at the highest levels attained during 1860-1920.
Another crucial factor for the general population is its well-being, which might be measured in both economic and biological terms. Real wages (adjusted for inflation) and relative wages (real wages divided by smoothed per capita GDP) are the economic factors of well-being presented in the book. Real wages increased fairly steadily until 1920, with a period of some stagnation between 1850-1880, then increased more rapidly until 1970, after which stagnation became very marked. Changes were even more evident for the factor of relative wages, which measures the proportion of total economic production that workers are getting (their slice of economic pie) – relative wages rose to a peak around 1830, then declined and fluctuated around a lower level until 1920, after which they rose to a new, higher peak in 1960, thereafter falling off again to older levels. The biological measures of well-being presented are average stature of the population and life expectancy; stature began to decline for those born in the U.S. after 1830, reached a low point around 1890, then increased to reach a new high in 1960, after which it leveled off; while life expectancy fell from 1790 to 1850, stagnated until 1890, then steadily rose until recent years.
Correlating the various factors affecting the general population, it is proposed that trends in well-being in the United States can be roughly divided into four phases. During the first, from about 1780 to 1830, real wages tripled and relative wages more than doubled, the populace was relatively tall in stature and of a long life expectancy (compared to Europe), while immigration was low. The second phase, from around 1830 to the early twentieth century, saw growth in real wages, but decline and stagnation in the proportion of economic production going to workers (as measured by relative wages), and falling stature and life expectancy – in concert with a wave of mass immigration. In the third phase, from the early twentieth century to the 1960s, real wages, relative wages, stature, and life expectancy all increased dramatically, while immigration was considerably reduced. Finally, during the fourth phase following the 1960s, real wages stagnated, the portion of economic production going to workers plummeted, and stature leveled off, though life expectancy continued to increase (until affected by the recent epidemic and “deaths of despair” among hard hit sectors of the population) – a period which also saw immigration increase once more to the high levels of the nineteenth century. Thus labor oversupply, as heavily influenced by mass immigration, appears to correlate with depressed levels of well-being for the general population of the U.S., as demographic structural theory would predict.
Elites are defined in Ages of Discord as being the small fraction of the population in which power is concentrated. For the United States, reference is made to the work of William Domhoff (in particular, his book Who Rules America?), in which the dominant power network is considered to be economic, with the corporate community ruling indirectly through lobbying, campaign finance, and appointments to key government positions (the “revolving door”), while maintaining ideological support for its interests through ownership of mass media, and support for foundations and policy discussion organizations.
The wealth of American elites, in terms of the portion of national wealth possessed by richest one percent of the population, steadily rose from roughly 17 percent in 1790 to about 44 percent in 1929, thereafter fell to around 20 percent at the end of the 1970s, and since has climbed back to the neighborhood of 35 percent. The relative number of elites – the proportion of the population who might be considered to be wealthy – appears to have exhibited similar trends.
In Jack Goldstone’s work, discussed previously, demand for advanced degrees in education was treated as a proxy measurement for elite competition. In Ages of Discord pursuit of law careers and degrees in the U.S. are presented as a similar proxy, supplemented by demand for MBA (Master of Business Administration) degrees in the most recent era. Until 1870 the number of lawyers in relation to the population was relatively low and constant, with most of these having no formal degree. After this pursuit of law degrees began to climb rapidly, and the years following 1970 saw the proportion of lawyers in the population surge to new highs, accompanied by a swift rise in the number of those holding MBA degrees. Moreover, in the face of this increasing demand, the cost of law and MBA degrees, and university degrees in general, has skyrocketed since 1980 – in terms of relation to average worker wages, exceeding the high levels last seen during the Gilded Age after the Civil War.
An interesting insight into sources of elite competition and disaffection is provided by starting salaries for law school graduates. In 2010, these starting salaries were distinctly bifurcated, with a very large number of graduates averaging around 50,000 dollars per year, and somewhat over 18 percent at 160,000 dollars per year. In other words, there were a limited number of “winners” and a larger number of “losers” among those gaining law degrees, the effect being especially crucial in light of the average debt of a law school student, at around 100,000 dollars.
Political polarization is next advanced as a proxy measure of elite fragmentation, as derived from average differences in the voting records of the two major parties in Congress from 1789 on. As thus measured, polarization fell from 1800 to an extraordinarily low level in the 1820s (the “Era of Good Feelings”), then began to rise after 1830, to eventually reach a new high in the early twentieth century. After this it fell again, reaching a low during the New Deal and World War II. only to rise once more thereafter, accelerating after 1980 to reach the highest levels on record. Thus were produced two periods of lower than average polarization, 1815-1850 and 1930-1980, along with two periods of higher than average polarization, 1850-1930 and 1980-present.
Overall then, in terms of demographic structural theory, it is suggested that labor oversupply (heavily influenced by immigration) led to elite overproduction (indicated by wealth inequality), ending in elite competition (proxied by professional degrees) and fragmentation (as seen in polarization). Additionally, the well-being of the general population and elite overproduction would appear to be inversely related – when the well-being of the population reached new lows, the wealth and number of elites tended to reach new highs.
In regard to the state as a fundamental variable of demographic structural theory, it is noted that the national government of the United States was very limited in size and function during the nineteenth century – its revenues were generally around 2 percent of Gross Domestic Product (mostly provided by tariffs intended to protect manufacturing), exceeding that level only in time of war (which was considered to be a primary business of the state). Thus the solvency of the state played no significant demographic structural role.
However, the situation of the state changed drastically after the onset of the Great Depression, with the national government taking on a welfare function for its citizens with the New Deal, and a permanent, hugely increased military function that was initiated by the Second World War, followed by the assertion of hegemonic power afterward. Thus government revenues rose rapidly, reaching over 20 percent of Gross Domestic Product by the year 2000, an increase of an order of magnitude. Unfortunately, though, measures of state solvency have not lately kept pace with revenue. U.S. public debt, as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product, declined to a low of around 31 percent in the early 1980s, but then rose to over 100 percent by 2012 (and over 120 percent in 2024) – which, for the United States, is unprecedented for a period without any major wars, but commonly seen in the stagflation sub-phase of a secular cycle.
Further, it is observed that the legitimacy of the state, as measured in polls of the population, has not continued at a high level. In answer to the question “How much of the time do you trust the government in Washington?” those replying “just about always” or “most of the time” peaked at around 77 percent in 1965, but have since declined to 26 percent in 2013 (and 22 percent in 2024). Another indication of state legitimacy and social cohesion might be seen in the tax rates on top incomes, which reached over 90 percent during World War II, and continued at 90 percent from 1950 to 1963, rates which are unimaginable today.
Socio-political instability is the final variable of demographic structural theory to be examined in Part Two of Ages of Discord, as measured by exceptional incidents of violence within the United States itself (but not war with other nations or ordinary criminal homicide) – including riots, lynchings, assassinations, domestic terrorism, mass shootings, labor and political violence, and full scale civil war. After 1780 such violence began to decline, to reach very low level by 1820, then steadily rose to reach an extremely high peak in the 1860s (the Civil War). Thereafter it fell to settle at a still elevated level, which continued through the 1920s (peaking during the Red Scare of 1919-21), after which it drastically decreased to reach a low during the 1940s and 50s, only to increase again after 1960. Interestingly, this overall pattern also appears to have 50 year bigenerational (“fathers and sons”) cycles superimposed on it.
Part Three of Ages of Discord proposes that the United States underwent a complete secular cycle during the years 1780-1930, with an integrative phase from approximately 1780 to 1850, and a disintegrative phase from 1850 to 1930. It also attempts to analyze the relationships between the demographic structural variables discussed above.
During the first part of the integrative phase, from 1780 to the 1830s, population expanded rapidly into sparsely settled lands, igniting conflicts with American Indians which nevertheless encouraged increasing solidarity among settlers of European descent. Further, immigration was low, eliminating the possibility of labor oversupply. So far as elites were concerned, there existed ample opportunities for their advancement, not only through robust economic growth but also in government – the number of states, and therefore senators and state legislatures, doubled between 1790 and 1837, while the number of members of the House of Representatives quadrupled. Thus arose the “Era of Good Feelings”.
The second part of the integrative phase saw a trend reversal, as immigration began to accelerate during the 1830s, while population density on the eastern seaboard markedly increased, leading to the rise of labor oversupply. The number and wealth of elites were rapidly increasing, but at the same time the addition of new states slowed, restricting the growth of government positions. Further, divisive sectionalism became an increasingly important issue. A majority of the nation’s wealthiest individuals resided in the South, who made their money through a slaveholding plantation economy, and had a dominating influence on the national government. However, a new class of elites was arising in the North who gained their wealth through industry, and favored high tariffs and funding of internal improvements to promote manufacturing – while Southern elites wanted low tariffs and had no interest in internal improvements. The rapidly expanding class of Northern elites resented the domination of government by the South (especially so as the North had a much larger free population), and though the number of abolitionists who saw slavery as a moral evil was small, opposition to the “slave power” of the South was much more prevalent.
Turchin then goes on to construct a mathematical model for antebellum America that portrays the dynamics of its basic demographic structural variables. It is noteworthy that the model indicates that after a rapid increase that began in 1820, average elite incomes peaked around 1840, then fell as the number of elites outpaced the resources available to them – though top elite incomes continued to go up, in an environment of increasingly intense competition. The model also considers Political Stress Indicators (PSIs, as originally developed by Jack Goldstone), and one component of these, the Elite Mobilization Potential (a measure of elite competition and conflict), begins accelerating in 1840 and then skyrockets after 1850, yielding a PSI which corresponds fairly closely with observed incidents of political instability and sectional conflict, finally going “off the chart” for open warfare.
The proposed disintegrative phase of the nation’s first secular cycle, from 1850 to 1930, obviously commenced with increasingly intense instability that finally exploded in the Civil War. This instability involved not only sectional rivalry – the 1850s also saw the rise of widespread opposition to immigration, which culminated in the formation of the Know-Nothing party. However, the anti-immigrant movement eventually subsided because it did not have sufficient support from elites, due to the fact that immigration supplied industrialists with cheap labor. Instead, many Northern elites rallied to the new Republican party, which channeled popular discontent into opposition to the Southern “slave power”.
After the Civil War the nation’s political situation was completely transformed, with the South having been defeated and devastated, and Northern elites now dominating the government. Domestic instability decreased, but nevertheless remained at an elevated level compared to the first part of the earlier integrative phase. Contributing to such instability was political conflict during the Reconstruction after the war, labor violence involving suppression of strikes (which had their ultimate source in labor oversupply), and incidents of racial violence. Elites attempted to consolidate their position, and control competition among themselves, finally turning to the government to rationalize the economy with such measures as the Federal Trade Commission. Nevertheless, instability appeared to peak during the Red Scare period of 1919-21, which saw labor violence that featured pitched battles in the West Virginia Mine War (at Matewan and Blair Mountain); deadly race riots, which erupted in 20 cities during the Red Summer of 1919, followed by the Tulsa Riot of 1921, resulting in a total of 1300 deaths; and political terrorism in a wave of anarchist bombings in a number of cities and on Wall Street, which caused dozens of fatalities. In short, it appeared as if some sort of violent revolution might be possible.
Heightening elite anxiety during the Red Scare violence was the reality of the Bolshevik Revolution, which had already overturned the existing order in Russia, and held out the promise of doing so across the world, thus posing a direct threat to elite interests. In the United States, much of the threat of revolution appeared to come from immigrant socialists, communists, anarchists, and labor organizers (indeed, the anarchist bombing campaign had been conducted by aliens of Italian origin). So, in reaction, U.S. Attorney General Mitchell Palmer launched a series of raids, organized under J. Edgar Hoover, which targeted such immigrants, with 6000 being arrested and 556 ultimately deported (including Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman). However, an even more important reaction took the form of federal laws, passed in 1921 and 1924, that drastically restricted immigration altogether. Thus the state took action to protect collective elite interests from a perceived threat of revolution, even though high immigration favored a portion of elites with lower labor costs – this action being in direct contrast to the failure of the anti-immigrant Know-Nothing movement of the 1850s, which was largely abandoned by elites.
The fourth and final part of Ages of Discord examines the idea of a partial secular cycle for the United States that began around 1930 and continues to the present. The beginning of the cycle saw the onset of an integrative phase – the nation was entering the Great Depression at the time, but a trend reversal towards integration had already commenced decades earlier with the Progressive Era, the newly enacted laws restricting immigration worked against labor oversupply, and programs of the New Deal (foreshadowed by massive government intervention in the economy during the First World War) promised action to improve the collective situation of the people. The years following the Second World War saw an increasing standard of well-being for the nation’s population (as measured by real wages, relative wages, stature, and life expectancy), accompanied by low labor and political violence, reduced polarization, and high levels of social trust and cooperation: thus constituting what could be called a “Second Era of Good Feelings”.
After 1960, however, it is advanced that an opposing trend reversal began to be seen, and in coming years intensified, to finally lead to the beginning of a disintegrative phase around 1990. During this time most measures of the well-being of the general population stagnated or decreased, while elite fortunes rose, social trust and cooperation fell, and government debt eventually began to increase.
Turchin goes on to construct a mathematical model of this trend reversal, as had earlier been done for the antebellum era. Interestingly, it develops that labor supply began to outstrip demand after 1970 (thus leading to labor oversupply), due to the “baby boom” population bulge, increasing immigration, and women entering the workforce; further, that growth in demand for labor ceased altogether around 2000, while supply continued to increase. By taking into account factors for GDP per capita, the labor demand/supply ratio, and the national minimum wage, the mathematical model is able to predict changes in real wages that closely follow those actually observed during the entire period from 1930 to 2010 – an impressive accomplishment.
Where elites are concerned, Turchin’s model predicts that their number began to skyrocket after 1980, as the economy’s share of wages for the general population fell and elite incomes rose. This prediction is supported by data demonstrating that between 1983 and 2010 households with a net worth above 1 million dollars (in constant 1995 dollars) more than doubled, and above 10 million almost quadrupled. (Later data, from 2019, has those above 10 million increasing by a factor of over 10, though the total number of households in the nation had only risen by a little over 50 percent since 1983.) The model goes on to indicate that this increase in elite numbers came to have a negative effect, however, on average elite incomes after 1990 – though, as in the antebellum period, top elite incomes continued to rise, as competition within elite ranks intensified. Evidence for such heightened competition is provided by the bifurcation in starting salaries for law school graduates, mentioned earlier – the distinct peak of very high salaries for a small minority, as opposed to the much lower salaries of the majority, only developed between the mid 1990s and 2000, and has continued since. Further evidence can be seen in the cost of being elected to the House of Representatives, which doubled (in constant dollars) between the 1980s and 2012, while the number of candidates for House and Senate elections increased (in spite of mounting costs) by over 50 percent between 2000 and 2010. Thus it is advanced that the onset of a disintegrative phase commenced after 1990, as a result of such intensified elite competition.
Turchin next goes on to calculate a Political Stress Indicator series for the period 1946 to 2012, taking into account factors for mass mobilization, elite mobilization, and the condition of the state. The PSI falls to a low in the mid 1960s, rises at an increasing rate after 1980, and then skyrockets after 2000. It is pointed out that the Political Stress Indicators calculated for the periods before the U.S. and English Civil Wars were accurate leading indicators for the outbreaks of violent instability that resulted; further, that despite many differences in detail, the circumstances of pre-Civil War England and America and the contemporary United States are in certain basic ways much the same – in Turchin’s words: “A growing gap between labor supply and labor demand led to falling relative wages. This was then followed by elite overproduction, intraelite competition and conflict, and increasing sociopolitical instability.” It is observed that the nation has not yet reached the extreme degree of instability that preceded the U.S. Civil War, but the situation is nevertheless on a path to end in some sort of serious disorder -– the prospect of a “Turbulent 2020s”.
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The year 2023 in the “Turbulent 2020s” saw the publication of Peter Turchin’s End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration – a book that, to a greater degree than any of his previous efforts, was directed at a popular audience; and, like Ages of Discord, concentrated on the situation of the United States.
Part I of End Times begins with a consideration of elites: who they are, and the consequences of excessive growth in their number. It is advanced that in the U.S., elite status is closely correlated with wealth, and that the lower ranks of the elite are made up of those in the top 10 percent of wealth holders, with a worth around 1 to 2 million dollars, which gives them a fair degree of control over their own lives, though usually not, as individuals, much influence on national politics. Above these are those with a worth in the tens or hundreds of millions, or even more, such as important businesspeople and many prominent politicians, who have significant power over others, perhaps extending to the national stage – though such power is not based solely on wealth, but also administrative position and persuasion through the media.
Since the 1980s the number of elites in the United States has rapidly increased (as described earlier in Ages of Discord), with those worth 10 million or more (in constant dollars) growing by more than ten times from 1983 to 2019. The problem is that positions of power have not increased at the same rate; in fact, important posts in government, including seats in Congress, have scarcely increased at all. The result is increasing competition for these positions, and outright conflict, as standards of conduct collapse and extreme tactics to “succeed” become common. Further, and most importantly, the number of “losers” or disaffected elites must necessarily increase even more rapidly than elites as a whole – Turchin calls these “counter-elites”.
Coupled with the increase in the number and collective wealth of elites is a decline in the status of the rest of the population, as their real wages (in constant dollars) have stagnated since the 1970s, and their share of national income has halved. The resulting popular discontent, combined with increasing elite competition and conflict, has produced a deteriorating political situation, which, according to Turchin, culminated in the election of Donald Trump in 2016 (and, since End Times was published, his re-election in 2024). In other words, Trump’s election was more an expression of resentment and disaffection than an endorsement. The book then goes on to examine the ascent of Abraham Lincoln during the similarly deteriorating political situation of the antebellum era, and the rise to power in China of the leader of the catastrophic Taipeng Rebellion of 1850-64, who was a classic representative of the disaffected elite.
Part I of End Times then ends with a general discussion of secular cycles and the importance of elite conflict in their disintegrative phases, presenting historical examples in the form of medieval France and England as well as the polygamous societies studied by Ibn Khaldun (as treated in earlier volumes). The possibility that external forcing, in the form of climatic changes and waves of epidemic disease, causes the synchronization of secular cycles across the world is examined, and the existence of a Crisis Database is mentioned, part of a research network overseen by Turchin that collects historical data on how societies descend into periods of crisis and emerge from them.
Cases of individual Americans, and their reactions to current social circumstances, are presented in Part II of the book. These are interesting and well done, putting a human face on the discussion – but perhaps it might have been made clearer that they are evidently composites, fictional sketches based on actual data points. At any rate, the individual cases include representatives of the common people, elites, and the upper strata of the elite (the “ruling class”). The forces shaping the situations faced by the individuals are also discussed, including analysis of such phenomena such as popular immiseration, the “wealth pump” of the capitalist economy that funnels money upward to elites, and the disaffection of growing numbers of elites as “counter-elites”. Turchin notes that he was shocked to encounter, in 2015, the work of Case and Deaton, demonstrating that life expectancy in the United States was actually beginning to decline, driven by “deaths of despair”.
Part II goes on to examine various forms by which states are ruled, such as “militocracies”, in which a military elite has ultimate power (a current example being the government of Egypt), bureaucratic empires governed by administrators (such as China, past and present), and theocracies (Iran being a prominent case). Plutocracies are said to be relatively rare, but the United States and Britain are advanced as being outstanding instances of such, their existence being facilitated by the protection of ocean borders, which permitted economic elites, in particular, to gain dominance within them. These elites now collectively govern through a power network of leading schools, corporate boards, industry associations, policy institutes and foundations – and, of course, a “revolving door” with government positions. Issues of race and immigration are also described as contributing to the subordination of workers, and rule by economic elites.
The third and final part of End Times begins by presenting a number of examples of state collapse, and it is noted that theory-free algorithms depending on “big data” fare poorly in predicting civil wars as a phenomenon of collapse. An interesting comparison is then made between three major national entities that emerged from the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. In Russia, privatization initially resulted in the rise of a number of oligarchs, while the nation’s people suffered extreme privation under a regime of pervasive corruption. However, the existing military and administrative elites formed an alliance, led by Vladimir Putin, which exiled or subordinated the oligarchs, a reversion to an older order that nevertheless permitted an economic recovery to commence. In Belarus oligarchs never came to power, with the old order simply continuing. The new Ukrainian nation, on the other hand, was continuously dominated by a series of oligarchs who fought for power among themselves, while the land and its people endured stagnation and massive corruption. The result was that in 2013, on the eve of the Maidan revolution, the GDP per capita of Russia was two and a half times that of the Ukrainian nation, and Belarus double – in spite of the fact that the Ukrainian region of the old Soviet Union had enjoyed a higher GDP per capita than either Russia or Belarus. After the Maidan revolution of 2014 civil war broke out in Ukraine’s Donbas, eventually followed by the commencement of the Russia-Ukraine War in 2022, with the Ukrainian nation in the middle of a conflict between Russia and the West. As Turchin puts it: “Ukraine now faces a stark choice: either go down as a state or transform itself into a militocracy. Time will tell which of these futures becomes reality.”
The penultimate chapter of End Times commences with a proposal for a possible “Multipath Forecasting (MPF) engine”, an ambitious project which would, as Turchin indicates, “take as inputs various policies or reforms that are possible to adopt and forecast how the future trajectory will change as a result of such interventions.” A prototype for such an MPF engine is discussed, which utilizes the now familiar demographic structural framework, coupled with a model of contagious radicalization. Current elite dissidents who might credibly be involved in such radicalization, such as Tucker Carlson and J.D. Vance, are also examined, and it is suggested that the United States has entered a revolutionary situation.
Outcomes of crises are the subject of the last chapter of End Times. It is indicated that the Crisis Database (referred to above) has collected information on a hundred cases so far, which had outcomes with widely varying results, though these were most often profoundly negative – including population declines, epidemics, massive downward mobility or even extermination of elites, revolution or civil wars or both, and the death of the state. However, in a few instances the outcome of a crisis was mild or even constructive. Two instances of the latter are presented in the form of the Chartist Period in England (1819-1867) and Russia’s Era of Great Reforms (1855-1881), when crucial corrections were made to existing social and political conditions, such as extension of the voting franchise and the abolition of serfdom, albeit within a framework of expansive empires.
Finally, in three appendices, End Times examines the possibilities for both analysis and prognosis that might be derived from a mathematical and scientific study of history, as illustrated by fictional and real world examples. The foundational work of Jack Goldstone is cited, and the Seshat Global History Databank is once again referred to as a source of data for quantitative analysis, its clever use of proxies (where direct numerical information is not available) being described in some detail. The book then closes with a discussion of the advantages of a structural dynamic approach to history, and some fundamental factors governing the acquisition of knowledge.
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Sources
Demographic Structural Theory: 25 Years On, by Jack A. Goldstone, published in Cliodynamics: The Journal of Quantitative History and Cultural Evolution 8: 85–112, 2017. Goldstone’s own story of his development of a theory of the effects of demography on social structures and the course of history.
Revolution and Rebellion in the Early Modern World, by Jack A. Goldstone, published 1991. The foundational work of demographic structural theory in its quantitative analysis of history.
Complex Population Dynamics: A Theoretical/Empirical Synthesis, by Peter Turchin, published 2003. The culmination of Turchin’s work in the field of population changes in nature.
Historical Dynamics: Why States Rise and Fall, by Peter Turchin, published 2003. Applies to various historical situations a mathematical modeling approach, correlated with empirical observation, which produces results that are the basis for all of Turchin’s later work.
War and Peace and War: The Rise and Fall of Empires, by Peter Turchin, published 2007. Examines in detail the ideas of metaethnic frontiers and secular cycles in their relation to the history of empires.
Secular Cycles, by Peter Turchin and Sergey A. Nefedov, published 2009. Presents case studies of eight secular cycles of major European powers.
War, space, and the evolution of Old World complex societies by Peter Turchin, Thomas E. Currie, Edward A. L. Turner, and Sergey Gavrilets, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 110 no. 41, 2013. Presents a mathematical model of the growth of large societies in Eurasia and Africa between 1500 BC and 1500 AD as influenced by terrain, social traits, and military technology.
Ultrasociety: How 10,000 Years of War Made Humans the Greatest Cooperators on Earth, by Peter Turchin, published in 2016. Examines changes in the size and nature of human societies as a result of cultural evolution driven by conflict.
Ages of Discord: A Structural-Demographic Analysis of American History, by Peter Turchin, published in 2016. Applies to the United States, in particular, a demographic structural analysis updated for a modern industrial society.
End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration, by Peter Turchin, published in 2023. A work largely directed at a general audience that warns of the increasing danger of social and political disaffection.
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A Personal Afterword
As the title of this essay, “A New History”, suggests, a recently developed discipline of historical dynamics – which Peter Turchin terms cliodynamics – has introduced a truly novel approach to the study of history, providing an analytical explanation for the continually repeating pattern seen in the rise and fall of states, including the world’s greatest empires. It also has far reaching implications for understanding the future of our current society, particularly in its possibilities for decline and disintegration.
In fact, I found that the application of mathematical analysis to history, as presented in some detail in the book Historical Dynamics, to actually be a revelation. The simple principle that delayed negative feedback will inevitably result in a boom followed by a bust – and the greater the delay, the greater the bust – is described as producing the fall of states, due to the long term negative feedback of disintegrating social solidarity. But this idea would also appear to have profound meaning in other realms, for is not the ever increasing release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere a delayed feedback of the greatest magnitude? It seemed to have no discernable effects for many decades after the inception of the industrial revolution, but now it would appear that its consequences are beginning to be seen, and carbon dioxide can linger in the atmosphere for centuries…
The sheer range of historical issues studied in the works of Goldstone and Turchin is also impressive, touching on everything from the demography of the American “baby boom”, to the spread of Christianity, to the formation of modern Europe on the frontiers of the Carolingian Empire. It would not be going too far to say that a new understanding of some of the most important issues of history can be gained from their analyses. In a small example of such, my view of the Bolshevik Revolution, as treated in my sixth essay, has been expanded by the concept of overproduction of elites during the years leading up to the final breakdown. The first volume that I personally encountered in this wide-ranging new discipline was Turchin’s Secular Cycles, which set me on the road to all the others; but I would recommend that an interested newcomer start with Revolution and Rebellion in the Early Modern World and Historical Dynamics, as these establish the basic principles of the mathematical modeling/empirical approach.
However, though the role of historical dynamics in understanding the past (and perhaps present and future) would appear to be of fundamental importance, its architects freely acknowledge that it still faces certain limitations in the form of “exceptional circumstances”, and such wild card influences as dominating personalities and epidemic disease. Thus the French and Russian Revolutions had unusually broad and lasting consequences due to the utopian ideologies that intensified them, while the Roman and American Civil Wars resulted from situations that were aggravated by the lack of a powerful state to mediate and control conflicts between leading elites and their institutions – conditions in antebellum America also becoming explosive due to the overwhelming economic and social implications of the peculiar institution of slavery. Such exceptional circumstances could perhaps be accounted for to some extent, but wild cards would still remain, such as the Black Death, and the personal fanaticism of Adolf Hitler in seeking a hegemony in Europe of the “Aryan” race. Therefore human society is to some extent a chaotic system, and the course of its “future history” will never be entirely predictable; nevertheless, influences on that society it can certainly be analyzed, and a range of possible outcomes considered, all in the light of historical dynamics.
Gazing at the record of history, one is struck by the fact that those experiencing its events rarely seemed to perceive their actual causes – for they lacked an understanding of the crucial factors that underlay the events. Yes, the misery of the peasants may have been clear enough, but not that it was due to a natural increase of population overtaking increase in production; yes, it might have been obvious that elites were fighting over the great issues of the day, but not that passions had been inflamed by too many of them competing for limited positions and wealth; yes, it was understood that the state was bankrupt, but not that this was the result of skyrocketing expenses that could not be matched by traditional revenues in an era of general inflation. And yet – is the situation much better today? “Inequality” has become a watchword, but has any realistic plan been implemented to address the issue? Political factions are increasingly strident in their differences, but is there any effort to rein in the schemers who would exacerbate and exploit such differences to destructive effect? Huge peacetime government deficits may threaten to produce severe economic problems – without, however, yielding much benefit to ordinary people – but will these deficits ever be seriously questioned?
It is true that some of the work of Turchin that addresses these issues – especially his book End Times after its publication in 2023 – has occasionally come to the attention of major publications, such as the (London) Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Guardian, and Newsweek, even gaining a review in the lofty New York Times in a rather dismissive piece by Francis “End of History” Fukuyama. Thus the concepts of historical dynamics have at least begun to gain some notice; but do not, as yet, appear to have had any great impact in the public marketplace of ideas. Those who could make the most effective use of such insights are of course the people who actually determine the policies that govern our world: the ruling class of elites. But at present, they seem to be concerned only with pursuing extreme wealth and hegemonic power, disdaining even traditional norms and values, much less innovative ideas in history and social organization.
Overall, I would have to say that a depressing, even revolting panorama of history is presented by the seemingly endless repetition of rising and falling states, with attendant violence, misery, and general destruction – always due to a repetition of the same underlying factors, according to historical dynamics. But worse still is the lack of interest in altering the situation, at least among anyone who could do so. Thus, although I fully appreciate the efforts of Goldstone, Turchin, and their colleagues – in fact, I salute them – I remain dubious of any consequential effect that their efforts will have on events in my lifetime. There is at least a possibility, of course, that their ideas may have greater importance in the long term, on the principle that history, like science, might advance one funeral at a time. Nevertheless, I think that it is in the understanding of history, on its own terms, that they have made their greatest achievement, of a profound value all its own.