Bellicism

[Page 57]Bellicism refers to a war-centric approach to the state formation process, statecraft, and social change. The bellicist theory emphasizes a nonlinear process of political development and state formation. A prominent exponent of this theoretical orientation, Charles Tilly, wrote: “War made the state and the state made war.” In his 1990 book, Coercion, Capital, and European States: A.D. 990 to 1990, he advanced a war-centric military, political and social argument for state formation and evolution of state institutions. English historian Sir John Robert Seeley (1834–1895) and German historian Otto Hintze (1861–1940) noted that political development cannot be the result of solely internal dynamics. They referenced the external milieu and contextualized how “intense government” developed in “intense pressure.” Seeley explained the expansion of the British Empire ...