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So let's say you were teaching a 400 level undergraduate class with the name of something like "The Dynamics of Civilization" or "The rise and fall of empires" or something on this theme. In essence, a s. science driven account of macro-history. What readings would you use?
Gat, Turchin, and Boix are my first instinct. Also Schultz's work on the origins of WEIRD psych. Various evo anth and cultural evolution papers of note would also probably make it on the syllabus. But I feel like there is room for one more big book.
[That is Azar Gat's WAR IN HUMAN CIVILIZATION - https://amzn.to/2EslwKF [Peter Turchin's WAR & PEACE & WAR (though his other stuff works if the class has the math skills) - https://amzn.to/2PBSjxK [Carles Boix's POLITICAL ORDER & INEQUALITY - https://amzn.to/2UHyGIi
cc. @MarkKoyama, @Melanie_Xue, @Peter_Turchin, @JF_Schulz what would you do?
How many pages of dense material would be appropriate for such a class?
Oh I don't know. The thing I ended up creating is obviously too much. Generally speaking I would say 100 pages of material a week is the standard, with no more than 40 being especially dense
Alternately, two sessions of 30 very dense pages is also realistic. Then again, I had a 400 level class once where we had to read a full book a week. But those were mostly narrative accounts, not theoretical ones
Is Gibbon too obvious to even mention?
Ibn Khaldun over Gibbon
Check out Chris Blattman’s class here: https://chrisblattman.com/2017/05/22/final-lecture-order-violence/ … I think u might find some overlap specifically where he talks about the coffee/globalization boom in Latin America (starts week 4 slide 14) its a fantastic ex. of how important luck/elite competition is 4 development
William mcneill The Pursuit of Power: Technology, Armed Force, and Society since A.D. 1000
Also from IR: Gilpin, War and Change and Mark Z Taylor, The Politics of Innovation.
And I personally would teach Mumford and something on energy (Tainter, Smil, or Rhodes)
Note that he's asking for a "science driven account of macro-history". That tends to rule out older books that are scientifically obsolete. e.g. William H. McNeill's Plagues & Peoples seems dated at this point.
It's a good question. To complement those choices I would try to find a survey book that gave the students an overview/comparison of various different theories of macro-history. Does such a thing exist?
Not the big book you're looking for but I might assign something out of Randall Collins' Macrohistory collection of essays
Might wanna look at the Other Russians - Korotayev, Nefedov, etc
Conquest and Culture by Thomas Sowell.
Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations by MacArthur Fellow David Montgomery. Maybe not the major text, but an additional reading.
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