The Great Leveler (Paperback)

Walter Scheidel

ISBN 10: 0691271844 / ISBN 13: 9780691271842

Published by Princeton University Press, New Jersey, 2025

About this Item

Paperback. How only violence and catastrophes have consistently reduced inequality throughout world history.Are mass violence and catastrophes the only forces that can seriously decrease economic inequality? To judge by thousands of years of history, the answer is yes. Tracing the global history of inequality from the Stone Age to today, Walter Scheidel shows that inequality never dies peacefully. Inequality declines when carnage and disaster strike and increases when peace and stability return. The Great Leveler is the first book to chart the crucial role of violent shocks in reducing inequality over the full sweep of human history around the world.Ever since humans began to farm, herd livestock, and pass on their assets to future generations, economic inequality has been a defining feature of civilisation. Over thousands of years, only violent events have significantly lessened inequality. The 'Four Horsemen' of leveling mass-mobilisation warfare, transformative revolutions, state collapse, and catastrophic plagues have repeatedly destroyed the fortunes of the rich. Scheidel identifies and examines these processes, from the crises of the earliest civilisations to the cataclysmic world wars and communist revolutions of the twentieth century. Today, the violence that reduced inequality in the past seems to have diminished, and that is a good thing. But it casts serious doubt on the prospects for a more equal future.An essential contribution to the debate about inequality, The Great Leveler provides important new insights about why inequality is so persistent and why it is unlikely to decline anytime soon. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Seller Inventory # 9780691271842

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Great Leveler (Paperback)
• Publisher: Princeton University Press, New Jersey
• Publication Date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0691271844
• ISBN 13: 9780691271842
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: new

About this title

Synopsis

How only violence and catastrophes have consistently reduced inequality throughout world history

Are mass violence and catastrophes the only forces that can seriously decrease economic inequality? To judge by thousands of years of history, the answer is yes. Tracing the global history of inequality from the Stone Age to today, Walter Scheidel shows that inequality never dies peacefully. Inequality declines when carnage and disaster strike and increases when peace and stability return. The Great Leveler is the first book to chart the crucial role of violent shocks in reducing inequality over the full sweep of human history around the world.

Ever since humans began to farm, herd livestock, and pass on their assets to future generations, economic inequality has been a defining feature of civilization. Over thousands of years, only violent events have significantly lessened inequality. The "Four Horsemen" of leveling—mass-mobilization warfare, transformative revolutions, state collapse, and catastrophic plagues—have repeatedly destroyed the fortunes of the rich. Scheidel identifies and examines these processes, from the crises of the earliest civilizations to the cataclysmic world wars and communist revolutions of the twentieth century. Today, the violence that reduced inequality in the past seems to have diminished, and that is a good thing. But it casts serious doubt on the prospects for a more equal future.

An essential contribution to the debate about inequality, The Great Leveler provides important new insights about why inequality is so persistent—and why it is unlikely to decline anytime soon.

About the Author

Walter Scheidel is the Dickason Professor in the Humanities, Professor of Classics and History, and a Kennedy-Grossman Fellow in Human Biology at Stanford University. The author or editor of sixteen previous books, he has published widely on premodern social and economic history, demography, and comparative history. He lives in Palo Alto, California.