COMPARATIVE

Thompson, RaslerPOLITICAL
/ INFLUENCES
STUDIES
ON EUROPEAN
/ February 1999
STATE MAKING

One school of thought on European state making argues that discontinuous change in weapons
and 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 of
war changed. Although this controversy is not easily resolved, the empirical evidence indicates
that major expansions in army sizes over the past 500 years were almost exclusively related to
major wars fought over regional and global primacy. Moreover, the leaders in expanding armies
were 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
EXPANSION
A Test of Two Explanations of Historical
Influences on European State Making

WILLIAM R. THOMPSON
KAREN RASLER
Indiana University

S ome analysts argue that the European state made war and that war, in
turn, 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 makers
were 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 an
extended bureaucracy to manage the expanding military organization. Thus,
a central question in the literature on historical state making concerns the

AUTHORS’ NOTE: We are indebted to Michael Thackston who restimulated our interest in this
topic 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.

3
4 COMPARATIVE POLITICAL STUDIES / February 1999

comparative contributions of war and military technological change as pri-

mary drivers. This article first reviews briefly some of the arguments made
about military technological change and advances two arguments about the
hypothesized impact of military revolutions: (a) the multiple claims about
periods of significant change in military hardware and software are fairly nu-
merous (and potentially contradictory) and suggest, rather than privileging
periods as revolutionary, that we should conceptualize them as a relatively
continuous string of large and small innovations until we are in a position to
sort 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 readily
to serial operationalization over half millennia. Nevertheless, it is possible to
analyze empirically the observed relationships among periods of intensive
warfare, asserted military revolutions, increases in army size, and attempts at
regional hegemony in Europe over the last 500 years. If the proponents of a
direct war-state expansion relationship are right, we should expect to find a
close link between the onset of major wars and the expansion of armies. That
same 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 supportive
of 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 technological
changes were irrelevant to the European expansion of the state. But they do
suggest that radical shifts in military hardware and software were not the pri-
mary drivers that some envision. In this case at least, technology appears to
have 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 in

other times and places (e.g., the neolithic invention of weaponry, the intro-
duction of chariots and compound bows throughout Eurasia, war elephants in
India, phalanxes in the Mediterranean, or stirrups and heavy cavalry in Carol-
ingian Europe), the particular military revolution(s) controversy that is most
 Thompson, Rasler / INFLUENCES ON EUROPEAN STATE MAKING 5

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. One
group (Parker, 1988; Roberts, 1956/1995; Rogers, 1995) contends that 16th-
and 17th-century changes in military technology led to changes in military
tactics, larger armies, and more powerful states. Thus, military technology is
credited with literally catapulting early modern Europe out of the medieval
ages 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 and
more gradual than the image implied by the concept of revolution, that there
are 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 way
around. However, for the purposes of our argument, we will restrict our brief
review 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 the
shorthand argument that tactical changes in the late 16th century/early 17th
century led to larger armies and serious administrative problems for states,
his perspective actually is more complicated. Roberts did stress that tactical
changes developed by Maurice of Orange and Gustavus Adolphus to im-

1. For discussions of the significant impacts of military technology on earlier periods, see
Dupuy (1980, pp. 290-298), who finds 18 revolutionary developments in weapons and lethality
from 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 the
critical 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 naval
issues 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 the
world is another distinctive and complicated issue that deserves separate handling (but in con-
junction with naval technology).
6 COMPARATIVE POLITICAL STUDIES / February 1999

prove firepower and its mobility were fundamental to what he saw as a 1560-
1660 military revolution that served as a divide “separating medieval society
from 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 infantry
movements, constituted fundamental changes that led to a large number of
consequences.
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 sizes
were 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, the
Dutch/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 driving
forces—strategic scale and warfare—to his model that most subsequent
work tends to overlook or reduce to changes in military tactics. He then goes
on 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 of
warfare. It also helped that states worked to suppress private and irregular
competitors. But it was a combination of state expansion and warfare escala-
tion that led to greater state centralization and increasing interference in the
everyday lives of their populations. War costs, and the problems associated
with dealing with them, increased as a consequence of the expanded armies
and navies and the expenses associated with training, arming, and adminis-
tering them, all within the context of a period of rising prices. Yet, the military
expansion 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 major
European 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 the
defensive response in terms of the construction of fortresses with angled bas-
tions (the trace italienne). The inability of artillery to demolish these “artil-
lery fortresses” led to strategic emphases on siege warfare that, along with an
increasing tactical dependence on infantry firepower, led directly to an ex-
 Thompson, Rasler / INFLUENCES ON EUROPEAN STATE MAKING 7

pansion in army size. More troops were needed to conduct the sieges and to
garrison the artillery fortresses. Although Parker argues that the tempo of the
transformations involved and their spatial impact were more limited than
Roberts suggested, a military revolution, largely centered in Spain, Italy, the
Netherlands, and France, did lead to the development of military power that
ultimately was unrivaled anywhere else in the world.
Jeremy Black (1991, 1995) doubts that a military revolution took place in
the 1560-1660 period, but he is willing to entertain revolutionary status for a
number of other periods: the 8th-century adoption of heavy cavalry, the 14th-
century development of artillery, the 15th-century introduction of handheld
firearms, the 1660-1720 development of flintlock muskets and bayonets, and
the 1792-1815 innovations of the revolutionary armies. At least three of the
last four developments, Black contends, were more revolutionary in impact,
especially in terms of army size, than anything that took place between 1560
and 1660. Black also argues that the causal arrow in the changes in military
technology−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 16th
and 17th centuries. Rogers draws attention to the Hundred Years War (1337-
1453), which encompassed two earlier infantry and artillery revolutions. In
the 1330s through 1340s, the dominance of feudal heavy cavalry was dis-
rupted by English longbows and later by Swiss pikes. In the 1420s through
1440s, artillery was developed that could destroy walled enclaves and, paren-
thetically, could be used to not only drive the English from France but also to
consolidate French territory. These two revolutions were followed by Park-
er’s fortification and Roberts’s administrative revolutions in a process of
punctuated 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 costs
of artillery and fielding infantry in battles favored states with the resources to
pay for them. By and large, this meant that large and centralized states were
most 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 short
bursts after the one emphasized by Roberts (1956/1995). See, as well, Bartlett (1993), who
stresses the significance of military changes in the 950-1350 period preceding Rogers’s Hundred
Years 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.
8 COMPARATIVE POLITICAL STUDIES / February 1999

implied that domestic centrifugal forces could be thwarted and that the extent
of national territory could be expanded even further. More tax revenues
meant more and better artillery and armies in a self-reinforcing cycle.
Roberts, Parker, Black, and Rogers do not exhaust all of the interesting
things 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 tactical
shifts. Nevertheless, a brief overview of their arguments suffices for the most
part 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 been
highlighted single out as many as six periods that are worthy of special atten-
tion. Other authors have proposed nearly another dozen periods as equally if
not more special. With the single exception of the 11th century, candidates
for consideration encompass behavior between the 8th century to the end of
the 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 the
others. One can speculate that if any qualify as revolutionary, all or most may
do so as well. But the problem is that we need a new vocabulary, or at least we
need to borrow conceptualization from other disciplines that have made more
headway in studying impacts. Asking the question about whether specific
changes qualify as revolutionary has probably taken us about as far as the am-
biguous concept of revolution can. It has served to highlight the potential for
abrupt and/or accelerated change having a variety of possible consequences
of 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 it
may be worthwhile to single out periods of abrupt or rapid change. There is
no 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 weaponry
evolution, 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 in
European army paradigms over some 1,200 years, but it is not clear whether every paradigm
should be treated as if it were equally influential.
 Thompson, Rasler / INFLUENCES ON EUROPEAN STATE MAKING 9

Table 1
Some 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)

same time, there is no reason to assume that changes said to be revolutionary

come about abruptly or have immediate impact. On the contrary, quite a few
military innovations have required a number of years of trial-and-error ex-
perimentation on the battlefield to work out their initial limitations. As a
number of authors have pointed out, if a revolution takes a century or more to
unfold, what do we gain by calling it revolutionary?
To go beyond the stage in which authors proclaim that their favorite period
is more revolutionary than somebody else’s, we need to ask, and answer, a se-
ries of questions pertaining to the differentiation of minor versus radical
changes, isolated or systemic developments, abrupt or gradual impacts, and
temporary or permanent shifts. Innovations can also have differential effects
in terms of the extent to which they are copied/diffused and the general scope
of their overall impacts on societal processes.
10 COMPARATIVE POLITICAL STUDIES / February 1999

The general point is not that many of these questions have not already been
raised. 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 scope
and breadth of their consequences is still fairly sketchy. The task of compar-
ing the revolutionary candidates, and their various components, needs a great
deal more investigation. Until we can make more headway along these lines,
attempting to determine what is revolutionary and which period might be
most revolutionary seems quite premature.
No one denies the existence of impressive technological changes in the
European military subsystem from at least 1500 on, if not earlier. The ques-
tions that remain unresolved (in addition to their revolutionary status) are
what 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 with
some precision. Lacking this capability, we are forced to wrestle with am-
biguous clues, analytical hunches, and imprecise data. Still, the debate goes
on 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—and
perhaps not even that—but definitely not sufficient to bring about all the
other changes sometimes attributed to key martial innovations. It is probably
also a strategic error for analysts to quarrel over whether the military revolu-
tion occurred in the 15th, 16th, 17th, or 18th century. All centuries between
the 15th and 20th seem to have experienced significant changes in military
technology—as did a number of centuries before the 15th. If it is appropriate
to refer to the changes as revolutionary, and this is a contentious question, we
should 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 was
that much more critical than the others would it become appropriate to speak
of the military revolution. But what we tend to get instead is that authors are
reluctant, and understandably so given the difficulties involved, to compare
fully the differential impacts of various technological changes.
 Thompson, Rasler / INFLUENCES ON EUROPEAN STATE MAKING 11

The opposition to the arguments promoting the primacy of military tech-

nology is collectively vague and often idiosyncratic. The tendency is to say
that it was something in the political-economic environment—particular
wars, strong states, trade-induced prosperity, foreign policy ambitions, mili-
tary institutions, specific decision makers, and the like—that preceded
change in military technology. Rarely do critics focus on anything readily
generalizable.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 or
historical time. In addition to moving beyond noting apparent exceptions to
the generalization, this discussion could profit from a perspective that per-
mits greater complexity than questioning simply which sources of change
come first. The idea of the coevolution of different spheres of human activi-
ties with an allowance for varying causal primacies over time seems to work
better than being trapped into claims for the generic and timeless primacy of
one 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 of
change, we still need to know how, when, and why the subsystems interact or
are 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 principal
bridges between and among the various types of activities that people under-
take. War is about foreign policy goals ranging from acquiring/defending
small pieces of territory to the attainment/prevention of regional and global
hegemony. War, it is also argued, is necessary to translate military inventions
into applied innovations. War consumes resources and forces political deci-
sion makers to mobilize additional resources, including men, material, and
taxes, 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 state
sizes. Wars tended to have a ratchet effect in the European experience. The
greater 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 emphasizing
factors such as medieval constitutions, expanding trade and urbanization, and political coalition
making, which do not lend themselves very readily to operationalization.
12 COMPARATIVE POLITICAL STUDIES / February 1999

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 attained
in military personnel, expenditures, revenues, and state powers may have
proved 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 neither
military technology nor politics in general that is most responsible for the ex-
pansion of states and armies in western Europe. War, which reflects political
and economic ambitions and which activates military technology, has been a
principal causal culprit.7
This is not an argument that war determines everything else. Rather, war
provides an intermittent bridge among subsystems of activity in such a way
that its outbreak, particularly in the cases of the more intensive variety, tends
to accelerate subsystemic development and amplifies the linkages among the
different 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 more
war—although not necessarily in that order. Ultimately, what we are dealing
with are a number of escalatory spirals in interstate competition, military
technology, economic development, state making, and demography.8

WAR, TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE, AND ARMY SIZE

The literature on military technological change has at least one common

denominator. All discussions, with some exceptions encompassing capital-
intensive weaponry, nuclear missiles, and information technology, note the
positive impact of technological change on the size of armies. The expansion
of 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 in
different parts of Europe due to different mixes of the interacting ingredients. Even Geoffrey
Parker (1995, p. 341) seems prepared to concede the need for more complicated causal models
when he suggests that we should consider a “double helix” model with war-driven state making
interacting 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-driven
state making and military change actually encompasses at least three different escalatory spirals
and not merely two.
 Thompson, Rasler / INFLUENCES ON EUROPEAN STATE MAKING 13

the nonmilitary subsystems. The larger the armies, the greater the demands
for tax revenues, logistical/administrative support, popular mobilization, and
centralized and powerful states. Larger armies could also contribute to longer
wars encompassing more and more territory and greater devastation to the ci-
vilian economy and society. But this model depends on a close technological
® ®
change army size state/societal consequences linkage. What should be
questioned is the clarity and one-way direction of the technological change ®
army size relationship. Army size may also be something of a red herring for
interpreting early modern Europe.
If military technological change is revolutionary and its impact on army
size 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 many
of 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 intervening
variable, a rival hypothesis can be entertained. It is warfare that exerts a posi-
tive ratchet effect on army size, with subsequent warfare leading directly to
larger armies that may remain swollen at the end of war. If their numbers
should decline in the postwar period, they are unlikely to revert completely to
prewar sizes.
There are at least two reasons why we should consider privileging warfare
over military technology as a prime mover in this escalatory process. First,
there is an extensive literature with quantitative evidence that demonstrates
that 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 any
of the technological revolutions singled out in Table 1.9 If military costs esca-
lated throughout the allegedly technologically stagnant feudal era, a strong
case 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 drive
military costs upward, which suggests that the fundamental causal equation
® ®
is war military costs state/societal impact. From this perspective, mili-
tary technological change is a variable that intervenes principally between
war and military costs.10 At 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 military
revolution literature.
14 COMPARATIVE POLITICAL STUDIES / February 1999

sibility of a direct effect of military technological change on state/societal

structure or, for that matter, the possibility of state/societal structure influenc-
ing military technological change.
Treating military technology as an intervening variable does not preclude
revolutionary impacts. One could argue, for instance, as suggested by Mi-
chael Mann (1986) and others, that the principal effect of the early modern
military revolution(s) was not only to increase sharply the amount of military
costs 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 (and
hence more state centralization), the escalating problems of financing these
activities had serious implications for state making and the intensity of socie-
tal impacts.
Thus, one reason for privileging war over military technology as a prime
mover is a matter of placing technological change in a broader context. Mili-
tary technological change is a process that accelerated after the 15th century
in Europe and fed into an ongoing process relating the increasing costs of
warfare to state making. These processes have probably interacted in this
manner 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 more
emphasis 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 communicated
that there was something automatic about the technology per se that changed
wars, states, and societies. Yet cannons, fortresses, drilling, and new infantry
formats 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 response
to light cavalry raiders. More powerful cannons led to angled bastions. More
complex infantry maneuvers necessitated regular drilling. The need for
ground 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 and
changes in military technology tend to follow. Without war or its immediate
expectation, there is simply much less incentive to do anything about military
technology.
Another factor is the legendary resistance of military commanders to mili-
tary innovation. Why go with something new and uncertain when the more
traditional tactics and weapons worked reasonably well in the last war? The
 Thompson, Rasler / INFLUENCES ON EUROPEAN STATE MAKING 15

application of new military technology is facilitated greatly by the need to

deal with a stronger, more numerous, or well-entrenched opponent, which
can help to override professional conservatism if other, more conventional
options 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 the
absence 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 applied
from the variety that exists at a given point in time. It was not inevitable that
Welsh longbows would appear on battlefields in 14th-century France. Was it
any more inevitable that Dutch and Swedish innovators would revive their
impressions of Roman tactics in the late 16th/early 17th centuries? Should it
be surprising that the early 16th-century changes that led to the Spanish ter-
cios formation also included the temporary revival of Roman sword and
buckle troops to protect the men with firearms while reloading? Technologi-
cal development is a process of trial-and-error experimentation in which
some changes work and survive and others do not. Not only do innovators
have to choose from a range of old and new options but it also takes some time
to 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) that
some portion of the military technological change that took place in Europe
had already been tried out to some extent in East Asia, but with different ef-
fects. Gunpowder, artillery, and firearms were first developed by the Chinese
and used by Mongols, Koreans, and Japanese. East Asian army sizes do not
appear to have been affected all that appreciably by the adoption of various
types of firearms. “Modern” or European style states did not emerge. On the
contrary, 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 is
achieved, there should be fewer incentives to seek out further improvements
in military technology. By and large, this appears to be precisely what took
place in Qing China and Tokugawa Japan. Thus, one must conclude that not
only 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 the
continuation of key processes.
16 COMPARATIVE POLITICAL STUDIES / February 1999

Figure 1 summarizes quickly what exactly is at stake in this analysis. An

emphasis on military technological revolutions perceives a sequence of shifts
in technology leading to shifts in tactics and weaponry and then to increases
in army size. The emphasis on major power warfare, alternatively, views
competitions for regional primacy leading to escalations in intensive warfare
and army size. From this perspective, changes in military technology are
more likely to be a consequence of the escalatory pressures than they are an
autonomous source of change. Note that neither interpretation challenges the
subsequent links between increases in army size and state/societal impacts,
and, therefore, we will not pursue further this end of the causal sequence at
the present time.
Giving causal primacy to war does not mean that all wars are likely to be
equally important. Wars come in all sizes and shapes. Small wars should have
less impact than large wars. And large wars could conceivably be a function
of the coincidental overlapping of a number of small wars, but, more likely,
large wars are a function of large ambitions. Wars about regional primacy, it
is argued, should have the greatest impact on army size and other societal
consequences. 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 consume
many years and lives before a resolution is achieved.
The wars that come most readily to mind include the Italian wars, which
are usually credited with initiating what Black (1994a, 1994b) has termed the
Western Question (Who would dominate western Europe?) and which began
in 1494 with a premature French gambit and evolved into Charles V’s mid-
century Hapsburg bid; the Spanish-Dutch Wars, which merged into the
Thirty Years War; the wars of Louis XIV (at least 1688-1713); the French
Revolutionary/Napoleonic Wars (1792-1815); and World Wars I and II
(1914-1945).11 After 1945, the Western Question became somewhat moot
with 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 least
become less prominent after 1945.12

11. Not coincidentally, most of these wars are given strong theoretical prominence as global
wars in the leadership long cycle literature (Modelski, 1987; Modelski & Modelski, 1988; Mod-
elski & Thompson, 1988, 1996; Rasler & Thompson, 1989, 1994) and other historical treatments
of 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.
 Thompson, Rasler / INFLUENCES ON EUROPEAN STATE MAKING 17

Figure 1. Two sources of influence on army size.

Nonetheless, a rival hypothesis centered on the escalating demands of

warfare about regional dominance issues need not mutually exclude the co-
evolving effects of military technological change. For example, Louis XIV’s
wars at the end of the 17th century involved considerable manpower tied
down 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 also
more than twice as large as the numbers that France had mobilized against
Spain in their midcentury struggle for the continental lead. Although some of
the increase undoubtedly can be attributed to tactical changes and garrison
demands, an appreciable proportion must also be attributed to French foreign
policy ambitions and the scale of the warfare that they implied. As a conse-
quence, we should also expect the leaders with the most ambitious foreign
policies to take the lead in expanding the size of their armies. The alternative,
more-technologically oriented expectation is that whoever first developed
the 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 statistical

tests 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-
18 COMPARATIVE POLITICAL STUDIES / February 1999

tween the two, in accounting for the aggregate rate of growth and aggregate
size of European armies. For the more rigorous part of the examination, we
assess two equations for each dependent variable (growth rate and size).
Y (army growth rate or size) = c + B (war) + (1)
B2(military revolutions) + θ Y(t – 1) + e; and

Y (army growth rate or size) = c + B (war) + (2)

B2(war*military revolutions) + θ Y(t – 1) + e.

One can anticipate that serial correlation will be a problem in working

with army size information. Therefore, we estimate an autoregressive com-
ponent in each equation. A trend component is introduced where necessary
as well. Relying on maximum likelihood estimation procedures, we first en-
ter the two rival substantive variables (war and military revolutions) alone. In
the second equation, we enter an interaction term, combining war and mili-
tary revolutions, in addition to the war variable. The second equation allows
us 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 European
armies, major wars, and military technological change. For army data, we
rely on what we believe to be the only systematic data set (Rasler & Thompson,
1994) on great power army sizes encompassing the 1490-1990 era. More
than 160 sources were examined for numerical references to great power
army sizes over the period of 1490 to 1989. Applying uniform standards to
the varying estimates that were culled from the literature (i.e., focusing on na-
tional army size and excluding reserves and paramilitary forces) and erring
on 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 to
generate annual observations. Five-year intervals seemed about as discrete
an interval as was practical. However, within a 5-year period that encom-
passed years of peacetime and wartime, considerable size fluctuations might
be registered. Hence, to average at 5-year intervals works to depress army
size but it does so systematically for all great powers. Given the nature of
European 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.
 Thompson, Rasler / INFLUENCES ON EUROPEAN STATE MAKING 19

pressing or inflating the numbers of soldiers, a deflating technique seems

preferable.
The data on European great powers include the following states for the
time periods indicated: Spain (1490-1799), France (1490-1989), England/
Britain (1490-1989), Austria (1490-1919, with Austrian forces credited to
the 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 been
in 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 available
after 1700 and are also available in the data source. It has been excluded from
this analysis because there is some question about the comparability of Rus-
sian army size with those of western European states without introducing
some sort of discount factor. In any event, Russia’s inclusion would only bias
consistently upward the aggregation of European army size. Its exclusion
should not distort an analysis focused on the hypothesized impact of military
revolutions.
We examine two indicators of army size to control for the possibility that a
singular 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. Given
the well-known ratchet effect of wars, we do not really expect this possible
bias to be much of a problem, but our empirical findings will be all the more
compelling if we find similar effects of war and military technological
change on both the rates of growth and the absolute size of west European ar-
mies. Rather than examine each country separately, the appropriate data are
aggregated for each 5-year interval to create a single army size indicator. This
indicator is logged to ameliorate some of the problems associated with the
large increases in army size over a 500-year stretch, particularly in the 20th
century. The growth rate indicator, which should be particularly useful in
evaluating asserted revolutionary impacts, is calculated conventionally by
computing the proportional increase in interval t + 1 over interval t.
Because the number of major powers fluctuates over time (ranging from 3
to 7), we include a simple control variable by counting the number of powers
encompassed 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.
20 COMPARATIVE POLITICAL STUDIES / February 1999

1739-1748, 1755-1763, 1792-1815, 1914-1918, 1939-1945) are taken from

Levy’s (1985) list of general wars and Thompson’s (1988) survey of systemic
war candidates. Periods of military technological change (1470/1490-1530,
1560-1660, 1680-1720, 1792-1815, 1914-1918, and 1939-1945) are taken
from 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 are
identical 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 to
distinguish, however crudely, between the two influences. To investigate the
hypothesis 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 restricted
solely 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 that
these 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 continental
orientations, intervene in ways to ensure the persistence of some level of vari-
ety in state structures, societal patterns, and war consequences. How these
subsequent impacts are felt and absorbed are certainly of interest, but we
leave their analysis to other forums.

DATA ANALYSIS

Table 2 breaks down the aggregate European army size and increases by
century. 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 tripled
over the 1500 numbers and almost tripled again by 1700. These numbers cor-
roborate, approximately, Parker’s (1976, pp. 195-196) observation that army
sizes increased by a factor of 10 over the same time period. By 1800, they had
more than doubled the 1700 level and increased again by roughly a factor of
1.5 by 1900. The only long-term downward movement is not registered until
toward the end of the 20th century. But a focus on turn-of-the century figures
 Thompson, Rasler / INFLUENCES ON EUROPEAN STATE MAKING 21

should not be allowed to overlook the peak numbers in the 1940s, reflecting a
quadrupling 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 more
feasible. Yet, Table 2 also lists the size increases with population controlled.
The magnitude of the increases in the first three centuries (1500-1800) are not
as 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 by
1600 and again by 1700. By 1800, it had only increased by about a third and
had even shrunk by 1900, indicating that population size was growing faster
than 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 enlisted
in the early 1940s. Thus, changes in the western European demographic sub-
system eventually caught up to changes in army size and even surpassed
them, generally, in the 19th and 20th centuries, but not in every decade. The
two World Wars of the 20th century were capable of accelerating army size at
a rate faster than population growth, just as those wars also were capable of
negatively affecting the demographic subsystem.16
The general conclusion is that no century had a monopoly on significant
increases in aggregate army size. Every century since 1500 experienced it,
thereby strengthening the reluctance to single out any particular onset of
military technological change as unusually responsible for swelling army
sizes. Either military technological change continued to expand army sizes
throughout the nearly 500-year period we are examining, some other stimuli
were involved, or some combination of technological change and other stim-
uli were responsible. A closer examination of changes in aggregate army size
is 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 rate
in the aggregated west European army size. The outcomes for Models 1 and 2
indicate that the only substantive variable that is statistically significant over
the entire 1490-1989 time period is war. The military revolutions variable is
insignificant in Model 1, as is the war-military revolutions interaction term in
Model 2. The interaction term in Model 2 does reduce the size of the war
term’s coefficient and its significance level, but it does not eliminate entirely
war’s effect—despite a very high correlation between the war variable and
the interaction term (r = .87). The impact of the interaction term is even less
discernible in the 1490-1790 period (Model 4), thereby increasing our confi-

15. The coevolution of different subsystems need not proceed at equivalent paces.
22 COMPARATIVE POLITICAL STUDIES / February 1999

Table 2
Magnitudes of Increase in Aggregate West European Army Size

Aggregate Army Size Aggregate Army Size per

Year (in hundreds) Increase Thousand Population Increase

1500 71 2.6
1600 219 3.08 5.3 2.04
1700 618 2.82 11.6 2.19
1800 1,442 2.33 15.3 1.32
1900 2,114 1.47 9.6 –0.37
1940 8,359 3.95 44.2 4.60
1989 1,024 0.48 4.1 –0.57
Source: Army data are based on information in Rasler and Thompson (1994). Population data
that approximate as much as possible the political units counted as great powers are taken from
McEvedy 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.

dence in the validity of the general outcome. Army size growth rates are
clearly influenced by a variety of factors—as evidenced by the relatively low
R 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 army
size. The statistical outcome is less obvious but, ultimately, quite compatible
with the growth rate findings. The war variable is statistically significant in
all 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 major
changes. Only war is statistically significant in the pre-1792 era—which also
happens to encompass the period most heavily contested in the literature.
Therefore, we can infer that the variables involving some measurement of
military 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 us
to differentiate between war and technologically induced changes in the
more modern period, we need to discount considerably the support that
emerges for the military revolution argument in Table 4’s Models 1 and 2.

16. For one of the more intriguing examinations of the interactions between war and popula-
tion growth, see Urlanis (1971).
 Thompson, Rasler / INFLUENCES ON EUROPEAN STATE MAKING 23

We can pursue this question further by identifying more precisely when

aggregate army size actually changed. Figure 2’s logged and normalized plot
of aggregate army size encompasses 10 periods of increase that are greater
than 25%. Table 5 identifies the 10 by war and in terms of which states led the
increases. 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 major
power warfare in western Europe. Every significant increase in aggregate
army size is linkable to militarized contests about regional dominance in
western Europe. Moreover, in most cases but not all, the leader in army size
expansion is also the state with the greatest foreign policy ambitions: the
Hapsburgs and Spain in the 1530s and 1620-1630s; then France through the
19th century; and then Prussia/Germany in the late 19th/early to mid-20th
centuries. 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 French
and Germans in the 1960s. The first exception might be linked to Maurice of
Orange’s (captain-general of Dutch forces in the late 16th century) tactical
innovations, 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 World
War II, especially after their forces had been reduced in size at the end of the
war and, in the German case, into the 1950s. France’s war in Algeria must
also take some of the credit. Yet it is the general decline in European army
sizes 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, economic
capability and population bases, social welfare policies, as well as changes in
military technology. For immediate purposes, however, it is worth emphasiz-
ing that it was primarily Soviet and American army sizes that remained larger
after World War II than they had been prior to the latest round in the sequence
of wars over European (and East Asian) regional dominance. The more re-
cent (post-1945) developments, reinforced as they are by the end of the cold
war’s effect on Soviet and American army size reductions, therefore under-
line the limitations of military technological change on competitive army
sizes. Remove or reduce the competitive element and one can expect to see a
decrease 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 technological
change, head counts are still considered important, as manifested most re-
cently in the Gulf War.
24 COMPARATIVE POLITICAL STUDIES / February 1999

Table 3
Time 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 diagnostics
Adjusted R square 0.20 0.20 0.13 0.12
Standard error 0.35 0.35 0.23 0.23
Durbin-Watson statistic 2.08 2.08 1.92 1.92
Ljung-Box Q statistic
(df = 36) 27.01 26.41 25.63 24.47
Breusch-Godfrey F statistic
(df = 2) 1.82 1.82 0.76 0.21
First-order ARCH F statistic
(df = 1) 0.11 0.07 0.19 0.18
Note: t statistics are reported below the coefficients in parentheses.
*p < .10. **p < .05. *** p < .01.

CONCLUSIONS

A number of intriguing arguments have been advanced about the effects

of various phases of accelerated changes in European military technology.
We need to remain agnostic about whether it is appropriate to refer to any or
all 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 questions
about 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-
 Thompson, Rasler / INFLUENCES ON EUROPEAN STATE MAKING 25

Table 4
Time 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)
a
Trend 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 diagnostics
Adjusted R square 0.93 0.93 0.95 0.95
Standard error 0.26 0.27 0.17 0.17
Durbin-Watson statistic 2.02 2.04 2.21 2.23
Ljung-Box Q statistic
(df = 36) 17.10 19.78 14.67 15.44
Breusch-Godfrey F statistic
(df = 2) 1.79 1.68 1.85 1.94
First-order ARCH F statistic
(df = 1) 0.22 0.51 0.05 0.16
Note: t statistics are reported below the coefficients in parentheses.
a. The trend variable is squared and the trend coefficients are expressed at the e(–06) level.
*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 of
warfare is the most important causal driver in expanding European army
sizes. 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
26 COMPARATIVE POLITICAL STUDIES / February 1999

Table 5
Significant Increases in Aggregate European Army Size

Two States With Greatest

Increase 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/Spain
1620-1624/1625- Thirty Years War Spain/France
1629/1630-1634
1675-1679 Dutch war France/The Netherlands
1690-1694/1705-1709 War of the league of Augsburg/ France/England
Spanish succession
1755-1759 Seven Years War France/Britain
1790-1794/1810-1814 French Revolutionary/ France/Britain
Napoleonic Wars
1910-1919 World War I Germany/Britain
1930-1944 World War II Germany/Britain
1960-1964 Cold War France/Germany
Note: An increase greater than 25% from one 5-year interval to the next is regarded as significant.

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 to
such bids, just as European army sizes have begun to shrink now that it seems
unlikely that regional hegemony will be contested on the battlefield—at least
in 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 about
important changes in European political-economic history. That is not quite
the same thing as saying that changes in military technology propelled me-
dieval Europe into the modern era. As John Lynn (1991) admits, there is a
perverse thrill in seeing activities often placed on the academic periphery by
analysts who have preferred social and economic determinisms moved to the
head of the causal ladder. But that is not reason enough to privilege one deter-
minism over another.17 Multiple propellers, interlinked in complex ways that
we are still trying to disentangle, drove early and later modern European be-

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 technological
changes 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 too
much causal credit to the wrong variable.
 Figure 2. The expansion of European armies (logged and normalized on 1989).
27
28 COMPARATIVE POLITICAL STUDIES / February 1999

havior. We need models that reflect this assumption. In short, we need models
that connect war, military technology, state-building, and economic pro-
cesses, among other factors, in balanced ways. Elevating military technology
to the position of the prime mover probably distorts our understanding of how
things worked as much as ignoring it altogether would. Some place in be-
tween these two continuum endpoints, and subordinated to the even more
central 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 are Leading Sectors and World Politics: The Coevolution of Global Politics
and Economics (1996, with George Modelski) and Great Power Rivalries (1998, edited).
His current projects center on the study of interstate rivalries and the political economy
of structural change in world politics.

Karen Rasler is professor of political science at Indiana University. The author of a

number of articles on conflict processes, she is currently engaged in a study of protracted
conflict in Middle Eastern politics.