Secular Cycles

The essential ideas are that particular factors cause societies to grow and prosper, then decline and finally to degenerate into internal bickering and even warfare. Eventually the disintegration ceases, and a new cycle begins. The stages of the cycle are: 1) expansion; 2) stagflation; 3) crisis and 4) Disintegration. During expansion the population grows and brings more land under cultivation – the authors examine mostly pre-industrial societies. Once the growing population’s needs exceed the productivity of the land, it has reached the second stage, wherein less land per capita slowly impoverishes the lower half of society. During stagflation, the elite continue to collect their rents and fees, so their lot does not worsen. In fact, because the lower strata of society are increasingly struggling, the labor pool expands, pushing wages down. During the stagflation phase, the elite increase in both number (often as a status reward in lieu of payments) and their per capita consumption. Impoverishment grows from the bottom strata up until it finally begins to digest the lower echelon of the elite, some of whom fall out of elite status. At this point we reach stage three – crisis. In this phase, economic pressures cause elite members to contend with each other; the rich use their influence to minimize taxes; and crime rises as the poor become desperate and the government, starved for funds, can no longer maintain order. This further reduces overall productivity. Finally, in the fourth stage disorder, disease, starvation and violence reduce population numbers in all strata of society. Eventually a strong leader arises and the population, now small enough to expand within available resources, begins the next cycle.One of the aspects of this book that impresses me is the authors’ avoidance of doctrine. Unlike Toynbee or Spengler, they do not insist their cycle always proceeds in exact accord with a preformed structure. They acknowledge the influence of particular factors that make the cycles differ between countries and eras. Their arguments are convincing precisely because they acknowledge they are general principles and correlations, and that industrialization has changed the model in ways they have yet to consider.However, I believe that can be done by considering farms and factories as different forms of resources for wealth production. Add in natural resources – water, minerals, energy, and the ecosystem’s ability to absorb pollution – and the implications of their model seems sensible and logical. For instance, factories are an employment resource for the lower half of society. As such, the factory has ‘shrunk’ – requires fewer employees to make the same number of widgets (even without outsourcing); but the corporation’s profit from the factory continues – for now. Another example: Oil becomes more difficult to procure and oil (and gasoline) prices rise. All resources can become over-exploited, and the Turchin / Nefedov model works well.The one application of the model that is provocative is to the global economy: A few ‘elite’ countries (Western Europe, the U.S.) and the many less wealthy nations. The latter are holding the resources the former require; the former have the financial and military power. And perhaps this is one aspect that makes this book so interesting: Besides some great lessons of history, it changes the reader's world-view and provokes speculation on the future. Yay for gray matter!

Great work. Overall theories of history have very justifiably been criticized for forcing events into some theoretical mold. But this work is different. It is more empirically-based, and it has lots of nice detail on the societies.It cuts off at the beginning of industrialization, something that disappointed me. But the dynamics of industrial societies may differ from the dynamics of preindustrial, agrarian ones, so the authors may have decided to work on something more manageable.I note this because the French Revolution fits quite well into a disintegrative phase, and the book cuts off before it, while the Bourbons were still in their integrative phase. It looks like there were lots of professionals and other elite aspirants who did not enjoy being shoved into the Third Estate behind the clergy and the nobility. So the elites battled it out, with some elites appealing to the common people, another feature of disintegrative phases. That revolution even had a device that was convenient for reducing the elites' numbers: the guillotine.Napoleon's conquests seem like a return to an integrative phase, however, with him returning to power after his initial defeat and exile. But he was defeated and exiled a second time, and his conquests were not permanent. France continued to have a lot of tumult after his death, only settling down late in the 19th cy.

I agree with the other reviewers; it is a masterpiece, as are his other books (War and Peace and War, Historical Dynamics). Really an eye opener. I think it explains history better than either Collapse (Jared Diamond) or Collapse of Complex Societies (Tainter). I read this along with Dirt (Montgomery) recently; they go well together. I especially like the idea of applying the mathematics of ecology to humans, and to economics. I think the ecological models that have been developed were created with more scientific rigor and objectivity than what is typically the case in mainstream economics.I won't write 1000 words explaining what it is all about; others have done this already. I suggest you just buy the book and read it. Absolutely worthwhile.Spoiler: Basically history seems to have a long-term boom/bust cycle, and we seem to be in the stagflation phase of the cycle (near the top), as other reviewers have noted. The book will explain how this works and what the rest of the cycle looks like, based on several historical case studies.

An excellent exploration of long-term cycles in agricultural societies. Even if you disagree with, or don't care about, the thesis, there is plenty of fascinating information about the structures of various European societies, from ancient Rome through Romanov Russia.The general thesis of this book is that agricultural societies strengthen and weaken in multi-century cycles based on a modestly complex interaction of the population dynamics of the peasantry and the elite. Turchin and Nefedov provide quite a lot of data to buttress their case. One consequence of their thesis is that "golden ages" for the elites of a society are lousy times to be a peasant, while good times for the peasantry are usually times of stability, but only modest prosperity, for the nobility/elite of a society.

Peter Turchin works on long-wave theories of history. This work refines his earlier views, and adds another layer of explanatory complexity to the basic theme. A great deal of it is devoted to illustrating how the theory played out across the centuries. From my wide, if non-specialist, reading, he has it mostly right, and all the detail gives the reader a solid sense of how the interplay of the various theoretical factors worked out in messy real life.Definitely worth reading, and I'll be interested to see if it makes any impact more widely.- on related fields.

An interesting and plausible idea for explaining historic financial cycles, that can become rather bogged down with lots of facts and figures that can cause one to loose sight of the central features of each secular cycle. Despite this niggle it is a well written book that has relevance for today's financial crisis. One could view this latest secular cycle as the start of the stagflation phase of the "Industrial cycle" that started expanding towards the end of the 18th century when we began exploiting high net energy fossil fuel as our primary energy source, which is now transitioning to much lower net energy sources of fossil fuel such as shale gas, tar sand and deep ocean oil, plus renewable sources like wind and solar.

The book outlines the boom-bust cycle of various societies. The time frame of the cycle is roughly one hundred and fifty years. There are four phases of the cycle; expansion, stagflation, crisis, and disintegration. The authors outline eight different historical examples. France, England, Russia, and both the Roman Republic and Roman Empire are the pre-industrial societies selected. There are a few key aspects, that move the cycle from one phase to the next phase. The first is rapid population growth. This causes wages to decline and living costs to increase. The result is rising social inequality and an increase in the elite population numbers. The larger elite population, eventually turns on itself. The society disintegrates into; violence, disease, warfare, and collapse. The bottom is eventually reached and a new restructured society emerges. A new cycle has now started. This book is a game changer. The combination of; history, demographics, and economics, will change the readers perception. This book is highly recommended, to the historically and economically minded reader.

Turchin and Nefedov’s work is very thought-provoking. The writing style seems more like a PhD thesis turned into a book but the general line of enquiry makes the journey worth the effort. The book covers the rise and fall of several civilizations from medieval England and France, Russia and Rome. The authors attempt to link several indicators, from historical records, in order to bolster their thesis that there are regular oscillations to the rise and fall of empires.Although the writing is quite dry, there is a wealth of observation here. The authors also do a convincing job of linking some of the more esoteric aspects of civilizations such as how “elites” tend to end up overpopulated and the resultant effect is wars. They also do a good job of providing evidence of how currencies and wages react as populations lose trust in government.However, a lot of their points also seem more like symptoms rather than cause. Given the background in population dynamics I expected much more regarding a prime topic: energy. There is little discussion of how these empires derived their sources of energy, other than some views on what happened when peasants were decimated by disease or strife. What about deforestation or other aspects of fundamental energy flow in these empires?Overall this is interesting material and I’m hoping that they write more in the series. I really think it would be a great benefit to link more of the fundamentals to the emergent effects on the population in general.

NO CABE DUDA QUE EL LIBRO OFERTADO, CUMPLEN CON LAS ESPECTATIVAS DE LOS CLIENTES MAS EXIJENTES, UN SERVICIO Y ATENCIÓN SIN DUDA MUY BUENA

Un peu difficile d'accès pour un anglais non natif mais vraiment très intéressant.