ABSTRACT
This whole discussion has been permeated by one persistent question, why conquest? Why do societies embark upon programmes of calculated military activity which wreak such havoc on so many people? Obviously, there are a number of reasons for war: economic advantage, revenge, anticipation of an enemy attack, even believed ritual imperatives. But none of these quite accounts for that gratuitous, unnecessary aggression which we associate with history’s would-be expansionists-the Alexanders, Caesars, Genghis Khans and Hitlers of this world. Indeed, it is said that Alexander wept because he had no more worlds to conquer. Presumably the reasons were locked in the now unfathomable psyches of the individuals concerned. But such urges and ambitions could not have been put into effect without the conducive combinations of circumstances which attended their expression, nor the rationalizations (ideologies) which facilitated their operation.
