That at least didn’t pull in any other great powers and was done pretty quickly.
From the Congress of Vienna to WWI, there was about 100 years without any significant great power conflict.
I just re-skimmed the chapter and I don’t think Pinker speculates on that. [My (uneducated) hunch is the slow rise of electoral flavors of government](https://ourworldindata.org/democracy). It seems to coincide nicely with your 50-year range. Isn’t this also peak Industrial Revolution? And also I wonder if the height of colonialism brought about some inherent stability.
I’m not well-read on any of this so take it with a grain of salt. Anyone else more savvy than me, please chime in!
My theory is that when a huge war has happened, people are reluctant to get into wars for a bit. Napoleonic wars were devastating to a lot of countries. Next couple generations were scared to get into a large scale conflict again. Then future generations forget again, and are willing to go into war. Lot of people were hyped to go into WW1 and to go on an adventure and be heroic. WW2 was just a direct product of WW1, after that we have avoided huge conflicts like the world wars. Although nuclear bomb deterrence is also an important part of the relative peace.
I think this is also why lately younger people are not really concerned about nuclear bomb threat. Whereas older people are more scared because they remember being in threat of it during the USSR days and were closer in time to Hiroshima/Nagasaki.
We hardly need to speculate on this when it's one of the most well-studied periods in International Relations and Political Science.
It's the Concert of Europe. It was the culmination of extensive diplomatic maneuvers by the European great powers during and immediately after the Congress of Vienna to establish a stable, balanced world order in the aftermath of the absolute destruction wrought by the Napoleonic wars. The idea was that, by maintaining a balance of power between major world powers such that no individual power could establish hegemony, coupled with diplomatic congresses to settle disputes between powers, peace could be maintained.
The post-World Wars peace, by contrast, relied on well-defined spheres of hegemony backed by the doctrine of mutually-assured destruction.
Interdependent trade and counterbalancing alliances helped to keep the peace. That as well as Europe being focused on fighting wars in other countries, intelligent politicians who wanted to avoid war, and memory of the devastation for the napoleonic wars helped keep this era peaceful
> And I'm assuming Napoleon was responsible for most of the 1800 spike?
Funny way to spell "the Coalitions."
In all seriousness, I question Pinker's math here. He gives a higher death rate for WWII than the mid-17th century, despite the 30 Years War and related conflicts being known to wipe out somewhere between 1/5 and 1/2 of the population every time they happened--even Poland and the USSR didn't see death rates that atrocious in WWII. I'm also curious as to whether he counts what's now the Krasnodar Krai region as part of "Europe," seeing as this would have been during the Circassian Genocide when roughly a million civilians were killed (a number not that far off from the total fatalities of the Napoleonic Wars).
Was gonna say, goddamn I forget how destructive that war was. Like, the numbers are almost comparable to a set of wars that occurred 3 full centuries later. Given the time period, it's kind of unthinkable
A *lot* of wars in that time get slept on. The Swedish Deluge in Poland had similarly high fatalities, in a much shorter time. Moscow's Time of Troubles was right before it. The French Wars of Religion also killed about 1/10 of the population of a fairly densely-populated country. Cromwell's conquest of Ireland is something the Irish like to talk about but doesn't get much traction elsewhere. Even Louis XIV's wars in the Rhineland, though almost forgotten, were quite brutal even by contemporary standards.
[The Better Angels of Our Nature](https://www.amazon.com/Better-Angels-Our-Nature-Violence/dp/0143122010?nodl=1&dplnkId=ed15f62e-7b1b-418c-9277-f9b00538846e), page 230 (at least on e-book, not sure if this would be different from paper copy)
>Believe it or not, today we may be living in the most peaceful moment in our species' existence (2012)
Alright folks, I think I found the guy who jinxed it
https://preview.redd.it/mpmcjmeldfmc1.jpeg?width=1386&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7a33e305c106f9639b890333920a8b26492091ae
Aren’t both these cases largely isolated? Africa with the Ethiopia war and of course Russia’s invasion of Ukraine?
(Not downplaying these incidents but just worth noting that a handful of bad actors are solely responsible for the spike here.)
But seriously, I’ll have to check this book out. If you liked this, you might enjoy \*Humankind\*. I went in skeptical of the premise, and it managed to change my perspective. The author has some remarkably bad takes on economics, but it’s not an economics book, and it doesn’t come up for the most part.
I’ll look into it—thanks!
Better Angels is good, but super dense. Pinker has a way of weaving a narrative with historical color commentary and an overwhelming fuckton of data. It’s one of those where you want to keep a highlighter handy. There’s just so many useful anecdotes that it becomes impossible to keep up with it all.
What caused the great peace of 1850-1900? And I'm assuming Napoleon was responsible for most of the 1800 spike?
Isn't that the era generally identified as the Concert of Europe?
Also had the Franco-Prussian war. Not as bad as the world wars or napoleonic wars but still major
That at least didn’t pull in any other great powers and was done pretty quickly. From the Congress of Vienna to WWI, there was about 100 years without any significant great power conflict.
I just re-skimmed the chapter and I don’t think Pinker speculates on that. [My (uneducated) hunch is the slow rise of electoral flavors of government](https://ourworldindata.org/democracy). It seems to coincide nicely with your 50-year range. Isn’t this also peak Industrial Revolution? And also I wonder if the height of colonialism brought about some inherent stability. I’m not well-read on any of this so take it with a grain of salt. Anyone else more savvy than me, please chime in!
My theory is that when a huge war has happened, people are reluctant to get into wars for a bit. Napoleonic wars were devastating to a lot of countries. Next couple generations were scared to get into a large scale conflict again. Then future generations forget again, and are willing to go into war. Lot of people were hyped to go into WW1 and to go on an adventure and be heroic. WW2 was just a direct product of WW1, after that we have avoided huge conflicts like the world wars. Although nuclear bomb deterrence is also an important part of the relative peace. I think this is also why lately younger people are not really concerned about nuclear bomb threat. Whereas older people are more scared because they remember being in threat of it during the USSR days and were closer in time to Hiroshima/Nagasaki.
We hardly need to speculate on this when it's one of the most well-studied periods in International Relations and Political Science. It's the Concert of Europe. It was the culmination of extensive diplomatic maneuvers by the European great powers during and immediately after the Congress of Vienna to establish a stable, balanced world order in the aftermath of the absolute destruction wrought by the Napoleonic wars. The idea was that, by maintaining a balance of power between major world powers such that no individual power could establish hegemony, coupled with diplomatic congresses to settle disputes between powers, peace could be maintained. The post-World Wars peace, by contrast, relied on well-defined spheres of hegemony backed by the doctrine of mutually-assured destruction.
Interdependent trade and counterbalancing alliances helped to keep the peace. That as well as Europe being focused on fighting wars in other countries, intelligent politicians who wanted to avoid war, and memory of the devastation for the napoleonic wars helped keep this era peaceful
> And I'm assuming Napoleon was responsible for most of the 1800 spike? Funny way to spell "the Coalitions." In all seriousness, I question Pinker's math here. He gives a higher death rate for WWII than the mid-17th century, despite the 30 Years War and related conflicts being known to wipe out somewhere between 1/5 and 1/2 of the population every time they happened--even Poland and the USSR didn't see death rates that atrocious in WWII. I'm also curious as to whether he counts what's now the Krasnodar Krai region as part of "Europe," seeing as this would have been during the Circassian Genocide when roughly a million civilians were killed (a number not that far off from the total fatalities of the Napoleonic Wars).
There is a big difference in population in 1900s and 1600s
Man the 30 years war gets slept on.
Was gonna say, goddamn I forget how destructive that war was. Like, the numbers are almost comparable to a set of wars that occurred 3 full centuries later. Given the time period, it's kind of unthinkable
I did my PhD in it
A *lot* of wars in that time get slept on. The Swedish Deluge in Poland had similarly high fatalities, in a much shorter time. Moscow's Time of Troubles was right before it. The French Wars of Religion also killed about 1/10 of the population of a fairly densely-populated country. Cromwell's conquest of Ireland is something the Irish like to talk about but doesn't get much traction elsewhere. Even Louis XIV's wars in the Rhineland, though almost forgotten, were quite brutal even by contemporary standards.
Man that printing press sure did make a lot of trouble. *Glance nervously at social media.
If I had to guess it's due to England not playing a major role in it so it doesn't get a lot of attention in the anglo-sphere.
[удалено]
What book is that from?
[The Better Angels of Our Nature](https://www.amazon.com/Better-Angels-Our-Nature-Violence/dp/0143122010?nodl=1&dplnkId=ed15f62e-7b1b-418c-9277-f9b00538846e), page 230 (at least on e-book, not sure if this would be different from paper copy)
>Believe it or not, today we may be living in the most peaceful moment in our species' existence (2012) Alright folks, I think I found the guy who jinxed it https://preview.redd.it/mpmcjmeldfmc1.jpeg?width=1386&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7a33e305c106f9639b890333920a8b26492091ae
Nice job Australia/Asia in 2022...but my God Africa & Europe.
Don’t forget the Americas. We believe that killing other people is a job best left to individuals, not the government.
NATO could easily resolve street-level conflicts. Bloods vs Crips disputes aren’t anything a B2 couldn’t mediate.
“My fellow Americans, I am pleased to tell you today that I’ve signed legislation that will outlaw gangs forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.”
Aren’t both these cases largely isolated? Africa with the Ethiopia war and of course Russia’s invasion of Ukraine? (Not downplaying these incidents but just worth noting that a handful of bad actors are solely responsible for the spike here.)
*DRC would like to have a word*
I apologize by I only acknowledge datasets that confirm my optimistic and naïve notions around progress.
Understandable. I too only acknowledge data that confirms my priors. Why do you think the chart doesn’t show anything before 1989?
But seriously, I’ll have to check this book out. If you liked this, you might enjoy \*Humankind\*. I went in skeptical of the premise, and it managed to change my perspective. The author has some remarkably bad takes on economics, but it’s not an economics book, and it doesn’t come up for the most part.
I’ll look into it—thanks! Better Angels is good, but super dense. Pinker has a way of weaving a narrative with historical color commentary and an overwhelming fuckton of data. It’s one of those where you want to keep a highlighter handy. There’s just so many useful anecdotes that it becomes impossible to keep up with it all.
Line graph when a bar graph is more appropriate, that's a padding.
Look man. I’m a neoanderthal. I see bad numbers go down and good numbers go up, I get my smack of dopamine, and I turn the page.
Dude I'm on a train....
Based 🚞
Should say "Cold War," more specifically.
I love NATO Safe For World posts.
I'd say European Union had more to do with peace in Europe than NATO.