ABSTRACT
Turgot noted that in the past, when civilized nations conquered or were conquered by barbarians, a cultural contact occurred which gradually caused barbarism to retreat. Yet we should remember that eighteenth-century people perceived themselves as only finally emerging from medieval barbarism, and they could not predict the ruinous nature of modern warfare. To note the most ubiquitous example available in the eighteenth century, the barbarians who replaced the Roman Empire ineluctably ushered in the beginning of their own civilizing process. It was no mere chance that Gibbon's The Decline and Fall, described the Roman Empire in its heyday as comprehending 'the fairest part of the earth, and the most civilized portion of mankind. Before concluding this discussion of the law of unintended consequences, since it is so central for the purposes of our discussion, the chapter examines it from a slightly different perspective.
