Conclusion

Guido Aldeni may sound naive and he was obviously wrong when dismissing the problem of the many kings in Europe to his Chinese hosts. Nevertheless, the kinship between the European rulers was not without importance and the European state system was formed by marriage more than by war, despite the fact that great changes took place in military technology and organization and that most kings spent a greater part of their incomes on war than on any other purpose.

Nor has the importance of war for state formation been dealt with fully in this chapter; it remains to examine its effect on the internal development of the states. Concerning external matters, however, we must conclude that the main phase in the development of the European state system was the period before around 1200, when almost all of the later kingdoms came into existence. Admittedly, a European in the eighteenth century would hardly have found much that was familiar if he or she had been able to return to the thirteenth century. The reason for this, however, is not primarily the division between the states but their internal conditions. Thus, state formation is far more than the division of the continent between a number of kings; laying claims to a particular territory, distinct from that of other kings, was only a first step; the most important was to gain the loyalty and support of its inhabitants, notably the leading ones, whose power might rival that of the king. This process will form the theme of the next part of the book.

Notes

1 Quoted in Tilly, Coercion, p. 128.

2 Diamond, Guns, pp. 180-91; Morris, War, pp. 75-81.

3 For example, Kennedy, Rise and Fall, pp. 17-18 and Ferguson, Civilization, pp. 36-7.

4 Hoffman, Why Did Europe?, pp. 109-12.

5 Hui, War and State Formation, pp. 90-3.

6 Keegan, The Mask of Command, pp. 33-40 and A History of Warfare, pp.

258-73.

7 For this and the following, see Hui, War and State Formation, pp. 50-108 and Fukuyama, The Origins, pp. 98, 110-16.

8 Parker, The Military Revolution, p. 2-3; Hui, War and State Formation, pp. 64-108.

9 Geary, The Myth of Nations, pp. 24-40.

10 These divisions form the basis for Stein Rokkan’s attempt to explain European state formation and the differences between the various countries, which is thought-provoking, although not entirely convincing (Rokkan, ‘Dimensions of State-Formation and Nation-Building’).

11 Bagge, Cross and Scepter, pp. 28-31.

12 Hui, War and State Formation, pp. 109-67.

13 On medieval and early modern warfare, see Verbruggen, The Art of Warfare; Contamine, War in the Middle Ages; Keegan, A History of Warfare, and McNeill, The Pursuit of Power.

14 Bachrach, Warfare in Tenth-Century Germany.

15 Bartlett, The Making of Europe, pp. 65-70.

16 For the following, see Duffy, Ireland, pp. 16-80.

17 For this and the following, see MacKay, Spain in the Middle Ages, pp. 15-78.

18 Cuttino, English Diplomatic Administration, pp. 1-28.

19 Finer, ‘The Role of the Military’, p. 104.

20 Rogers, War Cruel and Sharp pp. 348-84, on the Poitiers campaign.

21 Warner, Joan of Arc, pp. 13-33.

22 Housley, ‘Sanctified Patriotism’, pp. 233-5.

23 Henneman, ‘The Military Class’; Krynen, L'Empire du roi, pp. 296-338.

24 McNeill, The Pursuit of Power, pp. 82-100.

25 Meyer, ‘State, Roads, War’, pp. 110-12.

26 Parker, The Military Revolution, pp. 42-3.

27 For the following, see McNeill, The Pursuit of Power, pp. 79-143 and Kennedy, The Rise and Fall, pp. 31-115.

Tilly, Coercion, p. 45.

Osiander, The State System, pp. 78—9; Wilson, The Holy Roman Empire, pp. 127—8; Croxton, Westphalia, pp. 351—62. See also Nexon, The Struggle for Power, pp. 265—88, who has a similar understanding of the Peace Treaty itself, although attaching greater importance to the Reformation as a factor in state formation than I do.

Blockmans, Power, pp. 66—8; Watts, The Making of Polities, p. 97.

Cf Spruyt, The Sovereign State, p. 157.

Tilly, Coercion, pp. 28 and 65, admits that the development was not regular but does not really discuss the problem of ‘the survival of the unfittest’. By contrast, Spruyt, The Sovereign State, pp. 32—3 and 156—8, quite correctly uses this observation as a counterargument against Tilly’s conclusion.

Tilly, Coercion, p. 45.

Martinez, Furies, pp. 56—64.

Froissart, Chronicles, pp. 143—4.

There is at least an alternative version, according to which Edward did not dine with the king because he was attending to Sir James Audley who had been mortally wounded (Taylor, Chivalry, p. 181).

Froissart, Chronicles, pp. 106—9. Froissart’s source is Jean le Bel who wrote around ten years after the event. The episode has been much discussed by historians. Sumption, Trial by Battle, pp. 581—2 accepts the story. By contrast, Moeglin, ‘Eduard III et les six bourgeois’, pointing to a number of parallel examples, concludes that Edward demanded the public humiliation of the citizens of Calais, not their execution. See also Taylor, Chivalry, p. 198.

Englund, Poltava, pp. 278—9, 339—40.

Contamine, ‘Ransom and Booty’, pp. 190—3.

Keegan, A History of Warfare, pp. 3—12.

Clark, Iron Kingdom, pp. 198—201; Blanning, Frederick the Great, pp. 203—7, 262—3.

For the following, see Lang, Francois I, pp. 340—52.

Guicciardini, History of Italy, pp. 348—67.

Rodriguez-Salgado, ‘The Habsburg-Valois Wars’, p. 383.

Collins, Early Modern France, p. 193.

Bertrand de Born, in Kehew, Lark in the Morning, pp. 144—5.

Hoffman, Why Did Europe?, pp. 21—34.

Rodriguez-Salgado, ‘The Habsburg-Valois Wars’, pp. 377-400.

Clark, Iron Kingdom, pp. 194-5; Blanning, Frederick the Great, p. 185.

According to Blanning, Frederick the Great, p. 281, he was an indifferent general but a brilliant warlord. Other scholars, including Clark, Iron Kingdom, pp. 198-210, have a more positive view of him as a general.

Frederick won around half of the battles he fought during the Seven Years War, which seems quite impressive, considering that in most cases he was numerically inferior.

Osiander, The States System, pp. 49-50.

Parker, The Thirty Years' War; Osiander, The State System, pp. 78-9; Burkhardt, Der Dreissigjährige Krieg, pp. 198-204; Wilson, The Holy Roman Empire, pp. 127-8. See also Nexon, The Struggle for Power, pp. 265-88, who has a similar understanding of the Peace Treaty itself, although attaching greater importance to the Reformation as a factor in state formation than I do.

This was partly the result of the Tories replacing the Whigs in the British government in 1710 but above all of the death of the Austrian emperor and the succession of Charles VI, who was also the candidate to the Spanish throne (1711). Consequently, by supporting Charles’ candidacy, the English risked creating the same situation as they wanted to avoid, the union of Spain with one of the greatest powers on the Continent.

Osiander, The States System, p. 118.

Hui, War and State Formation, pp. 158-9.

Osiander, The States System, p. 38.

57 Ibid., pp. 48—9.

58 See Scales, The Shaping, pp. 526—38, and Wilson, The Holy Roman Empire, pp. 1—15, for a discussion of this.

59 Kissinger, World Order, pp. 59—82, with particular reference to Metternich and Bismarck.

60 Blanning, Frederick the Great, p. 294.

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Source: Bagge Sverre H.. State Formation in Europe, 843-1789: A Divided World. Routledge,2019. — 306 p.. 2019

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