Warfare, nationalism, and globalization

This chapter sets out the standard accounts of the relationship between warfare and the state‐ and nation‐formation. It outlines positions that suggest recent trends in warfare and the state system appear to be undermining this relationship, before arguing that nationalism is being transformed but not superseded by contemporary developments. Charles Tilly and Michael Mann in their classic studies argued the modern nation state is a by‐product of rulers’ efforts to acquire the means of war and war is an organizational phenomenon from which the state derived its administrative machinery. Both scholars drew on the substantial historiography on the European “military revolution” of the early modern era, which resulted in new technologies, tactics, and strategies, and a rapid increase in the size of armies relative to the population. W. H. McNeill contended that the World Wars represent the end of the European nation state as a sovereign actor.