Age of Expansion
Stage 3 of Quigley's seven-stage civilizational model — the long growth phase driven by the instrument of expansion, marked by rising production, population, geography, and knowledge
Also known as: Stage 3, Stage III, Age of Growth, stage of expansion, expansion phase
The Age of Expansion is the growth phase of every civilization: the long period during which a maturing instrument of expansion produces rising standards of living, rising population, geographic colonization, and an expanding store of knowledge (EoC 136; T&H 19). Quigley assigns Western civilization three Ages of Expansion — c. 970-1270, c. 1420-1650, and c. 1725-1929 — each driven by a different instrument (feudalism, commercial capitalism, industrial capitalism) (EoC 132).
The Four Kinds of Expansion
Quigley defines the Age of Expansion by four simultaneous processes (EoC 136): "(a) increased production of goods, eventually reflected in rising standards of living; (b) increase in population of the society, generally because of a declining death rate; (c) an increase in the geographic extent of the civilization, for this is a period of exploration and colonization; and (d) an increase in knowledge." The four are intimately connected — increased production funds the demographic expansion, the demographic and geographic expansions create demand for more production, and the new geographic frontiers feed back into the store of knowledge. The Age of Expansion is not equivalent to mere economic boom: it is the simultaneous expansion of population, territory, output, and intellectual horizon, propelled by a working instrument of expansion.
Cause — A Working Instrument of Expansion
The Age of Expansion is driven by a particular kind of organization Quigley calls an instrument of expansion: an arrangement that channels society's surplus into reinvestment, accumulating capital, knowledge, and capacity rather than dissipating them. In the Quigley Lectures he formalizes this as an organization that maintains incentives for intensive growth — investment in productive capacity rather than extensive appropriation of others' resources (Quigley Lectures, p. 53). When the instrument is functioning, expansion is self-sustaining; when it institutionalizes (see Instrument-to-Institution Transition), the surplus is redirected to non-productive uses and the Age of Expansion ends. "The age of expansion began to draw to its close about the middle of the third millennium B.C." in Mesopotamia, Quigley writes, when the priesthood that had operated as the original instrument of expansion began applying surplus to non-productive purposes (EoC 218).
Stage-Lag Between Core and Periphery
A characteristic feature of the Age of Expansion is the stage-lag between the core and periphery. The core enters Stage 3 first because that is where the instrument of expansion was originally assembled; the periphery enters Stage 3 later, when the instrument's reach has expanded geographically. The periphery therefore remains in expansion after the core has already begun moving on. "By the latter half of Stage 3, the peripheral areas are tending to become wealthier and more powerful than the core areas" (EoC 137; T&H 20). This lag both prolongs the perceived prosperity of a civilization (the periphery continues to grow while the core sclerotizes) and sets up the imperialist wars of the following Age of Conflict, when peripheral states use their accumulated strength against the institutionalized core.
The Three Western Ages of Expansion
Quigley's most detailed application of the concept is to Western civilization, which he characterizes as the only civilization to have undergone three distinct Ages of Expansion — successfully reforming or circumventing its instrument of expansion twice before the third sclerotized. The first Age of Expansion (c. 970-1270) was driven by feudalism, which converted local self-defense and land-tenure into a system of mounted military and agricultural surplus (EoC 132; Quigley Lectures p. 3). The second (c. 1420-1650, or 1440-1590 in the Lectures variant) was driven by commercial capitalism, which channeled surplus into long-distance trade, joint-stock enterprise, and exploration. The third (c. 1725-1929, or 1770-1890) was driven by industrial capitalism — the Agricultural Revolution and Industrial Revolution together producing the largest sustained expansion in human history. The current crisis follows the institutionalization of industrial capitalism into monopoly capitalism around 1893-1930.
Why the Age Ends
The Age of Expansion never ends from outside — no invasion, no resource exhaustion, no climate is required. It ends because its instrument institutionalizes. "As soon as the rate of expansion in a civilization begins to decline noticeably, it enters Stage 4, the Age of Conflict" (EoC 137). The signal is a slowing rate of growth in the core (not necessarily a contraction), accompanied by a redirection of investment toward consumption and rent rather than production. "In all three the rate of expansion is now slowing down, as the post-1950 [order] becomes institutionalized," Quigley told his students in the late 1960s about the postwar Western boom (Quigley Lectures, p. 54). The Age of Expansion is, by Quigley's analysis, not the normal condition of a civilization but a precious and unusual interval; civilizations spend more of their lives in conflict or universal empire than in expansion.
Cited in
- tragedy-and-hope · p. 19 Quigley
The Age of Expansion is generally followed by an Age of Conflict, and this, in turn, by a period of Universal Empire in which a single political unit ruled the whole extent of the civilization. Western Civilization, on the contrary, did not pass from the Age of Crisis to the Age of Universal Empire, but instead was able to reform itself and entered upon a new period of expansion.
- tragedy-and-hope · p. 20 Quigley
In the latter part of the Age of Expansion, the peripheral areas of a civilization tend to become wealthier and more powerful than the core area.
- evolution-of-civilizations · p. 136 Quigley
The Stage of Expansion is marked by four kinds of expansion: (a) increased production of goods, eventually reflected in rising standards of living; (b) increase in population of the society, generally because of a declining death rate; (c) an increase in the geographic extent of the civilization, for this is a period of exploration and colonization; and (d) an increase in knowledge.
- evolution-of-civilizations · p. 132 Quigley
Western civilization has had three periods of expansion, the first about 970-1270, the second about 1420-1650, and the third about 1725-1929. The instrument of expansion in the first was feudalism, which became institutionalized into chivalric feudalism.
- evolution-of-civilizations · p. 207 Quigley
The consequences of it are quite evident: society was launched into an Age of Expansion. The Age of Expansion of Mesopotamian civilization lasted about two thousand years, say from just before 4500 to just before 2500.
- evolution-of-civilizations · p. 218 Quigley
They began to apply this income to nonproductive purposes. As a result the age of expansion began to draw to its close about the middle of the third millennium B.C. We have said that an Age of Expansion shows geographic extension of the area of the society's culture, increase in its population, increase in its economic production, growth of factual knowledge...
- quigley-lectures · p. 3 Quigley
950 is significant as the point at which our Western Civilization began the first of its three great Ages of Expansion, 970-1270. (The other two were 1440-1590 and 1770-1890). This first age of expansion applies to the core of Western Civilization, the area between the Rhine River and the Loire.
- quigley-lectures · p. 38 Quigley
With additional events, the situation looked like stability, and these additional events produced a new Age of Expansion. The first of these was the expansion of technology, including the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions.