The Causes of War and the Spread of Peace ─ But Will War Rebound?

Why do humans go to war? Have we been waging war ever since we first existed as a species? Is a propensity to wage war part of what it is to be human, or more a result of the evolution of human society? And has there been a decline in war-making over time - or is this just a pious hope?

Azar Gat here draws together insights from evolutionary theory, anthropology, history, historical sociology, and political science to address these fundamental questions about the history of our species- the answers to which also have big implications for our species' future survival.

The book reveals that theories regarding the recent decline of war, such as the "democratic peace" and "capitalist peace," capture merely elements of a broader Modernization Peace that has been growing since the onset of the industrial age in the early 19th century.

Azar Gat is Ezer Weitzman Professor of National Security in the Department of Political Science at Tel Aviv University. He took his doctorate from the University of Oxford (1986). His most recent books include Victorious and Vulnerable: Why Democracy Won in the 20th Century and How it is still Imperiled (Hoover, 2009), and Nations: The Long History and Deep Roots of Political Ethnicity and Nationalism (CUP, 2012), with Alexander Yakobson. His War in Human Civilization (OUP, 2006) was named as one of the Books of the Year by the Times Literary Supplement. His titles have been translated into Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Greek, and Hebrew.