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Civil War and Revolution SungraphoThema VELS levels 1-3 Civil War and Revolution What can the study of civil war bring to our understanding of revolutions? Professor David Armitage, Harvard University The study of civil war has recently become academic Civil war has gradually become the most widespread, big business, especially among political scientists the most destructive, and now the most characteristic and economists. A surge of intellectual interest in form of organised human violence. Since 1820, an a major problem like this often has two sources: average of two to four per cent of all countries have the internal dynamics of academic disciplines experienced civil war at any given moment. This themselves, and external currents in the wider world striking average disguises the fact that some periods that scholars hope their findings might shape. The were even more acutely afflicted by internal warfare: ongoing ‘boom in the study of civil war,’ as it has for example, the middle decades of the nineteenth been called, has both these motives. Economists who century, the period of the US Civil War, the Taiping study underdevelopment, especially in Africa, have Rebellion and the Indian Mutiny, among other internal isolated civil war as one of its main causes. Students conflicts.2 The decades since 1975 have seen a similar of international relations who focused their attention spike in the incidence of internal warfare. Indeed, in on wars between states have turned to the study of the last thirty years, an average of at least ten per cent civil wars as they found their traditional subject of all countries at any one time have been suffering disappearing before their very eyes: since World War civil war: in 2006 (the last year for which complete II, the developed world has enjoyed a ‘Long Peace’ data are available), there were thirty-two civil wars in without interstate war, while between 1989 and 2006, progress around the world. As if these totals are not 115 of the world’s 122 wars were fought within states alarming enough, the global economic impact of civil as part of a ‘Long Agony’ of civil war for many of the wars has been estimated to be roughly US$120 billion world’s poorest peoples. Meanwhile, the rise of ethnic a year: that is more than the developed world’s annual conflict since 1989 excited interest in the various aid budget for the developing world.3 Civil war is causes of civil strife across the world from the Balkans therefore a global scourge and in every sense a costly to the Horn of Africa.1 This has led to an explosion one. Its occurrence has dipped slightly in the last few of social-scientific research on civil wars, especially years, but it shows no signs of disappearing from the those that occurred in the last half-century. world any time soon. 18 Agora AGORA_vol_44_no2_2009.indd 18 17/04/2009 4:06:20 PM Thema 1 Stathis N. Kalyvas, “Civil In light of the prevalence, the within the boundaries of a single Wars,” in The Oxford ruinousness, and the appalling price sovereign state? Did calling the conflicts Handbook of Comparative of civil war, it is striking how little in Rwanda and Bosnia civil wars allow Politics, eds. Carles attention historians have paid to it as a the rest of the world to wash their Boix and Susan Stokes (Oxford: Oxford phenomenon central to both the past hands of responsibility for what took University Press, 2007), and the present. Yet they may have place behind closed borders? And does 417; Lotta Harbom and overlooked its importance for some naming what has happened in Darfur Peter Wallensteen, of the same reasons social scientists ‘genocide’ rather than civil war render a “Armed Conflict, have been transfixed by it. Few, if any, fundamentally political conflict instead 1989–2006,” Journal of historians have the kind of influence intractably ethnic, and hence beyond Peace Research, 44 (2007): over public policy that economists hope of reasonable resolution?7 624, Table II. 2 C. A. Bayly, The Birth of the can command. Diplomatic historians The conventional definition of civil war Modern World, 1780-1914 can still study past interstate wars and used by political scientists stipulates (Oxford: Blackwell, hence have little need to redirect their that there must be ‘sustained military 2004), 148–65. energies to the study of civil war. Nor combat, primarily internal, resulting 3 Carles Boix, “Civil Wars have historians generally been quite so in at least 1000 battle-field deaths per and Guerrilla Warfare professionally committed to tying their in the Contemporary year, pitting central government forces World,” in Order, research agendas to current events and against an insurgent force capable of … Conflict, and Violence, contemporary issues. When historians inflict[ing] upon the government forces eds. Stathis N. Kalyvas have studied civil war, they have treated at least 5 percent of the fatalities the et al, (Cambridge: it not as a single phenomenon, across insurgents sustain.’8 This definition dis- Cambridge University time and around the world. Instead Press, 2008), 206; Paul tinguishes civil wars from other kinds of they have seen civil wars as a series of warfare; it marks civil war off from other Collier, Lisa Chauvet distinct events in discrete places: for and Håvard Hagre, The sorts of violence, like rioting, terrorism Security Challenge in example, the English Civil Wars, the and genocide; and it allows analysts to Conflict-Prone Countries, American Civil War, the Russian Civil generate large sets of data from which Copenhagen Consensus War and the Spanish Civil War. Each they can draw statistical conclusions 2008 Challenge Paper of those conflicts has its own massive about the duration, recurrence and total (April 2008), 22. and sophisticated historiography. The 4 This essay is drawn from number of civil wars. But different crite- sheer size and complexity of those ria can, of course, lead to very different my own foolhardy treatments has deterred all but the most work in progress, Civil results. During the debate on whether War: A History in Ideas ambitious – or foolhardy – historians or not Iraq was suffering a civil war, one (New York: Knopf, from attempting any comparative or author used the yardsticks I have just forthcoming). connected histories of civil war across 4 quoted to calculate that there had been 5 Kalyvas, “Civil Wars,” 416. space and time. seven civil wars there since 1945, while 6 James D. Fearon, “Iraq’s Civil War,” Foreign Affairs A further reason why historians have two journalists who used a less sophis- 86, No. 2 (March/April not examined civil war outside its ticated version – that it ‘must be “civil” 2007): 2–16. See also the specific contexts might be the lack of and it must be “war”’ – counted only articles quoted in Note 9. consensus about just what counts as a five civil wars in world history since the 7 Mahmood Mamdani, civil war. ‘Civil war is … a phenomenon 1640s.9 “The Politics of Naming: prone to serious semantic confusion, Genocide, Civil War, A less controversial working definition Insurgency,” London even contestation. The description of a might be the one offered by Yale Review of Books 29, No. 5 conflict as a civil war carries symbolic political scientist Stathis Kalyvas: (8 March 2007): 1–9. and political weight since the term can ‘armed combat within the boundaries of 8 Melvin Small and J. confer or deny legitimacy to a warring a recognized sovereign entity between David Singer, Resort to party.’5 Its application can depend on Arms: International and parties subject to a common authority whether you are a ruler or a rebel, the at the outset of the hostilities.’10 This Civil Wars, 1816-1980 victor or the vanquished, an established (Beverley Hills: Sage, less restrictive definition might help us 1982), 210–20. government or an interested third party. to see one major area of historical study 9 David A. Patten, “Is Iraq Outside powers may hedge their bets for which debates about the nature in a Civil War?,” Middle or decide that such wars are beyond and meaning of civil war could have East Quarterly 14, No. 3 their control because they are solely special relevance to historians: the study (Summer 2007): 27–32; ‘civil,’ that is, internal, matters: this was John Keegan and Bartle of revolutions. It defines civil war as one major issue at stake in the British organised collective violence within a Bull, “What is a Civil and American debates in late 2006 War? Are We Witnessing single polity which leads to a division of One in Iraq?” Prospect 129 and 2007 over whether the violence in 6 sovereignty and consequently a struggle (December 2006): 18–19. Iraq should be called ‘civil war.’ The for authority. Put this way, I would 10 Stathis N. Kalyvas, consequences of such decisions have suggest, the definition can encompass The Logic of Violence in been central to major conflicts across Civil War (Cambridge: most, if not all, of what we think of as the centuries and around the world. Was the world’s great revolutions: English, Cambridge University the American Civil War a war between Press, 2006), 17. American, French, Russian and Chinese, equal opposing parties, or a rebellion among others. Indeed, I would go Agora 19 AGORA_vol_44_no2_2009.indd 19 17/04/2009 4:06:20 PM Thema ‘Civil war is in fact the genus of which revolution is only a species.’ further, and say that civil war is in fact within the city, or civitas, for control of the genus of which revolution is only a Rome itself.13 A sequence of such con- species.11 flicts had marked Roman history from On the face of it, there would seem to the days of Sulla and Marius through to be excellent reasons to resist such a the victory of Octavian (later, Augustus) conflation of civil war and revolution.
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