War made the state and the state made peace,’ says Ian Morris, changing Charles Tilly’s famous dictum.1 Morris’ main examples of this are the great empires, particularly the Roman and the Chinese.
There were limits to how much an empire could grow. When the Romans had conquered most of what was then regarded as the civilized world, it was costly and unproductive to attempt to conquer thinly populated countries along the borders.
The great empires created peace by crushing their enemies and then shaped the conditions for an organized and relatively wealthy society, with trade, communications, roads, circuses, baths, books and institutions of learning. Both Rome and China had strong armies, but their aim was to defend the borders, not to extend them.2As we have seen, war did not make the state in Europe but there is no doubt that the state made war. To the extent that war made the state, it was unsuccessful war. The state was not the result of conquest but of continuous mobilization against one or more enemies, which in turn necessitated greater and more professional armies, technological innovation and the development of a professional bureaucracy. This meant that the way to state formation was not to crush rival powers within the borders but to gain their support and use them against external enemies. Although this did not prevent rebellion, civil wars or rivalry between kings and their subjects, there was no way in which a ruler could suppress his population solely by means of military power, not even in the age of absolutism when kings commanded large and professional armies. The following discussion will deal with the various means of a military, legal, administrative, religious and cultural character, by which the European states were built.