idw – Informationsdienst Wissenschaft
Nachrichten, Termine, Experten
Nachrichten, Termine, Experten
Prof. Michael Mann (Department of Sociology, UCLA) spricht am Dienstag, den 26. April 2005 um 18 Uhr (st) am ZMO in Berlin zu "Wars, Empires and Capitalism".
(Kirchweg 33, 14129 Berlin, 030 80307-0, Anmeldungen bitte an zmo@rz.hu-berlin.de)
In his lecture Michael Mann is seeking to explain the overall trajectory of war in modern times: why Europeans were so unusually warlike and so imperialistic in modern times, and why inter-state (as opposed to intra-state) warfare declined so precipitously after 1945. Michael Mann will also comment on the extent to which the Bush administration has reversed this trajectory (the only inter-state wars since 2000 have involved the US).
Mann starts by contrasting contexts in which there was a single "stand-alone" empire dominating a region (e.g. China in Asia) from where there was rivalry between multiple empires. The latter context produces far more wars, since one of the two principal motives for imperial conquest - alongside economic acquisition - has been to forestall possible conquests around one's borders by one's rivals. He then argues that the history of Europe has to be seen as essentially one of rivalry between multiple "mini-empires", starting within the continent itself and then spreading seamlessly, without a break, to the world as a whole. This process began before the rise of capitalism and structured the emergence of capitalism as a world system - that is, capitalism expanded through military force. Yet within the history of modern empires we can then detect a trajectory toward milder forms of empire, that is from "informal" empires. This has also been true of the American empire. This overall trajectory, when added to the advent of nuclear weapons and of a single "stand-alone" American empire explains the reduction in inter-state warfare.
http://www.zmo.de Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO)
http://www.zmo.de/veranstaltungen/2005/zmo_kolloquium_2005.html World History Reihe des ZMO
http://www.soc.ucla.edu/faculty.php?lid=729&display_one=1 Prof. Michael Mann, UCLA
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