Source: The Peaceful Revolutionist
by David S D’Amato
Today, our discussions about the relations between states take for granted vast, well-equipped, and highly professionalized militaries, sophisticated in both battlefield and political terms. Even states much smaller than the United States today spend tens of billions every year on their military forces and surrounding bureaucracy. But at the dawn of the modern age, there were very few standing armies. A standing army was a luxury too costly even for the richest and most powerful figures in present-day Germany. When Emperor Ferdinand II needed an army, he went to market to procure one with gold. The Thirty Years’ War stretched the fiscal and administrative capacities of the state as it existed, transforming it into something much more like the state we know today; war preparations and intensive military buildup provided the motivating force necessary to the kinds of hierarchical bureaucratization associated with the modern state.” (03/30/25)
https://dsdamato.substack.com/p/military-revolution-and-the-new-state