The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers - Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000

ECONOMIC CHANGE AND

MILITARY CONFLICT

FROM 1500 TO 2000

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but also important for under￾W W standing today's world as the

• • new century dawns, for just as

the great empires of the past flourished and fell,

will today's—and tomorrow's—empires rise and

fell as well.

In this wide-ranging analysis of global politics

over the past five centuries, Ydle historian Paul

Kennedy focuses on the critical relationship of

economic to military power as it affects the rise

and fell of empires. Nations project their military

power according to their economic resources and

in defense of their broad economic interests. But,

Kennedy argues, the cost of projecting that mili￾tary power is more than even the largest econo￾mies can afford indefinitely, especially when new

technologies and new centers of production shift

economic power away from established Great

Powers—hence the rise and fell of nations.

Professor Kennedy begins this story around the

year 1500, when a combination of economic and

military-technological breakthroughs so strength￾ened the nation-states of Europe that soon they

prevailed over the great empires of the East; but

European dynastic and religious rivalries, along

with new technologies, made it impossible for any

single power to dominate the continent. From the

campaigns of Emperor Charles V to the struggles

against Napoleonic France, victory repeatedly

went to the economically strong side, while states

that were militarily top heavy usually crashed

to eventual defeat. This is a pattern, Professor

Kennedy shows, that also applied in the two world

wars of the present century, where superior eco￾nomic and technological resources twice defeated

the German war machine.

In what will probably be the most widely dis￾cussed part of this book, Professor Kennedy

devotes his closing chapters to an analysis of Great

Power politics since 1945 through the year 2000.

Here, too, his focus is not only on the military

abilities and policies of the leading states, but also

(continued on back flap)

(continued from front flap)

on those profound shifts in the world's productive

balances that—as in the Renaissance—cause cer￾tain Great Powers to rise as others fall. Professor

Kennedy's discussion of the implications of these

changes for the United States, the Soviet Union,

the countries of western Europe, and the emerging

Asian powers of China and Japan makes this one

of the most important political studies of recent

time. Both for the policy maker and the general

public, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers

transcends its historical scholarship.

Educated at the universities of Newcastle, Oxford,

and Bonn, PAUL KENNEDY is now Dilworth Pro￾fessor of History at Yale University, where he

teaches modern international and strategic history.

A former research assistant to Sir Basil Liddell

Hart, he has written and edited ten books on sub￾jects such as naval history, imperialism, Anglo￾German relations, strategy, and diplomacy. A

visiting fellow and guest lecturer at many universi￾ties, he reviews widely in daily and weekly jour￾nals as well as for professional magazines. Paul

Kennedy is married, has three children, and lives

in Hamden, Connecticut.

Jacket design: Bob Silverman

Jacket art: Van Howell

Random House, Inc., New York, NY. 10022

Printed in U.S.A. 1/88

© 1988 Random House, Inc.

From

T H E RISE AN D FALL

T&GREATPOWERS

"Although the United States is at present still in a class of its

own economically and perhaps even militarily, it cannot avoid

confronting the two great tests which challenge the longevity of

every major power that occupies the 'number one' position in

world affairs: whether, in the military/strategical realm, it can

preserve a reasonable balance between the nation's perceived

defense requirements and the means it possesses to maintain

those commitments; and whether, as an intimately related

point, it can preserve the technological and economic bases

of its power from relative erosion in the face of the ever-shift￾ing patterns of global production. This test of American abili￾ties will be the greater because it, like imperial Spain around

1600 or the British Empire around 1900, is the inheritor of a

vast array of strategical commitments which had been made

decades earlier, when the nation's political, economic, and mili￾tary capacity to influence world affairs seemed so much

more assured. In consequence, the United States now runs the

risk, so familiar to historians of the rise and fall of previous

Great Powers, of what might roughly be called imperial

overstretch': that is to say, decision makers in Washing￾ton must face the awkward and enduring fact that the sum

total of the United States' global interests and obligations is

nowadays far larger than the country's power to defend them

all simultaneously."

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The Rise and Fall

of the Great Powers

ALSO BY PAUL KENNEDY

Pacific Onslaught 1941-1943

Pacific Victory 1943-1945

The Samoan Tangle

The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery

The Realities Behind Diplomacy

The Rise of the Anglo-German Antagonism 1860-1914

Strategy and Diplomacy 1860-1945

THE

RISE AND FALL

OF THE

GREAT POWERS

Economic Change

and Military Conflict

from 1500 to 200 0

BY PAUL KENNEDY

Random House

New York

Copyright © 1987 by Paul Kennedy

All rights reserved under

International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

Published in the United States by Random House, Inc.,

New York.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following

for permission to reprint previously published material:

Lexington Books, D. C. Heath and Company: An illustration from American

Defense Annual 1987-1988, edited by Joseph Kruzel. Copyright © 1987, D. C.

Heath and Company (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, D. C. Heath and

Company). Reprinted by permission of the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kennedy, Paul M., 1945-

The rise and fall of the great powers.

Includes index.

1. History, Modern. 2. Economic history.

3. Military history, Modern. 4. Armaments—Economic

aspects. 5. Balance of power. I. Title.

D210.K46 1988 909.82 87-9690

ISBN 0-394-54674-1

Book design by Charlotte Staub

Maps by Jean Paul Tremblay

Manufactured in the United States of America

89

To Cath

Acknowledgments

\A/hatever the weaknesses of this

book, they would have been far greater without the kind help of

friends. J. R. Jones and Gordon Lee went through the entire manu￾script, asking questions all the way. My colleague Jonathan Spence

endeavored (I fear with only partial success) to curb the cultural as￾sumptions which emerged in the first two chapters. John Elliott was

encouraging about Chapter 2, despite its being very evidently "not my

period." Paddy O'Brien and John Bosher sought to make my comments

on eighteenth-century British and French finance a little less crude.

Nick Rizopoulos and Michael Mandelbaum not only scrutinized the

later chapters, but also invited me to present my ideas at a series of

meetings at the Lehrman Institute in New York. Many, many scholars

have heard me give papers on subthemes in this book, and have pro￾vided references, much-needed criticism, and encouragement.

The libraries and staffs at the universities of East Anglia and Yale

were of great assistance. My graduate student Kevin Smith helped me

in the search for historical statistics. My son Jim Kennedy prepared the

maps. Sheila Klein and Sue McClain came to the rescue with typing

and word processing, as did Maarten Pereboom with the bibliography.

I am extremely grateful for the sustained support and encouragement

which my literary agent, Bruce Hunter, has provided over the years.

Jason Epstein has been a firm and patient editor, repeatedly getting me

to think of the general reader—and also recognizing earlier than the

author did how demanding it would be to deal with themes of this

magnitude.

My family has provided support and, more important still, light

relief. The book is dedicated to my wife, to whom I owe so much.

Paul Kennedy

Hamden, Connecticut, 1986

vil

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments vii

Maps xi

Tables and Charts xiii

Introduction xv

STRATEGY AND ECONOMICS

IN THE PREINDUSTRIAL WORLD

1.

The Rise of the Western World 3

Ming China 4

The Muslim World 9

Two Outsiders—Japan and Russia 14

The "European Miracle" 16

2.

The Habsburg Bid for Mastery, 1519–1659 31

The Meaning and Chronology of the Struggle 32

Strengths and Weaknesses of the Habsburg Bloc 41

International Comparisons 55

War, Money, and the Nation-State 70

3.

Finance, Geography, and the Winning of Wars, 1660–1815 73

The "Financial Revolution" 76

Geopolitics 86

The Winning of Wars, 1660–1763 100

The Winning of Wars, 1763–1815 115

STRATEGY AND ECONOMICS

IN THE INDUSTRIAL ERA

4.

Industrialization and the Shifting Global Balances, 1815–1885 143

The Eclipse of the Non-European World 147

Britain as Hegemon? 151

The "Middle Powers" 158

The Crimean War and the Erosion of Russian Power 170

ix

X CONTENTS

The United States and the Civil War 178

The Wars of German Unification 182

Conclusions 191

5.

The Coming of a Bipolar World and the Crisis

of the "Middle Powers": Part One, 1885–1918 194

The Shifting Balance of World Forces 198

The Position of the Powers, 1885–1914 202

Alliances and the Drift to War, 1890–1914 249

Total War and the Power Balances, 1914–1918 256

6.

The Coming of a Bipolar World and the Crisis

of the "Middle Powers": Part Two, 1919–1942 275

The Postwar International Order 275

The Challengers 291

The Offstage Superpowers 320

The Unfolding Crisis, 1931–1942 333

STRATEGY AND ECONOMICS

TODAY AND TOMORROW

7.

Stability and Change in a Bipolar World, 1943–1980 347

"The Proper Application of Overwhelming Force" 347

The New Strategic Landscape 357

The Cold War and the Third World 373

The Fissuring of the Bipolar World 395

The Changing Economic Balances, 1950 to 1980 413

8.

To the Twenty-first Century 438

History and Speculation 438

China's Balancing Act 447

The Japanese Dilemma 458

The EEC—Potential and Problems 471

The Soviet Union and Its "Contradictions" 488

The United States: The Problem of Number One in Relative Decline 514

Epilogue 536

Notes 541

Bibliography 625

Index 663

MAPS

1. World Power Centers in the Sixteenth Century 5

2. The Political Divisions of Europe in the Sixteenth Century

3. Charles V's Inheritance, 1519 34

4. The Collapse of Spanish Power in Europe 42

5. Europe in 1721 109

6. European Colonial Empires, c. 1750 112

7. Europe at the Height of Napoleon's Power, 1810 128

8. The Chief Possessions, Naval Bases, and Submarine Cables

of the British Empire, c. 1900 225

9. The European Powers and Their War Plans in 1914 255

10. Europe After the First World War 276

11. Europe at the Height of Hitler's Power, 1942 351

12. Worldwide U.S. Force Deployments, 1987 520

xi