Suchergebnisse

Among approaches to explaining global history, the secular cycles and leadership long cycle schools emphasize much different phenomena. The former stresses processes highlighting demographic pressures and the rise and fall of land powers. The latter focuses on trading states, maritime activities, and economic growth pulsations. While the two research programs seemingly possess little in common, appearances may be deceiving. By elucidating their overlapping emphasis on structured punctuations in demographic/dynastic cycles with significant changes in global political economy, it is possible to show how the two schools of thought are complementary. A more integrated approach, encompassing population, disease, war and economic growth dynamics, should enhance our understanding of changes in global history.

Considers the question of whether democratic peace & civil society indicate the decline of major interstate war. Rosecrance's 1987 trading state theory is addressed & refined into a more straightforwardly evolutionary case for ongoing shifts in war/peace & trade/development. Next it is shown that if the democratic peace/civil society arguments are on target, major interstate war should disappear as soon as metamorphoses identified with democratization & civil society have fully emerged across all societies & political systems, & that these changes are irreversible. On the other hand, if the slightly altered trading state theory is correct, system type & social metamorphoses are bound up in a web of shifts occurring in military, political, & economic areas that do imply major war is ebbing for reasons other than changes in type of regime. But as long as such warfare remains possible, one must also recognize that while major interstate conflict has decreased in incidence, it has at the same time grown increasingly deadlier & more global in scope & scale. Tables, References. K. Coddon

Explores E.N. Chernykh's Great Migration (C-wave) model for explaining long-term changes in world-system behavior across seven periods of crisis/transformation that occurred between 3500 B.C. & 1300 A.D. to argue that he was wrong to claim there was only one pan-Eurasian crisis in the first millennium B.C. Two such crises are described. It is maintained that it is possible to connect actors widely separated in Eurasian space. However, evidence of indirect linkages between Mediterranean & Chinese security problems does not imply that all actors were involved in exactly the same processes at the same time. Attention is given to both the element of continuity that is found when first millennium crises are compared to last second millennium crises & the impact of the two crises of the first millennium B.C. on the later reorientation of trade patterns in the Near East. Although Chernykh's model is useful for analyzing the onset of Eurasian interdependence, his interpretation & crisis dating need to be revised. Tables, Figures, References. J. Lindroth