War and the Birth of the Nation State

The rise of the nation-state is assigned by most historians a central role in the economic growth of Europe. Most recently Douglass North and Robert Thomas have argued that sustained economic growth was made possible only by institutional changes which, themselves, were a consequence of the rise of the nation-state. ¹ Thus it is clear that a complete model of the economic growth of Europe will have to account for the rise of the nation-state. That is the humble task of this paper.