The Evolution of Civilizations an Introduction to Historical Analysis

Carroll Quigley was a legendary teacher at the Georgetown School of Foreign Service. His course on the history of civilization was extra-ordinary in its scope and on its impact on its students. Like the course, the Evolution of Civilizations is a comprehensive and perspective look at the factors behind the rise and fall of civilizations. Quigley examines the application scientific method to the social sciences. He poses a division of culture into six levels, from the more abstract to the more concrete - intellectual, religious, social, political, economic and military. - and he identifies seven stages of historical change for all civilizations: mixture, gestation, expansion, conflict, universal empire, decay and invasion. He tests these hypothesis by a detailed analysis of five major civilizations: the Mesopotamian, the Canaanite, the Minoan, the classical, and the Western. Quigley defines a civilization as "a producing society with an instrument of expansion." A civilization's decline is not inevitable but occurs when its instrument of expansion is transformed into an institution--that is, when social arrangements that meet real social needs are transformed into social institutions serving their own purposes regardless of real social needs.