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War and the Birth of the Nation State

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 May 2010

Richard Bean
Richard Bean
Affiliation:
University of Houston
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Extract

The rise of the nation-state is assigned by most historians a central role in the economic growth of Europe. Most recently Douglass North and Robert Thomas have argued that sustained economic growth was made possible only by institutional changes which, themselves, were a consequence of the rise of the nationstate. Thus it is clear that a complete model of the economic growth of Europe will have to account for the rise of the nation-state. That is.the humble task of this paper.

Type
Papers Presented at the Thirty-second Annual Meeting of the Economic History Association
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 33 , Issue 1 , March 1973 , pp. 203 - 221
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1973

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References

1 North, D. C. and Thomas, R. P., The Rise of the Western World: A New Economic History (Cambridge: forthcoming 1973)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 The reader will doubtless note that many of the notions presented in this paper without attribution are not original to this author, but the explaining of the rise of the nation-state in Europe is a task quite large enough without attempting to trace to its ultimate origin every previous idea on the subject.

3 The details of the military history of Europe are based on SirOman, Charles, A History of the Art of War in the Middle Ages, 2 vols (2nd ed., London: Methuen, 1924)Google Scholar, and A History of the Art of War in the Sixteenth Century (London: Methuen, 1937)Google Scholar.

4 White, Lynn, Medieval Technology and Social Change (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967), pp. 1–38Google Scholar.

5 Oman, Middle Ages, II, p. 303.

6 Ibid., p. 226.

7 This is not the same thing as saying that the proportion of total resources devoted to military affairs was larger in the Classical era than in the Middle Ages. We can ascertain, within some limits of uncertainty, the size of field armies. However, the military obligations of the feudal lords were specific and limited. We simply do not know how large were the garrisons left behind by the various lords—ranging from the petty barons to the king himself.

8 The real per capita revenues of the English crown seem to have been only about one third higher than those of the French crown at the beginning of the sixteenth century, but they were perhaps three or four times greater in the High Middle Ages. See Tables 3 and 4. In 1500 there were about ten Livres tournois per pound sterling. See Dietz, F. C., “English Government Finance, 1485–1558,” University of Illinois Studies in the Social Sciences, IX (September, 1920), p. 215Google Scholar.

9 But see footnote 7.

10 See Tables 3 and 4 for England and France. Vives, J. V., An Economic History of Spain (3rd ed. trans., Princeton: Princeton University Press,.1969), p. 312CrossRefGoogle Scholar, says the revenue of that royal treasury rose from 800,000 maravedis in 1470 to 22,000,000 maravedis in 1504.

11 SirRamsay, J. H., A History of the Revenues of the Kings of England, 1066–1399 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1925), Vol. II, p. 293Google Scholar.

12 SirRamsay, J. H., Lancaster and York: A Century of English History, 1399–1485 AD (Oxford: Clarendon, 1925), Vol. I, pp. 317 ffGoogle Scholar.

13 Dietz, English Public Finance, 1558–1641 (New York: Century, 1932), pp. 111–12, 216Google Scholar.

14 Oman, Middle Ages, II, 432.

15 Petit-Dutaillis, Charles, in Lavisse, Ernest, ed., Histoire de France dupuis les origines jusqu'à la révolution (Paris: Hachette, 1911), IV, pt. 2, p. 405nGoogle Scholar.

16 Parker, G., “Spain, Her Enemies and the Revolt of the Netherlands, 1559–1648,” Past and Present, IL (1970), p. 85Google Scholar.

17 This is about all that Edward II accomplished during the first half of the Hundred Years War in spite of the great victories of Crécy and Poitiers.

18 Oman, Sixteenth Century, p. 75.