The Fourth Turning: What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America's Next Rendezvous with Destiny

by William Strauss

The saeculum is a seasonal cycle of history, roughly the length of a long human life, that explains the periodic recurrence of Awakenings and Crises throughout modernity. The Anglo-American saeculum dates back to the waning of the Middle Ages in the middle of the fifteenth century. There have been seven saecula: Late Medieval (1435-1487) Reformation (1487-1594) New World (1594-1704) Revolutionary (1704-1794) Civil War (1794-1865) Great Power (1865-1946) Millennial (1946-2026?) America is presently in the Third Turning of the Millennial Saeculum and giving birth to the twenty-fourth generation of the post-Medieval era. On each of the following seven page pairs, the turnings are shown on the left and the generations on the right. Each generation is shown next to the turning in which it was born. (The birth dates typically precede the turning dates by about two to four years.) For any turning, the constellation of generations includes the children shown to its right, plus the three prior generations. The chart on page 138 displays the seasons of Anglo-American history. Turnings A turning is a social mood that changes each time the generational archetypes enter a new constellation. Each turning is roughly the length of a phase of life. The First Turning is a High—an upbeat era of strengthening institutions and weakening individualism, when a new civic order implants and the old values regime decays. (Nomads enter elderhood; Heroes, midlife; Artists, young adulthood; and Prophe...

Turnings and saculums

regime implants. (Artists enter elderhood; Prophets, midlife; Nomads, young adulthood; and Heroes, childhood.) The Fourth Turning is a Crisis—a decisive era of secular upheaval, when the values regime propels the replacement of the old civic order with a new one. (Prophets enter elderhood; Nomads, midlife; Heroes, young adulthood; and Artists, childhood.) Late Medieval Half Saeculum: Turnings The Retreat from France {Third Turning, 1435-1459) was an era of dynastic decline and civil disorder. In 1435, not long after Joan of Arc's execution, the English withdrew from Paris for the last time. In the 1440s, they were pushed out of France on all fronts. Thus ended the Hundred Years' War. Meanwhile, the weak rule of young Henry VI eroded central authority in England. By the 1450s, noble houses flouted the law, vied for power, and engaged in private wars with impunity. Arthurians entering childhood The Wars of the Roses (Fourth Turning, 1459-1487) began with an irrevocable break between the ruling houses of Lancaster and York. After a bloody civil war, Yorkist kings (Edward IV, Edward V, Richard III) mostly prevailed in reigns that were punctuated with invasions and rebellions. At Bosworth Field (in 1485), Henry Tudor defeated Richard III and crowned himself Henry VII, founder of a new royal dynasty. Two years later he defeated a pretender at the Battle of Stoke, which won him the enduring confidence of his subjects. Arthurians entering young adulthood Humanists entering childho...

Turnings and generations