Deadly Quarrels

Book excerpt: Lewis Fry Richardson was one of the first to develop the systematic study of the causes of war; yet his great war data archive, Statistics of Deadly Quarrels, posthumously published, has yet to be fully systematized and assimilated by war-causation scholars. David Wilkinson has reanalyzed Richardson's data and drawn together the results of kindred quantitative work on the causes of war, from other as well as from Richardson. He has translated this classic of international relations literature into contemporary idiom, fully and accurately presenting the substance of Richardson's idea and at the same time bringing it up to date with judicious comment, updating the references to the critical and successor literature, and dealing in some detail with Richardson himself. Professor Wilkinson lists among the findings: 1. the death toll of war is largely the product of a very few immense wars; 2. most wars do not escalate out of control, they are vey likely to be small, brief, and exclusive; 3. great powers have done most of the world's fighting, inflicting and suffering most of the casualties; 4. the propensity of any two groups to fight increases as the ethnocultural differences between them increase. Contemporary peace strategy would therefore seem to be to avoid World War III by promoting superpower detente, and reanimating, accelerating, and civilizing the process of world economic development. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1980.