TY - BOOK ID - 4893702 TI - Civil wars : a history of ideas PY - 2017 SN - 9780300149821 9780300234244 PB - [Yale] : Yale university press, DB - UniCat KW - Civil war KW - War KW - Guerre civile KW - Guerre KW - History KW - Economic aspects KW - Political aspects KW - Moral and ethical aspects KW - Histoire KW - Aspect économique KW - Aspect politique KW - Aspect moral KW - CIVIL WAR--PHILOSOPHY KW - CIVIL WAR--HISTORY KW - Aspect économique KW - Politieke filosofie. Sociale filosofie KW - Binnenlandse politiek KW - Polemologie KW - Wereldgeschiedenis KW - Political philosophy. Social philosophy KW - Internal politics KW - Polemology KW - World history UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:4893702 AB - For much of recorded history, the most frequent, horrific, destructive and yet strangely overshadowed form of collective human violence has been civil war. It has shattered communities and scarred imaginations as much as it has shaped nations and staged pivotal moments in world history. Nor has such carnage been confined to the distant past: in the last fifty years almost half the world's countries, especially its poorest, have suffered civil war, with their impact being estimated at about $100 billion per annum, or roughly twice what is spent annually on aid to developing countries. Civil war is also big business. Economists, political scientists, aid agencies, development strategists and governments put major resources into examining the factors that cause civil war, what determines its intensity and duration, how civil wars end, and why they seem so often to recur. In other words it is a global scourge and one that shows no signs of disappearing any time soon.In this important book, historian David Armitage defines and describes civil war over two millennia, from ancient Roman 'bellum civile' to today, with Iraq and Syria as prominent hotspots for concern and debate. Taking a broad historical perspective, Armitage interrogates the moral as well as political consequences of applying or withholding the term 'civil war' to various conflicts, from the absolution of responsibility that comes with relegating a war to 'internal affairs', to rendering other political conflicts as intractably ethnic 'genocides' and perhaps beyond hope of reasonable resolution, to dismissing wholesale warfare as 'someone else's business'. Arguing for a crucial international orientation so often lacking from nationally-focused discussions of civil war that deforms contemporary politics and strategy, this book adds an urgent and vital historical dimension to the ongoing struggle over this massive drain on global resources and shameful blot on humanity's conscience. ER -