War! What Is It Good For?: Conflict and the Progress of Civilization from Primates to Robots

498 Pages·2014·7.6 MB·English

by  Ian Morris

WAR
WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR?

IAN MORRIS is Willard Professor of Classics and a fellow of the Archaeology
Centre at Stanford University. He has appeared on a number of television
networks, including the History Network and PBS and has directed excavations
in Greece and Italy. His first trade book Why the West Rules – For Now was
published to critical acclaim and won a number of prizes including a PEN USA
Literary Award. Morris’s second book The Measure of Civilisation, a companion
volume to his first, was praised as a ‘treasure trove of information about social
development’.
ALSO BY IAN MORRIS
Why the West Rules—for Now
WAR
WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR?

CONFLICT
THE ROLE OF
CIVILISATION,
IN FROM
PRIMATES ROBOTS
TO

IAN MORRIS
First published in Great Britain in 2014 by
PROFILE BOOKS LTD
3A Exmouth House Pine Street
London ECIR 0JH
www.profilebooks.com
First published in the United States of America in 2014 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux Copyright © Ian
Morris, 2014
Maps copyright © 2014 by Michele Angel Grateful acknowledgment is made to the Hal Leonard
Corporation for permission to reprint lyrics from “War,” written by Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong,
1969, first recorded by Edwin Starr, 1970, released as a single by Gordy Records (Gordy 7101). Publisher:
Stone Agate Music (from BMI Repertoire).
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication
may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any
means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission
of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
eISBN 978 1 84765 454 0
CONTENTS
List of Illustrations
Introduction: Friend to the Undertaker
1. The Wasteland? War and Peace in Ancient Rome
2. Caging the Beast: The Productive Way of War
3. The Barbarians Strike Back: The Counterproductive Way of War, A.D. 1–
1415
4. The Five Hundred Years’ War: Europe (Almost) Conquers the World, 1415–
1914
5. Storm of Steel: The War for Europe, 1914–1980s
6. Red in Tooth and Claw: Why the Chimps of Gombe Went to War
7. The Last Best Hope of Earth: American Empire, 1989–?
Notes
Further Reading
Bibliography
Acknowledgments
Index
ILLUSTRATIONS
Table 1 Historian Niall Ferguson’s “menu” of forms of government (From
Colossus: The Price of America’s Empire by Niall Ferguson, copyright
© 2004 by Niall Ferguson. Used by permission of The Penguin Press, a
division of Penguin Group [USA] LLC.)
Figure Locations in the Roman Empire mentioned in Chapter 1
1.1
Figure First-century A.D. German auxiliary soldier fighting for Rome
1.2 (Landesmuseum Mainz, Mainz, Germany)
Figure Barbarian auxiliaries presenting the Roman emperor with the heads of
1.3 enemies killed in Dacia, 110s A.D. (Scala/Art Resource, NY)
Figure Shipwrecks and lead pollution from the Mediterranean Basin, A.D. 1–
1.4 900
Figure Roman marines preparing to board an enemy ship, first century B.C.
1.5 (Scala/Art Resource, NY)
Figure Locations outside the Roman Empire mentioned in Chapter 1
1.6
Figure Yanomami club fight, early 1970s (© Dr. Napoleon A. Chagnon,
1.7 Yanomamo, Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1997, p. 187)
Figure Greek infantryman spearing a Persian, ca. 470 B.C. (Scala/Art Resource,
2.1 NY)
Figure Ancient empires, 250 B.C.–A.D. 300
2.2
Figure The lucky latitudes
2.3
Figure Sites of the original revolutions in military affairs, ca. 9500–500 B.C.
2.4
Table Military and social developments, 10,000–1 B.C.
2.1
Figure Fighting on a cave painting from Los Dogues, Spain, CA. 10,000–5000
2.5 B.C. (From Jean Guilane and Jean Zammit, The Origins of War:
Violence in Prehistory, Oxford: Blackwell, 2001, p. 105)
Figure The Vulture Stele, carved ca. 2450 B.C. (Gianni Dagli Orti/The Art
2.6 Archive at Art Resource, NY)
Figure Egypt’s pharaoh Ramses II in a chariot at the Battle of Kadesh, 1274
2.7 B.C. (Gianni Dagli Orti/The Art Archive at Art Resource, NY)
Figure The size of Eurasian empires, 3000 B.C.–A.D. 117
2.8
Figure Estimated rates of violent death for the Stone Age, ancient empires, and
2.9 the twentieth century
Figure Locations in western Eurasia mentioned in Chapter 3
3.1
Figure Locations in Asia mentioned in Chapter 3
3.2
Figure Locations on the Eurasian steppes mentioned in Chapter 3
3.3
Figure Equestrian statue of the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius (Getty
3.4 Images)
Figure Roman troops burning Dacian villages as shown on the column of
3.5 Marcus Aurelius (Alinari Archives–Anderson Archive, Florence)
Figure The size of states in Eurasia’s lucky latitudes, A.D. 1–1400
3.6
Figure The falling average size of states in Eurasia’s lucky latitudes, A.D. 1–
3.7 1400
Figure Christian and Muslim cavalry at the Battle of Damietta, 1218 (©
3.8 Corpus Christi College, Cambridge)
Figure Locations in East Asia and Oceania mentioned in Chapter 3
3.9
Figure Locations in Africa mentioned in Chapter 3
3.10
Figure Locations in the Americas mentioned in Chapter 3
3.11
Figure The orientation of the continents
3.12
Figure Locations in Asia mentioned in Chapter 4
4.1
Figure The world’s oldest true gun, from Manchuria, 1288 (© Yannick
4.2 Trottier)
Figure Locations in Europe mentioned in Chapter 4
4.3
Figure Locations in Africa mentioned in Chapter 4
4.4
Figure French and Portuguese galleons fighting off the coast of Brazil,
4.5 probably in 1562 (Gianni Dagli Orti/The Art Archive at Art Resource,
NY)
Figure Count William Louis of Nassau’s letter to Maurice of Nassau
4.6 explaining the principles of volleying, December 1594 (Koninklijke
Huisarchief, The Hague, Netherlands)
Figure Locations in the Americas mentioned in Chapter 4
4.7
Figure Skull 25 from the Battle of Towton, 1461 (From Biological
4.8 Anthropology, University of Bradford Biological Anthropology
Research Centre, Towton Mass Grave Project)
Figure The triangular trade routes of the Atlantic Ocean
4.9
Figure Diverging wages in northwestern and southern Europe, 1500–1750
4.10
Figure Spanish insurgents attacking French troops, May 2, 1808 (PhotoAISA,
4.11 Barcelona)
Figure Zulu prince Dabulamanzi kaMpande with his soldiers, 1879 (South
4.12 Wales Borderers’ Regimental Museum, Brecon, United Kingdom)
Figure The extent of European empires, 1900
4.13
Figure Estimated rates of violent death for the Stone Age, ancient empires, the
4.14 age of migrations, nineteenth-century colonies, and the nineteenth-
century West
Figure GDP per person per year, 1500–1913
4.15
Figure Locations in Europe mentioned in Chapter 5
5.1
Figure Industrial output per person in five major economies, 1750–1913
5.2
Figure The size of five major economies, 1820–1913
5.3
Figure Relative naval power of the eight biggest fleets, 1880–1914
5.4
Figure Halford Mackinder’s map of the heartland, inner rim, and outer rim
5.5
Figure German troops infiltrating through Pont-Arcy, May 27, 1918 (©
5.6 Imperial War Museums [Q 55010])
Figure British dead at Songueval, March 1918 (© Imperial War Museums [Q
5.7 42245])
Figure The size of the world’s five largest economies, 1913–39
5.8
Figure Locations in Asia mentioned in Chapter 5
5.9
Figure Burned children in Shanghai’s bombed-out railway station, 1937
5.10 (Copyright © Corbis)
Figure A German artilleryman at the Battle of Kursk, July 1943 (Getty Images)
5.11
Figure The first Soviet atomic test, August 29, 1949 (Private collection of
5.12 David Holloway)
Figure Economic growth, 1943–83
5.13
Figure The size of Soviet and American nuclear arsenals, 1945–83
5.14
Figure U.S. 1st Air Cavalry Division, Binh Dinh Province, South Vietnam,
5.15 January or February 1968 (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
Figure Locations in Africa mentioned in Chapter 6
6.1
Figure Four chimpanzees charging a fifth at Arnhem Zoo, late 1970s (© Frans
6.2 de Waal. From Chimpanzee Politics (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1982.)
Figure The Ngogo War, 1998–2009
6.3
Figure Female bonobos engaged in genito-genital rubbing (Getty Images)
6.4
Figure The divergence of great apes from our last shared ancestor
6.5