War and the Rise of the State

Book excerpt: "In a sweeping study of the West over the last 500 years, Bruce Porter shows the astonishing range of warfare's modernizing effects on states. Warfare unifies, rallies, and bureaucratizes both states and their populaces; warfare triggers nationalism, reform movements, and revolutions. More positively, through its inevitable mobilization of citizenry, war has been a contributing cause of virtually all major social movements and even democracy. Porter examines major civil wars as well as international conflicts, showing how they served as catalysts for the New Monorachies, absolutist states, nation-states, totalitarian states, and contemporary industrial and post-industrial states. Finishing with an examination of the impact on the American state of the Civil War, the two World Wars, and the Cold War, Porter reveals our own paradox: pro-military conservatives denounce big government, forgetting that military might presupposes political power; anti-military liberals embraces to the power of the state to accomplish social ends while hesitating to acknowledge the military origins of that power."--The dust-jacket flaps.