Review of 'The Causes of War: Volume I: 3000 BCE to 1000 CE' by Alexander Gillespie [Oxford and Portland: Hart Publishing, 2013. IX pp + 246 pp. ISBN 978-1-84946-500-7. USD 80.75]

Abstract

Much effort in international law over the last century has gone into reducing the incidence of war, the 'jus ad bello', or at least ameliorating its effects, the 'jus in bello'. It is an arguable point as to how effective this effort has been. Large scale loss of life and cruelty still go on and humanity continues to be revolted by it. If warfare is so common and so revolting, it begs the question, why does it continue? Why is humanity so incapable of preventing it? What causes humanity to repeat cycles of behaviour that lead to war? There is no known period of recorded human history that has been free of war. As much as international lawyers focus on the efforts made in the last 100 years to control war, it appears profoundly worthwhile to examine the causes of war across the span of history. At the same time, such an undertaking seems so vast as to be unachievable. The triumph of Gillespie's work is to have made this task achievable and to bring a mass of sources into a single analytical whole.