(3) AZAR GAT –

WAR IN HUMAN CIVILIZATION (2006)

 

 

“War, huh, yeah

What is it good for?”

 

Azar Gat’s history of war in human civilization is nothing short of magisterial – and at least halfway answers that famous song lyric, telling us what war is for.

 

That is the fundamental question which this book examines – “Why do people go to war?”.

 

Is it part of human nature or a “late cultural invention” of “civilization”, linked to agriculture, the state or something else? In short, who was right – Hobbes or Rousseau?

 

Has war declined in modernity? If so, why?

 

“In this truly global study of war and civilization, Azar Gat sets out to find definitive answers to these questions in an attempt to unravel the ‘riddle of war’ throughout human history, from the early hunter-gatherers right through to the unconventional terrorism of the twenty-first century”.

 

The book is divided into three parts. Part 2 – titled Agriculture, Civilization, and War – is perhaps the most straightforward of the three, although the overarching question of why people go to war is still present throughout, along with the associated question of how they do. Although he gave the game away in Part 1, Gat definitely leans into Hobbes here, with the emergence of strong central states – Hobbes’ Leviathan – being a key reason for less violent societies. Yes – even when those states make a wasteland and call it peace, as with the Roman Empire and their Pax Romana. He indicates as much with the title of his conclusion for this part – War, the Leviathan, and the Pleasures and Miseries of Civilization.

 

However, Parts 1 and 3 were the most fascinating for me. Part 1 and its sweeping title Warfare in the First Two Million Years indicate that its gamut is the whole of human prehistory – and indeed earlier to hominid or primate prehistory. One myth that Gat dispels in Part 1 is that humans are uniquely prolific for intra-species violence. As Gat demonstrates, they are not – and indeed other animal species match or exceed humans for violence within their own species. Where humans differ is with respect to the targets of their violence. Whereas animals avoid more costly violence against evenly matched males and instead target young or females of their own species (as with the infamous example of male lions killing cubs when they take over a pride), humans are the opposite – targeting other males, often with the express motive of taking women and children as prizes. But you might ask – aren’t human males similarly evenly matched as their animal counterparts? Yes, indeed – which is why humans make it less evenly matched by the preferred strategies of the ambush or raid catching antagonists by surprise, ideally asleep, something which is easier to do for humans than for animals.

 

Which brings us to the other myth Gat dispels in this part – Rousseau’s “noble savage” or rather the myth of a peaceful ‘savage’, where the true escalation of violence in war arising with ‘civilization’, whether agriculture, the state, or something else. Indeed, Gat demonstrates that humans in their “state of nature” or indeed in societies not predominated by powerful central states experience much more violence, usually by substantial orders of magnitude.

 

As for Part 3 – Modernity: The Dual Face of Janus – Gat demonstrates that modernity has resulted in, well, more peace and less violence or war, even if that does not seem to be the case because of the destructive power of our technology. More intriguingly, Gat dispels (or at least introduces cause for caution with respect to) any monomythic explanations for this – such as “democratic peace theory” or fear of nuclear weapons.

 

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****

S-TIER (GOD TIER)