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Este blog trata basicamente de ideias, se possível inteligentes, para pessoas inteligentes. Ele também se ocupa de ideias aplicadas à política, em especial à política econômica. Ele constitui uma tentativa de manter um pensamento crítico e independente sobre livros, sobre questões culturais em geral, focando numa discussão bem informada sobre temas de relações internacionais e de política externa do Brasil. Para meus livros e ensaios ver o website: www.pralmeida.org. Para a maior parte de meus textos, ver minha página na plataforma Academia.edu, link: https://itamaraty.academia.edu/PauloRobertodeAlmeida.

Mostrando postagens com marcador Carrol Quigley. Mostrar todas as postagens
Mostrando postagens com marcador Carrol Quigley. Mostrar todas as postagens

domingo, 26 de junho de 2022

Mais um livro de Carroll Quigley, categoria teorias conspiratórias: The Anglo-American Establishment


 

The Anglo-American Establishment 

Paperback – June 1, 1981


Top reviews from the United States

Reviewed in the United States on October 3, 2018
Dr. Quigley was an interesting fellow, and a very good historian. His work on this subject is extensive, though this, the first of his works, laid in wait until his death. For those who are familiar with Dr. Quigley's work will appreciate the foundations laid in this book. Its a good place to start before approaching the monstrously long Tragedy & Hope.
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Reviewed in the United States on July 3, 2014
How real history is made. This book will disabuse you of all the false history you have learned through state sponsored and state controlled schools. Quigley gives names, dates and documents on the real shakers and movers who controlled geopolitics behind the scenes. Great read. See also Quigley's 'Tragedy and Hope' which is the basis of two other shorter and more readable books: 1) Gary Alan's famous book called None Dare call it Conspiracy and 2) Joseph Plummer's Tragedy & Hope 101: The Illusion of Justice, Freedom and Democracy. AT 200 pages, Tragedy & Hope 101 is a great primer for Quigley's larger 1,300 plus page book or even a great companion book.

The Evolution of Civilizations: An Introduction to Historical Analysis, by Carrol Quigley

Li este livro quando ainda era adolescente, e me lembro muito bem de qual biblioteca que eu frequentava que o retirei: da União Cultural Brasil-Estados Unidos, próximo à Avenida Nove de Julho e pouco abaixo de seu túnel, em São Paulo, SP, aí pelos idos de 1967 ou 1968.

The Evolution of Civilizations: An Introduction to Historical Analysis 

2nd Edition

Carroll Quigley was a legendary teacher at the Georgetown School of Foreign Service. His course on the history of civilization was extraordinary in its scope and in its impact on students.

Like the course, The Evolution of Civilizations is a comprehensive and perceptive look at the factors behind the rise and fall of civilizations. Quigley examines the application of scientific method to the social sciences, then establishes his historical hypotheses. He poses a division of culture into six levels from the abstract to the more concrete. He then tests those hypotheses by a detailed analysis of five major civilizations: the Mesopotamian, the Canaanite, the Minoan, the classical, and the Western.

Quigley defines a civilization as “a producing society with an instrument of expansion.” A civilization’s decline is not inevitable but occurs when its instrument of expansion is transformed into an institution—that is, when social arrangements that meet real social needs are transformed into social institutions serving their own purposes regardless of real social needs. 

Reviews: 

Reviewed in the United States on December 9, 2018

The "seven ages of man" here become the seven stages of the evolution of civilisations. Quigley's method is analytical (analysis = "breaking up"), in that it parcels up the continuum of historical evolution beyond the usual stages of "rise" and "decline and fall" (Gibbon), but not "scientific," certainly not by the definition of "scientific" he himself proposes (cf. p.33): if the "scientific" method involves gathering of "all the relevant evidence," he fails to do so, analysing as he does only a fairly limited subset of all the "civilisations" he himself lists (a list that itself surely only comprises a subset of civilisations that have actually existed). Rather than being "scientific," his approach is rationalist, which, it so happens, is precisely that metaphysics which he evidently despises most (cf. pp. 38, 337). For a budding philosopher of history, he gets his philosophy awfully wrong. His curious definition of the Russian "civilisation" as separate from the "Western" is perhaps excusable by Quigley's personal historical context (the book was first published in 1961), although it must be said that the mark of a historian must be, inter alia, that he can lift his head above his immediate context. More generally Quigley's grasp of history is probably nearly as limited as that of philosophy (he reduces, for example, the Napoleonic Wars to a conflict between France and Britain--never mind what those poor underrated Germans, Russians, Italians, Spanish, Poles, Dutch and countless other peoples may think of it, on whose lands those wars took place, fought by their peoples). Having said that, the one chapter in his book I found eminently readable is the one in which Quigley puts his "scientific" method aside and simply retells history, in a grand sweep, no doubt, but in a way that makes interesting connections: Chapter 6, "The Matrix of Early Civilisations," which in some ways anticipates Jared Diamond's on the whole more intriguing analysis. One "star" for making an honest attempt, and a second "star" for Chapter 6.

Reviewed in the United States on September 30, 2012

Let me repeat a short part from the Conclusion of the book: "To know is not too demanding: it merely requires memory and time. But to understand is quite a different matter: it requires intellectual ability and training, a self-conscious awareness of what one is doing, experience in techniques of analysis and synthesis, and above all, perspective." I'm not a professional historian but I can see that Quigley had put a very honest intellectual effort in order help bring a perspective to the readers who want to understand the history of civilizations. He puts his framework into test by trying to explain the major phases of many civilizations and he seems to have achieved a consistent set of explanations. Moreover, he does this without being dry, the whole book is an exciting read and feels like listening to a good professor who seems to have a deep understanding and knowledge of his subject matter. Nevertheless, there are still many open questions regarding the evolution of civilizations, such as: is it really possible to explain and predict many events by focusing on weapons technology? Why the difference between civilizations between different times, etc?

The book has other drawbacks, especially the explanations about linguistics, but I think they can be tolerated, after all it was written about 50 years ago. We have learned a lot since then but it's a pity that we do not see more people like Quigley; people who can write really good books on big topics without being drown in details, and people who can defend a strong framework for analyzing grand structures throughout long periods of time.
Reviewed in the United States on May 6, 2008
I am a professional historian and one-time student of Carroll Quigley. Rereading "The Evolution of Civilizations" after 40 years, I heard his voice speaking across time and felt once again the uncanny penetration of his analytical mind. I suppose that he was the most remarkable person I have ever met.
This book makes a major contribution to the study of civilizations, previously the preserve of writers of a literary or philosophical bent. Quigley was through and through a scientist who strove to analyze the rise and fall of civilizations and develop explanations of their dynamics that went well beyond the descriptive treatments of Toynbee and others.
Quigley's seven stages of the rise and fall of civilizations, his six dimensions of analysis (military, political, economic, social, religious, and intellectual), and his application of the concept of institutionalization of once-productive "instruments" of society to explaining the stages of Expansion and Conflict are superior to any competing framework of analysis I have encountered. They deserve careful scrutiny for what they can tell us about the interaction of civilizations in our globalizing world.
I found especially interesting Quigley's analysis of how climate change shaped prehistorical population movements, his discussion of the philosophical struggles of classical antiquity, and his explanation of the economic factors driving European expansion and conflict.
That this book has never received much attention from professional historians should not surprise us. Quigley was operating in a mode that led him to diverge from the mainstream and to upset more than a few specialists.
While this book certainly contains high value for students of world history, its teachings can be applied in other fields as well. I have found the analytical techniques and the explanation of science and epistemology in this book repeatedly fruitful in my own historical, scientific, and criminal detective work.
For more on Quigley, try a Google or Yahoo search under "Carroll Quigley: Theorist of Civilizations".

quinta-feira, 5 de maio de 2011

A frase da semana - Carrol Quigley

"For years I have told my students that I have been trying to train executives rather than clerks. The distinction between the two is parallel to the distinction previously made between understanding and knowledge. It is a mighty low executive who cannot hire several people with command of more knowledge than he has himself. And he can always buy reference works or electronic devices with better memories for facts than any subordinate. The chief quality of an executive is that he have understanding. He should be able to make decisions that make it possible to utilize the knowledge of other persons. Such executive capacity can be taught, but it cannot be taught by an educational program that emphasizes knowledge and only knowledge. Knowledge must be assumed as given, and if it is not sufficient the candidate must be eliminated. But the vital thing is understanding. This requires possession of techniques that, fortunately, can be taught."

Carroll Quigley. The Evolution of Civilizations. 2nd ed. 1979. p. 420
(in: http://www.carrollquigley.net/)

A review by Elmer Louis Kayser in Courier, October 1961,
of a book:
THE EVOLUTION OF CIVILIZATIONS,
by Carroll Quigley.
New York: The Macmillan Company, 1960

The Evolution of Civilizations


by Carroll Quigley.
(New York, The Macmillan Company, 1960.
Pp. x, 281, $5.95)



Reviewed by Elmer Louis Kayser



[Dean of University Students and Professor of European History
at The George Washington University.
Born in Washington, Dean Kayser holds his A.B., M.A., and LL.D.
from George Washington,and a Ph.D.
from Columbia University.

Vitally interested in international affairs,
Dean Kayser is the author of several books,
an associate Editor of World Affairs,
and a director of the American Peace Society.]



A work of the importance of The Evolution of Civilizations deserves much more than the hurried first reading that a deadline has imposed. Reading Professor Quigley's volume is a pleasant, but rather exacting exercise. He demonstrates Toynbeean erudition and non-Tonybeean brevity.

It is fortunate that a brief review is expected, for a truly critical review would have to be longer than the book itself. A vast time span, a tremendous area, and an amazing diversity of fields are involved. A high degree of selectivity must be exercised in determining what material is to be presented. The sector is small within which anyone could claim the competence of a specialist. The work of others must be used and judgments made. A detailed criticism under these circumstances becomes a race between author and critic to see who has read the latest monograph or special study and made the soundest evaluation of it. Toynbee, in reconsidering the first ten volumes of The Study of History in the recent twelfth volume, found that there had been new writing while he was publishing which made it desirable that he make changes. The blurb (author unknown) on the jacket of the latest Toynbee volume goes so far as to assert that, during the publication of the First Decade of Toynbee, new discoveries in some fields "have changed the picture almost out of recognition."

The present reviewer accepts the historical data which Professor Quigley uses as what a competent scholar selected at the time of writing as valid supports for the ideas that he presents. The reviewer makes no attempt to examine these individually and critically. His interest is in what the author was trying to do, in the patterns of thinking that he sets up.

The author is thinking of aggregates of human beings as they constitute themselves in social groups and various types of society: parasitic societies, producing societies, and civilizations, depending upon whether the members have the major portion of their relationships outside the group or within it. He finds "two dozen civilizations," living and dead, within the last ten millenia and suggests various groupings. Before discussing historical change, he considers methods of analyzing the evolution of a society, the resultant of development and morphology. Civilizations pass through "seven stages": mixture, gestation, expansion, age of conflict, universal empire, decay, and invasion, which he offers as a convenient way of breaking into segments an intricate historical process.

A very interesting chapter devoted to the physical setting of the earliest civilizations is followed by a detailed discussion of Mesopotamia, Canaanite and Minoan, Classical and Western Civilizations. These discussions of the civilizations which relate directly to the stream of Western Civilization through historic time occupy the major portion of the study. In a final word of conclusion, Professor Quigley states his belief that six points have emerged from his study. The first three, he points out, merely underscore well-recognized and long accepted points of view. The last three, he feels, represent a real contribution. They are: 1) the "seven stages" (which proves, as Toynbee's [stages do] not, a basis for an analysis of the whole course of the evolution of a civilization, including the earliest phases), 2) an improved nomenclature and 3) techniques for dealing with historical problems.

Professor Quigley's indebtedness to his predecessors is obvious and acknowledged. While he lacks the Wagnerian tone of Spengler and the severely classical attitudes of Toynbee, he does have the more direct approach of the social scientist. His heavy emphasis on scientific method in the first chapter, even though he concludes by pointing out the difference between the natural and social sciences in the subjective factor, leads us to expect a much more rigorous method than the one applied. In the case, we notice such statements as "To be sure there are difficulties, but in some cases, at least these can be explained away." You wonder again at the grading system applied to Western society in the chart on page 81. The reviewer is not sure just how it is determined when a civilization reaches "its peak of achievement" and how this is related to the seven stages of development.

All of these are matters of detail. The important fact is that the author has distilled from a vast store of historical knowledge a highly suggestive approach for the systematic study of major historical movements. The real review will probably have to wait until that traveler from New Zealand in the midst of a vast solitude, standing on a broken arch of London Bridge, has finished his sketch of the ruins of St. Paul's.

Nota pessoal: Li essse livro com 16 ou 17 anos, em sua versão traduzida para o Português e publicada no Brasil, e ele me marcou profundamente.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida