We describe a compartmental model that captures the spread of political dissent between a civilian population and security forces. Both groups are subdivided into "accessories" and "dissenters" with a "dissent bug" spreading from the latter group to the former in the same way a virus spreads from infectives to susceptibles. We provide conditions under which the corresponding system of two non-linear ordinary differential equations has either the origin or a non-trivial value as its unique asymptotically stable equilibrium. The model is illustrated with data from the French Revolution and shows that the unraveling of the old regime is consistent with Chenoweth's rule, which postulates that no revolution has failed if more than 3.5% of the population is involved in "mass non-cooperation". We complement this metric with a dissension ratio equal to the civilian dissenting population divided by the security forces accessories —a ratio with a threshold value approximately equal to five as the old regime was collapsing.
The purpose of this paper is to estimate the trend of 18th century British slave prices. We apply robust econometric procedures on slave price data constructed by Whatley (2018) over the period 1699 to 1807 and find evidence of a structural break in 1740, thereby advocating a broken trend. We estimate the trend over two regimes demarcated by the structural break, concluding there is no significant trend in the first regime prior to 1740. However, in the second regime, slave prices show a significant positive trend increasing annually at around 2.4%. Since 1740, the slave prices are close to constant variance, lending support to the tighter confidence intervals that we obtain in the second regime. We document various accounts by historians that can help explain this steady increase, focusing on supply and demand side arguments.
The paper aims to suggest Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), as a preliminary tool of military efficiency. This approach examines battles as a decision-making unit (DMU) characterized by multiple inputs and outputs. Data: Data are measurable indicators such as battles won, territorial expansion, casualties, and historical impact. By assigning quantitative values, the study facilitates cross-temporal comparisons of military effectiveness. Analysis: The strategic performance of Alexander the Great at the Battle of Granicus River (334 BCE) serves as a primary case study of DEA employment. The scope of analysis extends to a range of historically significant conflicts, from the Trojan War to World War II to compare with and be used as benchmarks. Results: The study demonstrates the practical utility of quantifying historical events into a single comparable metric, facilitating clearer comparisons across diverse battles ranked from highest to lowest values.
In the study of the causes of the Russian Revolution, the problem of the standard of living of the population plays an important role. This problem, in turn, is linked to the question of agricultural productivity. In modern historiography, both domestic and foreign, the thesis of the growing productivity of Russian agriculture in the post-reform period is considered proven - and in particular the increase in grain yields. This thesis is based on the well-known works of V.G. Mikhailovsky, V.M. Obukhov and A.S. Nifontov, in which time series of grain yields in European Russia were constructed on the basis of official statistics. Meanwhile, the opinion of the experts of the 1901 Commission is well known, who believed that the increase in yields recorded in official statistics was explained by the improvement in the system of collecting harvest data. Reforms to improve the survey system were carried out in 1870, 1883 and 1893. The author examines the dynamics of 4-year averages and shows that when 4-year periods containing the years indicated are excluded from consideration, the yield in the remaining time intervals does not increase. In other words, the increase in yield in the time series shown was explained by more detailed accounting. The period 1893-1914 is considered separately, when it is assumed that the yield data were quite accurate and no new reforms were made in the field of their collection. Previously it was assumed that the yield, calculated by the regression coefficient of the linear model, increased by 12% during this period. The author conducts a more detailed analysis and shows that the regression coefficient used previously is statistically insignificant. Thus, the claim of an increase in returns over this period cannot be statistically substantiated. Perhaps the return was a random variable independent of time. The paper also examines the dynamics of gross cereal yields per capita and shows that average per capita yields did not increase between 1893 and 1914. Thus, the prevailing opinion about the growth of agricultural productivity in Russia in the post-reform period needs to be revised
Historians and social scientists have long been preoccupied with understanding and documenting periods of crisis. Such emphasis is only growing, and becoming more pressing, as the world continues to face a number of interrelated stressors in the form of irreversible climate change, major ecological shocks and disease outbreaks, eruptions of military violence, economic disruptions and deepening inequalities, political polarization and unrest, the rise of authoritarian and nationalist regimes. Crises in these domains are not new, but have been recurrent features of past societies. Although these periods have typically led to massive loss of life, the failure of critical institutions, and even complete societal collapse, there are instances in the historical record of societies managing to turn the tide of crisis even as violence and social turmoil grow. Here, we focus on four such cases of crises mitigated with structural reforms revealed from our previous historical analyses: early Republican Rome, mid-19th century England and Russia, USA during the the late 20th to early 21st centuries. Utilizing structural demographic theory as a lens to explore these cases, we seek to expose the pressures that built up leading to crisis and the early signs of violent confrontation revealed by these societies, as well as to examine the conditions and key decisions made in the midst of this unrest that allowed these societies to turn the tide and enact significant structural adaptations. Our findings have clear relevance to understanding and navigating similar crises in contemporary societies.
