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It's been mentioned recently that awakenings are frequently bloody, especially when the previous Crisis War is a civil war. This clearly contradicts the Fourth Turning theory, which has a tendency to romanticize them.

I've spent some time looking at it and the risk of a brutal awakening and an older generation victory appears to be greatest when a dominant religious or ethnic minority takes power. If you support various policies based on identity alone, the minority currently in power is going to be very unwilling to give it up because they're very aware that if the marginalized majority takes power, they'll never have a say again.

In Syria, for instance, the Alawites are only around 1/8th of the population. In Iraq, Sunnis are around 30% of the population, where Shias outnumber them more than two to one. In South Africa, whites are only 20% of the population and set up a system brutal enough where even many segregationists in the United States thought was going too far. In Thailand, Thai Chinese are about 1/6th of the population and they've overthrown leaders over and over again to keep their position.

The United States has its own examples. If you look at a map, you notice the worst of the lynching and racial violence in the South occurred where white individuals were the minority, sometimes outnumbered by more than two to one.

Now this is far from a guarantee that awakenings with dominant minorities will end in brutal suppression, nor is it a necessary component for a massacre to occur (China being a prominent example) but it does seem to make such drastic actions more likely. This really requires more work, but it does seem to suggest something.

It's been mentioned recently that awakenings are frequently bloody, especially when the previous Crisis War is a civil war. This clearly contradicts the Fourth Turning theory, which has a tendency to romanticize them.

I think awakenings have the ability to be either, or even a mix. There are plenty of examples of awakenings that fit the description Howe & Strauss give them, even in ancient and medieval times. One of the most notable ancient examples that John has mentioned was the Golden Age of Athens, and I also suspect that the founding of the Muslim House of Wisdom during the beginning of the Abbasid Caliphate in the 8th Century was an example of a second and third turning.

That said, I think you're on to something, and it makes quite a bit of sense. The dominant minority will not be able to maintain control of society through democratic means, or arguably even through the rule of law, simply because the math is against them. The majority of the population are against their interests, which means unless they take "artificial" (read violent, oppressive) measures to ensure their control, their interests will be ignored. A small minority of people who control access to arms and to money will be able to control a disempowered minority.

Violence during an Awakening is highly correlated to whether the
previous crisis war was an internal ethnic or religious civil war,
versus an external war. These two cases are enormously different.

Violence during an Awakening is highly correlated to whether the
previous crisis war was an internal ethnic or religious civil war,
versus an external war. These two cases are enormously different.

What are your thoughts on the English Civil War cycle? (by cycle I mean the span of time from regeneracy event to another, i.e. we are in the WWII cycle, before Pearl Harbor they were in the Civil War cycle)

England experience an internal crisis civil war, yet the awakening ended peacefully with the Glorious Revolution, and the country was relatively unified during the War of the Spanish Succession (granted, there was quite a lot of political controversy between the Whigs and Tories about how the war was fought, but there was no replay of the civil war).

jmm1184 wrote: > What are your thoughts on the English Civil War cycle? (by cycle I
> mean the span of time from regeneracy event to another, i.e. we
> are in the WWII cycle, before Pearl Harbor they were in the Civil
> War cycle)

> England experience an internal crisis civil war, yet the awakening
> ended peacefully with the Glorious Revolution, and the country was
> relatively unified during the War of the Spanish Succession
> (granted, there was quite a lot of political controversy between
> the Whigs and Tories about how the war was fought, but there was
> no replay of the civil war).

BBC wrote: > History / The Glorious Revolution

> According to the Whig account, the events of the revolution were
> bloodless and the revolution settlement established the supremacy
> of parliament over the crown, setting Britain on the path towards
> constitutional monarchy and parliamentary democracy.

> But it ignores the extent to which the events of 1688 constituted
> a foreign invasion of England by another European power, the Dutch
> Republic.

> Although bloodshed in England was limited, the revolution was only
> secured in Ireland and Scotland by force and with much loss of
> life. ...

> James had made military preparations for the defence of England
> over the summer and autumn of 1688 and his army encamped on
> Hounslow Heath was, at about 25,000 men, numerically larger than
> the force brought over by William. For the first time since the
> 1640s, England was faced with the prospect of civil war.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/ci ... n_01.shtml

The following article from 2011 says that the Glorious Revolution was
a crisis war for Northern Ireland, coinciding with the
Williamite-Jacobite war.


** 23-Jun-11 News -- Sectarian violence in Northern Ireland grows again
** http://www.generationaldynamics.com/pg/ ... m#e110623b

John wrote:Violence during an Awakening is highly correlated to whether the
previous crisis war was an internal ethnic or religious civil war,
versus an external war. These two cases are enormously different.

How does that show up in American History (the only kind I am reasonably familiar with)? The ACW was kinda religious, over the morality of slavery...was the c1890 Awakening more violent than the c1970 Awakening?

Tom Mazanec wrote: > How does that show up in American History (the only kind I am
> reasonably familiar with)? The ACW was kinda religious, over the
> morality of slavery...was the c1890 Awakening more violent than
> the c1970 Awakening?

The American civil war was not a war between two ethnic groups, as the
black slaves generally supported the South. The fault line was
geographical (North vs South), and so it had the characteristics of an
external war.

If the black slaves had risen up and fought against the southern
whites, then the "Reconstruction" era would have been far bloodier.

The American civil war was not a war between two ethnic groups, as the
black slaves generally supported the South. The fault line was
geographical (North vs South), and so it had the characteristics of an
external war.

If the black slaves had risen up and fought against the southern
whites, then the "Reconstruction" era would have been far bloodier.

That might be true, but there's more to it than that. After the Civil War, there was a strong emphasis on reconciling the two sides, not simply punishing the South. If instead, the North treated the South as nothing more than occupied territory, executing all the Confederate leaders, long-term military occupation (and there were many in the North who wanted to do this), the awakening would have been a lot worse and there would be a good chance of another civil war breaking out in the crisis period.

Trevor wrote: > That might be true, but there's more to it than that. After the
> Civil War, there was a strong emphasis on reconciling the two
> sides, not simply punishing the South. If instead, the North
> treated the South as nothing more than occupied territory,
> executing all the Confederate leaders, long-term military
> occupation (and there were many in the North who wanted to do
> this), the awakening would have been a lot worse and there would
> be a good chance of another civil war breaking out in the crisis
> period.

I agree with that, but I would add that the contrafactual that you
pose was not likely to occur. The ethnic civil wars that I've been
talking about occur when two ethnic groups live together, often in the
same villages and neighborhoods, and people start raping, torturing
and slaughtering their next door neighbors. This is a highly personal
kind of war, very different from an external war, where one country
raises an army and invades another country, and then the army
withdraws when the war ends. The American North and South were like
two separate countries, with very different economies and lifestyles,
not like Hutus and Tutsis living next door to each other. That's why
that kind of personal civil war could not have occurred, and the two
were really more like two separate countries.

In fact, I'll go farther and say that after 80 years of dealing with
each other politically and nonviolently, that kind of civil war was
really impossible. Sherman's march did raise some of the kinds of
vitriolic emotions we're talking about, but they didn't last.