The modernization of war

1. The modernization of war

2. War, the State and historical change • War = organized, collective violence • War = prime function of the state State: institution representing, governing a territory/population • Inter-state/international relations • War = instrument of politics and government Clausewitz: “Continuation of politics by other means” • Defensive: protecting territory, population, sovereignty of the state • Offensive: state’s interests pursued via expansion, colonization, etc.

3. War, the State and historical change • Modernization and progress • A problem, not an equivalence • Drivers of modernization • Technology – Tools • Economics – Money • Politics – Ideas

4. War, the State and historical change • The “military revolution” in early modern history Michael Roberts (1956), Netherlands, Sweden, 1560-1660 • Technological, tactical, and doctrinal evolutions  larger, permanent armies • Creation of the modern state • Fortification, naval warfare, rise of the West (G. Parker, 1970s) Transformation of warfare part and parcel of wider historical changes

5. The long nineteenth century, 1789-1918 • Revolutions of the late eighteenth-century • Enlightenment: rational and scientific approaches to warfare • Political revolutions: citizenship, taxes, and military service • Advent of mass warfare • Frederick the Great (18th c.) – <40,000 soldiers • Napoleon, Leipzig, 1813: 195,000

6. War and the transformation of politics • “Levéeen masse”, France, 1793 “From this moment until the enemy is driven from the territory of the Republic, all the French people are permanently requisitioned for the armies. The young men will go to the front, married men will forge arms and carry supplies, women will make tents and clothing, children will divide old linen into bandages, old men will be carried into the squares to rouse the courage of the soldiers, to teach hatred of kings and the unity of the Republic.” --- “The musket made the infantryman and the infantryman made the democrat” J.F.C Fuller, The Conduct of War

7. “How war made states and vice versa” With a nation in arms, a state’s extractive power rose enormously, as did the claims of citizens on their state. Although a call to defend the fatherland stimulated extraordinary support for the efforts of war, reliance on mass conscription, confiscatory taxation, and conversion of production to the ends of war made any state vulnerable to popular resistance, and answerable to popular demands as never before. From that point onward, the character of war changed, and the relationship between war making and civilian politics altered fundamentally.” Charles Tilly, Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 990-1990, 1990

8. War and citizenship “All this bargaining created or confirmed individual and collective claims on the state, individual and collective rights vis-à-vis the state, and obligations of the state to its citizens. It also created rights – recognized enforceable claims – of states with respect to their citizens. The core of what we now call “citizenship”, indeed, consists of multiple bargains hammered out by rulers and ruled in the course of their struggles over the means of state action, especially the making of war.” Charles Tilly, Coercion, Capital, and European States

9. The long nineteenth century, 1789-1918 • Economic transformations • Scientific and technological progress • Agricultural efficiency • Industrialization • Organizational changes • Bureaucracy • Professionalization (General staff and military academies)

10. A second “military revolution”? • Technologies of combat • Breech-loading guns, rapid-firing rifles and artillery, machine gun– Firepower and accuracy • Transportation and communication • Railway: US Civil War, Prussia vs Austria (1866) and France (1870-1) • Communications (Telegraphy) • Steam-powered, ironclad boats • Medical advances

11. Transformations of the battlefield: Waterloo

12. Transformations of the battlefield: WWI

13. Critical innovations • Air Power • Integrations of different weapon systems • The Absolute Weapon: the Atomic bomb Hiroshima, 6 August 1945 = 14,000 tons of TNT 1953: Hydrogen bomb 1961: USSR bomb = 4,000 Hiroshima-type bomb

14. An innovation-centred narrative • First World War – The chemists’ war • Second World War – The physicists’ war • Towards to a New Revolution in Military Affairs – ICT • Civilianization and Industrialization of warfare – War = perversion of science and innovation “Since technology and war operate on a logic which is not only different but actually opposed, the conceptual framework that is useful, even vital, for dealing with the one should not be allowed to interfere with the other”. Martin Van Creveld

15. What does the killing?Technology-in-Use • The engine of warfare: Horsepower!! • British Army in WWI (1917): 591,000 horses, 213,000 mules, 47,000 camels, 11,000 oxen • German Army in WWII (1945): 1.2 million horses • Guns and artillery remained the main killers in WWI and WWII

16. What does the killing?Technology-in-Use • Greater efficiency obtained not by innovation but by better deployment, coordination, organization of existing technologies • Rifles and small arms: gradual adaptation