Historical periods, trends, and cycles in international relations

Abstract

One of the most prominent features of Quincy Wright's comprehensive approach to the study of international relations was his knowledge of historical events and scholarly thought through the ages and his emphasis on historical continuity and development. The first volume of A Study of War was devoted to the history of war, and included analyses of animal, primitive, traditional, and modern warfare, along with special chapters on the character of modern and contradictions of modern civilization. Wright was particularly interested in discovering ways of analyzing and measuring historical events and trends objectively. He also believed that empirical studies could not be very fruitful unless the scholar knew history well unless he acquired a sense of the continuity of human affairs, of change, and of the uniqueness of every nation, every period, and every individual; disclosures of apparent repetitions; light upon the causes of human action; emphasis on the role of contingency; a sense of the influence of choice and of values in human affairs (historians are seldom materialists); and standards of evaluation (Wright, 1955, pp. 86-87). In his classes Quincy Wright often astonished his students by the depth and detail of his historical knowledge, which he used frequently to illustrate his major points. He focused especially on differing periods and trends. For example, he divided the history of modern military techniques into four periods: (1) experimental adaptation of firearms and religious wars, 1450-1648; (2) professional armies and dynastic wars, 1648-1789; (3) industrialization and nationalist wars the capitalization of war-1789-1914; and (4) the airplane and totalitarian war, 1914 on (Wright, 1942, pp. 294-303). His students in the late 1930s were introduced to Arnold J. Toynbee's four phases in the rise and fall of a civilization (Heroic Age, Time of Troubles, Universal State, and the rise of a new Universal Religion in the time of decline). Although the coming of World War II heightened his students' anxiety about the prospects for Western civilization, Wright continued his studies and consultant activities apparently without loss of faith or hope in mankind and in ultimate peace. Three aspects of his concerns and research interests inspired my own work: predicting war as a function of attitudinal factors (Klingberg, 1941); predicting the end of war as a function of casualties (Klingberg, 1966); and predicting national policies of expansion or withdrawal on the basis of national moods (Klingberg, 1952). In terms of today's concerns a number of hypotheses emerging from these studies testify to the permanence of Wright's place both in methodology and in substantive focus. For instance, one's interest in the end of fighting in Vietnam might lead one to refer to Wright's historical data of combat duration