‘War makes states’. Do you agree?

Charles Tilly, in his influential argument about state formation stated the famous amorphism
“war made the state, and the state made war.” REF. In essence, Tilly argued that the threat of
war coerced rulers in pre-modern Europe to form standing armies which in turn led to the
centralisation of power and monopolistic claim to the legitimate use of violence.

I argue that the statement, ‘War makes states’ is true to the extent that war is a necessary
factor in imposing the creation of bureaucratic infrastructure and centralising power.
However, war itself is not the sole feature to instigate such political transformation. I argue
that a catalyst for this significant political change is shown, through a neo-Marxist
perspective, to be necessary, whilst the essay will also argue that varying geopolitical and
cultural factors are critical in influencing the centralisation of power and strengthening of
institutional capacity. This essay will further argue the need for certain conditions for war to
strengthen state capacity through a comparative analysis of contemporary wars.

This essay will consider a state through a classical Weberian perspective, to be as state Weber
(1919) “The state is the form of a human community that (successfully) lays claim to the
monopoly of the legitimate use of violence in a given territory.” (p. 33). When considering
the question of state formation this essay, as Tilly lamented, will base its analysis in
considering state-formation as state-transformation. Specifically, as noted by Nexon (2013),
to not conflate Weber’s concept of the modern state with the ‘state’ or to argue under the
falsehood that there exists a moment in which polities transition to ‘statehood’. Rather, it is a
small cumulation of factors that constitute a gradual transition of growing bureaucratic
institutions and centralisation of absolute power.

Charles Tilly supported and rejuvenated ‘bello-centric’ theories of sociology and philosophy,
placing importance in the centrality of public policy, the formative power of war and the
belief in Realpolitik, being the prioritisation of practical rather than ideological considerations
in the analysis of political development (Rodríguez-Franco, 2016). Tilly posited that the
driving force behind state formation was war and the preparation for war. In that the
exogenous threat and existence of war elicited pragmatic changes led by the ruler in order to
best mobilise resources for war (Ertman, 2003). Primarily this involved the creation of
bureaucratic infrastructures that could supply standing armies as well as collect tax from the
population to finance the armies and military advancements. The forced rationalisation of tax
revenues through bureaucratic processes led to the increase in relative state autonomy and
ultimately, the increased central concentration and monopoly of legitimate violence. Leaders
of polities in Europe during the period of emerging patrimonial states were able to, through
increased economic capital, allocate increased funding towards military expenditure and
means of exercising greater control over other rulers (Brewer, 1990). As Thies (2005),
identified, this pattern contributes to the central proposition of the bello-centric theory in state
formation, “that wars are a critical stimulus to centralising power and building institutional
capacity.” (p. 49).

Importantly, this shift from patrimonial rule to bureaucratisation occurred following a number
of changes to warfare and military organisation, labelled the “military revolution” (Spruyt,
2002). Rogers (1995), identifies three, different yet interrelated elements that constitute the
military revolution. First, armed cavalry was supplanted by infantry to form the principal
component of armies. Second, was the introduction of gunpowder and finally, the third
element was the increase in the size of armies. Armies were increasing substantially in size in
early modern Europe but were also changing in their nature, as they became increasingly
professional and permanent. This change occurred both due to the military advancements
occurring at the time and the recurrent need for rulers to engage in armed conflict. The
process of bureaucratisation was thus initiated by a practical need to finance and create the
capacity to accommodate the armies.

Some scholars have raised specific criticism to Tilly’s theory at a micro-level for the seeming
omission of convincing mechanisms to incentivise specific elites and the general population,
both groups acting with agency, into paying tax (Krinsky & Mische, 2013). However, Tilly,
specifically in his later works, addresses the reality that at a micro-level of analysis domestic
coercion alone over the often recalcitrant population would not raise sufficient economic
capital (Boucoyannis, 2015). He adopts similar reasoning to rational choice theory in
explaining that states were forced to enter into reciprocal bargaining relationships with
differing social classes; both in regards to the civilianisation of government, and the nature of
tax (Oppenheimer, 2008). Importantly, particular emphasis is placed on the importance of
bargaining relationships with the capitalist class, to generate independent income streams.
Due to the implausibility of rebuilding institutions made during war time, this process that
created structures and institutions inextricably linked to the war-making activities of the state
rendered the infrastructure permanent (Biggs, 1999). Whilst it may seem implausible that
significant actors would cede power to an emerging state and acknowledge legitimacy
through entering into bargaining relationships, Tilly adopts an analogous argument that the
state, to an extent, operated as an organised racketeering syndicate. Individuals paid tax in
exchange for protection from both the state itself and the wars that the state engaged in,
whilst the state continued to strengthen its economic capital to achieve a monopolistic claim
to violence and economic capital within a territory. Thus, both the state and the elites within
the territory engaged in a relationship that was, to an extent, mutually practical, a condition I
argue to be critical.

Conversely, neo-Marxist conceptions of state-formation, particularly the work of Perry

Anderson, express that the diminishing power of regional actors other than the king and the
subsequent centralisation of power was not due to the process of war as these actors would
not have ceded their power at the earlier stage of the state’s emergence (Gustafsson, 2010).
Whilst, both theories situate the emergence of the state in the decline of feudalism throughout
Europe, the critical difference exists in the cause of this decline. Rather than attributing the
demise of feudalism in the 13th to 15th century to the perpetual armed conflict between the
collection of polities in decentralized Europe; Anderson, posits that the crisis of the Black
death and subsequent political unrest of the peasantry led to the decline in feudalism
(Anderson, 2013). The mass death caused by the plague led to a general distrust of the local
power holders, compelling aristocrats to be loyal to the king; ultimately, leading to the
centralization of power with leaders of absolutist states (Sen, 2017). Critically, Anderson
adopted an econo-centric focus to the emergence of the state, wherein the growth of the state
was due to the transition from feudalism to capitalism, in which, in a new political
environment, a class of secular bourgeoisie replaced traditional monarchical structures and
accumulated power and state protection in conjunction with the state (Teschke, 2005).
However, while this approach identifies a catalyst necessary for political change, it does little
to provide analytical reasoning as to why the state emerged as the dominant political
structure. Whereas, the proclamation that ‘War makes states’ provided pragmatic reasoning
as to why the state was best able to mobilise resources to prepare for wars and thus emerged
as the dominant polity. Thus, Anderson fails to provide a convincing narrative for the
mechanism that caused the emergence of the state, but rather a description of the economic
change. However, it is shown that a catalyst is needed for such substantial political change,
and in the case of pre-modern Europe such catalysts were both the black death and the
ongoing armed conflict.

Some scholars have refuted the fundamental premise of the argument that ‘war makes states’,
being that the warfare led to the consolidation and rational bureaucratisation of European
States (Kaspersen & Strandsbjerg, 2017). Gorski & Sharma (2017) argue that the need for a
standing army does not undermine the patrimonial nature of office in early Modern Europe.
Despite the nature of the institutional relationships between rulers and their armies shifting
from the 13th to the 18th century the patron-client relationship was, unlike modern armies,
based on ties of dependency and patrimonial ruling that constituted a feudal structure
(Adams, 2005). Interestingly, their revisionist analysis found that the military was the last
state institution to be bureaucratised rather than the first. They contest that this rejects the
bellicist view that war forces bureaucratic institutions upon states. The emergence of
bureaucratic institutions is rather traced to the Catholic church, where the gradual spread of
bureaucracy to state governance is argued to both be due to the influence of the church over
Latin Christendom, and the changing of the inheritance laws in Latin Europe. In the 13 th
century partial inheritance laws of Frankish custom led to the continued fracturing of
ownership, eventually exacerbating the crisis of the feudal system. The change of collective
inheritance to primogeniture led to a process of dynastic consolidation, in which the
development of conglomerate polities wherein a male heir legitimately inherited two once
separate polities and the process of increasing ownership caused the consolidation and
centralisation of power in fewer rulers. It is this mechanism of dynastic consolidation which
is argued to be the primary method for the formation of states in Europe.

While this argument provides a convincing narrative as to how changing inheritance laws
decreased the number of polities and aided in the centralisation of power, it does not explain
the reason as to why bureaucratisation spread to state institutions from its ecclesiastical
origin. While the church certainly was influential, I argue that viewing bureaucratisation as a
natural progression from the church distinctly lacks a pragmatic reason as to why both the
church and the ruling elite would pursue the bureaucratisation process. Furthermore, whilst
the military was the last state institution to be bureaucratised, I contest the claim that this
disproves the bello-centric account of war imposing rational bureaucratisation upon polities.
The military, while not subject to explicit bureaucratisation, shifted towards formality and
permanence, and it was this change that forced the creation of other bureaucratic state
institutions prior to the military. However, as bureaucratic institutions originated from the
church, and polities were centralised not just as processes of defeats in combat, it suggests
that the process of state-formation is not as linear as a causal relationship between war
causing states. Rather, one must consider the salient features of specific geopolitical and
cultural factors that are often needed to help consolidate statehood as the natural political
structure to form as a pragmatic reaction from warfare.

The necessity of a specific political environment that will elicit a shift towards statehood
when subject to warfare is visible through a comparative analysis to contemporary third
world states. Tilly’s conjecture has seemingly been proven false outside of Europe by a
number of wars in contemporary third world countries, particularly in Africa and the Middle
East, wherein wars have undermined state capacity and contributed to state-destroying
(McBride et al., 2011). Taylor & Bottea (2008), conducted a comparative study between two
contemporary large wars, being Vietnam (1946-1989) and Afghanistan (1978 - present),
where they found the war in Vietnam to have strengthened state capacity while it was state-
destroying in Afghanistan. The chief condition that caused this variation was the need for a
social and political cohesion in the state prior to the war, in which important features of this
cohesion are ethnic homogeneity and lack of endogenous conflict within society (Sørenson,
2001). Thus, for war to strengthen contemporary states the population must be relatively
unified around a national ideology. While the tendency of war to often weaken core state
institutions in contemporary society may appear to disprove Tilly’s outside pre-modern
Europe, it rather points to the necessity of certain conditions that will naturally vary in
differing geopolitical contexts. In pre-modern Europe, unity around a national identity was
largely formed through war; whereas, in a number of third-world states, war has fractured
society and sparked internal conflict.

To conclude, Tilly makes an effective argument as to why war makes states, through
applying external pressure upon polities to adapt to a political system that best mobilises
resources to be prepared for war. To this extent, I agree with the statement that ‘war makes
states’. However, I argue that war only acts as the primary impetus for the formation of states
but necessitates a certain political environment, not the linear causality implied by Tilly’s
amorphism. In pre-modern Europe, this political environment was caused by the rapid growth
in military advancement that changed the structure of armies and nature of warfare, a number
of destabilising crises for feudalism that allowed for the centralisation of power, and changes
to inheritance laws that contributed to the centralisation of power.

Word Count: 2113

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