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jpegben's review against another edition
I don't generally review works I read for academic purposes, but I thought I'd detail a few thoughts on this one. Charles Tilly's work is seminal at this point and it's difficult to overstate its influence. The idea of the state as a protection-racket or a "coercion-yielding" organisation has come to guide the way in which so many think about the state. Yes, this work is replete with simplifications, generalisations, and even a little starry-eyed naïveté, but the core insight about the reciprocal relationship between the development and expansion of the state's organisational capacity and the exigencies brought on by the need to wage war remain piercing and important.
At its core, the observation that the administrative apparatus of the state arose from the need to mobilise resources for war is correct, but simplistic. Likewise, the notion that the course of development states followed depended on the resources they controlled, particularly how capital was concentrated and economies were constituted, has broad resonance. Tilly efficaciously demonstrates how the concessions leaders made to other stakeholders within states be they forms of institutional representation, the provision of goods, or bargaining over how resources were allocated and redistributed, profoundly influenced how institutions, legal arrangements, and bureaucracies emerged and consolidated. Regardless of whether this is entirely accurate or not - I'm sceptical it is in all examples - Tilly makes a powerful point in the sense that he resists the black box approach when it comes to treating the state in overly monolithic or discrete terms. Tilly's most important contribution is undoubtedly his historicisation of the development of states, of how history has not only shaped their institutions, but created a degree of path dependence even if the national state model did eventually prevail.
However, I did think the coercive-centric and capital-centric dichotomy, particularly in terms of how broad these categories are, did lend itself to reducing quite idiosyncratic processes to fit a broad theoretical model. It works in terms of the general Longue Duree across Europe, but can be very easily problematised when the examples Tilly adduces are placed under close scrutiny. Drawing on the example I know best, Russia, I did feel like Tilly diminished the complex process of Russian state formation to one of a straightforward story of centralising consolidation which was an afterthought that followed warmaking. War and capital are the be all and end all in his schema. There is little or no room for the administrative legacies of the Tartar yoke and repeated incursions. Tilly, unlike many historians of Russia including Stephen Kotkin and others, assumes that the ponderous form that the Russian state assumed was an ad hoc response to warmaking. Yet, in many ways, statemaking in Russia preceded warmaking as warmaking itself was a means to make the existing state safe due to its precarious geostragetic position. In other words, Russia expanded to create buffers and pre-empt attacks on the state heartland. Additionally, he doesn't acknowledge the central role that cossacks, merchants - particularly the Stroganov family - and free landholders played in Russia's initial eastward expansion into Siberia which doesn't easily align with his narrative of Russia as a coercion-centric state and more closely approximates some of the capital-centric forms of expansion which prevailed in states like the Netherlands. Finally, and this can be applied more generally, he fails to seriously account for the power of ideas and how they can distinctly impact the direction of state development. The Russian Revolution is reduced to a mere byproduct of defeat in the First World War, in essence state failure, while the causational role of revolutionary agitation and conspiracy informed by one of the most radical strands of Enlightenment thought is virtually overlooked.
This bespeaks the primary problem with Tilly today. It's difficult to locate agency in his systemic analysis. At times, he'll make a passing concession to how an individual actor or group of actors profoundly influenced the course of development, but he doesn't address this in any rigorous or systematic way. Even when examining the earliest period of state development, patrimonialism, Tilly displays a tendency to characterise armies as a unitary actor rather than an agglomeration of local, sometimes opposing interests. This does not undermine Tilly's core insights, but it reflects a particular systemic approach which is difficult to square with meaningful historical agency for individuals and many stakeholder groups
At its core, the observation that the administrative apparatus of the state arose from the need to mobilise resources for war is correct, but simplistic. Likewise, the notion that the course of development states followed depended on the resources they controlled, particularly how capital was concentrated and economies were constituted, has broad resonance. Tilly efficaciously demonstrates how the concessions leaders made to other stakeholders within states be they forms of institutional representation, the provision of goods, or bargaining over how resources were allocated and redistributed, profoundly influenced how institutions, legal arrangements, and bureaucracies emerged and consolidated. Regardless of whether this is entirely accurate or not - I'm sceptical it is in all examples - Tilly makes a powerful point in the sense that he resists the black box approach when it comes to treating the state in overly monolithic or discrete terms. Tilly's most important contribution is undoubtedly his historicisation of the development of states, of how history has not only shaped their institutions, but created a degree of path dependence even if the national state model did eventually prevail.
However, I did think the coercive-centric and capital-centric dichotomy, particularly in terms of how broad these categories are, did lend itself to reducing quite idiosyncratic processes to fit a broad theoretical model. It works in terms of the general Longue Duree across Europe, but can be very easily problematised when the examples Tilly adduces are placed under close scrutiny. Drawing on the example I know best, Russia, I did feel like Tilly diminished the complex process of Russian state formation to one of a straightforward story of centralising consolidation which was an afterthought that followed warmaking. War and capital are the be all and end all in his schema. There is little or no room for the administrative legacies of the Tartar yoke and repeated incursions. Tilly, unlike many historians of Russia including Stephen Kotkin and others, assumes that the ponderous form that the Russian state assumed was an ad hoc response to warmaking. Yet, in many ways, statemaking in Russia preceded warmaking as warmaking itself was a means to make the existing state safe due to its precarious geostragetic position. In other words, Russia expanded to create buffers and pre-empt attacks on the state heartland. Additionally, he doesn't acknowledge the central role that cossacks, merchants - particularly the Stroganov family - and free landholders played in Russia's initial eastward expansion into Siberia which doesn't easily align with his narrative of Russia as a coercion-centric state and more closely approximates some of the capital-centric forms of expansion which prevailed in states like the Netherlands. Finally, and this can be applied more generally, he fails to seriously account for the power of ideas and how they can distinctly impact the direction of state development. The Russian Revolution is reduced to a mere byproduct of defeat in the First World War, in essence state failure, while the causational role of revolutionary agitation and conspiracy informed by one of the most radical strands of Enlightenment thought is virtually overlooked.
This bespeaks the primary problem with Tilly today. It's difficult to locate agency in his systemic analysis. At times, he'll make a passing concession to how an individual actor or group of actors profoundly influenced the course of development, but he doesn't address this in any rigorous or systematic way. Even when examining the earliest period of state development, patrimonialism, Tilly displays a tendency to characterise armies as a unitary actor rather than an agglomeration of local, sometimes opposing interests. This does not undermine Tilly's core insights, but it reflects a particular systemic approach which is difficult to square with meaningful historical agency for individuals and many stakeholder groups
mburnamfink's review against another edition
3.0
Coercion, Capital, and European States charts a grand theory of history that attempts to explain why Europe in the late 20th century looks like it does, a fairly uniform sprawl of nation-state social democracies, as opposed to the diverse variety of political systems existent over the past 1000 years: feudal baronies, city-states, sprawling empires. Tilly's basic thesis is that states make war, and vice versa. The increasing expense of maintaining gunpowder, and later armies of mass conscripts, forced centralization and fictionalization, which broke less affluent and efficient states, and lead towards the modern ideal. This is not to imply a singular and inevitable path: Tilly traces a coercion intensive path followed by Sweden, a capital intensive path followed by the Dutch, and a medium path typical of France, England, and Prussia.
As a relatively short book, it's hard to cover every part of the grand theory in detail, but I was dissatisfied. Clearly, coercion and capital are two major forces in history, but as variables they lack explanatory power. Armies look like unitary instruments of coercion from a distance, and in a Clausewitzian framework, are coercive elements of power between states, but this glosses over the factionalism that characterized pre-modern armies, the autonomy of a warrior elite against the agricultural masses, and the difficulty of using coercion systematically against weaker states. While Tilly is right to note that budgets increased in time of war settle at a higher baseline, and to gesture at key phase transitions in warfare, he is vague on key details. In particular, there should be more comparison between strong kings and weak kings at the mercy of major dukes, the rise and fall of the condottieri mercenary regiment, the Levée en masse of the French Revolution, and high-tech warfare of the 20th century. I'd point towards McNeill's The Pursuit of Power and Mallett's Mercenaries and the Masters for the first two, I'm not well-versed enough on the French Revolution to talk about the second one, and the third deserves an entire shelf.
Economics is an area that I am less well-versed on than military history, but I was equally dissatisfied with his explanation of capital. Cities and trade networks serve as the engines of capital accumulation, and wealth is linked to military strength as wars became increasingly financed by loans, but there is more there. The good credit of Dutch merchants helped liberate them from Spanish rule as Spain declared bankruptcy several times during the Spanish-Dutch wars, yet the wealthy city-states of Italy declined as powers past the 16th century. There are obvious benefits to being the center of the financial system, as London and New York's dominance show. Yet capital is fluid, transnational, and while states benefit from and caused monetization, capital is distinct from statehood. In particular, more attention should be paid to 'real capital', in the productive qualities of physical objects on the land, against capital that exists on paper and in the beliefs of bankers.
It's not a surprise that someone with my academic pedigree would say this, but Coercion, Capital, and European States could really use more engagement with the biopolitical theories of Foucault. Tilly completely misses the development of disciplinary administrative apparatuses as an element of power, and the circulation of disciplinary techniques between states. The nation-state, which links ethnicity, territory, and administration in a sovereign union, can only be understood from a biopolitical perspective.
The final chapter, on the extension of European style states to the the post-colonial, post-World War II order, and the continued resilience of military elites in the third world, has not aged particularly well. I can't blame someone writing at the fall of the USSR for thinking out loud about states in the 21st century and not capturing the War on Terror, the rise of transnational NGOs as instruments of power, and the concerns about failed and failing states, but this book posits an end to history and fails to see beyond it. And finally, if I were a scholar in this field, I'm not sure how I'd use the ideas here. Plot my state on Capital vs Coercion over time? Draw lines? Postulate moderation as good?
As a relatively short book, it's hard to cover every part of the grand theory in detail, but I was dissatisfied. Clearly, coercion and capital are two major forces in history, but as variables they lack explanatory power. Armies look like unitary instruments of coercion from a distance, and in a Clausewitzian framework, are coercive elements of power between states, but this glosses over the factionalism that characterized pre-modern armies, the autonomy of a warrior elite against the agricultural masses, and the difficulty of using coercion systematically against weaker states. While Tilly is right to note that budgets increased in time of war settle at a higher baseline, and to gesture at key phase transitions in warfare, he is vague on key details. In particular, there should be more comparison between strong kings and weak kings at the mercy of major dukes, the rise and fall of the condottieri mercenary regiment, the Levée en masse of the French Revolution, and high-tech warfare of the 20th century. I'd point towards McNeill's The Pursuit of Power and Mallett's Mercenaries and the Masters for the first two, I'm not well-versed enough on the French Revolution to talk about the second one, and the third deserves an entire shelf.
Economics is an area that I am less well-versed on than military history, but I was equally dissatisfied with his explanation of capital. Cities and trade networks serve as the engines of capital accumulation, and wealth is linked to military strength as wars became increasingly financed by loans, but there is more there. The good credit of Dutch merchants helped liberate them from Spanish rule as Spain declared bankruptcy several times during the Spanish-Dutch wars, yet the wealthy city-states of Italy declined as powers past the 16th century. There are obvious benefits to being the center of the financial system, as London and New York's dominance show. Yet capital is fluid, transnational, and while states benefit from and caused monetization, capital is distinct from statehood. In particular, more attention should be paid to 'real capital', in the productive qualities of physical objects on the land, against capital that exists on paper and in the beliefs of bankers.
It's not a surprise that someone with my academic pedigree would say this, but Coercion, Capital, and European States could really use more engagement with the biopolitical theories of Foucault. Tilly completely misses the development of disciplinary administrative apparatuses as an element of power, and the circulation of disciplinary techniques between states. The nation-state, which links ethnicity, territory, and administration in a sovereign union, can only be understood from a biopolitical perspective.
The final chapter, on the extension of European style states to the the post-colonial, post-World War II order, and the continued resilience of military elites in the third world, has not aged particularly well. I can't blame someone writing at the fall of the USSR for thinking out loud about states in the 21st century and not capturing the War on Terror, the rise of transnational NGOs as instruments of power, and the concerns about failed and failing states, but this book posits an end to history and fails to see beyond it. And finally, if I were a scholar in this field, I'm not sure how I'd use the ideas here. Plot my state on Capital vs Coercion over time? Draw lines? Postulate moderation as good?