War Did Make States: Revisiting the Bellicist Paradigm

Working Paper.

Charles Tilly’s classical claim that “war made states”in early modern Europe remains controversial. The “bellicist”paradigm has attracted theoretical criticism both within and beyond its original domain of applicability. While several recent studies have analyzed the internal aspects of Tilly’s theory, there have been very few systematic attempts to assess its logic with regard to state expansion. In this paper, we test the bellicist theory directly by aligning historical data on European state borders with conflict data, focusing primarily on the period from 1490 through 1790. Proceeding at the systemic, state and dyadic levels, our analysis confirms that warfare did in fact contribute to the territorial expansion of European states before (and beyond) the French Revolution.

Cederman, Lars-Erik, Luc Girardin, Paola Galano Toro, and Guy Schvitz. 2021. “War Did Make States: Revisiting the Bellicist Paradigm.” Working Paper.

@article{war-did-make-states,
   abstract = {Charles Tilly's classical claim that \textquotedblleft war made states\textquotedblright  in early modern Europe remains controversial. The \textquotedblleft bellicist\textquotedblright  paradigm has attracted theoretical criticism both within and beyond its original domain of applicability. While several recent studies have analyzed the internal aspects of Tilly's theory, there have been very few systematic attempts to assess its logic with regard to state expansion. In this paper, we test the bellicist theory directly by aligning historical data on European state borders with conflict data, focusing primarily on the period from 1490 through 1790.  Proceeding at the systemic, state and dyadic levels, our analysis confirms that warfare did in fact contribute to the territorial expansion of European states before (and beyond) the French Revolution.},
   author = {Cederman, Lars-Erik and Girardin, Luc and Galano Toro, Paola and Schvitz, Guy},
   journal = {Working Paper},
   title = {{War Did Make States: Revisiting the Bellicist Paradigm}},
   year = {2021},
   status = {personal nastac-wp}
}