Fluctuations in the Intensity of War
Discussion
Joshua Goldstein:
"Wright (1942:227) studies "fluctuations in the intensity of war" and concludes that "There appears to have been a tendency in the last three centuries for concentrations of warfare to occur in approximately fifty-year oscillations, each alternating period of concentration being more severe" (p. 227). Wright defines these concentrations as follows:
- War of the Spanish Succession (1701–14)
- Concentration of wars around the Seven Years' War (1756–63)
- Napoleonic wars (1795–1815)
- Concentration of wars around 1853–715
- The World War (1914–18, renewed in 1939)
He concludes that "in the modern period of world-civilization fluctuations of war and peace have tended to become stabilized at about fifty years" (p. 378). These fifty-year concentrations of war are synchronous with Kondratieff's long waves."