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Pattern and Repertoire in History
Historical landmarks, such as wars, coups, and revolutions, seem to arise under unique conditions. Indeed, what seems to distinguish history from the natural and social sciences is its inability to be dissected or generalized in any meaningful way. Yet even complex and large-scale events like the American Revolutionary War and the French Revolution can be broken down into their component parts, and, as Bertrand Roehner and Tony Syme show, these smaller modules are rarely unique to the events they collectively compose. The aim of this book is to analyze clusters of similar "elementary" occurrences that serve as the building blocks of more global events. Making connections between seemingly unrelated case studies, Roehner and Syme apply scientific methodology to the analysis of history. Their book identifies the recurring patterns of behavior that shape the histories of different countries separated by vast stretches of time and space. Taking advantage of a broad wealth of historical evidence, the authors decipher what may be seen as a kind of genetic code of history.
- GenresHistory
432 pages, Hardcover
First published June 30, 2002
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November 3, 2020
## Summary
The book describes an analytical and comparative approach to history, explains why its useful and then tries to apply the methodology to three sets of historical events -- Revolutions, Strikes and Wars -- which are further subdivided and analyzed.
The author argues that people draw from a repertoire of behaviour, which creates regularities in historical processes. Tradition, religion, culture, biology and societal memory puts constraints on behaviour and makes some actions more likely than others. Imitating successful behaviour of others is also a common collective trait and we only improve or innovate on our behaviour if it no longer works. We can therefore say that behaviours have an evolutionary history; artefacts or fossils that can be traced through time. This repertoire of behaviour leads to similarities in how historical processes evolve because humans react similarly across time and regions.
The comparative methodology breaks historical events into subcomponents which can be more easily compared. The French Revolution was unique in totality, but by breaking it down into a sequence of elements (such as the storming of the Bastille or the meeting of the Estates-General) we can compare across the smaller elements. We can also abstract this sequence of events and map them to a sequence of comparable events in other countries. This method is used to analyze processes of cause-and-effect and extract similarities, differences, and patterns in order to understand how history evolved. We can then use this knowledge to understand how the future might evolve.
For example, the French Revolution shared many detailed similarities with previous French revolts, likely as a result of a memory or knowledge of those events. Similarly, although Churchill thought the Japanese were crazy for joining the war, from their perspective it was perfectly rational: they had a history of fighting a larger foe and winning.
The method can also be applied across countries which don't have a shared history. Goldstone examines the revolutionary process in his book and demonstrates that the same process of revolution is common to all Eurasian countries, dependent on human reactions to certain chains of events. In particular the revolutions in Britain and France had many similarities: state financial problems, sale of church estates, execution of the king, coming to power of an individual. Once revolutionary movements start the dynamics are very similar.
Lastly, the book describes the pitfalls and successes of prediction using historical analogy such as Friedman's unsuccessful prediction of US war with Japan based on a type of rocket that was physically impossible, or Churchill's wildly successful prediction of the first battles in World War 1 which were realized almost to the day. Another interesting prediction is General de Gaulle's prediction of the course of WW2 before Germany had even invaded France, claiming that WW2 was a world war and that Germany would be defeated by American planes and equipment.
## Review
In the age of data science, the method of comparing historical episodes (or reasoning by historical analog) is pretty common, especially in the macro-investing community. Reading this book serves as an incredibly interesting guide for how to do that kind of analysis correctly. Much of today's macro-investing research likely falls into the trap of reasoning from superficial similarities rather than from similarities in historical processes. There is likely a large grey area between how much abstraction can be applied to historical events in order to compare them, but when done properly it results in phenomenal predictions (such as Churchill's prediction of a specific battle).
Although I really enjoyed this book, both for aggregating the key ideas of a number of authors and for giving a large amount of suggested reading, I would not recommend this as a first book on comparative or analytical history. If you are interested in this topic, you would be better off reading "War and Peace and War" which is more fun to read and builds a theory around empire formation using comparative history.
The book describes an analytical and comparative approach to history, explains why its useful and then tries to apply the methodology to three sets of historical events -- Revolutions, Strikes and Wars -- which are further subdivided and analyzed.
The author argues that people draw from a repertoire of behaviour, which creates regularities in historical processes. Tradition, religion, culture, biology and societal memory puts constraints on behaviour and makes some actions more likely than others. Imitating successful behaviour of others is also a common collective trait and we only improve or innovate on our behaviour if it no longer works. We can therefore say that behaviours have an evolutionary history; artefacts or fossils that can be traced through time. This repertoire of behaviour leads to similarities in how historical processes evolve because humans react similarly across time and regions.
The comparative methodology breaks historical events into subcomponents which can be more easily compared. The French Revolution was unique in totality, but by breaking it down into a sequence of elements (such as the storming of the Bastille or the meeting of the Estates-General) we can compare across the smaller elements. We can also abstract this sequence of events and map them to a sequence of comparable events in other countries. This method is used to analyze processes of cause-and-effect and extract similarities, differences, and patterns in order to understand how history evolved. We can then use this knowledge to understand how the future might evolve.
For example, the French Revolution shared many detailed similarities with previous French revolts, likely as a result of a memory or knowledge of those events. Similarly, although Churchill thought the Japanese were crazy for joining the war, from their perspective it was perfectly rational: they had a history of fighting a larger foe and winning.
The method can also be applied across countries which don't have a shared history. Goldstone examines the revolutionary process in his book and demonstrates that the same process of revolution is common to all Eurasian countries, dependent on human reactions to certain chains of events. In particular the revolutions in Britain and France had many similarities: state financial problems, sale of church estates, execution of the king, coming to power of an individual. Once revolutionary movements start the dynamics are very similar.
Lastly, the book describes the pitfalls and successes of prediction using historical analogy such as Friedman's unsuccessful prediction of US war with Japan based on a type of rocket that was physically impossible, or Churchill's wildly successful prediction of the first battles in World War 1 which were realized almost to the day. Another interesting prediction is General de Gaulle's prediction of the course of WW2 before Germany had even invaded France, claiming that WW2 was a world war and that Germany would be defeated by American planes and equipment.
## Review
In the age of data science, the method of comparing historical episodes (or reasoning by historical analog) is pretty common, especially in the macro-investing community. Reading this book serves as an incredibly interesting guide for how to do that kind of analysis correctly. Much of today's macro-investing research likely falls into the trap of reasoning from superficial similarities rather than from similarities in historical processes. There is likely a large grey area between how much abstraction can be applied to historical events in order to compare them, but when done properly it results in phenomenal predictions (such as Churchill's prediction of a specific battle).
Although I really enjoyed this book, both for aggregating the key ideas of a number of authors and for giving a large amount of suggested reading, I would not recommend this as a first book on comparative or analytical history. If you are interested in this topic, you would be better off reading "War and Peace and War" which is more fun to read and builds a theory around empire formation using comparative history.
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