Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-55f67697df-xlmdk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-05-08T09:30:50.670Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

19 - War and Empire, 1700–1870

from Part II - Factors Governing Differential Outcomes in the Global Economy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2021

By
Philip T. Hoffman  and
Tirthankar Roy
Edited by
Stephen Broadberry  and
Kyoji Fukao
Stephen Broadberry
Affiliation:
University of Oxford
Kyoji Fukao
Affiliation:
Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo
Get access

Summary

This chapter shows how developments in military technology and strategy since the 1600s joined the political ambitions of states and merchants’ commercial interests to create European rules in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Why did warfare in early modern times produce this outcome? Wars and empires had existed before. The European warfare outside Europe, the chapter suggests, could exploit more resources than the other major powers in Eurasia could, leading to decisive shifts in the balance of power. At the same time, trade entailed violence, whether we consider the Atlantic slave trade or the impact of European wars upon the actions of the Indian Ocean merchant firms. A final section asks how empires shaped economic change in the world; and shows that the emergence of empires had lasting effects on commercialization, though direct effects on living standards until 1870 were ambiguous.

Keywords

warfaretaxationmilitary technologycolonialismcottonempireIndustrial RevolutionslaverytradeAfricaAsiaBritainChinaEuropeIndia
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Economic History of the Modern World , pp. 468 - 487
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Book purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Acemoglu, D., Johnson, S. and Robinson, J. A. (2001). ‘The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development: An Empirical Investigation’, American Economic Review, 91, 1369–1401.Google Scholar
Acemoglu, D., Johnson, S. and Robinson, J. A. (2002). ‘Reversal of Fortune: Geography and Institutions in the Making of the Modern World Income Distribution’, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 117, 1231–1294.Google Scholar
Allen, R. C. (2009). The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective, Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Andrade, T. (2016). The Gunpowder Age: China, Military Innovation, and the Rise of the West in World History, Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Austin, G. (2008). ‘The “Reversal of Fortune” Thesis and the Compression of History: Perspectives from African and Comparative Economic History’, Journal of International Development, 20, 996–1027.Google Scholar
Barua, P. (1994). ‘Military Developments in India, 1750–1850’, Journal of Military History, 58, 599.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bayly, C. A. (1985). ‘State and Economy in India over Seven Hundred Years’, Economic History Review, 38, 583–596.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bayly, C. A. (1990). Indian Society and the Making of the British Empire, Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Beckert, S. (2015). Empire of Cotton: A Global History, New York: Vintage.Google Scholar
Brandt, L., Ma, D. and Rawski, T. G. (2014). ‘From Divergence to Convergence: Reevaluating the History behind China’s Economic Boom’, Journal of Economic Literature, 52, 45–123.Google Scholar
Coşgel, M. M. and Miceli, T. J. (2005). ‘Risk, Transaction Costs, and Tax Assignment: Government Finance in the Ottoman Empire’, Journal of Economic History, 65, 806–821.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coşgel, M. M., Miceli, T. and Ahmed, R. (2009). ‘Law, State Power, and Taxation in Islamic History’, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 71, 704–717.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cox, G. W. (2012). ‘Was the Glorious Revolution a Constitutional Watershed?’, Journal of Economic History, 72, 567–600.Google Scholar
Davis, L. E. and Huttenback, R. A. (1986). Mammon and the Pursuit of Empire: The Political Economy of British Imperialism, 1860–1912, Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Dincecco, M. (2009a). ‘Fiscal Centralization, Limited Government, and Public Revenues in Europe, 1650–1913’, Journal of Economic History, 69, 48–103.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dincecco, M. (2009b). ‘Political Regimes and Sovereign Credit Risk in Europe, 1750–1913’, European Review of Economic History, 13, 31–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dincecco, M. (2011). Political Transformations and Public Finances: Europe, 1650–1913, Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Engerman, S. L. and Sokoloff, K. L. (1997). ‘Factor Endowments, Institutions, and Differential Paths of Growth Among New World Economies’, in Haber, S. (ed.), How Latin America Fell Behind, Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 260–304.Google Scholar
Engerman, S. L. and Sokoloff, K. L. (2012). Economic Development in the Americas since 1500, Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Evans, E. W. and Richardson, D. (1995). ‘Hunting for Rents: The Economics of Slaving in Pre-Colonial Africa’, Economic History Review, 48, 665–686.Google Scholar
Findlay, R. and O’Rourke, K. H. (2007). Power and Plenty: Trade, War, and the World Economy in the Second Millennium, Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gommans, J. L. (2002). Mughal Warfare: Indian Frontiers and Highroads to Empire, 1500–1700, London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Goody, J. (1971). Technology, Tradition and the State in Pre-Colonial Africa, Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Gordon, S. (1998). ‘The Limited Adoption of European-Style Military Forces by Eighteenth Century Rulers in India’, Indian Economic and Social History Review, 35, 229–245.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guézo, A. (2010). ‘The Impact of British Abolition on the States in the Hinterland of the Slave Coast’, Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria, 19, 132–156.Google Scholar
Gupta, B. and Roy, T. (2017). ‘From Artisanal Production to Machine Tools: Industrialization in India over the Long Run’, in O’Rourke, K. H. and Williamson, J. G. (eds.), The Spread of Modern Industry to the Periphery since 1871, Oxford University Press, 229–255.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hahn, S. (2016). A Nation Without Borders: The United States and Its World in an Age of Civil Wars, 1830–1910, New York: Penguin.Google Scholar
Headrick, D. R. (1981). The Tools of Empire: Technology and European Imperialism in the Nineteenth Century, Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Headrick, D. R. (2010). Power over Peoples: Technology, Environments, and Western Imperialism, 1400 to the Present, Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Hoffman, P. T. (1996). Growth in a Traditional Society: The French Countryside, 1450–1815, Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Hoffman, P. T. (2015). Why Did Europe Conquer the World?, Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Hopkins, A. G. (1968). ‘Economic Imperialism in West Africa: Lagos, 1880–92’, Economic History Review, 21, 580–606.Google Scholar
Hopkins, A. G. (2009). ‘The “New International Economic Order” in the Nineteenth Century: Britain’s First Development Plan for Africa’, in Law, R. (ed.), From Slave Trade to ‘Legitimate’ Commerce: The Commercial Transition in Nineteenth-Century West Africa, Cambridge University Press, 240–264.Google Scholar
Huang, R. (1974). Taxation and Governmental Finance in Sixteenth-Century Ming China, vol. 4, Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Huillery, E. (2014). ‘The Black Man’s Burden: The Cost of Colonization of French West Africa’, Journal of Economic History, 74, 1–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ingram, E. (1984). In Defence of British India: Great Britain in the Middle East, 1775–1842, London: Frank Cass.Google Scholar
Inikori, J. E. (1977). ‘The Import of Firearms into West Africa, 1750–1807’, Journal of African History, 18, 339–368.Google Scholar
Jones, E. (2003). The European Miracle: Environments, Economies and Geopolitics in the History of Europe and Asia, Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kelly, M., Mokyr, J. and Ó Gráda, C. (2014). ‘Precocious Albion: A New Interpretation of the British Industrial Revolution’, Annual Review of Economics, 6, 363–389.Google Scholar
Law, R. (1986). ‘Dahomey and the Slave Trade: Reflections on the Historiography of the Rise of Dahomey’, Journal of African History, 27, 237–267.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Law, R. (1989). ‘Slave-Raiders and Middlemen, Monopolists and Free-Traders: The Supply of Slaves for the Atlantic Trade in Dahomey c.1715–1850’, Journal of African History, 30, 45–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Law, R. (2009). ‘Introduction’ in Law, R. (ed.), From Slave Trade to ‘Legitimate’ Commerce: The Commercial Transition in Nineteenth-Century West Africa, Cambridge University Press, 1–31.Google Scholar
Lieberman, V. (2008). ‘The Qing Dynasty and Its Neighbors: Early Modern China in World History’, Social Science History, 32, 281–304.Google Scholar
Manning, P. (1990). Slavery and African Life: Occidental, Oriental, and African Slave Trades, Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Mokyr, J. (2017). A Culture of Growth, Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Monson, A. and Scheidel, W. (eds.) (2015). Fiscal Regimes and the Political Economy of Premodern States, Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Neal, L. (1990). The Rise of Financial Capitalism: International Capital Markets in the Age of Reason, Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Nunn, N. (2008). ‘The Long-Term Effect of Africa’s Slave Trades’, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 123, 139–176.Google Scholar
Oak, M. and Swamy, A. V. (2012). ‘Myopia or Strategic Behavior? Indian Regimes and the East India Company in Late Eighteenth-Century India’, Explorations in Economic History, 49, 352–366.Google Scholar
Ojo, O. (2008). ‘The Organization of the Atlantic Slave Trade in Yorubaland, c.1777 to c.1856’, International Journal of African Historical Studies, 41, 77–100.Google Scholar
O’Rourke, K. H. and Williamson, J. G. (1999). Globalization and History: The Evolution of a Nineteenth-Century Atlantic Economy, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Pamuk, Ş. (2004). ‘Institutional Change and the Longevity of the Ottoman Empire, 1500–1800’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 35, 225–247.Google Scholar
Parker, G. (1988). The Military Revolution: Military Innovation and the Rise of the West 1500–1800, Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Perdue, P. C. (2005). China Marches West: the Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pomeranz, K. (2000). The Great Divergence : China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy, Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Roberts, R. L. (1980). ‘Production and Reproduction of Warrior States: Segu Bambara and Segu Tokolor, c.1712–1890’, International Journal of African Historical Studies, 13, 389–419.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosenthal, J. L. and Bin Wong, R. (2011). Before and Beyond Divergence, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Roy, K. (2005). ‘Military Synthesis in South Asia: Armies, Warfare, and Indian Society, c.1740–1849’, Journal of Military History, 69, 651–690.Google Scholar
Roy, T. (2013). ‘Rethinking the Origins of British India: State Formation and Military-Fiscal Undertakings in an Eighteenth-Century World Region’, Modern Asian Studies, 47, 1125–1156.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roy, T. (2016). ‘The Mutiny and the Merchants’, The Historical Journal, 59, 393–416.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sng, T. H. (2014). ‘Size and Dynastic Decline: The Principal-Agent Problem in Late Imperial China, 1700–1850’, Explorations in Economic History, 54, 107–127.Google Scholar
Thornton, J. (1999). Warfare in Atlantic Africa 1500–1800, London: UCL Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vries, P. H. H. (2002). ‘Governing Growth: A Comparative Analysis of the Role of the State in the Rise of the West’, Journal of World History, 13, 67–138.Google Scholar
Will, P. E. and Wong, R. B. (1991). Nourish the People, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×