The Pursuit of Power: Technology, Armed Force, and Society since A.D. 1000

by William H. McNeill

In this magnificent synthesis of military, technological, and social history, William H. McNeill explores a whole millennium of human upheaval and traces the path by which we have arrived at the frightening dilemmas that now confront us. McNeill moves with equal mastery from the crossbow—banned by the Church in 1139 as too lethal for Christians to use against one another—to the nuclear missile, from the sociological consequences of drill in the seventeenth century to the emergence of the military-industrial complex in the twentieth. His central argument is that a commercial transformation of world society in the eleventh century caused military activity to respond increasingly to market forces as well as to the commands of rulers. Only in our own time, suggests McNeill, are command economies replacing the market control of large-scale human effort. The Pursuit of Power does not solve the problems of the present, but its discoveries, hypotheses, and sheer breadth of learning do offer a perspective on our current fears and, as McNeill hopes, "a ground for wiser action."

"No summary can do justice to McNeill's intricate, encyclopedic treatment. . . . McNeill's erudition is stunning, as he moves easily from European to Chinese and Islamic cultures and from military and technological to socio-economic and political developments. The result is a grand synthesis of sweeping proportions and interdisciplinary character that tells us almost as much about the history of butter as the history of guns. . . . McNeill's larger accomplishment is to remind us that all humankind has a shared past and, particularly with regard to its choice of weapons and warfare, a shared stake in the future."—Stuart Rochester, Washington Post Book World

"Mr. McNeill's comprehensiveness and sensitivity do for the reader what Henry James said that Turgenev's conversation did for him: they suggest 'all sorts of valuable things.' This narrative of rationality applied to irrational purposes and of ingenuity cannibalizing itself is a work of clarity, which delineates mysteries. The greatest of them, to my mind, is why human beings have never learned to cherish their own species."—Naomi Bliven, The New Yorker

Genres: History, Nonfiction, War, Military History, Military Fiction, World History, Politics

418 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1982

About the author

William Hardy McNeill was a historian and author, noted for his argument that contact and exchange among civilizations is what drives human history forward, first postulated in The Rise of the West (1963). He was the Robert A. Milikan Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Chicago, where he taught from 1947 until his retirement in 1987.
In addition to winning the U.S. National Book Award in History and Biography in 1964 for The Rise of the West, McNeill received several other awards and honors. In 1985 he served as president of the American Historical Association.
In 1996, McNeill won the prestigious Erasmus Prize, which the Crown Prince of the Netherlands Willem-Alexander presented to him at Amsterdam's Royal Palace.
In 1999, Modern Library named The Rise of the West of the 100 Best Nonfiction Books of the 20th century.
In 2009, he won the National Humanities Medal. In February 2010, President Barack Obama, a former University of Chicago professor himself, awarded McNeill the National Humanities Medal to recognize "his exceptional talent as a teacher and scholar at the University of Chicago and as an author of more than 20 books, including The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community (1963), which traces civilizations through 5,000 years of recorded history".

Reviews

[Costas... · Rating 4 out of 5]

Συναρπαστική σύνθεση, με αναφορές σε πολλές πτυχές της παγκόσμιας ιστορίας και θεωρίες που μπορούν να δώσουν το έναυσμα για περαιτέρω έρευνα. Αν και σε μερικά σημεία στα τελευταία κεφάλαια δείχνει τα χρονάκια του (38 χρόνια από τότε που πρωτοεκδόθηκε) είναι σε κάθε περίπτωση για την ιστοριογραφία του 20ού αιώνα, ένα σημαντικό έργο.

Ο Μακνήλ μπαίνει γρήγορα στο ψητό, υποστηρίζοντας ότι κάπου στο 1000 μ.Χ σημειώθηκαν στην Κίνα αξιοσημείωτες αλλαγές στη βιομηχανία και τους εξοπλισμούς, αρκετές εκατοντάδες χρόνια μάλιστα, προτού εμφανιστούν ανάλογα επιτεύγματα στην Άπω Δύση. Όμως, παρά το γεγονός ότι κάποιες νέες μέθοδοι παραγωγής εφαρμόστηκαν σε πολύ μεγάλη κλίμακα, τελικά κατέρρευσαν εξίσου εντυπωσιακά όσο είχαν εμφανιστεί. Η κρατική πολιτική άλλαξε, και μαζί με αυτήν το κοινωνικό πλαίσιο που είχε υποθάλψει την αλλαγή μέσω της ρύθμισης της συμπεριφοράς στα ήθη της αγοράς, γεγονός που είχε σημαντικές αρνητικές επιπτώσεις στην ανάπτυξη της καινοτομίας. Στα μέσα περίπου του 15ου αιώνα η Κίνα μπήκε συνειδητά μεν (βλ. μανδαρίνικη γραφειοκρατία), μοιραία δε, σε μια διαδικασία εσωστρεφούς ανάπτυξης, επικεντρωμένης μάλλον στην κρατική οικοδόμηση παρά στον πόλεμο και περισσότερο στη συγκρότηση εθνικής οικονομίας μέσω του εσωτερικού παρά του εξωτερικού εμπορίου.

Το ακριβώς αντίθετο αναπτυξιακό μοντέλο ακολούθησε η Δυτική Ευρώπη. Η επιδίωξη της ισχύος ήρθε μέσω του πολέμου από κοινού με την οικοδόμηση υπερπόντιων αυτοκρατοριών και αποτέλεσε την πλέον χαρακτηριστική μορφή έκφρασης του διακρατικού ανταγωνισμού στο ευρωπαϊκό σύστημα. Ο συγγραφέας συνοψίζει αυτή τη διαδικασία στο εσωτερικό της -με ιδιαίτερη αναφορά στην περίοδο 1600-1750- αναφερόμενος σε «έναν βελτιωμένο μοντέρνο στρατό που διαγκωνιζόταν σκληρά με τους αντιπάλους του» και διατάρασσε την ισορροπία δυνάμεων μόνο τοπικά και προσωρινά. Το αποτέλεσμα όμως σε ότι αφορά την περιφέρεια, ήταν μια συστηματική εξάπλωση που συντηρούσε ένα διευρυνόμενο εμπορικό δίκτυο, αύξανε τον φορολογητέο πλούτο στην Ευρώπη και καθιστούσε τη συντήρηση της στρατιωτικής οργάνωσης λιγότερο δαπανηρή απ' ότι θα είχε συμβεί σε διαφορετική περίπτωση. Η Ευρώπη εν ολίγοις, παρήγαγε έναν αυτοτροφοδοτούμενο κύκλο ανελέητου ανταγωνισμού στο πλαίσιο του οποίου η στρατιωτική της οργάνωση συντηρούσε και συντηρούνταν από την οικονομική και την πολιτική επέκταση εις βάρος των υπολοίπων κοινωνιών και κρατικών σχηματισμών του πλανήτη.

Η διαδικασία αυτή συνεχίστηκε μέχρι τα μέσα του 19ου αιώνα και παρότι επηρεάστηκε από τη Γαλλική Επανάσταση και τον υπερ-εικοσαετή πόλεμο που την ακολούθησε, παγιώθηκε σε νέα μορφή ανταγωνισμών χάρη στην ολοκλήρωση της πρώτης βιομηχανικής επανάστασης, η οποία σημειωτέον έλαβε μέρος σχεδόν ταυτόχρονα με τα άλλα δύο κοσμοϊστορικά γεγονότα και κατέστησε για πρώτη φορά δυνατή τη μαζική εκβιομηχάνιση του πολέμου φέρνοντας σε ολοκληρωτική ρήξη τη σχέση ανάμεσα στις οργανωτικές αρχές και τα οπλικά συστήματα που τόσο καλά είχαν εξυπηρετήσει τις ευρωπαϊκές κυβερνήσεις του Παλαιού Καθεστώτος και στη νέα πραγματικότητα της βιομηχανικής εποχής. Η λύση δόθηκε με την, όχι και τόσο αυτονόητη για τα μέτρα της εποχής, σύμπραξη ιδιωτικού κεφαλαίου και κρατικού μηχανισμού (χρυσή εποχή του φιλελευθερισμού γαρ), που γέννησε και σταδιακά γιγάντωσε το φαινόμενο που έχουμε συνηθίσει να αποκαλούμε στρατιωτικό-βιομηχανικό σύμπλεγμα. Αυτό με τη σειρά του οδήγησε σε μια τρελή κούρσα ναυτικών εξοπλισμών (οι καινοτομίες στη ναυπήγηση πολεμικών πλοίων και στην ανάπτυξη εξελιγμένων συστημάτων πυροβολικού ακολουθήθηκαν μοιραία και από μια αντίστοιχη κούρσα εξοπλισμών για τους στρατούς ξηράς), πρώτα ανάμεσα στις αποικιακές αυτοκρατορίες της Βρετανίας και της Γαλλίας και στη συνέχεια, υποβοηθούμενη από τη σύγκλιση και την Εγκάρδια Συνεννόηση των δύο πρώην παραδοσιακών εχθρών συνοδεία της τσαρικής Ρωσίας, ανάμεσα στη Βρετανική Αυτοκρατορία και την αναδυόμενη υπερδύναμη της καϊζερικής Γερμανίας. Με μια εναλλαγή δράσεων και αντιδράσεων στα όρια της υπνοβασίας (βλ. τους Υπνοβάτες του Κρίστοφερ Κλαρκ), η πορεία προς τον πρώτο καταστροφικό πόλεμο από καταβολής κόσμου γίνεται δυνατή. Τα υπόλοιπα είναι ιστορία.

[Sense of History]

This is a very hybrid work, as the subtitle (Technology, Armed Force & Society since AD 1000) suggests. It focuses on technology, on military developments and on social developments. In addition, McNeill has not limited himself to the specified time period, that is, from the year 1000 on, but actually starting with the first civilizations. So let us be clear: McNeill probably has been a bit too ambitious, because he doesn’t offer a balanced presentation of all these aspects over this long period. How could he? Like his previous work, Plagues and Peoples (1972), it is best to regard this book as a pioneering work, a book in which a number of incentives is given for further study. And if you see it that way, this is really an outstanding work. I zoom in on some merits first.

First of all, in the second chapter McNeill brings a correction on his Magnum Opus, The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community (1963): here he clearly indicates that in the China of around the year 1000 things happened that had global repercussions: "it is the hypothesis of this book that China's rapid evolution towards market-regulated behavior in the centuries on either side of the year 1000 tipped a critical balance in world history. I believe that China's example set humankind off on a thousand-year exploration of what could be accomplished by relying on prices and personal or small-group (the partnership or company) perception of private advantage as a way of orchestrating behaviour on a mass scale". That is no small thing, and McNeill has put with this hypothesis his mark (in the early 1980's) on the debate of what has become 'The Great Divergence'.

A second merit is already implicit in the previous one. McNeill points to the market mechanism that constantly drove the socio-technological development, especially in the military domain. Continuously he highlights the interaction between what he calls "command economy", driven by central governments and especially based on taxes/tributes or loans, and the ants nest-like activity by private investors, inventors, and adventurers. He does this most intensely in the chapter on the development of the European supremacy at sea, in the 16th and 17th centuries. Here also he formulates a global hypothesis, namely that the command-driven evolution between the 15th and the end of the 19th century in Western Europe was subordinate to a market-driven evolution, and this would explain the dominance of the Western world over the rest of the planet. Of course, he mentions the role of capitalism, but he does so sparingly, as one of the elements that made that money easy to mobilize for all kinds of risk investments, but no more than that. The curious thing is that McNeill, although constantly on the terrain of marxist historians, actually not really engages in that discussion and doesn’t really clarifies his own position (for instance, he nowhere mentions Immanuel Wallerstein and his world system-theory).

With this we actually are on the domain of the weaknesses of this work. I already indicated that McNeill was absolutely too ambitious in the scope of this work and didn’t live up to what he promised in the subtitle. Frankly, we can’t blame him for that: it is not a task one man or woman is up to.

What I personally regret is that McNeill in most of this work (about 300 of the 380 pages) focuses on the enormous developments in the Western military technology. Now, of course, this is a very interesting domain, but with this enormous attention he gives the impression that the other continents and cultures just weren’t relevant. In other words he sinneth against his own globalist principles. After all, with his "The Rise of The West" he had put the interaction between continents and cultures on the map of historians.

Occasionally McNeill gives attention to economic and social developments that are relevant to his military story, but he does that in a very limited way. This work is not a real study on the interaction between all those domains. Only in some limited time periods (for example, the 19th century) he comes near to it. Also the cultural aspect is undervaluated: the role of ideologies in military developments is almost completely absent.

Some passages and hypotheses of McNeill are very speculative. For instance, he gives the impression that it is mainly the demographic explosion of the 19th century that led to both world wars in the 20th century. And then he states that a stabilisation occurred, which is in clear contradiction with the demographic explosion that began just after the 2nd World War. Some of his hypotheses are also based on own impressions, gained during his own military service in the second world war, which is a very narrow basis. And finally almost the whole chapter about the period after the second world war is so speculative (and obviously based on wrong assessments) that you better skip it.

Nevertheless, McNeill with this work, once again, has produced a very fascinating work with numerous of aspects and theories that deserve further excavation. In the historiography of the 20th century, this really is a significant work (my exact rating is rather 3.5 stars)

[Marc Lamot · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is so much to say about this very dense work. In the first place that again McNeill offers us a real pioneering work: nothing less than a study on the relationship between political, military and social developments, especially in the 2nd millennium, an approach that – as far as I know - no one has ventured before.

I once again learned a lot of new things, and not only about the evolution of weapon technology. McNeill, for example, corrects his most important work "the Rise of the West" (1963) in a far-reaching way, by highlighting the merits of the enormous Chinese empire in the beginning of the 2nd millennium. And in a breathtakingly detailed chapter he shows how the domination of the West over the rest of the world in the 19th century originated in the feverish fanaticism of the emerging city states and later also nation states in Europe, in the period between the 14th and the 18th century. A very own and always recurring mantra of him is how the market, the private initiative, always drove the dynamics of this development and forced governments to constantly take over and adjust military tactics and armaments, with the slaughter of the First World War as absolute low point.

But just as in his previous work 'Plagues and Peoples' (1972), there are also great weaknesses. A kind of military-technological determinism is one of them: from the 14th century on McNeill focuses almost exclusively on the military-technological evolutions in Western European countries, in particular Great Britain. In that way he not only sins against the globalism he so celebrates, but also all social, economic and political evolutions seem to be the result of the military background. And just as with “Plagues and Peoples” one has to keep an eye on the publication date: 1982; that is to say that it was mainly written on the basis of material that saw the light in the 70s, and of course was still strongly influenced by the Cold War situation of that time. That immediately explains why the last chapter is also very speculative and McNeill, - with hindsight we can say that easy enough -, has made some seriously wrong estimations; a historian who predicts the future, it remains a dangerous game. But nevertheless: I take my hat off for the achievement of this father of Global History (my rating: 3,5 stars). See also my more elaborate review in my alias Senseofhistory, https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[Josh Friedlander · Rating 4 out of 5]

In his best-known work Plagues and People, William McNeill traced the impact of diseases on human civilisation from smallpox to AIDS. This book is even broader in its ambition: it is about how weapon technology and the see-sawing balance of power lead inevitably to instability and arms races, traced through several dense millennia of history. It is perhaps too ambitious in its scope and simultaneously too minutely detailed; many of the finer points of arquebusiers and dreadnoughts slipped out of my mind instantly, but probably would have worked really well as a museum exhibit.

One key phrase echoes through the book - "industrialisation of war". In one sense this began in ancient times. The imperial trailblazer Sargon of Akkad was fearsome enough, but his ravages were short lived. As an overly effective virus burns out its host population too quickly, his pillaging would come to an abrupt halt when he ran out of food for his armies - no-one was left to farm the land. Thus eventually tax-based empires such as that of Xerxes became more widespread: the onerous and constant but bearable burden of taxation was seen as preferable to the sporadic but devastating system of plunder. This changed when the wheelwrights of Central Asia perfected the hub-and-axle system necessary for stable two-wheeled chariots (aided by the compound bow). The burst of chariot-guided warfare from the steppes led to civilisational collapse in the Levant (the period of the Hyksos in Egypt begins here, around 1600 BC), although in China the invaders formed the more stable Shang dynasty. And so it continues, in a predictable pattern: civilisational progress leads to military innovation, leading to a round of upgrades, and ever-greater scale of bloodshed. Finer metalwork techniques led to the arrival of the crossbow in Europe in the twelfth century (it was invented in China): unlike the longbow, which required years of training to develop suitable hand strength, it could be used by anyone with reasonable accuracy - it had a locking mechanism whereby the string could be drawn, and then simply fired by a trigger. The Second Lateran Council forbade Christians to use it on one another.

But the true industrialisation of war begins with the modern Industrial Revolution, specifically (for our purpose) around the 1850s. The Crimean War

presented British and French inventors with an opportunity to apply civil engineering to military problems of every sort. The pace of change in weaponry and in methods of management of armed force continued to accelerate thereafter, so that by the 1880s military engineering had begun to forge ahead of civil engineering, reversing the relationship of thirty years before

McNeill argues that Britain did in fact acquire its empire in a fit of absent-mindedness (in J.R. Seeley's memorable phrase): faced with a population surplus and sizeable advantage in military technology, wars against less advanced powers cost barely more than basic army upkeep and very little in blood. The Opium Wars, a devastating event in Chinese history, was barely noticed by the Victorian public.

The phrase "military-industrial complex" has accrued tinfoil-hat connotations since Eisenhower coined it, but it has a simple meaning: governments need big, expensive military R&D, and in the industrial age private companies arise to supply it (supplanting the public weaponries of the past, such as the Woolwich Arsenal, [namesake of Arsenal Football Club]), and then take on inertial force. In order to exist they need a steady stream of projects, and by nature of their size and strategic importance they tend to become immune from market forces and oversight. This dynamic appears in the naval arms race sparked by the British HMS Dreadnought in the build-up to the First World War. Krupp in Germany and Armstrong in Britain kept turning out larger and larger ships, as panicked admirals requisitioned the necessary budgets by any means possible. The dreadnought race was a bust: after the fairly insignificant Battle of Jutland, submarine warfare dominated the naval theatre of the war. But the system and its boondoggles are still around. Lockheed Martin's F-35, after fifteen years and billions of dollars, has been an utter failure.

In Legnano in 1176, the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa's knights were repelled by the pikemen of the Lombard League. This was a harbinger of the power of infantry over mounted knights. A handful of mounted Normans had conquered England in 1066, and not many more crusaders had taken Jerusalem. But the Italians had found a way to overcome them with a defensive square formation with pikes facing outward. (McNeill also reads it as the beginning of the dominance of Southern market-based civilisation over Northern feudalism, one of many social aspects which play a large role in the book but I had trouble fitting into this review.) Knightly culture died hard; there was something ungentlemanly in dismounting and fighting hand to hand. But the logic of violence is ineluctable. McNeill, writing in 1984, was thinking about nuclear arms and Mutually Assured Destruction, the subject of his last chapter. In our time warfare through unmanned drones is seen as unchivalrous but inevitable, and nuclear proliferation - with its concomitant cyber-battles - continues unabated. Is there a remedy to this? McNeill doesn't offer one, and his long history offers only cause for despair.

[Hadrian · Rating 2 out of 5]

First published in 1982, The Pursuit of Power is a broad history of military methods and technological development from 1000 to the mid-20th century.

The book appears to be over-general, with so many disparate periods forced into a schema of command vs. market economies. Curiously enough, he makes some arguments that may have been interesting for 1982 - the assertion that the 'market' economy was only a temporary phase in human history and that the 'command economy' began to reassert itself starting in the latter parts of the 19th century.

Another surprise is that he treats China as a major player but only in the first chapter of the book - and his discussion of a decline, written well before any economic historical debates on the 'great divergence' was also written well before China or even Japan had established themselves in the postwar era as economic powers in their own right.

[Song · Rating 5 out of 5]

以前我有个感叹，是觉得人类那么多聪明才智，都用在自相残杀上了，是何其反讽的一件事。结果你猜怎么着，麦克尼尔老师这本书告诉我，人类社会走到今天这个样子，确实是出于自相残杀之目的。为了打赢战争，人类发明了社会动员方式，工业化生产，管理学，交通运输，和各种科技。

[Josh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Historian William H. McNeill examines the reciprocal relationship between society, technology and armed forces, offering broad coverage and specific treatment of historiographical and historical debates. His survey includes early Chinese commercialization, the rise of the West, the managerial revolution sparked by World War I and elaborated by World War II, and the post-1945 nuclear arms race, among other subjects.
Ten chapters proceed chronologically from antiquity to the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks of the 1970s. While the opening chapters are global in approach and cover several centuries, McNeill’s focus eventually narrows temporally and geographically to Western Europe and specifically Great Britain, France, Prussia, Germany and Russia. These focused chapters analyze historical processes between 1600 and 1945, such as the “bureaucratization of violence” and the “industrialization of war.”
In the two opening chapters, McNeill describes the “command societies” of antiquity and explains why China did not become a world imperial power before 1500. Command-societies conditioned citizens to obey orders from social superiors. Its rulers collected taxes, prosecuted wars, and limited commercial relations by command. Command-societies limited commerce, McNeill suggests, because the sovereign subordinated the merchant classes and limited technical and military innovation. In “free” societies, by comparison, the logic of supply and demand and profit allowed flourishing commercial relations. The principle difference between China and Europe was that China remained a command society that ultimately squashed commercial development while European polities facilitated a commercial explosion. For example, the Chinese commercial boom circa 1000 A.D. had no analogue in the West. Although China possessed nascent coal and metalworking industries and an ocean-going fleet capable of reaching East Africa, its governing Confucian bureaucrats were suspicious of private capital accumulation and military aggrandizement. Hence, the Ming Dynasty suspended naval construction, banned foreign expeditions, and constrained vital industries beginning in the 1420s.
The Chinese commercial boom constitutes the heart of McNeill’s thesis that commercialization started in China, diffused among other polities, and those recipients organized their societies around the pursuit of private self-interest and profit seeking first in the Mediterranean and later throughout the European continent. By modeling their societies around the market, Italian city-states inaugurated a new art of war. Italian entrepôts pioneered the practice of replacing traditional civilian militias with hired professional soldiers. Hired professionals allowed city-states to reserve their domestic population for commercial labor. Taxes then paid for armed companies who, in turn, pumped money back into the system and rejuvenated the tax base. McNeill argues that commerce gradually freed European powers from the ancient constraints of scarce manpower and supply. Force and wealth became coterminous and self-reinforcing.
McNeill contends that the reciprocal relationship between technology, commerce, and armed forces produced increasingly sophisticated modern armaments and armies in Europe after 1600. This process was mitigated by cultural factors that produced varying levels of inventiveness among European powers. Wars constituted the primary vehicle for technical innovation. The Thirty Years War brought into fruition a modern army: drilled, disciplined, outfitted with standardized equipment, and controlled by a military bureaucracy devoted to the sovereign. McNeill also persuasively argues that the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars catalyzed the British industrial revolution because British wartime demands for armaments and goods encouraged profound growth in metalworking and related core industries.
McNeill’s final chapters illustrate how the industrialization of war provoked a continual security dilemma in Europe as nations sought new technologies to maintain parity between armed forces. Private firms made effective suppliers of military accouterment. European industries adopted the “American System” of interchangeable parts that could, within a few years, mass-produce and outfit an entire European army with the latest firearm. McNeill dates the modern “military-industrial complex” to the 1884 British Naval Scare. The British approved large naval appropriations to both modernize the Royal Navy and stimulate employment during an economic depression. Interest groups emerged that lobbied Parliament for enlarged naval appropriations bills that, in turn, sparked further technological change that made older ships obsolete. Outdated ships needed still larger appropriations for the next round of renovation. This became self-reinforcing when technologies sparked foreign inventiveness. A “Red Queen” effect emerged as nations spent more to maintain political equilibrium—it continues today.
McNeill concludes with a fitting survey of the post-1945 nuclear arms race that predicts either future global annihilation or the rise of a utopian global imperial order that stifles nuclear proliferation and ends the current security dilemma. Overall, McNeill’s superb military history persuasively demonstrates why historians cannot divorce the military from its social and cultural background, and suggests the Cold War has long historical precedents in European history.

[Nate Huston · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is exhaustingly exhaustive. Perhaps I just need more time to chew on it, but the first paragraph of the preface paints a more direct picture than I personally experienced. "Alterations in armaments resemble genetic mutations of microorganisms in the sens that they may, from time to time, open new geographic zones for exploitation, or break down older limits upon the exercise of force within the host society itself." (vii) From this note I expected to read about cases where the development of a given technology allowed advances, opened doors, or broke down walls that hitherto were obstacles to a given society's pursuit of some end. While there were a number of these specific cases, I got lost in a number of rabbit holes exploring specific societies that were so deep I lost sight of the original "genetic mutation" that had brought me there in the first place. With that said, I think there are a number of interesting points to be made, the first of which is the author's contention that the desire to maintain power on the part of Chinese leadership during the 11th Century tamped down innovation in that region even as it kick-started it across the globe.

The author's central thesis, in his own words, is "that China's rapid evolution towards market-regulated behavior in the centuries on either side of the year 1000 tipped a critical balance in world history." He goes on to say that he believes "China's example set human kind off on a thousand-year exploration of what could be accomplished by relying on prices and personal or small-group perception of private advantage as a way of orchestrating behavior on a mass scale." While this is certainly a worthwhile hypothesis to explore, McNeill spends only 40 of 387 pages on the Chinese and then sets off to describe the next 1000 or so years of development. While that path is a bit more in line with the sentiment expressed in his preface, it is also an enormous undertaking and tends quickly to depart from this China-as-tipping-point thesis.

The one rabbit hole I enjoyed the most was the comparison of the French political and British Industrial revolutions and their military impact. Long story short, McNeill attributes both to population booms and while the French responded by exporting men and creating an empire, the British "exported goods as well as men (armed and unarmed) and thereby contrived to establish a market-supported system of power that proved more durable than anything the French achieved, despite their many victories." (186)

[Roger Burk · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's about the how the interplay of culture, politics, economics, and technology affect the waging of war in the second millennium AD. The learning and breadth of scholarship are amazing. There's hardly a page in this splendid book that does not offer a new insight or tidbit. One or two of them I don't quite buy, but every one is interesting.

Then there are the concluding chapters, which opine about the future. He's writing less than ten years before the collapse of the Soviet Union. The nuclear arms race and overpopulation are the looming threats that may not be survivable. The most hopeful future is for a world government to be established and for free enterprise and economic growth to wither in the face of bureaucratic management that keeps everyone minimally happy. Maybe historians should just stick to the past.

One the other hand, early on he observes that history makes "simple solutions and radical despair both seem less compelling," and that's a lesson worth heeding.

[马尔马拉海的鱼 · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good introduction to world military history and big history.It clearly shows the relationship between military, politics and economy.
However,the fforecast of 21th century in the end of this book is too advanced to our time😂

[William Lexner · Rating 5 out of 5]

McNeill is perhaps the greatest of all historians.

[Ian · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author states in his Preface that this book is intended as a twin to his earlier book "Plagues and Peoples" which looked at the effect of micro-organisms on human society, adding the interesting perspective that "our only significant macroparasites are other men, who, by specializing in violence, are able to secure a living without themselves producing the food or other commodities they consume." This sets out the theme of the book, which looks at the relationship between economics and military force. There is too much in here to summarise effectively, but some of the main themes that I picked up were:

- how in early medieval Europe "free companies" of armed men who lived by plunder gradually transformed themselves into companies of mercenaries available for hire by communities, to protect those communities from other freebooters, and how taxation to pay for protection came to be seen as preferable to being the frequent victims of plunder.

- The author's views as to why European military technology caught up with and then surpassed that of China; and how, in the early colonial period, very small
European armies could defeat much larger forces from other parts of the World, (which he sees as less to do with technology than you might think).

- how the naval arms race of 1880-1914, and the post 1945 arms race, affected the economies of the countries involved, and how the two World Wars precipitated the move from the classic laissez-faire of the nineteenth century to the more managed economies of the twentieth century. The book was written in 1982 and so the author did not have the benefit of seeing how the Cold War arms race contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union, but this does not detract from his overall historical analysis.

I can't finish these comments without mentioning the staggering amount of research the author undertook. The footnotes and sources section takes up about 10% of the entire text, and the number of sources quoted led me to wonder whether the author had read everything ever published on the subject of military history.

I don't necessarily agree with every conclusion set out (when does that ever happen?) but this book did provide me with a number of fresh insights.

[Logan Quinn · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the best books on history I've read in a long time, possibly the best since Janet Abu-Lughod's Before European Hegemony. McNeill is obviously highly well-read, and manages to fit enormous amounts of information into each page, but the book avoids being overly academic and is very clearly written and straight-forward. It is understandable even to someone with only a very basic knowledge of history, McNeill does not waste words on flowery language, but explains his points succinctly and comprehensively.

The subject matter itself is impressive in both scope and ambition. He discusses the interplay of the market with technological advcance, the effect of military organization and new military technologies on the structure of society, and the perennial struggle between merchants and government. Most of the book is dedicated to Western/Central Europe and Russia since about 1400, but he also includes a chapter with an admirable discussion of these factors in China between 1000 and 1500.

McNeill does not just summarize and synthesize existing historical models (although there is enough of that to give the reader an impression of the state of the field), but presents his own model of historical progression.I have to say, his model of why the West rose to technological and military/commercial predominance is the first I have read that seems even remotely plausible to me. I cannot recommend this book enough. Even if you are not specifically interested in the subject matter, I would suggest giving it a read. Despite having no interest in epidemiology whatsoever, I plan to read McNeill's other book, Plagues and Peoples, simply because this one is so good that I expect he'll be able to make even a subject I've never considered reading about worthwhile.

[Randall Wallace · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nation states substitute taxation for plunder. Finance increases it’s power over politics in Europe while in China the opposite happened. In China capital accumulation was considered immoral because of it’s historical connection with unfair advantage. Christian Theology was of course also very opposed to capital accumulation however corrupted Christian Theology had and still has no problem with it. Interesting to learn the development from Bombards to Cannon. 1690 is when the bayonet is developed, finally eliminating the need for pikemen. 1690 is also when the British musket appears and stays basically unchanged until 1840. By 1794 repression of the French populace by the French state was once more possible. -Terrific insight on the rather nasty British Enclosure Acts on page 212- Breech Loading replaces Muzzle loading – big difference! We all know about the Rape of Nanking, but why was Japan there? This book shows you that siphoning Manchuria’s product helped boost Japan’s wartime output by fivefold between 1930 and 1942. Not five stars because James Burke made this stuff a lot more interesting in his video and book series Connections. I probably learned more from Connections – what a great series that was – and humorous too…

[Maurício Linhares · Rating 5 out of 5]

Was interested mostly in the historic perspective of war but the book goes on to also cover the politics and other possible reasons for all these many conflicts. Bonus points for the coverage of Middle Eastern and Asian conflicts (other than the ones that eventually reached Europe), specially how the Chinese could have developed the greatest empire ever long before the Europeans but ended up not doing it because the Mandarins were afraid they would lose power to the Military elite.

The way the current military complex was formed during the last 200 years is also covered in detail, including the Crimean war that ended up being the main rehearsal for what we saw in WW1, now I definitely want to read more and understand what was going on there at that time. Recommended read!

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book presented a compelling argument about the decline and rise of "command" in technological development and military mobilization. It was also very interesting to get McNeill's take on the latter stages of the Cold War (the book was published in 1982), so there was like a second history hidden in the last chapter--that of intellectual responses to the challenges of the nuclear age and the Cold War.

Still, I only give this (enjoyable) book 4 stars because of how Eurocentric the latter chapters are. It would have been nice to get a bit more information about Asia and Africa in the 19th and 20th centuries.

[Michael Burnam-Fink · Rating 4 out of 5]

Do you think exploring all of military history might be a little ambitious? Yeah, but McNeill pulls it off, explaining how technology, markets, and command authority have combined again and again to win wars, and create modern society. If there's any weakness in the book, it's that it skims WW2 and the Cold War, and treats innovation and technology as an autonomous force, but for a comprehensive military history, it's amazing.

[Jkterp · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent piece on military history. I was "forced" to read McNeil as I was Keegan and Horne as an essential piece to commissioning as an U.S. Army Officer. This should be essential reading for every NATO officer. It provided a rebirth for my interest in military history and sparked my interest in graduate research. This should be essential reading for every commissioned officer in NATO. Exquisite detail from the birth of gunpowder in western Europe until the present day.

[Luke · Rating 4 out of 5]

A dense overview of the influence of technology on military history. The sentence structure is complex - more like a philosophy book than a nonfiction history book, so I had to reread certain sentences multiple times. The intellectual level that the author operates on is very high.

I appreciated the early chapters of the book a little bit more. I think the author got bogged down on a few too many details after 1800 and the napoleonic wars or so.

[Lea Avi · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent history of how warfare, science, markets and rationalism combined to promote progress. It focuses mainly on European history from 1000 AD up until 1980, and explains how the intense competition between the various European states basically drove the West towards world dominance. If you've read any of Azar Gat or Ian Morris' works on war this should be right up your alley.

[Andrew Clough · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sometimes reading a book about one aspect of history over a long timeframe will give you a better perspective on how the pieces of history you're already familiar fit together. That was very much my experience here.

[Denise DeRocher · Rating 5 out of 5]

I recommend this book to anyone and everyone!! A must'read for all who are interested in warfare, politics, sociology, etc... An amazing endeavor.

[Yury Lyandres · Rating 4 out of 5]

Гвоздем программы стали ссылки в комментариях С.А. Нефедова: Пенской В.В. (2005) "Военная революция в Европе XVI-XVIIвв..." и Исаев А. et al (2007) "Танковый прорыв..."

[M Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a phenomenal book not only as a primer on military technological evolution, but also on how to adapt to changing technological and administrative paradigms. Deserves six stars.

[Fearless Leader · Rating 2 out of 5]

Dull standard military history; it gets better as his chronological telling gets closer to the present but it’s all still very superficial.

[Baldur · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is actually really interesting but it is dry as hell

[Carlos Wang · Rating 5 out of 5]

看到歐陽泰的那本《火藥時代》，這才想起了本書買了很久都沒閱讀。歐洲何以稱霸世界，是自上個世紀以來的顯學，從各種角度去探討，經濟、社會、軍事乃至於文化地理等都有，切入的時間範圍也長達兩三百年。2016年過世的著名史家威廉 H. 麥克尼爾 (William H. McNeill) 也撰寫了這本《競逐富強》(The Pursuit of Power) 來嘗試回答這個問題。

麥克尼爾在本書中主張，東方，或者是說，宋朝在公元一千年左右時，是雄霸世界的強權，在各方面表現都優於其他文明。然而，歐洲卻逐漸從此刻展開一系列的，在軍事、經濟到政治上的緩慢變革，最終讓它們在十九世紀壓倒群雄，稱霸世界。而推動這種進程的，正如同達爾文所提出，大家所熟悉的“物競天擇”。歐洲分裂的政治局勢，加上文明之間的衝突，強大的競爭壓力促使各國必須不斷的追求變革方能生存，這就是持久又強大的動力。

這種論點最常被舉例的是日本，它們在十五、六世紀時進入戰國紛爭的時代，而在此刻，歐洲人傳入火繩槍被發揚光大，甚至青出於藍。但經歷德川幕府兩百年的和平之後，當美國人再次踏上這塊土地時，卻赫然發現日本人早就對熱兵器陌生，喪失了曾有過的技能。欠缺競爭的動力當然是一大原因。但歐洲人凌駕東方之上的，卻還有更深刻的原因，而這正是本書要細部分析的。

船堅炮利只是歐洲獨霸世界的表象，以龐大的商業資本為底才是深層的裏因。麥克尼爾指出，比起傳統的中央集權政府指令型經濟，利用市場“無形之手”的力量來動員資源更能發揮出最大的效能。人性本能追求私利，非強迫式的要求趨動著商人從各方面主動去滿足政府所需，統治者再從這些金雞母手中收取豐厚稅金去打仗稱霸，構成了供需之間互利互惠的循環。英國便是利用這種無形的力量，打敗了擁有整個大陸，卻依然以指令為主，市場為輔的拿破崙。

資本主義的強大供應了軍備競賽的龐大成本，這便是歐洲稱霸的原因。

麥克尼爾的這番結論跨越經濟跟軍事的界線，是極具說服力的。但明眼人也都能看出，他解釋了“西方”的最終領先，卻沒有足夠的解釋了“東方”落後以及“為何不能發展出來同樣的模式”的原因。它說明了公元一千年時宋朝的強大跟侷限，但沒能說出個所以然。如果讀過賈德‧戴蒙的《槍砲、病菌與鋼鐵》就知道，地理環境對於文明的發展也有極大的影響。海洋型島國面臨的挑戰跟大陸型國家可能做出的抉擇不同，會有各自的考量。文化與傳統，人為的偶然等都可能產生極大的變數。不過這不是本書的缺點，畢竟主題是解釋歐洲的強大原因，而不是分析全球霸權興衰；做為回答這個大問題的拼圖之一，本書依然是完美的達成了任務。

本書的最後，麥克尼爾從二十世紀末的演變得出一個願景，他認為也許人類社會未來會發展出一個世界政府，能夠宏觀的調控經濟並與自由市場合作，有效的分配資源，人口得到控制，暴力在運動競技得到出口，即便產生衝突，也不再會是大規模的，和平降臨這顆星球。站在三十年後看這段話，或許吾人會覺得還是太樂觀了些，不管怎樣，或許這並不是個不可以畫出來的大餅。

《競逐富強》沒有繁體版讓我有點意外，而上海辭書的這個版本恐怕不好買，幸好聽聞有出版社願意再版，麥克尼爾這本書歷久彌新，仍非常值得一讀，與大家推薦之。

(我寫這篇書評的時候還沒有繁體，後來出了)

[Dennis Murphy · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Pursuit of Power: Technology, Armed Force, and Society since 1000 by William H. McNeill is one of those reference works that help set the tone for how technological change influence war and society. It is, therefore, a little funny that his book is, by the author's own admission, something of an extended footnote to an earlier project of his. We can safely discard his musings on world empire at the end of the book, but a number of the lessons of this text are worth investigating more thoroughly as time moves on. As I further my own understanding of technology and topics of international security, this is a book I imagine I will return to time and again. My only complaint is that it is not the most engaging read. Some nuggets of information fascinate, such as pre-revolutionary France's balloon corps and Maurice's military reforms, but there were other moments when the book felt tedious to work through. I like it, but it is a text best consumed in small doses and perhaps with a specific purpose in mind.

[Maria · Rating 3 out of 5]

McNeill traces the social history, technology and military history in one strand showing the path of war and power across the span of Europe and then beyond.

Why I started this book: Professional Reading title, and I'm doing my best to cross books of my too long list.

Why I finished it: This book was solid and when the physical book was due back at the library, I downloaded a digital form to take with me on my trip. (Libraries are great.) Interesting discussion on how the pace of change shifted as European countries went from governmental armorers to commercial contractors.

[R. · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really, really good history book that manages to stick to facts without making any real value judgements. I know that is what pure history is supposed to be, but at the same time, I the older I get the more I think that the value judgements are what is important and what prevents us from repeating mistakes. If you don't see anything wrong with the actions of the people who led us into the World Wars then aren't you less inclined to want to avoid another one?