On the Economic Consequences of Warfare in Early Modern Northwest Europe: Four Conceptual and Empirical Contributions

Abstract

The sheer endless episodes of warfare are one of the defining features of the early modern period in Northwest Europe. Aside from their destructive consequences, historians often associate these episodes of warfare with increasing taxation and improvements in the capacity of states. How these developments affected local and regional economies during the early modern period remains less understood. Combining several methodologies, this dissertation provides new insights in the economic consequences of warfare. The direct effects of warfare were unsurprisingly negative. However, how negative and how long it took for recovery to set in, were to a large extent determined by local organizations such as land-owning institutions and local town- or village councils. At the same time, such organizations—especially when and where they were powerful—were sometimes the direct target of expanding states and their armies. In targeting and damaging local organizations, warfare could do real and lasting damages to economies. In some other cases, however, expanding states were forced to incorporate the same organizations into the state. Where this happened, one could argue that the economic consequences of warfare may have been, to some extent, positive in the long term.