The state made war but war did not make the state

Returning to Hui’s comparison between China and Europe, the paradox pointed out above has not become less after the previous survey. Whereas China, with apparently the same military technology throughout the period, underwent a radical change in political organization, Europe experienced an equally radical change in military technology with surprisingly few changes in political division.

Tilly’s argument about the reduction from 1,000 to 25 states between 990 and 1870 suggests a parallel to, for instance, the likelihood of newborn animals of var­ious species to reach adulthood. Often only a few achieve this, while the rest dis­appear without trace. The analogy therefore suggests that the survival of a state was a rare occurrence, something only the strongest were able to achieve; in other words, that we are dealing with a parallel to Darwin’s survival of the fittest. In the case of European state formation, however, the territory remains the same and the unsuccessful states do not disappear, but become building material for their successful counterparts, in many cases, influencing them considerably and/or retaining much of their own character.

Tilly never specifies exactly what he regards as a state or how he arrives at the numbers respectively of 1,000 and 500, but he clearly regards the various fiefs in which large parts of continental Europe were divided as states.²⁸ There may be some arguments in favour of this, although what characterizes this period is rather a division of authority between the higher and the lower levels. There is no sover­eign state; the king is the highest authority, but his territory includes a number of more or less independent vassals and princes. The Peace Treaty of Westphalia of 1648 is often regarded as the precise date when the European state system came into existence, including the around 400 German territories. Strictly speaking, this is not true; the only formal recognition of this kind in the treaty concerned the independence of the Dutch Republic from Spain. By contrast, the emperor was still regarded as the head of the German principalities, although this superiority had limited practical importance, as had already been the case for centuries.²⁹

An objection may be raised to the thesis about continuity that a kingdom in the twelfth or thirteenth century is not necessarily identical with a state and that the title of the ruler does not necessarily correspond to the importance of his realm. The answer to the former objection is that continued existence over several cen­turies is a fairly strong criterion of statehood. Whatever the limitations in power and efficiency, it shows that more than the will of individual rulers is involved. Concerning the latter objection, we can point to the example of Navarra, which was an independent kingdom until it was joined with France but was insignificant compared to the principalities of Saxony, Brandenburg or Savoy and above all to the Dutch Republic. However, this is an exception and not the rule. Most king­doms were larger and more important than other principalities and the rulers of the most successful of the latter, Brandenburg and Savoy, actually managed to become kings, later (1815) also the Dutch stadholder.

In its main features, the European state system seems to have been formed between the division of the Carolingian Empire and around 1200. At the latter date, there were fifteen kingdoms in Europe: England, Scotland, France, Castile, Aragon, Portugal, Navarra, Sicily, Germany, Poland, Bohemia, Hungary, Den­mark, Norway and Sweden. Only two new kingdoms were added between 1200 and the new kingdoms that emerged after the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806, namely, Prussia (1701) and Sardinia (1720). In addition, both city republics and principalities ruled by princes without the royal title may be regarded as states. In the twelfth century, such units included most of the middle zone from the division of the Carolingian Empire: the Low Countries, Burgundy, Savoy, Provence and the many city republics of northern and central Italy, some of which eventually came to form large territorial units.

Of the fifteen kingdoms in the twelfth century, seven still existed as fully inde­pendent units with their own rulers in 1648, namely, England, France, Castile, Portugal, Denmark, Sweden and Poland, which probably suggests that kingdoms were more likely to survive than units without a king.³⁰ Germany may also be added, as its ruler, the emperor, was of course represented at the conference.

The main example of the importance of marriage is the formation of the Habs­burg Empire.

In contrast to other parts of the world, such as the Arab and Ottoman states and empires, there are relatively few examples in Europe of kingdoms formed by conquest. The Norman kingdoms in Sicily and Southern Italy are one important example and the new principalities in the Baltic area another. In both cases, the conquest was directed at an area where the inhabitants had another religion than Christianity, which made it easier to legitimate the conquest and to recruit soldiers by granting religious privileges.

In the Middle Ages, there was only one possible candidate to carry out the political unification of a country, namely, its lawful ruler, the king. The develop­ment of sovereign states was in most places the result of the victory of the king over the territorial princes, not of an open competition between the princes in which one of them won. In most cases, this was a gradual process, expressed in the formation of legal and political institutions, which will be discussed later. More­over, if we compare the areas controlled by states in 1500 and 1900, instead of the number of states, the picture becomes very different. Most of the 400—500 states were German principalities which existed continually from the late thirteenth century until 1806.³¹ Thus, the size of the typical European state is not 1/400 or 1/500 of the whole continent; most of the twenty-five states in the nineteenth century could trace their origins back to the Middle Ages; the number 400/500 is strictly confined to Germany, with the addition of some Italian units. We are therefore not dealing with an intense competition in which only the fittest sur­vived, but rather with a high probability of survival, not only for relatively strong units but also for units whose ruler could easily walk from one end of his country to the other in less than a day. Thus, the unfittest seem to have been as likely to survive as the fittest.³² States in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were not faced with the alternatives of modernization or extinction. Most old-fashioned and inefficient states continued to exist as before, as can be illustrated by the anecdote about Bismarck when asked what he would do if he knew that the Last Judgement was imminent. He answered that then he would move to Mecklenburg, for there everything happened 200 years after everywhere else. Mecklenburg was Prussia’s neighbour but, despite its inefficiency, continued to exist as an independent prin­cipality until the reorganization of Northern Germany in 1866.

The number of German petty states was reduced to around forty in the early nineteenth century, under Napoleon and at the Congress of Vienna (1814—15), and the rest became subordinated to the larger German Empire in 1870.³³ Thus, there was no significant reduction of the number of states during the most intensive phase of competition between them in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, accom­panied by the greatest changes in military technology and organization. There is no doubt that European states made war, but little to suggest that war made the state, at least not that the actual states owed their existence to war.

This conclusion can be developed further by a comparison with other parts of the world, which underwent a similar technological revolution as Europe, expres­sed in the term Gunpowder Empires. Although beginning their expansion before the arrival of gunpowder, the Ottomans made use of the new technology in their conquest of Constantinople (1453) and Egypt (1517) and greatly increased their empire in the period after 1450, until it included the Balkans as far north as Serbia and Hungary, and the southern and eastern shores of the Mediterranean and Mesopotamia. Further east, the Moghuls invaded India and founded a large empire which remained until the British conquest from the mid-eighteenth century onwards. The different results of the introduction of the same military technology, notably the difference between the dramatic changes that took place in other parts of the world compared to the limited ones in Europe, clearly indicate that other factors must have played an important part.

An all-European empire does not seem to have been a realistic option since the dissolution of the Carolingian Empire. Admittedly, the territory ruled by Charles V (1519—56), comprising Spain with its American possessions, the Low Countries, large parts of Italy and Germany as well as Bohemia and Hungary, would seem to have come close, encircling the other continental great power, France. However, Charles’ empire was too composite and weak financially to have been able to conquer the rest of Europe; his aims were dynastic and largely defensive, and his possessions were divided between his son and his brother after his death. Later attempts, by Napoleon and Hitler, came closer, although in both cases, great powers outside the continent of Western Europe, Britain, Russia and in the latter case, the United States, were able as well as willing to prevent it.

When the most primitive of the four periods was apparently the most successful regarding foreign conquest, while the military revolution had limited consequences, the explanation is clearly not that the former technology was more efficient than the latter. The main explanation lies in the importance of legitimacy and dynastic succes­sion. Territories were not up for grabs by the strongest power; they were subject to dynastic rights and could more easily be won by marriage than by war. With this as the point of departure, let us examine the attitudes of European war leaders and what we may call the rules of the game of medieval and early modern warfare. Why did they fight, what were their aims and to what extent were their actions determined or lim­ited by rules?