The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers

PRAISE

‘The dilemma created by the United States’ relative decline and continuing world-wide military commitments is brilliantly analysed. … Kennedy’s analysis has caught the American imagination because of his ability to interpret both current problems and future trends in an historical perspective stretching back half a millennium to the end of the Middle Ages. … The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers is one of the masterpieces of modern historical writing. It is also a striking vindication of the often neglected truth that the only way to understand the present is to understand the past.’

CHRISTOPHER ANDREW, Daily Telegraph

‘The reader must savour the argument – illustrated by successive Habsburg, French and German bids for European hegemony, as well as by the rise and fall of the Pax Britannica – in all its historical richness. I doubt whether the story of the rise and fall of the great powers has ever been told so professionally, with such a command of sources, or with such close attention to the connections between economics, geography and politics.’

ROBERT SKIDELSKY, Independent

‘The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers is a powerful work of history. It is not glib or polemical … it is enormously learned. Its relatively few predictions are made with appropriate modesty. It has the capacity to make an immensely important contribution to both public debate and private thinking about the policy dilemmas currently facing the United States and the world, which makes the attention it has received particularly heartening.

‘But this is an important book, too, for its relationship to the prevailing norms of historical scholarship and for the ways in which it simultaneously reflects and defies those norms. …

‘The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers is not a conventionally entertaining book, despite its surprising popularity. It is not comforting. It is merely invaluable.’

ALAN BRINKLEY, TLS

‘In a work of almost Toynbeean sweep he describes a pattern of past development that is not only directly relevant to our time but is clearly intended to be read by policy makers. … When a scholar as careful and learned as Mr Kennedy is prompted by contemporary issues to reexamine the great processes of the past, the result can only be an enhancement of our historical understanding and a fresh enlightenment of the problems of our own time. Further, when the study is written as simply and attractively as this work is, its publication may have a great and beneficient impact.’

MICHAEL HOWARD, New York Times Book Review

Important, learned and lucid … Paul Kennedy’s great achievement is that he makes us see our current international problems against a background of empires that have gone under because they were unable to sustain the material cost of greatness; and he does so in a universal historical perspective of which Ranke would surely have approved.’

JAMES JOLL, New York Review of Books

‘This continually stimulating and wonderfully ambitious book throws as sharp a light on the present as it does on the past.’

ZARA STEINER, Financial Times

‘It is, I hope, a tribute to Kennedy’s range and attention to specific that my notes on his book extend to ten single-spaced foolscap pages. He manages to be both humane and unsentimental.’

FREDERIC RAPHAEL, Sunday Times

‘Paul Kennedy’s epic study … will long remain a standard source of reference.’

PHILIP TOWLE, London Review of Books

‘If it’s the red meat of history you want, there is plenty to get your teeth into …’

RUSSELL LEWIS, Daily Mail

‘This is a book of immense intellectual confidence. … I cannot recommend this book too highly.’

NICK BUTLER, Tribune

‘This book is falling out of briefcases all over Washington DC, both because it looks and sounds erudite and because it purports to answer an increasingly common question, viz: Has the United States already embarked on its journey into the sunset of empire? And since, despite its impressive footnotes and intimidating bibliography, the thesis of the book is very easy to assimilate, it is administering a lot of frissons to trendwatchers.’

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS, Guardian

DEDICATION

To Cath

CONTENTS

COVER

TITLE PAGE

COPYRIGHT

PRAISE

DEDICATION

MAPS

TABLES AND CHARTS

INTRODUCTION

STRATEGY AND ECONOMICS IN THE PREINDUSTRIAL WORLD

1. The Rise of the Western World

Ming China

The Muslim World

Two Outsiders – Japan and Russia

The ‘European Miracle’

2. The Habsburg Bid for Mastery, 1519–1659

The Meaning and Chronology of the Struggle

Strengths and Weaknesses of the Habsburg Bloc

International Comparisons

War, Money, and the Nation-State

3. Finance, Geography, and the Winning of Wars, 1660–1815

The ‘Financial Revolution’

Geopolitics

The Winning of Wars, 1660–1763

The Winning of Wars, 1763–1815

STRATEGY AND ECONOMICS IN THE INDUSTRIAL ERA

4. Industrialization and the Shifting Global Balances, 1815–85

The Eclipse of the Non-European World

Britain as Hegemon?

The ‘Middle Powers’

The Crimean War and the Erosion of Russian Power

The United States and the Civil War

The Wars of German Unification

Conclusions

5. The Coming of a Bipolar World and the Crisis of the ‘Middle Powers’: Part One, 1885–1918

The Shifting Balance of World Forces

The Position of the Powers, 1885–1914

Alliances and the Drift to War, 1890–1914

Total War and the Power Balances, 1914–18

6. The Coming of a Bipolar World and the Crisis of the ‘Middle Powers’: Part Two, 1919–42

The Postwar International Order

The Challengers

The Offstage Superpowers

The Unfolding Crisis, 1931–42

STRATEGY AND ECONOMICS TODAY AND TOMORROW

7. Stability and Change in a Bipolar World, 1943–80

‘The Proper Application of Overwhelming Force’

The New Strategic Landscape

The Cold War and the Third World

The Fissuring of the Bipolar World

The Changing Economic Balances, 1950–80

8. To the Twenty-first Century

History and Speculation

China’s Balancing Act

The Japanese Dilemma

The EEC – Potential and Problems

The Soviet Union and Its ‘Contradictions’

The United States: the Problem of Number One in Relative Decline

EPILOGUE

NOTES

FOOTNOTES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

MAPS

1. World Power Centres in the Sixteenth Century

2. The Political Divisions of Europe in the Sixteenth Century

3. Charles V’s Inheritance, 1519

4. The Collapse of Spanish Power in Europe

5. Europe in 1721

6. European Colonial Empires, c. 1750

7. Europe at the Height of Napoleon’s Power, 1810

8. The Chief Possessions, Naval Bases, and Submarine Cables of the British Empire, c. 1900

9. The European Powers and Their War Plans in 1914

10. Europe After the First World War

11. Europe at the Height of Hitler’s Power, 1942

12. Worldwide US Force Deployments, 1987

INTRODUCTION

This is a book about national and international power in the ‘modern’ – that is, post-Renaissance – period. It seeks to trace and to explain how the various Great Powers have risen and fallen, relative to each other, over the five centuries since the formation of the ‘new monarchies’ of western Europe and the beginnings of the transoceanic, global system of states. Inevitably, it concerns itself a great deal with wars, especially those major, drawn-out conflicts fought by coalitions of Great Powers which had such an impact upon the international order; but it is not strictly a book about military history. It also concerns itself with tracing the changes which have occurred in the global economic balances since 1500; and yet it is not, at least directly, a work of economic history. What it concentrates upon is the interaction between economics and strategy, as each of the leading states in the international system strove to enhance its wealth and its power, to become (or to remain) both rich and strong.

The ‘military conflict’ referred to in the book’s subtitle is therefore always examined in the context of ‘economic change’. The triumph of any one Great Power in this period, or the collapse of another, has usually been the consequence of lengthy fighting by its armed forces; but it has also been the consequence of the more or less efficient utilization of the state’s productive economic resources in wartime, and, further in the background, of the way in which that state’s economy had been rising or falling, relative to the other leading nations, in the decades preceding the actual conflict. For that reason, how a Great Power’s position steadily alters in peacetime is as important to this study as how it fights in wartime.

The argument being offered here will receive much more elaborate analysis in the text itself, but can be summarized very briefly:

The relative strengths of the leading nations in world affairs never remain constant, principally because of the uneven rate of growth among different societies and of the technological and organizational breakthroughs which bring a greater advantage to one society than to another. For example, the coming of the long-range gunned sailing ship and the rise of the Atlantic trades after 1500 was not uniformly beneficial to all the states of Europe – it boosted some much more than others. In the same way, the later development of steam power and of the coal and metal resources upon which it relied massively increased the relative power of certain nations, and thereby decreased the relative power of others. Once their productive capacity was enhanced, countries would normally find it easier to sustain the burdens of paying for large-scale armaments in peacetime and of maintaining and supplying armies and fleets in wartime. It sounds crudely mercantilistic to express it this way, but wealth is usually needed to underpin military power, and military power is usually needed to acquire and protect wealth. If, however, too large a proportion of the state’s resources is diverted from wealth creation and allocated instead to military purposes, then that is likely to lead to a weakening of national power over the longer term. In the same way, if a state overextends itself strategically – by, say, the conquest of extensive territories or the waging of costly wars – it runs the risk that the potential benefits from external expansion may be outweighed by the great expense of it all – a dilemma which becomes acute if the nation concerned has entered a period of relative economic decline. The history of the rise and later fall of the leading countries in the Great Power system since the advance of western Europe in the sixteenth century – that is, of nations such as Spain, the Netherlands, France, the British Empire, and currently the United States – shows a very significant correlation over the longer term between productive and revenue-raising capacities on the one hand and military strength on the other.

The story of ‘the rise and fall of the Great Powers’ which is presented in these chapters may be briefly summarized here. The first chapter sets the scene for all that follows by examining the world around 1500 and by analysing the strengths and weaknesses of each of the ‘power centres’ of that time – Ming China; the Ottoman Empire and its Muslim offshoot in India, the Mogul Empire; Muscovy; Tokugawa Japan; and the cluster of states in west-central Europe. At the beginning of the sixteenth century it was by no means apparent that the last-named region was destined to rise above all the rest. But however imposing and organized some of those oriental empires appeared by comparison with Europe, they all suffered from the consequences of having a centralized authority which insisted upon a uniformity of belief and practice, not only in official state religion but also in such areas as commercial activities and weapons development. The lack of any such supreme authority in Europe and the warlike rivalries among its various kingdoms and city-states stimulated a constant search for military improvements, which interacted fruitfully with the newer technological and commercial advances that were also being thrown up in this competitive, entrepreneurial environment. Possessing fewer obstacles to change, European societies entered into a constantly upward spiral of economic growth and enhanced military effectiveness which, over time, was to carry them ahead of all other regions of the globe.

While this dynamic of technological change and military competitiveness drove Europe forward in its usual jostling, pluralistic way, there still remained the possibility that one of the contending states might acquire sufficient resources to surpass the others, and then to dominate the continent. For about 150 years after 1500, a dynastic-religious bloc under the Spanish and Austrian Habsburgs seemed to threaten to do just that, and the efforts of the other major European states to check this ‘Habsburg bid for mastery’ occupy the whole of Chapter 2. As is done throughout this book, the strengths and weaknesses of each of the leading powers are analysed relatively, and in the light of the broader economic and technological changes affecting western society as a whole, in order that the reader can understand better the outcome of the many wars of this period. The chief theme of this chapter is that despite the great resources possessed by the Habsburg monarchs, they steadily over-extended themselves in the course of repeated conflicts and became militarily top-heavy for their weakening economic base. If the other European Great Powers also suffered immensely in these prolonged wars, they managed – though narrowly – to maintain the balance between their material resources and their military power better than their Habsburg enemies.

The Great Power struggles which took place between 1660 and 1815, and are covered in Chapter 3, cannot be so easily summarized as a contest between one large bloc and its many rivals. It was in this complicated period that while certain former Great Powers like Spain and the Netherlands were falling into the second rank, there steadily emerged five major states (France, Britain, Russia, Austria, and Prussia) which came to dominate the diplomacy and warfare of eighteenth-century Europe, and to engage in a series of lengthy coalition wars punctuated by swiftly changing alliances. This was an age in which France, first under Louis XIV and then later under Napoleon, came closer to controlling Europe than at any time before or since; but its endeavours were always held in check, in the last resort at least, by a combination of the other Great Powers. Since the cost of standing armies and national fleets had become horrendously great by the early eighteenth century, a country which could create an advanced system of banking and credit (as Britain did) enjoyed many advantages over financially backward rivals. But the factor of geographical position was also of great importance in deciding the fate of the powers in their many, and frequently changing, contests – which helps to explain why the two ‘flank’ nations of Russia and Britain had become much more important by 1815. Both retained the capacity to intervene in the struggles of west-central Europe while being geographically sheltered from them; and both expanded into the extra-European world as the eighteenth century unfolded, even as they were ensuring that the continental balance of power was upheld. Finally, by the later decades of the century, the Industrial Revolution was under way in Britain, which was to give that state an enhanced capacity both to colonize overseas and to frustrate the Napoleonic bid for European mastery.

For an entire century after 1815, by contrast, there was a remarkable absence of lengthy coalition wars. A strategic equilibrium existed, supported by all of the leading powers in the Concert of Europe, so that no single nation was either able or willing to make a bid for dominance. The prime concerns of government in these post-1815 decades were with domestic instability and (in the case of Russia and the United States) with further expansion across their continental landmasses. This relatively stable international scene allowed the British Empire to rise to its zenith as a global power, in naval and colonial and commercial terms, and also interacted favourably with its virtual monopoly of steam-driven industrial production. By the second half of the nineteenth century, however, industrialization was spreading to certain other regions, and was beginning to tilt the international power balances from the older leading nations and toward those countries with both the resources and organization to exploit the newer means of production and technology. Already, the few major conflicts of this era – the Crimean War to some degree but more especially the American Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War – were bringing defeat upon those societies which failed to modernize their military systems, and which lacked the broad-based industrial infrastructure to support the vast armies and much more expensive and complicated weaponry now transforming the nature of war.

As the twentieth century approached, therefore, the pace of technological change and uneven growth rates made the international system much more unstable and complex than it had been fifty years earlier. This was manifested in the frantic post-1880 jostling by the Great Powers for additional colonial territories in Africa, Asia, and the Pacific, partly for gain, partly out of a fear of being eclipsed. It also manifested itself in the increasing number of arms races, both on land and at sea, and in the creation of fixed military alliances, even in peacetime, as the various governments sought out partners for a possible future war. Behind the frequent colonial quarrels and international crises of the pre-1914 period, however, the decade-by-decade indices of economic power were pointing to even more fundamental shifts in the global balances – indeed, to the eclipse of what had been, for over three centuries, essentially a Eurocentric world system. Despite their best efforts, traditional European Great Powers like France and Austria-Hungary, and a recently united one like Italy, were falling out of the race. By contrast, the enormous, continent-wide states of the United States and Russia were moving to the forefront, and this despite the inefficiencies of the czarist state. Among the western European nations only Germany, possibly, had the muscle to force its way into the select league of the future world powers. Japan, on the other hand, was intent upon being dominant in East Asia, but not farther afield. Inevitably, then, all these changes posed considerable, and ultimately insuperable, problems for a British Empire which now found it much more difficult to defend its global interests than it had a half-century earlier.