ABSTRACT
In Social and Cultural Dynamics, Pitirim Sorokin went to great lengths to quantify the data of history. He did not, however, fully exploit these data statistically, beyond presenting some coefficients of correlation for some variables and time periods. Sorokin believed that highly integrated systems were associated with relatively stable periods in history. What he called “transitional periods,” by contrast, were disorderly and unstable. Generally this instability manifested itself in the internal affairs of nations before it affected the relations between nations. Sorokin found neither periodic cycles nor linear trends in the data but only “trendless fluctuations.” There was some tendency for disturbances to occur during the rise rather than the fall of countries. Greece, Rome, Netherlands, and Poland were given as examples of this tendency. Sorokin and his colleagues compiled a list of 967 international wars, which should have been called something like “nation-wars,” since each war was counted once for each major European nation that engaged in it.
