Societies sometimes expand through population growth, military conquests and migrations. Why does this happen and in what way are expanding societies different from others? Examples of such episodes are many in European history and, to name but a few, include Archaic Greece, the Germanic barbarians and modernizing Europe of the 19th and 20th centuries. The present work is an attempt to construct a model that explains these expansions and others.

At the same time it is an experiment in using some principles of the biological and social sciences in the study of history. Social scientists have discovered general laws that apply to human societies. Sociologists are most often concerned with modern and recent societies and anthropologists with simple ones. In between are the agrarian civilizations that dominate most of documented history and they rarely receive much attention from anyone except historians. Unfortunately, historians are usually not much interested in general laws and, therefore, the laws that explain the evolution of agrarian societies are largely unknown. Perhaps it is time for this to change.

Axel Kristinsson (b. 1959) is an Icelandic independent historian with a background in the social and political history of Iceland in the medieval and early modern periods. I recent years, however, he has concentrated on his own brand of macro-history where the approach of evolution and complexity theory is used to discover general principles of the evolution of human societies. Axel lives in Reykjavik and grows trees in his spare time.

The book can be ordered here.

http://www.biblio.com/books/360417338.html

Homepage: http://www.axelkrist.com/