Himanshu Rai’s Reviews > The Sources of Social Power: Volume 1, A History of Power from the Beginning to AD 1760 > Status Update

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.