Expansions: competition and conquest in Europe since the Bronze Age by Axel Kristinsson - 2010

Reykjavík: ReykjavíkurAkademían, 2010. Paperback. New. x, 371 pp. 16x23 cm. <br /><br />From the back cover: Societies sometimes expand through population growth, military conquests and migrations. Why does this happen and in what way are expanding societies different from others? Examples of such episodes are many in European history and include Archaic Greece, the Germanic barbarians, and modernizing Europe of the 19th and 20th centuries, to name but a few. This work is an attempt to construct a model that explains these expansions and others. <br /><br />At the same time it is an experiment in applying some principles of the biological and social sciences to the study of history. Social scientists have discovered general laws that apply to human societies. Sociologists are often concerned with modern and recent societies and anthropologists with simple ones. In between are the agrarian civilizations that dominate most of documented history and which rarely receive much attention from anyone except historians. Unfortunately, historians are usually not much interested in general laws, and the laws that explain the evolution of agrarian societies are therefore largely unknown. Perhaps it is time for this to change.<br /></br > New. Weight 660g, will require a small amount of extra postage charged at cost. Customers will receive an e-mail with directions on how to approve the extra charge.