Towards a Model of Territorial Expansion and the Limits of Empire (original) (raw)

Musket, Map and Money: How Military Technology Shaped Geopolitics and Economics

2014

While stressing the role of institutions and property rights regimes in affecting economic performance, North (1981) posits that the competition between European states was a source of institutional change that led ultimately to the European Miracle. Intense and prolonged interstate rivalry led to changes in political and economic institutions as states became more inclusive in order to get support from wider social groups to sustain their effort for greater power at the international arena and that led to better economic performance. 7 North (1995, 1998) reiterates his position in North (1981) to explain economic development by international political military competition. North (1995) notes that: "……Even the relative failures in Western Europe played an essential role in European development and were more successful than China or Islam because of competitive pressures." (26) The "relative failures" here refers to countries such as Portugal or Spain that were once forerunners in European economic development but somehow were overtaken later by countries such as Netherlands and England. Jones (1988) further develops the basic theme of Jones (1981) in the case studies of Song China and Tokugawa Japan, and Jones (1990) provides a more detailed study of the Song China's high economic achievements. Jones (1988) calls for case studies of other major instances of very long-term economic changes in a world historical framework. Jones (2002) repeats this exhortation. 8 The call did not go unanswered. Bernholz et al. (1998) and Bernholz and Vaubel (2004) answer the call by formulating the Hume-Kant hypothesis and testing it against practically the whole of world history. Bernholz et al. (1998) and Bernholz and Vaubel (2004) termed the theory that explains economic development by the nature of the international political system the Hume-Kant Hypothesis and presented case studies that cover almost the whole written history of mankind. According to Bernholz and Vaubel, they themselves weren't the originators of the Hume-Kant hypothesis-they see its assertion, under varying names, in many writers through history. The Hume-Kant hypothesis has echoes in many prominent thinkers and scholars from all academic fields over the cen

War, Trade, and Natural Resources: A Historical Perspective

Oxford Handbooks Online, 2012

War and Trade are two human activities that are so intrinsic to the species that it is impossible to assign any moment in its evolution at which either of them first "appeared". Every stage of socio-political evolution, from hunting and gathering to agriculture and animal husbandry and on to the commercial and industrial nations of today, has seen people conducting trade and warfare, both within their own boundaries and across them. The object of both Trade and War, or "Warre" as Thomas Hobbes more emphatically labeled it, has for most of the time been access to and control over scarce "Natural Resources", differing only in the means by which this is to be achieved. Trade attempts to secure access to the fruits of the natural resources possessed by others by offering something of value in return, frequently the products obtained from the different bundle of natural resources in one's own possession, thereby making both parties "better off". War, on the other hand, attempts to do this by using force to deprive the other of the resources at his command, without offering anything of value in return. The use of force, however, itself requires the input of the user's own scarce resources. Thus both War and Trade, from this perspective, are but alternative options to convert one's own scarce resources into those of the other in a manner that enhances one's own welfare, the difference being that Trade also raises the welfare of the other while War reduces it.

State Building for Future Wars: Neoclassical Realism and the Resource-Extractive State

Neorealist theory holds that the international system compels states to adopt similar adaptive strategies-namely, balancing and emulation-or risk elimination as independent entities. Yet states do not always emulate the successful practices of the system's leading states in a timely and uniform fashion. Explaining this requires a theory that integrates systemic-level and unit-level variables: a "resource-extraction" model of the state in neoclassical realism. External vulnerability provides incentives for states to emulate the practices of the system's leading states or to counter such practices through innovation. Neoclassical realism, however, suggests that state power-the relative ability of the state to extract and mobilize resources from domestic society-shapes the types of internal balancing strategies that countries are likely to pursue. State power, in turn, is a function of the institutions of the state, as well as of nationalism and ideology. The experiences of six rising or declining great powers over the past three hundred years-China, France, Great Britain, Japan, Prussia (later Germany), and the United Statesillustrate the plausibility of these hypotheses.