Age of Conflict
Stage 4 of Quigley's seven-stage civilizational model — the era of slowing expansion, class struggle, imperialist wars, and growing irrationality that follows the institutionalization of the instrument of expansion
Also known as: Age of Crisis, Stage 4, Stage IV, Age of General Crisis, stage of conflict
The Age of Conflict is the fourth and "most complex, most interesting, and most critical" stage in Quigley's seven-stage civilizational model. It begins when the instrument of expansion has institutionalized, slowing the rate of growth and producing four interlocking symptoms: declining expansion, intensifying class conflict, imperialist wars between core states, and rising irrationality (EoC 137; T&H 20). Quigley dates the West's current Age of Conflict from roughly 1893 onward.
The Four Defining Characteristics
Quigley repeatedly names the same four characteristics — virtually verbatim across The Evolution of Civilizations (p. 137), Tragedy and Hope (p. 20), and the Georgetown Lectures (p. 51). The Age of Conflict is: "(a) a period of declining rate of expansion; (b) a period of growing tension of evolution and increasing class conflicts, especially in the core area; (c) a period of increasingly frequent and increasingly violent imperialist wars; and (d) a period of growing irrationality, pessimism, superstitions, and otherworldliness" (EoC 137). All four phenomena appear in the core area of a civilization before they appear in the peripheral areas; this stage-lag is the structural reason peripheral powers tend to outrun the core.
Cause — The Institutionalization of the Instrument of Expansion
The Age of Conflict is not a moral failure or a fall from grace; it has a precise structural cause. "The reason for the decreasing rate of expansion," Quigley tells his Georgetown students, "is that the organization of expansion ceases acting as an instrument of expansion and becomes an institution. The tendency for all organizations to begin as instruments and to end as institutions is a general characteristic of all organizational patterns of any kind" (Quigley Lectures, p. 51). See Instrument-to-Institution Transition for the mechanism. People's habits and social organizations remain calibrated to expansion even after expansion stops; the resulting frictions break out as imperialist war and class struggle: "Social classes and political units within the civilization try to compensate for the slowing of expansion through normal growth by the use of violence against other social classes or against other political units. From this come class struggles and imperialist wars" (T&H 20).
Imperialist Wars and the Rise of the Periphery
The wars of the Age of Conflict reduce the number of political units in the civilization by conquest. Eventually, "one emerges triumphant. When this occurs we have one political unit for the whole civilization" — the Universal Empire. Crucially, the consolidator is almost never a core state. "When this occurs the core empire is generally a semiperipheral state, while the Universal Empire is generally a peripheral state" (T&H 21). The Mesopotamian Age of Conflict ran from about 2700 to 700 B.C. and ended with the Assyrian conquest. Classical civilization's Age of Conflict produced first Macedonian then Roman consolidation. Quigley names two earlier Western Ages of Conflict — the Hundred Years' War period (c. 1300-1430) and the "Second Hundred Years' War" (c. 1650-1815) — both successfully circumvented before a Universal Empire could form (EoC 141; T&H 21).
Irrationality and Otherworldliness
The fourth symptom — rising irrationality — is the one Quigley spends the most ink defending. "At the same time they turn to irrationality to compensate for the growing insecurity of life, for the chronic economic depression, for the growing bitterness and dangers of class struggles" (EoC 139). Mystery cults in Hellenistic Greece, late-Roman astrology and gnosticism, the proliferation of millennial movements in late-medieval Europe, and what Quigley sees as the rise of pseudo-religion, pessimist philosophy, and revolutionary millenarianism in the modern West are all classified together as Age-of-Conflict irrationality. This is not a snobbish dismissal of religion as such; Quigley distinguishes between religion proper (a structuring of meaning during expansion) and irrationality (an escape from disappointed expansion). The two have, on his account, opposite social functions.
The Present Age of Conflict (1893–Present)
Quigley dates the West's third and current Age of Conflict from approximately 1893 — the close of the long nineteenth-century Age of Expansion — and treats the entire arc of 1893-2024-and-beyond as its working out. The wars of 1914 and 1939 are not anomalies; they are the imperialist wars predicted by the model. The rise of Soviet Russia and the United States as the dominant successor powers fits the peripheral-conqueror pattern. The class struggles of the twentieth century — Bolshevism, fascism, the rise of organized labor and the welfare state — fit characteristic (b). The growing irrationality includes, on Quigley's reading, both the totalitarian ideologies of the interwar period and what he saw in his Georgetown lectures as the spreading nihilism, drug culture, and political theatre of the 1960s. Whether the West will achieve reform, circumvention, or be consolidated into a Universal Empire is left open at the end of The Evolution of Civilizations.
Cited in
- tragedy-and-hope · p. 20 Quigley
Eventually, in most civilizations the rate of expansion begins to decline everywhere. It is this decline in the rate of expansion of a civilization which marks its passage from the Age of Expansion to the Age of Conflict. This latter is the most complex, most interesting, and most critical of all the periods or the life cycle of a civilization.
- tragedy-and-hope · p. 20 Quigley
It is marked by four chief characteristics: (a) it is a period of declining rate of expansion; (b) it is a period of growing tensions and class conflicts; (c) it is a period of increasingly frequent and increasingly violent imperialist wars; and (d) it is a period of growing irrationality, pessimism, superstitions, and otherworldliness.
- tragedy-and-hope · p. 21 Quigley
In most civilizations the long-drawn agony of the Age of Conflict finally ends in a new period, the Age of the Universal Empire. As a result of the imperialist wars of the Age of Conflict, the number of political units in the civilization are reduced by conquest. Eventually one emerges triumphant.
- evolution-of-civilizations · p. 137 Quigley
As soon as the rate of expansion in a civilization begins to decline noticeably, it enters Stage 4, the Age of Conflict. This is probably the most complex, most interesting, and most critical of all the seven stages.
- evolution-of-civilizations · p. 139 Quigley
The Age of Conflict (Stage 4) is a period of imperialist wars and of irrationality supported for reasons that are usually different in the different social classes. The masses of the people ... engage in imperialist wars because it seems the only way to overcome the slowing down of expansion.
- evolution-of-civilizations · p. 140 Quigley
As a result of the imperialist wars of the Age of Conflict, the number of political units in the civilization is reduced. Eventually one unit emerges triumphant. When this occurs we are in Stage 5, the Stage of Universal Empire.
- quigley-lectures · p. 51 Quigley
The civilization has entered upon Stage IV in its life-span; that is, it enters its Age of Conflict or General Crisis (Stage IV). ... These four indicators are: (a) decreasing rate of expansion; (b) increasing class-conflicts; (c) increasing imperialist wars among the political units which make up most civilizations; and (d) growing irrationality.
- evolution-of-civilizations · p. 220 Quigley
In Mesopotamian society we may fix the dates of the Age of Conflict from about 2700 B.C. to the Assyrian Conquest about 700 B.C. The preliminary universal empires would be found in the Akkadian period about 2350 B.C. and again in the Babylonian period about 1700 B.C.