War and Peace and War: The Rise and Fall of Empires

by Peter Turchin

Every episode of internal warfare develops like an epidemic or a forest fire. In the beginning of the conflict, each act of violence triggers chains of revenge and counter-revenge. With time, participants lose all restraint, atrocities become common, and conflict escalates in an accelerating, explosive fashion. After the initial explosion, however, violence drags on and on, for years and sometimes even for decades. Sooner or later most people begin to yearn for the return of stability and an end to fighting. The most psychopathic and violent leaders get killed off or lose their supporters. Violence, like an epidemic or a forest fire, “burns out.” Even though the fundamental causes that brought the conflict on in the first place might still be operating, the prevailing social mood swings in favor of cessation of conflict at all costs, and an uneasy truce gradually takes hold. Those people, like the generation of Charles the Wise, who directly experienced the period of civil warfare, become “immunized” against it, and while they are in charge, they keep things stable. The peaceful period lasts for a human generation—between 20 and 30 years. Eventually, however, the conflict-scarred generation dies off or retires, and a new cohort arises, people who did not experience the horrors of civil war, and are not immunized against it. If the long-term social forces, which brought about the first outbreak of internal hostilities, are still operating, the society will slide into the se...