War and the European State Making

COMPARATIVE POLITICAL STUDIES / February 1999Thompson, Rasler / INFLUENCES ON EUROPEAN STATE MAKING

One school of thought on European state making argues that discontinuous change in weaponsand tactics led to the expansion of armies, and, therefore, states. Others argue that decision mak-ers expanded state organizations to make war for its own sake, not simply because the tools ofwar changed. Although this controversy is not easily resolved, the empirical evidence indicatesthat major expansions in army sizes over the past 500 years were almost exclusively related tomajor wars fought over regional and global primacy. Moreover, the leaders in expanding armieswere usually the states aspiring to regional hegemony and their principal opponent. This evi-dence buttresses the argument for drawing a direct relationship between war and state mak-ing—instead of emphasizing an indirect relationship between weapons/tactics and army size.

WAR, THE MILITARY REVOLUTION(S)CONTROVERSY, AND ARMY

EXPANSIONA Test of Two Explanations of Historical

Influences on European State Making

WILLIAM R. THOMPSONKAREN RASLERIndiana University

Some analysts arguethat the European state made war and that war, inturn, made the European state. Others argue that any such equation be-

tween war and state making is too direct. For one school of thought, it is mili-tary technological change that intervened in such a way that decision makerswere forced to raise ever larger armies due to shifts in weaponry and tactics,thereby generating the need for ever greater revenues to pay for them and anextended bureaucracy to manage the expanding military organization. Thus,a central question in the literature on historical state making concerns the

3

AUTHORS’NOTE:We are indebted to Michael Thackston who restimulated our interest in thistopic and the journal editor and anonymous reviewers who encouraged us to improve our argu-ment and evidence.

COMPARATIVE POLITICAL STUDIES, Vol. 32 No. 1, February 1999 3-31© 1999 Sage Publications, Inc.

comparative contributions of war and military technological change as pri-mary drivers. This article first reviews briefly some of the arguments madeabout military technological change and advances two arguments about thehypothesized impact of military revolutions: (a) the multiple claims aboutperiods of significant change in military hardware and software are fairly nu-merous (and potentially contradictory) and suggest, rather than privilegingperiods as revolutionary, that we should conceptualize them as a relativelycontinuous string of large and small innovations until we are in a position tosort out the genuinely radical changes from those that are more routine; and(b) military technological change is activated by intensive, major power war-fare, which means that warfare is the primary causal driver and military tech-nology is, at best, an intervening variable between warfare and the socioeco-nomic and political impacts of war.

Warfare and military technological change do not lend themselves readilyto serial operationalization over half millennia. Nevertheless, it is possible toanalyze empirically the observed relationships among periods of intensivewarfare, asserted military revolutions, increases in army size, and attempts atregional hegemony in Europe over the last 500 years. If the proponents of adirect war-state expansion relationship are right, we should expect to find aclose link between the onset of major wars and the expansion of armies. Thatsame link should be less close if the proponents of the military revolu-tion(s)–state expansion thesis are correct.

A time series analysis of the pertinent data turns out to be quite supportiveof a direct relationship between major, regional warfare and army size and,therefore, it is presumed, state making and other political-economic impacts.These findings do not lead to the conclusion that military technologicalchanges were irrelevant to the European expansion of the state. But they dosuggest that radical shifts in military hardware and software were not the pri-mary drivers that some envision. In this case at least, technology appears tohave been subordinated to political decisions, conflict processes, and the it-erative competitions for regional primacy.

THE MILITARY REVOLUTION(S) CONTROVERSY

Although military revolutions have been discovered or argued about inother times and places (e.g., the neolithic invention of weaponry, the intro-duction of chariots and compound bows throughout Eurasia, war elephants inIndia, phalanxes in the Mediterranean, or stirrups and heavy cavalry in Carol-ingian Europe), the particular military revolution(s) controversy that is most

4 COMPARATIVE POLITICAL STUDIES / February 1999

germane for our present purposes refers to early modern Europe and was ini-tiated by Michael Roberts (1956/1995) in a 1955 lecture.1

Since then, a number of authors have contributed to the controversy. Onegroup (Parker, 1988; Roberts, 1956/1995; Rogers, 1995) contends that 16th-and 17th-century changes in military technology led to changes in militarytactics, larger armies, and more powerful states. Thus, military technology iscredited with literally catapulting early modern Europe out of the medievalages into the modern era. The strongest version (Parker, 1988) argues,moreover, that these same technological changes were responsible for Euro-pe’s subsequent ascendancy over the rest of the world. An opposing group (Ad-ams, 1990; Ayton & Price, 1995; Black, 1991, 1995; Finer, 1975; Guilmartin,1995; Hacker, 1994; Howard, 1976; Kingra, 1993; Lynn, 1995a, 1995b,1996; Morillo, 1995; Parrott, 1995; Prestowich, 1996; I.A.A. Thompson,1995; Tilly, 1975, 1990) suggests that too much causal credit is given to mili-tary technology, that tactical changes and army expansion were slower andmore gradual than the image implied by the concept of revolution, that thereare other candidates than the 16th century for the locus of military revolution,and/or that it was the antecedent development of state making, war, or tech-nological evolution that led to army expansion—rather than the other wayaround. However, for the purposes of our argument, we will restrict our briefreview primarily to the arguments advanced by Roberts (1956/1995), Parker(1988, 1995), Black (1991, 1994a, 1994b, 1995), and Rogers (1995).2

Although Roberts’s (1956/1995) argument is often abbreviated to theshorthand argument that tactical changes in the late 16th century/early 17thcentury led to larger armies and serious administrative problems for states,his perspective actually is more complicated. Roberts did stress that tacticalchanges developed by Maurice of Orange and Gustavus Adolphus to im-

Thompson, Rasler / INFLUENCES ON EUROPEAN STATE MAKING 5

1. For discussions of the significant impacts of military technology on earlier periods, seeDupuy (1980, pp. 290-298), who finds 18 revolutionary developments in weapons and lethalityfrom the Macedonian sarissa (359 BC) to the atomic bomb (1945). He also argues for 19 revolu-tionary technological developments since prehistoric times. See also McNeill (1982), Ferrill(1985), Dudley (1991), Drews (1993), and O’Connell (1995). But, in particular, interested read-ers are encouraged to consider White’s (1962) argument about stirrups and feudalism and thecritical reactions to the thesis described in DeVries (1992). Some of the views on more recent de-velopments (machine guns, tanks, and strategic bombers) are surveyed in Raudzens (1990).

2. For the purposes of manageability, some analytical shortcuts are necessary. In particular,naval technology will be ignored altogether. It is certainly part of the story, but to deal with navalissues in conjunction with an emphasis on army size creates unnecessary complications. The re-lated question of the role of military technology in the ascendancy of Europe over the rest of theworld is another distinctive and complicated issue that deserves separate handling (but in con-junction with naval technology).

prove firepower and its mobility were fundamental to what he saw as a 1560-1660 military revolution that served as a divide “separating medieval societyfrom the modern world” (p. 13). The Dutch and Swedish innovations in creat-ing or recreating linear formations, centered on volley firepower and with im-plications for subordinating cavalry and mobile field artillery to infantrymovements, constituted fundamental changes that led to a large number ofconsequences.

Roberts’s (1956/1995) model is made much more complicated by his dis-cussion of the consequences. They include new expectations in training, dis-cipline, and initiative; standing armies; and uniformity. Expanded army sizeswere another consequence, but, most interestingly for the purposes of our ar-gument, Roberts contended explicitly that the increases in army sizes were“the result of a revolution in strategy, made possible by a revolution in tactics,and made necessary by the Thirty Years War” (p. 18). Alternatively put, theDutch/Swedish tactical changes facilitated the strategies of greater scale de-veloped in the Thirty Years War (1618-1648).

In one sentence, Roberts thereby introduced two new drivingforces—strategic scale and warfare—to his model that most subsequentwork tends to overlook or reduce to changes in military tactics. He then goeson to say that it was the transformation in warfare scale that led to the expan-sion of state authority because only the state could organize and supply the re-sources and logistics needed to meet the demands of the escalated scale ofwarfare. It also helped that states worked to suppress private and irregularcompetitors. But it was a combination of state expansion and warfare escala-tion that led to greater state centralization and increasing interference in theeveryday lives of their populations. War costs, and the problems associatedwith dealing with them, increased as a consequence of the expanded armiesand navies and the expenses associated with training, arming, and adminis-tering them, all within the context of a period of rising prices. Yet, the militaryexpansion also helped monarchies to fend off the attacks of their domestic ri-vals and to further the consolidation of royal power in a number of majorEuropean states.

Geoffrey Parker (1976, 1988) initially questioned the existence of a mili-tary revolution but later incorporated it into an expanded argument that em-phasized an earlier beginning point and a more southern location for the revo-lutionary changes. His perspective gives pride of place to the late 15th-century development of artillery that could reduce town walls quickly and thedefensive response in terms of the construction of fortresses with angled bas-tions (thetrace italienne). The inability of artillery to demolish these “artil-lery fortresses” led to strategic emphases on siege warfare that, along with anincreasing tactical dependence on infantry firepower, led directly to an ex-


pansion in army size. More troops were needed to conduct the sieges and togarrison the artillery fortresses. Although Parker argues that the tempo of thetransformations involved and their spatial impact were more limited thanRoberts suggested, a military revolution, largely centered in Spain, Italy, theNetherlands, and France, did lead to the development of military power thatultimately was unrivaled anywhere else in the world.

Jeremy Black (1991, 1995) doubts that a military revolution took place inthe 1560-1660 period, but he is willing to entertain revolutionary status for anumber of other periods: the 8th-century adoption of heavy cavalry, the 14th-century development of artillery, the 15th-century introduction of handheldfirearms, the 1660-1720 development of flintlock muskets and bayonets, andthe 1792-1815 innovations of the revolutionary armies. At least three of thelast four developments, Black contends, were more revolutionary in impact,especially in terms of army size, than anything that took place between 1560and 1660. Black also argues that the causal arrow in the changes in militarytechnology−absolutism argument is not as clearly unidirectional as Roberts ar-gued. Rather, they developed in tandem, each reinforcing the other.

Finally, Clifford Rogers (1995) has argued that Black is right to empha-size multiple revolutions but that Roberts and Parker missed two earlier revo-lutions that were even more dramatic than those that took place in the 16thand 17th centuries. Rogers draws attention to the Hundred Years War (1337-1453), which encompassed two earlier infantry and artillery revolutions. Inthe 1330s through 1340s, the dominance of feudal heavy cavalry was dis-rupted by English longbows and later by Swiss pikes. In the 1420s through1440s, artillery was developed that could destroy walled enclaves and, paren-thetically, could be used to not only drive the English from France but also toconsolidate French territory. These two revolutions were followed by Park-er’s fortification and Roberts’s administrative revolutions in a process ofpunctuated equilibrium. Long periods of little or gradual change were inter-rupted by bursts of accelerated change that presumably continue into the con-temporary period.3

Rogers (1995) also argues for more complex causality schemes. The costsof artillery and fielding infantry in battles favored states with the resources topay for them. By and large, this meant that large and centralized states weremost favored to win.4 Yet, becoming more competitive internationally also


3. Rogers (1995) does not go into any detail about which periods he might accept as shortbursts after the one emphasized by Roberts (1956/1995). See, as well, Bartlett (1993), whostresses the significance of military changes in the 950-1350 period preceding Rogers’s HundredYears War. Bartlett, however, emphasizes gradual diffusion as opposed to short bursts of change.

4. See Bean (1973) for an earlier and often overlooked treatment of this problem.

implied that domestic centrifugal forces could be thwarted and that the extentof national territory could be expanded even further. More tax revenuesmeant more and better artillery and armies in a self-reinforcing cycle.

Roberts, Parker, Black, and Rogers do not exhaust all of the interestingthings to be said about military revolutions in early modern Europe. For in-stance, Prestowich (1996) argues that the changes of the early modern peri-ods were made possible by even earlier revolutions. Alternatively, Lynn(1996) has sketched out a long sequence of paradigmatic shifts in military in-stitutions that he argues should take explanatory precedence over tacticalshifts. Nevertheless, a brief overview of their arguments suffices for the mostpart to serve our own emphasis on serial advances in military technology. Ta-ble 1 summarizes their arguments and the arguments of others for the revolu-tionary periodization of military changes. The four authors that have beenhighlighted single out as many as six periods that are worthy of special atten-tion. Other authors have proposed nearly another dozen periods as equally ifnot more special. With the single exception of the 11th century, candidatesfor consideration encompass behavior between the 8th century to the end ofthe 12th century and into the 21st.5

There is little to be gained by advocating a polite and pluralistic compro-mise via the co-optation of everyone’s arguments. Very much to the contrary,we should remain agnostic on whether any or all of these periods of techno-logical change should be regarded as revolutionary in character. Yet, it re-mains unclear that any one period deserves more or less attention than theothers. One can speculate that if any qualify as revolutionary, all or most maydo so as well. But the problem is that we need a new vocabulary, or at least weneed to borrow conceptualization from other disciplines that have made moreheadway in studying impacts. Asking the question about whether specificchanges qualify as revolutionary has probably taken us about as far as the am-biguous concept ofrevolutioncan. It has served to highlight the potential forabrupt and/or accelerated change having a variety of possible consequencesof greater and lesser import. Now we need to move beyond this initial step.

We may take it as a given that military technology (encompassing arma-ment, military formations, and tactics) has a long history of change and that itmay be worthwhile to single out periods of abrupt or rapid change. There isno reason to assume that all change has been gradual or incremental. At the


5. There are a number of candidates for revolutionary impact in the period between the Na-poleonic Wars and the present. Many of these are discussed in standard treatments of weaponryevolution, such as the two noted in Table 1—Preston and Wise (1970) and Brodie and Brodie(1973). In addition, Lynn (1996) has proposed an ambitious schedule of institutional shifts inEuropean army paradigms over some 1,200 years, but it is not clear whether every paradigmshould be treated as if it were equally influential.

same time, there is no reason to assume that changes said to be revolutionarycome about abruptly or have immediate impact. On the contrary, quite a fewmilitary innovations have required a number of years of trial-and-error ex-perimentation on the battlefield to work out their initial limitations. As anumber of authors have pointed out, if a revolution takes a century or more tounfold, what do we gain by calling it revolutionary?

To go beyond the stage in which authors proclaim that their favorite periodis more revolutionary than somebody else’s, we need to ask, and answer, a se-ries of questions pertaining to the differentiation of minor versus radicalchanges, isolated or systemic developments, abrupt or gradual impacts, andtemporary or permanent shifts. Innovations can also have differential effectsin terms of the extent to which they are copied/diffused and the general scopeof their overall impacts on societal processes.


Table 1Some Candidates For Military Changes on Land

Change Period Focus Examples of Endorsing Authors

8th-10th centuries Feudal paradigm Lynn (1996)12th-13th centuries Medieval-stipendary paradigm Lynn (1996)

Medieval organization of war Prestowich (1996)Late 13th-1340 Medieval organization of war Prestowich (1996)1330s-1340s Infantry Rogers (1995)1420s-1440s Artillery Rogers (1995)Late 15th-early Aggregate-contract paradigm Lynn (1996)16th centuries

1470-1530 Artillery fortress Parker (1988), Black (1991),Rogers (1995)

Late 16th-early State-commission paradigm Lynn (1996)17th centuries

1560-1660 Infantry Roberts (1956/1995),Rothenberg (1986), Parker (1988),Rogers (1995)

1680-1720 Infantry Black (1991, 1995)1789-1810 Popular-conscript paradigm Lynn (1996)1792-1815 Infantry Paret (1983, 1986), Black (1991,

1995), Jones (1987), Parker (1988)1866-1905 Mass-reserve paradigm Lynn (1996)World War I Infantry and artillery Preston and Wise (1970), Brodie

and Brodie (1973), Jones (1987)World War II Total war Preston and Wise (1970), Brodie

and Brodie (1973), Jones (1987)1970-1995 Volunteer-technical paradigm Lynn (1996)1990s-ongoing Information age Nye and Owens (1996),

Cohen (1996)

The general point is not that many of these questions have not already beenraised. A number have, and we have some sense about the appropriate an-swers for those questions that have been examined. However, most of the at-tention has been devoted to the promotion of a specific revolutionary candi-date or the debunking of someone else’s candidate. The tracing of the scopeand breadth of their consequences is still fairly sketchy. The task of compar-ing the revolutionary candidates, and their various components, needs a greatdeal more investigation. Until we can make more headway along these lines,attempting to determine what is revolutionary and which period might bemost revolutionary seems quite premature.

No one denies the existence of impressive technological changes in theEuropean military subsystem from at least 1500 on, if not earlier. The ques-tions that remain unresolved (in addition to their revolutionary status) arewhat affected what, to what extent, and with what consequences. The prob-lem is that to fully answer these questions, we would need a reasonably de-tailed understanding of causal relationships among, minimally, economics,politics, social relations, and military technology over the past 500 (or per-haps 1,000) years. Then it would be possible, or at least more feasible, to as-sess the impacts of technological changes in the military subsystem withsome precision. Lacking this capability, we are forced to wrestle with am-biguous clues, analytical hunches, and imprecise data. Still, the debate goeson because the questions are anything but peripheral to the historical devel-opment of Europe and the world system.

The position taken here is that to claim causal primacy for military techno-logical change is to claim more than we can demonstrate at this point in time.It seems likely that military technological change was at best necessary—andperhaps not even that—but definitely not sufficient to bring about all theother changes sometimes attributed to key martial innovations. It is probablyalso a strategic error for analysts to quarrel over whether the military revolu-tion occurred in the 15th, 16th, 17th, or 18th century. All centuries betweenthe 15th and 20th seem to have experienced significant changes in militarytechnology—as did a number of centuries before the 15th. If it is appropriateto refer to the changes as revolutionary, and this is a contentious question, weshould probably be more concerned with tracking a sequence of revolutions,as opposed to anointing one segment of the sequence as especially distinc-tive. Only if an argument can be advanced that one link in the sequence wasthat much more critical than the others would it become appropriate to speakof the military revolution. But what we tend to get instead is that authors arereluctant, and understandably so given the difficulties involved, to comparefully the differential impacts of various technological changes.


The opposition to the arguments promoting the primacy of military tech-nology is collectively vague and often idiosyncratic. The tendency is to saythat it was something in the political-economic environment—particularwars, strong states, trade-induced prosperity, foreign policy ambitions, mili-tary institutions, specific decision makers, and the like—that precededchange in military technology. Rarely do critics focus on anything readilygeneralizable.6 Many authors are apt to end up saying that a military revolu-tion did not work the same way in his or her own favorite territorial patch orhistorical time. In addition to moving beyond noting apparent exceptions tothe generalization, this discussion could profit from a perspective that per-mits greater complexity than questioning simply which sources of changecome first. The idea of the coevolution of different spheres of human activi-ties with an allowance for varying causal primacies over time seems to workbetter than being trapped into claims for the generic and timeless primacy ofone subsystem over another. A coevolutionary perspective emphasizes in-stead the likelihood of more complex, causal reciprocities.

Yet, it is also possible to be more specific than to merely push for the ana-lytical compromise of reciprocal causality. If we conceive of different activi-ties and processes as associated with different subsystems (e.g., military, po-litical, economic, social), subject to evolutionary and revolutionary rates ofchange, we still need to know how, when, and why the subsystems interact orare influenced by developments in the other spheres of activity. Not surpris-ingly, no complete answer for this problem will be advanced in this article.What is advanced instead is a partial answer. War is one of the principalbridges between and among the various types of activities that people under-take. War is about foreign policy goals ranging from acquiring/defendingsmall pieces of territory to the attainment/prevention of regional and globalhegemony. War, it is also argued, is necessary to translate military inventionsinto applied innovations. War consumes resources and forces political deci-sion makers to mobilize additional resources, including men, material, andtaxes, that, in turn, have shaped state making. War can alter demographic pro-files (death rates and birthrates), it can provide opportunities for social mobil-ity, and it can facilitate the spread of famine and disease.

Among other things, wars can contribute to expansions in army and statesizes. Wars tended to have a ratchet effect in the European experience. Thegreater the war effort, the greater was the step upward, as measured in terms


6. Those that do generalize (Downing, 1992; Spruyt, 1994) tend to fall back on emphasizingfactors such as medieval constitutions, expanding trade and urbanization, and political coalitionmaking, which do not lend themselves very readily to operationalization.

of the number of soldiers on state payrolls and state expenditures, revenues,and powers, at least for the survivors. At the end of the war, the levels attainedin military personnel, expenditures, revenues, and state powers may haveproved temporary, but they tended not to revert to the prewar level (Brewer,1989; Mann, 1986; Peacock & Wiseman, 1961; Porter, 1994; Rasler &Thompson, 1983, 1985, 1989; Tilly, 1975, 1990). Therefore, it is neithermilitary technology nor politics in general that is most responsible for the ex-pansion of states and armies in western Europe. War, which reflects politicaland economic ambitions and which activates military technology, has been aprincipal causal culprit.7

This is not an argument that war determines everything else. Rather, warprovides an intermittent bridge among subsystems of activity in such a waythat its outbreak, particularly in the cases of the more intensive variety, tendsto accelerate subsystemic development and amplifies the linkages among thedifferent subsystems. For instance, war shakes up the development of mili-tary technology, which, in turn, places more demands on the political, demo-graphic, and economic subsystems. Consequent changes in politics and eco-nomics lead to further improvements in military technology and morewar—although not necessarily in that order. Ultimately, what we are dealingwith are a number of escalatory spirals in interstate competition, militarytechnology, economic development, state making, and demography.8

WAR, TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE, AND ARMY SIZE

The literature on military technological change has at least one commondenominator. All discussions, with some exceptions encompassing capital-intensive weaponry, nuclear missiles, and information technology, note thepositive impact of technological change on the size of armies. The expansionof army size then becomes a principal military conduit to consequences for


7. Barnett (1992) reminds us that participation in warfare need not lead to state expansion.8. A similar conceptualization is implied by Hale (1985, p. 64) when he writes of the corre-

lations among army numbers, population, wealth, and bureaucracy in early modern Europe, al-though his specific point, equally well taken, was that the outcome was manifested unevenly indifferent parts of Europe due to different mixes of the interacting ingredients. Even GeoffreyParker (1995, p. 341) seems prepared to concede the need for more complicated causal modelswhen he suggests that we should consider a “double helix” model with war-driven state makinginteracting with military change as two complex spirals. This apparent advocacy of more com-plex models seems to be moving in the right direction, except that one might note that war-drivenstate making and military change actually encompasses at least three different escalatory spiralsand not merely two.

the nonmilitary subsystems. The larger the armies, the greater the demandsfor tax revenues, logistical/administrative support, popular mobilization, andcentralized and powerful states. Larger armies could also contribute to longerwars encompassing more and more territory and greater devastation to the ci-vilian economy and society. But this model depends on a close technologicalchange® army size® state/societal consequences linkage. What should bequestioned is the clarity and one-way direction of the technological change®

army size relationship. Army size may also be something of a red herring forinterpreting early modern Europe.

If military technological change is revolutionary and its impact on armysize is straightforward, we should expect to see an abruptly ascending stair-case effect, with each subsequent technological revolution generating a per-manent increase. If, on the other hand, Roberts is correct in attributing manyof his consequences to the scale of the Thirty Years War, which was facili-tated by technological change, and we generalize this to read warfare (or, bet-ter, intensive, major power warfare) in general as the critically interveningvariable, a rival hypothesis can be entertained. It is warfare that exerts a posi-tive ratchet effect on army size, with subsequent warfare leading directly tolarger armies that may remain swollen at the end of war. If their numbersshould decline in the postwar period, they are unlikely to revert completely toprewar sizes.

There are at least two reasons why we should consider privileging warfareover military technology as a prime mover in this escalatory process. First,there is an extensive literature with quantitative evidence that demonstratesthat the costs of war and preparing for war are what lead to societal impacts.Some authors have shown that these costs of war were escalating prior to anyof the technological revolutions singled out in Table 1.9 If military costs esca-lated throughout the allegedly technologically stagnant feudal era, a strongcase can be made that they anteceded subsequent changes in artillery, infan-try formats, and armament that, no doubt, also contributed to increased mili-tary costs. Equally, it has been shown that war participation tends to drivemilitary costs upward, which suggests that the fundamental causal equationis war®military costs® state/societal impact. From this perspective, mili-tary technological change is a variable that intervenes principally betweenwar and military costs.10At the same time, there is no need to rule out the pos-


9. Mann’s (1986) work on England is particularly notable in this respect.10. This alignment does not preclude feedback from military technological change to the

consequent probability of war, but such feedback would be secondary to the more primary war-military technological change sequence and contrary to the position usually taken in the militaryrevolution literature.

sibility of a direct effect of military technological change on state/societalstructure or, for that matter, the possibility of state/societal structure influenc-ing military technological change.

Treating military technology as an intervening variable does not precluderevolutionary impacts. One could argue, for instance, as suggested by Mi-chael Mann (1986) and others, that the principal effect of the early modernmilitary revolution(s) was not only to increase sharply the amount of militarycosts but also to make them more or less permanent. Prior to the late 15th cen-tury, military costs in Europe may have been rising over time but they had re-mained intermittent. After centralizing states became committed to artillery,artillery fortresses, and standing armies that needed to train year-round (andhence more state centralization), the escalating problems of financing theseactivities had serious implications for state making and the intensity of socie-tal impacts.

Thus, one reason for privileging war over military technology as a primemover is a matter of placing technological change in a broader context. Mili-tary technological change is a process that accelerated after the 15th centuryin Europe and fed into an ongoing process relating the increasing costs ofwarfare to state making. These processes have probably interacted in thismanner as long as there have been wars, organizations to fight them, and mili-tary technology. But this observation leads to a second reason for giving moreemphasis to the causal role of warfare.

There is, moreover, a problem of agency in military revolution discus-sions. It may not be intended but, an impression is sometimes communicatedthat there was something automatic about the technology per se that changedwars, states, and societies. Yet cannons, fortresses, drilling, and new infantryformats did not emerge in a vacuum or of their own accord. Some technologi-cal change may be accidental but a respectable proportion of military techno-logical change has to do with problem solving. Heavy cavalry was a responseto light cavalry raiders. More powerful cannons led to angled bastions. Morecomplex infantry maneuvers necessitated regular drilling. The need forground forces to defend against the shock of a cavalry attack led to the devel-opment of weapons that gave horses strong incentives to avoid impalement.These problems pertain to winning or avoiding defeat in battle. They are in-spired by war-making activities and, in that respect, war comes first andchanges in military technology tend to follow. Without war or its immediateexpectation, there is simply much less incentive to do anything about militarytechnology.

Another factor is the legendary resistance of military commanders to mili-tary innovation. Why go with something new and uncertain when the moretraditional tactics and weapons worked reasonably well in the last war? The


application of new military technology is facilitated greatly by the need todeal with a stronger, more numerous, or well-entrenched opponent, whichcan help to override professional conservatism if other, more conventionaloptions seem closed or unlikely to succeed. Much new technology may be in-vented between wars but it is unlikely to be fully tested or developed in theabsence of a shooting war. Another way of putting this is that military inven-tions are unlikely to become innovations without a concrete foe, and, accord-ingly, they are unlikely to have much impact in the absence of wartime oppor-tunities and needs.

Furthermore, someone has to select which technology will be appliedfrom the variety that exists at a given point in time. It was not inevitable thatWelsh longbows would appear on battlefields in 14th-century France. Was itany more inevitable that Dutch and Swedish innovators would revive theirimpressions of Roman tactics in the late 16th/early 17th centuries? Should itbe surprising that the early 16th-century changes that led to the Spanishter-cios formation also included the temporary revival of Roman sword andbuckle troops to protect the men with firearms while reloading? Technologi-cal development is a process of trial-and-error experimentation in whichsome changes work and survive and others do not. Not only do innovatorshave to choose from a range of old and new options but it also takes some timeto determine what is or is not successful. Wars, and long wars in particular,provide ample time and incentive for experimentation in the field.

In this vein, it is also occasionally pointed out (e.g., Morillo, 1995) thatsome portion of the military technological change that took place in Europehad already been tried out to some extent in East Asia, but with different ef-fects. Gunpowder, artillery, and firearms were first developed by the Chineseand used by Mongols, Koreans, and Japanese. East Asian army sizes do notappear to have been affected all that appreciably by the adoption of varioustypes of firearms. “Modern” or European style states did not emerge. On thecontrary, the new military technology was used in China and Japan to facili-tate the achievement of regional and local hegemonies—something success-fully resisted in Europe. If our argument giving causal priority to the compe-tition for regional primacy holds, one should expect that once primacy isachieved, there should be fewer incentives to seek out further improvementsin military technology. By and large, this appears to be precisely what tookplace in Qing China and Tokugawa Japan. Thus, one must conclude that notonly must technology be selected by human agents from an array of options,that different agents may apply the same basic inventions in different ways,but also that the application of similar technology can lead to variable out-comes in different regional contexts—with different implications for thecontinuation of key processes.


Figure 1 summarizes quickly what exactly is at stake in this analysis. Anemphasis on military technological revolutions perceives a sequence of shiftsin technology leading to shifts in tactics and weaponry and then to increasesin army size. The emphasis on major power warfare, alternatively, viewscompetitions for regional primacy leading to escalations in intensive warfareand army size. From this perspective, changes in military technology aremore likely to be a consequence of the escalatory pressures than they are anautonomous source of change. Note that neither interpretation challenges thesubsequent links between increases in army size and state/societal impacts,and, therefore, we will not pursue further this end of the causal sequence atthe present time.

Giving causal primacy to war does not mean that all wars are likely to beequally important. Wars come in all sizes and shapes. Small wars should haveless impact than large wars. And large wars could conceivably be a functionof the coincidental overlapping of a number of small wars, but, more likely,large wars are a function of large ambitions. Wars about regional primacy, itis argued, should have the greatest impact on army size and other societalconsequences. These are the wars that tend to be fought over the most exten-sive territory and thus need large armies, mobilize the greatest amount of re-sources for and against the fundamental prize at stake, and often consumemany years and lives before a resolution is achieved.

The wars that come most readily to mind include the Italian wars, whichare usually credited with initiating what Black (1994a, 1994b) has termed theWestern Question (Who would dominate western Europe?) and which beganin 1494 with a premature French gambit and evolved into Charles V’s mid-century Hapsburg bid; the Spanish-Dutch Wars, which merged into theThirty Years War; the wars of Louis XIV (at least 1688-1713); the FrenchRevolutionary/Napoleonic Wars (1792-1815); and World Wars I and II(1914-1945).11 After 1945, the Western Question became somewhat mootwith the ascent of the U.S. and Soviet Union superpowers. We might then ex-pect the impact of this sequence of warfare, involving French, Hapsburg/Spanish, and German attempts at regional dominance, to fade away or at leastbecome less prominent after 1945.12


11. Not coincidentally, most of these wars are given strong theoretical prominence as globalwars in the leadership long cycle literature (Modelski, 1987; Modelski & Modelski, 1988; Mod-elski & Thompson, 1988, 1996; Rasler & Thompson, 1989, 1994) and other historical treatmentsof international relations in political science and sociology, in which they are referred to vari-ously as general, systemic, or hegemonic wars.

12. The argument is not that no one in Europe currently harbors thoughts about regional pri-macy but only that it appears that the probability of resolving the issue on the battlefield seems in-creasingly remote.

Nonetheless, a rival hypothesis centered on the escalating demands ofwarfare about regional dominance issues need not mutually exclude the co-evolving effects of military technological change. For example, Louis XIV’swars at the end of the 17th century involved considerable manpower tieddown in defending and manning French fortresses. Parker (1995, p. 353) esti-mates that approximately 40% of the French army of that time was commit-ted to this type of assignment. However, Louis XIV’s 1690s army was alsomore than twice as large as the numbers that France had mobilized againstSpain in their midcentury struggle for the continental lead. Although some ofthe increase undoubtedly can be attributed to tactical changes and garrisondemands, an appreciable proportion must also be attributed to French foreignpolicy ambitions and the scale of the warfare that they implied. As a conse-quence, we should also expect the leaders with the most ambitious foreignpolicies to take the lead in expanding the size of their armies. The alternative,more-technologically oriented expectation is that whoever first developedthe major military innovation in question should take the lead in army expan-sion, with their competition subject to some variable lag.

METHODOLOGY AND DATA

To test these hypotheses, we employ a combination of rigorous statisticaltests and descriptive data analysis. Our primary focus is on the relative ex-planatory power of periods of major wars versus periods of military technol-ogy change, without ruling out the possibility of an interaction effect be-


Figure 1.Two sources of influence on army size.

tween the two, in accounting for the aggregate rate of growth and aggregatesize of European armies. For the more rigorous part of the examination, weassess two equations for each dependent variable (growth rate and size).

Y (army growth rate or size) =c + B (war) +B2(military revolutions) +θ Y(t – 1) +e; and

(1)

Y (army growth rate or size) =c + B (war) +B2(war*military revolutions) +θ Y(t – 1) +e.

(2)

One can anticipate that serial correlation will be a problem in workingwith army size information. Therefore, we estimate an autoregressive com-ponent in each equation. A trend component is introduced where necessaryas well. Relying on maximum likelihood estimation procedures, we first en-ter the two rival substantive variables (war and military revolutions) alone. Inthe second equation, we enter an interaction term, combining war and mili-tary revolutions, in addition to the war variable. The second equation allowsus to determine whether war still explains a significant proportion of the vari-ance in growth rates and/or size when the interaction term is introduced.Typically, the interaction term should diminish the strength of the war vari-able substantially. The question is just how strong is the independent influ-ence of war.

Equations 1 and 2 require data on the growth rates and sizes of Europeanarmies, major wars, and military technological change. For army data, werely on what we believe to be the only systematic data set (Rasler & Thompson,1994) on great power army sizes encompassing the 1490-1990 era. Morethan 160 sources were examined for numerical references to great powerarmy sizes over the period of 1490 to 1989. Applying uniform standards tothe varying estimates that were culled from the literature (i.e., focusing on na-tional army size and excluding reserves and paramilitary forces) and erringon the conservative side when major discrepancies in claimed army size ma-terialized, averaged 5-year observations for each great power were gener-ated.13 The reason for averaging is that there was insufficient information togenerate annual observations. Five-year intervals seemed about as discretean interval as was practical. However, within a 5-year period that encom-passed years of peacetime and wartime, considerable size fluctuations mightbe registered. Hence, to average at 5-year intervals works to depress armysize but it does so systematically for all great powers. Given the nature ofEuropean army size data and forced to choose between systematically de-


13. Partially as a consequence, peacetime colonial armies maintained by west European ar-mies have been excluded if they were not institutionally integrated into the metropolitan armies.

pressing or inflating the numbers of soldiers, a deflating technique seemspreferable.

The data on European great powers include the following states for thetime periods indicated: Spain (1490-1799), France (1490-1989), England/Britain (1490-1989), Austria (1490-1919, with Austrian forces credited tothe Spanish column between 1520 and 1559), The Netherlands (1590-1799),Sweden (1590-1809), Prussia/Germany (1640-1989), and Italy (1860-1989).14 Some would insist on having information on the Ottoman Empire,Venice, and Russia included. Insufficient data on Ottoman army size pre-cluded that state’s forces from being counted. By 1500, Venice had long beenin decline and its significance as a land power was short-lived. It is not in-cluded in the data set. Russian data, on the other hand, are readily availableafter 1700 and are also available in the data source. It has been excluded fromthis analysis because there is some question about the comparability of Rus-sian army size with those of western European states without introducingsome sort of discount factor. In any event, Russia’s inclusion would only biasconsistently upward the aggregation of European army size. Its exclusionshould not distort an analysis focused on the hypothesized impact of militaryrevolutions.

We examine two indicators of army size to control for the possibility that asingular focus on changes in army size might bias the test in favor of short-term, war-induced increases that melted away at the end of hostilities. Giventhe well-known ratchet effect of wars, we do not really expect this possiblebias to be much of a problem, but our empirical findings will be all the morecompelling if we find similar effects of war and military technologicalchange on both the rates of growth and the absolute size of west European ar-mies. Rather than examine each country separately, the appropriate data areaggregated for each 5-year interval to create a single army size indicator. Thisindicator is logged to ameliorate some of the problems associated with thelarge increases in army size over a 500-year stretch, particularly in the 20thcentury. The growth rate indicator, which should be particularly useful inevaluating asserted revolutionary impacts, is calculated conventionally bycomputing the proportional increase in intervalt + 1 over intervalt.

Because the number of major powers fluctuates over time (ranging from 3to 7), we include a simple control variable by counting the number of powersencompassed by the army data in any given interval. Periods of major warfare(1494-1516, 1585-1608, 1618-1648, 1672-1678, 1688-1697, 1701-1713,


14. There is some tendency for new and old powers to ease into or out of the aggregate num-bers, thereby reducing the possible distortion of entries and exits from the ranks.

1739-1748, 1755-1763, 1792-1815, 1914-1918, 1939-1945) are taken fromLevy’s (1985) list of general wars and Thompson’s (1988) survey of systemicwar candidates. Periods of military technological change (1470/1490-1530,1560-1660, 1680-1720, 1792-1815, 1914-1918, and 1939-1945) are takenfrom Table 1. Both variables are treated crudely as dichotomous indicators,with a 1 signifying ongoing, intensive, major power warfare or military tech-nological change and a 0 indicating the absence of one or the other influence.Because the periods of general war and military technological change areidentical after 1792, we need to pay close attention to the outcomes for Equa-tions 1 and 2 before 1790 because it is only in this period that it is possible todistinguish, however crudely, between the two influences. To investigate thehypothesis about who is most responsible for army increases, we will sepa-rately identify the growth leaders at specific points in time.

It should also be clear that our empirical focus at this time is restrictedsolely to the possibility of linkages between military technological change,war, and army size. We assume that if either of the first two variables signifi-cantly influence army size that there are likely to be equally significant rami-fications for state making and societal impacts. But we also recognize thatthese impacts may be registered differentially. That is, all war participants(and other states affected by war and technological change) need not be ex-pected to experience identical consequences. Other factors, such as geo-graphical location, winning and losing, or maritime trade versus continentalorientations, intervene in ways to ensure the persistence of some level of vari-ety in state structures, societal patterns, and war consequences. How thesesubsequent impacts are felt and absorbed are certainly of interest, but weleave their analysis to other forums.

DATA ANALYSIS

Table 2 breaks down the aggregate European army size and increases bycentury. As the numbers become increasingly larger, the proportional in-creases tend to decline in magnitude. However, each century witnessed sig-nificant and impressive increases. By 1600, army size had more than tripledover the 1500 numbers and almost tripled again by 1700. These numbers cor-roborate, approximately, Parker’s (1976, pp. 195-196) observation that armysizes increased by a factor of 10 over the same time period. By 1800, they hadmore than doubled the 1700 level and increased again by roughly a factor of1.5 by 1900. The only long-term downward movement is not registered untiltoward the end of the 20th century. But a focus on turn-of-the century figures


should not be allowed to overlook the peak numbers in the 1940s, reflecting aquadrupling of the 1900 numbers.

One easy alternative explanation for the increase in army size is that an in-crease in European population size made military recruitment more and morefeasible. Yet, Table 2 also lists the size increases with population controlled.The magnitude of the increases in the first three centuries (1500-1800) are notas great as is indicated in terms of the raw numbers, but they are still quite re-spectable. Even controlling for population, aggregate army size doubled by1600 and again by 1700. By 1800, it had only increased by about a third andhad even shrunk by 1900, indicating that population size was growing fasterthan army size.15 The 1940s remind us, however, that large proportional in-creases were still possible. In the first half of the 1900s, slightly less than 1%of the population was enlisted in the army, whereas nearly 4.4% was enlistedin the early 1940s. Thus, changes in the western European demographic sub-system eventually caught up to changes in army size and even surpassedthem, generally, in the 19th and 20th centuries, but not in every decade. Thetwo World Wars of the 20th century were capable of accelerating army size ata rate faster than population growth, just as those wars also were capable ofnegatively affecting the demographic subsystem.16

The general conclusion is that no century had a monopoly on significantincreases in aggregate army size. Every century since 1500 experienced it,thereby strengthening the reluctance to single out any particular onset ofmilitary technological change as unusually responsible for swelling armysizes. Either military technological change continued to expand army sizesthroughout the nearly 500-year period we are examining, some other stimuliwere involved, or some combination of technological change and other stim-uli were responsible. A closer examination of changes in aggregate army sizeis more supportive of the second and third interpretation than it is of the first.

Table 3 reports the outcome of our time-series analysis of the growth ratein the aggregated west European army size. The outcomes for Models 1 and 2indicate that the only substantive variable that is statistically significant overthe entire 1490-1989 time period is war. The military revolutions variable isinsignificant in Model 1, as is the war-military revolutions interaction term inModel 2. The interaction term in Model 2 does reduce the size of the warterm’s coefficient and its significance level, but it does not eliminate entirelywar’s effect—despite a very high correlation between the war variable andthe interaction term (r = .87). The impact of the interaction term is even lessdiscernible in the 1490-1790 period (Model 4), thereby increasing our confi-


15. The coevolution of different subsystems need not proceed at equivalent paces.

dence in the validity of the general outcome. Army size growth rates areclearly influenced by a variety of factors—as evidenced by the relatively lowR squares—but the dummy variable for major warfare also clearly outper-forms the dummy variable for military revolutions.

Table 4 switches the empirical focus from growth rates to absolute armysize. The statistical outcome is less obvious but, ultimately, quite compatiblewith the growth rate findings. The war variable is statistically significant inall four models. In Model 1, the military revolution variable is also signifi-cant. In Model 2, the interaction term is also significant and much more sig-nificant than the war variable. Yet, note the contrast with Models 3 and 4,which eliminates the 1792-1989 overlap in identifying periods of majorchanges. Only war is statistically significant in the pre-1792 era—which alsohappens to encompass the period most heavily contested in the literature.Therefore, we can infer that the variables involving some measurement ofmilitary revolution in Models 1 and 2 are capitalizing on the sizable expan-sions of army size after the French Revolutionary/Napoleonic Wars, particu-larly the large numbers that are pressed into military service in the 20th cen-tury. Because the crudity of our measurement instruments does not allow usto differentiate between war and technologically induced changes in themore modern period, we need to discount considerably the support thatemerges for the military revolution argument in Table 4’s Models 1 and 2.


Table 2Magnitudes of Increase in Aggregate West European Army Size

Aggregate Army Size Aggregate Army Size perYear (in hundreds) Increase Thousand Population Increase

1500 71 2.61600 219 3.08 5.3 2.041700 618 2.82 11.6 2.191800 1,442 2.33 15.3 1.321900 2,114 1.47 9.6 –0.371940 8,359 3.95 44.2 4.601989 1,024 0.48 4.1 –0.57

Source:Army data are based on information in Rasler and Thompson (1994). Population datathat approximate as much as possible the political units counted as great powers are taken fromMcEvedy and Jones (1978).Note:Europe is defined as Spain (1490s-1790s), France (1490s-1989), Austria (1490s-1910s),England/Britain (1490s-1989), The Netherlands (1590s-1790s), Sweden (1590s-1800s), Prussia/Germany (1640s-1989), and Italy (1860s-1989) subject to their movement in and out of the ma-jor power ranks.

16. For one of the more intriguing examinations of the interactions between war and popula-tion growth, see Urlanis (1971).

We can pursue this question further by identifying more precisely whenaggregate army size actually changed. Figure 2’s logged and normalized plotof aggregate army size encompasses 10 periods of increase that are greaterthan 25%. Table 5 identifies the 10 by war and in terms of which states led theincreases. Every one, if we can include the 1960s as a cold war manifestation,is readily associated with a period of mid-century and end-of-century majorpower warfare in western Europe. Every significant increase in aggregatearmy size is linkable to militarized contests about regional dominance inwestern Europe. Moreover, in most cases but not all, the leader in army sizeexpansion is also the state with the greatest foreign policy ambitions: theHapsburgs and Spain in the 1530s and 1620-1630s; then France through the19th century; and then Prussia/Germany in the late 19th/early to mid-20thcenturies. The state with the second largest increase tended to be the main op-ponent of the aspirant to regional hegemony.

There are only two exceptions—the Dutch in the 1590s and the Frenchand Germans in the 1960s. The first exception might be linked to Maurice ofOrange’s (captain-general of Dutch forces in the late 16th century) tacticalinnovations, but it must also be associated with an army expanding from vir-tually a zero base to a moderately large size. The 1960s exception, of course,has much to do with French and German cold war rearmament after WorldWar II, especially after their forces had been reduced in size at the end of thewar and, in the German case, into the 1950s. France’s war in Algeria mustalso take some of the credit. Yet it is the general decline in European armysizes after 1945 that is most telling. Eclipsed by the superpowers, the trend to-ward larger and larger armies in western Europe reversed itself. This is a de-velopment that combines the influences of international politics, economiccapability and population bases, social welfare policies, as well as changes inmilitary technology. For immediate purposes, however, it is worth emphasiz-ing that it was primarily Soviet and American army sizes that remained largerafter World War II than they had been prior to the latest round in the sequenceof wars over European (and East Asian) regional dominance. The more re-cent (post-1945) developments, reinforced as they are by the end of the coldwar’s effect on Soviet and American army size reductions, therefore under-line the limitations of military technological change on competitive armysizes. Remove or reduce the competitive element and one can expect to see adecrease in army size, despite continuing changes in military technology. Al-though it might be countered that fewer military personnel than before are re-quired to fight late 20th/early 21st century wars thanks to technologicalchange, head counts are still considered important, as manifested most re-cently in the Gulf War.


CONCLUSIONS

A number of intriguing arguments have been advanced about the effectsof various phases of accelerated changes in European military technology.We need to remain agnostic about whether it is appropriate to refer to any orall of these phases as revolutionary in impact. What we need is a more com-plex vocabulary and more detailed set of answers to a number of questionsabout their hypothesized impacts. Yet, it seems unlikely that changes in mili-tary technology deserve as much causal credit as they are sometimes given.What influences what over the very long term is apt to be a complicated ques-


Table 3Time Series Regression Estimation of Growth Rates in Western European Army Sizes

Coefficients

1490-1989 1490-1790

Independent Variable Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4

War 0.34*** 0.26* 0.21*** 0.26**(3.37) (1.59) (3.14) (2.36)

Military revolutions –0.01 — –0.08 —(–0.06) (–1.09)

War*Military revolutions — 0.11 — –0.08(0.61) (–0.68)

Number of states –0.00 –0.00 0.00 0.00(–0.05) (–0.04) (0.05) (0.19)

Constant –0.03 –0.04 0.01 –0.04(–0.50) (–0.63) (0.10) (–0.67)

AR(1) 0.28*** 0.29*** 0.24* 0.24*(2.83) (2.94) (1.80) (1.84)

AR(2) –0.22** –0.20** — —(–2.12) (–2.02)

Residual diagnosticsAdjustedRsquare 0.20 0.20 0.13 0.12Standard error 0.35 0.35 0.23 0.23Durbin-Watson statistic 2.08 2.08 1.92 1.92Ljung-BoxQ statistic(df = 36) 27.01 26.41 25.63 24.47

Breusch-GodfreyF statistic(df = 2) 1.82 1.82 0.76 0.21

First-order ARCHF statistic(df = 1) 0.11 0.07 0.19 0.18

Note: tstatistics are reported below the coefficients in parentheses.*p < .10. **p < .05. *** p < .01.

tion with coevolving developments in different spheres of activity experienc-ing change at variable rates of maturation and decay.

In general, reciprocal causality is probably an easier, albeit more ambigu-ous, proposition to defend. Nevertheless, it is argued, as did Roberts who ini-tiated much of the recent debate about military revolutions, that the scale ofwarfare is the most important causal driver in expanding European armysizes. This argument can be taken one step further by contending that it is re-petitive warfare fought over regional hegemony that has been most responsi-ble for escalating army sizes, military costs, and military technology in


Table 4Time Series Regression Estimates of Logged West European Aggregate Army Size

Coefficients

1490-1989 1490-1790

Independent Variable Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4

War 0.41*** 0.21* 0.23*** 0.20**(5.76) (1.72) (4.68) (2.68)

Military revolution 0.30*** — –0.04 —(3.26) (–0.58)

War*Military revolution — 0.40*** — 0.07(2.78) (0.68)

Number of states 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00(0.79) (0.29) (0.59) (0.42)

Trenda 1.84*** 1.74*** 2.21*** 2.27***(7.11) (7.27) (7.11) (7.42)

Constant 0.52 0.94 –0.22 –0.40(0.64) (1.25) (–0.25) (–0.48)

AR(1) 0.95*** 0.93*** 1.08*** 1.07***(9.47) (9.47) (8.75) (8.58)

AR(2) –0.17* –0.17* –0.35*** –0.33***(–1.63) (–1.63) (–2.84) (–2.70)

Residual diagnosticsAdjustedRsquare 0.93 0.93 0.95 0.95Standard error 0.26 0.27 0.17 0.17Durbin-Watson statistic 2.02 2.04 2.21 2.23Ljung-BoxQ statistic(df = 36) 17.10 19.78 14.67 15.44

Breusch-GodfreyF statistic(df = 2) 1.79 1.68 1.85 1.94

First-order ARCHF statistic(df = 1) 0.22 0.51 0.05 0.16

Note: tstatistics are reported below the coefficients in parentheses.a. The trend variable is squared and the trend coefficients are expressed at thee(–06) level.*p < .10. **p < .05. *** p < .01.

Europe. Data on aggregate European army sizes, and their rates of growth,over the last 500 years appear to support this interpretation. Army sizes ex-panded in tune with sequential bids at regional primacy and the resistance tosuch bids, just as European army sizes have begun to shrink now that it seemsunlikely that regional hegemony will be contested on the battlefield—at leastin Europe.

But, there is absolutely no reason to rule out, at the very least, a very im-portant facilitating role for military technological change in bringing aboutimportant changes in European political-economic history. That is not quitethe same thing as saying that changes in military technology propelled me-dieval Europe into the modern era. As John Lynn (1991) admits, there is aperverse thrill in seeing activities often placed on the academic periphery byanalysts who have preferred social and economic determinisms moved to thehead of the causal ladder. But that is not reason enough to privilege one deter-minism over another.17 Multiple propellers, interlinked in complex ways thatwe are still trying to disentangle, drove early and later modern European be-


Table 5Significant Increases in Aggregate European Army Size

Two States With GreatestIncrease War Context Increase in Army Size

1525-1529/1530-1534 Charles V bid for hegemony Hapsburg Empire (Austria/Spain)1590-1594/1605-1609 Spanish-Dutch war The Netherlands/Spain1620-1624/1625- Thirty Years War Spain/France1629/1630-1634

1675-1679 Dutch war France/The Netherlands1690-1694/1705-1709 War of the league of Augsburg/ France/England

Spanish succession1755-1759 Seven Years War France/Britain1790-1794/1810-1814 French Revolutionary/ France/Britain

Napoleonic Wars1910-1919 World War I Germany/Britain1930-1944 World War II Germany/Britain1960-1964 Cold War France/Germany

Note:An increase greater than 25% from one 5-year interval to the next is regarded as significant.

17. The literature on technological determinism (e.g., Roland, 1993) often distinguishes be-tween hard and soft determinism. Most of the literature on the effects of military technologicalchanges approximates the soft end of the continuum, which means that other variables are recog-nized as having significance and interacting with the determining variable to bring about change.The concern here has less to do with accusations of determinism and more to do with giving toomuch causal credit to the wrong variable.

27

Figure 2.The expansion of European armies (logged and normalized on 1989).

havior. We need models that reflect this assumption. In short, we need modelsthat connect war, military technology, state-building, and economic pro-cesses, among other factors, in balanced ways. Elevating military technologyto the position of the prime mover probably distorts our understanding of howthings worked as much as ignoring it altogether would. Some place in be-tween these two continuum endpoints, and subordinated to the even morecentral role of war making, would seem to be preferable.

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William R. Thompson is professor of political science at Indiana University. His most re-cent books areLeading Sectors and World Politics: The Coevolution of Global Politicsand Economics(1996, with George Modelski) andGreat Power Rivalries(1998, edited).His current projects center on the study of interstate rivalries and the political economyof structural change in world politics.

Karen Rasler is professor of political science at Indiana University. The author of anumber of articles on conflict processes, she is currently engaged in a study of protractedconflict in Middle Eastern politics.


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