Intra-civilizational conflict vastly outnumbered intercivilizational contact in history.

Evidence

The most dramatic and significant contacts between civilizations were when people from one civilization conquered and eliminated or subjugated the people of another. These contacts normally were not only violent but brief, and they occurred only intermittently. Beginning in the seventh century A.D., relatively sustained and at times intense intercivilizational contacts did develop between Islam and the West and Islam and India. Most commercial, cultural, and military interactions, however, were within civilizations. While India and China, for instance, were on occasion invaded and subjected by other peoples (Moguls, Mongols), both civilizations also had extensive times of “warring states” within their own civilization. Similarly, the Greeks fought each other and traded with each other far more often than they did with Persians or other non-Greeks. — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 137

Categorization

• XREF: Reverses the common assumption that history is defined by clashes between civilizations; echoes the ‘warring states within’ framing and Greek intra-conflict point.