War Reimagines the State:

the Military Technical Revolution and State-Formation in Early Modern Europe

Stacie E. Goddard

Assistant Professor

Department of Political Science

Wellesley College

233 Pendleton Hall East

Wellesley, MA 02481

(T): 781-228-2204

email:

[e-mail]

Word Count: 10, 938

I thank Fiona Adamson, William Connelly, Patrick Jackson, Paul MacDonald, Daniel Nexon,
Hendrik Spruyt, and especially Consuelo Cruz and Warner R. Schilling for discussions about this
project.

1

This essay recasts both why the military technical revolution was important, as well as

how it influenced the modern European state. First, I argue that the military transformation of the

sixteenth and seventeenth century was not simply a material revolution; it was an ideational

revolution as well. Second, I argue that that the military technical revolution did not only

increase a sovereign’s power or his ability to control territory. Rather the military revolution

reconstructed social relations within the modern state. In particular, the military technical

revolution reorganized societies into populations, conceptualizing social relations as organized

and governed by virtue of their geographic boundaries. In sum, the military technical revolution

reimagined the state, creating a revolutionary social organization, one with no equivalent in

European society. Although confined at first to the battlefield, this organization would ultimately

reorder dynastic governance networks, producing the territorially-organized societies that

underpin the modern state.

2

Introduction

The modern European state was born in war. As Geoffrey Parker notes, “hardly a decade

can be found before 1815 in which at least one battle did not take place” (Parker, 1999: 1). The

early modern period was particularly violent. In the sixteenth century there were only six years

of peace; in the seventeenth, only four. In the wake of the Thirty Years War, the social and

political foundations of the dynastic empires collapsed. By the end of the seventeenth century,

dynastic empires had given way to sovereign territorial states.

1

It is not surprising then that war occupies a central place in theories of state formation.

According to these theories conflict forced sovereigns to exert control across defined territorial

boundaries: in the face of continuous warfare, sovereigns coerced and cajoled resources from

their subjects, and in the process constructed strong, centralized states. At the same time, war

provided sovereigns with increased capacity to define and defend their boundaries. In particular,

from 1400 to 1700 a military technical revolution gave sovereigns new technologies—artillery

and fortifications foremost among them—that they would use to build the modern state.

2

While this traditional story is intuitively convincing, it is also flawed. Many conventional

theories are both functionalist and technologically determinist, casting sovereigns as reacting

unprobematically to objective systemic needs. In truth, however, there was not one “best” way

to respond to conflict and technological change; from the pressures of the Thirty Years War

came myriad institutional forms, creating several pathways to the modern state (Stone, 2004,

Tilly, 1990). Similarly, the historical evidence belies technological reductionism: many new

1

There is a vast literature on state formation, and both the causes of state formation, as well as the dating of the

state’s emergence are contested. For particularly notable examples see Anderson (1974), Bendix (1980), Bonney,
(1991), Downing (1992), Elias (2000), Ertman (1997), Gorski (2003), Mann (1986), Philpott (2001) Poggi (1978,
1990), Spruyt (1994), Strayer (1970), Tilly(1975, 1985, 1990), Wallerstein (1974).

3

technologies, most notably gunpowder, were not as decisive as these theories often assume, and

had little initial effect on state formation and governance.

Most notably, traditional theories fundamentally miscast the process of state formation

itself. State formation was not simply a matter of aggregating power and exerting control over

territory—polities from the Roman Empire onward had accomplished this to great effect, and yet

this process did not create “states” in and of itself. In early modern Europe, sovereigns did not

merely accumulate power; they fundamentally reordered social relations, undermining the

hierarchic, non-territorial networks of dynastic empires and replacing them with “territorially

defined, fixed, and mutually exclusive enclaves of legitimate dominion…unique in human

history” (Ruggie, 1993, p. 151).

3

Although none of these criticisms means that theorists should abandon the military

technical revolution altogether, it does mean that the process should be reconceptualized. To do

so, this essay recasts both why the military technical revolution was important, as well as how it

influenced the modern state. First, I argue that the military transformation of the sixteenth and

seventeenth century was not simply a material revolution; it was an ideational revolution as well.

In particular, military reforms—specifically Maurice of Nassau’s reforms of the Dutch

Army—revolutionized ideas about warfare in three significant ways. First, armies became

spatially organized—soldiers were commanded not by their place in a social network, but by

their position in time and place. Second, the Dutch revolutionized methods of control across

territorial space, using generalizable, transposable laws to coordinate individual movements.

Finally, in the Dutch army one sees the beginnings of rationalized authority, the idea that

2

For examples of these theories that place the military technical revolution at the heart of state-building see Bean

(1973), Black (1991), Downing (1992), Ertman (1997), Herz (1957), McNeill (1992), Parker (1999), Rogers (1993),
Stone (2004), Tilly (1975,1990).

4

legitimate authority flows not through transcendental ties or personal rank, but by implementing

institutional knowledge across a defined and bounded territory (Weber, 1978, Weber, 1978).

Second, I argue that that the military technical revolution did not only increase a

sovereign’s power or his ability to control territory. Rather Dutch reforms reconstructed social

relations within the modern state. In particular, the military technical revolution reorganized

societies into populations, conceptualizing social relations as organized and governed by virtue

of their geographic boundaries (Foucault, 1991, Pasquino, 1991). On the one hand, populations

emerged as a novel object of governance. As John Ruggie argues while people occupied

territory in dynastic states, their territoriality did not define them as an object of governance

(Ruggie, 1993: 149). It was only in the late 17

th

century, that populations replaced dynastic

networks as a unique object of political control, and created clear territorial boundaries between

the inside and outside of states. On the other hand, organizing societies into populations created

new tools of governance: sovereigns could assume that interactions within territorial boundaries

were subject to regular and generalizable laws, and subject to a “science” of politics.

In sum, Dutch innovations created a revolutionary social organization, one with no

equivalent in European society. Although confined at first to the battlefield, this organization

would ultimately reorder dynastic governance networks, producing the territorially-organized

societies that underpin the modern state. To explain how occurred, the paper proceeds as follows.

The first section defines populations, showing how they diverged from pre-modern societies as

an object and method of governance. The next section offers an overview of the military

technical revolution, and explains how Dutch reforms reconfigured social relations within the

military. In the third section, I examine the military model’s diffusion throughout Europe,

3

See also Sack (1986). For a general discussion of the territorial reorganization of societies, see also Bonney (1991),

5

demonstrating how it was that the Dutch organization came to reconstruct social relations within

the modern territorial state. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of this

theory for studies of state formation, technology and political change.

The boundaries of people: defining population politics

It might seem intuitive that as long as societies have occupied territory, they have had the

capacity to view their interactions as geographically bounded—maybe nomadic tribes were not

subject to territorial organization, but for other societies, boundaries appear unproblematic. But

populations are actually a unique socio-political organization, one which was constructed in the

late 17

th

century Europe as a radical departure from earlier polities. The word “population” is

itself a recent neologism, entering standard political discourse only in the eighteenth century

(Pasquino, 1991: 112). More importantly, populations differed from other forms of political

organization in three significant ways.

First, populations emerged in the latter half of the 17

th

century as a novel object of

governance.

4

Well into the 16

th

and early 17

th

centuries, relations between sovereign and subject

reflected a “descending” theory of governance: the objects of sovereign power were the authority

networks that tied dynasts to viceroys to subjects. These networks lacked territorial logic; in

dynastic Europe, sovereigns’ networks overlapped and fragmented territories, creating a

“patchwork of overlapping and incomplete rights of government” (Ruggie, 1983: 274). Even in

areas where sovereigns established exclusive control over territory, geographic boundaries

Duby (1980: 286, Mann (1986), Strayer (1959, 1970), Spruyt 1994: 77) Toulmin (1995: 96-97).

4

For a discussion see Foucault (1991) Bonney (1991:188), Giddens (1987: 35-116_, Pasquino (1991), Toulmin,

(1995: 5-45)Some would date the actual creation of boundaries much earlier, to the late 13

th

and 14

th

centuries. See

e.g., Spruyt (1994, 77) As discussed below, however, the date this paper is interested in is not the moment that
boundaries were created, but when it was those boundaries came to organize social relations spatially.

6

established neither the foundations nor limitations of sovereign power. Sovereignty, rather, was

directed at subjects positioned within dynastic lines.

While people occupied territory in dynastic states, their territoriality did not define them

as an object of governance (Ruggie, 1993: 149). It was only in the late 17

th

century, that

populations replaced dynastic networks as a unique site of political control. To be clear, it is not

simply that populations placed a territorial boundary on human interaction; rather, when people

are organized as a population, they become integrally joined to territory, a particular space over

which political control is exercised. Regardless of whether we are speaking of a population of a

state, a city, or even a room, we are referring to some sort of human collectivity which is defined

by its place: the society is not merely bounded, but actually constructed by its geography.

5

The

boundaries of population have no logic of their own; they are demarcated in terms of their

location. In short, the most notable characteristic of population is that outside of a defined space,

the object cannot exist.

Moreover, populations are not reducible to the human beings that reside a geographic

space. Populations are an object with unique characteristics, whose qualities are far more than

the sum of the individuals living within the territory. As Foucault argues, populations have their

“own regularities, rates of death and diseases, [their] cycles of scarcity…the domain of

population involves a range of intrinsic, aggregate effects, those that are irreducible” (Foucault,

1991: 99). One can describe the characteristics of a population without referring to any specific

individual that resides within that geographic space. The “average age of mortality” need not

correlate to any particular individual, and no one person has 2.5 kids. The characteristics of a

5

For a discussion, see Foucault (1991), Hacking (1990: 6), Mann (1986: 521), Weber, 1978: 901-904).

7

population persist even after its individual members do not—the population of France is

immortal, its individual inhabitants are less so.

Second, populations are distinct in their methods of governance as well. In particular,

once societies were organized as populations, sovereigns could assume their subjects were

relative homogenous across a defined geographic space. Given this homogeneity, sovereigns

could treat individuals within a territory as subject to generalizable and regular laws; governance

could be uniform, and knowledge of a particular individual could be obtained deductively, by

ascertaining that individual’s position within the population as a whole. Such methods were

inconceivable in dynastic polities, where the method of governance adopted vastly different

assumptions about time and space. In dynastic polities governance sovereignty was neither

bounded by nor predicated upon its territorial boundaries.

Authority was executed through

personal ties, not through deductive and regular laws; the governance of each individual,

moreover, was peculiar, “depended upon one’s place in a network of particular ties, not one’s

location in a particular area” (Spruyt 1994: 34).

6

Not even time was treated as homogenous in

dynastic societies. Instead time was embedded in religious cycles that conceived of time as

discontinuous and cyclical. Pre-modern time was marked by repetition and violent rupture, not

homogeneity and continuity.

7

Empires moved cyclically—they rose and fell, they did not

progress. Nor was time the same across geographic space. In one part of Europe—say, the

Caucauses—the Apocalypse might be at hand; in another, the inhabitants were decades away

from the end of days (Koselleck, 2004: 6).

Such discontinuity made it impossible to conceive of

any uniformity within a single polity.

6

See also See also Giddens (1981: 45), Kratochwil (1986), Ruggie (1993: 148).

7

For a good discussion of time in the premodern and modern world, see Koselleck (2004), Bartelson (1995: 111-

121), Walker (1993: 38-47).

8

In contrast, once the body politic could be conceived of as a population, the

characteristics inside a geographic space appeared uniform: differences may exist, but they were

difference in degree, not in kind. The characteristics of individuals, families, and tribes became

“of secondary importance compared to population, as an element internal to population: no

longer, that is to say, a model, but a segment” (Foucault, 1991: 100). With population politics,

individuals are “amorphous and undifferentiated entities who are given an identity simply by

their location in a particular area.” Once populations existed, the modern sovereign state could

govern its subjects through “spatial markers, regardless of kin, tribal affiliation, or religious

beliefs” (Spruyt, 1994: 34-35).

The importance of geographic homogeneity cannot be overstated. It laid the basis for a

rationalized logic of state. Indeed, with populations, what constituted a legitimate sovereign was

revolutionized. Well into the 16

th

and early 17

th

centuries, relations between sovereign and

subject reflected a “descending” theory of governance: vertical authority networks tied dynasts

to individuals, and sovereignty itself was conceived as a set of personal relations between

sovereign and subject. A sovereign’s right to head these networks was ultimately transcendental,

encapsulated within the simultaneously divine and human form of the King (Bendix, 1980, 21-

60, Kantorowicz, 1957).

Dynastic networks gained their legitimacy as representations of the Christian theological

order—as authority descended from God to sovereign, so did it from sovereign to subject, and

thus “all power and authority come from a transcendental sphere above, and the social body is a

passive recipient animating force” (Bartelson, 1995: 101, Hacking, 1975: 24). Even the

Reformation failed to undermine these concepts of authority. Although the Catholic Church’s

authority to establish this order was challenged in the 16

th

century, first by Protestant sects, then

9

by the humanists, the method of establishing the legitimacy remained the same. Whether the

final arbiter was the Pope, the scripture, or “a Lycergus, a Moses, a King Utopus,” sovereign

legitimacy was not territorial, but depended upon the individuals’ position (Bartelson, 1995:

100).

With populations, governance became tied not to the position of a sovereign within a

network of dynastic ties, but to the uncovering of universal and regular laws. Simply put, with

populations came the possibility of rational authority.

8

Authority came not from personal status

or position, but through one’s ability to implement a set of generalizable laws applicable to the

whole of the state. In essence, the governance of populations is exceedingly rational: knowledge

is not particularistic, and authority is found in universal laws, not in the person of the monarch.

9

In sum, it was only in the late 17

th

and early 18

th

centuries that populations emerged as a

unique object of governance. Although before this one could refer to a “body politic,” this polis

was not uniform across space, could not be known through universal laws and propositions, and

most importantly, had no inherent association with territorial boundaries. Populations in contrast

organized power over territory and individuals in reference to each other—the governance of

subject and space became conceptually combined.

Theorists have long recognized populations as a unique product of state formation.

Michael Mann argues, for instance, that for modern states “the main reorganizing force of

political power…concerns the geographic infrastructure of human societies, especially their

boundedness” (1986: 521). Similarly, Hendrik Spruyt maintains that maintains that in contrast to

other polities, the sovereign state is “an organization that is territorially defined”; whereas

8

Weber (1978)

9

For the preeminent discussion of rationalization, see Weber (1978). See also Foucault (1977, 1971) and Toulmin

(1995).

10

medieval systems were based on “personal ties conferring rights and obligations”, the sovereign

state organizes and governs its society territorially (1994: 77).

10

Despite these observations, scholars do not explain how these social relations came to be

territorially organized. More often than not, theorists see populations as an unproblematic result

of territorial consolidation: once a monarch centralized power over territory, it was inevitable

that social relations would be spatially organized. Yet history suggests this process was not so

simple: aggregated power did not in and of itself reconstruct social relations as populations.

Even once territory was consolidated, dynastic sovereigns continued to exert their authority

through descending and personal ties with subjects: individuals were governed on the basis of

their positions within these ties, and not by their location in a particular geographic space.

Dynastic ties, moreover, continued to overlap and fragment territories, and thus sustained the

parcelized sovereignty which had characterized medieval forms of political organization

(Giddens, 1987: 93, Toulmin, 1995: 96).

Territorially-organized poulations were thus not simply a byproduct of territorial

consolidation or increased sovereign power. Rather, this essay argues that it was the military

technical revolution—and particularly the reforms of Maurice of Nassau in the late 16

th

century—that produced this novel organization. The military, of course, was not the only source

of this change. For instance the Reformation introduced ideas that undermined dynastic

sovereignty and created space for populations to emerge.

11

Similarly, one cannot understand

populations politics without the ideas of the Enlightenment. The rationalist revolution from the

sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries not only challenged the theological order, but legitimized

novel political organizations, providing a foundation for the impersonal control of human beings

10

See also Bonney (1991); Duby (1980); Mann 1986; Strayer (1959), Strayer (1970).

11

Yet the military revolution had an autonomous and significant impact on the emergence

of populations in early modern Europe. As an organization, the military introduced the idea that

people could be spatially defined and bounded, and that they were governed by universal laws.

It was within European militaries then—specifically in the Dutch armies of Maurice of

Nassau—that the foundations of population politics emerged in the late sixteenth century.

The Military Technical Revolution revisited

From 1400 to 1700, Europe witnessed dramatic changes in the conduct of war.

12

This

“military revolution”—a term Michael Roberts coined in a now famous lecture—was not one

event, but a series of transformations in strategy, technology, tactics, and organization (Parker,

1976, Roberts, 1956). From 1400 to 1600, for example, early modern armies underwent an

infantry revolution: foot infantry came to displace the armoured knight who had dominated

warfare in the Middle Ages (Brodie, 1973, Contamine, 1984, McNeill, 1982, Oman, 1937,

Rogers, 1993, Smail, 1956).

Infantry, armed with pike, halberd, and bow, were charged with

shielding the knight, using “a tight formation ‘like a great wall’ of pole-arms and crossbowmen,”

to protect the heavy cavalry as it prepared for its charge (Rogers, 1993: 245). The battle itself

turned on single combat between these men-at-arms, and not the clash of infantry. In contrast,

from the early fifteenth century onward, infantry—first archers and pikemen, and then

musketeers—would displace heavy cavalry in the armies of Europe.

Along with this infantry revolution came a technological revolution, manifested in

improvements in artillery and fortification. Advances in gunpowder, design, and metallurgy

11

Bendix (1980), Gorski (2003), Philpott (2001), Philpott (2000).

12

On the military technical revolution, see e.g., Black (1991), Downing (1992), Feld (1975), Feld (1975), Hale

(1985), Lynn (1985), Lynn (1991), McNeill (1982), Parker (1976), Parker (1999), Paul (2004), Roberts (1956),

12

made artillery seemingly unstoppable. From 1449 to 1450 the French destroyed 60 castles, for

example, depriving the English of their territorial claims. In 1494, Charles VIII artillery

demolished the fortifications of the Italian states, prompting Machiavelli to state that “No wall

exists, however thick, that artillery cannot destroy in a few days” (Parker, 1999: 10). These

offensive technological advances, however, were quickly matched by improvements in

fortifications. In the sixteenth century, the Italians—constantly harassed by siege

warfare—developed the trace italienne, a “circuit of low thick walls punctuated by quadrilateral

bastions” (Parker, 1976: 203). So effective were these fortifications that when a town was

protected, it could only be “encircled and starved into surrender” (Hale, 1965, Parker, 1976:

204). The system of fortifications soon spread to battlegrounds in the Low Countries, Spain, and

to France, where Vauban perfected their design in the 17

th

century.

13

Historians have long argued that that these innovations revolutionized European warfare

and ensured Europe’s global dominance as a military power well into the twentieth century

(McNeill, 1982, McNeill, 1992, Parker, 1999). These military innovations shaped not only the

modern battlefield; they “decisively influenced (but were also influenced by) the development of

the modern state” (Giddens, 1987: 105). Many scholars, for example, argue that the military

revolution underlies the very existence of the modern territorial state: while innovations in

artillery gave sovereigns the offensive power to consolidate their realms, improvements in

fortifications allowed monarchs to then defend their established boundaries.

14

The military

revolution shaped state institutions as well. In order to raise infantry and provide new

technology, states were forced to either levy voluntary taxes or coerce resources from their

Rogers (1993), Stone (2004). There is substantial dispute over both about when the revolution began and ended, as
well as which advancements actually qualify as revolutionary.

13

See e.g., Duffy (1979), Hale (1965), Parker (1976).

13

societies (Ertman, 1997, Tilly, 1990). As a result, military innovations prompted not only the

centralization but the bureaucratization of states. Others contend that the revolution in military

affairs even determined regime type, determining whether constitutional or authoritarian

governments would prevail in the developing state (Downing, 1992, Rogers, 1993).

Certainly these are plausible accounts of state formation, and many of the arguments

advanced above are both theoretically nuanced and empirically convincing. But these accounts

are also limited. On the one hand, as argued above, many military historians have been

rightfully criticized for relying too heavily on technology as a singular motor of change

(Downing, 1992: 63, Stone, 2004). As argued below, however, while technology may have been

a catalyst, its effects are overstated: without novel ideas about how to reorganize the

military—ideas themselves that emerged from existing cultural and social relations—political

change would have been unlikely. In most of these studies, moreover, the effects of the military

revolution are a function of increased state capacity and power: it is by strengthening sovereign

power that innovation created the modern state. increased capacity is only one of the

mechanisms through which innovation influenced the modern state. It is not just that innovation

increased a sovereign’s ability to govern; by introducing novel forms of political and social

organization, the military revolution created new objects and methods of governance as well.

For example, Clifford Rogers credits the rise of the infantry as a force of

democratization; as mere commoners seized power on the battlefield, so too did they demand it

from the state (Rogers, 1993). Similarly, M.D. Feld argues that it was the military revolution

that produced the first modern industrial system, a means of efficiently and rationally ordering

individuals across time and space (Feld, 1975). More broadly, Michel Foucault saw within

14

Parker argues, for example, that much of the military revolution is sparked by the “tension between offensive and

defensive techniques.” (1999: 7).

14

militaries a “fundamental means of preventing civil disorder….The classical age saw the birth of

the meticulous military and political tactics by which the control of bodies and individual forces

was exercised within states” (Foucault, 1977: 168). Perhaps most famously, Max Weber argued

that “the varying impact of discipline on the conduct of war has had even greater effects upon the

political and social order,” prompting social organizations ranging from “patriarchal kinship

among the Zulus” to Swiss democracy (Weber, 1978: 1152).

Like these studies, this paper argues that the military revolution not only increased a

sovereign’s capacity to govern, but introduced radically reorganized social relations. It was

within armies, and in the Dutch Army in particular, that territorially-governed institutions were

first developed. So powerful was this organizing principle that it would become the model not

only for European militaries, but for population politics in the larger sovereign state.

The military revolution and organizational change

Early modern Europe witnessed a revolution not only in technology, but in the doctrine

and organization of its armies as well, many of which were developed in the Dutch Army of

Maurice of Nassau.

15

Faced with unrelenting war with Spain’s massive forces, Maurice, along

with his cousin William Louis of Nassau and colleague Simon Stevin, implemented three

innovations. First, Maurice and William Louis formulated the doctrine that would finally make

firepower effective on the battlefield. The technological advances of firepower—and in

particular, the effects of infantry weapons such as the arquebus and the musket—are often

15

For a general overview of Maurice of Nassau and his innovations, see Feld (1975), Gorski (1993: 72-75), Lynn

(1985: 179-188), McNeill (1982: 126-128) Parker (1976, 1999: 18-24), Paul (2004), Roberts (1956), Weber 1978).

15

exaggerated.

16

When first introduced, guns were hardly a technological improvement over the

crossbows and long-bows of the European armies. A good musketeer could only shoot one round

every three minutes, as compared with a longbow’s thirty arrows in three minutes. Plagued by

low velocity and accuracy, the musketeer had very little chance of taking out a horse, much less

the armored knight. As a result, these weapons’ battlefield effects were more psychological than

material (Brodie, 1973: 43). Yet sovereigns and commanders had economic if not technological

reasons to prefer guns to bows. Not only were these weapons cheaper to make than crossbows

and longbows, training infantry to fire them effectively was far simpler. A good archer took a

lifetime to train; a decent gunner could be produced in a few months or even a few days

(Guilmartin, 1974, Parker, 1999: 17).

In order to improve the rate of fire, Maurice introduced the countermarch (McNeill,

1982: 129, Parker, 1999: 19-21).On the face of it the countermarch is quite simple: it is a

maneuver in which the front line of a formation fires and then marches to the rear to reload,

allowing the next line to advance and fire (in Maurice’s army, lines were approximately six deep,

enough to allow for a continuous rate of fire).

17

The introduction of countermarch, however,

increased not only firepower but affected battlefield mobility and tactics. As Parker describes,

Middle Age battlefields were extremely narrow. Often they measured no more than a mile or so

across, and could have upwards of ten of thousands of troops packed into this small space (the

fighting at Agincourt is a typical example of this formation) (Keegan, 1983: 78-91, Parker, 1999:

19-20). Within this space, there was very little room for mobility. Maurice and his cousin

quickly realized that soldiers could not possible load and fire when packed so deeply. To

16

For an argument that overstates the effect of gunpowder, see Bean (1973). For criticisms of this argument, see

Tilly (1985) and Downing, (1992: 63).

16

implement countermarch tactics, it became necessary to spread out one’s armies, “both to

maximize the effect of outgoing fire and to minimize the target for incoming fire” (Parker, 1999:

19). Accomplishing this, however, meant commanders had to discern how to control countless

individuals scattered across a defined territorial space.

Second, the Dutch introduced a systematic doctrine which refined strategies used to

defend against sieges, as well as to attack fortresses. On the one hand, Maurice developed

unique tactics to siege Spanish fortresses, a doctrine that emphasized not the gun but the spade.

As McNeill argues, “Digging had not been much emphasized by European armies before his

time.” Yet it was through “digging ditches and erecting ramparts” that Maurice protected his

army’s outer perimeter and shielded his sieging army from casualties (McNeill, 1982: 128). On

the other hand, Maurice worked to strengthen his own fortifications as well. With comparatively

large Spanish garrisons threatening their borders, the Dutch had no choice but to embark upon a

costly fortification program, designed not only to reinforce the Dutch strongholds, but to

accommodate much larger garrisons than had been deployed in the past (Israel, 1995: 262-263,

Parker, 1976, esp. 208; c.f., Kingra, 1993). To advance fortification techniques, Maurice and

Stevin composed textbooks on siege warfare, and appointed a chair of surveying and fortification

at Leiden University (Duffy, 1979: 81).

Neither Maurice’s emphasis on firepower or fortification signaled a technological

advance in European warfare. As noted above, each of these technologies were found across

Europe well before Maurice adopted his innovations in the late 16

th

and early 17

th

centuries. Yet

the Dutch innovation was twofold. First, while the technology might not have been unique, ideas

about how to use technology were radical. As Feld argues, the Dutch system “broke with the

17

Parker argues that until the musket increased in accuracy, the countermarch was of limited value. (Hale, 1965,

17

past in both ideology and technique” (Feld, 1975: 427). For instance it spread soldiers out on

the battlefield, exposing lesser-born infantry to the hand-to-hand conflict once reserved for

nobility. Maurice’s doctrine also placed spades in the hands of soldiers at a time when taking

“refuge behind a wall by burrowing in a ditch carried a taint of cowardice…” (McNeill, 1982:

128).

It was these new doctrinal demands that drove Maurice’s third and perhaps most

important innovation: the development of drill and discipline, both on the battlefield and in the

barracks.

18

Certainly discipline and training were not entirely absent from other European

armies; commanders had long understood that soldiers must be taught new tactics. Yet as Lynn

notes, training was a one-shot ordeal that “went no further than teaching weapons-handling and

combat technique, and once troops had mastered their weapons…their training was considered to

be complete” (Lynn, 1985: 187, McNeill, 1982: 126). Moreover, there was little if any emphasis

on obedience in battle; once in combat, soldiers were free to act as an unguided mass (Feld,

1975: 435, Lynn, 1985, p 188, McNeill, 1982: 123).

If Maurice’s doctrine was to be effective, however, soldiers must not only be trained, but

constantly drilled. To implement the complicated countermarch and to do so under fire required

practice and discipline: if firepower were to be constant, soldiers must move “simultaneously and

in rhythm”; to disperse troops across the battlefield meant that soldiers must be taught to hold

fast, and not flee the battlefield (McNeill, 1982: 129). To secure these outcomes, Dutch troops

spent the majority of their time drilling, practicing fire and maneuver. Moreover, for the

Parker, 1976).

18

For a discussion of the Dutch army and discipline, see Feld (1975), Gorski (2003: 72-75), Gorski (1993: 282),

Lynn (1985: 187-189), McNeill (1982: 126-130), Parker (1976: 198-202), Parker (1999: 20-21), Paul (2004), Rogers
(1993).

18

countermarch to succeed actions had to be uniform across space as well: each individual action

must fit securely into a larger spatially defined system.

All of this allowed Maurice’s army to move “nimbly on a battlefield, acting

independently yet in coordination with each other…”(McNeill, 1982: 130). Drill was required

not only for battle but for fortification as well. Between 1588 and 1607, the Dutch standing army

nearly tripled in size. This army was stationed in the cities of its homeland at a time when most

states’ armies “were to be found anywhere except in the country for which they were presumably

fighting. Most princes were anxious to keep armies away from their garrisons at all cost”

(Brodie, 1973: 76). The Dutch, forced to keep their army stationed at home, had to face the

problem of governing their soldiers in urban, civilian environments. To control these armies,

Dutch commanders implemented reforms that emphasized territorial control and surveillance, in

order to “protect civil society through tighter discipline…” (Israel, 1995: 268). Drills, parade,

and maneuver were employed to keep the soldiers occupied while stationed within the cities.

In sum, Maurice revolutionized the doctrine and discipline of European armies. Certainly

each of these innovations increased a sovereign’s material power. With the countermarch, for

example, musketeers became infinitely more effective in battle, able to sustain a rate of fire

unseen in previous armies. As a result of Dutch innovations, moreover, infantry became all the

more dominant in battle: not only were musketeers more lethal, the illustrated drill manual meant

infantry could be trained more quickly and uniformly than ever before. Finally, drill and

discipline allowed states to manage their rapidly expanding armies, and even keep soldiers

standing while at home.

But ultimately neither the cause of Maurice’s reforms nor their effects on state formation

can be reduced to increased material power. They also introduced novel modes of social

19

organization that would diffuse to civil society, reconfiguring hierarchical social relations into

territorially-bounded populations. First, under Maurice of Nassau, soldiers shifted from being

commanded by their place in a social network, to being controlled through their position in time

and place. Second the Dutch revolutionized the methods of control across space, using universal

laws to coordinate individual movements across territory. Finally, in the Dutch army one sees

the beginnings of rationalized authority, the idea that legitimate authority flows not through

transcendental ties or personal rank, but through implementing institutional knowledge across a

defined and bounded geographic space (Weber, 1978: 1149-1156).

Dutch reforms and objects of governance: a territorially defined army. First, Dutch reforms

reconfigured the military as an object of governance. Before Dutch innovations, European

armies reflected the social structure of medieval society. Like the broader society in which they

were embedded, militaries were organized into hierarchal, descending aristocratic networks.

Central to these networks was the knight, who provided military service to a sovereign in

exchange for lands held in fief: military command, thus, directly reflected networks of political

governance. It was these social networks that governed actions on the battlefield. At the core of

warfare was the clash between knights. Men-at-arms would seek each other out those at

corresponding rank as the object of close combat; to fight with individuals of any less position

was ignoble.

19

Dutch reforms, in contrast, eliminated hierarchical networks. Much of this social reform

was prompted by the infantry revolution. To be clear, it is not that Maurice invented the infantry,

or demonstrated its dominance over heavy cavalry. Signs of the infantry revolution came in the

20

fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, as pike-and-bow armed infantry inflicted significant defeat

upon better-armed knights. For example, at Courtrai (1302), Flemish infantry lured knights into

a geographic trap, using their pikes to slaughter thousands of French men-at-arms. The English

knights faced a similar defeat at Bannockburn (1314), at the hands of the Scottish pikemen, and

at Crecy (1346) and Agincourt (1415) dismounted English knights joined an infantry armed with

pikes and longbows to defeat a vastly superior French force (Keegan, 1983: 78-116, Rogers,

1993, Stone, 2004, Verbruggen, 1977: 223-243). As a result of these defeats, infantry moved to

the center of European armed forces. In the Spanish Army formed tercios, formations of

pikemen and musketeers, dominated the Italian campaigns. In England, archers armed with

longbows decimated charging men-at-arms. Even in France, where entrenched aristocratic

networks strongly resisted the rise of the infantry, the French came to rely heavily on their

mercenary Swiss infantry, particularly during the Italian campaign (Lynn, 1985, p 178).

What differentiates the Dutch military from others is not the use of infantry, but rather its

integration of infantry and other arms as a coherent object. Although infantry dominated the

armies of early modern Europe, these soldiers existed outside of defining social networks:

armies, thus, were not treated as an integrated social unit. In some militaries, infantry was

simply the disinherited and otherwise useless members of society (Rogers, 1993, Stone, 2004).

As a result, commanders gave little thought as to how to command infantry: it was an

undifferentiated mass that would operate beside the knights on the battlefield. As infantry

became more significant, this created fissures within the armies’ social organization, so much so

that “European rulers’ initial response to this dilemma had been to hire foreign mercenaries for

infantry service…”(McNeill, 1982: 135). Far from integrating infantry into standing social

19

For a description of the social order and the role of the knight, see Duby (1980), Feld (1975), Howard (2001: 1-

21

networks, by using mercenaries commanders ensured hierarchic social networks would be

protected even as the infantry became dominant on the battlefield.

In contrast, Maurice and his colleagues reordered military relations, breaking down

extant social relations and creating an army that was a coherent and homogenous social form

(Feld, 1975, Weber, 1978: 1152). It is perhaps not surprising that it was the Dutch Army, and not

some other European state, that rejected hierarchical social relations as the basis of their military

organization. The Dutch in many ways were the first non-aristocratic society, having had most

of their nobility (save William of Orange) side with the Hapsburgs at the beginning of their

eighty-year revolt with Spain. The spread of Calvinism, too, encouraged a relative pluralism in

Dutch society, and a recognition that governance could and should be directed at individuals

outside of traditional authority networks (Gorski, 2003, Gorski, 1993).

But Maurice’s army did not simply reflect Dutch society. As Feld argues, his military’s

organization “was a new kind of armed force….without a corresponding social base. The modes

of relationship which characterized the operations of the Dutch army were without analogues in

the urban and rural communities of the Northern Netherlands” (Feld, 1975: 433, Weber, 1978:

1152). In particular, Dutch armies “operated within a spatial framework;” Maurice’s army was

now an object with a unique geographic infrastructure. One now commanded individuals, not

according to their position within aristocratic social relations, but rather by their position across a

defined piece of territory (Feld, 1975: 433, McNeill, 1982: 131). The object of governance

moved from the knight and his network to command an entire army, now approaching tens of

thousands, dispersed throughout the battlefield. So for example, what any individual was

supposed to do during a countermarch depended on where and when he was positioned on the

19), Keegan (1983, esp. p 98), McNeill (1982: 135-136).

22

battlefield, not on his individual characteristics or social relations. It is this space, then, that

became the object of governance. An individual soldier—be he noble or not—was reduced to an

element within this geographic system. Its individual characteristics or social relations “are no

longer the principal variables that defines it…The soldier is above all a fragment of mobile

space, before he is courage or honor” (Foucault, 1977: 164).

Fortifications and military encampments, moreover, heightened the conception of a

military as intricately tied to a bounded geographic space. Under Maurice, new styles of military

encampment were introduced; these “took the form of a square, within which each soldier was

assigned an exact space” (Gorski, 1993). By precisely dispersing soldiers across a defined space,

commanders could maximize territorial authority. Fortifications, too, reinforced ideas of

bounded space. Not only were soldiers often confined to their walls, it was these fortifications,

as argued below, that would come to delineate the boundaries not only of militaries, but of the

entire territorial state (Duffy, 1979, Kingra, 1993, Sahlins, 1990).

Thus, by obliterating social relations and replacing these networks with spatial relations,

Maurice introduced a fundamentally new organization into politics. It is not only that networks

ceased to exist as the target of command on the battlefield; the military itself became its own

autonomous object, not reducible to the characteristics of the knights, or any particular individual

for that matter. Maurice’s army was instead an “articulated organism with a central nervous

system that allowed sensitive and more or less intelligent response” (McNeill, 1982: 133).

Methods of Control. Second, Dutch innovations altered methods of control as well, creating a

system of disciplinary laws that could be applied to any individual soldier, regardless of his place

within a social network. Theorists have long credited Maurice and his colleagues as introducing

23

discipline and training into military relations. This argument is slightly mis-specified—soldiers

of all European armies had always been subject to some sort of coercion and training. The Dutch

methods of discipline, however, were radical for two reasons. First, Maurice’s laws were

universal, applicable across time and space. In previous social organizations, conceiving of

universal laws was simply impossible. As long as militaries were composed of heterogeneous

networks, then control over the battlefield was stochastic: the rules governing battle were the

same as those guiding broader social relations, based entirely on one’s position within a social

network. During battle, infantry were not commanded as objects; rather “the disinherited sought

the closest approximation to and imitation of the singularly endowed lord” (Feld, 1975: 435).

In contrast, once hierarchical networks were obliterated within the military, Maurice’s

soldiers appeared as a homogenous unit. As a result, this military could be controlled and

disciplined through a universal system of law. Complex maneuvers, for example, could be

governed through standardized rules. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, Count John II

of Nassau began to break down military operations into their component parts, having them

illustrated so they could be replicated exactly across the field—there were thirty-two positions

for a pike, for example, and forty-two steps to properly load and fire a musket (Parker, 1976:

202). Maurice also regularized marching, creating a “well-choreographed military ballet” which

“permitted a carefully drilled unit to deliver a series of volleys in rapid succession…”(McNeill,

1982: 129). In 1599, Maurice even called for the standardization of weapons: a charge that

might seem unremarkable in industrial society, but was revolutionary in a world where weapons

were still art, each crafted for a specific individual, and deliberately unique in its form (Brodie,

1973: 48-49).

24

Second, as universal laws expanded, a soldier became defined not by his social position

or his individual qualities, but by “his ability to respond precisely to the instructions of his

supervisor” (Feld, 1975: 424). Moreover, it was assumed that individuals could be taught these

laws, that the qualities of a good soldier were to be found in these standardized rules, and not in

the character of the man himself. Again, this stands in stark contrast to prevailing social

relations, in which one’s abilities were a function of one’s social relations. The knight’s own

martial qualities, for example, were believed to be inherited through his network position, and no

other individual could learn to conduct the business of battle (Brodie, 1973: 30, Foucault, 1977:

135, Howard, 2001: 1-19, McNeill, 1982: 132, 172).

In the Dutch army, in contrast, the soldier became “something that can be made”

(Foucault, 1977: 135). Drill manuals could teach men to be soldiers, by explaining how

collectivities of soldiers must be organized in various geographic locations in order to coordinate

movement and maximize fire. It was under the Nassaus that higher military education was born,

beginning first in 1600 with the chair of fortification at Leiden, coming to its apex in 1617 when

John of Nassau “founded the first military academy from which student could receive ‘the first

systematic military education of modern times” (Paul, 2004, p. 34).

20

In sum, the Dutch revolutionized methods of control across territorial space. The

“artificial community of well-drilled platoons and companies could and did very swiftly replace

the customary hierarchies…that had given European society its form…”(McNeill, 1982: 132).

The characteristics of individuals and their existing social relations was secondary: what a

soldier was ordered to do now depended upon his position at a particular time and in a particular

space.

20

See also See also Lynn (1985: 180), Parker (1999: 21).

25

Legitimating command: the rationalization of social control. Finally, with this new political

organization came a new foundation for legitimating control as well. In dynastic armies, the

authority to command was a function of social status, of one’s position within hierarchic

networks. Officers were drawn entirely from the nobility, and one’s right to command was

legitimated in the name of one’s sovereign or other transcendental authority. Not surprisingly,

noblemen resented, even refused, to take orders from soldiers of lower social rank. Indeed, as

demonstrated at Agincourt, knights believed that engaging with men outside of aristocratic

networks was strictly illegitimate: even as English infantry decimated French knights, these men-

at-arms would not break the norms governing appropriate military conduct.

21

Legitimate governance of the military directly mirrored legitimate sovereignty in

dynastic Europe. In Maurice’s army, in contrast, one sees the beginnings of a rationalization of

authority (Weber 1978: 1149-1152, Feld, 1975; Feld, 1975). Commanders were chosen and

judged not on their social status, but by their ability to implement a set of defined, rational laws.

Maurice himself, for example, may have been a commander, but he was not a monarch, and

William of Orange showed unheard of restraint in his dealings with the Dutch military. Marks of

status and personal prestige no longer guaranteed military acclaim. The Dutch military officer,

thus became “primarily a technocrat…not an aristocrat backed by tradition and a social apparatus

that made his very presence the focal point and model for the behavior of members of the lower

orders” (Feld, 1975). His authority came not from who he was, but from what he knew.

This rationalization argument should not be overstated. The Dutch Army was not a

complete bastion of democracy and meritocracy, where any derelict could rise to command.

26

Social status continued to have its privileges and throughout Europe, the aristocracy would

dominate most armies into the early twentieth century. But when compared to other militaries,

and indeed other European social organizations, the Dutch model was indeed revolutionary,

marrying legitimacy to rational knowledge, the ability to implement appropriate laws and

commands, and not merely in social status. So revolutionary was this concept that McNeill

claims it the creation of a “New Leviathan—half inadvertently perhaps” that “was certainly one

of the major achievements of the seventeenth century, as remarkable in its way as the birth of

modern science or any of the other breakthroughs of that age” (McNeill, 1982: 133).

In sum, Maurice’s innovations created a revolutionary social organization, one with no

equivalent in European society. As an organization, the military now appeared spatially defined

and bounded, was governed by universal laws, and if not fully rationalized, at least appealing to

knowledge as the basis for legitimate command. It was this model, ultimately, that would

provide the basis for European population politics.

From battlefield to town square: the military and population politics

As a military organization the Dutch model diffused quickly throughout European

society. As John Lynn argues, Maurice made the Netherlands “the military college of Europe,”

with French, English, Swedish, and Prussian officers among those that frequented the Low

Countries (Lynn, 1985: 180). Indeed, Gustavus Adolphus and Friedrich Wilhelm were among

the great sovereign/commanders educated in Dutch military techniques (Feld, 1975, Israel, 1995:

370). But Maurice’s novel social organization penetrated not only European militaries; it greatly

influenced modes of governance within the modern state. In particular, I argue that the military

21

For a description, see Rogers (1993: 245-347). See also Contamine (1984), McNeill (1982), Smail (1956),

27

revolution provided the quintessential model of population politics. To be clear, this paper does

not contend that it was only the military revolution that structured population politics.

Monarchs, for example, drew lessons from Roman models of sovereignty in organizing control

over territory (Bartelson, 1995: 115, Spruyt, 1994). Merchant networks also undermined

hierarchical institutions, and with the growth of the market came ideas of personal property and

defined space which undoubtedly influenced territorial organizations. Enlightenment

philosophy, likewise, radically affected conceptions of sovereignty, providing new models of

legitimacy and governance in European affairs (Bonney, 1991, Israel, 1995: 571, Toulmin, 1995:

71-79).

But what the military revolution did do was provide a concrete model of population

politics, one that sovereigns could employ not only within their militaries, but to govern their

subjects. This diffusion is hardly surprising; the Dutch organization “created more effective

instruments of policy than the world had ever seen before” (McNeill, 1982: 132). Given that

many monarchs were also military commanders, moreover, it was even more likely that

institutions would replicate across fields: that institutions found effective in organizing one set of

people—the army—would be readily adapted throughout the larger state.

In particular, the Dutch military organization introduced three elements into state

organizations, elements that form the core of population politics. First, the military model

constructed social relations into a novel object of governance, one which was territorially bound

and homogenous within those boundaries. On the one hand, Dutch reforms quite literally bound

societies through the spread of fortifications, which were designed to protect official boundaries.

The spatial organization of subjects began first at the micro-level, within Dutch cities (Israel,

Verbruggen (1977). For a description of a knights’ refusal to fight with infantry, see Keegan (1983, esp. p 98).

28

1995: 677-678). Newly built fortifications offered a double advantage: designed for territorial

surveillance and control outside of the fortresses, their architecture could also enhance authority

and surveillance within the fortification as well. At the national level, populations were made

concrete through the construction of fortified boundaries (Duffy, 1979, Gottmann, 1944, Kingra,

1993, Parker, 1999: 24-33). Throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, emerging states

sought to reinforce their boundaries through improved fortifications. What was novel about this

process were not the fortifications themselves—powers had long protected themselves by

reinforcing their boundaries—but the idea that these fortified boundaries now marked a finite

reach of a sovereign power. With the spread of fortifications came the idea that sovereignty over

subjects operated not through overlapping networks, but within a geographically defined,

contained, and territorially exclusive space.

For example, Sahlins argued the vision of people demarcated in a bounded and unified

space dominated Vauban’s idea of a French “iron frontier,” an official boundary of the

population demarcated by impenetrable fortresses. In developing his idea, Vauban dismissed

prior patterns of overlapping jurisdictions, noting that “This confusion of enemy and friendly

fortresses mixing together does not please me at all.” Instead, Vauban advocated a firm,

exclusive linear organization of boundaries, one which “suggests that the French crown was

beginning to consider its territory a bounded unity and enclosed space” (Sahlins, 1990: 1434).

As territory was increasingly conceived of as a bounded space, so too were populations

seen as defined by those boundaries— people within a given territory were seen as homogenous,

and qualitatively distinct from other populations. David Hume, for instance, noted that “the

same national character commonly follows the authority of a government to a precise

boundary…Is it conceivable that the qualities of the air should change exactly within the limits

29

of an empire?” (Sahlins, 1990: 1436). Thus whereas dynastic networks had crossed territorial

frontiers, the spread of the military model created populations that were contained and defined

by their place. Similarly whereas dynastic networks were heterogeneous, defying definitions of

foreign and domestic, populations are internally homogenous, with shared characteristics.

Second, it was the military revolution that provided the methods of population politics.

As argued above, in dynastic polities the methods of governance were personal and network

driven. Authority was executed through personal ties, not through deductive and regular laws;

and the governance of each individual was peculiar, and depended upon that individual’s

position within a set of ties. Therefore the governance of subjects could not be universal, having

to proceed from vastly different assumptions about individuals, time and space.

In contrast, the Dutch military introduced universal, transposable laws, rules that could be

applied across a defined population. This model diffused quickly into civilian administration:

the “realization that a quasi-legislative code could be drafted for the formation and control of

effective armies culminated in…a legal and administrative system to exploit the entire of

society’s resources for military ends” (Feld, 1975: 194). Whereas dynastic networks governed on

the basis of personal authority and coercion, the military revolution promoted impersonal and

general laws as the basis of governance. For example, as Weber, Foucault, and Giddens have all

persuasively argued, the military revolution introduced widespread disciplinary laws within

societies (Foucault, 1977, Giddens, 1987: 106-110, Weber, 1978: 1149-1156). These universal

rules of conduct quickly spread throughout the population: they guided not only the prison, as

Foucault describes, but the schoolyard, the church, and the whole of society.

30

Similarly the military revolution facilitated a burgeoning science of statistics.

22

As the

military revolution progressed, so too did the sovereign’s need to know more about those laws

governing both the army and society. Just as Maurice and his colleagues had broken down vast

numbers of soldiers into their fundamental elements, so too could sovereigns enumerate the

qualities of their own populations, and thus the key to governance was to discover which laws

should apply within a given territory. What began as a tool of war became the method by which

sovereigns could most effectively organize and govern their societies as populations. Indeed

military experts pushed for better statistics as a tool to govern their populations. For example,

Vauban posited that in order to effectively rule territory, the government must have exact

knowledge about the characteristics of those residing within boundaries. As a result, he made

the oldest known attempt to conduct a census on French soil (Gottmann, 1944: 123).

By the late seventeenth century, statistics was hailed as the tool for ascertaining both the

character of a society, and the proper means for achieving effective governance. For instance,

William Petty, the first economist and a student of Thomas Hobbes, advocated “the use of

calculation to understand the nature of social life.” Similarly, John Sinclair, a meticulous

political mathematician and author of The Statistical Account of Scotland, believed statistics to

be “an inquiry into the state of a country, for the purpose of ascertaining the quantum of

happiness enjoyed by its inhabitants, and the means of its future happiness” (Herbst, 1993: 9).

Like military command, then, sovereignty could now be exercised over a collectivity with a

bounded space by ascertaining the regularities that permeated through specified boundaries.

Finally, the Dutch military introduced rationalized legitimacy, claims of authority that ran

counter to the dynastic model (Weber 1978). As argued earlier, in dynastic polities a sovereign’s

22

On the growth of statistics, war, and the state, see {Foucault (1991); Giddens (1987); Hacking (1975; Brewer

31

legitimacy depended upon his or her personal position in a series of networks: his relational

position embodied the transcendental authority necessary to govern universal polities. In

contrast, the Dutch military’s rationalism suggested a basis of authority that ran counter to all

earlier models of political organization: it severed personal and divine relations of authority, and

in fact posited that the source of authority was to be found in universal laws, not in the person of

the monarch.

The military was not the only model of a rational bureaucratic organization, but in many

ways it was the most concrete and influential. While other European organizations gained

legitimacy through their representation of the Christian theological order or other “charismatic”

sources of authority, the military organizations were among the first to suggest that mechanistic

laws governed natural and social phenomena alike, and thus could be applied to the practice of

politics. Even contemporary Enlightenment philosophers recognized the Dutch military model as

revolutionary, turning to Maurice’s army as the quintessential example of rationalized

governance over territory. As Feld argues, for example, what originally drew Descartes to

Holland was not only the nation’s reputation for tolerance; that “lifelong student of rational, even

mechanical behavior in man was, in joining the Dutch army, especially animated by the wish ‘to

study the various customs of man in their most natural state’” (Feld, 1975: 429).

It was this military model thus that provided the rationalized basis of population politics.

State bureaucracy was military discipline’s “most rational offspring” (Weber, 1978: 1149).

Indeed, as Weber argues, military rationalism eradicated “not only personal charisma but also

stratification by status groups, or at least transforms them in a rationalizing direction” (Ibid). In

sum then the military technical revolution did not only “make the state” by giving sovereigns

1990).

32

more material power, although this was part of the story. Rather, Dutch reforms reconfigured

social relations, organizing what were once hierarchic, network societies into spatially-bounded

populations. In doing so, military reforms fundamentally reshaped sovereignty and governance

in the international system.

Conclusion

It has been argued that the military technical revolution transformed societies into

populations, reordering social relations from non-territorial networks into spatially-organized and

bounded populations. As argued above, this unique socio-political organization provided the

very tools of governance that distinguished the modern state from its dynastic predecessors:

populations created a concept of sovereignty that was territorially bounded; it allowed for

universal methods of governance; and buttressed the impersonal and rational conception of

sovereignty which would prove fundamental in the creation of the modern bureaucratic state.

The study here has implications beyond historical state formation as well. First, the

argument engages directly with questions of systemic change and international politics. On the

one hand, the essay here supports the argument of Ruggie, Spruyt, Kratochwil and others that the

emergence of territoriality significantly affected the development of the international system

(Bartelson, 1995, Kratochwil, 1986, Ruggie, 1983, Ruggie, 1993, Spruyt, 1994, Walker, 1993).

This study reinforces the argument that changes in the international system cannot be understood

apart from changes “within states.” Without bounded societies “it becomes impossible to

distinguish the actors conducting ‘international’ relations, operating under anarchy, from those

conducting ‘domestic’ politics, operating under hierarchy” (Spruyt, 1994: 12). The organization

of societies into populations is more than a shift in domestic governance; populations constructed

33

territorial boundaries, creating the qualitative distinction between anarchy and hierarchy that

governs international relations today. At the same time, the argument here does not undermine

the claims of Kenneth Waltz and other neorealists, that anarchy profoundly shapes conduct and

outcomes in the international system (Mearsheimer, 2003, Waltz, 1979). To the contrary,

systemic conflict and anarchic pressures induce much of the technological change in the

sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Without war, it is doubtful sovereigns would have looked to

reform their militaries or societies. It is thus the interaction of anarchy, ideas, and extant social

relations that accounts for international change.

Second, the paper here contributes to studies of technology and political change, a topic

with an increasing importance in contemporary studies of international affairs. New

technologies, especially improvements in transportation and communication, are often credited

with remaking social relations, even to the point of transforming international politics. Most

notably, some argue that the growth of rapid international communication and transportation

might eventually break down the boundaries of the nation-state, sparking identities that permeate

traditional borders (Haas, 1968). Yet, while the essay here suggests that technology is a catalyst

for massive social change, it also warns against overly functionalist or reductionist analysis.

Technology is not an objective factor, exogenous to other social processes. Societies do not

always respond predictably or efficiently to new technologies, and how technologies reorder

relations depends as much on ideas as well as material factors.

Finally, the article raises the question of whether or not contemporary wars and military

doctrine have the power to reshape the state. There are scholars who argue that we are

witnessing a new revolution in military affairs, that the introduction of nuclear weapons, net-

centric warfare, insurgent and terrorist strategies represent not only a fundamental shift of the

34

nature of war, but in the shape of states as well. John Herz, for example, argued that nuclear

weapons rendered territorial boundaries moot (Herz, 1957). Others argue that non-state actors,

be it guerrilla groups, terrorists, or organized crime organizations, challenge the states legitimate

control of violence, and thus the anarchy/hierarchy distinction of international politics.

Regardless of the specific transformation, each of these arguments suggests that war-making is,

at its core, a political practice. It is not outside of politics, but intimately bound up in the social

relations of the modern state.

35

Anderson, Perry. (1974) Lineages of the Absolutist State. London: New Left Books.
Bartelson, Jens (1995) A Genealogy of Sovereignty. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bean, Richard. (1973) War and the Birth of the Nation State. Journal of Economic History

33:203-21.

Bendix, Reinhard. (1980) Kings or People: Power and the Mandate to Rule. Berkeley:

University of California Press.

Black, Jeremy. (1991) A Military Revolution? Military Change and European Society, 1550-

1800. Atlantic Highlands, NJ.

Bonney, Richard. (1991) The European Dynastic States, 1494-1660. Oxford: Oxford University

Press.

Brewer, John (1990) The Sinews of Power: War, Money, and the English State 1688-1783.

Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Brodie, Bernard and Fawn Brodie. (1973) From Crossbow to Hbomb. Indiana University Press.
Contamine, Philippe. (1984) War in the Middle Ages, translated by Michael Jones. London: Basil

Blackwell.

Downing, Brian. (1992) The Military Revolution and Political Change. Princeton: Princeton

University Press.

Duby, George. (1980) The Chivalrous Society. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Duffy, Christopher. (1979) Siege Warfare: The Fortress in the Early Modern World, 1494-1660.

London: Routledge adn Kegan Paul.

Elias, Norbert. (2000) The Civilizing Process. Blackwell Publishing Limited.
Ertman, Thomas. (1997) Birth of the Leviathan: Building States and Regimes in Medieval and

Early Modern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Feld, M.D. (1975) Middle Class Society and the Rise of Military Professionalism. Armed Forces

and Society 1:419-42.

———. (1975) Military Professionalism and the Mass Army. Armed Forces and Society 1:191-

214.

Foucault, Michel. (1977) Discipline and Punish, translated by Alan Sheridan. New York:

Pantheon Books.

———. (1991) Governmentality. In The Foucault Effect, edited by Colin Gordon Graham

Burchell, and Peter Miller. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Giddens, Anthony. (1981) A Contemporary Critique of Historical Materialism. Berkeley:

University of California Press.

———. (1987) The Nation-State and Violence: Vol 2 of a Contemporary Critique of Historical

Materialism. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Gorski, Philip S. (2003) The Disciplinary Revolution: Calvinism and the Rise of the State.

Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

———. (1993) The Protestant Ethic Revisited: Disciplinary Revolution and State Formation in

Holland and Prussia. The American Journal of Sociology 99:265-316.

Gottmann, Jean. (1944) Vauban and Modern Geography. Geographical Review 34:120-28.
Guilmartin, J.F., JR. (1974) Gunpowder and Galleys: Changing Technology and Mediterranean

Warfare at Sea in the Sixteenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Haas, Ernest. (1968) The United of Europe. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.

36

Hacking, Ian. (1975) The Emergence of Probability. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
———. (1990) The Taming of Chance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hale, J.R. (1965) The Early Development of the Bastion: An Italian Chronology, C. 1450-C.

1534. In Europe in the Later Middle Ages, edited by J.R. Hale. London: L. Highfield and
B. Smalley.

———. (1985) War and Society in Renaissance Europe, 1450-1620. New York: St. Martin's

Press.

Herbst, Susan. (1993) Numbered Voices. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Herz, John. (1957) The Rise and Demise of the Territorial State. World Politics 9:473-93.
Howard, Michael. (2001) War in European History. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Israel, Jonathan. (1995) The Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Greatness, and Fall 1466-1806. Oxford:

Oxford University Press.

Kantorowicz, E.H. (1957) The King's Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology.

Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Keegan, John. (1983) The Face of Battle: A Study of Agincourt, Waterloo, and the Somme. New

York: Penguin.

Kingra, Mahinder S. (1993) The Trace Italienne and the Military Revolution During the Eighty

Years' War, 1567-1648. The Journal of Military History 57:431-46.

Koselleck, Reinhart. (2004) Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time. New York:

Columbia University Press.

Kratochwil, Friedrich. (1986) Of Systems, Boundaries, and Territoriality: An Inquiry into the

Formation of the State System. World Politics 39:27-52.

Lynn, John A. (1985) Tactical Evolution in the French Army, 1560-1660. French Historical

Studies 14:176-91.

———. (1991) The Trace Italienne and the Growth of Armies: The French Case. The Journal of

Military History 55:297-330.

Mann, Michael. (1986) The Sources of Social Power, Vol I: A History of Power from the

Beginning to Ad 1760. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

McNeill, William H. (1982) The Pursuit of Power: Technology, Armed Force, and Society since

A.D. 1000. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

———. (1992) The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community. Chicago: University

of Chicago Press.

Mearsheimer, John J. (2003) The Tragedy of Great Power Politics. New York: W.W. Norton.
Oman, Charles. (1937) A History of the Art of War in the Sixteenth Century. New York: E.P.

Dutton, 1937.

Parker, Geoffrey. (1976) The "Military Revolution," 1560-1660--a Myth? The Journal of

Modern History 48:195-214.

———. (1999) The Military Revolution: Military Innovation and the Rise of the West 1500-

1800. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Pasquino, Pasquale. (1991) Theatrum Politicum: The Genealogy of Capital--Police and the State

of Prosperity. In The Foucault Effect, edited by Colin Gordon Graham Burchell, and
Peter Miller. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Paul, Michael C. (2004) The Military Revolution in Russia, 1550-1682. The Journal of Military

History 68:9-45.

37

Philpott, Daniel. (2001) Revolutions in Sovereignty: How Ideas Shaped Modern International

Relations. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

———. (2000) The Religious Roots of Modern International Relations. World Politics 52:206-

45.

Poggi, Gianfranco. (1978) The Development of Modern State: A Sociological Introduction. Palo

Alto: Stanford University Press.

———. (1990) The State: Its Nature, Development, and Prospects. Palo Alto: Stanford

University Press.

Roberts, Michael. (1956) The Military Revolution, 1560-1660. Belfast.
Rogers, Clifford J. (1993) The Military Revolutions of the Hundred Years' War. The Journal of

Military History 57:241-78.

Ruggie, John Gerard. (1983) Continuity and Transformation in World Politics: Toward a

Neorealistic Synthesis. World Politics 35.

———. (1993) Territoriality and Beyond: Problematizing Modernity in International Relations.

International Organization 47:139-74.

Sack, David. (1986) Human Territoriality: Its Theory and History. New York: Cambridge

University Press.

Sahlins, Peter. (1990) Natural Frontiers Revisited: France's Boundaries since the Seventeenth

Century. The American Historical Review 95:1423-51.

Shute, W. (1613) The Triumphs of Nassau. London.
Smail, R.C. (1956) Crusading Warfare (1097-1193). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Spruyt, Hendrik. (1994) The Sovereign State and Its Competitors. Princeton: Princeton

University Press.

Stone, John. (2004) Technology, Society, and the Infantry Revolution of the Fourteenth Century.

The Journal of Military History 68:361-80.

Strayer, Joseph and Dana C. Monro. (1959) The Middle Ages. New York: Appleton-Century-

Crofts.

Strayer, Joseph R. (1970) On the Medieval Origins of the Modern State. Princeton, NJ: Princeton

University Press.

Tilly, Charles. (1990) Coercion, Capital and European States, Ad 990-1990. Cambridge: Basil

Blackwell.

———. (1975) Reflections on the History of European State-Making. In The Formation of

National States in Western Europe. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

———. (1985) War Making and State Making as Organized Crime. In Bringing the State Back

In, edited by Dietrich Rueschemeyer Peter B. Evans, and Theda Skocpol, pp. 203-21.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Toulmin, Stephen. (1995) Cosmopolis: The Hidden Agenda of Modernity. Chicago: University of

Chicago Press.

Verbruggen, J.F. (1977) The Art of Warfare in Western Europe During the Middle Ages: From

the Eighth Century to 1340. Amerstand: North Holland Publishing Co.

Walker, R.B.J. (1993) Inside/Outside: International Relations as Political Theory Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press.

Wallerstein, Immanuel. (1974) The Modern World System, Vol. I. New York: Academic Press.
Waltz, Kenneth. (1979) Theory of International Politics. New York: New York.
Weber, Max. (1978) Economy and Society. Berkeley: University of California Press.

38

———. (1978) Economy and Society. Berkeley: University of California Press.