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Historical recurrence is an idea in thestudy of history. The concept of historical recurrence has been applied to various levels ofhuman history, from the rise and fall ofempires to patterns in the history of a givenpolity, or to any two specific events which bear a striking similarity.[1]
In his bookThe Idea of Historical Recurrence in Western Thought, G. W. Trompf traces historically recurring patterns of political thought and behavior in the West since antiquity.
Ancient western thinkers who thought about recurrence were largely concerned withcosmological rather than historical recurrence.[2] Western philosophers and historians who have discussed various concepts of historical recurrence include the GreekHellenistic historianPolybius (c. 200 – c. 118 BCE), the Greek historian andrhetoricianDionysius of Halicarnassus (c. 60 BCE – after 7 BCE),Luke the Evangelist,Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527),Giambattista Vico (1668–1744),Correa Moylan Walsh (1862–1936), andArnold J. Toynbee (1889–1975).[3]
In ancient Eastern thought,Confucius (ca. 551 – ca. 479 BCE) urged: "Study the past if you would define the future."[4]
G. W. Trompf describes various historicalparadigms of historical recurrence, including paradigms that view types of large-scale historical phenomena variously as "cyclical"; "fluctuant"; "reciprocal"; "re-enacted"; or "revived".[5] He also notes "[t]he view proceeding from a belief inthe uniformity ofhuman nature [Trompf's emphasis]. It holds that because human nature does not change, the same sort of events can recur at any time."[6] "Other minor cases of recurrence thinking", he writes, "include the isolation of any two specific events which bear a verystriking similarity, and the preoccupation withparallelism, that is, with resemblances, both general and precise, between separate sets of historical phenomena".[6]
In theIslamic world,Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406) wrote thatasabiyyah (social cohesion or group unity) plays an important role in a kingdom's or dynasty's cycle of rise and fall.[7][8]
Trompf notes that most western concepts of historical recurrence imply that "the past teaches lessons for ... future action"—that "the same ... sorts of events which have happened before ... will recur".[9] One proponent of the idea of cosmic cycles wasPoseidonius, who argued that dissipation of the oldRoman virtues had followed the removal of theCarthaginian challenge to Rome's supremacy in theMediterranean world.[10]
The theme thatcivilizations flourish or fail according to their responses to the human andenvironmental challenges that they face, was picked up two thousand years later byArnold J. Toynbee.[11]
Dionysius of Halicarnassus (c. 60 BCE – after 7 BCE), after praising Rome, anticipated its eventual decay, suggesting the idea of recurring decay in the history of world empires—an idea developed by the Greek historianDiodorus Siculus (1st century BCE) and byPompeius Trogus, a 1st-century BCERoman historian from aCeltic tribe inGallia Narbonensis.[12]
By the late 5th century,Zosimus (also called "Zosimus the Historian"; fl. 490s–510s: aByzantine historian who lived inConstantinople) could see the writing on the Roman wall, and asserted that empires fell due to internal disunity. He gave examples from the histories ofGreece and Macedonia. In Rome's decay, Zosimus saw history repeating itself in its general movements, which he related to the Fates and "astral orbits".[13]
The ancients developed an enduringmetaphor for apolity's evolution, drawing ananalogy between an individual human'slife cycle and developments undergone by abody politic: this metaphor was offered, in varying iterations, byCicero (106–43 BCE),Seneca (c. 1 BCE – 65 CE),Florus (c. 74 CE – c. 130 CE), andAmmianus Marcellinus (between 325 and 330 CE – after 391 CE).[14] Thissocial-organism metaphor, which has been traced back to the Greek philosopher andpolymathAristotle (384–322 BCE),[15] would recur centuries later in the works of the French philosopher andsociologistAuguste Comte (1798–1857), the English philosopher and polymathHerbert Spencer (1820–1903), and the French sociologistÉmile Durkheim (1858–1917).[15]
Niccolò Machiavelli, analyzing the state ofFlorentine andItalian politics between 1434 and 1494, described recurrent oscillations between "order" and "disorder" within states:[16]
when states have arrived at their greatest perfection, they soon begin to decline. In the same manner, having been reduced by disorder and sunk to their utmost state of depression, unable to descend lower, they, of necessity, reascend, and thus from good they gradually decline to evil and from evil mount up to good.[16]
Machiavelli accounts for this oscillation by arguing thatvirtù (valor and political effectiveness) produces peace, peace brings idleness (ozio), idleness disorder, and disorderrovina (ruin). In turn, fromrovina springs order, from ordervirtù, and from this, glory and good fortune.[16] Machiavelli, as had theancient Greek historianThucydides, sawhuman nature as remarkably stable—steady enough for the formulation of rules of political behavior. Machiavelli wrote in hisDiscorsi:
Whoever considers the past and the present will readily observe that all cities and all peoples ... ever have been animated by the same desires and the same passions; so that it is easy, by diligent study of the past, to foresee what is likely to happen in the future in any republic, and to apply those remedies that were used by the ancients, or not finding any that were employed by them, to devise new ones from the similarity of events.[17]
Joshua S. Goldstein suggests that empires, analogously to an individual'smidlife crisis, experience a politicalmidlife crisis: after a period of expansion in which all earlier goals are realized, overconfidence sets in, and governments are then likely to attack or threaten their strongest rival. Goldstein cites four examples: theBritish Empire and theCrimean War; theGerman Empire and theFirst World War; theSoviet Union and theCuban Missile Crisis; theUnited States and theVietnam War.[18]
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One "minor case of recurrence thinking" identified by G. W. Trompf involves "the isolation of any two specific events which bear a verystriking similarity" and a "preoccupation withparallelism, that is with resemblances, both general and precise, between separate sets of historical phenomena".[19]
In the 18th century,Samuel Johnson wrote that people are "all prompted by the same motives, all deceived by the same fallacies, all animated by hope, obstructed by danger, entangled by desire, and seduced by pleasure".[20]
InThe Trouble with History,Adam Michnik writes: "The world is full ofinquisitors andheretics, liars and those lied to,terrorists and the terrorized. There is still someone dying atThermopylae, someonedrinking a glass of hemlock, someonecrossing the Rubicon, someone drawing up aproscription list."[21]
The Spanish-American philosopherGeorge Santayana observed: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."[22]
Plutarch'sParallel Lives traces the similarities between pairs of historical figures, one Greek and one Roman.[23]
Mahatma Gandhi worked to liberate his compatriots by peaceful means and was shot dead;Martin Luther King Jr. worked to liberate his compatriots by peaceful means and was shot dead.[24]
Over history, confrontations between peoples – typically, geographical neighbors – help consolidate the peoples intonations, at times into frankempires; until at last, exhausted by conflicts and drained of resources, the once militant polities settle into a relatively peaceful habitus.[25][a]Martin Indyk observes: "Wars often don't end until both sides have exhausted themselves and become convinced that they are better off coexisting with their enemies than pursuing a futile effort to destroy them."[27]
Fintan O'Toole writes about American war correspondentMartha Gellhorn (1908–1998):
Her dispatches were not first drafts of history; they were letters from eternity. ... To see history – at least the history of war – in terms of people is to see it not as a linear process but as a series of terrible repetitions ... It is her ability to capture ... the terrible futility of this sameness that makes Gellhorn's reportage so genuinely timeless. [W]e are ... drawn... into the undertow of her distraught awareness that this moment, in its essence, has happened before and will happen again.[28]
Ruth Ben-Ghiat, inStrongmen: Mussolini to the Present (2020), documents the "viral recurrence" around the world, over the past century, of despots andauthoritarians "with comparable strategies of control and mendacity".[29]
