Book ID: CBB712856108

The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century (2017)

unapi

Scheidel, Walter (Author)


Princeton University Press


Publication Date: 2017
Edition Details: Book Series: The Princeton economic history of the Western world
Physical Details: xvii+ 504 pp., illustrations, charts
Language: English

Are mass violence and catastrophes the only forces that can seriously decrease economic inequality? To judge by thousands of years of history, the answer is yes. Tracing the global history of inequality from the Stone Age to today, Walter Scheidel shows that inequality never dies peacefully. Inequality declines when carnage and disaster strike and increases when peace and stability return. The Great Leveler is the first book to chart the crucial role of violent shocks in reducing inequality over the full sweep of human history around the world. Ever since humans began to farm, herd livestock, and pass on their assets to future generations, economic inequality has been a defining feature of civilization. Over thousands of years, only violent events have significantly lessened inequality. The "Four Horsemen" of leveling--mass-mobilization warfare, transformative revolutions, state collapse, and catastrophic plagues--have repeatedly destroyed the fortunes of the rich. Scheidel identifies and examines these processes, from the crises of the earliest civilizations to the cataclysmic world wars and communist revolutions of the twentieth century. Today, the violence that reduced inequality in the past seems to have diminished, and that is a good thing. But it casts serious doubt on the prospects for a more equal future. An essential contribution to the debate about inequality, The Great Leveler provides important new insights about why inequality is so persistent--and why it is unlikely to decline anytime soon. (Publisher)

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Authors & Contributors
Philip Coggan
Milanovic, Branko
Scott Rozelle
Simon Bunel
Pistor, Katharina
Céline Antonin
Concepts
Equality
Wealth
Economic history
Income distribution
World history
Social history
Time Periods
20th century
19th century
21st century
18th century
20th century, late
17th century
Places
United States
France
China
Bosnia and Herzegovina
England
New England (U.S.)
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