Historic recurrence


Historic recurrence is the repetition of similar events in history. The concept of historic recurrence has variously been applied to the overall history of the world, to repetitive patterns in the history of a given polity, and to any two specific events which bear a striking similarity.
Hypothetically, in the extreme, the concept of historic recurrence assumes the form of the Doctrine of Eternal Recurrence, which has been written about in various forms since antiquity and was described in the 19th century by Heinrich Heine and Friedrich Nietzsche.
While it is often remarked that "history repeats itself", in cycles of less than cosmological duration this cannot be strictly true. In this interpretation of recurrence, as opposed perhaps to the Nietzschean interpretation, there is no metaphysics. Recurrences take place due to ascertainable circumstances and chains of causality. An example is the ubiquitous phenomenon of multiple independent discovery in science and technology, described by Robert K. Merton and Harriet Zuckerman. Indeed, recurrences, in the form of reproducible findings obtained through experiment or observation, are essential to the natural and social sciences; and, in the form of chance observations rigorously studied via the comparative method, are essential to the humanities.
G.W. Trompf, in his book The Idea of Historical Recurrence in Western Thought, traces historically recurring patterns of political thought and behavior in the west since antiquity. If history has lessons to impart, they are to be found par excellence in such recurring patterns.
Historic recurrences of the "striking-similarity" type can sometimes induce a sense of "convergence", "resonance" or déjà vu.

Authors

Ancient western thinkers who had thought about recurrence had largely been concerned with cosmological rather than historic recurrence. Western philosophers and historians who have discussed various concepts of historic recurrence include the Greek Hellenistic historian Polybius, the Greek historian and rhetorician Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Luke the Evangelist, Niccolò Machiavelli, Giambattista Vico, Arnold J. Toynbee.
An eastern concept that bears a kinship to western concepts of historic recurrence is the Chinese concept of the Mandate of Heaven, by which an unjust ruler will lose the support of Heaven and be overthrown.
G.W. Trompf describes various historic paradigms of historic recurrence, including paradigms that view types of large-scale historic phenomena variously as "cyclical"; "fluctuant"; "reciprocal"; "re-enacted"; or "revived". He also notes "he view proceeding from a belief in the uniformity of human nature . It holds that because human nature does not change, the same sort of events can recur at any time." "Other minor cases of recurrence thinking," he writes, "include the isolation of any two specific events which bear a very striking similarity , and the preoccupation with parallelism , that is, with resemblances, both general and precise, between separate sets of historical phenomena."

Lessons

G.W. Trompf notes that most western concepts of historic recurrence imply that "the past teaches lessons for... future action"—that "the same... sorts of events which have happened before... will recur..." One such recurring theme was early offered by Poseidonius, who argued that dissipation of the old Roman virtues had followed the removal of the Carthaginian challenge to Rome's supremacy in the Mediterranean world. The theme that civilizations flourish or fail according to their responses to the human and environmental challenges that they face, would be picked up two thousand years later by Toynbee. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, while praising Rome at the expense of her predecessors—Assyria, Media, Persia, and Macedonia—anticipated Rome's eventual decay. He thus implied the idea of recurring decay in the history of world empires—an idea that was to be developed by the Greek historian Diodorus Siculus and by Pompeius Trogus, a 1st-century BCE Roman historian from a Celtic tribe in Gallia Narbonensis.
By the late 5th century, Zosimus could see the writing on the Roman wall, and asserted that empires fell due to internal disunity. He gave examples from the histories of Greece and Macedonia. In the case of each empire, growth had resulted from consolidation against an external enemy; Rome herself, in response to Hannibal's threat posed at Cannae, had risen to great-power status within a mere five decades. With Rome's world dominion, however, aristocracy had been supplanted by a monarchy, which in turn tended to decay into tyranny; after Augustus Caesar, good rulers had alternated with tyrannical ones. The Roman Empire, in its western and eastern sectors, had become a contending ground between contestants for power, while outside powers acquired an advantage. In Rome's decay, Zosimus saw history repeating itself in its general movements.
The ancients developed an enduring metaphor for a polity's evolution: they drew an analogy between an individual human's life cycle, and developments undergone by a body politic. This metaphor was offered, in varying iterations, by Cicero, Seneca, Florus, and Ammianus Marcellinus. This social-organism metaphor, which has been traced back to the Greek philosopher and polymath Aristotle, would recur centuries later in the works of the French philosopher and sociologist Auguste Comte, the English philosopher and polymath Herbert Spencer, and the French sociologist Émile Durkheim.
Niccolò Machiavelli, about to analyze the vicissitudes of Florentine and Italian politics between 1434 and 1494, described recurrent oscillations between "order" and "disorder" within states:
Machiavelli accounts for this oscillation by arguing that virtù produces peace, peace brings idleness, idleness disorder, and disorder rovina. In turn, from rovina springs order, from order virtù, and from this, glory and good fortune. Machiavelli, as had the ancient Greek historian Thucydides, saw human nature as remarkably stable—steady enough for the formulation of rules of political behavior. Machiavelli wrote in his Discorsi:
in Tunis, Tunisia
In 1377 the Islamic scholar Ibn Khaldun, in his Muqaddima, wrote that when nomadic tribes become united by asabiyya—Arabic for "group feeling", "social solidarity", or "clannism"—their superior cohesion and military prowess puts urban dwellers at their mercy. Inspired often by religion, they conquer the towns and create new regimes. But within a few generations, writes Ibn Khaldun, the victorious tribesmen lose their asabiyya and become corrupted by luxury, extravagance, and leisure. The ruler, who can no longer rely on fierce warriors for his defense, will have to raise extortionate taxes to pay for other sorts of soldiers, and this in turn may lead to further problems that result in the eventual downfall of his dynasty or state.
Joshua S Goldstein suggests that empires, analogously to an individual's midlife crisis, experience a political midlife crisis: after a period of expansion in which all earlier goals are realized, overconfidence sets in, and regimes are then likely to attack or threaten their nearest rival; Goldstein cites four examples: the British Empire and the Crimean War; the German Second Reich and World War I; the USSR and the Cuban Missile Crisis; the United States and the Vietnam War. Suggestions that the European Union is suffering a political midlife crisis have been put forward by Gideon Rachman, Roland Benedikter, and Natalie Nougayrède.
David Hackett Fischer has identified four waves in European history, each of some 150-200 years' duration. Each wave begins with prosperity, leading to inflation, inequality, rebellion and war, and resolving in a long period of equilibrium. For example, 18th-century inflation led to the Napoleonic wars and later the Victorian equilibrium.
Sir Arthur Keith's theory of a species-wide amity-enmity complex suggests that human conscience evolved as a duality: people are driven to protect members of their in-group, and to hate and fight enemies who belong to an out-group. Thus an endless, useless cycle of ad hoc "isms" arises.

Similarities

One of the recurrence patterns identified by G.W. Trompf involves "the isolation of any two specific events which bear a very striking similarity". The Spanish-American philosopher George Santayana observed that "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Karl Marx, having in mind the respective coups d'état of Napoleon I and his nephew Napoleon III, wrote acerbically in 1852: "Hegel remarks somewhere that all facts and personages of great importance in world history occur, as it were, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce."
However, Poland's Adam Michnik believes that history is not just about the past because it is constantly recurring, and not as farce, as Marx had it, but as itself: "The world", writes Michnik, "is full of inquisitors and heretics, liars and those lied to, terrorists and the terrorized. There is still someone dying at Thermopylae, someone drinking a glass of hemlock, someone crossing the Rubicon, someone drawing up a proscription list."
Poland's Catholic Primate, Stanisław Szczepanowski, is murdered by his former friend, King Bolesław the Bold ; and England's Catholic Primate, Thomas Becket, is murdered at the behest of his former friend, King Henry II.
Chinese Emperor Kublai Khan's attempted conquest of Japan is frustrated by typhoons; and Spanish King Philip II's 1588 attempted conquest of England is frustrated by a hurricane.
Hernán Cortes's fateful 1519 entry into Mexico's Aztec Empire is reputedly facilitated by the natives' identification of him with their god Quetzalcoatl, who had been predicted to return that very year; and English Captain James Cook's fateful 1778 entry into Hawaii, during the annual Makahiki festival honoring the fertility and peace god Lono, is reputedly facilitated by the natives' identification of Cook with Lono, who had left Hawaii, promising to return on a floating island, evoked by Cook's ship under full sail.
On 27 April 1521, Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan, in the Philippine Islands, foolhardily, with only four dozen men, confronts 1,500 natives who have defied his attempt to Christianize them and is killed. On 14 February 1779, English explorer James Cook, on Hawaii Island, foolhardily, with only a few men, confronts the natives after some individuals have taken one of Cook's small boats, and Cook and four of his men are killed.
Poland's Queen Jadwiga, dying in 1399, bequeaths her personal jewelry for the restoration of Kraków University ; and Leland Stanford's widow Jane Stanford attempts, after his 1893 death, to sell her personal jewelry to restore Stanford University's financial viability, ultimately bequeathing the jewelry to fund the purchase of books for Stanford University.
In 1812 French Emperor Napoleon—born a Corsican outsider—unprepared for an extended winter campaign, invades the Russian Empire, precipitating the fall of the French Empire; and in 1941 German Führer Adolf Hitler—born an Austrian outsider—unprepared for an extended winter campaign, invades the Russian Empire's Soviet successor state ruled by Joseph Stalin—born a Georgian outsider—precipitating the fall of the German Thousand-Year Reich.
Mohandas Gandhi works to liberate his compatriots by peaceful means and is shot dead; Martin Luther King, Jr., works to liberate his compatriots by peaceful means and is shot dead.
Over history, confrontations between peoples – typically, geographical neighbors – help consolidate the peoples into nations, at times into frank empires; until at last, exhausted by conflicts and drained of resources, the once militant polities settle into a relatively peaceful habitus.
Polities ignore Jan Bloch's 1898 warnings of the railroad-mobilized, industrialized, stalemated, attritional total war, World War I, that is on the way and will destroy an appreciable part of mankind; and polities ignore geologists', oceanographers', atmospheric scientists', biologists', and climatologists' warnings of the climate-change tipping point that is on course to destroy all of mankind.
People ignore warnings about the dangers of nuclear power plants until anticipated nuclear power-plant accidents occur; and people ignore warnings about the dangers of nuclear weapons until some city in the world is blown up by a nuclear weapon.
British novelist Martin Amis observes that recurring patterns of imperial ascendance-and-decline are mirrored in the novel: novels seem to follow the political power. In the 19th century, when Britain was ascendant on the planet, British novels were huge and tried to express what the whole society was. British hegemony waned with World War II and ended after the war. The British novel was then some 225 pages long and centered on narrower subjects such as career setbacks or marriage setbacks: the British novel's "great tradition" increasingly looked depleted. Ascendance had passed to the United States, and Americans such as Saul Bellow, Norman Mailer, Philip Roth, and John Updike began writing huge novels.