Status Updates From The Sources of Social Power...

An European state that wished to survive had to increase its extractive capacity over defined territo-ries to obtain conscripted and professional armies or navies. Those that did not were crushed on the battlefield and absorbed into others the fate of Poland, Saxony, and Bavaria in this century and the next. No European state was continuously at peace. A peaceful state would have ceased to exist in 16th-18th century.

War lays a burden on the reeling state, And peace does nothing to relieve the weight.

Military power reorganized the social development of the ancient civilizations. But this is tough reading for a beginner of sociology.

Really tough reading

Evolutionary theories of the origins of stratification and the state

Societies are constituted of multiple overlapping and intersecting sociospatial networks of power. A general account of societies, their structure, and their history can best be given in term of the interpretations of the four sources of social power: ideological, economic, military, and political (IEMP) rela- tionships.