Recurrence of war in classical East and West Civilizations

David J. Krus and Edward A. Nelsen
Arizona State University

James M. Webb
Kent State University

Summary.- Frequencies of western wars for the period of 1600-1945 were compared with frequencies of wars in China for the period separating Han and Qing dynasties (206 BC-1911 AD). The frequency of warfare was about the same except for the periods characterized by predominance of the Confucian and Neo-Confucian ethic. During these periods the frequency of Chinese wars was about three times lower than the frequency of warfare typical of the western civilization.

On November 20, 1725 Carolus Slavicek, a Jesuit missionary at the imperial court of the Chinese Qing Dynasty, recorded his conversation with the emperor which took place the day before. While discussing the relative merits of the ethical teachings of Western and Eastern civilizations the Emperor Shi Zong Xian observed (Slavicek, 1725, p. 30.) that 

To open this type of public discussion, one has to ask what are the fundamental principles and essential differences between the East and West civilizations. Our interest in these respects is focused on the different degrees of their bellicosity.

The alternating periods of war and peace show different periodicity for varied time intervals and diverse geographic regions. Prominent general theories of societies such as developed by Spengler, Marx, Sorokin, and Toynbee, concentrate on analysis of these systematic changes. Since war frequently presages profound social transformations, study of these regularities plays an important role in theories about the nature of social experience. Graphical representations of frequencies and intensities of armed conflicts preceded by some type of time series analysis are often used in visualization of these trends. We discussed these trends previously (Krus and Blackman, 1980), and outlined the role approximations of the apparent trend by some type of a geometric function may play in formation of theories pertaining to the nature of social change. Linear, exponential, or logarithmic forms of these approximations may give rise to hypotheses about evolutionary social trends. Sinusoid, spiral, or other cyclical forms of these functions may favor formulations of hypotheses about large, cyclic movements in history. While simulating diverse viewpoints on the nature of historical change, we also described several components of the complex trends underlying the periodicity of recurrence of wars within the context of the Western civilization. We also presented additional empirical studies on the questions of war and peace in sequels to this paper (Krus and Webb; 1991, 1992, 1993). The present paper continues our previous quantitative studies of the issues related to the general topic of war and peace by comparing the war cycles observed within the context of the Western civilization with the war cycles observed in the classical Chinese civilization for the time interval separating the Han and Qing dynasties.

Method

To measure war cycles in the Western civilization we used the 1600 to 1945 segment of Quincy Wright’s (1964) database. Included were all hostilities involving members of the family of nations and engaging over 50,000 troops. The primary reason for selecting Quincy Wright’s database among many others possible was his ‘family of nations’ criterion of inclusion. Most of the wars recorded for this time interval were wars of the Judeo-Christian civilization of Europe and America. Wars of the China, Japan, and other countries of the Pacific Rim were included only toward the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. The gradual inclusion of these states at the time they were becoming ‘members of the family of nations’ coincide with the time they were losing their classical culture. Their inclusion to the database around the turn of the century provided us with a common denominator facilitating comparability while their exclusion during the time period preceding the turn of the century allowed the conduct of our study which purpose was to contrast incidence of wars within the Judeo-Christian civilization of Europe and America with incidence of wars within the Confucian and Neo-Confucian civilization of the Imperial China.

To measure war cycles of the imperial China we relied on Dong Zuo Bin’s Zhong Guo Nian Li (1960), Wang Guo Ting’s Zhong Guo Li Shi Nian Biao (1958), and Yuan Liu's Zhong Guo Shi Da Ci Dian (1982), complemented by relevant chapters of The Cambridge Encyclopedia of China (Hook, 1991), Kodansha Encyclopedia of Japan (Itasaka, 1993), and Encyclopedia of Asian History (Embree, 1988). To compare war cycles characteristic of Eastern and Western civilization types we were counting the major, readily discernible periods of wars for the 1600-1911 period for the Western civilization and periods of wars for the 206 BC-1911 AD time interval for the Eastern civilization. In synchronization of the war cycles of both civilizations under scrutiny we were helped by the coincidence of the onset of the major European conflicts, commenced the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648) which the transition from Ming to Qing dynasties (1644) in China, marked by the resurgence of warfare, usually accompanying the dynastic change. The selection of the year 1911 as the limiting upper bound of our study was guided by the consideration that after that date, the transition of China away from the traditional system of values continued at an accelerated rate.

Results

The frequency distribution of wars within context of the Western civilization for the 1600-1945 period is presented in Fig. 1.

Thirty Year's War                         Napoleonic Wars           WW I+WW II Fig. 1.  Frequency of 1600-1945 wars within the context of Western civilization.

TABLE 1.   Summary of major 1600-1945 wars within Western civilization context indexing the time dimension of Figure 1

Within the context of the Chinese history, representative of Eastern civilization, inspection of the frequency distribution of wars for the same time interval, the average peace time between two subsequent wars appears much longer than peace intervals separating major wars of Western civilization. There were only two marked periods of war activity between 1600 and 1911. The first period of war activity was related to the transition from Ming to Qing dynasty. The second period was due mainly to Opium Wars (1839-1842, 1856-1860) with a combined time span of 7 years and Taiping Rebellion (1850-1864) lasting 14 years during the time of Qing Dynasty. However, China, being the oldest continuing civilization on Earth, has records of wars over much longer time span, allowing us to estimate the average time of peace intervals with greater reliability. For the 215 BC to 1945 AD time interval of over 2,000 years, the frequency of wars is shown in Fig. 2.

To aid orientation along the time dimension recorded in Figure 2 and to facilitate subsequent discussion, major dynasties of Imperial China are listed in Table 2.

TABLE 2 .  Summary of Major Chinese Dynasties.

Counting approximately 15 major wars lasting about 450 years over the interval of 2,160 years, the average time of peace would be about 115 years. Compared with the estimated average time of the peace of about 50 years for the Western civilization, the bellicosity of western Judeo-Christian civilization appears to be about two times greater than the bellicosity of the Chinese civilization.

The Chinese civilization can be divided into intervals when Confucian and Neo-Confucian ethical systems were dominant and when they were not. Confucian philosophy did not gained dominance earlier than the Han Dynasty, fell into decline during the Period of Disunion only to be reestablished during the Tang dynasty, and largely disappeared from the Chinese countries following the fall of the Qing dynasty. The Period of Disunion lasted about 400 years, a period comparable to the time span of Quincy Wright’s database. During this period we counted 5 major war conflicts lasting about 150 years. That gives the average duration of the peace interval of about 50 years, the same as the average time of the peace interval estimated for the Western civilization.  Excluding the wars during periods when Confucian philosophy was not dominant in China, i.e., the wars marking the transition from the Qin to Han dynasty, the wars of the Period of Disunion and the wars of the most recent period of Republic of China and People’s Republic of China, the count of  8 major conflicts lasting about 250 years over the time span of 1,728 years would give an average interval of peace between the adjacent major wars of about 180 years. According to this conservative estimate, the belligerency of western Judeo-Christian civilization would be at least three times greater than the belligerency of the classical Chinese civilization governed by the principles of Confucian and Neo-Confucian ethic.

Analysis

The central point of the present paper is that the relative low incidence of warfare in the Chinese civilization is related to the Confucian and Neo-Confucian ethical systems of its classical period. When the Confucian ethical system was not dominant, the frequency of warfare approximated that of the Western civilization. During the time of the predominance of the Confucian ethical system, the frequency of armed human conflicts within classical Eastern civilization was markedly lower than within the Western civilization.

One of primary functions of the religio-ethical systems is to regulate aggression. The causes of wars are manifold, however the results of the foregoing analysis indicate that the preventable causes of wars are related to the tenor of the dominant religio-ethical systems, i.e., for the civilizations under scrutiny, to the tenors of the Judeo-Christian systems of ethics presented in the Old and New Testaments and to the Confucian and Neo-Confucian systems of ethics perhaps best represented by Confucian Analects.

Computer assisted searches of the Old and New Testaments and the Confucian Analects may facilitate insights into some the issues which are central to the question of the war and peace, the questions of the paramount importance to our society. The following quotes were obtained by searching the Old Testament for tokens ‘city,’ ‘smite,’ and ‘fire,’ which are the closest Biblical equivalents to the use of the modern weapons of mass destruction. Some of these verses from Exodus, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Numbers, Ezekiel, and Jeremiah are excerpted in the following paragraph to illustrate this point.

‘And you shall burn with fire the city, and it shall be an heap for ever; it shall not be built again. And it shall be that you shall set the city on fire: according to the commandment of the Lord. Now the children of Judah had fought against Jerusalem, and had taken it, and smitten it with the edge of the sword, and set the city on fire. And the men of Israel turned again upon the children of Benjamin, and smote them with the edge of the sword, as well the men of every city, as the beast, and all that came to hand: also they set on fire all the cities that they came to. You shall burn with fire a third part in the midst of the city, when the days of the siege are fulfilled: and you shall take a third part, and smite about it with a knife: and a third part you shall scatter in the wind. And when the Lord your God will deliver them before you, you shall smite them, and utterly destroy them; you shall make no covenant with them, nor show mercy unto them. Go and smite the inhabitants of Jabeshgilead with the edge of the sword, with the women and the children.’

There were no matches for this particular combination of the search tokens in the Confucian Analects.

Among Bible’s most striking features is the difference between the frequency of the word ‘war’ in the Old and New Testaments. As shown in Fig. 3, the word ‘war’ is mentioned in the New Testament 15 times, while in the Old Testament, the word ‘war’ occurs 205 times. The word ‘peace’ occurs in the Old Testament 296 times and, proportionately, is mentioned 1.4 times more often than the word ‘war.’ In the New testament the word ‘peace’ occurs 104 times and, proportionately, is mentioned about 7 times more often than the word ‘war.’ However, the context of one of the ‘peace’ tokens is  ‘Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.’ (Matthew 10:34). In Confucian Analects, the word war occurs 4 times in contexts such as ‘The things in reference to which the Master exercised the greatest caution were-fasting, war, and sickness.

Fig.3.   Frequency of the word "war"’ in the Old Testament, New Testament, and Confucian Analects.

To facilitate the comparability of the frequencies reported above, consider the ordinal positions of frequencies of the related concepts in the Old and New Testaments, shown in Fig. 4, and in the Confucian Analects, shown in Fig. 5. Computer word searches show that the word fire is used in both the New and Old Testaments 506 times. Only few other words other than names (Lord (6748), God (3,892), father (971), son (1,798)) and places (Israel (2,300), Jerusalem (767), heaven (551)) have greater frequency of occurrence; the word good occurs 655 times and the word evil occurs 569 times. For comparison, sin occurs 388 times, blood 375 times, death 342 times, wicked 325 times, love 281 times, power 260 times, anger 228 times, wrath 194 times, joy 155 times, suffer 92 times, curse 92 times, hate 85 times, punish 55 times, forgive 48 times, and happy 25 times. In Confucian Analects, the word love occurs 52 times, the word death 12 times, the word fire 3 times, and there is no mention of blood at all.

Fig. 4.  Frequency of the Categories Fire, Blood, Death, and Love in the Bible.

Fig. 5.  Frequency of the Categories Fire, Blood, Death, and Love  in the Confucian Analects.

Early Christians were divided with respect of matters of war and peace. Some, as Tertullian, were pacifists, and initially, many Roman soldiers, after their conversion to Christianity, deserted the Imperial Army. However, after the adoption of Christianity as the state religion of the Roman Empire by Emperor Constantine in 313, the Church ceased to oppose war as a part of its general policy. Afterwards, Saint Augustine (354-430), devised the doctrine of ‘just wars,’ a doctrine that has been subscribed to by a majority of all Christian denominations ever since and elaborated along the following lines.

Theocratic state, surrounded by the hostile states, must have exceptionally strong armed forces. The opinion that a theocracy state does not need military is a grave mistake. The theocratic state must be aware that its very existence is aversive to its enemies who will do their utmost to destroy it, since its very existence incessantly disquiets and irritates the people who disagree with the principles upon which it is build. The theocratic state is, fulfilling the will of God, the guardian of the community of its people. Everyone knows that its enemies will attack the theocratic state without any reason. If the theocratic state permitted its destruction, it would provide arguments to those who affirm that there is no God, or arguments to those who would maintain that the theocratic state did not merit the protection of God. The defense of the theocratic state is the foremost duty of all its citizens. Theocratic society must be successfully defended by the military might because, ultimately, this defense is the act of love toward its enemies.

The doctrine of the ‘just war’ as an ‘act of love’ is based on the reasoning of the Saint Augustine that to wage a just war is to really act misericorditer, in a spirit of compassion and kindness shown toward the enemy, as it is in the best interest of the enemy that their sins and vices are corrected. Recently, the doctrine of the ‘just war’ was used by Billy Graham in absolving George Bush responsibility for the anticipated loss of human lives during the 1991 war in the Persian Gulf.

Discussion

Perhaps the most profound analysis of factors leading to an increased probability of military conflict undertaken within the context of Western civilization is that of David McClelland. Scattered throughout his voluminous work on forces shaping society and summarized in his seminal book, Power: the inner experience, are the quantitative findings on the marked influence of religio-ethic systems on the probability of occurrence of military confrontations. However, his brilliant diagnosis of these factors is not matched by his perspective on available options likely to diminish the probability of armed conflicts. Despite of the overwhelming empirical evidence about the role religion has in initiation and continuation of warfare, McClelland, facing on the last pages of his book the necessity to conclude his narrative, suddenly asserts that ‘we could not give up our religious beliefs even if we wanted to’, thus escaping conclusions which otherwise would be inevitable.

The present study is in many respects an attempt to continue the McClelland’s traditions of quantitative social science based on content analysis of relevant documents. It oversteps the boundaries of the Western civilization in order to gain wider perspective. It analyses warfare-related deaths over an interval spanning a millennium. The results indicate that ethical systems play a major role in lessening the probability of preventable military conflicts. They also indicate that some ethical systems are more capable to prevent wars than others. These findings are not insignificant and are related to possible violent deaths of millions of people. The conclusions to be made should be obvious to any human being which values reason more than belief.

References

Dong Zuo Bin (1960) Zhong Guo Nian Li. Hong Kong: University Press.

Embree, A.T. (Ed.) (1988) Encyclopedia of Asian History. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.

Hook, B. (Ed.) (1991) The Cambridge Encyclopedia of China (2nd ed.) Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.

Itasaka, G. (Ed.) (1993) Kodansha Encyclopedia of Japan (2nd ed.) Tokyo: Kodansha.

Krus, D.J., & Blackman, H.S. (1980) Time-scale factor as related to theories of social change. Psychological Reports, 46, 95-102.

Krus, D.J., & Webb, J.M. (1991) Geographical concentration of military expenditures in the Middle East. Psychological Reports, 69, 533-534.

Krus, D.J., & Webb, J.M. (1992) Motivational attribution as prolegomena to armed conflict. Psychological Reports, 69, 533-534.

Krus, D.J., & Webb, J.M. (1993) Quantification of Santayana’s cultural schism theory. Psychological Reports, 72, 319-325.

McClelland, D.C. (1975) Power: the inner experience. New York: Halstead.

Slavicek, C. (1725) Relatio de Missione Sinensi ad Annum 1725.  Main State Archive of Bavaria, Jesuitica in Genere 277, pp. 28-32.

Wang Guo Ting. (1958) Zhong Guo Li Shi Nian Biao. Beijing: Shang Wu Yin Shu Guan.

Wright, Q. (1965) A study of war. (2nd ed.) Chicago, IL: Univer. of Chicago Press.

Yuan Liu. (Ed.) (1982) Zhong Gua Shi Da Ci Dian. Taipei, Taiwan: Yuan Liu Publishers.

This project was funded by the grant from the Pacific Rim Cultural Foundation, Republic of China, to David J. Krus (Ko Yang Rui). The authors express their profound gratitude to Lieutenant Colonel Cheng Chi Linn (Ret.) for his invaluable help with library searches and advice during the development of the database of major Chinese wars.