The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined

  80. Slavery as a negative-sum game: Smith, 1776/2009, p. 281.

  81. “slaveholders were bad businessmen”: Mueller, 1989, p. 12.

  82. Economics of antebellum slavery: Fogel & Engerman, 1974.

  83. British abolition of slave trade: Nadelmann, 1990, p. 492.

  84. Humanitarian motives for British slave trade ban: Nadelmann, 1990, p. 493; Ray, 1989, p. 415.

  85. Humanitarian motives for abolition of slavery: Davis, 1984; Grayling, 2007; Hunt, 2007; Mueller, 1989; Payne, 2004; Sowell, 1998.

  86. “mankind has not been born with saddles”: Thomas Jefferson, “To Roger C. Weightman,” Jun. 24, 1826, in Portable Thomas Jefferson, p. 585.

  87. Debt bondage: Payne, 2004, pp. 193–99.

  88. Shuddering at debt bondage: Quoted in Payne, 2004, p. 196.

  89. Debt collection as force: Payne, 2004, p. 197.

  90. Trafficking: Feingold, 2010, p. 49.

  91. Dubious statistic: Free the Slaves (http://www.freetheslaves.net/, accessed Oct. 19, 2010) claims that “there are 27 million slaves in the world today,” a figure that is orders of magnitude higher than those from the UNESCO Trafficking Statistics Project; Feingold, 2010. Bales on progress in fighting slavery: S. L. Leach, “Slavery is not dead, just less recognizable,” Christian Science Monitor, Sept. 1, 2004.

  92. Despotism: Betzig, 1986.

  93. Summary executions by despots: Davies, 1981, p. 94.

  94. Political murder: Payne, 2004, chap. 7; Woolf, 2007.

  95. Regicide: Eisner, 2011.

  96. Death by government: Rummel, 1994, 1997.

  97. Decline of political murder: Payne, 2004, pp. 88–94; Eisner, 2011.

  98. Lay down this right to all things if others do too: Hobbes, 1651/1957, p. 190.

  99. “exempt themselves from the obedience”: Locke, Two treatises on government, quoted in Grayling, 2007, p. 127.

  100. Framers and human nature: Pinker, 2002, chap. 16; McGinnis, 1996, 1997.

  101. “If men were angels”: Federalist Papers No. 51, in Rossiter, 1961, p. 322.

  102. “ambition must be made to counteract ambition”: Federalist Papers No. 51, in Rossiter, 1961, pp. 331–32.

  103. Framers and positive-sum cooperation: McGinnis, 1996, 1997.

  104. Mozi on war and evil: Quoted in the epigraph of Kurlansky, 2006.

  105. Swords into plowshares: Isaiah 2:4.

  106. Turning the other cheek: Luke 6:27–29.

  107. War as the medieval default: G. Schwarzenberger, “International law,” New Encyclopaedia Britannica, 15th ed., quoted in Nadelmann, 1990.

  108. Rates of war: See figure 5–17, which is based on Peter Brecke’s Conflict Catalog, discussed in chapter 5; Brecke, 1999, 2002; Long & Brecke, 2003.

  109. Persecution of pacifists: Kurlansky, 2006.

  110. Falstaff on honor: Henry IV, Part I, Act 5, scene 1.

  111. Johnson on European war: Idler, No. 81 [82], Nov. 3, 1759, in Greene, 2000, pp. 296–97.

  112. “pernicious Race of little odious Vermin”: Gulliver’s travels, part II, chap. 6.

  113. Antiwar pensée: “Justice and the reason of effects,” Pensées, 293.

  114. Trade as an antiwar tactic: Bell, 2007a; Mueller, 1989, 1999; Russett & Oneal, 2001; Schneider & Gleditsch, 2010.

  115. “The spirit of commerce”: Kant, 1795/1983.

  116. Entrepreneurial Quakers: Mueller, 1989, p. 25.

  117. “Perpetual Peace”: Kant, 1795/1983.

  118. Kingly declarations of love of peace: Luard, 1986, 346–47.

  119. “No longer was it possible”: Mueller, 1989, p. 18, based on research in Luard, 1986.

  120. Dropping out of the conquest game: Mueller, 1989, pp. 18–21.

  121. Great power wars less frequent but more damaging: Levy, 1983.

  122. Mysterious decline of force: Payne, 2004, p. 29.

  123. Nonviolence a prerequisite to democracy: Payne, 2004, 2005.

  124. Moral agitation and the slave trade: Nadelmann, 1990.

  125. Homicidal and sexual fantasies: Buss, 2005; Symons, 1979.

  126. Equation of visceral disgust with moral disgust: Haidt, Björklund, & Murphy, 2000; Rozin, 1997.

  127. Degradation and mistreatment: Glover, 1999.

  128. Medieval reintroduction of Roman judicial torture: Langbein, 2005.

  129. Life was cheap: Payne, 2004, p. 28.

  130. Productivity in book publishing: Clark, 2007a, pp. 251–52.

  131. Libraries with novels: Keen, 2007, p. 45.

  132. Increasing literacy: Clark, 2007a, pp. 178–80; Vincent, 2000; Hunt, 2007, pp. 40–41.

  133. Increase in French literacy: Blum & Houdailles, 1985. Other European countries: Vincent, 2000, pp. 4, 9.

  134. Reading Revolution: Darnton, 1990; Outram, 1995.

  135. Turning point in reading: Darnton, 1990, p. 166.

  136. Expanding circle: Singer, 1981.

  137. History of the novel: Hunt, 2007; Price, 2003. Number of novels published: Hunt, 2007, p. 40.

  138. Weeping officer: Quoted in Hunt, 2007, pp. 47–48.

  139. Diderot’s eulogy for Richardson: Quoted in Hunt, 2007, p. 55.

  140. Novels denounced: Quoted in Hunt, 2007, p. 51.

  141. Morally influential novels: Keen, 2007.

  142. Global campus: Lodge, 1988, pp. 43–44.

  143. Republic of Letters: P. Cohen, “Digital keys for unlocking the humanities’ riches,” New York Times, Nov. 16, 2010.

  144. Combinatorial mind: Pinker, 1999, chap. 10; Pinker, 1997, chap. 2; Pinker, 2007b, chap. 9.

  145. Spinoza: Goldstein, 2006.

  146. Subversive cities: E. L. Glaeser, “Revolution of urban rebels,” Boston Globe, Jul. 4, 2008.

  147. Skepticism as the origin of modern thought: Popkin, 1979.

  148. Interchangeability of perspectives as the basis for morality: Nagel, 1970; Singer, 1981.

  149. Humanitarian revolutions in Asia: Bourgon, 2003; Sen, 2000. See also Kurlansky, 2006.

  150. Tragic vision of human condition: Burke, 1790/1967; Sowell, 1987.

  151. Readiness for democracy: Payne, 2005; Rindermann, 2008.

  152. Madison, government, and human nature: Federalist Papers No. 51, in Rossiter, 1961, p. 322. See also McGinnis, 1996, 1997; Pinker, 2002, chap. 16.

  153. French people as a different species: Quoted in Bell, 2007a, p. 77.

  154. Tragic and Utopian visions: Originally from Sowell, 1987, who called them the “constrained” and “unconstrained” visions; see Pinker, 2002, chap 16.

  155. Counter-Enlightenments: Berlin, 1979; Garrard, 2006; Howard, 2001, 2007; Chirot, 1995; Menschenfreund, 2010.

  156. Schwerpunkt: Berlin, 1979, p. 11.

  157. Cosmopolitanism as a bad thing: Berlin, 1979, p. 12.

  158. Warmth! Blood! Life!: Quoted in Berlin, 1979, p. 14.

  159. Super-personal organism: Berlin, 1979, p. 18.

  160. “Men desire harmony”: Quoted in Bell, 2007a, p. 81.

  161. The myth of social Darwinism: Claeys, 2000; Johnson, 2010; Leonard, 2009. The myth originated in a politicized history by Richard Hofstadter titled Social Darwinism in American thought.

  162. War is noble: Mueller, 1989, p. 39.

  Chapter 5: The Long Peace

  1. World War II not the climax: War and civilization (1950), p. 4, quoted in Mueller, 1995, p. 191.

  2. Predictions of doomsday: Mueller, 1989, 1995.

  3. Lewis F. Richardson: Hayes, 2002; Richardson, 1960; Wilkinson, 1980.

  4. A long future without a world war: Richardson, 1960, p. 133.

  5. Hemoclysm: White, 2004.

  6. Grim diagnoses of modernity: Menschenfreund, 2010. Prominent examples include Sigmund Freud, Michel Foucault, Zygmunt Bauman, Edmund Husserl, Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, and Jean-François Lyotard.

  7. Long Peace: Gaddis, 1986, 1989. Gaddis was referring to the absence of war between the United States and the Soviet Union, but I have broadened it to include peace among gre
at powers and developed states.

  8. Overoptimistic turkey: Usually credited to the management scholar Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

  9. The population of the world: Historical population estimates from McEvedy & Jones, 1978.

  10. Subjective probability through mnemonic availability: Tversky & Kahneman, 1973, 1974.

  11. Misperceptions of risk: Gardner, 2008; Ropeik & Gray, 2002; Slovic, Fischof, & Lichtenstein, 1982.

  12. Worst Things People Have Done: White, 2010a. See also White, in press, for narratives of the events and more recent estimates. The Web site lists the numbers and sources that went into his estimates.

  13. An Lushan Revolt: White notes that the figure is controversial. Some historians attribute it to migration or the breakdown of the census; others treat it as credible, because subsistence farmers would have been highly vulnerable to a disruption of irrigation infrastructure.

  14. Assyrian chariots: Keegan, 1993, p. 166.

  15. Revolting savagery: Saunders, 1979, p. 65.

  16. “The greatest joy a man can know”: Quoted in numerous sources, including Gat, 2006, p. 427.

  17. Genghis’s Y chromosome: Zerjal et al., 2003.

  18. Towers of skulls: Rummel, 1994, p. 51.

  19. Forgotten massacres: White, in press.

  20. List of wars since 3000 BCE: Eckhardt, 1992.

  21. Hockey-stick graph of wars: Eckhardt, 1992, p. 177.

  22. Associated Press versus 16th-century monks: Payne, 2004, p. 69.

  23. Historical myopia as a distorter of war trends: Payne, 2004, pp. 67–70.

  24. Measuring historical myopia with a ruler: Taagepera & Colby, 1979.

  25. Military horizon: Keegan, 1993, pp. 121–22.

  26. Evil in war outweighs good: Richardson, 1960, p. xxxvii.

  27. “to condemn much is to understand little”: Richardson, 1960, p. xxxv.

  28. “Thinginess fails”: Richardson, 1960, p. 35.

  29. Slave trade as war: Richardson, 1960, p. 113.

  30. Excluded small wars: Richardson, 1960, pp. 112, 135–36.

  31. Portia versus Richardson: Richardson, 1960, p. 130.

  32. Bird’s-eye view and tests of hypotheses: Richardson, 1960; Wilkinson, 1980.

  33. Cluster illusion: Feller, 1968.

  34. Gambler’s fallacy: Kahneman & Tversky, 1972; Tversky & Kahneman, 1974.

  35. Glowworms and constellations: Gould, 1991.

  36. Random onsets of war have also been found in Singer and Small’s Correlates of War Project, Singer & Small, 1972, pp. 205–6 (see also Helmbold, 1998); Quincy Wright’s A study of war database, Richardson, 1960, p. 129; Pitirim Sorokin’s 2,500-year list of wars, Sorokin, 1957, p. 561; and Levy’s Great Power War database, Levy, 1983, pp. 136–37.

  37. Exponential distribution of war durations was also found in the Conflict Catalog, Brecke, 1999, 2002.

  38. Wars most likely to end in first year: See Wilkinson, 1980, for refinements.

  39. No good cycles: Richardson, 1960, pp. 140–41; Wilkinson, 1980, pp. 30–31; Levy, 1983, pp. 136–38; Sorokin, 1957, pp. 559–63; Luard, 1986, p. 79.

  40. History is not an engine: Sorokin, 1957, p. 563.

  41. Most important person of the 20th century: White, 1999.

  42. World War I need not have happened: Lebow, 2007.

  43. Historians on Hitler: quoted in Mueller, 2004a, p. 54.

  44. No Hitler, no World War II: Mueller, 2004a, p. 54.

  45. No Hitler, no Holocaust: Goldhagen, 2009; Himmelfarb, 1984, p. 81; Fischer, 1998, p. 288; Valentino, 2004.

  46. Probability of heads: Keller, 1986. Persi Diaconis, a statistician and magician, can throw heads ten times in a row; see E. Landuis, “Lifelong debunker takes on arbiter of neutral choices,” Stanford Report, Jun. 7, 2004.

  47. Henri Poincaré: Science and method, quoted in Richardson, 1960, p. 131.

  48. “mankind has become less warlike”: Richardson, 1960, p. 167.

  49. Other datasets point to same conclusion: Sorokin, 1957, p. 564: “As in the data presented here is nothing to support the claim of disappearance of war in the past, so is there nothing to support the claim, in spite of the exceptionally high figures for the twentieth century, that there has been (or will be) any steady trend toward increase of war. No, the curve fluctuates, and that is all.” Singer & Small, 1972, p. 201: “Is war on the increase, as many scholars and laymen of our generation have been inclined to believe? The answer would seem to be a very unambiguous negative.” Luard, 1986, p. 67: “The overall frequency of war [from 1917 to 1986] was not very different from that in the previous age [1789 to 1917]. . . . The average amount of war per state, the more significant measure, is now lower if the comparison is made with the entire period 1789–1914. But if the comparison is made with 1815–1914 alone there is little decline.”

  50. Fewer but more lethal wars: Richardson, 1960, p. 142.

  51. Technically they are not “proportional,” since there is usually a nonzero intercept, but are “linearly related.”

  52. Power-law distribution in the Correlates of War Dataset: Cederman, 2003.

  53. Plotting power-law distributions: Newman, 2005.

  54. Power-law distributions, theory and data: Mitzenmacher, 2004, 2006; Newman, 2005.

  55. Zipf’s laws: Zipf, 1935.

  56. Word type and token frequencies: Francis & Kucera, 1982.

  57. Things with power-law distributions: Hayes, 2002; Newman, 2005.

  58. Examples of normal and power-law distributions: Newman, 2005.

  59. Newman presented the percentages of cities with an exact population size, rather than in a range of population sizes, to keep the units commensurable in the linear and logarithmic graphs (personal communication, February 1, 2011).

  60. Causes of war: Levy & Thompson, 2010; Vasquez, 2009.

  61. Mechanisms that generate power-law distributions: Mitzenmacher, 2004; Newman, 2005.

  62. Power laws for deadly quarrels versus cities: Richardson, 1960, pp. 154–56.

  63. Self-organized criticality and war sizes: Cederman, 2003; Roberts & Turcotte, 1998.

  64. War of Attrition game: Maynard Smith, 1982, 1988; see also Dawkins, 1976/1989.

  65. Loss aversion: Kahneman & Renshon, 2007; Kahneman & Tversky, 1979, 1984; Tversky & Kahneman, 1981. Sunk costs in nature: Dawkins & Brockmann, 1980.

  66. More lethal wars last longer: Richardson, 1960, p. 130; Wilkinson, 1980, pp. 20–30.

  67. Nonlinear increase in the costliness of longer wars: The death tolls of the 79 wars in the Correlates of War Inter-State War Dataset (Sarkees, 2000) are better predicted by an exponential function of duration (which accounts for 48 percent of the variance) than by the durations themselves (which account for 18 percent of the variance).

  68. Weber’s Law for perceived deaths: Richardson, 1960, p. 11.

  69. Rediscovery of Weber’s Law for perceived deaths: Slovic, 2007.

  70. Attrition with sunk costs generates a power-law distribution: Wilkinson, 1980, pp. 23–26; Weiss, 1963; Jean-Baptiste Michel, personal communication.

  71. 80:20 rules: Newman, 2005.

  72. Interpolation of small quarrels: Richardson, 1960, pp. 148–50.

  73. Homicides in the United States: Fox & Zawitz, 2007; with data for the years 2006–2009 extrapolated as 17,000 per year, the estimated total is 955,603.

  74. Homicides outnumber war-related deaths: Krug et al., 2002, p. 10; see also note 76.

  75. Wars less deadly than disease: Richardson, 1960, p. 153.

  76. Wars still less deadly than disease: In 2000, according to the WHO World report on violence and health, there were 520,000 homicides and 310,000 “war-related deaths.” With approximately 56 million deaths from all causes, this works out to an overall violent death rate of around 1.5 percent. The figure cannot be compared directly to Richardson’s since his estimates for the 1820–1952 period were radically less complete.

  77. 80:2 rule: Based on the 94 wars of magnitude 4–7 for which Richa
rdson had plottable death data.

  78. Great powers: Levy, 1983; Levy et al., 2001.

  79. A few great powers fight a lot of wars: Levy, 1983, p. 3.

  80. Great powers still fight a lot of wars: Gleditsch et al., 2002; Lacina & Gleditsch, 2005; http://www.prio.no/Data/.

  81. Great power wars kill the most people: Levy, 1983, p. 107.

  82. Data from last quarter of the 20th century: Correlates of War Inter-State War Dataset, 1816–1997 (v3.0), http://www.correlatesofwar.org/, Sarkees, 2000.

  83. Recall that Levy excluded colonial wars, unless a great power was fighting with an insurgent movement against the colonial government.

  84. Short wars in the late 20th century: Correlates of War Inter-State War Dataset, 1816–1997 (v3.0), http://www.correlatesofwar.org/, Sarkees, 2000; and for the Kosovo war, PRIO Battle Deaths Dataset, 1946–2008, Version 3.0, http://www.prio.no/CSCW/Datasets/Armed-Conflict/Battle-Deaths/, Gleditsch et al., 2002; Lacina & Gleditsch, 2005.

  85. Conflict Catalog: Brecke, 1999, 2002; Long & Brecke, 2003.

  86. Definition of “Europe”: Though I have stuck with the coding scheme of the Conflict Catalog, other datasets code these countries as Asian (see, for example, Human Security Report Project, 2008).

  87. The same data plotted on a logarithmic scale look something like figure 5–15, reflecting the power-law distribution in which the largest wars (those involving the great powers, most of which are European) account for the majority of the deaths. But because of the massive decline in deaths in European wars after 1950, the logarithmic scale magnifies the small bounce in the last quarter of the century.

  88. Conflict Catalog and pre-1400 European Conflict Catalog: Long & Brecke, 2003; Brecke, 1999, 2002.

  89. Obscure wars: None of these were mentioned in the thousand or so responses to a survey in which I asked one hundred Internet users to name as many wars as they could think of.

  90. War as part of the natural order of things: Howard, 2001, pp. 12, 13.

  91. Casualties didn’t weigh heavily: Luard, 1986, p. 240.

  92. Sex life of European kings: Betzig, 1986, 1996a, 2002.

  93. Overlordship: Luard, 1986, p. 85.

  94. Royal pissing contests: Luard, 1986, pp. 85–86, 97–98, 105–6.