and economics, it seemed appropriate to offer a final (if necessarily speculative) chapter to explore the present disjuncture between the military balances and the productive balances among the Great Powers; and to point to the problems and opportunities facing today’s five large politico-economic ‘power centres’ – China, Japan, the EEC, the Soviet Union and the United States itself – as they grapple with the age-old task of relating national means to national ends. The history of the rise and fall of the Great Powers has in no way come to a full stop.
Since the scope of this book is so large, it is clear that it will be read by different people for different purposes. Some readers will find here what they had hoped for: a broad and yet reasonably detailed survey of Great Power politics over the past five centuries, of the way in which the relative position of each of the leading states has been affected by economic and technological change, and of the constant interaction between strategy and economics, both in periods of peace and in the tests of war. By definition, it does not deal with small powers, nor (usually) with small, bilateral wars. By definition also, the book is heavily Eurocentric, especially in its middle chapters. But that is only natural with such a topic.
To other readers, perhaps especially those political scientists who are now so interested in drawing general rules about ‘world systems’ or the recurrent pattern of wars, this study may offer less than what they desire. To avoid misunderstanding, it ought to be made clear at this point that the book is not dealing with, for example, the theory that major (or ‘systemic’) wars can be related to Kondratieff cycles of economic upturn and downturn. In addition, it is not centrally concerned with general theories about the causes of war, and whether they are likely to be brought about by ‘rising’ or ‘falling’ Great Powers. It is also not a book about theories of empire, and about how imperial control is effected (as is dealt with in Michael Doyle’s recent book Empires), or whether empires contribute to national strength. Finally, it does not propose any general theory about which sorts of society and social/governmental organizations are the most efficient in extracting resources in time of war.
On the other hand, there obviously is a wealth of material in this book for those scholars who wish to make such generalizations (and one of the reasons why there is such an extensive array of notes is to indicate more detailed sources for those readers interested in, say, the financing of wars). But the problem which historians – as opposed to political scientists – have in grappling with general theories is that the evidence of the past is almost always too varied to allow for ‘hard’ scientific conclusions. Thus, while it is true that some wars (e.g. 1939) can be linked to decision-makers’ fears about shifts taking place in the overall power balances, that would not be so useful in explaining the struggles which began in 1776 (American Revolutionary War) or 1792 (French Revolutionary) or 1854 (Crimean War). In the same way, while one could point to Austria-Hungary in 1914 as a good example of a ‘falling’ Great Power helping to trigger off a major war, that still leaves the theorist to deal with the equally critical roles played then by those ‘rising’ Great Powers Germany and Russia. Similarly, any general theory about whether empires pay, or whether imperial control is affected by a measurable ‘power–distance’ ratio, is likely – from the conflicting evidence available – to produce the banal answer sometimes yes, sometimes no.
Nevertheless, if one sets aside a priori theories and simply looks at the historical record of ‘the rise and fall of the Great Powers’ over the past five hundred years, it is clear that some generally valid conclusions can be drawn – while admitting all the time that there may be individual exceptions. For example, there is detectable a causal relationship between the shifts which have occurred over time in the general economic and productive balances and the position occupied by individual powers in the international system. The move in trade flows from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic and northwestern Europe from the sixteenth century onward, or the redistribution in the shares of world manufacturing output away from western Europe in the decades after 1890, are good examples here. In both cases, the economic shifts heralded the rise of new Great Powers which would one day have a decisive impact upon the military/territorial order. This is why the move in the global productive balances toward the ‘Pacific rim’ which has taken place over the past few decades cannot be of interest merely to economists alone.
Similarly, the historical record suggests that there is a very clear connection in the long run between an individual Great Power’s economic rise and fall and its growth and decline as an important military power (or world empire). This, too, is hardly surprising, since it flows from two related facts. The first is that economic resources are necessary to support a large-scale military establishment. The second is that, so far as the international system is concerned, both wealth and power are always relative and should be seen as such. Three hundred years ago, the German mercantilist writer von Hornigk observed that
whether a nation be today mighty and rich or not depends not on the abundance or security of its power and riches, but principally on whether its neighbours possess more or less of it.
In the chapters which follow, this observation will be borne out time and again. The Netherlands in the mid-eighteenth century was richer in absolute terms than a hundred years earlier, but by that stage was much less of a Great Power because neighbours like France and Britain had ‘more … of it’ (that is, more power and riches). The France of 1914 was, absolutely, more powerful than that of 1850 – but this was little consolation when France was being eclipsed by a much stronger Germany. Britain today has far greater wealth, and its armed forces possess far more powerful weapons, than in its mid-Victorian prime; that avails it little when its share of world product has shrunk from about 25 per cent to about 3 per cent. If a nation has ‘more … of it’, things are fine; if ‘less of it’, there are problems.
This does not mean, however, that a nation’s relative economic and military power will rise and fall in parallel. Most of the historical examples covered here suggest that there is a noticeable ‘lag time’ between the trajectory of a state’s relative economic strength and the trajectory of its military/territorial influence. Once again, the reason for this is not difficult to grasp. An economically expanding power – Britain in the 1860s, the United States in the 1890s, Japan today – may well prefer to become rich rather than to spend heavily on armaments. A half-century later, priorities may well have altered. The earlier economic expansion has brought with it overseas obligations (dependence upon foreign markets and raw materials, military alliances, perhaps bases and colonies). Other, rival powers are now economically expanding at a faster rate, and wish in their turn to extend their influence abroad. The world has become a more competitive place, and market shares are being eroded. Pessimistic observers talk of decline; patriotic statesmen call for ‘renewal’.
In these more troubled circumstances, the Great Power is likely to find itself spending much more on defence than it did two generations earlier, and yet still discover that the world is a less secure environment – simply because other powers have grown faster, and are becoming stronger. Imperial Spain spent much more on its army in the troubled 1630s and 1640s than it did in the 1580s, when the Castilian economy was healthier. Edwardian Britain’s defence expenditures were far greater in 1910 than they were at, say, the time of Palmerston’s death in 1865, when the British economy was relatively at its peak; but which Britons by the later date felt more secure? The same problem, it will be argued below, appears to be facing both the United States and the USSR today. Great Powers in relative decline instinctively respond by spending more on ‘security’, and thereby divert potential resources from ‘investment’ and compound their long-term dilemma.
Another general conclusion which can be drawn from the five-hundred-year record presented here is that there is a very strong correlation between the eventual outcome of the major coalition wars for European or global mastery, and the amount of productive resources mobilized by each side. This was true of the struggles waged against the Spanish-Austrian Habsburgs; one of the great eighteenth-century contests like the War of Spanish Succession, the Seven Years War, and the Napoleonic War; and of the two world wars of this century. A lengthy, grinding war eventually turns into a test of the relative capacities of each coalition. Whether one side has ‘more … of it’ or ‘less of it’ becomes increasingly significant as the struggle lengthens.
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