John Collier Civil War

Soldiers of the American Civil War were overwhelmed by a time where weaponry and technological developments were thriving. This brutal war changed the soldiers, both mentally and physically, and continued to have an impact throughout their entire lives. There were not only many deaths during the war, but also prior to the war as many soldiers took their own life. They would experience disturbing thoughts and events in their mind that could not be explained until they became known as mental illnesses. The exploration of psychological disorders following the Civil War improved medical diagnostic tools and the way patients were treated which transformed the treatment of mental illness by creating new ways of discovering illnesses, treating patients, and developing the foundation for the future of psychology throughout America.

Throughout history, our world has constantly been bruised and battered by civil turmoil. Today, the civil war in Syria decimates the country; the Israeli and Palestinian conflict rages on; tens of thousands of people have been killed in South Sudan's ongoing civil war. It is not always easy to isolate what exactly ignites the flames of war, but, whenever possible, finding a workable, calm and satisfying solution to a potential uprising is preferable.

40% of sub-Saharan countries have experienced civil war largely because of differences in cultural and political beliefs. On prominent African civil war existed in Nigeria where after gaining their independence, cultural differences led the Ibo people to rebel against the government and declare independence as the Republic of Biafra. “A 3 year war ensued that left hundreds of thousands dead” (Ellis and Esler 1030). Similar wars existed in countries throughout the continent, greatly hurting Africa’s economic

In 1861, a horrific war began. Nobody had any idea that this war would become the deadliest war in American history. It wasn’t a regular war, it was a civil war opposing the Union in the North and the Confederate States in the South.. The Civil War cost many people’s lives on the battlefield and beyond. In addition it cost an extreme amount of money for the nation which possibly could have been avoided if the war had turned to happen a little differently.

Conflict between and within nations is proven by history to be expected, but the answer to which countries are at a higher risk for conflict depends on whom you are asking. The reading “Ethnicity, Insurgency and Civil War” by James D. Fearon and David D. Laitin, argues that the conditions that favour insurgency are better predictors of which countries are at risk for internal conflict. Determining which countries are at a higher risk depends on multiple logical factors for the perfect environment for rebellion to occur. These factors are based on the political, economic, and organization of the state in question. Fearon and Laitin dissect the formula for rebellion piece by piece over the course of the entire article. By the end it left me in

How effective is terrorism? This question has generated lively scholarly debate and is of obvious importance to policy-makers. However, most existing studies of terrorism are not well equipped to answer this question because they lack an appropriate comparison. This article compares the outcomes of civil wars to assess whether rebel groups that use terrorism fare better than those who eschew this tactic. I evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of terrorism relative to other tactics used in civil war. Because terrorism is not a tactic employed at random, I first briefly explore empirically which groups use terrorism. Controlling for factors that may affect both the use of terrorism and war outcomes, I find that although civil wars involving

Michael Banton looks into the issues concerning topics such as ethnic dimension, mobilisation, ethnicity, race and conflict. In this article Banton focuses on conflicts which are considered to be ethnical conflicts; these conflicts are derived by certain types of motivations. Baton looks at secondary data demonstrating surveys of 92 armed conflicts within the years of 1945-89. Through these data the author recognises that many of the ethnic conflicts had come about at the time that imperial powers were no longer able to support political frameworks which they had placed upon the country. Overall the author suggest that within shared ethnics there is a collective action in achieving a common shared goal. This is achieved through collective shared

Rudolf and Findley (2016) look into whether the fragmentation of combatants throughout civil war has any long lasting effects on the ability of peace following civil wars. they state that the splintering of combatant groups, will produce potential spoiler groups that are neither related nor insignificant in the course of civil war resolution. The connections made with the spoiling and credible commitment literatures, the authors hypothesize that rebel splintering speeds the reappearance of civil wars. The results advocate the need to pay more attention to the dynamics of fragmentation. “For example, governments that attempt to splinter groups or to use existing fragmentations within rebel groups to end a civil war may encourage the unintended

Studying civil wars can be a very complicated endeavor. This is because the topic is very difficult to break down. When scholars study civil wars, there are many variables that can’t be controlled that can skew data. This makes finding interactions between different variables more difficult. Their complex entanglement, in addition to there being many variables to begin with, makes studying civil wars interesting yet particularly challenging. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the world was experiencing a wave of conflict proliferation. From South America to Asia and everywhere in between, many states found themselves embroiled in civil conflict. With the US fighting communism from spreading and the Soviet Union fighting to make sure it spread, many domestic issues became internationalized when super powers (more often so than not) became involved. With the rivalry between both hegemons growing more intense, countries experiencing civil conflicts found themselves aided (and sometimes occupied) by both sides. Conflicts in smaller states became proxy wars as the US and the USSR battled it out for supremacy. In both Guatemala and Vietnam, they too got caught up in the middle of the fight. Although the civil wars of both countries began close in time to one another, it is important to analyze their differences in order to

The outcome of these wide coverage has led to the emergence of the Wars, that are unique and which have with time sprouted up all over the globe. The global spread of these Civil Wars, have distinguishing peculiarities in comparison to the “Old Clausewitzean Wars.”In other words, in the old wars, various states were involved in the battles. This was a determined effort, competition, an argument or a struggle between nations, with the intention of winning power or control while in new wars, group within the state and other non-state actors are involved in the struggle and control of resources, in contrast to the new wars, whereby "their" advocators, normally influence other people´s decisions, using certain traits, such as people´s characteristics, feelings, beliefs or even religion etc. Their major intention is to draw distiction markers, thus creating division and exclusion of the community members from others. The people are unreasonably disliked through the ethcial prejudices, based on either group customs, physical features, languages race or even religion, hence, affecting the political, social and economic affairs of a specific country or a

The question assumes that there is a linear relationship between inequality and armed conflict; the rise of the former inevitably leads to the increase of the latter. However, in the absence of functioning communism or utopian egalitarianism, we need to concede that our world is full of inequalities, but not all parts of the world are equally ridden by conflict. Moreover, large N-studies of civil war, conducted over the past few years, all seem to conclude that inequality is not directly linked to the risk of civil war (Collier&Hoeffler, 2004: 563-595; Fearon & Laitin, 2003: 75-90; Hegre, Gissinger, Gleditsch, 2003: 251-276). Following this lead, I will argue for a non-linear link between inequality and conflict and for the multi-causality

Non-state networks that emerge during war are largely informed by the country’s peacetime dynamics, adjusting to opportunities and challenges in a less ‘secure’ environment. Are they inherently predatory, undermining the state and stripping its assets or can they be foundations from which a strong civil society can be built upon as, ostensibly, relative stability returns? Different actors in a conflict have different tools at their disposal and thus divergent mechanisms for harnessing power. Picard (2000) categorises four organizational networks that emerged during Lebanon’s fifteen- year civil war: ideological and welfare-based entities; loosely controlled armed groups; autonomous principalities; and corporatist structures. It goes without saying that these categories are not rigid and can exhibit overlapping characteristics. Their separation however serves a useful analytical purpose and reveals the diversity in the means devised, to both maintain local legitimacy and maintain a steady revenue stream, devised by those who take part in war making.

Violent civil conflict has been attributed to many reasons and there are indeed a web of factors that make violent conflict an issue from economic inequality to employment to deep rooted ethnic rivalry. The literature is indeed very rich. However while there are causes there are also factors that create a conducive environment for violent conflict and one area is the system of government. Systems of government present a classification through which we could assess the occurrence of violent civil conflict. Democracy is believed to have a pacifying power, the electoral processes, the rule of law and freedom from state oppression gives the population enough avenues to express grievances without resorting to full scale civil violence. This is drawn from the work of Kantian view that the representativeness of democracy makes it more difficult for the government to go to war seeing that it risks losing political power among the population who bear the brunt of war.[1] The democratic peace theory beyond mutual democratic pacifism, would thus have an impact on internal civil relations positively but this is not the case. However there have been an increased number of cases of civil and ethnic violence in government systems that we might consider to be in stages of democratization. Evidence would seem to suggest that there are greater levels of violent civil conflict in these sort of regimes as opposed to full blown dictatorships or

Civil war is ultimately created by an interplay of internal structure and nation context. The effect of internal structure, such as ethnic, economic, and political fragmentation. “Today’s typical war is civil, started by rebels who want to change their country’s constitution, after the balance of power between races, or secede.” Failed states, where governmental institutions have completely collapsed involves competing

The “resource curse” is a popular theory in the literature of civil conflict that attributes the onset of civil conflict to the presence and abundance of natural resources. In recent years, a growing number of quantitative empirical studies have attempted to investigate the link between natural resources and conflict, but researchers are still unable to make a definitive call on whether natural resources necessarily cause conflict in broad terms. In this paper, I will attempt to show that the theory of the “resource curse” lacks persuasive power due to: 1) a theoretical ambiguity on the true impact of natural resources on conflict and, 2) a lack of strong empirical support for the “resource curse”. In the process, I will also show that despite there being no general consensus on how natural resources contribute to conflict across countries as a whole, individual studies have been able to establish that some key factors, such as the extent of a country’s dependence on natural resources and the presence of certain types of primary commodities in a country, may affect the relationship between resources and conflict.