The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (160 page)

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Authors: Steven Pinker

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79. Slave trade statistics: Rummel, 1994, pp. 48, 70. White, in press, estimates that 16 million people died in the Atlantic slave trade, and another 18.5 million in the Mideast slave trade.
80. Slavery as a negative-sum game: Smith, 1776/2009, p. 281.
81. “slaveholders were bad businessmen”: Mueller, 1989, p. 12.
82. Economics of antebellum slavery: Fogel & Engerman, 1974.
83. British abolition of slave trade: Nadelmann, 1990, p. 492.
84. Humanitarian motives for British slave trade ban: Nadelmann, 1990, p. 493; Ray, 1989, p. 415.
85. Humanitarian motives for abolition of slavery: Davis, 1984; Grayling, 2007; Hunt, 2007; Mueller, 1989; Payne, 2004; Sowell, 1998.
86. “mankind has not been born with saddles”: Thomas Jefferson, “To Roger C. Weightman,” Jun. 24, 1826, in
Portable Thomas Jefferson
, p. 585.
87. Debt bondage: Payne, 2004, pp. 193–99.
88. Shuddering at debt bondage: Quoted in Payne, 2004, p. 196.
89. Debt collection as force: Payne, 2004, p. 197.
90. Trafficking: Feingold, 2010, p. 49.
91. Dubious statistic: Free the Slaves (
http://www.freetheslaves.net/
, accessed Oct. 19, 2010) claims that “there are 27 million slaves in the world today,” a figure that is orders of magnitude higher than those from the UNESCO Trafficking Statistics Project; Feingold, 2010. Bales on progress in fighting slavery: S. L. Leach, “Slavery is not dead, just less recognizable,”
Christian Science Monitor
, Sept. 1, 2004.
92. Despotism: Betzig, 1986.
93. Summary executions by despots: Davies, 1981, p. 94.
94. Political murder: Payne, 2004, chap. 7; Woolf, 2007.
95. Regicide: Eisner, 2011.
96. Death by government: Rummel, 1994, 1997.
97. Decline of political murder: Payne, 2004, pp. 88–94; Eisner, 2011.
98. Lay down this right to all things if others do too: Hobbes, 1651/1957, p. 190.
99. “exempt themselves from the obedience”: Locke,
Two treatises on government
, quoted in Grayling, 2007, p. 127.
100. Framers and human nature: Pinker, 2002, chap. 16; McGinnis, 1996, 1997.
101. “If men were angels”: Federalist Papers No. 51, in Rossiter, 1961, p. 322.
102. “ambition must be made to counteract ambition”: Federalist Papers No. 51, in Rossiter, 1961, pp. 331–32.
103. Framers and positive-sum cooperation: McGinnis, 1996, 1997.
104. Mozi on war and evil: Quoted in the epigraph of Kurlansky, 2006.
105. Swords into plowshares: Isaiah 2:4.
106. Turning the other cheek: Luke 6:27–29.
107. War as the medieval default: G. Schwarzenberger, “International law,”
New Encyclopaedia Britannica,
15th ed., quoted in Nadelmann, 1990.
108. Rates of war: See figure 5–17, which is based on Peter Brecke’s Conflict Catalog, discussed in chapter 5; Brecke, 1999, 2002; Long & Brecke, 2003.
109. Persecution of pacifists: Kurlansky, 2006.
110. Falstaff on honor:
Henry IV, Part I,
Act 5, scene 1.
111. Johnson on European war:
Idler
, No. 81 [82], Nov. 3, 1759, in Greene, 2000, pp. 296–97.
112. “pernicious Race of little odious Vermin”:
Gulliver’s travels
, part II, chap. 6.
113. Antiwar
pensée
: “Justice and the reason of effects,”
Pensées,
293.
114. Trade as an antiwar tactic: Bell, 2007a; Mueller, 1989, 1999; Russett & Oneal, 2001; Schneider & Gleditsch, 2010.
115. “The spirit of commerce”: Kant, 1795/1983.
116. Entrepreneurial Quakers: Mueller, 1989, p. 25.
117. “Perpetual Peace”: Kant, 1795/1983.
118. Kingly declarations of love of peace: Luard, 1986, 346–47.
119. “No longer was it possible”: Mueller, 1989, p. 18, based on research in Luard, 1986.
120. Dropping out of the conquest game: Mueller, 1989, pp. 18–21.
121. Great power wars less frequent but more damaging: Levy, 1983.
122. Mysterious decline of force: Payne, 2004, p. 29.
123. Nonviolence a prerequisite to democracy: Payne, 2004, 2005.
124. Moral agitation and the slave trade: Nadelmann, 1990.
125. Homicidal and sexual fantasies: Buss, 2005; Symons, 1979.
126. Equation of visceral disgust with moral disgust: Haidt, Björklund, & Murphy, 2000; Rozin, 1997.
127. Degradation and mistreatment: Glover, 1999.
128. Medieval reintroduction of Roman judicial torture: Langbein, 2005.
129. Life was cheap: Payne, 2004, p. 28.
130. Productivity in book publishing: Clark, 2007a, pp. 251–52.
131. Libraries with novels: Keen, 2007, p. 45.
132. Increasing literacy: Clark, 2007a, pp. 178–80; Vincent, 2000; Hunt, 2007, pp. 40–41.
133. Increase in French literacy: Blum & Houdailles, 1985. Other European countries: Vincent, 2000, pp. 4, 9.
134. Reading Revolution: Darnton, 1990; Outram, 1995.
135. Turning point in reading: Darnton, 1990, p. 166.
136. Expanding circle: Singer, 1981.
137. History of the novel: Hunt, 2007; Price, 2003. Number of novels published: Hunt, 2007, p. 40.
138. Weeping officer: Quoted in Hunt, 2007, pp. 47–48.
139. Diderot’s eulogy for Richardson: Quoted in Hunt, 2007, p. 55.
140. Novels denounced: Quoted in Hunt, 2007, p. 51.
141. Morally influential novels: Keen, 2007.
142. Global campus: Lodge, 1988, pp. 43–44.
143. Republic of Letters: P. Cohen, “Digital keys for unlocking the humanities’ riches,”
New York Times,
Nov. 16, 2010.
144. Combinatorial mind: Pinker, 1999, chap. 10; Pinker, 1997, chap. 2; Pinker, 2007b, chap. 9.
145. Spinoza: Goldstein, 2006.
146. Subversive cities: E. L. Glaeser, “Revolution of urban rebels,”
Boston Globe
, Jul. 4, 2008.
147. Skepticism as the origin of modern thought: Popkin, 1979.
148. Interchangeability of perspectives as the basis for morality: Nagel, 1970; Singer, 1981.
149. Humanitarian revolutions in Asia: Bourgon, 2003; Sen, 2000. See also Kurlansky, 2006.
150. Tragic vision of human condition: Burke, 1790/1967; Sowell, 1987.
151. Readiness for democracy: Payne, 2005; Rindermann, 2008.
152. Madison, government, and human nature: Federalist Papers No. 51, in Rossiter, 1961, p. 322. See also McGinnis, 1996, 1997; Pinker, 2002, chap. 16.
153. French people as a different species: Quoted in Bell, 2007a, p. 77.
154. Tragic and Utopian visions: Originally from Sowell, 1987, who called them the “constrained” and “unconstrained” visions; see Pinker, 2002, chap 16.
155. Counter-Enlightenments: Berlin, 1979; Garrard, 2006; Howard, 2001, 2007; Chirot, 1995; Menschenfreund, 2010.
156.
Schwerpunkt
: Berlin, 1979, p. 11.
157. Cosmopolitanism as a bad thing: Berlin, 1979, p. 12.
158. Warmth! Blood! Life!: Quoted in Berlin, 1979, p. 14.
159. Super-personal organism: Berlin, 1979, p. 18.
160. “Men desire harmony”: Quoted in Bell, 2007a, p. 81.
161. The myth of social Darwinism: Claeys, 2000; Johnson, 2010; Leonard, 2009. The myth originated in a politicized history by Richard Hofstadter titled
Social Darwinism in American thought
.
162. War is noble: Mueller, 1989, p. 39.
Chapter 5: The Long Peace
 
1. World War II not the climax:
War and civilization
(1950), p. 4, quoted in Mueller, 1995, p. 191.
2. Predictions of doomsday: Mueller, 1989, 1995.
3. Lewis F. Richardson: Hayes, 2002; Richardson, 1960; Wilkinson, 1980.
4. A long future without a world war: Richardson, 1960, p. 133.
5. Hemoclysm: White, 2004.
6. Grim diagnoses of modernity: Menschenfreund, 2010. Prominent examples include Sigmund Freud, Michel Foucault, Zygmunt Bauman, Edmund Husserl, Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, and Jean-François Lyotard.
7. Long Peace: Gaddis, 1986, 1989. Gaddis was referring to the absence of war between the United States and the Soviet Union, but I have broadened it to include peace among great powers and developed states.
8. Overoptimistic turkey: Usually credited to the management scholar Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
9. The population of the world: Historical population estimates from McEvedy & Jones, 1978.
10. Subjective probability through mnemonic availability: Tversky & Kahneman, 1973, 1974.
11. Misperceptions of risk: Gardner, 2008; Ropeik & Gray, 2002; Slovic, Fischof, & Lichtenstein, 1982.
12. Worst Things People Have Done: White, 2010a. See also White, in press, for narratives of the events and more recent estimates. The Web site lists the numbers and sources that went into his estimates.
13. An Lushan Revolt: White notes that the figure is controversial. Some historians attribute it to migration or the breakdown of the census; others treat it as credible, because subsistence farmers would have been highly vulnerable to a disruption of irrigation infrastructure.
14. Assyrian chariots: Keegan, 1993, p. 166.
15. Revolting savagery: Saunders, 1979, p. 65.
16. “The greatest joy a man can know”: Quoted in numerous sources, including Gat, 2006, p. 427.
17. Genghis’s Y chromosome: Zerjal et al., 2003.
18. Towers of skulls: Rummel, 1994, p. 51.
19. Forgotten massacres: White, in press.
20. List of wars since 3000 BCE: Eckhardt, 1992.
21. Hockey-stick graph of wars: Eckhardt, 1992, p. 177.
22. Associated Press versus 16th-century monks: Payne, 2004, p. 69.
23. Historical myopia as a distorter of war trends: Payne, 2004, pp. 67–70.
24. Measuring historical myopia with a ruler: Taagepera & Colby, 1979.
25. Military horizon: Keegan, 1993, pp. 121–22.
26. Evil in war outweighs good: Richardson, 1960, p. xxxvii.
27. “to condemn much is to understand little”: Richardson, 1960, p. xxxv.
28. “Thinginess fails”: Richardson, 1960, p. 35.
29. Slave trade as war: Richardson, 1960, p. 113.
30. Excluded small wars: Richardson, 1960, pp. 112, 135–36.
31. Portia versus Richardson: Richardson, 1960, p. 130.
32. Bird’s-eye view and tests of hypotheses: Richardson, 1960; Wilkinson, 1980.
33. Cluster illusion: Feller, 1968.
34. Gambler’s fallacy: Kahneman & Tversky, 1972; Tversky & Kahneman, 1974.
35. Glowworms and constellations: Gould, 1991.
36. Random onsets of war have also been found in Singer and Small’s Correlates of War Project, Singer & Small, 1972, pp. 205–6 (see also Helmbold, 1998); Quincy Wright’s
A study of war
database, Richardson, 1960, p. 129; Pitirim Sorokin’s 2,500-year list of wars, Sorokin, 1957, p. 561; and Levy’s Great Power War database, Levy, 1983, pp. 136–37.
37. Exponential distribution of war durations was also found in the Conflict Catalog, Brecke, 1999, 2002.
38. Wars most likely to end in first year: See Wilkinson, 1980, for refinements.
39. No good cycles: Richardson, 1960, pp. 140–41; Wilkinson, 1980, pp. 30–31; Levy, 1983, pp. 136–38; Sorokin, 1957, pp. 559–63; Luard, 1986, p. 79.
40. History is not an engine: Sorokin, 1957, p. 563.
41. Most important person of the 20th century: White, 1999.
42. World War I need not have happened: Lebow, 2007.
43. Historians on Hitler: quoted in Mueller, 2004a, p. 54.
44. No Hitler, no World War II: Mueller, 2004a, p. 54.
45. No Hitler, no Holocaust: Goldhagen, 2009; Himmelfarb, 1984, p. 81; Fischer, 1998, p. 288; Valentino, 2004.
46. Probability of heads: Keller, 1986. Persi Diaconis, a statistician and magician, can throw heads ten times in a row; see E. Landuis, “Lifelong debunker takes on arbiter of neutral choices,”
Stanford Report
, Jun. 7, 2004.
47. Henri Poincaré:
Science and method
, quoted in Richardson, 1960, p. 131.

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