War, Peace & Prosperity

The University of Chicago Press

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War, Peace & Prosperity in the Name of God

Three Main Themes

The book with is an attempt to identify & quantify the historical role of religion in sociopolitics and economics.

To that end, it takes a functionalist view driven by the social, political, and economic functions of religion.

Structural-functionalist analysis of religion, spearheaded by Talcott Parsons in the 1930s.

It revolves around three critical questions:

Why and how did political power and organized religion become so swiftly and successfully intertwined? What has been the role of religion in con�ict historically? And what were some of the sociopolitical, demographic, and economic e¤ects of religiously motivated con�icts?

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War, Peace & Prosperity in the Name of God

The Key Punch-lines

Monotheisms, especially the Abrahamic ones, were particularly potent in combining and intertwining religious and political authority.

Di¤erences, driven by the One God/One Religion duality, were often strong enough to trump sectarian and denomination disagreements within.

Interactions, rivalries and competition between monotheisms left lasting imprints on institutions, politics and socioeconomics both in the West and the (Middle) East.

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War, Peace & Prosperity in the Name of God

Preliminaries

Moral as well as ethical considerations associated with faith serve as a foundation for social stability.

Monotheism particularly e¤ective in serving this function.

Ecclesiastical and political power complemented each other in in�uencing the e¢ cacy of centralized government.

But religious rivalries produced and sustained violent con�icts throughout history.

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War, Peace & Prosperity in the Name of God

Preliminaries

Violent con�icts were diminishing over time...

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War, Peace & Prosperity in the Name of God

Preliminaries

They were getting shorter...

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War, Peace & Prosperity in the Name of God

Preliminaries

.... but also deadlier.

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War, Peace & Prosperity in the Name of God

Abrahamic Monotheisms

Propensity of religious con�icts didn�t decline as much.

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War, Peace & Prosperity in the Name of God

Abrahamic Monotheisms

They tended to be more deadly....

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War, Peace & Prosperity in the Name of God

Abrahamic Monotheisms

... and last longer.

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War, Peace & Prosperity in the Name of God

Christian-Muslim Rivalries

Chapter 2 establishes the extent and speed with which Abrahamic monotheisms spread between the eighth and �fteenth centuries CE.

Chapter 3 discusses the chronologies of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, subsequent to their births.

Although these religions di¤ered, one common trait among adherents has their zeal for promoting their religion.

The success of monotheisms in spreading and enduring meant that, sooner or later, civilizations associated with them would be in direct confrontation.

One God/One True Faith duality.

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War, Peace & Prosperity in the Name of God

Christian-Muslim Rivalries

Chapter 4 discusses a framework in which internal divisions within a monotheist religion would be subordinated to those between monotheisms.

For religious a¢ nity to foster cooperation among parties that could otherwise be in con�ict with one another, the resources at stake need to be meaningful and outside external threats need to be credible and grave enough.

An outside threat tended to be �grave�when it came from those who subscribed to a di¤erent religion.

A "grave" military threat by a society with a di¤erent faith could breed internal coexistence, however temporary the latter could be.

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War, Peace & Prosperity in the Name of God

Christian-Muslim Rivalries

Chapter 5 reviews the rise of the Islamic Ottoman Empire in the 14th CE and how it became a serious threat to Europe.

Di¤erences of faith had a lot to do with how Ottomans and Europeans viewed each other.

This manifested in the main imperial objectives of the early Ottoman rulers.

The Gaza ideology (Kafadar, 1996) Its earlier precursors in the Holy Crusades the Europeans organized against the Muslims between the 11th and 13th CE.

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War, Peace & Prosperity in the Name of God

E¤ects in Europe

"Modern history of Europe begins under stress of the Ottoman conquest." Lord Acton (1834�1902)

Chapter 6 shows that European ecclesiastical pluralism, as exempli�ed by the recognition of Lutheranism and its o¤shoots by the Roman Catholic Church in 1555, had some roots in European and Ottoman existential rivalries.

Chapter 7 explores the in�uence of state ideologies versus that of ethno-religious ties in perpetuating or diverting con�icts and war.

The reign of a sultan with a European and Christian maternal background was enough to o¤set most of the empire�s western orientation in imperial expansion.

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War, Peace & Prosperity in the Name of God

E¤ects in Europe

Chapter 8 documents that religious fractionalization is, at least in part, an artifact of the history of con�icts.

Countries in which more Christian on Muslim wars unfolded historically between 1400 CE and 1900 CE re�ect more religious homogeneity today.

Chapter 9 establishes that the longer-term history and patterns of con�ict also came to bear on political borders in the modern world.

Christian versus Muslim con�icts and intrareligious feuds had no impact on border formation. But intra-Christian con�icts and Muslim-Christian con�icts had a fragmentary e¤ect on the size of polities.

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War, Peace & Prosperity in the Name of God

E¤ects in Europe

Chapter 10 is a review of the associated literatures in sociology, political science and economics that have articulated links between European ecclesiastical pluralism and the continent�s economic takeo¤.

Individual e¤ects:

Weber-Tawney (1930, 1926) culture-centric hypothesis. Becker-Woessmann (2009) human capital-centric role.

Institutional E¤ects:

A more competitive religion market; check and balances on the Roman Catholic Church. The interplay between political fragmentation and religious pluralism (Mokyr, 2005).

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War, Peace & Prosperity in the Name of God

E¤ects in the Middle East

Chapter 11 concludes by an examination of repercussions in the Middle East and dar al-Islam.

Culture, ideology and technology transfers. The cognitive dissonance of the "sick man of Europe" (Osman II, r. 1618 - 1622, Murad IV, r. 1623 - 1640). Phases of Ottoman technology adoption involved (a) denial, (b) conservative revival, (c) reluctant adoption of militarily vital technologies only, and (d) social, political and cultural emulation.

The adoption of the printing press not without a 234 year lag. Ibrahim Müteferrika published sixteen works in 20 volumes but his printing press closed after his death. Setting the intellectual basis for the Tanzimat Decree of 1839 by Abdül Mecid, marking the �rst sweeping reform attempts in the empire.

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War, Peace & Prosperity in the Name of God

E¤ects in the Middle East

Why did the Western threat and technological advances not unite dar al-Islam?

Historical instances in which they, in fact, did. The First Crusades during the Fatimid and Abbasid dynasties in 11th CE, the Turkish War of independence in 1919-1922.

More importantly, why were there no positive sociopolitical, institutional rami�cations?

No satisfactory answer to this. But Kuran (2004) and Armstrong (1988) speak to this issue. And Kemalist reforms in Turkey did produce tangible e¤ects although their long-term resiliency is questionable now.

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War, Peace & Prosperity in the Name of God

E¤ects in the Middle East

Impact on education and women�s role in society was tangible and long lasting...

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War, Peace & Prosperity in the Name of God

E¤ects in the Middle East

... but not irreversible.

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War, Peace & Prosperity in the Name of God

The Big Picture

Monotheist societies lasted longer and spread wider in the pre-modern era, suggesting that monotheism brought some sociopolitical advantages.

The inherent belief in one true god meant that these religious communities had sooner or later to contend with one another, although di¤erences among them were typically strong enough to trump disagreements within.

There were long-term repercussions of these dynamics for the organization of societies and their politics in Europe and the Middle East.

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War, Peace & Prosperity in the Name of God

The Institutional Context

Institutions rule and become growth enhancing if and when domestic parties have more common interests at stake.

European ecclesiastical history is a prominent manifestation of this conjecture.

The evolution of American institutions since the demise of the Soviet bloc is its modern corollary.

The extent to which they are e¤ectively inclusive and non-extractionary is now o¢ cially open to debate (Mancur Olson, 1984, redux).

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War, Peace & Prosperity in the Name of God

The Development Context

Two fundamentals of neoclassical economics are virtues of competition and nonzero summness.

This book suggests ideological competition had positive sociopolitical and economic e¤ects as well.

Moreover, such external competition a¤ected the extent to which economic interests became "common".

At a minimum, external threats and ideological competition aided Pareto e¢ cient internal distributions when there were economic, political and social changes.

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War, Peace & Prosperity in the Name of God

The Geopolitical & Globalization Context

When in competition, nationalism and religious radicalism have historically provided checks and balances on each other.

However, globalization inherently favors religious ideology over nationalism.

Religion has ideological and scale advantages over nationalism, both of which being more conducive to capitalist growth.

And this is the context in which one has to contend with the Huntington hypothesis.

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