The one issue I see is that life expectancy after birth has risen substantially, but since infants aren’t the ones deciding whether to risk going to war, life expectancy after infancy is a better metric to use to measure life-years risked. Life expectancy after infancy hasn’t risen very substantially since the 1800s.
‘… life expectancy in the mid-Victorian period was not markedly different from what it is today. Once infant mortality is stripped out, life expectancy at 5 years was 75 for men and 73 for women.’
I might even have expected that since it is much easier to generate a soldier now than in the past (the minimum soldier doesn’t really need expensive schooling) due to lower infant and childbirth mortality, countries would go to war more often. We probably have governments accountable to the people, better educated and wealthier populations, etc to thank for avoiding this awful outcome.
Thanks, that's a pretty important point I hadn't considered! The rise in life expectancy at 25 seems to be almost half the rise in life expectancy at birth. But the former still seems pretty significant. See https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy-at-different-ages for France: 62 in 1816, 83 today. (France chosen only because it had data sources dating that far back; Norway, Denmark and Sweden show similar increases.) That's 62-25=37 versus 83-25=58 expected-years staked.
I agree, though, that life becoming more valuable is probably not the most important reason for the decline in war. Better institutions and stronger trade ties are likely better explanations.
There’s also the fact that more productive workers means it is less valuable to send them to war (and on a personal level, being able to produce more value (earn more) as a civilian than as a soldier).
Cosmopolitan values and cultural diversity probably matter enough to be mentioned, although I feel generally cynical that self interest is the main thing to consider.
I think your model of cultural diversity & cosmopolitanism mattering is somewhat like: people become less likely to think of the Other as enemies if they see the Other around in their communities much more often?
I think that's plausible, but my impression of the history of Indian, Chinese and European wars is that the fighting parties were pretty similar in culture, ethnicity, etc.
More seriously, I haven't looked into the best datasets/natural experiments myself. I have only heard that "The Better Angels of Nature" is good, but you very likely already know about it.
By cosmopolitanism, I mean that people value the lives of people far away. Tell someone to invade Tahiti, and they’ll say, “but what about the Tahitians?”
The US and Europe both have freedom of religion and general disapproval of racism. The lack of religious and racial motivations for wars means a decrease in the total war-motivation. This combined with the decreases in economic motivations sounds like a recipe for a long peace.
It could be true that people are less racist/more tolerant of religious differences today. But was racism/religious intolerance a major driver for early wars anyway, if most wars were fought between pretty similar people?
I think implicit in your argument is that the decisions of nation-states are increasingly beholden to the whims of its people rather than a single leader or cadre of elites (a bit of a Fukuyaman End of History claim). So democratization enabled by prosperity entrenches domestic interest in retaining and expanding those gains. Layer this on top of this the importance of global trade to that prosperity, and one has some sense of the many factors that cut against international competition and promote international cooperation.
This isn't my field, but I'm sure a lot written about this by economic theorists and historians. The one that jumps to mind that may be relevant to some of these questions in Niall Ferguson. His latest book Doom tracks a lot of the human and economic tolls of wars and pandemics over the course of history. I've written up a short review -> https://stetson.substack.com/p/eschatology-through-the-ages
On the whole you made your argument well.
The one issue I see is that life expectancy after birth has risen substantially, but since infants aren’t the ones deciding whether to risk going to war, life expectancy after infancy is a better metric to use to measure life-years risked. Life expectancy after infancy hasn’t risen very substantially since the 1800s.
‘… life expectancy in the mid-Victorian period was not markedly different from what it is today. Once infant mortality is stripped out, life expectancy at 5 years was 75 for men and 73 for women.’
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2625386/
I might even have expected that since it is much easier to generate a soldier now than in the past (the minimum soldier doesn’t really need expensive schooling) due to lower infant and childbirth mortality, countries would go to war more often. We probably have governments accountable to the people, better educated and wealthier populations, etc to thank for avoiding this awful outcome.
Thanks, that's a pretty important point I hadn't considered! The rise in life expectancy at 25 seems to be almost half the rise in life expectancy at birth. But the former still seems pretty significant. See https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy-at-different-ages for France: 62 in 1816, 83 today. (France chosen only because it had data sources dating that far back; Norway, Denmark and Sweden show similar increases.) That's 62-25=37 versus 83-25=58 expected-years staked.
I agree, though, that life becoming more valuable is probably not the most important reason for the decline in war. Better institutions and stronger trade ties are likely better explanations.
There’s also the fact that more productive workers means it is less valuable to send them to war (and on a personal level, being able to produce more value (earn more) as a civilian than as a soldier).
Cosmopolitan values and cultural diversity probably matter enough to be mentioned, although I feel generally cynical that self interest is the main thing to consider.
I think your model of cultural diversity & cosmopolitanism mattering is somewhat like: people become less likely to think of the Other as enemies if they see the Other around in their communities much more often?
I think that's plausible, but my impression of the history of Indian, Chinese and European wars is that the fighting parties were pretty similar in culture, ethnicity, etc.
Are there any datasets we can parse or experiments that have been done to really figure out what drives war or peace?
Yes; having a McDonald's causes peace! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lexus_and_the_Olive_Tree
More seriously, I haven't looked into the best datasets/natural experiments myself. I have only heard that "The Better Angels of Nature" is good, but you very likely already know about it.
It would be very cool if there have been good statistical studies/natural experiments, though.
By cosmopolitanism, I mean that people value the lives of people far away. Tell someone to invade Tahiti, and they’ll say, “but what about the Tahitians?”
The US and Europe both have freedom of religion and general disapproval of racism. The lack of religious and racial motivations for wars means a decrease in the total war-motivation. This combined with the decreases in economic motivations sounds like a recipe for a long peace.
It could be true that people are less racist/more tolerant of religious differences today. But was racism/religious intolerance a major driver for early wars anyway, if most wars were fought between pretty similar people?
I think implicit in your argument is that the decisions of nation-states are increasingly beholden to the whims of its people rather than a single leader or cadre of elites (a bit of a Fukuyaman End of History claim). So democratization enabled by prosperity entrenches domestic interest in retaining and expanding those gains. Layer this on top of this the importance of global trade to that prosperity, and one has some sense of the many factors that cut against international competition and promote international cooperation.
This isn't my field, but I'm sure a lot written about this by economic theorists and historians. The one that jumps to mind that may be relevant to some of these questions in Niall Ferguson. His latest book Doom tracks a lot of the human and economic tolls of wars and pandemics over the course of history. I've written up a short review -> https://stetson.substack.com/p/eschatology-through-the-ages