The Causes of War: Volume 1: 3000 BCE to 1000 CE

"This is the first v. of a projected four-volume series charting the causes of war from 3000 BCE to the present day, written by a leading international lawyer, and using as its principal materials the documentary history of international law largely in the form of treaties and the negotiations which led up to them. These v. seek to show why millions of people, over thousands of years, slayed each other. In departing from the various theories put forward by historians, anthropologists and psychologists, Gillespie offers a different taxonomy of the causes of war, focusing on the broader settings of politics, religion, migrations and empire-building. These four contexts were dominant and often overlapping justifications for the first four thousand years of human civilisation, for which written records exist."--Bloomsbury Publishing

4. Rome and the Political Question5. The Contribution of Christianity; 6. The Christian Emperors of the Roman Empire; 7. The Return of the Monarchy in the West; 8. Islam and the Political Question; 9. Conclusion; V. Religion; 1. Introduction; 2. Mesopotamia, Egypt, Assyria, Israel and Persia; 3. China and India; 4. Greece and Rome; 5. Christianity; 6. Orthodoxy, Heresy and Intolerance; 7. The Rise of the Papacy and the East-West Tension; 8. The Religious Question between Rome and Persia; 9. Islam; 10. Islam and Christianity in the East; 11. Islam and Christianity in the West; 12. Conclusion.