Carroll Quigley

In the 1800s (peaking in the 1880s), guns were the best weapon available.

In America, almost everyone could afford to buy a gun, and could learn how to use it fairly easily.

Governments couldn't do any better: it became the age of mass armies of citizen soldiers with guns.

(Similarly, Periclean Greece was an age of the citizen soldier and of democracy ).

He focuses on the Round Table group founded in 1891 by Cecil Rhodes and Alfred Milner.

In the 1900s, expensive, specialist weapons (such as tanks and bombers) became available, and citizen soldiers became dominated by specialist soldiers.

Carroll Quigley (November 9, 1910 – January 3, 1977) was an American historian and theorist of the evolution of civilizations.

He is remembered for his teaching work as a professor at Georgetown University, and his seminal works, The Evolution of Civilizations: An Introduction to Historical Analysis, and Tragedy And Hope; A History Of The World In Our Time, in which he states that an Anglo-American banking elite have worked together for centuries to spread certain values globally.

Born in Boston, Quigley attended Harvard University, where he studied history and earned B.A, M.A., and Ph.D. degrees.

Quigley notes that the slaughter of World War I (1914-1918) was due to the mismatch between the traditional armies (citizen soldiers) and the available weapons (machine guns used defensively).

Quigley's writing style is dense, influenced by a former history professor of his:

"'As we raced along, Goethe was covered in fifteen minutes, Schiller in ten, Fichte in five...he covered any topic simply by slicing it up into a small number of parts and giving a name to each part. The complex character and achievement of Goethe, for example, were divided into six portions, each was given a title, and, ever after, the whole of Goethe could be evoked merely by reciting six words...I should like to outdare even my former professor by dividing this greater complexity [Classical culture] into only five parts.'"

Quigley's analytical style is scientific, stemming from his earlier training in physics.

In this book we are concerned with the social sciences...and particularly with the effort to apply a scientific method of observation, formulation of hypotheses, and testing to such phenomena.

The enormous size of this field has made it advisable to curtail our attention to the process of social change, especially in civilizations.

He taught at Princeton University, and then at Harvard, and then from 1941 to 1976 at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.

From 1941 until 1972, he taught a two-semester course at Georgetown on the development of civilizations.

According to his obituary in The Washington Star, many alumni of Georgetown's School of Foreign Service asserted that this was "the most influential course in their undergraduate careers".

In his book The Anglo-American Establishment: From Rhodes to Cliveden (written in 1949 and published posthumously in 1981), Quigley aims to trace the history of a secret society.

The book uses no footnotes and does not show his sources.

In addition to his academic work, Quigley served as a consultant to the U.S. Department of Defense, the United States Navy, the Smithsonian Institution, and the House Select Committee on Astronautics and Space Exploration in the 1950s.

He was also a book reviewer for The Washington Star, and a contributor and editorial board member of Current History.

In his first year (1965) in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown, Bill Clinton took Quigley's course, receiving a 'B' as his final grade in both semesters (an excellent grade in a course where nearly half the students received D or lower).

Quigley retired from Georgetown in June 1976 after being honored by the student body with its Faculty Award for the fourth consecutive year.

He died the following year at Georgetown University Hospital following a heart attack.

Quigley's work emphasized "inclusive diversity" as a core value of Western civilization, contrasting it with the dualism of Plato.

He concluded the book Tragedy and Hope with the hope that the West could "resume its development along its old patterns of Inclusive Diversity".

From his study of history, "it is clear that the West believes in diversity rather than in uniformity, in pluralism rather than in monism or dualism, in inclusion rather than exclusion, in liberty rather than in authority, in truth rather than in power, in conversion rather than in annihilation, in the individual rather than in the organization, in reconciliation rather than in triumph, in heterogeneity rather than in homogeneity, in relativisms rather than in absolutes, and in approximations rather than in final answers."

Quigley asserts that any intolerance or rigidity in the religious practices of the West are aberrations from its nature of inclusivity and diversity.

Quigley points to the tolerance and flexibility in Aquinas's belief that theological truth is revealed over time through dialogue within the Christian community, which allows the community to adapt to a changing world.

Having studied the rise and fall of civilizations, "Quigley found the explanation of disintegration in the gradual transformation of social 'instruments' into 'institutions,' that is, transformation of social arrangements functioning to meet real social needs into social institutions serving their own purposes regardless of real social needs".

From a historical study of weapons and political dynamics, Quigley concludes that the characteristics of weapons are the main predictor of democracy.

Democracy tends to emerge only when the best weapons available are easy for individuals to buy and use.

This explains why democracy occurs so rarely in human history.

In 1991, Clinton named Quigley as an important influence on his aspirations and political philosophy, when Clinton launched his presidential campaign in a speech at Georgetown.

He said he learned from Quigley that “The future can be better than the past, and that each of us has a personal, moral responsibility to make it so.” Bill Clinton told his audiences, “that is what the new choice is all about....We are not here to save the Democratic party.

We are here to save the United States of America.” It was Clinton's most effective speech, and he repeated variations time and time again as the blueprint for his campaign message in winning the Democratic nomination and the general election for President of the United States in 1992.

The same remark on American greatness was recalled by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who met her husband in Quigley's class on African history.

One distinctive feature of Quigley's historical writings is his assertion that the Round Table movement played a significant role in recent world history.

His writing on this topic has made Quigley famous among many who investigate "conspiracy theories".