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The Rise and Decline of the State
The state, which since the middle of the seventeenth century has been the most important of all modern institutions, is in decline. From Western Europe to Africa, many existing states are either combining into larger communities or falling apart. Many of their functions are likely to be taken over by a variety of organizations that, whatever their precise nature, are not states. In this unique volume Martin van Creveld traces the story of the state from its beginnings to its end. Starting with the simplest political organizations that ever existed, he guides the reader through the origins of the state, its development, its apotheosis during the two World Wars, and its spread from its original home in Western Europe to cover the globe. In doing so, he provides a fascinating history of government from its origins to the present day. This original book will of interest to historians, political scientists and sociologists.
448 pages, Paperback
First published August 25, 1995
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635 people want to read
About the author
Martin van Creveld
65 books128 followersMartin Levi van Creveld is an Israeli military historian and theorist.
Van Creveld was born in the Netherlands in the city of Rotterdam, and has lived in Israel since shortly after his birth. He holds degrees from the London School of Economics and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he has been on the faculty since 1971. He is the author of seventeen books on military history and strategy, of which Command in War (1985), Supplying War: Logistics from Wallenstein to Patton (1977, 2nd edition 2004), The Transformation of War (1991), The Sword and the Olive (1998) and The Rise and Decline of the State (1999) are among the best known. Van Creveld has lectured or taught at many strategic institutes in the Western world, including the U.S. Naval War College.
- wikipedia.org
Van Creveld was born in the Netherlands in the city of Rotterdam, and has lived in Israel since shortly after his birth. He holds degrees from the London School of Economics and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he has been on the faculty since 1971. He is the author of seventeen books on military history and strategy, of which Command in War (1985), Supplying War: Logistics from Wallenstein to Patton (1977, 2nd edition 2004), The Transformation of War (1991), The Sword and the Olive (1998) and The Rise and Decline of the State (1999) are among the best known. Van Creveld has lectured or taught at many strategic institutes in the Western world, including the U.S. Naval War College.
- wikipedia.org
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
December 2, 2014
Written fifteen years ago "The Rise and Decline of the State" stands today as a prophetic work. It correctly predicted the diminishment of states' sovereignty, the rise of disorder (especially terrorism), and the crisis of legitimacy that many states are currently undergoing. It was able to do so because Martin Van Creveld was able to accurately and precisely describe the development of the state as an institution from its inception in the fourteenth century till its apogee in the twentieth. Along with the "Shield of Achilles" by Philip Bobbitt and "The Sovereign Individual" by Lord Rees-Mogg and James Dale Davidson, this work grapples with the constitutional and strategic dilemmas that now plague contemporary politics. Of the three works, "The Rise and Decline of the State" is the most balanced in tone and view. Whereas Davidson and Rees-Mog think that states will entirely disappear, Bobbitt contends that states will transform from nation-states to market-states in the coming century. Martin van Creveld, however, sees the state as enduring in some places, disappearing in others, and being subjugated by other corporations in still others. I would recommend this work to anyone who wishes to better understand politics on the scale of grand strategy as it is currently being played.
April 7, 2012
Since 9-11, I've had a bout of existential angst over secular, Western modernity and this was aggravated by my upbringing during the golden age of Cold-War Apocalypse-porn paranoia from 1980's Hollywood: Red Dawn, Blade Runner, Terminator, etc. Is the modern world doomed to return to a Hobbesian state of nature? Will the survivors of some grand collapse retain enough of our institutions like common law, jury trials and a written constitution?
Cultures and nations can and do adapt and survive in the worse systemic shocks. In the failure of a sovereign state, some segments of society will fare better that most: Those with a pre-existing level of trust and shared destiny will have a head start in re-building. Perhaps this is the underlying fear from mainline Protestants, Catholics and even humanists: That Pentecosts, Evangelicals, Muslims and any "Other" will out-breed our own and become new nations unto themselves, with parallel justice systems and institutions. But this book made me more pessimistic on restoring Constitutional principles in the US and promoting it across the world. Pluralism, equality before the law and private property rights are luxuries in an anarchic state of nature. Institutions matter.
While industrial agriculture may have debunked Malthus, his fears of mass culture debasement may not be far-fetched. The race for scarce energy resources have turned democracies into reluctant enablers of brutal oligarchs and has turned authoritarian regimes into powerful creditors. If one looks at how many millions of dollars American oil and gas firms have spent on lobbying and campaign contributions, one can argue that the energy corporations ALREADY control the West, the global South as well as the BRICs. Perhaps the government is there for decoration, to maintain the illusion of participatory democracy. Perhaps we are well into the post-national age and Creveld's final chapter is less prophecy than recent past.
As van Creveld guides the reader through history, I think ambitious nation-builders should take note that it took centuries for English-Anglo institutions to evolve, to the point where Revolutionary War-era Americans had absorbed these values as part of their "foundational narrative", fully integrated into our civic religion. Will the generation of Jersey Shore and Lady Gaga keep the flame? I shudder. I recommend van Creveld to the head-for-the-hills types (of which I am an admitted "prepper") as less a framework of re-building than an academic but insightful discussion of how statecraft evolves. Revolutionaries will find that running a government is as difficult as overthrowing one. Not only does it take aggressive investment to modernize, but like 19th century Japan, the whole people of a nation must WANT to modernize. The people must trust its institutions and its institutions must earn the people's trust.
To the anarcho-syndicalist types, "Rise and Decline" may fit into the Hans Herman Hoppe vision perhaps as another authoritative signpost that the modern state is losing legitimacy among the masses, leaving the environment ripe for new model of transnational sovereignty. To the neo-liberals, the book may be used for their own purposes. In the stock tickers and credit ratings and mergers and acquisitions, I sense a collective, subconscious Neo-Manifest Destiny; where quarterly metrics and data mining analytics will rule the next global epoch. A John O'Sullivan, Creveld is not, but within the near future, with inevitable debt crisis and energy supply shocks, the oligarchs will find a way to pry the "mandate of heaven" from state sovereigns and place it within the hands of its shareholders.
My personal outlook: Perhaps corporate "charter cities" will take the place of sovereign nations; islands of modernity in a sea of Malthusian madness where its residents escape into electronic worlds and develop their own virtual markets of ether and hype.
Cultures and nations can and do adapt and survive in the worse systemic shocks. In the failure of a sovereign state, some segments of society will fare better that most: Those with a pre-existing level of trust and shared destiny will have a head start in re-building. Perhaps this is the underlying fear from mainline Protestants, Catholics and even humanists: That Pentecosts, Evangelicals, Muslims and any "Other" will out-breed our own and become new nations unto themselves, with parallel justice systems and institutions. But this book made me more pessimistic on restoring Constitutional principles in the US and promoting it across the world. Pluralism, equality before the law and private property rights are luxuries in an anarchic state of nature. Institutions matter.
While industrial agriculture may have debunked Malthus, his fears of mass culture debasement may not be far-fetched. The race for scarce energy resources have turned democracies into reluctant enablers of brutal oligarchs and has turned authoritarian regimes into powerful creditors. If one looks at how many millions of dollars American oil and gas firms have spent on lobbying and campaign contributions, one can argue that the energy corporations ALREADY control the West, the global South as well as the BRICs. Perhaps the government is there for decoration, to maintain the illusion of participatory democracy. Perhaps we are well into the post-national age and Creveld's final chapter is less prophecy than recent past.
As van Creveld guides the reader through history, I think ambitious nation-builders should take note that it took centuries for English-Anglo institutions to evolve, to the point where Revolutionary War-era Americans had absorbed these values as part of their "foundational narrative", fully integrated into our civic religion. Will the generation of Jersey Shore and Lady Gaga keep the flame? I shudder. I recommend van Creveld to the head-for-the-hills types (of which I am an admitted "prepper") as less a framework of re-building than an academic but insightful discussion of how statecraft evolves. Revolutionaries will find that running a government is as difficult as overthrowing one. Not only does it take aggressive investment to modernize, but like 19th century Japan, the whole people of a nation must WANT to modernize. The people must trust its institutions and its institutions must earn the people's trust.
To the anarcho-syndicalist types, "Rise and Decline" may fit into the Hans Herman Hoppe vision perhaps as another authoritative signpost that the modern state is losing legitimacy among the masses, leaving the environment ripe for new model of transnational sovereignty. To the neo-liberals, the book may be used for their own purposes. In the stock tickers and credit ratings and mergers and acquisitions, I sense a collective, subconscious Neo-Manifest Destiny; where quarterly metrics and data mining analytics will rule the next global epoch. A John O'Sullivan, Creveld is not, but within the near future, with inevitable debt crisis and energy supply shocks, the oligarchs will find a way to pry the "mandate of heaven" from state sovereigns and place it within the hands of its shareholders.
My personal outlook: Perhaps corporate "charter cities" will take the place of sovereign nations; islands of modernity in a sea of Malthusian madness where its residents escape into electronic worlds and develop their own virtual markets of ether and hype.
July 23, 2025
Quite dated, but is an interesting retelling of human history through the lens of the development of modern bureaucratic states which isn’t a common perspective. Because the book was published in 1999, it suffers from “the end of history” syndrome for the many War on Terror conflicts have yet to occur, but casts pessimistic projections for the future in that states will voluntarily reject responsibility for items they once previously monopolized. These projections have largely come to pass. Would be interesting to read a follow up, provided it tracked the rise of illiberal democracies and that morphed the “state.”
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 27, 2021
Mmmm there is a good deal of plot development but where are the compelling characters? Where is the smut? The romance? Pfff disappointment, hope it will help me pass my exams though
March 8, 2015
Filled a lot of gaps in my knowledge of European history, and most of the conclusions drawn in the final chapter on the decline of the state seem to have held up pretty well in the 15 years since its publication (though I think as a country we are experiencing cyclical loss and partial recovery of faith in government, rather than continuing the direct decline that he observed in the late 90s, as well as an upswing in leftist sentiment among those too young to have seen communism fall). Definitely altered my perspective on current trends in society. Stylistically, not a difficult read, though van Creveld does sometimes jump back and forth chronologically within each chapter.
July 13, 2009
Basically just a history book. It was really boring after the first chapter. So I skipped 200 pages in the middle. Just read the last 2 chapters; Decline of the State, and Beyond the State. They're why you should buy the book. They are where most of the quotes come from.
Quotes:
"As far as individual states are concerned, there are good reasons to think that many of them will soon no longer be either willing or able to control and protect the political, military, economic, social, and cultural lives of their citizens to the extent that they used to."
"What really mattered was one's personal standing and the number of relatives whom one might call to one's assistance; as in all other societies, the strong and influential could get away from situations in which the weak and the unconnected became entangled. A small, intimate, and tightly knit community might not find it too difficult to discipline, and if necessary punish, isolated individuals."
"The most important objective of warfare were to exact vengeance for physical injury, damage to property, offenses to honor, and theft. Another was to obtain booty, and again this included not merely goods but marriageable women and young children who could be incorporated into one's own lineage and thus add to its strength."
"He will take...and he will take...and he will take...and in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves; but the Lord will not hear you on that day."
"As Adam Smith said, the one thing more important than opulence is defense. Insecurity, whether due to the weakness of government or to its excessive strength...prevented the accumulation of a surplus among the people and the emergence of sustained per capita economic growth."
"Having destroyed their competitors or harnessed them to their own service, kings had power that in theory was unprecedented. In practice, though, the isolated sites of the palaces that they built for themselves, the number of attendants by whom they were surrounded, and the amount of ceremonial on which they insisted all pointed in the opposite direction. As we shall see in the next chapter, other things being equal, the more absolute any monarch the greater his dependence on impersonal bureaucratic, military, and legal mechanisms to transmit his will and impose it on society at large. In the end, those mechanisms showed themselves capable of functioning without him and were even destined to take power away from him."
"For example, to develop the Manhattan Project - including the construction of some of the largest industrial plant ever - and build the first atomic bombs took less than three years; but the designers of present-day conventional weapons systems want us to believe that a new fighter bomber cannot be deployed in fewer than fifteen."
"In a world where the role of interstate war was declining, the position of political leaders became increasingly dependent on their ability to deliver material prosperity. The latter itself was now being defined less in terms of welfare services, as during the years 1945-75, than in terms of attracting investment, providing jobs and creating growth."
"The days when a single state, however large and powerful, could hope to pull itself up by its own bootstraps, set up its own self-contained empire, and use its power to make a bid for its neighbors' territory or even world domination seem to be over."
"Will they be able to retain their monopoly on the maintenance of law and order?"
"Faced with armed resistance on the part of the occupied populations, the Germans soon discovered that it was precisely the most modern components of their armed forces which were the most useless."
"Like the Germans, too, the British and the French armed forces discovered that it was precisely the most powerful weapons and weapons systems which were the most useless, being either too expensive, too fast, too indiscriminate, too big, too inaccurate, or all of these. As to the most powerful weapons of all, i.e., nuclear ones, against an enemy who was so dispersed and so elusive that he could barely be found, they were simply irrelevant."
"The provision of security - which since at least Thomas Hobbes has been recognized as the most important function of the corporation known as the state - will again be shared out among other entities. Some will be territorial but not sovereign, i.e., communities larger than states; others, perhaps more numerous, neither sovereign nor territorial. Some will operate in the name of political, ideological, religious, or ethnic objectives, other with an eye purely to private gain. Whatever their goals, all will need money to survive. They will get it by contracting with states to do their dirty business for them, or by selling their services to other organizations, or by blackmailing the population."
"Thus the likelihood grows that the state will lose its monopoly over those forms of organized violence which still remain viable in the nuclear age, becoming one actor among many. Spreading from the bottom up, the conduct of that violence may revert to what it was as late as the first half of the seventeenth century: namely a capitalist enterprise little different from, and intimately linked with, so many others."
"Some will be legal, others criminal; although as time goes on and the various organizations and people interact with each other - if only in order to learn how to provide security better - the differences between them are likely to diminish."
"As presented in this study, government and state are emphatically not the same. The former is a person or group which makes peace, wages war, enacts laws, exercises justice, raises revenue, determines the currency, and looks after internal security on behalf of society as a whole, all the while attempting to provide a focus for people's loyalty and, perhaps a modicum of welfare as well. The latter is merely one of the forms which historically speaking, the organization of government has assumed, and which, accordingly, need not be considered eternal and self-evident any more than were previous ones."
"Definition of the state...First, being sovereign, it refuses to share any of the above functions with others but the concentrates all of them in its own hands. Secondly, being territorial, it exercises such powers over all the people who live within its borders and over them only. Thirdly and most importantly, it is an abstract organization. Unlike any of its predecessors at any other time and place, it is not identical with either rulers nor ruled; it is neither a man nor a community, but an invisible being known as a corporation. As a corporation it has an independent persona. The latter is recognized by law and capable of behaving as if it were a person in making contracts, owning property, defending itself, and the like."
"The obverse side of this coin is the feeling, which is prevalent among the citizens of many developed countries, that when the time for delivery comes the state just does not keep its promises, that it pays, if at all, in false coin. And that, in order to secure any kind of future for themselves and their children, citizens are left with no choice but to look after themselves in ways that are independent of, and may even stand in opposition to, the will of the state."
"Organizations and people whose wealth and status are independent of the state, internationally oriented, and prepared to take advantage of opportunities that are opening up in every field from global communication and trade to providing private education stand to gain...With the state weakening, many of them will undoubtedly find it both easier and more necessary to translate whatever advantages they have into direct power. Instead of merely lobbying and bribing, as is the case today, they will rule - at least by carrying some of the functions of the government, in regard to some people, and to some extent."
Quotes:
"As far as individual states are concerned, there are good reasons to think that many of them will soon no longer be either willing or able to control and protect the political, military, economic, social, and cultural lives of their citizens to the extent that they used to."
"What really mattered was one's personal standing and the number of relatives whom one might call to one's assistance; as in all other societies, the strong and influential could get away from situations in which the weak and the unconnected became entangled. A small, intimate, and tightly knit community might not find it too difficult to discipline, and if necessary punish, isolated individuals."
"The most important objective of warfare were to exact vengeance for physical injury, damage to property, offenses to honor, and theft. Another was to obtain booty, and again this included not merely goods but marriageable women and young children who could be incorporated into one's own lineage and thus add to its strength."
"He will take...and he will take...and he will take...and in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves; but the Lord will not hear you on that day."
"As Adam Smith said, the one thing more important than opulence is defense. Insecurity, whether due to the weakness of government or to its excessive strength...prevented the accumulation of a surplus among the people and the emergence of sustained per capita economic growth."
"Having destroyed their competitors or harnessed them to their own service, kings had power that in theory was unprecedented. In practice, though, the isolated sites of the palaces that they built for themselves, the number of attendants by whom they were surrounded, and the amount of ceremonial on which they insisted all pointed in the opposite direction. As we shall see in the next chapter, other things being equal, the more absolute any monarch the greater his dependence on impersonal bureaucratic, military, and legal mechanisms to transmit his will and impose it on society at large. In the end, those mechanisms showed themselves capable of functioning without him and were even destined to take power away from him."
"For example, to develop the Manhattan Project - including the construction of some of the largest industrial plant ever - and build the first atomic bombs took less than three years; but the designers of present-day conventional weapons systems want us to believe that a new fighter bomber cannot be deployed in fewer than fifteen."
"In a world where the role of interstate war was declining, the position of political leaders became increasingly dependent on their ability to deliver material prosperity. The latter itself was now being defined less in terms of welfare services, as during the years 1945-75, than in terms of attracting investment, providing jobs and creating growth."
"The days when a single state, however large and powerful, could hope to pull itself up by its own bootstraps, set up its own self-contained empire, and use its power to make a bid for its neighbors' territory or even world domination seem to be over."
"Will they be able to retain their monopoly on the maintenance of law and order?"
"Faced with armed resistance on the part of the occupied populations, the Germans soon discovered that it was precisely the most modern components of their armed forces which were the most useless."
"Like the Germans, too, the British and the French armed forces discovered that it was precisely the most powerful weapons and weapons systems which were the most useless, being either too expensive, too fast, too indiscriminate, too big, too inaccurate, or all of these. As to the most powerful weapons of all, i.e., nuclear ones, against an enemy who was so dispersed and so elusive that he could barely be found, they were simply irrelevant."
"The provision of security - which since at least Thomas Hobbes has been recognized as the most important function of the corporation known as the state - will again be shared out among other entities. Some will be territorial but not sovereign, i.e., communities larger than states; others, perhaps more numerous, neither sovereign nor territorial. Some will operate in the name of political, ideological, religious, or ethnic objectives, other with an eye purely to private gain. Whatever their goals, all will need money to survive. They will get it by contracting with states to do their dirty business for them, or by selling their services to other organizations, or by blackmailing the population."
"Thus the likelihood grows that the state will lose its monopoly over those forms of organized violence which still remain viable in the nuclear age, becoming one actor among many. Spreading from the bottom up, the conduct of that violence may revert to what it was as late as the first half of the seventeenth century: namely a capitalist enterprise little different from, and intimately linked with, so many others."
"Some will be legal, others criminal; although as time goes on and the various organizations and people interact with each other - if only in order to learn how to provide security better - the differences between them are likely to diminish."
"As presented in this study, government and state are emphatically not the same. The former is a person or group which makes peace, wages war, enacts laws, exercises justice, raises revenue, determines the currency, and looks after internal security on behalf of society as a whole, all the while attempting to provide a focus for people's loyalty and, perhaps a modicum of welfare as well. The latter is merely one of the forms which historically speaking, the organization of government has assumed, and which, accordingly, need not be considered eternal and self-evident any more than were previous ones."
"Definition of the state...First, being sovereign, it refuses to share any of the above functions with others but the concentrates all of them in its own hands. Secondly, being territorial, it exercises such powers over all the people who live within its borders and over them only. Thirdly and most importantly, it is an abstract organization. Unlike any of its predecessors at any other time and place, it is not identical with either rulers nor ruled; it is neither a man nor a community, but an invisible being known as a corporation. As a corporation it has an independent persona. The latter is recognized by law and capable of behaving as if it were a person in making contracts, owning property, defending itself, and the like."
"The obverse side of this coin is the feeling, which is prevalent among the citizens of many developed countries, that when the time for delivery comes the state just does not keep its promises, that it pays, if at all, in false coin. And that, in order to secure any kind of future for themselves and their children, citizens are left with no choice but to look after themselves in ways that are independent of, and may even stand in opposition to, the will of the state."
"Organizations and people whose wealth and status are independent of the state, internationally oriented, and prepared to take advantage of opportunities that are opening up in every field from global communication and trade to providing private education stand to gain...With the state weakening, many of them will undoubtedly find it both easier and more necessary to translate whatever advantages they have into direct power. Instead of merely lobbying and bribing, as is the case today, they will rule - at least by carrying some of the functions of the government, in regard to some people, and to some extent."
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 5, 2021
"While states continue to carry out some important functions, two centuries after the French Revolution first enlisted modern mass nationalism, many of them seem to have run out of people who believe in them, let alone are willing to act as cannon fodder on their behalf. Sometimes this appears to have been the result of an unsuccessful war, as in the United States (following Vietnam and 'the confidence gap') and the USSR (where a similar role was played by the failure in Afghanistan). Elsewhere it happened imperceptibly as growing integration with other states caused the sovereignty of each one to be whittled down, as in much of Europe.
Whatever the precise processes, almost everywhere they have been accompanied by a declining willingness of states to take responsibility for their economies; provide social benefits; educate the young; and even perform the elementary functions of protecting their citizens against terrorism and crime, a task which at best is being shared with other organizations and at worst simply let go. At the close of the second millennium, and in a growing number of places from Western and Eastern Europe all the way to the developing world, the state is not so much served and admired as endured and tolerated. The days when, as used to be the case during the era of total war in particular, it could set itself up as a god on earth are clearly over."
Whatever the precise processes, almost everywhere they have been accompanied by a declining willingness of states to take responsibility for their economies; provide social benefits; educate the young; and even perform the elementary functions of protecting their citizens against terrorism and crime, a task which at best is being shared with other organizations and at worst simply let go. At the close of the second millennium, and in a growing number of places from Western and Eastern Europe all the way to the developing world, the state is not so much served and admired as endured and tolerated. The days when, as used to be the case during the era of total war in particular, it could set itself up as a god on earth are clearly over."
Read
December 7, 2025what a complex historical argument
December 29, 2012
A very interesting read on the historical development of the state and the current crisis of the nation state. A wonderful source of reference material and thought provoking on virtually all levels. Creveld tracks the rise of the state from the high middle ages to the apogee of the state during the two world wars and shows how the state as an institution has begun to go into decline since the mid-to-late twentieth century.
December 13, 2016
Perspectives are hard to be changed and its more difficult when they are build up by the idea of nationalism. this book does a great job in changing that perspective for you and make you realize of reality that's been always before you.
Go for it till the last page...!
Go for it till the last page...!
Want to read
July 26, 2016
August 21, 2013
Mehr als ein Jahrzehnt alt - aktueller denn je.
December 21, 2015
A dense history of the world. It took me a long time to read, so the thesis didn't blow me away, but the history lessons did.
February 14, 2024
Good as a general overview of history of state-building. For more in-depth knowledge I would recommend to read Mann's "Sources of Social Power" in 4 volumes.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews