From Warfare to Wealth
The Military Origins of Urban Prosperity in Europe

This book provides a new way to think about long-run economic and political development that speaks to several fundamental debates.

Mark Dincecco (Author), Massimiliano Gaetano Onorato (Author)

9781316612590, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 14 December 2017

210 pages
22.8 x 15.3 x 1.3 cm, 0.33 kg

'In this provocative book Dincecco and Onorato make a strong case for revising our conventional views of early urban growth in Europe. The continent's unhappy tradition of conflict may well have been a stimulant for development.' David Stasavage, Julius Silver Professor, New York University

The economic rise of Europe over the past millennium represents a major human breakthrough. To explain this phenomenon, this book highlights a counterintuitive yet central feature of Europe's historical landscape: warfare. Historical warfare inflicted numerous costs on rural populations. Security was a traditional function of the city. To mitigate the high costs of conflict in the countryside, rural populations migrated to urban centers. Over time, the city's historical role as a safe harbor translated into local economic development through several channels, including urban political freedoms and human capital accumulation. To make this argument, the book performs a wide-ranging analysis of a novel quantitative database that spans more than one thousand years, from the fall of the Carolingian Empire to today. The book's study of urban Europe's historical path from warfare to wealth provides a new way to think about the process of long-run economic and political development.

1. Introduction
2. The importance of warfare
3. Europe's urban rise
4. Evaluating the safe harbor effect
5. Evaluating the warfare-to-wealth effect
6. Warfare to wealth in comparative perspective
Epilogue.

Subject Areas: War & defence operations [JWL], Military administration [JWJ], Warfare & defence [JW]