Anthropological Aspects of the Origins of War

Abstract

A STUDY of the origin of war and its various manifestations from an anthropological point of view, by J. R. Swanton, of the Bureau of American Ethnology, which has been issued by the Smithsonian Institution in the War Background Studies series (No. 12), indicates the impossibility of separating the consideration of wars between tribes or nations from disturbances internal to them. Reviewing the various motives which lead to war and comparing warfare in simple and in advanced societies, Mr. Swanton emphasizes the relations between motives governing the individual and those which result in collective hostilities. These and further considerations of group controls, international relations, the effect of warfare upon trade and the place of the military establishment in the national life, lead to the conclusion that war is an expression of man's antisocial tendencies; and just as individual and collective crimes have to be controlled within the State by men trained and equipped to meet them, so the destructive threat represented by foreign armed forces when used for aggression must be countered by armed forces prepared to meet them. Between many nations there is a constantly increasing tendency to settle differences by peaceful means, and if these areas of law and of good feeling continue to spread, the preservation of order will pass more and more to the police, or to armed forces acting in that capacity. Consideration of the origins of war and attitudes towards it among different people shows that collective pugnacity is an acquired trait–cultural not biological. Fear and not hatred is the underlying if not the dominant motive, and when this fear can be allayed, belligerency will disappear with it. There is no mystery about the force required to terminate warfare. All that is needed is the will to do so.