Customer Reviews

War in Human Civilization

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I had a bit of time over the holidays so I read two new massive tomes on warfare, Gat's and one by Max Boot. Gat's stunningly comprehensive work is so good that it manages to make other 500+ page books seem positively lightweight and journalistic in comparison. This treatment of the history of war and warfare, or 'human belligerency' as Gat puts it, would overwhelm the non-specialist (it clocks in at about 820 pages), if it weren't for the author's ability to synthesize material, sum up scholarship and, last but not least, write some of the clearest and most lucid prose I've seen in the social sciences in ages. He makes forays into evolutionary theory, state formation, antiquity, technology and the rise of science, prehistory, the transition to agriculture, democratic peace theory, etc. The chapter on tribal warfare (in Agraria and Pastoralia, as Gat puts it) is -- as the saying has it -- worth the price of admission alone. His careful demolition of radical Rousseauist idealism is equally fascinating, but he is no simplistic, knee-jerk Hobbesian.

Gat is philosophically astute as well as deep; he knows history as well as theory; and he even treats, if briefly, the question of the causes of war. Above all, the book is animated by his personality: one can surmise that, yes, he's quite intellectual, but his is a mind that is always probing, curious and interesting. (There's a picture of the author on the back flap. He is youngish but he has bags under his eyes. He must read and write around the clock. I for one am grateful.) This is my book of the year.

This is truly a "shock and awe" book! Once again, Azar Gat will stun and amaze you with 800 pages of pure intellect to the Nth degree! I was always very impressed by his other books on war. Yet, with 28+ years of active duty military service and a personal library of 1000+ books on various military subjects - I have NEVER been more impressed by such a comprehensive interdisciplinary treatment on the "enigma of Warre". This book seamlessly blends psychology, sociology, archeology, anthropology, and history, along with a myriad of other relevant disciplines to provide the most extensive examination on the general theme of war that I have ever experienced. I am now totally convinced that all senior military officers should only study the broad scope of war from such a well-informed interdisciplinary approach {long before they delve into any details with the devil). This book is anything but a `same-old-same-old' standard perspective of war. This book will force a truly open-minded reader to reassess every facet of war - and every predisposition encountered about war. I believe that this book is "the" seminal document to begin a reeducation and reassessment of our all of our so-called `modern-day' beliefs, motives, policies, strategies, operations and tactics about war. This book should be a mandatory read for all senior officials at the Whitehouse, DOD, DoS,DNI, NSA, CIA, FBI, and ALL intelligence agencies. This book should be a mandatory read at every service staff college and war college. Get it - read it - read it again and again - and you will ponder new perspectives about the riddle of war for years to come.

This book actually contains all of the complete details necessary for a comprehesive 2-semester interdiciplinary course on war - at the graduate level. And even if you are a "war college" graduate from any military service - you've never read about war the way Azar Gat presents War. Reading Azar Gat requires one to study and reflect upon the massive amount of supporting comprehesive details that he so skillfully presents -as well as the overall perspective he supports. In this particular case, Gat presents a very detailed perspective of War based upon a cogent argument of complex bio-cultural interaction. He starts at the very beginning of primitive wars (primates/Homo Erectus), and works all the way on up to modern war as we know it. (And don't be fooled - because it's not Darwin's brand of evolutionary theory anymore either.) It is a very complex in presentation - but necessarily so in order to professionally justify a rather basic argument built upon well documented facts, propensities, predispositions and trends of human nature/nuture as they affect the phenomenon of war. It is an argument that is anything but mere opinion. This is an excellent 'insightful' book for mandatory reading at the highest levels of government or military - in any government or military. Surprisingly despite the complexities, it is quite understandable, for you often walk away with many thoughts like - "Well that's what I suspected all along." The price is a mere pittance vis-a-vis the facinating and illuminating content of this book. Anyone who reads "War in Civilization" will never look at War the same way again - including the current wars that are going on right now. You WILL have to read this book at least twice! It's a Keeper!

The comments provided by the other reviewers are fair and accurate, I agree with them, so I would only point out that this book does not merely describe what happened but above all it explains why it happened. I hold it as a masterful work that can be savored by the professional historian and educated layperson alike. My rate is between 5 (content) and 4 (pleasure, sometimes falling to 3, sometimes raising to 5). I highly recommend it.

Other books on war that I would recommend would be "War before Civilization. The Myth of the Peaceful Savage", by Lawrence Keeley; "How War Began" by Keith F. Otterbein; and "War and Peace and War: The Rise and Fall of Empires" by Peter Turchin.

Additionally, as a complement to "War in Human Civilization", I would also suggest reading the following works, whose scope is as amazingly global as Gat's: 1. Agrarian cultures: "Pre-industrial societies" by Patricia Crone; 2. Economy: "The world economy. A millennial perspective" (2001) plus "The world economy: Historical Statistics" (2003) by Angus Maddison (a combined edition of these two volumes is to appear on December 2007); 3. Government: "The History of Government" by S.E. Finer; 4. Ideas: "Ideas, a History from Fire to Freud", by Peter Watson; 5. Religion: "The Phenomenon of Religion: A Thematic Approach" by Moojan Momen.

The first line of Azar Gat's tome, War in Human Civilization, asks a seemingly innocuous question, "Is war grounded, perhaps inescapably, in human nature?" By examining a daunting array of fields--cultural and biological evolution, psychology, archeology, history, political science, sociology, and ethology--Gat constructs a comprehensive analysis of war unprecedented in scope and brilliance.
War in Human Civilization is split into three parts, "Warfare in the First Two Million Years: Environment, Genes, and Culture," "Agriculture, Civilization, and War," and "Modernity: the Dual Face of Janus." Gat begins by examining the fundamental motivations for violent conflict in nature. Adhering to the tenets of biological evolution, violent encounters were the product of competition for reproductive success--access to females and the resources necessary to attract and support them--and somatic resources, food. Gat proposes an "evolutionary calculus" in which the motivations for violent conflict are the direct or subsequent necessity of fitness. The evolutionarily selected behaviors that lead to violent conflict are (1) competition (2) retaliation to injure the enemy and/or reestablish deterrence, and (3) kin-based altruism, dictating that one's willingness for self-sacrifice decreases as the cost-benefit of genetic similarity decreases. Simply, the fight for survival and the protection of offspring, siblings, cousins, and so on, are innate.
Gat utilizes the ideologies of Thomas Hobbes and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In drawing a distinction between hunter-gathers and pre-state agriculturalists, he finds that the Hobbesian view of intrinsic violence "closer to the truth," but not entirely dominating. He examines archaeological and historical data and reveals that state-based warfare is actually less lethal than pre-state violence, contrary to the Rousseauite thesis of a naturally peaceful man coerced into conflict over state-imposed materialism. In other words, civilization has, by coercive power, enforced (internal) peace, the reality of violent conflict more manifest in the dominating fear of it than its actual practice. However, Gat also recognizes the potential for error in using archaeological evidence that may neither be comprehensive nor representative. The sheer scale of state-based warfare renders it more "spectacular" while the mortality rate (among a much larger population) decreases. From this foundation Gat analyzes the relationship between cultural and biological evolution. Both are reproductive, restrained, and unendingly competitive systems, though cultural reproduction occurs far faster as transmission is possible horizontally from any mind to another. Culture, according to Gat, is largely restrained by biological predispositions that, in turn, affect the selection of biological traits. This, importantly, can even be harmful to our biological fitness, as selection against these traits--such as a taste for sugary foods that previously served to favor ripe, and thereby nutritionally valuable, fruit--is weak. Gat identifies the advent of agriculture and animal husbandry and the development of the state and civilization as the two most influential "'take off' transitions" in human culture.
Production in the form of agriculture and animal husbandry led to population increases and the concentration of peoples and resources. This concentration allowed resource monopolization as well as the differential concentration and appropriation of the limited surpluses. Here the Rousseauite notion comes into play, proposing that "existing natural differences between people were enormously magnified and objectified by accumulated resources." This, in kind, reinforced stratification by creating dependence on a few monopolizers necessary for subsistence. Coercive mobilization of peoples, resources, and the growth of scale increased the size of violent conflicts. Professional fighting forces were established along pseudo-kin lines (soldier brotherhood), dictating that "us" is cohesive against "them." This practice also led to sedentary fortification of settlements and the state-created distinction between murder and feud, and war.
Modern war between nations takes its definitional origins from Prussian military philosopher Carl von Clausewitz. According to Clausewitz war is a political act involving prolonged instances of conflict utilizing violent force or the threat of force to make unfavorable the conditions of resistance to one's will. According to Gat this definition is inadequate, explaining only large-scale war, and ignores the fact that the greater magnitude of state-based warfare is actually less lethal than pre-state violence. Nevertheless, despite his broad and thorough analysis, Gat's loose and implicit definition of war as any form of violent conflict reduces all motivations--political, spiritual, and material--to nothing more than complex manifestations of a desire for sex and survival.
At its most basic, civilization increased the material cost of fighting by harming people and their productivity while adding considerable complexity to the innate motivations of reproductive and somatic resources. Prestige, honor, and power were developed as channels of resource monopolization, demonstrated by rulers' coffers and harems. Cultural links created by language, custom, and even ethnicity and nationalism formed communities similar to kin groups, making defense of these practices and similarities akin to the protection of one's genetic family. Gat views these cultural bonds, religion in particular, as the product of man's biological ability for extreme intellectual adaptation and curiosity: "We are compulsive meaning seekers." The development of written language created another means of connection while permitting the storage and transmission of vast amounts of knowledge, religion and mythology included. Interestingly enough, Gat points out that despite the peaceful creeds of both Christianity and Islam, both structurally accepted war, were utilized in its pursuit, and have been unable to "eradicate the motivations and realities that generated war." War has been a part of human existence for hundreds of thousands of years, but what of its role in the modern world?
In the last section of War in Human Civilization Gat looks to the development of nation-states, the peculiarity of Western success, the impact of technological innovation, and the role of affluent liberal democracies. Immanuel Kant proposed in Perpetual Peace that liberal democracies, particularly constitutional republics, would not war with one another because of the price members of those republics would have to pay to do so. Gat quickly recognizes that some historic republics have been militant and successful contrary to this thesis, but also that quantitative analysis of wars in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries show that very few conflicts were between two democratic states. Gat thoroughly examines the prospect of a democratic peace and delves extensively into the relevant literature and contemporary arguments, pointing out significant exceptions (like India and Pakistan) and errors (oversimplification, assumption, and vague definitions of "war" and "democracy"). In its original form, Gat rejects the democratic peace theory, framing his own in a complex and intricate examination of the organization and operation of modern affluent liberal democracies.
Gat recognizes the significance of globalized commerce, economic interdependence, and the pacifistic tendencies of these societies, and proposes that economic development renders the benefits of peace, and not the costs of war, prohibitive. He supports this claim with evidence of an overall decline in war in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries independent of democratic governments. This suggests that the existence of powerful liberal democracies produces benefits that affect peace globally. The citizens in these democracies, for example, have difficulty justifying killing, conquering, or taking territory. The tolerant democratic process can even be seen as making more palatable and readily practiced negotiation and compromise. Gat's view in this case is highly optimistic, asserting that the tenets of liberal democracy (life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness) make war unacceptable in all but the most drastic and threatening situations, "sometimes barely even then." In this complex ideological system, Gat is careful to mention a variety of related factors--the sexual revolution, decreasing birth rates, wealth, the shrinking size of the modern family, women's vote, and the advent of unprecedented destructive force in the nuclear age. Gat's affluent liberal democratic peace reconstruction, while more inclusive and explanatory, still remains assailable, if not only for its complexity and admitted exceptions.
In a modern sense, war can be symmetrical or asymmetrical, the force and advantage heavily in favor of one participant. The growing use of terrorism and guerilla tactics, combined with the replacement of the nation by the ideological sect as the center of gravity, has historically proved insurmountable for even the most powerful liberal democracies. Vietnam, Korea, Malaya, Algeria, Afghanistan, and Iraq are prominent examples. Gat's examination of insurgency, terrorism, deterrence, weapons of mass destruction, and the particular character of modern asymmetrical war are provocative. If deterrence, countermeasures, and prevention all fall short of effectively countering assault, then what?
War in Human Civilization is undoubtedly an exhausting and impressive work. "Is war grounded, perhaps inescapably, in human nature?" Gat says yes--and it is natural, explainable, and most importantly exceptional from other forms of conflict in nature because of human culture and the development of civilization through agriculture and animal husbandry, not any quality of its intrinsic character. The motivations and realities are the same. "That `war' is customarily defined as large-scale organized violence is merely a reflection of the fact that human societies have become large and organized." The ultimate causes of war are deeply rooted in our evolutionary history. War is a political act, but the politics that underlie its assumption were created in pursuit of the same elementary biological ends. The same evolutionary calculus that pushes us to crave candy and sex encompasses the array of variables necessary (though not always sufficient) that bring us to war. Gat, using a colossal reservoir of interdisciplinary knowledge, has forever changed our interpretation of war, violence, and our very nature.

I learnt much reading this book. I also think it showed that the writer actually has military experience and knows what he is talking about.

The book itself should be split into two parts. The first part dealing with prehistoric and the second civilized warfare. Much of what he describes as primitive warfare we would call crime. I thought his comments about how civilization has actually reduced warfare fascinating.

Overall this was a fascinating book to read. It will take you some time to get through it. As more than one reviewer has pointed out, this is not a small text. Then again, when covering such a large and diverse field as 'war in human civilization' this book seems like just the beginning. The positive aspects of this book are that reading it will give you a good sense of where warfare fits into history. The debate between Hobbes and Rousseau regarding where warfare fits in human history was well developed and the author makes it known where his stance lies. Starting from Neanderthals up to the present day the reader is taken through each time period and war is put into an understandable context with other variables like politics, economics, ideology, nationalism, etc. taking their place as contributing or detracting forces. Seeing how warfare has evolved throughout the ages and how the reasoning behind it has either changed or fluidly adapted to the new environment human beings found themselves in will give readers a new perspective and understanding of how history has been shaped. The one problem I encountered a few times when dealing with a part of history that I try to keep up-to-date on and specialize in, early twentieth-century history, is that when it comes to some of the details the author can be wrong or reductionist at times. You cannot hold it against him as he is not only covering the history of the world, to some extent, within his book but also a variety of subjects outside of history (ethnography, anthropology, etc). That is the main reason why I give this work 4 stars. It is highly commendable to undertake such a diverse topic with multiple scholarly inputs, but you will undoubtedly encounter problems when it comes to details as you can only spend so much time on each subject/fact and, even worse, you have limited time to do the research. Nonetheless, this is an excellent text which I'll come back to time and time again.

This is by far the best book on the subject I've read. The author's approach is refreshingly holistic, combining insights from fields as diverse as anthropology, evolutionary biology, psychology, archaeology, economics, history, and International Relations theory. The book is extremely objective, relying on data (qualitative and quantitative) gathered from the social sciences and the author does not waste any space attempting to moralize, justify, or be subjective in regards to the topic of war. Dr. Gat is a mostly a realist for sure, and presents war as it is in human nature and throughout human history. The book is readable and interesting yet at the same time very thorough. I've read a lot of books- academic and non-academic- in the social sciences, but this is the book that has had the most impact on my understanding of the grand scheme of human nature and human civilization. A word to those who are expecting a book on strategy and specific battle tactics- those are not to be found in here. This book focuses on the big picture, on the phenomenon of war. As with everyone else who has reviewed this book, I believe this book to be a true masterpiece and recommend it to anyone who is interested in learning about war, and the connection between war and other aspects of human civilization and history.

WAR has the shortest title but is one of the largest books I own. It is packed with information and well-written. A wonderful book to dip in any time to learn something new and unexpected.