The Destructiveness of Pre-Industrial Warfare: Political and Technological Determinants

This article is concerned with the demographic impact of warfare in pre-industrial Europe and the consequences of the adoption of firearms from the early 16th century. The scale of warfare and its costs both increased, but the demographic impact depended on rulers’ strategies for meeting or evading these costs, rather than the scale of warfare itself. War-induced mortality was almost entirely due to epidemic disease precipitated by economic and social disruption. The impact was primarily regional, but diseases such as bubonic plague could trigger supraregional crises, as they did in 17th-century Germany. Gunpowder weapons initially reduced military costs, but this trend was reversed as warships and fortifications became more expensive and armies acquired more sophisticated sub-unit organization. Rulers cut their outgoings by using ‘military brokers’ to raise mercenary units who lived off the resources of the war zones, resulting in extreme damage to civilian life and property. As a reaction, highly organized, well-disciplined standing armies with their own supply organizations emerged after 1670. These were much less destructive to civilians but were very expensive to maintain, partly because the new level of organization allowed larger forces to be coordinated effectively. European rulers became increasingly indebted, and in France, the ancien régime collapsed as a result. Its revolutionary successor sustained campaigns of predatory expansion with a military system based on mass conscription. The result was an increase in the scale and destructiveness of warfare, before France succumbed to a hostile coalition financed by the wealth of England’s industrializing economy.