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Pseudoerasmus @pseudoerasmus.bsky.social · 15d

anyway if Britain indirectly benefited from fighting all those wars (financial development, boost to arms industry, etc.) these benefits accrued because very few wars were actually fought on British soil !

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Pseudoerasmus @pseudoerasmus.bsky.social · 15d

The vast majority of wars that Britain participated in (mostly through subsidies to other states) were a big waste of time & treasure because their aims went well beyond those narrow interests. And European wars were not good for British trade with Europe, period.

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Pseudoerasmus @pseudoerasmus.bsky.social · 15d

the trade that mattered for Britain before the Industrial Revolution was the trade with America and with Western Europe. Protecting the trade with America required defending the American colonies prior to independence plus Jamaica/Barbados.

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Pseudoerasmus @pseudoerasmus.bsky.social · 15d

precisely! though check out my clarification (a separate thread)

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Pseudoerasmus @pseudoerasmus.bsky.social · 15d

IMO an important, but near totally neglected, reason that England was 'first' to undergo an industrial revolution, but continental industrialisation was delayed -- was precisely that so many wars were fought in 1500-1800 by European states on European soil.

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Pseudoerasmus @pseudoerasmus.bsky.social · 15d

Did warfare drive the evolution of complex societies over thousands of years à la Morris or Turchin? -- YES

BUT did European wars in 1500-1800 advance or retard a country’s economic development relative to England?

My answer: RETARD

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Pseudoerasmus @pseudoerasmus.bsky.social · 15d

Does historical warfare (e.g., 1400-1900) predict high-capacity states in 2025? -- YES

Did warfare make the average European state more capable of extracting resources from its population than the Chinese state, ca 1800? -- YES

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Pseudoerasmus @pseudoerasmus.bsky.social · 15d

Many misunderstood my meaning so here is a clarification.

I was NOT saying the social science lit arguing that war => state formation/capacity is wrong.

There is a subtle distinction between that question and the narrower historical question of the little divergence within western Europe.

Pseudoerasmus @pseudoerasmus.bsky.social · 16d

Wars were mostly bad for European economic development. Might be obvious to ordinary people, but it's not considered obvious in economic history. But I think it's obvious ;-)

Below from @sheilaghogilvie.bsky.social

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Pseudoerasmus @pseudoerasmus.bsky.social · 15d

Preexisting characteristics include, did they have a lot of merchants, did they have a lot of peasants, were they very urbanised, etc. Whereas the state capacity literature which invokes Tilly is driven by testing the simple causal hypothesis that ‘wars => state capacity’.

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Pseudoerasmus @pseudoerasmus.bsky.social · 15d

I do think Tillly's meaning is pretty clear in conjunction with the text. For Tilly, states *selected* into the types of fiscal capacity (coercive or consensual or some intermediate path) based on preexisting characteristics of those states, as much as wars caused centralisation and state capacity.

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Pseudoerasmus @pseudoerasmus.bsky.social · 15d

I always thought coercive versus consensual was the better dichotomy than coercion- versus capital-intensive...

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Pseudoerasmus @pseudoerasmus.bsky.social · 15d

( assuming they’ve even read the book )

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Pseudoerasmus @pseudoerasmus.bsky.social · 15d

Tilly: “states having access to a combination of large rural populations, capitalists, and relatively commercialized economy won out”

the element of selection in Tilly is stronger than the simple “war => state formation” formula that most EH take away from Coercion, Capital, and European States

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Pseudoerasmus @pseudoerasmus.bsky.social · 15d

technical innovations are the best way to rescue the positive role of war in European development; and although some people have made that argument, it’s much less popular than the state capacity & Malthusian arguments; which just goes to show you the decadence of economic historians :-) ;-)

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Pseudoerasmus @pseudoerasmus.bsky.social · 15d

but I’m not saying being spared from war is sufficient for anything

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Pseudoerasmus @pseudoerasmus.bsky.social · 15d

The best case for the state capacity argument is that if you fight a lot of wars but NOT on your own territory & often by using proxies, like England who esp in the 18th century provided subsidies to states fighting wars far more than supplying troops & saw almost no fighting on its own soil

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Pseudoerasmus @pseudoerasmus.bsky.social · 15d

IMO these arguments may or may not be valid compared with Asia but within the European, the state capacity thing is overrated because actually looking at European states, you can see that the urgency of war reinforced some very unmodern & frankly stupid methods of taxation.

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Pseudoerasmus @pseudoerasmus.bsky.social · 15d

(i.e., mortality from direct & indirect causes through constant wars relieved population pressure low & ergo kept per capita incomes higher )

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Pseudoerasmus @pseudoerasmus.bsky.social · 15d

Generally, many? most? EH think that wars were good for European economic development, especially in the very long run; and there are two proposed mechanisms. Wars promote state centralisation & built state capacity, esp. fiscal & bureaucratic capacity. And/or wars were good for Malthusian reasons…

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Pseudoerasmus @pseudoerasmus.bsky.social · 16d

very long-term, like on a multi-thousand year scale, different story. I'm a fan of this book

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Pseudoerasmus @pseudoerasmus.bsky.social · 16d

( My default is that Ogilvie is always correct, unless proven otherwise. That is the opposite of my default on AJR :-)

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Pseudoerasmus @pseudoerasmus.bsky.social · 16d

Wars were mostly bad for European economic development. Might be obvious to ordinary people, but it's not considered obvious in economic history. But I think it's obvious ;-)

Below from @sheilaghogilvie.bsky.social

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Pseudoerasmus @pseudoerasmus.bsky.social · 16d

( Similar in France: military competition made prerevoutionary French finances stupider, not cleverer! )

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Pseudoerasmus @pseudoerasmus.bsky.social · 16d

I side with Ogilvie: German states used ‘archaic’ means of financing wars & made all kinds of side deals which strengthened guilds, manorial rights, mercantile privileges, making Germany look 'feudal' & 'backward' circa 1800.

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Pseudoerasmus @pseudoerasmus.bsky.social · 16d

(2) War retarded German economic development & by implication delayed German industrialisation. 'Germany' in the 16th c had been dynamic & innovative. War not only destroyed physically but inter-state competition actually worsened institutions. This view is associated (most recently) with Ogilvie.

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