Full Description
This is the first volume of a projected four-volume series charting the causes of war from 3000 BCE to the present day, written by a leading international lawyer, and using as its principal materials the documentary history of international law largely in the form of treaties and the negotiations which led up to them. These volumes seek to show why millions of people, over thousands of years, slayed each other. In departing from the various theories put forward by historians, anthropologists and psychologists, Gillespie offers a different taxonomy of the causes of war, focusing on the broader settings of politics, religion, migrations and empire-building. These four contexts were dominant and often overlapping justifications for the first four thousand years of human civilisation, for which written records exist.
Contents
1. Introduction
1. The Conversation on Sunday Afternoon
2. Utopia
3. Facts
4. Casus Belli in Practice
II. Empires
1. Introduction
2. The Formation of Empires
3. The Middle East
4. Greece
5. Rome
6. The Formation of Modern Europe
7. Conclusion
III. Migratory Peoples
Introduction
Egypt
India
China
Rome
Further Migratory Peoples in the West to 1000
Byzantium
Northern Europe
Conclusion
IV. Politics
Introduction
The Near East, Egypt, China and India
The Greeks and the Wars for Freedom
Rome and the Political Question
The Contribution of Christianity
The Christian Emperors of the Roman Empire
The Return to Monarchy in the West
Islam and the Political Question
Conclusion
V. Religion
Introduction
Mesopotamia, Egypt, Assyria, Israel and Persia
China and India
Greece and Rome
Christianity
Orthodoxy, Heresy and Intolerance
The Rise of the Papacy and the East-West Tension
The Religious Question between Rome and Persia
Islam
Islam and Christianity in the East
Islam and Christianity in the West
Conclusion
VI. Conclusion
