Introduction
The scientific study of civil war is always improving and always expanding and one major aspect to consider when studying civil wars is the relationship between civil wars and geography. Three key articles to the findings of relationships between civil wars and geography are “The Geography of Civil War" (2002) by Halvard Buhaug and Scott Gates, “Local Determinants of African Civil Wars" (2006) by Halvard Buhaug and Jan Ketil Rød, and “Geography as Motivation and Opportunity" (2009) by Nils B. Weidmann. First, in “The Geography of Civil War” Gates and Buhang research how strategic aspirations of the rebel groups in civil wars and factors of geography affect the location of the conflict in relation to the capital of the country and the overall size of the conflict area. Gates and Buhang believe this is an important area of study because they claim that “when it comes to exploring determinants of the location of conflicts, little or no systematic effort has been made”(419.) Gates and Buhang find that the size of the conflict (scope) is shaped by location to a border, natural resources, and conflict duration. Meanwhile they find that the distance to the capital of the fighting is influenced by the scope, size of country, whether the rebel group is trying to secede and if the rebel group has a certain identity, for example ethnic or religious. Secondly, in their article about the local determinants of African civil wars Halvard Buhaug and Jan Ketil Rød (2006) claim that the disaggregated research design (letting grids within a state be the unit of analysis) is the better design to look at the independent variables that cause civil wars. Buhaug and Rød (2006) claim that studying civil war onset at the country level overlo...
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...p between geography and civil war. The article shows that scope and distance to the capital are relevant factors in the study of civil war. The second article proves the importance of using the disaggregated research design instead of using country year as the unit of analysis. The country year can miss the importance of certain independent variables that differ throughout the geography.
The significance of the third article is that Weidmann finds the same results that Collier, Hoeffler, and Rohner do in their article “Beyond Greed and Grievance: Feasibility and Civil War." Weidmann finds that motivation is not a cause of civil war on the territorial domain and that opportunity instead is a cause of civil war. This finding supports Collier, Hoeffler, and Rohner’s argument discussed in their article who also find that motivation does not relate to civil war onset.
Throughout the years, many people have been taught that the reason the Civil War happened, was to abolish slavery all through the United States. Although that is true, there were more reasons why the Civil War occurred.Referencing will be done on different articles and writers to support the findings of the authors. The article “Slavery, the Constitutional, and the Origins of the Civil War” by Paul Finkelman, discusses about the North (union) and the South (confederacy) and the disagreement of the territories following the constitutional laws regarding slavery, the article explores both sides of the territories and their beliefs of how the situation of slavery should have been dealt with. The article “The Economic Origins of the Civil War” by Marc Egnal, discusses the North’s (union) and the South’s (confederacy) economic situation that could have pushed the two territories to engage in war with one another. Finally, the last article “Politics, Ideology, and the Origins of the American Civil War” by Eric Foner, focuses on the Norths (union) and Souths (confederacy) views on politics and ideas of how each territory is ran and how they have affected the North and the South. These historians supplied specific and different explanations that explained what exactly caused the United States to enter into a Civil War. With the information provided by the authors, the evidence will lead us to the answer of what caused the Civil War.
The Differences between the North and South on the Eve of the Civil War On the eve of the Civil war, both the North and the South had differences, both minor and large. The main difference was Slavery where both sides had a completely dissimilar view point on how the treat black people an example of this is the Missouri compromise in 1820. There were also differences in the rate of industrialisation and Education. The largest difference between the North and the South was the number of free black people. The North had hardly any slaves; however the South had around 4 million slaves.
The decades leading up to the American Civil War showed a great divide in the economic, political, and regional attitudes between the North and South. These divisions still plague the country today. However, there is a divide on whether economic anxieties or political differences were the major factor in the run up to the Civil War.
I felt like the author could clearly show the true contributing factors of the civil war. As an admirer of history, I could use utilize his book for references later on in my academic studies. The book is 127 pages chronicling the events that led to the civil war. Holt gives novices history readers a wonder firsthand look into the world of young America pre-civil war. His book brought out new ways to approach the study of pre-civil war events. The question whether the Civil War was inevitable or could have been derailed was answered in The Fate of Their Country. Holt places the spotlight on the behaviors Politicians and the many congressional compromises that unintendedly involved the actions of the residents of American. These factors at hand placed the Civil war as inevitable. Most of the politician’s views in The Fate of Their Country were egotistical and shortsighted which left gaps in American’s social future. To consider the subject of why, first we need to understand the contributing causes, America’s great expansion project, the Manifest Destiny the driving factor behind the loss of virtue and political discord.
Abolitionism was around before the 1830’s but, it became a more radical during this time. Before 1830, Benjamin Lundy ran a anti-slavery newspaper. In 1829, Lundy hired William Lloyd Garrison. Garrison went on to publish his own newspaper the Liberator.
...otal factor that drove North and South to the Civil War. Even to this day, greed continues to plague Americans and it can be witnessed in many instances. For example the AIG bailout, which displays the problems that arise from greed for money (and in the bankers’ cases, power as well) in America. Or some Americans’ objection to Mexican immigration due to the argument that they are ‘taking our jobs’, which is very similar to those who were anti-slavery in the North. In the end, Money – or the accumulation of material wealth – must never trump our sense of humanity. Greed – whether in the form of economic power of a nation, profit for a corporation, or lifestyles of the rich and famous – should never take precedence over our core spiritual values. The Declaration of Independence reflected this in part: “All men are created equal…” All human beings are created equal.
The majority of speculations regarding the causes of the American Civil War are in some relation to slavery. While slavery was a factor in the disagreements that led to the Civil War, it was not the solitary or primary cause. There were three other, larger causes that contributed more directly to the beginning of the secession of the southern states and, eventually, the start of the war. Those three causes included economic and social divergence amongst the North and South, state versus national rights, and the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Dred Scott case. Each of these causes involved slavery in some way, but were not exclusively based upon slavery.
Hobbes, as one of the early political philosophers, believes human has the nature to acquire “power after power” and has three fundamental interests which are safety, “conjugal affections”, and riches for commodious lives. (Hobbes, p108, p191) From this basis, Hobbes deducts that in a state of nature, human tends to fight against each other (state of war) to secure more resources (Hobbes,
After thoroughly assessing past readings and additional research on the Civil War between the North and South, it was quite apparent that the war was inevitable. Opposed views on this would have probably argued that slavery was the only reason for the Civil War. Therefore suggesting it could have been avoided if a resolution was reached on the issue of slavery. Although there is accuracy in stating slavery led to the war, it wasn’t the only factor. Along with slavery, political issues with territorial expansion, there were also economic and social differences between North and South. These differences, being more than just one or two, gradually led to a war that was bound to happened one way or another.
Michael F. Holt, in his article The Political Divisions That Contributed to Civil War, argued the American Civil War was caused by the breakdown of the two-party political system, which generated a local loss of faith in the entire political system, justifying the creation of a new political system in the South. It was the agency of individuals attempting to solve their political grievances. While Bruce Levine, in his article The Economic Divisions That Contributed to Civil War, maintained unresolvable economic divisions between North and South made the Civil War inevitable, as the two different economies could not indefinitely coexist. While the conflicting economies of the North and the South played a major role in fashioning the war,
The Civil War has been viewed as the unavoidable eruption of a conflict that had been simmering for decades between the industrial North and the agricultural South. Roark et al. (p. 507) speak of the two regions’ respective “labor systems,” which in the eyes of both contemporaries were the most salient evidence of two irreconcilable worldviews. Yet the economies of the two regions were complementary to some extent, in terms of the exchange of goods and capital; the Civil War did not arise because of economic competition between the North and South over markets, for instance. The collision course that led to the Civil War did not have its basis in pure economics as much as in the perceptions of Northerners and Southerners of the economies of the respective regions in political and social terms. The first lens for this was what I call the nation’s ‘charter’—the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, the documents spelling out the nation’s core ideology. Despite their inconsistencies, they provided a standard against which the treatment and experience of any or all groups of people residing within the United States could be evaluated (Native Americans, however, did not count). Secondly, these documents had installed a form of government that to a significant degree promised representation of each individual citizen. It was understood that this only possible through aggregation, and so population would be a major source of political power in the United States. This is where economics intersected with politics: the economic system of the North encouraged (albeit for the purposes of exploitation) immigration, whereas that of the South did not. Another layer of the influence of economics in politics was that the prosperity of ...
Yet ask those same people whether they would be willing in cold blood to start another civil war now to gain another similar possession, and not one man or woman would vote for the proposition. In modern eyes, precious though wars may be, they must not be waged solely for the sake of the ideal harvest (95).
The purpose of this essay is to inform on the similarities and differences between systemic and domestic causes of war. According to World Politics by Jeffry Frieden, David Lake, and Kenneth Schultz, systemic causes deal with states that are unitary actors and their interactions with one another. It can deal with a state’s position within international organizations and also their relationships with other states. In contract, domestic causes of war pertain specifically to what goes on internally and factors within a state that may lead to war. Wars that occur between two or more states due to systemic and domestic causes are referred to as interstate wars.
Ethnicity relates to civil wars because ethnic groups are the cause of civil wars. Ethnicity is defined as belonging to a social group that carry the same culture, traditions, and identify with each other based on appearance, language, and religion. Ethnic groups carry four criteria’s that include self-perpetuating, share core cultural values, communicating and interacting, and have a membership that can be self-identified by others within the group based on commonalities. Ethnic groups are more likely to carry a grievance, opportunity to rebel, and bargaining problems, which lead to civil war.
The reason that the states seek self-interest is because the pessimistic view of human nature (Heywood 2011: 54). According to Morgenthau (1985), he claims that human beings lust for power (Jackson, Sorensen 2013: 66). Besides, Hobbes (1651) claims that humans are affected by many appetites, especially power (Heywood 2011: 55). As human beings are selfish and competing for power, conflicts can happen amongst them (Heywood 2011: 57). A state is composed of the selfish people, therefore, human egoism leads to many conflicts in international relations, ‘state egoism’ – different states may be opposed (Heywood 2011: 57). But Waltz argues that wars happened because of the anarchical system (Jackson, Sorensen 2013: 80).