After colonialism/cold war: Is it viable to say that we live in the most peaceful time im human history?

by kurz_gesagt

Hope this qualifies for this subreddit! Looking for the opinion of historians on this topic. I’m running the science animation channel Kurzgesagt (www.youtube.com/user/kurzgesagt) and am currently working on a video about this.

If I got this right, war between nation states has practically stopped (Ukraine/Russia being the current exception). Instead we now mostly have civil wars/local conflicts. I tried to compare the situation since 1900, with the situation 1800-1900. Most of the wars in this time period seem to be large scale wars between empires/nations and colonial wars.

The reasons seem to be: Democratization, globalization of trade, the end of colonialism/soviet union, the modern opinion that war between states is bad (I mean we have an international court for war crimes. This is pretty new in human history), the fact that most borders are fixed and respected and the shift from big empires to lots of small states.

Also, most of the world conflicts seem to be in areas that were until recently, under foreign control. Or where former colonial powers invented states that didn’t take local culture or ethnicities into account. So, is it fair to say that these young states have to find themselves before they can thrive?

It seems there are two major opinions on this between historians:

  1. War is on decline and might be a non issue in the future.
  2. It’s just a statistical anomaly and big wars might come back soon.

What do you guys think about this? Oh and any historian is interested in working on the video with us, drop me a line at info@kurzgesgt.org

Thadeauz

Peaceful is relative. Even if the numbers of wars between states decreased can we really talk about a more peaceful world?

  • Second Congo War (1998-2003) : 2.5 to 5.4 milions death
  • Afghan Civil War (1989-2001) : 400 000 death
  • Second Burundi Civil War (1993-2005) : 300 000 death
  • Somali Civil War (1991-present) : 300 000 death
  • Lord's Resistance War (1987-present) : 200 000/500 000 death
  • Algerian Civil War (1991-2002) : 200 000 death
  • Syrian Civil War (2011-present) : 180 000+ death
  • War in Darfur (2003-present) : 170 000+ death
  • Iraq War (2003-2011) : 176 000/189 000 death
  • Mexican Drug War (2006-present) : 100 000+ death
  • West Papua Genocide (1984-present) : 100 000/400 000 death
  • Laos Civil War (1974-2007) : 100 000 death
  • Iraq Uprising (1991) : 85 000/235 000 death
  • Sri Lanka Civil War (1983-2009) : 80 000/100 000 death
  • Ituri Conflict, War in Afghanistan, War in North-West Pakistan, Kurdish-Turkish Conflict, Shia insurgency in Yemen, Congo Civil War, war in Maghreb, Thailand, Niger, Sudan, Kargil, Georgia, Palestine, etc. All of those were in the 1990-present period.

If war between nations is declining, war in general seem to be in good shape. And both of those situation seem to be because of the industrialize world shaping the world around them.

blindingpain

Steven Pinker would agree with you. He's an evolutionary/neuropsychologist at Harvard who has written a lot of good stuff, but most notable for you is The Better Angels of Our Nature on how violence has declined, globally and regionally, in the past several centuries. It's a very good read, and some of the factors he attributes this to are those that you mentioned, democratization, decolonization, globalization of trade, the notion of war crimes, but also he credits much to the burgeoning of fiction literature writing in the 18th and 19th centuries, to the rationalist ideals resulting from the Enlightenment, and from the Industrial Revolution.