Violence and Modernity: War (CR Jan 2015)
Typologies of Violence
1. Violence between states = war
1. Modernising war
2. Large-scale state violence within its own borders = terror
3. Mass violence in absence of overall state control = civil war (‘people’s war’; revolutionary war)
4. Violence of minorities aiming to overthrow the state = terrorism
5. Low-level repressive state violence = civil violence
NB Weber’s definition of the state as the body holding a monopoly of organised violence
The problem to be considered
Enlightenment expectations were that reason and science would succeed in building a harmonious,
non-violent society
Voltaire Essay on War
Later in 19th C Socialists like the Duc de St. Simon – trade and communications (railways) would so
integrate the world that conflict would be impossible
Also Marx and the ideal state of Communism
The terrible reckoning of violence
French revolutionary terror – 40,000 deaths
Napoleonic wars –
1.8 million French and allies (inc 600,000 civilians)
1.5 million allied forces (Britain, Russia, Austria, Spain, Italy, Prussia
Total – 3.3 million
Deaths by category (France and allies)
371,000 killed in action
800,000 killed by disease, primarily in the disastrous invasion of Russia
600,000 civilians
65,000 French allies (mainly Poles fighting for independence lost in 1795)
Total: 1,800,000 French and allies (mostly Germans and Poles) dead in action, disease and missing
War deaths 1854-1945
Crimean War (1854-6) c. 600,000
American Civil War (1861-5) 750,000 (620,000 trad)
World War 1 (1914- 18) - 9m to 15m (6m ‘missing’)(6m civilians)
Russian Civil War (1918-22) 10m
Spanish Civil War (1936-9) – c. 500,000
World War 2 (1939-45) - 60-70m dead (inc 27m USSR; 0.25m USA; 0.5m Britain)
Deaths in recent wars
Vietnam (1955-75): The South c 1m dead (inc 58,000 US troops); The North 600,000 military – total
of 2m – 4m for war
Gulf War 1 Kuwait (1990-1) 190 coalition troops killed in action (189 died in accidents and ‘friendly
fire’); 25,000 Iraqi civilians and soldiers
Gulf War 2 – Iraq (March-May 2003) 172 coalition troops killed c.200,000 involved – 30,000 Iraqi
troops and civilians killed)
Afghan Wars – 1979-8 (15,000 Soviet military: 75,000 plus Mujaheddin; maybe ) 0.6 to 1.0m civilians
- 2001- ?? (3,162 coalition dead; 15,000 civilians; Taliban – unknown)
Why have wars expanded?
1. Technology – weapons derived from industry
2. Logistics – organisation - An army ‘marches on its stomach’ – Napoleon
3. Soldiers – recruitment, conscription, motivation (rise of nationalism/ nation state)
4. Money = ever-larger tax revenues
2 + 3 + 4 = modern state – prerequisite for mass warfare (+ ideology esp. Nationalism)
Military revolution - technology
1750 – muskets (accuracy 100/150 yards; 5 rounds per minute)
- Cannon – shot and some crude shells = wars of mobility (cavalry) and close quarters fighting
- bayonets, swords, daggers
Begins to change in early 19th C
C 1850 – rifle (rifling in barrel) increases accuracy to 500 yards. Bullet magazines and rapid re-loading
increase frequency of firing. 1870 true rifle.
1862 Gatling gun – hand-cranked machine gun; Maxim gun – automatic – 100s of rounds per minute
Second half of nineteenth century
Dynamite and high explosive (chemical industry)
Internal combustion engine
railways
Steel - e.g. armour plating of ships
Leads to - dreadnoughts at sea
long range artillery (20 miles by WW1)
high-explosive shell. Obliterate anything exposed so
Warfare becomes defensive – trenches (American CW and Russo-Japanese War as prototypes of
First World War) (mortars 100-300 yds define distance of trenches)
Military revolution - technology
From WW1 to WW2
Aircraft – airships (derived from hot-air balloons) – failure cf gas
- biplanes/triplanes – spotting; bombing; dogfights (NB first flight – 17 Dec 1903 – 120 ft;
12 seconds (7 mph) alt 10 ft.)
Tanks (diesel engines)– to break through trenches
Blitzkrieg (lightning war)
= blitzkrieg – massive concentration of power at a small point – punch hole in defence – pour
through using mobile infantry, spread out and attack from behind
Blitzkrieg – Volkhov Jan 1942
Mass bombing
Guernica 1937 c. 1000; Coventry 1940 c. 1000 in two raids; Dresden (Feb 1945) c. 25,000; Tokyo
(1945) 75,000 +; Nuclear bombs - Hiroshima and Nagasaki (Aug 1945) 100,00 each
Military revolution - technology
1945 a kind of apogee – military development bifurcates:
1. The hi-tech path continues producing weapons that, in many cases, can scarcely be used
World War 2 and beyond (Cold War)
Rockets – Katiushas; V1; V2 – missiles – ICBMs - mirv
Jet engines
Computers and communications (12 signals exchanged at Trafalgar: 50,000 per hour in Gulf War 1)
Cruise missiles; Drones
2. ‘Asymmetric warfare’- ‘People’s War’
Up to 1945 – size matters – the wealthiest and best equipped win. But ‘conventional’ war is
increasingly challenged
Post-1945 in anti-colonial and anti-imperialist wars small forces have sometimes prevailed over or
counter-balanced the most advanced equipment
Guerilla and Revolutionary wars (‘People’s Wars) – China; Cuba; Latin America; Kenya; Malaya
Vietnam war – ‘bicycles versus B-52 bombers’
Current wars in Middle East
Other components of military revolution
2. Logistics – organisation
3. Soldiers – recruitment, conscription
4. Money = ever-larger tax revenues
2 + 3 + 4 = modern state – prerequisite for mass warfare (+ ideology esp. Nationalism)
Logistics and organisation
In a modern army only around ten percent are frontline troops – the rest organise, plan, maintain,
transport etc.
Requires a major bureaucracy to sustain it with endless skills, technical, practical and managerial
Recruitment
In 18th c – volunteers, mercenaries, press-gangs
Napoleon institutes first nationwide conscription – Levee en masse
- originates in 1793 with CPS as a mass call to arms and defence (embryonic total war – men
called to fight, women to work in factories – linked to emergence of citizenship)
- institutionalised from 1797 on
Money United States Federal, State and Local Government Spending (see ppt on website)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cIjTodmfk0Slide 49
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&v=slaNADrdPMA&NR=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKtCVblxDRc&feature=endscreen&NR=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msHJLwYWX30
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20JCGDwBt7A
Violence and Modernity: War 2. Social costs and scars of war
As we have already seen the costs, scars and consequences of war are inseparable from its other
aspects. We have been looking, for example at its interaction with the modern state. War is at the
core of modern citizenship and the developing ideologies – especially nationalism – are geared to
uniting people to fight. War is a, arguably the, main raison d’etre of the modern state.
Impacts associated with war
economic development; Technological, medical and scientific development; Cultural/psychological
impact; Political manipulation; Social change (gender roles; weakens class); Engenders revolutions;
Destroys empires and economies [NB War rarely ‘solves’ political and international problems it
sets out to combat – instead, it usually displaces them with other, often more acute, problems.]
Impacts 1 Economic Development
Victory can strengthen a country’s economic grip by defeating a rival – classic example is Britain vs
France Seven Years’ War and beyond.
Imperialism and imperial state – Hobson, Lenin, Hilferding et al.
War makes state a leading investor and/or customer - War (and space) spending has a ‘Keynesian’
effect on economy -‘Military-industrial complex,
Impacts 2 Technological, medical and scientific development
Impacts 3 Cultural/psychological impact
Enormous impact of war on culture high and low
Goya and war painting from Napoleonic period
From figurative to abstract art – music Tchaikovsky to Stravinsky; Painting - Kandinsky
War Movies http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gz3Cc7wlfkI
Impacts 4 Political Manipulation Chauvinistic military campaigns to influence elections
(Falklands factor)
French imperialism in N.Africa
Bismarck
Impacts 5 Social Change
gender roles; in mass warfare women move into ‘male’ civilian roles at work (what happens when
the surviving men come back?)
weakens class – ‘all in it together’
welfare state
Impacts 6 Engenders Revolutions
Russian Revolution
Chinese Revolution – People’s Liberation Army, Long March, Yunan Period
Impacts 7 Destroys Empires 1914 map/1919 map